The wheel of time, p.2
The Wheel of Time, page 2
22 To Make an Anchor Weep
23 Call to a Sitting
24 Honey in the Tea
25 Attending Elaida
26 As If the World Were Fog
27 A Plain Wooden Box
28 In Malden
29 The Last Knot
30 Outside the Gates
31 The House on Full Moon Street
32 To Keep the Bargain
33 Nine Out of Ten
34 A Cup of Kaf
35 The Importance of Dyelin
36 Under an Oak
37 Prince of the Ravens
Epilogue: Remember the Old Saying
Glossary
THE GATHERING STORM
Map
Prologue: What the Storm Means
1 Tears from Steel
2 The Nature of Pain
3 The Ways of Honor
4 Nightfall
5 A Tale of Blood
6 When Iron Melts
7 The Plan for Arad Doman
8 Clean Shirts
9 Leaving Malden
10 The Last of the Tabac
11 The Death of Adrin
12 Unexpected Encounters
13 An Offer and a Departure
14 A Box Opens
15 A Place to Begin
16 In the White Tower
17 Questions of Control
18 A Message in Haste
19 Gambits
20 On a Broken Road
21 Embers and Ash
22 The Last That Could Be Done
23 A Warp in the Air
24 A New Commitment
25 In Darkness
26 A Crack in the Stone
27 The Tipsy Gelding
28 Night in Hinderstap
29 Into Bandar Eban
30 Old Advice
31 A Promise to Lews Therin
32 Rivers of Shadow
33 A Conversation with the Dragon
34 Legends
35 A Halo of Blackness
36 The Death of Tuon
37 A Force of Light
38 News in Tel’aran’rhiod
39 A Visit from Verin Sedai
40 The Tower Shakes
41 A Fount of Power
42 Before the Stone of Tear
43 Sealed to the Flame
44 Scents Unknown
45 The Tower Stands
46 To Be Forged Again
47 The One He Lost
48 Reading the Commentary
49 Just Another Man
50 Veins of Gold
Epilogue: Bathed in Light
Glossary
TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT
Map
Prologue: Distinctions
1 Apples First
2 Questions of Leadership
3 The Amyrlin’s Anger
4 The Pattern Groans
5 Writings
6 Questioning Intentions
7 Lighter than a Feather
8 The Seven-Striped Lass
9 Blood in the Air
10 After the Taint
11 An Unexpected Letter
12 An Empty Ink Bottle
13 For What Has Been Wrought
14 A Vow
15 Use a Pebble
16 Shanna’har
17 Partings, and a Meeting
18 The Strength of This Place
19 Talk of Dragons
20 A Choice
21 An Open Gate
22 The End of a Legend
23 Foxheads
24 To Make a Stand
25 Return to Bandar Eban
26 Parley
27 A Call to Stand
28 Oddities
29 A Terrible Feeling
30 Men Dream Here
31 Into the Void
32 A Storm of Light
33 A Good Soup
34 Judgment
35 The Right Thing
36 An Invitation
37 Darkness in the Tower
38 Wounds
39 In the Three-fold Land
40 A Making
41 An Unexpected Ally
42 Stronger than Blood
43 Some Tea
44 A Backhanded Request
45 A Reunion
46 Working Leather
47 A Teaching Chamber
48 Near Avendesora
49 Court of the Sun
50 Choosing Enemies
51 A Testing
52 Boots
53 Gateways
54 The Light of the World
55 The One Left Behind
56 Something Wrong
57 A Rabbit for Supper
Epilogue: And After
Glossary
A MEMORY OF LIGHT
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
Prologue: By Grace and Banners Fallen
1 Eastward the Wind Blew
2 The Choice of an Ajah
3 A Dangerous Place
4 Advantages to a Bond
5 To Require a Boon
6 A Knack
7 Into the Thick of It
8 That Smoldering City
9 To Die Well
10 The Use of Dragons
11 Just Another Sell-sword
12 A Shard of a Moment
13 What Must Be Done
14 Doses of Forkroot
15 Your Neck in a Cord
16 A Silence Like Screaming
17 Older, More Weathered
18 To Feel Wasted
19 The Choice of a Patch
20 Into Thakan’dar
21 Not a Mistake to Ignore
22 The Wyld
23 At the Edge of Time
24 To Ignore the Omens
25 Quick Fragments
26 Considerations
27 Friendly Fire
28 Too Many Men
29 The Loss of a Hill
30 The Way of the Predator
31 A Tempest of Water
32 A Yellow Flower-Spider
33 The Prince’s Tabac
34 Drifting
