“Stay behind!” Egwene exclaimed. “Let the rest of you go off into danger while we hide under the covers? I won’t do it!” She caught the Aes Sedai’s eye and drew back a little, but not all of her defiance vanished. “I won’t do it,” she muttered stubbornly.
“I suppose that means both of us will accompany you.” Nynaeve sounded resigned, but her eyes flashed when she added, “You still need my herbs, Aes Sedai, unless you’ve suddenly gained some ability I don’t know about.” Her voice held a challenge Rand did not understand, but Moiraine merely nodded and turned to the Ogier.
“Well, Loial, son of Arent son of Halan?”
Loial opened his mouth twice, his tufted ears twitching, before he spoke. “Yes, well. The Green Man. The Eye of the World. They’re mentioned in the books, of course, but I don’t think any Ogier has actually seen them in, oh, quite a long time. I suppose. . . . But must it be the Ways?”Moiraine nodded, and his long eyebrows sagged till the ends brushed his cheeks. “Very well, then. I suppose I must guide you. Elder Haman would say it’s no less than I deserve for being so hasty all the time.”
“Our choices are made, then,” Moiraine said. “And now that they are made, we must decide what to do about them, and how.”
Long into the night they planned. Moiraine did most of it, with Loial’s advice concerning the Ways, but she listened to questions and suggestions from everyone. Once dark fell Lan joined them, adding his comments in that iron-cored drawl. Nynaeve made a list of what supplies they needed, dipping her pen in the inkwell with a steady hand despite the way she kept muttering under her breath.
Rand wished he could be as matter-of-fact as the Wisdom. He could not stop pacing up and down, as if he had energy to burn or burst from it. He knew his decision was made, knew it was the only one he could make with the knowledge he had, but that did not make him like it. The Blight. Shayol Ghul was somewhere in the Blight, beyond the Blasted Lands.
He could see the same worry in Mat’s eyes, the same fear he knew was in his own. Mat sat with his hands clasped, knuckles white. If he let go, Rand thought, he would be clutching the dagger from Shadar Logoth instead.
There was no worry on Perrin’s face at all, but what was there was worse: a mask of weary resignation. Perrin looked as though he had fought something until he could fight it no longer and was waiting for it to finish him. Yet sometimes. . . .
“We do what we must, Rand,” he said. “The Blight. . . .” For an instant those yellow eyes lit with eagerness, flashing in the fixed tiredness of his face, as if they had a life of their own apart from the big blacksmith’s apprentice. “There’s good hunting along the Blight,” he whispered. Then he shuddered, as if he had just heard what he had said, and once more his face was resigned.
And Egwene. Rand drew her apart at one point, over by the fireplace where those planning around the table could not hear. “Egwene, I. . . .”Her eyes, like big dark pools drawing him in, made him stop and swallow. “It’s me the Dark One’s after, Egwene. Me, and Mat, and Perrin. I don’t care what Moiraine Sedai says. In the morning you and Nynaeve could start for home, or Tar Valon, or anywhere you want to go, and nobody will try to stop you. Not the Trollocs, not the Fades, not anybody. As long as you aren’t with us. Go home, Egwene. Or go to Tar Valon. But go.”
He waited for her to tell him she had as much right to go where she wanted as he did, that he had no right to tell her what to do. To his surprise, she smiled and touched his cheek.
“Thank you, Rand,” she said softly. He blinked, and closed his mouth as she went on. “You know I can’t, though. Moiraine Sedai told us what Min saw, in Baerlon. You should have told me who Min was. I thought. . . . Well, Min says I am part of this, too. And Nynaeve. Maybe I’m not ta’veren,” she stumbled over the word, “but the Pattern sends me to the Eye of the World, too, it seems. Whatever involves you, involves me.”
“But, Egwene—”
“Who is Elayne?”
For a minute he stared at her, then told the simple truth. “She’s the Daughter-Heir to the throne of Andor.”
Her eyes seemed to catch fire. “If you can’t be serious for more than a minute, Rand al’Thor, I do not want to talk to you.”
