Knife of Dreams

by Robert Jordan

  "Semirhage," he said in shock before he could stop the word, and suddenly everything seemed to happen at once.

  He reached for the Source and found Lews Therin clawing for it, too, each of them jostling the other aside from reaching it. Semirhage flicked her hand, and a small ball of fire streaked toward him from her fingertips. She might have shouted something, an order. He could not leap aside: Min stood right behind him. Frantically trying to seize saidin, he flung up the hand holding the Dragon Scepter in desperation. The world seemed to explode in fire.

  His cheek was pressed against the damp ground, he realized. Black flecks shimmered in his vision, and everything seemed faintly hazy, as if seen through water. Where was he? What had happened? His head felt stuffed with wool. Something was prodding him in the ribs. His sword hilt. The old wounds were a hard knot of pain just above that. Slowly, he realized he was looking at the Dragon Scepter, or what was left of it. The spearpoint and a few inches of charred haft lay three paces away. Small, dancing flames were consuming the long tassel. The Crown of Swords lay beyond it.

  Abruptly it came to him that he could feel saidin being channeled. His skin was goose bumps all over from saidar being wielded. The manor house. Semirhage! He tried to push himself up, and collapsed with a harsh cry. Slowly he pulled a left arm that seemed all pain up where he could see his hand. See where his hand had been. Only a mangled, blackened ruin remained. A stub sticking out of a cuff that gave off thin streamers of smoke. But the Power was still being channeled around him. His people were fighting for their lives. They might be dying. Min! He struggled to rise, and fell again.

  As though thinking of her had summoned her, Min was crouching over him. Trying to shield him with her body, he realized. The bond was full of compassion and pain. Not physical pain. He would have known if she had the smallest injury. She was feeling pain for him. "Lie still," she said. "You've. . . . You've been hurt."

  "I know," he said hoarsely. Again, he reached for saidin, and for a wonder, this time Lews Therin did not try to interfere. The Power filled him, and that gave him the strength to push himself to his feet one-handed, preparing several very nasty weaves as he did so. Careless of his muddy coat, Min gripped his good arm as though she were trying to hold him upright. But the fighting was over.

  Semirhage was standing stiffly with her arms at her sides, her skirts pressed against her legs, doubtless wrapped up in flows of Air. The hilt of one of Min's knives stood out from her shoulder, and she must have been shielded, too, but her dark, beautiful face was contemptuous. She had been a prisoner before, briefly, during the War of the Shadow. She had escaped from high detention by frightening her jailers to the point that they actually smuggled her to freedom.

  Others had been injured more seriously. A short dark sul'dam and tall pale-haired damane, linked by an a’dam, lay sprawled on the ground, staring up at the sun with already glazed eyes, and another pair were on their knees and clinging to one another, blood running down their faces and matting their hair. The other pairs stood as stiffly as Semirhage, and he could see the shields on three of the damane. They looked stunned. One of the sul'dam, a slender, dark-haired young woman, was weeping softly.

  Narishma's face was bloodied, too, and his coat appeared singed. So did Sandomere's, and a bone jutted through his left coatsleeve, white smeared with red, until Nynaeve firmly pulled his arm straight and guided the bone back into place. Grimacing in pain, he gave a guttural groan. She cupped her hands around his arm over the break, and moments later he was flexing his arm and moving his fingers and murmuring thanks.

  Logain appeared untouched, as did Nynaeve and Cadsuane, who was studying Semirhage the way a Brown might study an exotic animal never before seen.

  Suddenly gateways began opening all around the manor house, spilling out mounted Asha'man and Aes Sedai and Warders, veiled Maidens and Bashere riding at the head of his horsemen. An Asha'man and Aes Sedai in a ring of two could make a gateway considerably larger than those Rand could alone. So someone had managed to give the signal, a red sunburst in the sky. Every Asha'man was full of saidin, and Rand assumed the Aes Sedai were equally full of saidar. The Maidens began spreading out into the trees.

  "Aghan, Hamad, search the house!" Bashere shouted. "Matoun, form the lancers! They'll be on us as soon as they can!" Two soldiers thrust their lances into the ground and leapt down to run inside, drawing their swords, while the others began arraying themselves in two ranks.

