The Great Hunt twot-2

by Robert Jordan

  Ba'alzamon leaned on his staff and looked at Rand a moment, then moved to stand over Loial and Hurin, peering down at them. The vast shadow moved with him. He did not disturb the fog, Rand saw — he moved, the staff swung with his steps, but the gray mist did not swirl and eddy around his feet as it did around Rand's. That gave him heart. Perhaps Ba'alzamon really was not there. Perhaps it was a dream.

  "You find odd followers," Ba'alzamon mused. "You always did. These two. The girl who tries to watch over you. A poor guardian and weak, Kinslayer. If she had a lifetime to grow, she would never grow strong enough for you to hide behind."

  Girl? Who? Moiraine is surely not a girl. "I don't know what you are talking about, Father of Lies. You lie, and lie, and even when you tell the truth, you twist it to a lie."

  "Do I, Lews Therin? You know what you are, who you are. I have told you. And so have those women of Tar Valon." Rand shifted, and Ba'alzamon gave a laugh, like a small thunderclap. "They think themselves safe in their White Tower, but my followers number even some of their own. The Aes Sedai called Moiraine told you who you are, did she not? Did she lie? Or is she one of mine? The White Tower means to use you like a hound on a leash. Do I lie? Do I lie when I say you seek the Horn of Valere?" He laughed again; calm of the void or no, it was all Rand could do not to cover his ears. "Sometimes old enemies fight so long that they become allies and never realize it. They think they strike at you, but they have become so closely linked it is as if you guided the blow yourself."

  "You don't guide me," Rand said. "I deny you."

  "I have a thousand strings tied to you, Kinslayer, each one finer than silk and stronger than steel. Time has tied a thousand cords between us. The battle we two have fought — do you remember any part of that? Do you have any glimmering that we have fought before, battles without number back to the beginning of Time? I know much that you do not! That battle will soon end. The Last Battle is coming. The last, Lews Therin. Do you really think you can avoid it? You poor, shivering worm. You will serve me or die! And this time the cycle will not begin anew with your death. The grave belongs to the Great Lord of the Dark. This time if you die, you will be destroyed utterly. This time the Wheel will be broken whatever you do, and the world remade to a new mold. Serve me! Serve Shai'tan, or be destroyed forever!"

  With the utterance of that name, the air seemed to thicken. The darkness behind Ba'alzamon swelled and grew, threatening to swallow everything. Rand felt it engulfing him, colder than ice and hotter than coals both at the same time, blacker than death, sucking him into the depths of it, overwhelming the world.

  He gripped his sword hilt till his knuckles hurt. "I deny you, and I deny your power. I walk in the Light. The Light preserves us, and we shelter in the palm of the Creator's hand." He blinked. Ba'alzamon still stood there, and the great darkness still hung behind him, but it was as if all the rest had been illusion.

  "Do you want to see my face?" It was a whisper.

  Rand swallowed. "No."

  "You should." A gloved hand went to the black mask.

  "No!"

  The mask came away. It was a man's face, horribly burned. Yet between the black-edged, red crevices crossing those features, the skin looked healthy and smooth. Dark eyes looked at Rand; cruel lips smiled with a flash of white teeth. "Look at me, Kinslayer, and see the hundredth part of your own fate." For a moment eyes and mouth became doorways into endless caverns of fire. "This is what the Power unchecked can do, even to me. But I heal, Lews Therin. I know the paths to greater power. It will burn you like a moth flying into a furnace."

  "I will not touch it!" Rand felt the void around him, felt saidin. "I won't."

  "You cannot stop yourself."

  "Leave — me — ALONE!"

  "Power." Ba'alzamon's voice became soft, insinuating. "You can have power again, Lews Therin. You are linked to it now, this moment. I know it. I can see it. Feel it, Lews Therin. Feel the glow inside you. Feel the power that could be yours. All you must do is reach out for it. But the Shadow is there between you and it. Madness and death. You need not die, Lews Therin, not ever again."

  "No," Rand said, but the voice went on, burrowing into him.

