The Path of Daggers

by Jordan, Robert

  Flinn actually looked doubtful and scratched his fringe of white hair before saluting and leading his horse toward where Dashiva’s gateway was already winking out. Limping along, Flinn shook his head, muttering to himself fit for Dashiva. Rand wanted to snarl. He could not go mad, and neither could they.

  Flinn’s gateway vanished, and Rand returned to his study of the treetops. It was quiet again. Time stretched in stillness. This notion of taking the outposts in the mountains had been a bad one; he was willing to admit that, now. In this terrain, you could be half a mile from an army without knowing. In those tangled woods down there, you could be ten feet from them without knowing! He needed to face the Seanchan on better ground. He needed… .

  Abruptly he was fighting saidin, fighting wild surges that tried to ream out his skull. The Void was vanishing, melting beneath the onslaught. Frantic, dazed, he released the Source before it could kill him. Nausea twisted his middle. Double vision showed him two Crowns of Swords. Lying on the thick mulch of dead leaves in front of his face! He was on the ground! He could not seem to breathe properly, and struggled to suck in air. There was a chip broken off one of the crown’s golden laurel leaves, and blood stained several of the tiny golden swordpoints. A knot of hot pain in his side told him those never-healing wounds had broken open. He tried to push himself up, and cried out. In stunned amazement he stared at the dark fletchings of an arrow stuck through his right arm. With a groan he collapsed. Something ran down his face. Something dripped in front of his eye. Blood.

  Vaguely he became aware of ululating cries. Horsemen appeared among the trees to the north, galloping along the ridge, some with lowered lances, some working short bows as fast as they could nock and draw. Horsemen in blue-and-yellow armor of overlapping plates, and helmets like huge insects’ heads. Seanchan, several hundred of them it seemed. From the north. So much for Weiramon’s fly.

  Rand struggled to reach the Source. Too late to worry about sicking up, or falling on his face. Another time, he might have laughed at that. He struggled… . It was like fumbling for a pin in the dark with numbed fingers.

  Time to die, Lews Therin whispered. Rand had always known Lews Therin would be there at the end.

  Not fifty paces from Rand, screaming Tairens and Cairhien plowed into the Seanchan.

  “Fight, you dogs!” Anaiyella shrieked, swinging down from her saddle beside him. “Fight!” The willow lady in her silks and laces hurled a string of curses that would have made a wagon driver’s tongue go dry.

  Anaiyella stood holding her mount’s reins, glaring from the mill of men and steel to Rand. It was Ailil who turned him onto his back. Kneeling there, she looked down at him with an unreadable expression in her big dark eyes. He could not seem to move. He felt drained. He was not sure he could blink. Screams and the clash of steel rang in his ears.

  “If he dies on our hands, Bashere will hang both of us!” Anaiyella certainly was not simpering now. “If those blackcoated monsters get hold of us … !” She shuddered, and bent closer to Ailil, gesturing with a belt knife he had not noticed in her hand before. A ruby sparkled blood-red on the hilt. “Your Lance-captain could break off enough men to get us away. We could be miles away before he’s found, and back to our estates by the time—”

  “I think he can hear us,” Ailil broke in calmly. Her red-gloved hands moved at her waist. Sheathing a belt knife? Or drawing one? “If he dies here—” She cut off as sharply as the other woman had, and her head jerked around.

  Hooves thundered past Rand on either side in thick streams. Galloping north, toward the Seanchan. Sword in hand, Bashere barely reined in before leaping from his saddle. Gregorin Panar dismounted more slowly, but he waved his sword at the men flooding by. “Strike home for King and Illian!” he shouted. “Strike home! The Lord of the Morning! The Lord of the Morning!” The crash of steel rose higher. And the screaming.

  “It would be like this at the last of it,” Bashere growled, favoring the two women with suspicious glares. He wasted only an instant, though, before raising his voice above the din of battle. “Morr! Burn your Asha’man hide! Here, now!” He did not shout that the Lord Dragon was down, thank the Light.

  With an effort, Rand turned his head perhaps a hand. Enough to see Illianers and Saldaeans driving on north. The Seanchan must have given way.