35 A Practiced Grin
36 Unchangeable Things
37 The Last Battle
38 The Place That Was Not
39 Those Who Fight
40 Wolfbrother
41 A Smile
42 Impossibilities
43 A Field of Glass
44 Two Craftsmen
45 Tendrils of Mist
46 To Awaken
47 Watching the Flow Writhe
48 A Brilliant Lance
49 Light and Shadow
Epilogue: To See the Answer
Copyright
Also by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
About the Authors
Preview: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
Copyright
NEW SPRING
ROBERT JORDAN
For Harriet
Now and forever
Chapter
1
The Hook
A cold wind gusted through the night, across the snow-covered land where men had been killing one another for the past three days. The air was crisp, if not so icy as Lan expected for this time of year. It was still cold enough for his steel breastplate to carry the chill through his coat, and his breath to mist in front of his face when the wind did not whip it away. The blackness in the sky was just beginning to fade, the thousands of stars like the thick-scattered dust of diamonds slowly dimming. The fat sickle of the moon hung low, giving barely light to make out the silhouettes of the men guarding the fireless camp in the sprawling copse of oak and leatherleaf. Fires would have given them away to the Aiel. He had fought the Aiel long before this war began, on the Shienaran marches, a matter of duty to friends. Aielmen were bad enough in daylight. Facing them in the night was as close to staking your life on the toss of a coin as made no difference. Of course, sometimes they found you without fires.
Resting a gauntleted hand on his sword in its scabbard, he pulled his cloak back around himself and continued his round of the sentries through calf-deep snow. It was an ancient sword, made with the One Power before the Breaking of the World, during the War of the Shadow, when the Dark One had touched the world for a time. Only legends remained of that Age, except perhaps for what the Aes Sedai might know, yet the blade was hard fact. It could not be broken and never needed sharpening. The hilt had been replaced countless times over the long centuries, but not even tarnish could touch the blade. Once, it had been the sword of Malkieri kings.
The next sentry he came to, a short stocky fellow in a long dark cloak, was leaning back against the trunk of a heavy-limbed oak, his head slumped on his chest. Lan touched the sentry’s shoulder, and the man jerked upright, almost dropping the horn-and-sinew horsebow gripped in his gloved hands. The hood of his cloak slid back, revealing his conical steel helmet for an instant before he hastily pulled the cowl up again. In the pale moonlight, Lan could not make out the man’s face behind the vertical bars of his faceguard, but he knew him. Lan’s own helmet was open, in the style of dead Malkier, supporting a steel crescent moon above his forehead.
“I wasn’t sleeping, my Lord,” the fellow said quickly. “Just resting a moment.” A copper-skinned Domani, he sounded embarrassed, and rightly so. This was not his first battle, or even his first war.
“An Aiel would have wakened you by slitting your throat or putting a spear through your heart, Basram,” Lan said in a quiet voice. Men listened closer to calm tones than to the loudest shouts, so long as firmness and certainty accompanied the calm. “Maybe it would be better without the temptation of the tree so near.” He refrained from adding that even if the Aiel did not kill him, the man risked frostbite standing in one place too long. Basram knew that. Winters were nearly as cold in Arad Doman as in the Borderlands.
