The wheel of time, p.492
The Wheel of Time, page 492
Nynaeve felt a stab of shame. She had considered abandoning Birgitte. That was what she had almost come up with. The thought had only been there for a moment, rejected as soon as it came, but it had come. What a coward she was. Surely Birgitte never even had moments when fear almost took control of her. “I . . .” A faint taste of boiled catfern and powdered mavinsleaf. “I almost ran away,” she said faintly. “I was so frightened my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I almost ran away and left you.”
“Oh?” Nynaeve writhed inside as Birgitte considered her. “But you did not, did you? I should have loosed before I called out, but I’ve never felt comfortable shooting anyone from behind. Even her. Still, it all worked out. But what do we do with her now?”
Moghedien certainly seemed to have overcome her fear. Ignoring the silver collar around her throat, she watched Nynaeve and Birgitte as though they were the prisoners, not she, and she was deliberating what to do with them. Except for an occasional twitch of her hands, as if she wanted to scratch where her skin held the memory of nettles, she appeared black-clad serenity. Only the a’dam let Nynaeve know there was fear in the woman, almost a gibbering, but pushed down to a muted buzz. She wished the thing let her know what Moghedien was thinking as well as feeling. Then again, she was just as glad not to be inside the mind behind those cold dark eyes.
“Before you consider anything . . . drastic,” Moghedien said, “remember that I know much that would be useful to you. I have observed the other Chosen, peeked into their schemes. Is that not worth something?”
“Tell me, and I will consider whether it’s worth anything,” Nynaeve said. What could she do with the woman?
“Lanfear, Graendal, Rahvin and Sammael are plotting together.”
Nynaeve gave the leash a short tug, staggering her. “I know that. Tell me something new.” The woman was captive here, but the a’dam only existed so long as they were in Tel’aran’rhiod.
“Do you know they are drawing Rand al’Thor to attack Sammael? But when he does, he will find the others as well, waiting to trap him between them. At least, he will find Graendal and Rahvin. I think Lanfear plays another game, one the others know nothing about.”
Nynaeve exchanged worried glances with Birgitte. Rand must learn of this. He would, as soon as she and Elayne could speak to Egwene tonight. If they could manage to put their hands on the ter’angreal long enough.
“That is,” Moghedien murmured, “if he lives long enough to find them.”
Nynaeve took hold of the silvery leash where it joined the collar and pulled the Forsaken’s face close to hers. Dark eyes met her gaze flatly, but she could feel anger through the a’dam, and fear wriggling up and being stamped down. “You listen to me. Do you think I don’t know why you are pretending to be so cooperative? You think if you keep talking long enough, I will make some slip, and you can escape. You think the longer we talk, the harder I’ll find it to kill you.” That much was true enough. To kill somebody in cold blood, even one of the Forsaken, would be hard, maybe harder than she could manage. What was she going to do with the woman? “But you understand this. I won’t allow hinting at things. If you try keeping anything back from me, I will do to you everything you ever thought of doing to me.” Dread, creeping through the leash, like bone-chilling shrieks deep in Moghedien’s mind. Maybe she did not know as much about a’dam as Nynaeve thought. Maybe she believed Nynaeve could read her thoughts if she tried. “Now if you know of some threat to Rand, something ahead of Sammael and the others, you tell me. Now!”
Words spilled from Moghedien’s mouth, and her tongue flickered out to wet her lips continually. “Al’Thor means to go after Rahvin. Today. This morning. Because he thinks Rahvin killed Morgase. I don’t know whether he did or not, but al’Thor believes it. But Rahvin never trusted Lanfear. He never trusted any of them. Why should he? He thought it all might be some trap set for him, so he has laid a trap of his own. He has set Wards through Caemlyn so if a man channels a spark he will know. Al’Thor will walk right into it. He almost certainly already has. I think he meant to leave Cairhien right after sunrise. I had no part of it. It was none of it my doing. I—”
Nynaeve wanted to shut her up; the fear sweat glistening on the woman’s face made her sick, but if she had to listen to that pleading voice, too . . . She started to channel, wondering whether she would be strong enough to hold Moghedien’s tongue, then smiled. She was linked to Moghedien, and in control. Moghedien’s eyes bulged as she wove flows to stop her own mouth and tied them. Nynaeve added plugs for her ears, too, before turning to Birgitte. “What do you think?”
