The Fires of Heaven twot-5

by Robert Jordan

  It was not the same thing at all, of course. She gritted her teeth and did as she was told because that was the only way to learn dreamwalking, and she wanted to learn, to learn everything, more than anything else she could imagine. To even think that she could live by this foolish ji'e'toh was simply silly. She did what she had to do, and only when and because she had to.

  They were coming back to where they had begun. As her foot hit the spot, Egwene said, "That's one," and ran on through the darkness with no one to see but Aviendha, no one to say whether she went back to her tent right then. Aviendha would not have told, but it never occurred to Egwene to stop short of the fifty.

  Chapter 6

  (Crescent Moon and Stars)

  Gateways

  Rand woke in total darkness and lay there beneath his blankets trying to think of what had wakened him. It had been something. Not the dream; he had been teaching Aviendha how to swim, in a pond in the Waterwood back home in the Two Rivers. Something else. Then it came again, like a faint whiff of a foul miasma creeping under the door. Not a smell at all, really; a sense of otherness, but that was how it felt. Rank, like something dead a week in stagnant water. It faded again, but not all the way this time.

  Tossing aside his blankets, he stood up, wrapping himself in saidin. Inside the Void, filled with the Power, he could feel his body shiver, but the cold seemed in another place from where he was. Cautiously he pulled open the door and stepped out. Arched windows at either end of the corridor let in falls of moonlight. After the pitch black of his room, it was nearly like day. Nothing moved, but he could feel… something… coming closer. Something evil. It felt like the taint that roared through him on the Power.

  One hand went to his coat pocket, to the small carved figure of a round little man holding a sword across his knees. An angreal; with that he could channel more of the Power than even he could safely handle unaided. He thought it would not be necessary. Whoever had sent this attack against him did not know who they were dealing with, now. They should never have let him wake.

  For a moment, he hesitated. He could take the fight to whatever had been sent against him, but he thought it was still below him. Down where the Maidens were still sleeping, by the silence. With luck, it would not bother them, unless he rushed down to battle it in their midst. That would surely wake them, and they would not stand by and watch. Lan said that you should choose your ground, if you could, and make your enemy come to you.

  Smiling, he raced the thud of his boots up the nearest curving stairway, on upward, until he reached the top floor. The highest level of the building was one large chamber with a slightly domed ceiling and scattered thin columns fluted in spirals. Glassless arched windows all around flooded every corner with moonlight. The dust and grit and sand on the floor still faintly showed his own footprints, from the one time he had come up here, and no other mark. It was perfect.

  Striding to the center of the room, he planted himself atop the mosaic there, the ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai, ten feet across. It was an apt place. "Under this sign will he conquer." That was what the Prophecy of Rhuidean said of him. He stood straddling the sinuous dividing line, one boot on the black teardrop that was now called the Dragon's Fang and used to represent evil, the other on the white now called the Flame of Tar Valon. Some men said it stood for the Light. An appropriate place to meet this attack, between Light and darkness.

  The fetid feel grew stronger, and a burned sulfur smell filled the air. Suddenly things moved, slinking away from the stairs like moonshadows, along the outside of the room. Slowly they resolved into three black dogs, darker than night and big as ponies. Eyes shining silver, they circled him warily. With the Power in him, he could hear their hearts beat, like deep drums pounding. He could not hear them breathe, though; perhaps they did not.

  He channeled, and a sword was in his hands, its slightly curving, heron-marked blade seeming hammered out of fire. He had expected Myrddraal, or something even worse than the Eyeless, but for dogs, even Shadowspawn dogs, the sword would be enough. Whoever had sent them did not know him. Lan said he had very nearly reached the level of a blademaster, now, and the Warder was sparing enough with praise to make him think he might have passed onto that level already.

  With snarls like bones being ground to dust, the dogs hurtled at him from three sides, faster than galloping horses.

  He did not move until they were almost on him; then he flowed, one with the sword, move to move, as though dancing. In the blink of an eye the sword form called Whirlwind on the Mountain became The Wind Blows Over the Wall became Unfolding the Fan. Great black heads flew apart from black bodies, their dripping teeth, like burnished steel, still bared as they bounced across the floor. He was already stepping from the mosaic as the dark forms collapsed in twitching, bleeding heaps.