Incredulous, he watched her stiff back return to the table, where she leaned on her elbows next to Moiraine to listen to what the Warder was saying. I need to talk to Perrin, he thought. He knows how to deal with women.
Master Gill entered several times, first to light the lamps, then to bring food with his own hands, and later to report on what was happening outside. Whitecloaks were watching the inn from down the street in both directions. There had been a riot at the gates to the Inner City, with the Queen’s Guards arresting white cockades and red alike. Someone had tried to scratch the Dragon’s Fang on the front door and been sent on his way by Lamgwin’s boot.
If the innkeeper found it odd that Loial was with them, he gave no sign of it. He answered the few questions Moiraine put to him without trying to discover what they were planning, and each time he came he knocked at the door and waited till Lan opened it for him, just as if it were not his inn and his library. On his last visit, Moiraine gave him the sheet of parchment covered in Nynaeve’s neat hand.
“It won’t be easy this time of night,” he said, shaking his head as he perused the list, “but I’ll arrange it all.”
Moiraine added a small wash-leather bag that clinked as she handed it to him by the drawstrings. “Good. And see that we are wakened before daybreak. The watchers will be at their least alert, then.”
“We’ll leave them watching an empty box, Aes Sedai.” Master Gill grinned.
Rand was yawning by the time he shuffled out of the room with the rest in search of baths and beds. As he scrubbed himself, with a coarse cloth in one hand and a big yellow cake of soap in the other, his eyes drifted to the stool beside Mat’s tub. The golden-sheathed tip of the dagger from Shadar Logoth peeked from under the edge of Mat’s neatly folded coat. Lan glanced at it from time to time, too. Rand wondered if it was really as safe to have around as Moiraine claimed.
“Do you think my da’ll ever believe it?” Mat laughed, scrubbing his back with a long-handled brush. “Me, saving the world? My sisters won’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
He sounded like the old Mat. Rand wished he could forget the dagger.
It was pitch-black when he and Mat finally got up to their room under the eaves, the stars obscured by clouds. For the first time in a long while Mat undressed before getting into bed, but he casually tucked the dagger under his pillow, too. Rand blew out the candle and crawled into his own bed. He could feel the wrongness from the other bed, not from Mat, but from beneath his pillow. He was still worrying about it when sleep came.
From the first he knew it was a dream, one of those dreams that was not entirely dream. He stood staring at the wooden door, its surface dark and cracked and rough with splinters. The air was cold and dank, thick with the smell of decay. In the distance water dripped, the splashes hollow echoes down stone corridors.
Deny it. Deny him, and his power fails.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on The Queen’s Blessing, on his bed, on himself asleep in his bed. When he opened his eyes the door was still there. The echoing splashes came on his heartbeat, as if his pulse counted time for them. He sought the flame and the void, as Tam had taught him, and found inner calm, but nothing outside of him changed. Slowly he opened the door and went in.
Everything was as he remembered it in the room that seemed burned out of the living rock. Tall, arched windows led onto an unrailed balcony, and beyond it the layered clouds streamed like a river in flood. The black metal lamps, their flames too bright to look at, gleamed, black yet somehow as bright as silver. The fire roared but gave no heat in the fearsome fireplace, each stone still vaguely like a face in torment.
All was the same, but one thing was different. On the polished tabletop stood three small figures, the rough, featureless shapes of men, as if the
sculptor had been hasty with his clay. Beside one stood a wolf, its clear detail emphasized by the crudeness of the man-shape, and another clutched a tiny dagger, a point of red on the hilt glittering in the light. The last held a sword. The hair stirring on the back of his neck, he moved close enough to see the heron in exquisite detail on that small blade.
His head jerked up in panic, and he stared directly into the lone mirror. His reflection was still a blur, but not so misty as before. He could almost make out his own features. If he imagined he was squinting, he could nearly tell who it was.
“You’ve hidden from me too long.”
He whirled from the table, breath rasping his throat. A moment before he had been alone, but now Ba’alzamon stood before the windows. When he spoke caverns of flame replaced his eyes and mouth.
“Too long, but not much longer.”