“Elayne’s heart will break. She loves her mother.”
“I know that!” Nynaeve took a breath. “I will cry with her and mean every tear, but right now I must worry about Rand. I think she was telling the truth. I could almost feel it.” She caught the silver leash just below her bracelet and shook it. “Maybe it’s this, and maybe it was imagination. What do you believe?”
“That it’s the truth. She was never very brave unless she clearly had the upper hand, or thought she could get it. And you certainly put the fear of the Light into her.”
Nynaeve grimaced. Birgitte’s every word put another bubble of anger in her belly. She was never very brave except when she clearly had the upper hand. That could describe herself. She had put the fear of the Light into Moghedien. She had, and she had meant every word when she said it. Boxing somebody’s ears when they needed it was one thing; threatening torture, wanting to torture, even Moghedien, was something else again. And here she was trying to avoid what she knew she had to do. Never very brave except when she clearly had the upper hand. This time the bubble of anger was seeded by herself. “We have to go to Caemlyn. I do, at least. With her. I may not be able to channel strongly enough to tear paper as I am, but with the a’dam I can use her strength.”
“You won’t be able to affect anything in the waking world from Tel’aran’rhiod,” Birgitte said quietly.
“I know! I know, but I have to do something.”
Birgitte threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Nynaeve, it is such an embarrassment being associated with such a coward as you.” Abruptly her eyes widened in surprise. “There wasn’t much of your potion left. I think I am wak—” In mid-word, she was simply no longer there.
Taking a deep breath, Nynaeve untied the flows around Moghedien. Or made her do it; with the a’dam it was hard to tell which, really. She wished Birgitte was still there. Another pair of eyes. Someone who probably knew Tel’aran’rhiod better than she ever could. Someone who was brave. “We are taking a trip, Moghedien, and you are going to help me with every last scrap of you. If anything takes me by surprise . . . Suffice it to say, anything that happens to the one wearing this bracelet happens to the one wearing the collar. Only about tenfold.” The sickly look on Moghedien’s face said she believed. Which was just as well, since it was true.
Another deep breath, and Nynaeve began forming the image of the one place in Caemlyn she knew well enough to remember. The Royal Palace, where Elayne had taken her. Rahvin must be there. But in the waking world, not the World of Dreams. Still, she had to do something. Tel’aran’rhiod changed around her.
CHAPTER
55
The Threads Burn
Rand stopped. A long scorch along the corridor wall marked where half a dozen costly tapestries had gone to ash. Flames licked upward on another; a number of inlaid chests and tables were only charred ruins. Not his work. Thirty paces further on, red-coated men in breastplates and helmets with barred face-guards lay contorted in death on the white floor tiles, useless swords in hands. Not his work either. Rahvin had been wasteful of his own in attempting to reach Rand. He had been clever in his attacks, clever in his escapes, but from the moment he fled the throne room he had not faced Rand for more than the instant it took to strike and flee. Rahvin was strong, perhaps as strong as Rand, and more knowledgeable, but Rand had the fat-little-man angreal in his pocket, and Rahvin had none.
The corridor was doubly familiar, once for having seen it before, once for having seen something similar.
I walked this way with Elayne and Gawyn the day I met Morgase. The thought slithered painfully along the boundaries of the Void. He was cold in there, without emotion. Saidin raged and burned, but he was icy calm.
And another thought, like a stab. She lay on a floor like this, her golden hair spread as though sleeping. Ilyena Sunhair. My Ilyena.
Elaida had been there that day, too. She Foretold the pain I’d bring. She knew the darkness in me. Some of it. Enough.
Ilyena, I did not know what I was doing. I was mad! I am mad. Oh, Ilyena!
Elaida knew—some—but she did not tell even all of that. Better if she had told.
Oh, Light, is there no forgiveness? I did what I did in madness. Is there no mercy?
Gareth Bryne would have killed me, had he known. Morgase would have ordered my death. Morgase would be alive, perhaps. Elayne’s mother alive. Aviendha alive. Mat. Moiraine. How many alive, if I had died?
I have earned my torment. I deserve the final death. Oh, Ilyena, I deserve death.
