The Fires of Heaven

by Robert Jordan

  He had little ear for music, but he paused a moment to appreciate her song; she would have gone over well in any soldiers’ camp he had ever seen. But then, she would have been as popular if she could not sing a note. Wearing that blouse, she would have found a husband in short order.

  Joni and Barim were already there, Joni’s size enough to grant them a table by themselves despite his thin hair and the bandage he still wore around his temples. They were listening to the girl sing. Or at least staring at her. He touched each man on the shoulder and nodded toward the side door that led to the stableyard, where a sullen groom with a squint delivered their horses for three silver pennies. A year or so earlier Bryne could have bought a fair horse for no more. The troubles to the west and in Cairhien were playing havoc with trade and prices.

  No one spoke until they passed the city gates and were on a seldom-traveled road winding north toward the River Storn, little more than a wide dirt track. Then Barim said, “They was here yesterday, my Lord.”

  Bryne had learned that much himself. Three pretty young women together, obvious outlanders, could not pass through a city like Lugard without being remarked. By men, anyway.

  “Them and a fellow with shoulders,” Barim went on. “Sounds maybe like that Dalyn that was with them when they burned down Nem’s barn. Anyway, whoever he is, they was at The Nine Horse Hitch for a bit, but all they did was drink some and leave. That Domani girl the lads was telling me about, she nearly kicked up a fuss flashing her smile and swaying about, but then she calmed everything down again the same way. Burn me, but I’d like to meet me a Domani woman.”

  “Did you hear which way they went, Barim?” Bryne asked patiently. He had not been able to learn that.

  “Uh, no, my Lord. But I heard there’s been plenty of Whitecloaks passing through, all heading west. You think maybe old Pedron Niall’s planning something? Maybe in Altara?”

  “That’s not our business anymore, Barim.” Bryne knew his patience sounded a little frayed this time, but Barim was an old enough campaigner to stick to the matter at hand.

  “I know where they went, my Lord,” Joni said. “West, on the Jehannah Road, and pushing hard by what I heard.” He sounded troubled. “My Lord, I found two merchants’ guards, lads who used to be in the Guards, and had a drink with them. Happens they were in a stew called The Good Night’s Ride when that girl Mara came in and asked for a job singing. She didn’t get it—didn’t want to show her legs the way the singers in most of these places do, as who can blame her?—and she left. From what Barim told me, it was right after that they all set off west. I don’t like it, my Lord. She isn’t the kind of girl to want a job in a place like that. I think she’s trying to get away from that Dalyn fellow.”

  Strangely, despite the lump on his head, Joni had no animosity toward the three young women. It was his opinion, often expressed since leaving the manor, that the girls were in some sort of predicament and needed to be rescued. Bryne suspected that if he did catch up to the young women and take them back to his estate, Joni would be after him to turn them over to Joni’s daughters to mother.

  Barim had no such feelings. “Ghealdan.” He scowled. “Or maybe Altara, or Amadicia. We’ll kiss the Dark One getting them back. Hardly seems worth the annoyance for a barn and some cows.”

  Bryne said nothing. They had followed the girls this far, and Murandy was a bad place for Andormen; too many border troubles over too many years. Only a fool would chase into Murandy after an oathbreaker’s eyes. How much bigger a fool to follow halfway across the world?

  “Those lads I talked to,” Joni said diffidently. “My Lord, it seems a lot of the old lads who—who served under you are being sent off.” Emboldened by Bryne’s silence, he went on. “Lots of new fellows in. Lots. Those lads said at least four or five for every one told he wasn’t wanted anymore. The sort that like to cause trouble more than stop it. There’s some calling themselves the White Lions who only answer to this Gaebril”—he spat to show what he thought of that—“and a bunch more not part of the Guards at all. Not House levies. Near as they could say, Gaebril’s got ten times as many men under arms as there are Guards, and they’ve all sworn to the throne of Andor, but not to the Queen.”

  “That’s no longer our business, either,” Bryne said curtly. Barim had his tongue stuffed into his cheek, the way he always did when he knew something he either did not want to tell or was not sure was important enough. “What is it, Barim? Out with it, man.”