  "I can teach you to control that power so that it does not destroy you. No one else lives who can teach you that. The Great Lord of the Dark can shelter you from the madness. The power can be yours, and you can live forever. Forever! All you must do in return is serve. Only serve. Simple words — I am yours, Great Lord — and power will be yours. Power beyond anything those women of Tar Valon dream of, and life eternal, if you will only offer yourself up and serve."

  Rand licked his lips. Not to go mad. Not to die. "Never! I walk in the Light," he grated hoarsely, "and you can never touch me!"

  "Touch you, Lews Therin? Touch you? I can consume you! Taste it and know, as I knew!"

  Those dark eyes became fire again, and that mouth, flame that blossomed and grew until it seemed brighter than a summer sun. Grew, and suddenly Rand's sword glowed as if just drawn from the forge. He cried out as the hilt burned his hands, screamed and dropped the sword. And the fog caught fire, fire that leaped, fire that burned everything.

  Yelling, Rand beat at his clothes as they smoked and charred and fell in ashes, beat with hands that blackened and shriveled as naked flesh cracked and peeled away in the flames. He screamed. Pain beat at the void inside him, and he tried to crawl deeper into the emptiness. The glow was there, the tainted light just out of sight. Half mad, no longer caring what it was, he reached for saidin, tried to wrap it around him, tried to hide in it from the burning and the pain.

  As suddenly as the fire began, it was gone. Rand stared wonderingly at his hand sticking out of the red sleeve of his coat. There was not so much as a singe on the wool. I imagined it all. Frantically, he looked around. Ba'alzamon was gone. Hurin shifted in his sleep; the sniffer and Loial were still only two mounds sticking up out of the low fog. I did imagine it.

  Before relief had a chance to grow, pain stabbed his right hand, and he turned it up to look. There across the palm was branded a heron. The heron from the hilt of his sword, angry and red, as neatly done as though drawn with an artist's skill.

  Fumbling a kerchief from his coat pocket, he wrapped it around his hand. The hand throbbed, now. The void would help with that — he was aware of pain in the void, but he did not feel it — but he put the thought out of his head. Twice now, unknowing — and once on purpose; he could not forget that — he had tried to channel the One Power while he was in the void. It was with that that Ba'alzamon wanted to tempt him. It was that that Moiraine and the Amyrlin Seat wanted him to do. He would not.

  Chapter 16

  (Dragon's Fang)

  In the Mirror of Darkness

  "You should not have done it, Lord Rand," Hurin said when Rand woke the others just at daybreak. The sun yet hid below the horizon, but there was light enough to see. The fog had melted away while dark still held, fading reluctantly. "If you use yourself up to spare us, my Lord, who will see to getting us home?"

  "I needed to think," Rand said. Nothing showed the fog had ever been, or Ba'alzamon. He fingered the kerchief wrapped around his right hand. There was that to prove Ba'alzamon had been there. He wanted to be away from this place. "Time to be in the saddle if we are going to catch Fain's Darkfriends. Past time. We can eat flatbread while we ride."

  Loial paused in the act of stretching, his arms reaching as high as Hurin could have standing on Rand's shoulders. "Your hand, Rand. What happened?"

  "I hurt it. It's nothing."

  "I have a salve in my saddlebags—"

  "It is nothing" Rand knew he sounded harsh, but one look at the brand would surely bring questions he did not want to answer. "Time's wasting. Let us be on our way." He set about saddling Red, awkwardly because of his injured hand, and Hurin jumped to his own horse.

  "No need to be so touchy," Loial muttered.

  A track, Rand decided as they set out, would be something natural in that w
orld. There were too many unnatural things there. Even a single hoofprint would be welcome. Fain and the Darkfriends and the Trollocs had to leave some mark. He concentrated on the ground they passed over, trying to make out any trace that could have been made by another living thing.

  There was nothing, not a turned stone, not a disturbed clod of earth. Once he looked at the ground behind them, just to reassure himself that the land did take hoofprints; scraped turf and bent grass marked their passage plainly, yet ahead the ground was undisturbed. But Hurin insisted he could smell the trail, faint and thin, but still heading south.