  Ayako flung herself from her saddle and rushed to Sandomere, not even bothering to hold her skirts out of the mud. Merise rode to Narishma before swinging down right in front of him and taking his head in her hands without a word. He jerked, his back arching and nearly pulling his head free, as she Healed him. She had little facility with Nynaeve's method of Healing.

  Ignoring the turmoil, Nynaeve gathered her skirts in bloodied hands and hurried to Rand. "Oh, Rand," she said when she saw his arm, "I'm so sorry. I . . . I'll do what I can, but I can't fix it the way it was." Her eyes were filled with anguish.

  Wordlessly, he held out his left arm. It throbbed with agony. Strangely, he could still feel his hand. It seemed he should be able to make a fist with the fingers that were no longer there. His goose bumps intensified as she drew more deeply on saidar, the tendrils of smoke vanished from his cuff, and she gripped his arm above the wrist. His entire arm began tingling, and the pain drained away. Slowly, blackened skin was replaced by smooth skin that seemed to ooze down until it covered the small lump that had been the base of his hand. It was a miraculous thing to see. The scarlet-and-gold scaled dragon grew back, too, as much as it could, ending in a bit of the golden mane. He could still feel the whole hand.

  "I'm so sorry," Nynaeve said again. "Let me delve you for any other injuries." She asked, but did not wait, of course. She reached up to cup his head between her hands, and a chill ran through him. "There's something wrong with your eyes," she said with a frown. "I'm afraid to try fixing that without studying on it. The smallest mistake could blind you. How well can you see? How many fingers am I holding up?"

  "Two. I can see fine," he lied. The black flecks were gone, but everything still seemed seen through water, and he wanted to squint against a sun that appeared to glare ten times brighter than it had. The old wounds in his side were knotted with pain.

  Bashere climbed down from his compact bay in front of him and frowned at the stump of his left arm. Unbuckling his helmet, he took it off and held it under his arm. "At least you're alive," he said gruffly. "I've seen men hurt worse."

  "Me, too," Rand said. "I'll have to learn the sword all over again, though." Bashere nodded. Most forms required two hands. Rand bent to pick up the crown of Illian, but Min released his arm and hurriedly handed the crown to him. He settled it on his head. "I'll have to work out new ways to do everything."

  "You must be in shock," Nynaeve said slowly. "You've just suffered a grievous injury, Rand. Maybe you'd better lie down. Lord Davram, have one your men bring a saddle to put his feet up."

  "He's not in shock,' Min said sadly. The bond was full of sadness. She had taken hold of his arm as if to hold him up again. "He lost a hand, but there's nothing to do about it, so he's left it behind already."

  "Wool-headed fool,” Nynaeve muttered. Her hand, still smeared with Sandomere's blood, drifted toward the thick braid hanging over her shoulder, but she yanked it back down. "You've been hurt badly. It's all right to grieve. It's all right to feel stunned. It's normal!"

  "I don't have time," he told her. Min's sadness threatened to overflow the bond. Light, he was all right! Why did she feel so sad?

  Nynaeve muttered half under her breath about "woolhead" and "fool" and "man-stubborn," but she was not finished. "Those old wounds in your side have broken open," she almost growled. "You aren't bleeding badly, but you are bleeding. Maybe I can finally do something about them."

  But as hard as she tried—and she tried three times—nothing changed. He still felt the slow trickle of blood sliding
down his ribs. The wounds were still a throbbing knot of pain. Finally, he pushed her hand gently away from his side. "You've done what you can, Nynaeve. It's enough."

  "Fool." She did growl, this time. "How can it be enough when you're still bleeding?"

  "Who is the tall woman?" Bashere asked. He understood, at least. You did not waste time on what could not be mended. "They didn't try passing her off as the Daughter of the Nine Moons, did they? Not after telling me she was a little thing."

  "They did," Rand replied, and explained briefly.

  "Semirhage?" Bashere muttered incredulously. "How can you be sure?"

  "She's Anath Dorje, not . . . not what you called her," a honey-skinned sul'dam said loudly in a twangy drawl. Her dark eyes were tilted, and her hair was streaked with gray. She looked the eldest of the sul'dam, and the least frightened. It was not that she did not look afraid, but she controlled it well. "She's the High Lady's Truthspeaker."