  The leather-faced fellow stared at him in amazement. Barim had never figured out how Bryne knew when he was holding back. “Well, my Lord, some of the folks I talked to said some of those Whitecloaks yesterday was asking questions. About a girl sounds like that Mara. Wanted to know who she was, where she went. Like that. I heard they got real interested when they learned she was gone. If they’re after her, she could be hanged before we ever find her. If they have to go to the trouble of chasing her down, they might not ask too many questions about whether she’s really a Darkfriend. Or whatever it is they’re after her for.”

  Bryne frowned. Whitecloaks? What would the Children of the Light want with Mara? He would never believe she was a Darkfriend. But then, he had seen a baby-faced young fellow hanged in Caemlyn, a Darkfriend who had been teaching children in the streets about the glories of the Dark One—the Great Lord of the Dark, he had called him. The lad had killed nine of them in three years, as near as could be discovered, when they looked like turning him in. No. That girl is no Darkfriend, and I’ll stake my life on it. Whitecloaks were suspicious of everyone. And if they took it into their heads that she had fled Lugard to avoid them . . .

  He booted Traveler to a canter. The big-nosed bay gelding was not flashy, but he had endurance, and courage. The other two caught up soon enough, and they kept their mouths shut, seeing the mood he was in.

  Two miles or so from Lugard, he turned off into a thicket of oak and leatherleaf. The rest of his men had made a temporary camp here, in a clear space under thick, spreading oak limbs. Several small, smokeless fires were burning; they would take any opportunity to brew up some tea. Some were dozing; sleep was another thing an old soldier never missed a chance to snatch.

  Those awake kicked the rest out of their naps, and they all looked up at him. For a moment he sat his saddle studying them. Gray hair and bald heads and age-creased faces. Still hard and fit, but even so . . . He had been a fool to risk bringing them into Murandy just because he had to know why a woman had broken an oath. And maybe with Whitecloaks after them. No telling how far or how long from home before it was done. If he turned back now, they would have been gone more than a month before they saw Kore Springs again. If he went on, there was no guarantee the chase would stop short of the Aryth Ocean. He should be taking these men, and himself, home. He should. He had no call to ask them to try snatching those girls out of Whitecloak hands. He could leave Mara to Whitecloak justice.

  “We will be heading west,” he announced, and immediately there was a scramble of dousing fires with the tea and fastening pots to saddles. “We will have to press hard. I mean to catch them in Altara, if I can, but if not, there’s no telling where they’ll lead us. You could see Jehannah or Amador or Ebou Dar before we’re done.” He affected a laugh. “You’ll find out how tough you are if we reach Ebou Dar. They’ve taverns there where the barmaids skin Illianers for dinner and spit Whitecloaks for sport.”

  They laughed harder than the jest was worth.

  “We won’t worry with you along, my Lord,” Thad cackled, stuffing his tin cup into his saddlebags. His face was wrinkled like crumpled leather. “Why, I hear you had a run-in with the Amyrlin herself once, and—” Jar Silvin kicked him on the ankle, and he rounded on the younger man—gray-haired, but still younger—with a clenched fist. “Why’d you do that, Silvin? You want a broke head, you just—What?” The meaningful glares Silvin and some of the others were giving him finally sank in. “Oh. Oh, yes.” He buried himself in checking the girth straps on his s
addle, but no one was laughing anymore.

  Bryne forced his face to relax from stoniness. It was time he put the past in the past. Just because a woman whose bed he had shared—and more, he had thought—just because that woman looked at him as though she had never known him was no reason to stop speaking her name. Just because she had exiled him from Caemlyn, on pain of death, for giving her the advice he had sworn to give. . . . If she came a cropper with this Lord Gaebril who had suddenly appeared in Caemlyn, it was no longer any concern of his. She had told him, in a voice as flat and cold as smooth ice, that his name would never be spoken in the palace again, that only his long service kept her from sending him to the headsman for treason. Treason! He needed to keep spirits up, especially if this turned into a long chase.

  Hooking a knee around the high cantle of his saddle, he took out his pipe and pouch and filled his pipe with tabac. The bowl was carved with a wild bull collared with the Rose Crown of Andor. For a thousand years that had been the sign of House Bryne; strength and courage in service of the queen. He needed a new pipe; this one was old.