  Once again the sniffer put all his attentions on the trail he followed, like a hound tracking deer, and once again Loial rode lost in his own thoughts, muttering to himself and rubbing the huge quarterstaff held across his saddle in front of him.

  They had not been riding more than an hour when Rand saw the spire ahead. He was so busy watching for tracks that the tapering column already stood thick and tall above the trees in the middle distance when he first noticed it. "I wonder what that is." It lay directly in their path.

  "I don't know what it can be, Rand," Loial said.

  "If this — if this was our own world, Lord Rand …" Hurin shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. "Well, that monument Lord Ingtar was talking about — the one to Artur Hawkwing's victory over the Trollocs — it was a great spire. But it was torn down a thousand years ago. There's nothing left but a big mound, like a hill. I saw it, when I went to Cairhien for Lord Agelmar."

  "According to Ingtar," Loial said, "that is still three or four days ahead of us. If it is here at all. I don't know why it should be. I don't think there are any people here at all."

  The sniffer put his eyes back on the ground. "That's just it, isn't it, Builder? No people, but there it is ahead of us. Maybe we ought to keep clear of it, my Lord Rand. No telling what it is, or who's there, in a place like this."

  Rand drummed his fingers on the high pommel of his saddle for a moment, thinking. "We have to stick as close to the trail as we can," he said finally. "We don't seem to be getting any closer to Fain as it is, and I don't want to lose more time, if we can avoid it. If we see any people, or anything out of the ordinary, then we'll circle around until we pick it up again. But until then, we keep on."

  "As you say, my Lord." The sniffer sounded odd, and he gave Rand a quick, sidelong look. "As you say."

  Rand frowned for a moment before he understood, and then it was his turn to sigh. Lords did not explain to those who followed them, only to other lords. I didn't ask him to take me for a bloody lord. But he did, a small voice seemed to answer him, and you let him. You made the choice; now the duty is yours.

  "Take the trail, Hurin," Rand said.

  With a flash of relieved grin, the sniffer heeled his horse onward.

  The weak sun climbed as they rode, and by the time it was overhead, they were only a mile or so from the spire. They had reached one of the streams, in a gully a pace deep, and the intervening trees were sparse. Rand could see the mound it was built on, like a round, flat-topped hill. The gray spire itself rose at least a hundred spans, and he could just make out now that the top was carved in the likeness of a bird with outstretched wings.

  "A hawk," Rand said. "It is Hawkwing's monument. It must be. There were people here, whether there are now or not. They just built it in another place here, and never tore it down. Think of it, Hurin. When we get back, you'll be able to tell them what the monument really looked like. There will only be three of us in the whole world who have ever seen it."

  Hurin nodded. "Yes, my Lord. My children would like to hear that tale, their father seeing Hawkwing's spire."

  "Rand," Loial began worriedly.

  "We can gallop the distance," Rand said. "Come on. A gallop will do us good. This place may be dead, but we're alive."

  "Rand," Loial said, "I don't think that is a—"

  Not waiting to hear, Rand dug his boots into Red's flanks, and the stallion sprang forward. He splashed across the shallow ribbon of water in two strides, then scrabbled up the far side. Hurin launched his horse right behind him. Rand heard Loial calling behind them, but he laughed, waved for the Ogier to follow, and galloped on. If he kept his eyes on one spot, the land did not seem to slip and slide so badly, and the wind felt good on his face.

  The mound covered a good two hides, but the grassy slope rose at an easy slant. The gray spire reared into the sky, squared and broad enough despite its height to seem massive, almost squat. Rand's laughter died, and he pulled Red up, his face grim.

  "Is that Hawkwing's monument, Lord Rand?" Hurin asked uneasily. "It doesn't look right, somehow."

  Rand recognized the harsh, angular script that covered the face of the monument, and he recognized some of the symbols chiseled on the breadth, chiseled as tall as a man. The horned skull of the Da'vol Trollocs. The iron fist of the Dhai'mon. The trident of the Ka'bol, and the whirlwind of the Ahf'frait. There was a hawk, too, carved near the bottom. With a wingspan of ten paces, it lay on its back, pierced by a lightning bolt, and ravens pecked at its eyes. The huge wings atop the spire seemed to block the sun.

