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.
Gaping holes peered down now where windows had. They looked like sockets in some monstrous skull, the ruined balconies like a dozen splintered mouths. If Rahvin had been at any of them, he was surely dead. Rand would not believe it until he saw the corpse. He wanted to see Rahvin dead.
Wearing a snarl he did not know was there, he stalked back into the palace. He had wanted to see Rahvin die.
Nynaeve hurled herself flat and scrambled along the hall floor as something slashed through the nearest wall. Moghedien slithered as fast as she, but if the woman had not, she would have hauled her by the a’dam. Had that been Rand, or Rahvin? She had seen bars of white fire, liquid light, like that in Tanchico, and she had no wish to be anywhere near one again. Balefire was one weave she did not know and did not want to know. I want to Heal, burn both of these fool men, not learn a fancy way to kill!
She levered herself up to a crouch, peered back the way they had come. Nothing. An empty Palace hallway. With a ten-foot long gash through both walls, as neat as any stoneworker could have done, and bits of tapestry lying on the floor. No sign of either man. She had not had a glimpse of either so far. Only their handiwork. Sometimes that handiwork had almost been her. A good thing that she could draw on Moghedien’s anger, filter it out of the terror clawing to escape and let it seep into her. Her own was a pitiful thing that would scarcely have allowed her to sense the True Source, much less channel the flow of Spirit that kept her in Tel’aran’rhiod.
Moghedien was hunched over on her knees, dry retching. Nynaeve’s mouth tightened. The woman had tried to remove the a’dam again. Her cooperation had faded quickly when they discovered Rand and Rahvin actually here in Tel’aran’rhiod. Well, trying to unfasten that collar when it was around your neck was its own punishment. At least Moghedien did not have anything left in her stomach this time.
“Please.” Moghedien caught at Nynaeve’s skirt. “I tell you, we must get away.” Stark panic made her voice painful. Moghedien’s clawing terror mirrored itself on her face. “They are here in the flesh. The flesh!”
“Be quiet,” Nynaeve said absently. “Unless you’ve lied to me, that is an advantage. For me.” The other woman claimed that being in the World of Dreams physically limited your control of the Dream. Or rather, she admitted it, after letting a bit of the knowledge slip. She had admitted, too, that Rahvin did not know Tel’aran’rhiod as well as she. Nynaeve hoped that meant he did not know it as well as she did. That he knew more than Rand, she did not doubt. That wool-headed man! Whatever his reason for coming after Rahvin, he should never have let the man lead him here, where he did not know the rules, where thoughts could kill.
“Why will you not understand what I tell you? Even if they had only dreamed themselves here, either would be stronger than we. Here in the flesh, they could crush us without blinking. In the flesh they can draw saidin more deeply than we can draw saidar dreaming.”
“We are linked.” Still not paying attention, Nynaeve gave her braid a sharp pull. No way to tell which direction they had gone. And no warning of anything until she saw them. Somehow it still seemed unfair that they could channel without her being able to see or feel the flows. A stand-lamp that had been sliced in two was suddenly whole again, then not, just as quickly. That white fire must be incredibly powerful. Tel’aran’rhiod usually healed itself rapidly whatever you did to it.
“You brainless fool,” Moghedien sobbed, shaking Nynaeve’s skirt with both hands as if wanting to shake Nynaeve. “It does not matter how brave you are. We are linked, but you contribute nothing the way you are. Not a shred. It is my strength, and your madness. They are here in the flesh, not dreaming! They are using things you have never dreamed of! They will destroy us if we stay!”
“Keep your voice down,” Nynaeve snapped. “Do you want to bring one of them down on us?” She looked both ways hurriedly, but the hallway was still
empty. Had that been footsteps, boots? Rand or Rahvin? One had to be approached as carefully as the other. A man in a fight for his life could strike out before he saw they were friends. Well, that she was, anyway.
“We must go,” Moghedien insisted, but she did lower her voice. She got to her feet, sullen defiance twisting her mouth. Fear and anger writhed inside her, first one stronger, then the other. “Why should I help you any further? This is madness!”
“Would you rather feel the nettles again?”
Moghedien flinched, yet her dark eyes remained stubborn. “You think I will let them kill me rather than be hurt by you? You are mad. I will not stir from this spot until you are ready to take us away from here.”
Nynaeve jerked her braid again. If Moghedien refused to walk, she would have to drag her. Not a very quick way to search, with what seemed miles of Palace corridors yet to go. She should have been harsher when the woman first tried balking. In Nynaeve’s place, Moghedien would have killed without hesitation, or, if she thought the other useful, woven the trick of taking someone’s will, making them worship her. Nynaeve had tasted that once, in Tanchico, and even had she known how it was done, she did not think she could do it to somebody else. She despised this woman, hated her with all her being. But even if she had not needed her, she could not have killed her just standing there. The trouble was, she was afraid that Moghedien knew that, too, now.
Still, a Wisdom headed the Women’s Circle—even if the Circle did not always agree—and the Women’s Circle dealt out punishments to women who broke the law or offended custom too deeply, and to men, too, for some transgressions. She might not have Moghedien’s stomach for killing, for crushing people’s minds, but. . . .
The Fires of Heaven Page 98