  “I didn’t come out of that as well as you might have heard.” He leaned down for one of the men to hand him a twig still glowing from one of the spent fires, then straightened to puff his pipe alight. “It was some three years ago. The Amyrlin was making a progression. Cairhien, Tear, Illian, and finishing up in Caemlyn before returning to Tar Valon. At that time we were having problems with Murandian border lords—as usual.” Laughter rippled; they had all served on the Murandian border at one time or another. “I had sent some of the Guards down to set the Murandians straight on who owned the sheep and cattle on our side of the border. I never expected the Amyrlin to take an interest.” He certainly had their attention; preparations to leave were still going on, but more slowly.

  “Siuan Sanche and Elaida closeted themselves with Morgase—” There; he had said her name again, and it did not even smart. “—and when they came out, Morgase was half thunderhead, with lightning shooting out of her eyes, and half ten-year-old who’d been hauled up by her mother for stealing honeycakes. She’s a tough woman, but caught between Elaida and the Amyrlin Seat . . .” He shook his head, and they chuckled; Aes Sedai attentions were one thing none of them envied lords and rulers. “She ordered me to remove all troops from the border with Murandy immediately. I asked her to discuss it with me in private, and Siuan Sanche jumped all over me. In front of half the court, she chewed me up one side and down the other like a raw recruit. Said if I couldn’t do as I was told, she’d use me for fishbait.” He had had to beg her pardon before it was done—in front of everyone, for trying to do as he had been sworn to do—but there was no need to add that. Even at the end he had not been sure that she would not make Morgase behead him, or have it done herself.

  “Must have meant to catch herself a mighty big fish,” someone laughed, and others joined in.

  “The upshot was,” Bryne went on, “my hide got singed, and the Guards were ordered back from the border. So if you’re looking to me to protect you in Ebou Dar, just remember it’s my opinion those barmaids would hang the Amyrlin out to dry along with the rest of us.” They roared with mirth.

  “Did you ever find out what it was about, my Lord?” Joni wanted to know.

  Bryne shook his head. “Aes Sedai business of some sort, I expect. They don’t tell the likes of you and me what they are up to.” That earned a few chuckles as well.

  They mounted up with an alacrity that belied their ages. Some of them are no older than me, he thought wryly. Too old to go chasing after a pretty pair of eyes young enough to be his daughter’s if not his granddaughter’s. I only want to know why she broke oath, he told himself firmly. Only that.

  Raising his hand, he signaled forward, and they headed west, leaving a trail of dust. It would take hard riding to catch up. But he meant to. In Ebou Dar or the Pit of Doom, he would find them.

  CHAPTER

  13

  A Small Room in Sienda

  Elayne held herself against the swaying of the coach on its leather hinges, trying to ignore Nynaeve’s sour face across from her. The curtains were drawn back despite a sprinkling of dust that sometimes whipped through the windows; the breeze blew away some of the late-afternoon heat. Rolling, forested hills streamed past, the woods occasionally broken by short stretches of farmland. A lord’s manor, in the fashion of Amadicia, topped one of the hills a few miles from the road, a huge stone foundation fifty feet high with an elaborate wooden structure atop that, all ornate balconies and red-tiled roofs. Once it all would have been stone, but many years had passed since a lord needed a fortress in Amadicia, and the king’s law now required the wooden construction. No rebel lord would be able to hold out against the king for long. Of course, the Children of the Light were exempted from that law; they were immune to a number of Amadician laws. She had had to learn something of the laws and customs of other countries from the time she was a child.

  Cleared fields dotted the distant hills, too, like brown patches on a mostly green cloth, the men working them seeming ants. Everything looked dry; one bolt of lighting would set a fire that could burn for leagues. But lightning meant rain, and the few clouds in the sky were too high and thin for that. Idly she wondered whether she could make it rain. She had learned considerable control over weather. Still, it was very difficult if you had to begin with nothing.

  “Is my Lady bored?” Nynaeve asked acidly. “The way my Lady is staring at the countryside—down my Lady’s nose—I think my Lady must want to travel faster.” Reaching back over her head, she pushed open a small flap and shouted, “More speed, Thom. Don’t argue with me! You hold your tongue, too, Juilin Thief-catcher! I said more speed!”

