Unfettered III

  Gaul loped back up to the group, carrying a lantern. “The Guiding is intact, Perrin Aybara,” he said. “No sign of Trollocs that I could see—no scorch marks of cooking fires or discarded bones. They may be moving through the Ways, but they did not stop near here.”

  “Good work,” Perrin said. Then, under his breath, asked, “Showing off for the Maidens?”

  Gaul laughed so hard, Perrin would have thought someone had slipped the man some brandy in his canteen. Gaul wiped a tear from his eye. “He asks if I’m showing off for the Maidens,” he said to Sulin as she walked by. She immediately burst into laughter. It seemed incongruous in this dark place.

  “You are a good man, Perrin Aybara,” Gaul said, slapping him on the shoulder. “To give levity in these times. Showing off for the Maidens . . . As if that hadn’t already sent me across such hot sands.” He chuckled again, and he smelled completely earnest.

  Aiel, Perrin thought. He waved for them all to move forward, the Two Rivers men bringing the pack animals, as they followed the white painted line on the ground. The Waygate disappeared behind them, and for a time they seemed to be making no progress. Like they were walking an unending path in the inky darkness, with no frame of reference or landmark other than the occasional sickly gouge in the stone underfoot.

  Their footfalls seemed softer in this place, and their voices didn’t carry. It was as if, upon reaching the darkness, the very sound was strangled.

  Finally their light revealed a tall stone breaking the landscape. A worked rock slab, set on its end, seemed to appear from nothing. Perrin halted the men, set them watching out into the darkness as if on guard, and approached the Guiding with only the Aes Sedai, Asha’man, and Wise One.

  The stone was inset with a delicate script, made of metal and worked so fine that Perrin couldn’t imagine the time and effort it would have taken to fill the slab. Considering the fine swirls and leaf patterns, just one sentence of this Ogier script seemed as if it would take months.

  They didn’t need to rely solely upon the script, however. As they gathered near the pillar—huddling perhaps closer together than they might have in another place—Saerin took out a small notebook. “Alviarin’s notes,” she said, lighting the book with her lantern, “are confirmed by the more crude directions we found upon the Myrddraal’s corpse.”

  She inspected the slab, moving her fingers over sections of scrollwork that were reproduced in the notebook. “Yes . . . I think this will be enough to get us to Caemlyn.”

  “How difficult can it be?” Neald asked. The young Murandian’s usual exuberance was muted by that darkness, but he smelled of determination. Perrin had once been tempted to think of Neald as a boy—he hadn’t yet hit eighteen winters—but after all they’d been through together . . . well, there were few men Perrin would rather have at his back than Fager Neald. “The Shadow is able to move thousands upon thousands of Trollocs through this place. If they can navigate the path, then surely you can, Saerin Sedai.”

  “I doubt the Dark One sheds a tear if he loses the occasional troop of Shadowspawn to this endless dark,” Saerin said. “I, however, would rather not risk such a fate. My own skill in this script is lacking, and I wouldn’t dare lead us on my own. But, near as I can determine, the notes are accurate. The third bridge on the right should have a post in front with these markings here. If so, we are on the proper course.”

  “Let’s see these ramps,” Seonid said, businesslike as always, “and perform the test we agreed upon. Final decisions about moving forward should be predicated upon the results.”

  Perrin nodded, passing orders to the soldiers to guard the retreat and keep their ears open. Then the small group of channelers—along with Gaul and Sulin, who trailed behind like shadows—headed to the right, reaching an area where bridges split off from the ground, arcing into the darkness.

  He hated how structures like this seemed to appear out of nowhere—they didn’t catch the light in the distance as one might expect. Instead, they emerged from the too-thick darkness once the light grew close, as if reluctantly surrendered.

  Regardless, here at the edge, the structure of the Ways really started to defy explanation. Bridges split off the main path and reached out into the darkness, pathways into the vast nothing. In addition, stone ramps wound upward or downward, splitting off the main path and leading to what Perrin knew would be fields of stone identical to the one they now stood upon. Except these fields, best he could tell, were directly above or below the one they stood upon. There seemed to be no way that the structures could support themselves. He’d once tried to sketch it out, and it seemed that the stone fields must be discs—or perhaps Islands—hanging in the nothing, connected by networks of ramps and bridges.