Mumbling an apology, the Domani respectfully touched his helmet and moved three paces out from the tree. He held himself erect, now, and peered into the darkness. He shifted his feet, too, guarding against blackened toes. Rumor said Aes Sedai were offering Healing, closer to the river, injuries and sickness gone as if they had never been, but without that, amputation was the usual way to stop a man losing his feet to black-rot, and maybe his legs as well. In any case, it was best to avoid becoming involved with Aes Sedai more than absolutely necessary. Years later you could find one of them had tied strings to you just in case she might have need. Aes Sedai thought far ahead, and seldom seemed to care who they used in their schemes or how. That was one reason Lan avoided them.
How long would Basram’s renewed alertness last? Lan wished he had the answer, but there was no point in taking the Domani to task further. All of the men he commanded were bone-weary. Likely every man in the army of the grandly named Great Coalition—sometimes it was called the Grand Coalition, or the Grand Alliance, or half a dozen other things, some worse than uncomplimentary—likely every last man was near exhaustion. A battle was hot work, snow or no snow, and tiring. Muscles could knot from tension even when they had the chance to stop for a time, and the last few days had offered small chance to stop very long.
The camp held well over three hundred men, a full quarter of them on guard at any given time—against Aiel, Lan wanted as many eyes as he could manage—and before he had gone another two hundred paces, he had had to wake three more, one asleep on his feet without any support at all. Jaim’s head was up, and his eyes open. That was a trick some soldiers learned, especially old soldiers like Jaim. Cutting off the gray-bearded man’s protests that he could not have been asleep, not standing up straight, Lan promised to let Jaim’s friends know if he found him sleeping again.
Jaim’s mouth hung open for a moment; then he swallowed hard. “Won’t happen again, my Lord. The Light sear my soul if it does!” He sounded sincere to his bones. Some men would have been afraid that their friends would drub them senseless for putting the rest in danger, but given the company Jaim kept, more likely he dreaded the humiliation of having been caught.
As Lan walked on, he found himself chuckling. He seldom laughed, and it was a fool thing to laugh over, but laughter was better than worrying over what he could not change, such as weary men drowsing on guard. As well worry about death. What could not be changed must be endured.
Abruptly, he stopped and raised his voice. “Bukama, why are you sneaking about? You’ve been following me since I woke.” A startled grunt came from behind him. Doubtless Bukama had thought he was being silent, and in truth, very few men would have heard the faint crunching of his boots in the snow, yet he should have known Lan would. After all, he had been one of Lan’s teachers, and one of the first lessons had been to be aware of his surroundings at all times, even in his sleep. Not an easy lesson for a boy to learn, but only the dead could afford oblivion. The oblivious soon became the dead, in the Blight beyond the Borderlands.
“I’ve been watching your back,” Bukama announced gruffly, striding up to join him. “One of these black-veiled Aiel Darkfriends could sneak in and cut your throat for all the care you’re taking. Have you forgotten everything I taught you?” Bluff and broad, Bukama was almost as tall as he, taller than most men, and wearing a Malkieri helmet without a crest, though he had the right to one. He had more concern for his duties than his rights, which was proper, but Lan wished he would not spurn his rights so completely.
When the nation of Malkier died, twenty men had been given the task of carrying the infant Lan Mandragoran to safety. Only five had survived that journey, to raise Lan from the cradle and train him, and Bukama was the last left alive. His hair was solid gray now, worn cut at the shoulder as tradition required, but his back was straight, his arms hard, his blue eyes clear and keen. Tradition infused Bukama. A thin braided leather cord held his hair back, resting in the permanent groove across his forehead it had made over the years. Few men still wore the hadori. Lan did. He would die wearing it, and go into the ground wearing that and nothing else. If there was anyone to bury him where he died. He glanced north, toward his distant home. Most people would have thought it a strange place to call home, but he had felt the pull of it ever since he came south.
“I remembered enough to hear you,” he replied. There was too little light to make out Bukama’s weathered face, yet he knew it wore a glower. He could not recall seeing any other expression from his friend and teacher even when he spoke praise. Bukama was steel clothed in flesh. Steel his will, duty his soul. “Do you still believe the Aiel are pledged to the Dark One?”