“I deny you,” Rand said hoarsely. “I deny that you hold any power over me. I deny that you are.”
Ba’alzamon laughed, a rich sound rolling from fire. “Do you think it is that easy? But then, you always did. Each time we have stood like this, you have thought you could defy me.”
“What do mean, each time? I deny you!”
“You always do. In the beginning. This contest between us has taken place countless times before. Each time your face is different, and your name, but each time it is you.”
“I deny you.” It was a desperate whisper.
“Each time you throw your puny strength against me, and each time, in the end, you know which of us is the master. Age after Age, you kneel to me, or die wishing you still had strength to kneel. Poor fool, you can never win against me.”
“Liar!” he shouted. “Father of Lies. Father of Fools if you can’t do better than that. Men found you in the last Age, in the Age of Legends, and bound you back where you belong.”
Ba’alzamon laughed again, peal after mocking peal, until Rand wanted to cover his ears to shut it out. He forced his hands to stay at his sides. Void or no, they were trembling when the laughter finally stopped.
“You worm, you know nothing at all. As ignorant as a beetle under a rock, and as easily crushed. This struggle has gone on since the moment of creation. Always men think it a new war, but it is just the same war discovered anew. Only now change blows on the winds of time. Change. This time there will be no drifting back. Those proud Aes Sedai who think to stand you up against me. I will dress them in chains and send them running naked to do my bidding, or stuff their souls into the Pit of Doom to scream for eternity. All but those who already serve me. They will stand but a step beneath me. You can choose to stand with them, with the world groveling at your feet. I offer it one more time, one last time. You can stand above them, above every power and dominion but mine. There have been times when you made that choice, times when you lived long enough to know your power.”
Deny him! Rand grabbed hold to what he could deny. “No Aes Sedai serve you. Another lie!”
“Is that what they told you? Two thousand years ago I took my Trollocs across the world, and even among Aes Sedai I found those who knew despair, who knew the world could not stand before Shai’tan. For two thousand years the Black Ajah has dwelt among the others, unseen in the shadows. Perhaps even those who claim to help you.”
Rand shook his head, trying to shake away the doubts that came welling up in him, all the doubts he had had about Moiraine, about what the Aes Sedai wanted with him, about what she planned for him. “What do you want from me?” he cried. Deny him! Light help me deny him!
“Kneel!” Ba’alzamon pointed to the floor at his feet. “Kneel, and acknowledge me your master! In the end, you will. You will be my creature, or you will die.”
The last word echoed through the room, reverberating back on itself, doubling and redoubling, till Rand threw up his arms as if to shield his head from a blow. Staggering back until he thumped into the table, he shouted, trying to drown the sound in his ears. “Noooooooooooo!”
As he cried out, he spun, sweeping the figures to the floor. Something stabbed his hand, but he ignored it, stomping the clay to shapeless smears underfoot. But when his shout failed, the echo was still there, and growing stronger:
die-die-die-die-die-Die-Die-Die-Die-Die-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE
The sound pulled on him like a whirl pool, drawing him in, ripping the void in his mind to shreds. The light dimmed, and his vision narrowed down to a tunnel with Ba’alzamon standing tall in the last spot of brightness at the end, dwindling until it was the size of his hand, a fingernail, nothing. Around and around the echo whirled him, down into blackness and death.
The thump as he hit the floor woke him, still struggling to swim up out of that darkness. The room was dark, but not so dark as that. Frantically he tried to center on the flame, to shovel fear into it, but the calm of the void eluded him. Tremors ran down his arms and legs, but he held the image of the single flame until the blood stopped pounding in his ears.
Mat was tossing and twisting on his bed, groaning in his sleep. “. . . deny you, deny you, deny you. . . .” It faded off into unintelligible moans.
Rand reached out to shake him awake, and at the first touch Mat sat up with a strangled grunt. For a minute Mat stared around wildly, then drew a long, shuddering breath and dropped his head into his hands. Abruptly he twisted around, digging under his pillow, then sank back clutching the ruby-hilted dagger in both hands on his chest. He turned his head to look at Rand, his face hidden in shadow. “He’s back, Rand.”