  He’d eventually abandoned his drawing because he couldn’t say for certain if his perception was correct or not. The darkness of this place, the way it twisted the eyes and mind, made it difficult to judge distances. Trying to impose a visual structure on it had been like building a blacksmith’s puzzle with no actual solution.

  As others inspected the bridges and ramps, he could see several of them—Neald included—trying to wrap their minds around it, perhaps sketch it out in their heads. He caught Edarra shaking her head and muttering under her breath as she looked up, then down. Well, he had warned them.

  “The post with the inscription is where the notes said it would be,” Saerin said, stepping back up to him.

  Perrin nodded, then waved Grady over. “All right, Jur. Let’s do this.”

  The others gathered around him again, and he could smell their apprehension. Good. That meant he’d properly impressed upon them the danger of what they were about to do.

  Jur Grady, appearing almost as weathered as these stones, adopted a look of concentration. He’d seized the Power.

  “Do something small,” Perrin said. “We need to know.”

  Grady held a hand out in front of him and summoned a globe of yellow light, letting it hover above his fingertips. He grimaced, smelling of anger. “Blood and ashes! That’s something I never wanted to feel again. It’s like the taint was never cleansed. How can it still be here, in this place?”

  “It persists here,” Saerin said. “Oddly, I can feel it too, so it’s not just the men. It’s like rot on a dismembered part of the body, continuing to fester after the corpse itself has been burned.”

  “All right, Jur,” Perrin said, pointing toward a particular bridge they weren’t going to be using—one that was pocked on the side, degraded by whatever affliction was progressively making the Ways decay. “Take a small piece off that bridge there.”

  Grady stretched his hand out and released a small jet of light and flame. Though Perrin couldn’t see the weaves, he could tell—instinctively—that something was wrong with this one. The flame had a sickly brown cast to it unlike any flame he’d seen in real life. Grady, often stoic when he channeled, smelled suddenly of nausea and discomfort.

  His blast of fire broke the knob of stone off the bridge, dropping it into the void below. He immediately released the Power and heaved out a sigh. Together, they grew still. Perrin strained, listening in the darkness for even a hint of wind. He was ready to abandon this entire endeavor, and would do so in the blink of an eye, if he thought they might have alerted Machin Shin to come for them.

  He heard nothing, smelled nothing.

  Grady spat to the side, something Perrin didn’t think he’d ever seen the man do. “It’s not exactly the same as the taint was—but that just makes it a different kind of awful. Back then, I felt like I was reaching through oil to touch the Power. Here, something was . . . was corrupting my channeling as I used it. Like I’d finished half of my meal, and only then found worms in the bread.”

  “How hard was it to destroy that piece of stone?” Perrin said, nodding with his chin.

  “It crumbled like powder, my Lord,” Grady said. “Like . . . like it wasn’t stone at all, but dried clay.”

  “So we can do it,” Neald
said.

  The plan that Perrin had presented, after hours of thought and work, was relatively simple. Their small group would find its way to the Waygate into Caemlyn. Once there, they would destroy the bridges and ramps leading to that particular Island in the darkness, isolating it. These bridges were long, expansive things. Destroying them would effectively cut Caemlyn off, denying their enemies the ability to resupply forces behind Rand’s battle lines.

  The chance to completely isolate armies of Shadowspawn was worth risking a trip into the Ways. Accomplishing it, however, relied upon two things: their ability to navigate, and their ability to actually damage the stonework pathways that led to Caemlyn. Both now seemed confirmed.

  “We move forward, then,” Perrin said. “Into the darkness.”

  CHAPTER 3

  As If into Eternity Itself

  Perrin led the way across another graceful stone bridge arcing out into the darkness. Hours into the trip, and it still felt as if they’d made no progress. He remembered this sensation from before, the nagging worry that somehow it was all an illusion. That he was leaving one Island and being wound around to arrive back in the same spot.