The other man made a sign to ward off evil, as if Lan had spoken the Dark One’s true name. Shai’tan. They had both seen the misfortune that followed speaking that name aloud, and Bukama was one of those who believed that merely thinking it drew the Dark One’s attention. The Dark One and all the Forsaken are bound in Shayol Ghul, Lan recited the catechism in his head, bound by the Creator at the moment of creation. May we shelter safe beneath the Light, in the Creator’s hand. He did not believe thinking that name was enough, but better safe than sorry when it came to the Shadow.
“If they aren’t, then why are we here?” Bukama said sourly. And surprisingly. He liked to grumble, but always about inconsequential things or prospects for the future. Never the present.
“I gave my word to stay until the end,” Lan replied mildly.
Bukama scrubbed at his nose. His grunt might have been abashed this time. It was hard to be sure. Another of his lessons had been that a man’s word must be as good as an oath sworn beneath the Light or it was no good at all.
The Aiel had indeed seemed like a horde of Darkfriends when they suddenly spilled across the immense mountain range called the Spine of the World. They had burned the great city of Cairhien, ravaged the nation of Cairhien, and, in the two years since, had fought through Tear and then Andor before reaching these killing fields, outside the huge island city of Tar Valon. In all the years since the nations of the present day had been carved out of Artur Hawkwing’s empire, the Aiel had never before left the desert called the Waste. They might have invaded before that; no one could be sure, except maybe the Aes Sedai in Tar Valon, but, as so often with the women of the White Tower, they were not saying. What Aes Sedai knew, they held close, and doled out by dribbles and drops when and if they chose. In the world outside of Tar Valon, though, many men had claimed to see a pattern. A thousand years had passed between the Breaking of the World and the Trolloc Wars, or so most historians said. Those wars had destroyed the nations that existed then, and no one doubted that the Dark One’s hand had been behind them, imprisoned or not, as surely as it had been behind the War of the Shadow, and the Breaking, and the end of the Age of Legends. A thousand years from the Trolloc Wars until Hawkwing built an empire and that, too, was destroyed, after his death, in the War of the Hundred Years. Some historians said they saw the Dark One’s hand in that war, too. And now, close enough to a thousand years after Hawkwing’s empire died, the Aiel came, burning and killing. It had to be a pattern. Surely the Dark One must have directed them. Lan would never have come south if he had not believed that. He no longer did. But he had given his word.
He wriggled his toes in his turned-down boots. Whether or not it was as cold as he was used to, iciness burrowed into your feet if you stood too long in one place in snow. “Let’s walk,” he said. “I don’t doubt I’ll have to wake a dozen more men if not two.” And make another round to wake others.
Before they could take a step, however, a sound brought them up short, and alert: the sound of a horse walking in the snow. Lan’s hand drifted to his sword hilt, half consciously easing the blade in its sheath. A faint rasp of steel on leather came from Bukama doing the same. Neither feared an attack; Aiel rode only at great need, and reluctantly even then. But a lone horseman at this hour had to be a messenger, and messengers rarely brought good news, these days. Especially not in the night.
Horse and rider materialized out of the darkness following a lean man afoot, one of the sentries by the horsebow he carried. The horse had the arched neck of good Tairen bloodstock, and the rider was plainly from Tear as well. For one thing, the scent of roses came ahead of him on the wind, from the oils glistening on his pointed beard, and only Tairens were fool enough to wear scent, as if the Aiel had no noses. Besides, no one else wore those helmets with a high ridge across the top and a rim that cast the man’s narrow face in shadow. A single short white plume on the helmet marked him an officer, an odd choice for a messenger, albeit an officer of low rank. He huddled in his high-cantled saddle and held his dark cloak tightly around him. He seemed to be shivering. Tear lay far to the south. On the coast of Tear, it never snowed so much as a single flake. Lan had never quite believed that, whatever he had read, until he had seen it for himself.