  Laughing to himself, he let the sword go, though he held on to saidin, to the raging Power, the sweetness and the taint. Contempt slid along the outside of the Void. Dogs. Shadowspawn, certainly, but still just… Laughter died.

  Slowly, the dead dogs and their heads were melting, settling into pools of liquid shadow that quivered slightly, as if alive. Their blood fanned across the floor, trembled. Suddenly the smaller pools flowed across the floor in viscous streams to merge with the larger, which oozed away from the mosaic to mound higher and higher, until the three huge black dogs stood there once more, slavering and snarling as they gathered massive haunches under them.

  He did not know why he felt surprise, dim outside the emptiness. Dogs, yes, but Shadowspawn. Whoever had sent them had not been as careless as he had thought. But they still did not know him.

  Instead of reaching for the sword again, he channeled as he remembered doing once long ago. Howling, the huge dogs leaped, and a thick shaft of white light shot from his hands, like molten steel, like liquid fire. He swept it across the springing creatures; for an instant they became strange shadows of themselves, all colors reversed, and then they were made of sparkling motes that broke apart, smaller and smaller, until there was nothing.

  He let go of the thing he had made, with a grim smile. A purple bar of light still seemed to cross his vision in afterimage.

  Across the great chamber a piece of one of the columns crashed to the floor tiles. Where that bar of light — or whatever it had been; not light, exactly — had swung, neat slices were gone from the columns. A gaping swath cut half the width of the wall behind them.

  "Did any of them bite you, or bleed on you?"

  He spun at the sound of Moiraine's voice; absorbed in what he had done, he had not heard her come up the stairs. She stood clutching her skirts with both hands, peering at him, face lost in moon-shadow. She would have sensed the things the same way he did, but to be here so quickly she must have run. "The Maidens let you pass? Have you become Far Dareis Mai, Moiraine?"

  "They grant me some privileges of a Wise One," she said in a rush, impatience raw in her usually melodious voice. "I told the guards I had to speak with you urgently. Now, answer me! Did the Darkhounds bite you, or bleed on you? Did their saliva touch you?"

  "No," he answered slowly. Darkhounds. The little he knew he had gotten from old stories, the sort used to frighten children in the southlands. Some grown-ups believed, too. "Why should a bite worry you? You could Heal it. Does this mean the Dark One is free?" Enclosed in the Void as he was, even fear was distant.

  The tales he had heard said the Darkhounds ran the night in the Wild Hunt, with the Dark One himself the hunter; they left no print on even the softest dirt, only on stone, and they would not stop until you faced and defeated them or put running water between you. Crossroads were supposed to be particularly dangerous places to meet them, and the time just after sunset or just before sunrise. He had seen enough old stories walking by now to believe that any of it could be true.

  "No, not that, Rand." She seemed to be regaining her self-control; her voice was silver chimes again, calm and cool. "They are only another kind of Shadowspawn, something that
should never have been made. But their bite is death as surely as a dagger in the heart, and I do not think I could have Healed such a wound before it killed you. Their blood, even their saliva, is poison. A drop on the skin can kill, slowly, with great pain at the end. You are lucky there were only three: Unless you killed more before I arrived? Their packs are usually larger, as many as ten or twelve, or so say the scraps left from the War Of the Shadow."

  Larger packs. He was not the only target in Rhuidean for one of the Forsaken…

  "We must speak of what you used to kill them," Moiraine began, but he was already running as hard as he could, ignoring her cries to know where he was going and why.

  Down flights of stairs, through darkened corridors where sleepy Maidens, roused by the pounding boots, peered at him in consternation from moonlit rooms. Through the front doors, where Lan stood restlessly with the two women on guard, his color-shifting Warder's cloak about his shoulders, making parts of him seem to blend into the night.

  "Where is Moiraine?" he shouted as Rand dashed by, but Rand leaped down the broad steps two at a time without replying.