  He found himself strangely grateful for the broken patches in the stone. They, at least, were different on each Island or bridge. He just wished that Grady’s words didn’t hang over him as they did. It crumbled like powder . . . As if he hadn’t already felt nervous walking across stonework he knew had no support underneath it.

  Arganda walked nearby, periodically looking over the edge of the bridge. Perrin resisted. He had no need to stare down into that darkness, as if into eternity itself.

  Eventually, they reached the end of this particular bridge and walked out onto another nondescript field of stone. Their lights could never fully illuminate these places. He just wished he could see it all, rather than experiencing it from within these little bubbles of light that didn’t extend far enough.

  The soldiers had clumped together as they walked, and Perrin fell back to give them some encouraging words. This place did strange things to the mind. It was difficult to stay alert crossing bridge after bridge, with no sense of time or place.

  They reached the next Guiding. This one was in far worse shape than others; barely any of the writing was legible. Saerin approached and pulled out her notebook, then waved for one of the Mayeners to bring his lamp closer. She squinted at the stone and ran her fingers along it.

  “Such damage . . .” she said softly. “It’s all deteriorating. Like a cube of sugar left out in the rain . . .”

  “Can you find the way?” Perrin asked.

  She consulted the book, then led them around to a ramp leading downward. Perrin did a quick count of everyone as they passed. Saerin stood next to him, flipping pages in the notebook. He hadn’t known her as long as some of the others, but her direct manner didn’t seem much like other members of the Brown Ajah he’d known. He liked that, and had accepted quickly when she volunteered for this mission.

  “You’re doing well,” he told her once the count was done. Together, the two of them started down the ramp—last, save for the Aiel who had taken the rear guard position. “I was worried about this part.”

  “The instructions are clear,” she said. “The notes include directions to only a few Waygates, but those instructions are very deliberate and clear. I’m less worried about getting lost than I am about this being some kind of trap or misdirection.”

  Perrin nodded, though a part of him was concerned by how indifferently she said it. If there was one thing Loial had impressed on him, it was that the Ways were not to be taken lightly. It seemed almost foolhardy to be in here without the Ogier to guide him. Loial had not only been able to read the Guidings, but his constant warnings—the sheer edge of his concern—had imparted a reluctance to them all.

  Perhaps Perrin needed to take that role. He’d given in to letting the Aiel prowl ahead of and behind the group, as was their custom in any situation—but Loial had never allowed even Lan to scout for them in the Ways.

  “This place,” Saerin said, “is different than the records describe. The darkness isn’t the darkness of night, but of something else entirely. We’ve entered a different place, with different rules, than our world.”

  “You’ve studied the Ways?” Perrin asked her, carefully prodding for more information. She’d been hesitant, during their meetings to plan this expedition, to reveal all she knew. But he was accustomed to that from Aes Sedai by now.

  “I have dedicated my life to the most useful knowledge I could find,” Saerin said. “And to its practical application.”

  “Practical application?” Perrin prodded.

  “Nobody uses the Ways anymore,” Saerin said, looking up into the absolute blackness. “That makes them all the more interesting, as there is an obvious power to be found here. A power that—before Traveling was rediscovered—was unique.”

  He smelled a curiosity to her, carefully controlled—and not much fear. “You’ve traveled them before,” Perrin said. “Haven’t you?”

  “Only a fool would enter the Ways,” she replied. “Everyone knows that.”

  An Aes Sedai answer, for certain. She likely didn’t know how much of the truth Perrin could smell on her. Still, he left the topic for now, instead walking up past the Two Rivers men and the pack animals, where he cautioned the men to be extra quiet. He didn’t want to dampen their moods further, but . . . well, better gloomy than dead. Or worse.

  He moved up along the line until he was at the front, leading the way into the deep. He was accustomed to being able to see farther than other men, but he wasn’t convinced that worked in here. It was hard to tell, as there really wasn’t anything to see.