23 Call to a Sitting
24 Honey in the Tea
25 Attending Elaida
26 As If the World Were Fog
27 A Plain Wooden Box
28 In Malden
29 The Last Knot
30 Outside the Gates
31 The House on Full Moon Street
32 To Keep the Bargain
33 Nine Out of Ten
34 A Cup of Kaf
35 The Importance of Dyelin
36 Under an Oak
37 Prince of the Ravens
Epilogue: Remember the Old Saying
Glossary
THE GATHERING STORM
Map
Prologue: What the Storm Means
1 Tears from Steel
2 The Nature of Pain
3 The Ways of Honor
4 Nightfall
5 A Tale of Blood
6 When Iron Melts
7 The Plan for Arad Doman
8 Clean Shirts
9 Leaving Malden
10 The Last of the Tabac
11 The Death of Adrin
12 Unexpected Encounters
13 An Offer and a Departure
14 A Box Opens
15 A Place to Begin
16 In the White Tower
17 Questions of Control
18 A Message in Haste
19 Gambits
20 On a Broken Road
21 Embers and Ash
22 The Last That Could Be Done
23 A Warp in the Air
24 A New Commitment
25 In Darkness
26 A Crack in the Stone
27 The Tipsy Gelding
28 Night in Hinderstap
29 Into Bandar Eban
30 Old Advice
31 A Promise to Lews Therin
32 Rivers of Shadow
33 A Conversation with the Dragon
34 Legends
35 A Halo of Blackness
36 The Death of Tuon
37 A Force of Light
38 News in Tel’aran’rhiod
39 A Visit from Verin Sedai
40 The Tower Shakes
41 A Fount of Power
42 Before the Stone of Tear
43 Sealed to the Flame
44 Scents Unknown
45 The Tower Stands
46 To Be Forged Again
47 The One He Lost
48 Reading the Commentary
49 Just Another Man
50 Veins of Gold
Epilogue: Bathed in Light
Glossary
TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT
Map
Prologue: Distinctions
1 Apples First
2 Questions of Leadership
3 The Amyrlin’s Anger
4 The Pattern Groans
5 Writings
6 Questioning Intentions
7 Lighter than a Feather
8 The Seven-Striped Lass
9 Blood in the Air
10 After the Taint
11 An Unexpected Letter
12 An Empty Ink Bottle
13 For What Has Been Wrought
14 A Vow
15 Use a Pebble
16 Shanna’har
17 Partings, and a Meeting
18 The Strength of This Place
19 Talk of Dragons
20 A Choice
21 An Open Gate
22 The End of a Legend
23 Foxheads
24 To Make a Stand
25 Return to Bandar Eban
26 Parley
27 A Call to Stand
28 Oddities
29 A Terrible Feeling
30 Men Dream Here
31 Into the Void
32 A Storm of Light
33 A Good Soup
34 Judgment
35 The Right Thing
36 An Invitation
37 Darkness in the Tower
38 Wounds
39 In the Three-fold Land
40 A Making
41 An Unexpected Ally
42 Stronger than Blood
43 Some Tea
44 A Backhanded Request
45 A Reunion
46 Working Leather
47 A Teaching Chamber
48 Near Avendesora
49 Court of the Sun
50 Choosing Enemies
51 A Testing
52 Boots
53 Gateways
54 The Light of the World
55 The One Left Behind
56 Something Wrong
57 A Rabbit for Supper
Epilogue: And After
Glossary
A MEMORY OF LIGHT
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
Prologue: By Grace and Banners Fallen
1 Eastward the Wind Blew
2 The Choice of an Ajah
3 A Dangerous Place
4 Advantages to a Bond
5 To Require a Boon
6 A Knack
7 Into the Thick of It
8 That Smoldering City
9 To Die Well
10 The Use of Dragons
11 Just Another Sell-sword
12 A Shard of a Moment
13 What Must Be Done
14 Doses of Forkroot
15 Your Neck in a Cord
16 A Silence Like Screaming
17 Older, More Weathered
18 To Feel Wasted
19 The Choice of a Patch
20 Into Thakan’dar
21 Not a Mistake to Ignore
22 The Wyld
23 At the Edge of Time
24 To Ignore the Omens
25 Quick Fragments
26 Considerations
27 Friendly Fire
28 Too Many Men
29 The Loss of a Hill
30 The Way of the Predator
31 A Tempest of Water
32 A Yellow Flower-Spider
33 The Prince’s Tabac
34 Drifting
35 A Practiced Grin
36 Unchangeable Things