  The half-healed wound in his side clenched like a fist, pain he was only vaguely aware of inside the Void, by the time he reached the building he sought. It stood at the very edge of Rhuidean, far from the plaza, as far from the camp Moiraine shared with the Wise Ones as it was possible to be and remain in the city. The upper floors had collapsed in a mound of rubble that fanned out onto the cracked earth beyond the pavement. Only the bottom two floors remained whole. Refusing his body's efforts to hunch over around the pain, he went in, still at a dead run.

  Once the great antechamber, encircled by a stone balcony, had been tall; now it was taller, open to the night sky, its pale stone floor strewn with rubble from the collapse. In the moonshadows beneath the balcony, three Darkhounds were up on their hind legs, clawing and chewing at a bronze-clad door that shivered under their assault. The smell of burned sulfur hung strong in the air.

  Remembering what had happened before, Rand darted to one side as he channeled, the shaft of liquid white fire streaking by the door as it destroyed the Shadowspawn. He had tried to make it less this time, to confine the destruction to the Darkhounds, but the thick wall at the far end of the chamber had a shadowed hole in it. Not all the way through, he thought — it was hard to tell by moonlight — but he would have to fine his control of this weapon.

  The bronze sheathing on the door was tattered and torn as though the teeth and toenails of the Darkhounds really had been steel; lamplight shone through a number of small holes. There were pawprints in the floorstones, but surprisingly few. Releasing saidin, he found a place where he would not cut his hand to shreds and pounded on the door. Suddenly the pain in his side was very real and present; he took a deep breath and tried to thrust it away. "Mat? It's me, Rand! Open up, Mat!"

  After a moment, the door opened a crack, letting out a spill of lamplight; Mat peered through doubtfully, then pulled the door wider, leaning against it as if he had run ten miles carrying a sack of rocks. Except for a silver foxhead medallion hanging around his neck, its eye shaped and shaded like the ancient Aes Sedai symbol, he was naked. The way Mat felt about Aes Sedai, Rand was surprised he had not sold the thing long since. Deeper in the room, a tall, golden-haired woman was calmly wrapping a blanket around herself. A Maiden, by the spears and buckler lying at her feet.

  Rand hastily averted his eyes and cleared his throat. "I just wanted to make sure you were all right."

  "We're fine." Uneasily, Mat looked around the antechamber. "Now we are. You killed it, or something? I don't want to know what it was, as long as it's gone. It's bloody hard on a man sometimes, being your friend."

  Not only a friend. Another ta'veren, and perhaps a key to victory in Tarmon Gai'don; anyone who wanted to strike at Rand had reason to strike at Mat, as well. But Mat always tried to deny both things. "They're gone, Mat. Darkhounds. Three of them."

  "I told you I didn't want to know," Mat groaned. "Darkhounds now. I can't say it isn't always something new around you. A man wouldn't get bored; not until the day he died. If I hadn't been on my feet for a drink of wine when the door started to open…" He trailed off, shivering, and scratched a red place on his right arm as he studied the ravaged metal sheathing. "You know, it's funny how the mind plays tricks. When I was putting everything I had into holding this door shut, I could have sworn one of them had chewed a hole right through it. I could see its bloody head. And its teeth. Melindhra's spear didn't even faze it."

  Moiraine's arrival was more spectacular this time, running in, skirts held up, panting and fuming. Lan was at her heels with his sword in hand and thunderclouds on his stone face, and right behind, a throng of Far Dareis Mai that spilled out into the street. Some of the Maidens wore no more than smallclothes, but every one held her spears alertly and had her shoufa wrapped around her head, black veil hiding all but her eyes, ready to kill. Moiraine and Lan, at least, looked relieved to see him standing there calmly talking to Mat, though. The Aes Sedai also looked as if she meant to have strong words with him. With the veils, it was impossible to tell what the Aiel thought.

  Letting out a loud yelp, Mat darted back into his room and began hastily tugging on a pair of breeches, his capering impeded by the way he kept trying to haul at the breeches and scratch his arm at the same time. The golden-haired Maiden watched with a broad grin that threatened to break into laughter.

  "What's the matter with your arm?" Rand asked.