“I know.”
Mat nodded. “There were these three figures. . . .”
“I saw them, too.”
“He knows who I am, Rand. I picked up the one with the dagger, and he said, ‘So that’s who you are.’ And when I looked again, the figure had my face. My face, Rand! It looked like flesh. It felt like flesh. Light help me, I could feel my own hand gripping me, like I was the figure.”
Rand was silent for a moment. “You have to keep denying him, Mat.”
“I did, and he laughed. He kept talking about some eternal war, and saying we’d met like that a thousand times before, and. . . . Light, Rand, the Dark One knows me.”
“He said the same thing to me. I don’t think he does,” he added slowly. “I don’t think he knows which of us. . . .” Which of us what?
As he levered himself up, pain stabbed his hand. Making his way to the table, he managed to get the candle lit after three tries, then spread his hand open in the light. Driven into his palm was a thick splinter of dark wood, smooth and polished on one side. He stared at it, not breathing. Abruptly he was panting, plucking at the splinter, fumbling with haste.
“What’s the matter?” Mat asked.
“Nothing.”
Finally he had it, and a sharp yank pulled it free. With a grunt of disgust he dropped it, but the grunt froze in his throat. As soon as the splinter left his fingers, it vanished.
The wound was still there in his hand, though, bleeding. There was water in the stoneware pitcher. He filled the basin, his hands shaking so that he splashed water onto the table. Hurriedly he washed his hands, kneading his palm till his thumb brought more blood, then washed them again. The thought of the smallest sliver remaining in his flesh terrified him.
“Light,” Mat said, “he made me feel dirty, too.” But he still lay where he was, holding the dagger in both hands.
“Yes,” Rand said. “Dirty.” He fumbled a towel from the stack beside the basin. There was a knock at the door, and he jumped. It came again. “Yes?” he said.
Moiraine put her head into the room. “You are awake already. Good. Dress quickly and come down. We must be away before first light.”
“Now?” Mat groaned. “We haven’t had an hour’s sleep yet.”
“An hour?” she said. “You have had four. Now hurry, we do not have much time.”
Rand shared a confused look with Mat. He could remember every second of the dream clearly. It had begun as soon as he closed his eyes, and lasted only mi
nutes.
Something in that exchange must have communicated itself to Moiraine. She gave them a penetrating look and came all the way in. “What has happened? The dreams?”
“He knows who I am,” Mat said. “The Dark One knows my face.” Rand held up his hand wordlessly, palm toward her. Even in the shadowed light from the one candle the blood was plain.
The Aes Sedai stepped forward and grasped his upheld hand, her thumb across his palm covering the wound. Cold pierced him to the bone, so chill that his fingers cramped and he had to fight to keep them open. When she took her fingers away, the chill went, too.
He turned his hand, then, stunned, scrubbed the thin smear of blood away. The wound was gone. Slowly he raised his eyes to meet those of the Aes Sedai.
“Hurry,” she said softly. “Time grows very short.”
He knew she was not speaking of the time for their leaving anymore.
CHAPTER
44
The Dark Along the Ways
In the darkness just before dawn Rand followed Moiraine down to the back hall, where Master Gill and the others were waiting, Nynaeve and Egwene as anxiously as Loial, Perrin almost as calm as the Warder. Mat stayed on Rand’s heels as if he were afraid to be even a little alone now, even as much as a few feet away. The cook and her helpers straightened, staring as the party passed silently into the kitchen, already brightly lit and hot with preparations for breakfast. It was not usual for patrons of the inn to be up and out at that hour. At Master Gill’s soothing words, the cook gave a loud sniff and slapped her dough down hard. They were all back to tending griddles and kneading dough before Rand reached the stableyard door.
Outside, the night was still pitch-black. To Rand, everyone else was only a darker shadow at best. He followed the innkeeper and Lan blindly, blind in truth, hoping Master Gill’s knowledge of his own stableyard and the Warder’s instincts would get them across it without someone breaking a leg. Loial stumbled more than once.
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