  "Be silent, Falendre," Semirhage said coldly, looking over her shoulder. Her gaze promised pain. The Lady of Pain was good at delivering on her promises. Prisoners had killed themselves on learning it was she who held them, men and women who managed to open a vein with teeth or fingernails.

  Falendre did not seem to see it, though. "You don't command me," she said scornfully. "You're not even so'jhin."

  "How can you be sure?" Cadsuane demanded. Those golden moons and stars, birds and fishes, swung as she moved her piercing gaze from Rand to Semirhage and back.

  Semirhage saved him the effort of thinking up a lie. "He's insane," she said coolly. Standing there stiff as a statue, Min's knife hilt still sticking out beside her collarbone and the front of her black dress glistening with blood, she might have been a queen on her throne. "Graendal could explain it better than I. Madness was her specialty. I will try, however. You know of people who hear voices in their heads? Sometimes, very rarely, the voices they hear are the voices of past lives. Lanfear claimed he knew things from our own Age, things only Lews Therin Telamon could know. Clearly, he is hearing Lews Therin's voice. It makes no difference that his voice is real, however. In fact, that makes his situation worse. Even Graendal usually failed to achieve reintegration with someone who heard a real voice. I understand the descent into terminal madness can be . . . abrupt." Her lips curved in a smile that never touched her dark eyes.

  Were they looking at him differently? Logain's face was a carved mask, unreadable. Bashere looked as though he still could not believe. Nynaeve's mouth hung open, and her eyes were wide. The bond. . . .

  For a long moment, the bond was full of. . . numbness. If Min turned away from him, he did not know whether he could stand it. If she turned away, it would be the best thing in the world for her. But compassion and determination as strong as mountains replaced numbness, and love so bright he thought he could have warmed his hands over it. Her grip on his arm tightened, and he tried to put a hand over hers. Too late, he remembered and snatched the nub of his hand away, but not before it had touched her. Nothing in the bond wavered by a hair.

  Cadsuane moved closer to the taller woman and looked up at her. Facing one of the Forsaken seemed to faze her no more than facing the Dragon Reborn did. "You're very calm for a prisoner. Rather than deny the charge, you give evidence against yourself."

  Semirhage shifted that cold smile from Rand to Cadsuane. "Why should I deny myself?" Pride dripped from every word. "I am Semirhage."

  Someone gasped, and a number of the sul'dam and damane started trembling and weeping. One sul'dam, a pretty, yellow-haired woman, suddenly vomited down the front of herself, and another, stocky and dark, looked as if she might.

  Cadsuane simply nodded. "I am Cadsuane Melaidhrin. I look forward to long talks with you." Semirhage sneered. She had never lacked courage.

  "We thought she was the High Lady," Falendre said hurriedly, and haltingly at the same time. Her teeth seemed near to chattering, but she forced words out. "We thought we were being honored. She took us to a room in the Tarasin Palace where there was a ... a hole in the air, and we stepped through to this place. I swear it on my eyes! We thought she was the High Lady."

  "So, no army rushing toward us," Logain said. You could not have told from his tone whether he was relieved or disappointed. He bared an inch of his sword and thrust it back into its scabbard hard. "What do we do with them?" He jerked his head toward the sul'dam and damane. "Send them to Caemlyn like the others?"

  "We send them back to Ebou Dar," Rand said. Cadsuane turned to stare at him. Her face was a perfect mask of Aes Sedai serenity, yet he doubted she was anywhere near serene inside. The leashing of damane was an abomination that Aes Sedai took personally. Nynaeve was anything but serene. Angry-eyed, gripping her braid in a tight, blood-daubed fist, she opened her mouth, but he spoke over her. "I need this truce, Nynaeve, and taking these women prisoner is no way to get one. Don't argue. That's what they'd call it, including the damane, and you know it as well as I do. They can carry word that I want to meet the Daughter of the Nine Moons. The heir to the throne is the only one who can make a truce stand."

  "I still don't like it,' she said firmly. "We could free the damane. The others will do as well for carrying messages." The damane who had not been weeping before burst into tears. Some of them cried to the sul'dam to save them. Nynaeve's face took on sickly cast, but she threw up her hands and gave over arguing.