  "I told you the mind plays funny tricks," Mat said, still trying to scratch and pull at the same time. "When I thought that thing chewed through the door, I thought it slobbered all over my arm, too, and now it bloody itches like fire. Even looks like a burn there."

  Rand opened his mouth, but Moiraine was already pushing past him. Staring at her, Mat fell down while frantically dragging his breeches on the rest of the way, but she knelt beside him, ignoring his protests, clasping his head in her hands. Rand had been Healed before, and seen it done, but instead of what he expected, Mat only gave a shiver and lifted up the medallion by its leather thong so that it hung against his hand.

  "Bloody thing is colder than ice all of a sudden," he muttered. "What are you doing, Moiraine? If you want to do something, Heal this itch; it has my whole arm now." His right arm was red from wrist to shoulder, and had begun to look puffy.

  Moiraine stared at him with the most startled expression Rand had ever seen on her face. Maybe the only one. "I will," she said slowly. "If the medallion is cold, take it off."

  Mat frowned at her, then finally pulled it over his head and laid it beside him. She took his head again, and he gave a shout as if he had been ducked headfirst into ice; his legs stiffened and his back arched; his eyes stared at nothing, as wide as they would go. When Moiraine took her hands away, he slumped, gulping air. The redness and swelling were gone. It took three tries before he could speak. "Blood and — Does it have to be that flaming way every flaming time? It was just a bloody itch!"

  "You watch your tongue with me," Moiraine told him, getting up, "or I will find Nynaeve and put her in charge of you." But her heart was not in it; she could have been talking in her sleep. She was trying not to stare at the foxhead as Mat hung it back around his neck. "You will need rest," she said absently. "Stay in bed tomorrow, if you feel like it."

  The Maiden in the blanket — Melindhra? — knelt behind Mat and put her hands on his shoulders, looking up at Moiraine over his head. "I will see that he does as you say, Aes Sedai." With a sudden grin, she ruffled his hair. "He is my little mischief maker, now." From the horrified look on Mat's face, he was gathering his strength to run.

  Rand became aware of soft, amused chuckles behind him. The Maidens, shoufas and veils around their shoulders now, had crowded around and were peering into the room.

  "Teach him to sing, spear-sister," Adelin said, and the other Maidens crowed with laughter.

  Rand rounded on them firmly. "Let the man rest. Don't
some of you have to put on clothes?" They gave way reluctantly, still trying to peer into the room, until Moiraine came out.

  "Will you leave us, please?" the Aes Sedai said as the mangled door banged shut behind her. She half looked back with a vexed tightening of her mouth. "I must speak with Rand al'Thor alone." Nodding, the Aiel women started for the door, some still jesting about whether Melindhra — a Shaido, it seemed; Rand wondered if Mat knew that — would teach Mat to sing. Whatever that meant.

  Rand stopped Adelin with a hand on her bare arm; others who noticed stopped as well, so he spoke to them all. "If you will not go when I tell you to, what will you do if I have to use you in battle?" He did not intend to if he could help it; he knew they were fierce warriors, but he had been raised to believe it was a man's place to die if necessary before a woman had to. Logic might say it was foolish, especially with women like this, but that was how he felt. He knew better than to tell them that, however. "Will you think it a joke, or decide to go in your own good time?"

  They looked at him with the consternation of those listening to someone who had revealed his ignorance of the simplest facts. "In the dance of spears," Adelin told him, "we will go as you direct, but this is not the dance. Besides, you did not tell us to go."

  "Even the Car'a'carn is not a wetlander king," a gray-haired Maiden added. Sinewy and hard despite her age, she wore only a short shift and her shoufa. He was getting tired of that phrase.

  The Maidens resumed their joking as they left him alone with Moiraine and Lan. The Warder had finally put up his sword, and looked as at ease as he ever did. Which was to say as still and calm as his face, all stony planes and angles in the moonlight, and with an air of being on the brink of sudden movement that made the Aiel appear placid in comparison. A braided leather cord held Lan's hair, graying at the temples, back from his face. His gaze could have come from a blue-eyed hawk.