I deserve death.
Bootsteps behind him. He turned.
They came out of a broad crossing corridor not twenty paces from him, two dozen men in breastplates and helmets and the white-collared red coats of the Queen’s Guards. Except that Andor had no queen now, and these men had not served her while she lived. A Myrddraal led them, pale eyeless face like something found under a rock, overlapping plates of black armor heightening the illusion of a serpent as it moved, black cloak hanging motionless however it moved. The look of the Eyeless was fear, but fear was a distant thing in the Void. They hesitated when they saw him; then the Halfman raised its black-bladed sword. Men who had not already drawn put hands to hilts.
Rand—he thought that was his name—channeled in a way he could not remember doing before.
Men and Myrddraal stiffened where they stood. White frost grew thick on them, frost that smoked as Mat’s boots had smoked. The Myrddraal’s upraised arm broke off with a loud crack. When it hit the floor tiles, arm and sword shattered.
Rand could feel the cold—yes, that was his name; Rand—cold like a knife as he walked past and turned the way they had come. Cold, yet warmer than saidin.
A man and a woman crouched against the wall, servants liveried in red and white, short of their middle years and holding each other as though for protection. Seeing Rand—there was more to the name; not just Rand—the man started to rise from where he had huddled away from the Myrddraal-led band, but the woman hauled him back by his sleeve.
“Go in peace,” Rand said, putting out a hand. Al’Thor. Yes, Rand al’Thor. “I’ll not hurt you, but you could be hurt if you stay.”
The woman’s brown eyes rolled up in her head. She would have collapsed in a heap if the man had not caught her, and his narrow mouth was working rapidly, as if he was praying but could not get the words out.
Rand looked where the man was looking. His hand had stretched out of his coatsleeve far enough to bare the Dragon’s golden-maned head that was part of his skin. “I will not hurt you,” he said, and walked on, leaving them there. He had Rahvin to corner yet. Rahvin to kill. And then?
No sound but the click of his boots on the tiles. And deep in his head, a faint voice murmuring mournfully of Ilyena and forgiveness. He strained to feel Rahvin channeling, to feel the man filled with the True Source. Nothing. Saidin seared his bones, froze his flesh, scoured his soul, but from without it was not easy to see until you were close. A lion in high grass, Asmodean had said once. A rabid lion. Should Asmodean count among those who should not have died? Or Lanfear? No. Not—
He had only a moment’s warning to throw himself flat, a hair-thin slice of time between feeling flows suddenly woven and an arm-thick bar of white light, liquid fire, slicing through the wall, ripping across like a sword through where his chest had been. Where that bar slashed, on both sides of the hallways, wall and friezes, doors and tapestries ceased to exist. Severed wall hangings and chunks of stone and plaster broken free rained to the floor.
So much for the Forsaken fearing to use balefire. Who had told him that? Moiraine. She surely had deserved to live.
Balefire leaped from his hands, a brilliant white shaft streaking toward where that other bar had originated. The other failed even as his punched through the wall, leaving a purple afterimage fanning across his vision. He released his own flow. Had he done it finally?
Scrambling to his feet, he channeled Air, slamming ruined doors open so hard that the remnants ripped from the hinges. Inside, the room was empty. A sitting room, with chairs arrayed before a great marble fireplace. His balefire had taken a bite out of one of the arches leading to a small courtyard with a fountain, and another from one of the fluted columns along the walk beyond.
Rahvin had not gone that way, though, and he had not died in that blast of balefire. A residue hung in the air, a fading remnant of woven saidin. Rand recognized it. Different from the gateway he had made to Skim to Caemlyn, or the one to Travel—he knew now that was what he had done—into the throne room. But he had seen one like this in Tear, had made one himself.
He wove another now. A gateway, an opening at least, a hole in reality. It was not blackness on the other side. In fact, if he had not known the way was there, if he could not have seen the weave of it, he might not have known. There before him were the same arches opening onto the same courtyard and fountain, the same columned walk. For an instant the neatly rounded holes his balefire had made in arch and column wavered, filled, then were holes again. Wherever that gateway led, it was to somewhere else, a reflection of the Royal Palace as once it had been a reflection of the Stone of Tear. Vaguely he regretted not talking to Asmodean about it while he had the chance, but he had never been able to speak of that day to anyone. It did not matter. On that day he had carried Callandor, but the angreal in his pocket had already proved enough to harry Rahvin.