37 The Last Battle
38 The Place That Was Not
39 Those Who Fight
40 Wolfbrother
41 A Smile
42 Impossibilities
43 A Field of Glass
44 Two Craftsmen
45 Tendrils of Mist
46 To Awaken
47 Watching the Flow Writhe
48 A Brilliant Lance
49 Light and Shadow
Epilogue: To See the Answer
Copyright
Also by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
About the Authors
Preview: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
Copyright
NEW SPRING
ROBERT JORDAN
For Harriet
Now and forever
Chapter
1
The Hook
A cold wind gusted through the night, across the snow-covered land where men had been killing one another for the past three days. The air was crisp, if not so icy as Lan expected for this time of year. It was still cold enough for his steel breastplate to carry the chill through his coat, and his breath to mist in front of his face when the wind did not whip it away. The blackness in the sky was just beginning to fade, the thousands of stars like the thick-scattered dust of diamonds slowly dimming. The fat sickle of the moon hung low, giving barely light to make out the silhouettes of the men guarding the fireless camp in the sprawling copse of oak and leatherleaf. Fires would have given them away to the Aiel. He had fought the Aiel long before this war began, on the Shienaran marches, a matter of duty to friends. Aielmen were bad enough in daylight. Facing them in the night was as close to staking your life on the toss of a coin as made no difference. Of course, sometimes they found you without fires.
Resting a gauntleted hand on his sword in its scabbard, he pulled his cloak back around himself and continued his round of the sentries through calf-deep snow. It was an ancient sword, made with the One Power before the Breaking of the World, during the War of the Shadow, when the Dark One had touched the world for a time. Only legends remained of that Age, except perhaps for what the Aes Sedai might know, yet the blade was hard fact. It could not be broken and never needed sharpening. The hilt had been replaced countless times over the long centuries, but not even tarnish could touch the blade. Once, it had been the sword of Malkieri kings.
The next sentry he came to, a short stocky fellow in a long dark cloak, was leaning back against the trunk of a heavy-limbed oak, his head slumped on his chest. Lan touched the sentry’s shoulder, and the man jerked upright, almost dropping the horn-and-sinew horsebow gripped in his gloved hands. The hood of his cloak slid back, revealing his conical steel helmet for an instant before he hastily pulled the cowl up again. In the pale moonlight, Lan could not make out the man’s face behind the vertical bars of his faceguard, but he knew him. Lan’s own helmet was open, in the style of dead Malkier, supporting a steel crescent moon above his forehead.
“I wasn’t sleeping, my Lord,” the fellow said quickly. “Just resting a moment.” A copper-skinned Domani, he sounded embarrassed, and rightly so. This was not his first battle, or even his first war.
“An Aiel would have wakened you by slitting your throat or putting a spear through your heart, Basram,” Lan said in a quiet voice. Men listened closer to calm tones than to the loudest shouts, so long as firmness and certainty accompanied the calm. “Maybe it would be better without the temptation of the tree so near.” He refrained from adding that even if the Aiel did not kill him, the man risked frostbite standing in one place too long. Basram knew that. Winters were nearly as cold in Arad Doman as in the Borderlands.