  He heard Loial galloping up behind him.

  "I tried to tell you, Rand," Loial said. "It is a raven, not a hawk. I could see it clearly." Hurin turned his horse, refusing even to look at the spire any longer.

  "But how?" Rand said. "Artur Hawkwing won a victory over the Trollocs here. Ingtar said so."

  "Not here," Loial said slowly. "Obviously not here. 'From Stone to Stone run the lines of if, between the worlds that might be.' I've been thinking on it, and I believe I know what the 'the worlds that might be' are. Maybe I do. Worlds our world might have been if things had happened differently. Maybe that's why it is all so … washed-out looking. Because it's an 'if,' a 'maybe.' Just a shadow of the real world. In this world, I think, the Trollocs won. Maybe that's why we have not seen any villages or people."

  Rand's skin crawled. Where Trollocs won, they did not leave humans alive except for food. If they had won across an entire world… "If the Trollocs had won, they would be everywhere. We'd have seen a thousand of them by now. We'd be dead since yesterday."

  "I do not know, Rand. Perhaps, after they killed the people, they killed one another. Trollocs live to kill. That is all they do; that is all they are. I just don't know."

  "Lord Rand," Hurin said abruptly, "something moved down there."

  Rand whirled his horse, ready to see charging Trollocs, but Hurin was pointing back the way they had come, at nothing. "What did you see, Hurin? Where?"

  The sniffer let his arm drop. "Right at the edge of that clump of trees there, about a mile. I thought it was … a woman … and something else I couldn't make out, but …" He shivered. "It's so hard to make out things that aren't under your nose. Aaah, this place has my guts all awhirl. I'm likely imagining things, my Lord. This is a place for queer fancies." His shoulders hunched as if he felt the spire pressing on them. "No doubt it was just the wind, my Lord."

  Loial said, "There's something else to consider, I'm afraid." He sounded troubled again. He pointed southward. "What do you see off there?"

  Rand squinted against the way things far off seemed to slide toward him. "Land like what we've been crossing. Trees. Then some hills, and mountains. Nothing else. What do you want me to see?"

  "The mountains," Loial sighed. The tufts on his ears drooped, and the ends of his eyebrows were down on his cheeks. "That has to be Kinslayer's Dagger, Rand. There aren't any other mountains they could be, unless this world is completely different from ours. But Kinslayer's Dagger lies more than a hundred leagues south of the Erinin. A good bit more. Distances are hard to judge in this place, but … I think we will reach them before dark." He did not have to say any more. They could not have covered over a hundred leagues in less than three days.

  Without thinking, Rand muttered, "Maybe this place is like the Ways." He heard Hurin moan, and instantly regretted not keeping a rein on his tongue. />
  It was not a pleasant thought. Enter a Waygate — they could be found just outside Ogier stedding, and in Ogier groves — enter and walk for a day, and you could leave by another Waygate a hundred leagues from where you started. The Ways were dark, now, and foul, and to travel them meant to risk death or madness. Even Fades feared to travel the Ways.

  "If it is, Rand," Loial said slowly, "can a misstep kill us here, too? Are there things we have not yet seen that can do worse than kill us?" Hurin moaned again.

  They had been drinking the water, riding along as if they had not a concern in the world. Unconcern would kill quickly in the Ways. Rand swallowed, hoping his stomach would settle.

  "It is too late for worrying about what is past," he said. "From here on, though, we will watch our step." He glanced at Hurin. The sniffer's head had sunk between his shoulders, and his eyes darted as if he wondered what would leap at him, and from where. The man had run down murderers, but this was more than he had ever bargained for. "Hold on to yourself, Hurin. We are not dead, yet, and we won't be. We will just have to be careful from here on. That's all."

  It was at that moment they heard the scream, thin with distance.

  "A woman!" Hurin said. Even this much that was normal seemed to rouse him a little. "I knew I saw—"

  Another scream came, more desperate than the first.

  "Not unless she can fly," Rand said. "She's south of us." He kicked Red to a dead run in two strides.

  "Be careful you said!" Loial shouted after him. "Light, Rand, remember! Be careful!"