  “Morr!” The name roared through Bashere’s mustaches, and Morr himself dropped from a galloping horse nearly on top of Anaiyella. She looked disgruntled at the lack of an apology as the man knelt beside Rand, scrubbing dark hair out of his face. She moved back quickly enough when she realized he intended to channel, though, practically bounding away. Ailil was much smoother about rising, but not noticeably slower in stepping clear. And she slipped a silver-handled belt knife back into its sheath at her waist.

  Healing was a simple matter, if not exactly comfortable. The fletchings were broken off and the arrow drawn the rest of the way through with a sharp jerk that brought a gasp to Rand’s lips, but that was just to clear the way. Dirt and lightly embedded fragments would fall away as flesh knit itself up, but only Flinn and a few others could use the Power to remove what was driven deep. Resting two fingers on Rand’s chest, Morr caught his tongue between his teeth with a fixed expression and wove Healing. That was how he always did it; it did not work for him, otherwise. It was not the complex weaves that Flinn used. Few could manage that, and none as well as Flinn, so far. This was simpler. Rougher. Waves of heat rushed through Rand, strong enough to make him grunt and send sweat gushing from every pore. He quivered violently from head to foot. A roast in the oven must have felt that way.

  The sudden flood of heat ebbed slowly, and Rand lay panting. In his head, Lews Therin panted, too. Kill him! Kill him! Over and over.

  Muting the voice to a faint buzz, Rand thanked Morr—the young man blinked as if surprised!—then grabbed the Dragon Scepter from the ground and forced himself to his feet. Erect, he swayed slightly. Bashere started to offer an arm, then backed away at a gesture. Rand could stand unaided. Barely. He could as soon have flown by waving his arms as channeled, though. When he touched his side, his shirt slipped on blood, yet the old round scar and the newer slash across it merely felt tender. Half-healed only, but they had never been better than that since he got them.

  For a moment, he studied the two women. Anaiyella murmured something vaguely congratulatory and offered him a smile that made him wonder whether she intended to lick his wrist. Ailil stood very straight, very cool, as if nothing had happened. Had they meant to leave him to die? Or to kill him? But if so, why send their armsmen charging in and rush to check on him? On the other hand, Ailil had drawn her knife once the talk of him dying began.

  Most of the Saldaeans and Illianers were galloping north or riding down the slope of the ridge, pursuing the last of the Seanchan. And then Weiramon appeared from the north, riding a tall, glossy black at a slow canter that picked up when he saw Rand. His armsmen rode in double file at his back.

  “My Lord Dragon,” the High Lord intoned as he dismounted. He still seemed as clean as he had in Illian. Bashere simply looked rumpled and a bit grimy here and there, but Gregorin’s finery was decidedly dirt-stained, and slashed down one sleeve besides. Weiramon flourished a bow to shame a king’s court. “Forgive me, my Lord Dragon. I thought I saw Seanchan advancing in front of the ridge and went to meet them. I never suspected this other company. You can’t know how it would pain me if you were injured.”

  “I think I know,” Rand said dryly, and Weiramon blinked. Seanchan advancing? Perhaps. Weiramon would always snatch at a chance for glory in the charge. “What did you mean, ‘at the last,’ Bashere?”

  “They’re pulling back,” Bashere replied. In the valley, fire and lightning erupted for a moment as if to give him the lie, but nearly to the far end.

  “Your … scouts do say they all do be retreating,” Gregorin said, rubbing his beard, and gave Morr a sidelong, uncomfortable glance. Morr grinned at him toothily. Rand had seen the Illi
aner in the thick of fighting heading his men, shouting encouragement and laying his sword about with wild abandon, but he flinched at Morr’s grin.

  Gedwyn strode up then, leading his horse carelessly, insolently. He almost sneered at Bashere and Gregorin, frowned at Weiramon as if already knowing the man’s blunder, and eyed Ailil and Anaiyella as though he might pinch them. The two women drew back from him hastily, but then, so did the men except for Bashere. Even Morr. Gedwyn’s salute to Rand was a casual tap of fist to chest. “I sent scouts out as soon as I saw this lot was done. There are three more columns inside ten miles.”

  “All headed west,” Bashere put in quietly, but he looked at Gedwyn sharp enough to slice stone. “You’ve done it,” he told Rand. “They’re all falling back. I doubt they’ll stop short of Ebou Dar. Campaigns don’t always end with a grand march into the city, and this one is finished.”