Mumbling an apology, the Domani respectfully touched his helmet and moved three paces out from the tree. He held himself erect, now, and peered into the darkness. He shifted his feet, too, guarding against blackened toes. Rumor said Aes Sedai were offering Healing, closer to the river, injuries and sickness gone as if they had never been, but without that, amputation was the usual way to stop a man losing his feet to black-rot, and maybe his legs as well. In any case, it was best to avoid becoming involved with Aes Sedai more than absolutely necessary. Years later you could find one of them had tied strings to you just in case she might have need. Aes Sedai thought far ahead, and seldom seemed to care who they used in their schemes or how. That was one reason Lan avoided them.
How long would Basram’s renewed alertness last? Lan wished he had the answer, but there was no point in taking the Domani to task further. All of the men he commanded were bone-weary. Likely every man in the army of the grandly named Great Coalition—sometimes it was called the Grand Coalition, or the Grand Alliance, or half a dozen other things, some worse than uncomplimentary—likely every last man was near exhaustion. A battle was hot work, snow or no snow, and tiring. Muscles could knot from tension even when they had the chance to stop for a time, and the last few days had offered small chance to stop very long.
The camp held well over three hundred men, a full quarter of them on guard at any given time—against Aiel, Lan wanted as many eyes as he could manage—and before he had gone another two hundred paces, he had had to wake three more, one asleep on his feet without any support at all. Jaim’s head was up, and his eyes open. That was a trick some soldiers learned, especially old soldiers like Jaim. Cutting off the gray-bearded man’s protests that he could not have been asleep, not standing up straight, Lan promised to let Jaim’s friends know if he found him sleeping again.
Jaim’s mouth hung open for a moment; then he swallowed hard. “Won’t happen again, my Lord. The Light sear my soul if it does!” He sounded sincere to his bones. Some men would have been afraid that their friends would drub them senseless for putting the rest in danger, but given the company Jaim kept, more likely he dreaded the humiliation of having been caught.
As Lan walked on, he found himself chuckling. He seldom laughed, and it was a fool thing to laugh over, but laughter was better than worrying over what he could not change, such as weary men drowsing on guard. As well worry about death. What could not be changed must be endured.
Abruptly, he stopped and raised his voice. “Bukama, why are you sneaking about? You’ve been following me since I woke.” A startled grunt came from behind him. Doubtless Bukama had thought he was being silent, and in truth, very few men would have heard the faint crunching of his boots in the snow, yet he should have known Lan would. After all, he had been one of Lan’s teachers, and one of the first lessons had been to be aware of his surroundings at all times, even in his sleep. Not an easy lesson for a boy to learn, but only the dead could afford oblivion. The oblivious soon became the dead, in the Blight beyond the Borderlands.
“I’ve been watching your back,” Bukama announced gruffly, striding up to join him. “One of these black-veiled Aiel Darkfriends could sneak in and cut your throat for all the care you’re taking. Have you forgotten everything I taught you?” Bluff and broad, Bukama was almost as tall as he, taller than most men, and wearing a Malkieri helmet without a crest, though he had the right to one. He had more concern for his duties than his rights, which was proper, but Lan wished he would not spurn his rights so completely.
When the nation of Malkier died, twenty men had been given the task of carrying the infant Lan Mandragoran to safety. Only five had survived that journey, to raise Lan from the cradle and train him, and Bukama was the last left alive. His hair was solid gray now, worn cut at the shoulder as tradition required, but his back was straight, his arms hard, his blue eyes clear and keen. Tradition infused Bukama. A thin braided leather cord held his hair back, resting in the permanent groove across his forehead it had made over the years. Few men still wore the hadori. Lan did. He would die wearing it, and go into the ground wearing that and nothing else. If there was anyone to bury him where he died. He glanced north, toward his distant home. Most people would have thought it a strange place to call home, but he had felt the pull of it ever since he came south.
“I remembered enough to hear you,” he replied. There was too little light to make out Bukama’s weathered face, yet he knew it wore a glower. He could not recall seeing any other expression from his friend and teacher even when he spoke praise. Bukama was steel clothed in flesh. Steel his will, duty his soul. “Do you still believe the Aiel are pledged to the Dark One?”