  The wooden flap banged down, but Elayne could still hear Thom muttering loudly. Cursing, very likely; Nynaeve had been barking at the men all day. A moment later his whip cracked, and the coach racketed ahead even faster, rocking so hard that both women bounced on the golden-colored silk seats. The silk had been thoroughly dusted when Thom bought the vehicle, but the padding had long since gone hard. Yet jounced about as she was, the set of Nynaeve’s jaw said she would not ask Thom to slow again right after ordering him to go faster.

  “Please, Nynaeve,” Elayne said. “I—” The other woman cut her off.

  “Is my Lady uncomfortable? I know ladies are used to comfort, the sort of thing a poor maid wouldn’t know about, but surely my Lady wants to make the next town before dark? So my Lady’s maid can serve my Lady’s supper and turn down my Lady’s bed?” Her teeth clicked shut as the seat coming up met her coming down, and she glowered at Elayne as though it were her fault.

  Elayne sighed heavily. Nynaeve had seen the point, back in Mardecin. A lady never traveled without a maid, and two ladies would probably have a pair. Unless they put Thom or Juilin in a dress, that meant one of them. Nynaeve had seen that Elayne knew more of how ladies behaved; she had put it very gently, and Nynaeve usually knew sense when she heard it. Usually. But that was back in Mistress Macura’s shop, after they had filled the two women with their own horrible concoction.

  Leaving Mardecin, they had traveled hard until midnight to reach a small village with an inn, where they had roused the innkeeper from his bed to rent two cramped rooms with narrow beds, waking before first light yesterday to push on, skirting around Amador by a few miles. Neither of them would be taken for anything but what they claimed, on sight, but neither felt comfortable about passing through a great city full of Whitecloaks. The Fortress of the Light was in Amador. Elayne had heard it said that the king reigned in Amador, but Pedron Niall ruled.

  The trouble had started last night, at a place called Bellon, on a muddy stream grandly named the Gaean River, some twenty miles or so beyond the capital. The Bellon Ford Inn was larger than the first, and Mistress Alfara, the innkeeper, offered the Lady Morelin a private dining room, which Elayne could not very well refuse. Mistress Alfara had been sure that only the Lady Morelin’s maid, Nana, would kno
w how to serve her properly; ladies did require everything just so, the woman said, as well they should, and her girls were simply not used to ladies. Nana would know exactly how the Lady Morelin wanted her bed turned down, and would prepare her a nice bath after a hot day of travel. The list of things that Nana would do exactly right for her mistress had been endless.

  Elayne was not sure whether Amadician nobility expected such or Mistress Alfara was just getting work out of an outlander’s servant. She had tried to spare Nynaeve, but the woman had been as full of “as you wish” and “my Lady is most particular” as the innkeeper. She would have seemed a fool, or at least odd, to press it. They were trying to avoid attracting undue attention.

  As long as they had been in Bellon, Nynaeve had acted the perfect lady’s maid in public. In private was another matter. Elayne wished the woman would just revert to herself instead of bludgeoning her with a lady’s maid from the Blight. Apologies had been met with “my Lady is too kind” or simply ignored. I will not apologize again, she thought for the fiftieth time. Not for what was not my fault.

  “I have been thinking, Nynaeve.” Gripping a hanging strap, she felt like the ball in the children’s game called Bounce in Andor, where you tried to keep a colorful wooden ball bouncing up and down on a paddle. She would not ask for the coach to be slowed, though. She could stand it as long as Nynaeve did. The woman was so stubborn! “I want to reach Tar Valon and find out what is going on, but—”

  “My Lady has been thinking? My Lady must have a headache from all that effort. I will make my Lady a nice tea of sheepstongue root and red daisy as soon as—”

  “Be quiet, Nana,” Elayne said, calmly but firmly; it was her very best imitation of her mother. Nynaeve’s jaw dropped. “If you pull that braid at me, you can ride on the roof with the baggage.” Nynaeve made a strangled sound, trying so hard to talk that nothing came out. Quite satisfactory. “Sometimes you seem to think I am still a child, but you are the one behaving like a child. I did not ask you to wash my back, but I would have had to wrestle to stop you. I did offer to scrub yours in turn, remember. And I offered to sleep in the trundle bed. But you climbed in and wouldn’t get out. Stop sulking. If you like, I will be the maid at the next inn.” It would probably be a disaster. Nynaeve would shout at Thom in public, or box someone’s ears. But anything for a little peace. “We can stop right now and change in the trees.”