  At least the Aiel weren’t prowling too far ahead. The five at the foreguard stayed just in front of the main line. As Perrin arrived at the front, Gaul fell back and joined him.

  “It looks worse than before,” Gaul said softly. He had his veil down, but seemed about an inch from sliding it on. “If that is possible.”

  He was right. As they reached the next Guiding, Saerin led them to one of the spiraling ramps, which led straight down into more darkness. On the way down, Perrin had to step around holes in one side of the ramp or the other. There were pocks in the middle too, like places in a road where one cobblestone had been pried up and carried away.

  He joined Galad at the bottom, where the tall Whitecloak was looking back upward, smelling strongly of distaste. Perrin knew that feeling—the uncanny sensation that the place they’d left earlier should be right on top of them, somehow held up by no pillars or other supports.

  “This structure should collapse,” Galad said. “A thing of the Shadow, this is. The natural world does not work in such a manner.”

  “We’re not in the natural world, Galad,” Perrin said. “We are . . .”

  Perrin trailed off. What was that hushed sound? Distant wind, or just a rustle of motion from one of the others. His hairs stood up on his arms as he felt a chill run through his body. He strained to hear over the hushed voices of others whispering, of hooves quietly clopping on the stone. Sound seemed dampened here. Muffled. Over it all, he heard . . .

  Nothing. It was nothing. He was mostly certain.

  Galad cocked his head at Perrin. Most of the party was settling down on the Island beyond the ramp, digging out rations for the midday meal—though they could only guess at the actual time, and judged their meals by number of bridges or ramps crossed.

  “Is all well?” Galad asked.

  “As well as it can be, in this place,” Perrin said, though he caught Grady by the arm as he passed.

  “My Lord Goldeneyes?” Grady asked.

  “Jur,” Perrin said. “If we encounter the wind—if it finds us—don’t wait for my orders. Hit it with everything you have.”

  Grady eyed Galad, then spoke more softly. “Will it work? You know that something’s wrong with the One Power here. I . . . well, that thing you described. Will it even react to
the Power?”

  “Rand says he drove the Black Wind back once. He told me he used the One Power to push it back into the Waygate when it seemed ready to reach out and snatch him. If Machin Shin comes for us, that will be our only recourse. Understand?”

  “I understand. And we will be ready. I’ll let Neald know.” He saluted, then withdrew.

  Galad watched Grady go, smelling . . . of nothing specific, actually. Perrin had expected loathing.

  “No gibes, Galad?” Perrin asked. “No commentary on the evils of the One Power?”

  “I have never thought of the One Power as evil,” Galad replied. “It is merely another tool for men to use. Any power or authority, however, does have a tendency to corrupt. The signs of this are all over the White Tower. You disagree?”

  “No, actually,” Perrin said.

  “The Asha’man are terrible and worrisome,” Galad said. “But, upon consideration, I also find them noble. To take the lot they have been given and try to use it to help, rather than harm, is commendable. More commendable would be to seek gentling. Few men are willing to take a step so severe, however, despite it being right.”

  “Right no longer,” Perrin said. “With the Source cleansed.”

  “Not completely, if this place is a guide.”

  Light, Perrin thought. I hope he doesn’t mention this conversation to the other Whitecloaks. Some of them might take this as proof that the Asha’man were still not to be trusted. Few of the Whitecloaks were as rational as Galad. Dain Bornhald, who passed by near the end of the line, was a good example. The young man still smelled hateful when he was around Perrin. And, strangely, guilty.

  Perrin understood the hatred. Although Dain no longer believed Perrin had killed his father, that didn’t wipe away old biases or dislikes. But why the guilt? Was it because Bornhald had been forced, by duty, to kill his friend? Bornhald often smelled of brandy lately.

  Perrin didn’t give the soldiers long for their break. Moiraine had always kept them moving, making them eat while riding, and Perrin was inclined to trust her wisdom in this. He soon ordered everyone forward, with further reminders to remain quiet, and they fell back into the rhythm of this place. Marching through the too-quiet darkness. Pausing briefly at each Guiding, and again at each bridge or ramp to check the markings.