  The two soldiers Bashere had sent into the house came out, young men who walked with a rolling motion, more accustomed to saddles than their own feet. Hamad had a luxuriant black beard that fell below the edge of his helmet and a scar down his face. Aghan wore thick mustaches like Bashere's and carried a plain wooden box with no lid under his arm. They bowed to Bashere, free hands swinging their swords clear.

  "The house is empty, my Lord," Aghan said, "but there's dried blood staining the carpets in several rooms. Looks like a slaughter yard, my Lord. I think whoever lived here is dead. This was sitting by the front door. It didn't look like it belonged, so I brought it along." He held out the box for inspection. Within lay coiled a'dam and a number of circlets made of segmented black metal, some large, some small.

  Rand started to reach in with his left hand before he remembered. Min caught the movement and released his right arm so he could scoop up a handful of the black metal pieces. Nynaeve gasped. "You know what these are?" he asked.

  "They're a'dam for men," she said angrily. "Egeanin said she was going to drop the thing in the ocean! We trusted her, and she gave it to somebody to copy!"

  Rand dropped the things back into the box. There were six of the larger circlets, and five of the silvery leashes. Semirhage had been prepared no matter who he brought with him. "She really thought she could capture all of us." That thought should have made him shiver. He seemed to feel Lews Therin shiver. No one wanted to fall into Semirhage's hands.

  "She shouted for them to shield us," Nynaeve said, "but they couldn't because we were all holding the Power already. If we hadn't been, if Cadsuane and I hadn't had our ter'angreal, I don't know what would have happened." She did shiver.

  He looked at the tall Forsaken, and she stared back, utterly composed. Utterly cold. Her reputation as a torturer loomed so large that it was easy to forget how dangerous she was otherwise. "Tie off the shields on the others so they'll unravel in a few hours, and send them to somewhere near Ebou Dar." For a moment, he thought Nynaeve was going to protest again, but she contented herself with giving her braid a strong tug and turning away.

  "Who are you to ask for a meeting with the High Lady?" Falendre demanded. She emphasized the title for some reason.

  "My name is Rand al'Thor. I'm the Dragon Reborn." If they had wept at hearing Semirhage's name, they wailed at hearing his.

  Ashandarei slanted across his saddle, Mat sat Pips in the darkness among the trees and waited, surrounded by two thousand mounted crossbowmen. The sun was not long down, and events should be in motion. The Seanchan were going to be hit hard tonight in half a dozen places.
Some small and some not so small, but hard in every case.

  Moonlight filtering through the branches overhead gave just enough illumination for him to make out Tuon's shadowed face. She had insisted on staying with him, which meant Selucia was at her side on her dun, of course, glaring at him as usual. There were not enough moon-shadows to obscure that, unfortunately. Tuon must be unhappy about what was to happen tonight, yet nothing showed on her face. What was she thinking? Her expression was all the stern magistrate.

  "Your scheme do entail a good deal of luck," Teslyn said, not for the first time. Even shadowed, her face looked hard. She shifted in her saddle, adjusting her cloak. "It be too late to change everything, but this part can be abandoned certainly."

  He would have preferred to have Bethamin or Seta, neither bound by the Three Oaths and both knowing the weaves damane used for weapons, something that horrified the Aes Sedai. Not the weaves; just that Bethamin and Seta knew them.

  At least, he thought he would. Leilwin had flatly refused to fight any Seanchan except to defend herself. Bethamin and Seta might have done the same, or found at the last minute that they could not act against their countrymen. In any case, the Aes Sedai had rejected allowing the two women to be involved, and neither had opened her mouth once that was said. That pair were too meek around Aes Sedai to say boo to a goose.

  "Grace favor you, Teslyn Sedai, but Lord Mat is lucky," Captain Mandevwin said. The stocky one-eyed man had been with the Band since the first days in Cairhien, and he had earned the gray streaks in his hair, hidden now beneath his green-painted helmet, an open-faced footman's helmet, in battles against Tear and Andor before that. "I remember times we were outnumbered, with enemies on every side, and he danced the Band around them. Not to slip away, mind, but to beat them. Beautiful battles."