The other man made a sign to ward off evil, as if Lan had spoken the Dark One’s true name. Shai’tan. They had both seen the misfortune that followed speaking that name aloud, and Bukama was one of those who believed that merely thinking it drew the Dark One’s attention. The Dark One and all the Forsaken are bound in Shayol Ghul, Lan recited the catechism in his head, bound by the Creator at the moment of creation. May we shelter safe beneath the Light, in the Creator’s hand. He did not believe thinking that name was enough, but better safe than sorry when it came to the Shadow.
“If they aren’t, then why are we here?” Bukama said sourly. And surprisingly. He liked to grumble, but always about inconsequential things or prospects for the future. Never the present.
“I gave my word to stay until the end,” Lan replied mildly.
Bukama scrubbed at his nose. His grunt might have been abashed this time. It was hard to be sure. Another of his lessons had been that a man’s word must be as good as an oath sworn beneath the Light or it was no good at all.
The Aiel had indeed seemed like a horde of Darkfriends when they suddenly spilled across the immense mountain range called the Spine of the World. They had burned the great city of Cairhien, ravaged the nation of Cairhien, and, in the two years since, had fought through Tear and then Andor before reaching these killing fields, outside the huge island city of Tar Valon. In all the years since the nations of the present day had been carved out of Artur Hawkwing’s empire, the Aiel had never before left the desert called the Waste. They might have invaded before that; no one could be sure, except maybe the Aes Sedai in Tar Valon, but, as so often with the women of the White Tower, they were not saying. What Aes Sedai knew, they held close, and doled out by dribbles and drops when and if they chose. In the world outside of Tar Valon, though, many men had claimed to see a pattern. A thousand years had passed between the Breaking of the World and the Trolloc Wars, or so most historians said. Those wars had destroyed the nations that existed then, and no one doubted that the Dark One’s hand had been behind them, imprisoned or not, as surely as it had been behind the War of the Shadow, and the Breaking, and the end of the Age of Legends. A thousand years from the Trolloc Wars until Hawkwing built an empire and that, too, was destroyed, after his death, in the War of the Hundred Years. Some historians said they saw the Dark One’s hand in that war, too. And now, close enough to a thousand years after Hawkwing’s empire died, the Aiel came, burning and killing. It had to be a pattern. Surely the Dark One must have directed them. Lan would never have come south if he had not believed that. He no longer did. But he had given his word.
He wriggled his toes in his turned-down boots. Whether or not it was as cold as he was used to, iciness burrowed into your feet if you stood too long in one place in snow. “Let’s walk,” he said. “I don’t doubt I’ll have to wake a dozen more men if not two.” And make another round to wake others.
Before they could take a step, however, a sound brought them up short, and alert: the sound of a horse walking in the snow. Lan’s hand drifted to his sword hilt, half consciously easing the blade in its sheath. A faint rasp of steel on leather came from Bukama doing the same. Neither feared an attack; Aiel rode only at great need, and reluctantly even then. But a lone horseman at this hour had to be a messenger, and messengers rarely brought good news, these days. Especially not in the night.
Horse and rider materialized out of the darkness following a lean man afoot, one of the sentries by the horsebow he carried. The horse had the arched neck of good Tairen bloodstock, and the rider was plainly from Tear as well. For one thing, the scent of roses came ahead of him on the wind, from the oils glistening on his pointed beard, and only Tairens were fool enough to wear scent, as if the Aiel had no noses. Besides, no one else wore those helmets with a high ridge across the top and a rim that cast the man’s narrow face in shadow. A single short white plume on the helmet marked him an officer, an odd choice for a messenger, albeit an officer of low rank. He huddled in his high-cantled saddle and held his dark cloak tightly around him. He seemed to be shivering. Tear lay far to the south. On the coast of Tear, it never snowed so much as a single flake. Lan had never quite believed that, whatever he had read, until he had seen it for himself.