  Surprisingly—or perhaps not—Weiramon began arguing for an advance, to “take Ebou Dar for the glory of the Lord of the Morning,” as he put it, but it was certainly a shock to hear Gedwyn say he would not mind taking a few more swipes at these Seanchan and he certainly would not mind seeing Ebou Dar. Even Ailil and Anaiyella added their voices in favor of “putting an end to the Seanchan once and for all,” though Ailil did add that she would as soon like to avoid having to return to finish. She was quite sure the Lord Dragon would insist on her company for it. That in a tone as cool and dry as night in the Aiel Waste.

  Only Bashere and Gregorin spoke for turning back, and raise their voices they did increasingly as Rand stood silent. Silent and staring west. Toward Ebou Dar.

  “We did do what we came for,” Gregorin insisted. “Light’s mercy, do you think to take Ebou Dar itself?”

  Take Ebou Dar, Rand thought. Why not? No one would expect that. A total surprise, for the Seanchan and everybody else.

  “Times are, you seize the advantage and ride on,” Bashere growled. “Other times, you take your winnings and go home. I say it’s time to go home.”

  I would not mind you in my head, Lews Therin said, sounding almost sane, if you were not so clearly mad.

  Ebou Dar. Rand tightened his hand on the Dragon Scepter, and Lews Therin cackled.

  CHAPTER

  24

  A Time for Iron

  A dozen leagues east of Ebou Dar, raken glided in out of the cloud-streaked sunrise to land in a long pasture marked as the fliers’ field by colored streamers on tall poles. The brown grasses had been trampled and scored days since. All of the creatures’ grace in the air was lost as soon as their claws touched the ground in a lumbering run, leathery pinions thirty paces or more wide held high as if the animal wanted to sweep itself back upward. There was little beauty, either, in the raken that ran awkwardly down the field beating ribbed wings, fliers crouching in the saddle as if to pull the beast up by main force, ran on until at last they stumbled into the air, wingtips barely clearing the tops of the olive trees at the end of the field. Only as they gained height and turned toward the sun, soared toward the clouds, did the raken regain dignified grandeur. Fliers who landed did not bother to dismount. While a groundling held a basket up for the raken to gulp whole shriveled fruits by the double-handful at a time, one of the fliers would hand down their scouting report to a still more senior groundling, and the other bent on the other side to receive new orders from a flier too senior to handle reins personally very often. Almost that quickly after coming to a halt, the creature was reined around to waddle over to where four or five others waited their turn to make that long, ungainly run to the sky.

  At a dead run, dodging between moving formations of cavalry and infantry, messengers carried the scouting reports to the huge red-bannered command tent. There were haughty Taraboner lancers and stolid Amadician pikemen in well-ordered squares, breastplates striped horizontally in the colors of the regiments they were attached to. Altaran light horse in disordered bunches made their mounts prance, vain of the red slashes crisscrossing their chests, so different from the markings anyone else wore. The Altarans did not know those indicated irregulars of doubtful reliability. Among the Seanchan soldiers, named regiments with proud honors were represented, from every corner of the Empire, pale-eyed men from Alqam, honey-brown men from N’Kon, men black as coal from Khoweal and Dalenshar. There were morat’torm on their sinuous bronze-scaled mounts that made horses whicker and dance in fright, and even a few morat’grolm with their squat, beak-mouthed charges, but one thing that always accompanied a Seanchan army was conspicuous by it absence. The sul’dam and damane were still in their tents. Captain-General Kennar Miraj thought of sul’dam and damane a great deal.

  From his seat on the dais he could see the map table clearly, where helmetless under-lieutenants checked the reports and placed markers to represent the forces in the field. A small paper banner stood above each marker, inked symbols giving the size and composition of the force. Finding decent maps in these lands was next to impossible, but the map copied atop the large table was sufficient. And worrying, in what it told him. Black discs for outposts overrun or dispersed. Far too many of those, dotting the whole eastern half of the Venir range. Red wedges, for commands on the move, marked the western end as thickly, all pointed back toward Ebou Dar. And scattered among the black discs, seventeen stark white. As he watched, a young officer in the brown-and-black of a morat’torm carefully placed an eighteenth. Enemy forces. A few might be the same group seen twice, but for the most part they were much too far apart, the timing of the sightings wrong.