Stepping through quickly, he loosed the weave and hurried away across the courtyard as the gateway vanished. Rahvin would have felt that gate if he was close enough and trying. The fat little stone man did not mean he could stand and wait to be attacked.
No sign of life, except for himself and one fly. That was the way it had been in Tear, too. Stand-lamps in the hallways stood unlit, with pale wicks that had never seen a flame, yet even in what should have been the dimmest hall there was light, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere. Sometimes those lamps moved, too, and other things as well. Between one glance and the next, a tall lamp might have moved a foot, a vase in a niche an inch. Little things, as if someone had shifted them in the time his eyes were away. Wherever this was, it was a strange place.
It came to him, as he trotted along another colonnade, sensing for Rahvin, that he had not heard the voice crying over Ilyena since he channeled balefire. Perhaps he had somehow chased Lews Therin out of his head.
Good. He stopped at the edge of one of the Palace gardens. The roses and whitestar bushes looked as drought-bedraggled as they would have in the real palace. On some of the white spires rising above the rooftops, the White Lion banner rippled, but which spire could change in the blink of an eye. Good, if I don’t have to share my head with—
He felt odd. Insubstantial. He raised his arm, and stared. He could see the garden through coatsleeve and arm as through a mist. A mist that was thinning. When he glanced down, he could see the walk’s paving stones through himself.
No! It was not his thought. An image began to coalesce. A tall, dark-eyed man with a worry-creased face and more white in his hair than brown. I am Lews Ther—
I am Rand al’Thor, Rand broke in. He did not know what was happening, but the faint Dragon was beginning to fade from the misty arm held in front of his face. The arm began to look darker, the fingers on his hand longer. I am me. That echoed in the Void. I am Rand al’Thor.
He fought to picture himself in his own mind, struggled to make the image of what he saw in the mirror every day shaving, what he saw in a stand-mirror dressing. It was a frantic fight. He had never really looked at himself. The two images waxed and waned, the older dark-eyed man and the younger with blue-gray eyes. Slowly the younger image firmed, the older faded. Slowly his arm grew more solid. His arm, with the Dragon twined around it and the heron branded into his palm. There had been times he hated those marks, but now, even enclosed within the emotionless Void, he almost grinned to see them.
Why had Lews Therin tried to take him over? To make him into Lews Therin. He was sure that was who that dark-eyed man with the suffering face had been. Why now? Because he could in this place, whatever it was? Wait. It had been Lews Therin who shouted that adamant “no.” Not an attack by Lews Therin. By Rahvin, and not using the Power. If the man had been able to do this back in Caemlyn, the real Caemlyn, he would have. It had to be some ability he had gained here. And if Rahvin had gained it, perhaps he had, too. The image of himself had been what held him, brought him back.
He focused on the nearest rosebush, a thing a span high, and imagined it growing thin, foggy. Obediently, it melted away to nothing, but as soon as the picture in his mind was nothing, the rosebush was suddenly back, just as it had been.
Rand nodded coldly. It had limits, then. There were always limits and rules, and he did not know them here. But he knew the Power, as much as Asmodean had taught him and he had taught himself, and saidin was still in him, all the sweetness of life, all the corruption of death. Rahvin had to have seen him to attack. With the Power you had to see something to affect it, or know exactly where it was in relation to you down to a hair. Perhaps it was different here, but he did not think so. He almost wished Lews Therin had not gone silent again. The man might know this place and its rules.
Balconies and windows overlooked the garden, in some places four stories high. Rahvin had tried to . . . unmake him. He drew on the raging torrent of saidin through the angreal. Lightnings flashed from the sky, a hundred forking silver bolts, more, stabbing at every window, every balcony. Thunder filled the garden, erupting chunks of stone. The air itself crackled, and the hair on his arms and chest tried to stand under his shirt. Even the hair on his head began to lift. He let the lightnings die. Here and there bits of shattered stone windowframe and balcony broke loose, the crash of their fall muted by the echoes of thunder still ringing in his ears.