  Along the walls of the tent, clerks in plain brown coats, marked only with insignia of rank among clerks on the wide collars, waited at their writing tables, pens in hand, for Miraj to issue orders that they would copy out for distribution. He had already given what orders he could. There were as many as ninety thousand enemy soldiers in the mountains, nearly twice what he could muster here even with the native levies. Too many for belief, except that scouts did not lie; liars had their throats slit by their fellows. Too many, springing out of the ground like trap-worms in the Sen T’jore. At least they had a hundred miles of mountain yet to cover if they intended to threaten Ebou Dar. Almost two hundred, for the white discs farthest east. And hill country after that for another hundred miles. Surely the enemy general could not mean to let his dispersed forces be confronted one by one. Gathering them together would take more time. Time alone was on his side, right then.

  The entry flaps of the tent swept open, and the High Lady Suroth glided in, black hair a proud crest spilling down her back, pleated snow-white gown and richly embroidered over-robe somehow untouched by the mud outside. He had thought her still in Ebou Dar; she must have flown out by to’raken. She was accompanied by a small entourage, for her. A pair of Deathwatch Guards with black tassels on their sword hilts held the tentflaps, and more were visible outside, stone-faced men in red-and-green. The embodiment of the Empress, might she live forever. Even the Blood took note of them. Suroth sailed past as if they were as much servants as the lushly bodied da’covale in slippers and a nearly transparent white robe, her honey-yellow hair in a multitude of thin braids, who carried the High Lady’s gilded writing desk a meek two paces behind. Suroth’s Voice of the Blood, Alwhin, a glowering woman in green robes with the left side of her head shaved and the remainder of her pale brown hair in a severe braid, followed close on her mistress’s heels. As Miraj stepped down from the dais, he realized with shock that the second da’covale behind Suroth, short and dark-haired and slim in her diaphanous robe, was damane! A damane garbed as property was unheard of, but odder still, it was Alwhin who led her by the a’dam!

  He let none of his amazement show as he went to one knee, murmuring, “The Light be upon the High Lady Suroth. All honor to the High Lady Suroth.” Everyone else prostrated themselves on the canvas groundcloth, eyes down. Miraj was of the Blood, if too low to shave the sides of his scalp like Suroth. Only the nails of his little fingers were lacquered. Much too low to register surprise if a High Lady all
owed her Voice to continue acting as sul’dam after being raised to the so’jhin. Strange times in a strange land, where the Dragon Reborn walked and marath’damane ran wild to kill and enslave where they would.

  Suroth barely glanced at him before turning to study the map table, and if her black eyes tightened at what she saw, she had cause. Under her, the Hailene had done far more than had been dreamed, reclaiming great stretches of the stolen lands. All they had been sent for was to scout the way, and after Falme, some had thought even that impossible. She drummed fingers on the table irritably, the long blue-lacquered fingernails on the first two clicking. Continued success, and she might be able to shave her head entirely and paint a third nail on each hand. Adoption into the Imperial family was not unheard of for achievements so great. And if she stepped too far, overstepped, she might find her fingernails clipped and herself stuffed into a filmy robe to serve one of the Blood, if not sold to a farmer to help till his fields, or sweat in a warehouse. At worst, Miraj would only have to open his own veins.

  He continued to watch Suroth in patient silence, but he had been a scout lieutenant, morat’raken, before being raised to the Blood, and he could not help being aware of everything around him. A scout lived or died by what he saw or did not, and so did others. The men lying on their faces around the tent; some hardly seemed to breathe. Suroth should have taken him aside and let them continue with their work. A messenger was being turned back by the soldiers at the entrance. How dire was the message that the woman tried to push past Deathwatch Guards?

  The da’covale with the writing desk in her arms caught his eye. Scowls flashed across her pretty doll’s face, never pushed down for more than moments. Property showing anger? And there was something else. His gaze flickered to the damane, who stood with her head down but still looked around with curiosity. Brown-eyed da’covale and pale-eyed damane looked about as different as two women could, yet there was something about them. Something in their faces. Strange. He could not have said how old either was.