Winter's Heart twot-9

by Robert Jordan

  As soon as the single word left her mouth, a fountain of flame erupted in the forest to the north, and then another and another, a staggered line racing northward. Callandor shone like a flame in young Jahar's hands. Surprisingly, from the intensity on Elza's face and the way she gripped her skirts in fists, she was the one directing those flows.

  Merise took a fistful of the boy's black hair and gently shook his head. "Steady, my pretty," she murmured. "Oh, steady, my lovely strong one." He smiled at her, a ravishing smile.

  Cadsuane shook her own head slightly. Understanding any sister's relationship with her Warder was difficult, especially among Greens, but she could not begin to fathom what passed between Merise and her boys.

  Her real attention was on another boy, though. Nynaeve was swaying, groaning with the ecstasy of such an unbelievable mass of saidar flooding through her, but Rand sat like a stone, sweat rolling down his face. His eyes were blank, like polished sapphires. Was he even aware of what was happening around him?

  The swallow turned on its chain beneath her hand.

  "There," she said, pointing toward the ruins of Shadar Logoth.

  Rand could not see Nynaeve any longer. He could not see anything, feel anything. He swam in surging seas of flame, scrambled across collapsing mountains of ice. The taint flowed like an ocean tide, trying to sweep him away. If he lost control for an instant, it would strip away everything that was him and carry that down the conduit, too. As bad, or maybe worse, despite the tide of filth flooding through that odd flower, the taint on the male half of the Source seemed no less. It was like oil floating on water in a coating so thin you would not notice till you touched the surface, yet covering the vastness of the male half, it was an ocean in itself. He had to hold on. He had to. But for how long? How long could he hold on?

  If he could undo what al'Thor had done at the source, Demandred thought as he stepped through his gateway into Shadar Logoth, undo it sharply and suddenly, that might well kill the man, or at least sear the ability to channel out of him. He had reasoned out what al'Thor's plan had to be as soon as he realized where the access key was. A brilliant scheme, he did not mind admitting, however insanely dangerous. Lews Therin had always been a brilliant planner, too, if not so brilliant as everyone made out. Not nearly as brilliant as Demandred himself.

  One look at the rubble-strewn street changed his mind about altering anything, though. Beside him rose half a pale dome, its shattered top two hundred feet or more above the street, and above it, the sky held the light of midmorning. From the broken rim of the ruin down to the street, though, the air was dark with shadows, as if night were already falling. The city… quivered. He could feel it through his boots.

  Fire erupted in the forest, great explosions spun of saidin that hurled trees into the air on gouts of flame that sped toward him, but he was already weaving a gateway. Leaping through, he let it vanish and ran through the vine-draped trees as hard as he could, plowing through patches of snow, stumbling over rocks hidden in the mulch, but not slowing down, never that. The web had been reversed, for caution's sake, but so had the first, and he had been a soldier. Still running, he heard the explosions he expected, and knew they were racing toward where his gateway had been as surely as they had raced straight toward him among the ruins. They were far enough from him now to present no danger, though. Without slowing, he turned toward the access key. With the amount of saidin pouring through it, there might as well have been a fiery arrow in the sky pointing to al'Thor.

  So. Unless someone in this accursed Age had discovered yet another unknown ability, al'Thor must have acquired a device, a ter'angreal, that could detect a man channeling. From what he knew of what people now called the Breaking, after he himself had been imprisoned at Shayol Ghul, any woman who knew how to make ter'angreal would have been trying to create one that would do that. In war, the other side always came up with something you did not expect, and you had to counter it. He had always been good at war. First, he needed to get closer.

  Suddenly he saw people off to the right ahead of him through the trees, and sheltered behind a rough gray trunk. A bald-headed old man with a fringe of white hair was limping along between two women, one of them beautiful in a wild way, the other stunning. What were they doing in these woods? Who were they? Friends of al'Thor, or just people in the wrong place at the wrong time? He hesitated to kill them, whoever they were. Any use of the Power would warn al'Thor. He would have to wait until they passed. The old man's head was turning as if he were searching for something among the trees, but Demandred doubted a fellow that decrepit could see very far.

  Abruptly the old man stopped and thrust out his hand straight toward Demandred, and Demandred found himself frantically fending off a net of saidin that struck his warding much harder than it should have, as hard as his own spinning would. That tottering old man was an Asha'man! And at least one of the women must be what passed for Aes Sedai in this time, and joined with the fellow in a ring.

  He tried to launch his own attack and crush them, but the old man flung web after web at him without pause, and it was all he could do to fend them off. Those that struck trees enveloped them in flame or blew the trunks apart in splinters. He was a general, a great general, but generals did not have to fight alongside the men they commanded! Snarling, he began to retreat amid the crackle of burning trees and the thunder of explosions. Away from the key. Sooner or later the old man had to tire, and then he could take care of killing al'Thor. If one of the others did not get there first. He hoped fervently they did not.

  Skirts hiked to her knees, cursing, Cyndane ran from her third gateway as soon as she was through. She could hear the explosions marching toward the site, but this time she had realized why they came straight for her. Tripping on vines hidden in the snow, bumping into tree trunks, she ran. She hated forests! At least some of the others were here—she had seen those fountaining fires speed elsewhere than at her; she could feel saidar being spun at more than one place, spun with fury—but she prayed to the Great Lord that she would reach Lews Therin first. She wanted to see him die, she realized, and for that, she would have to get closer.

  Crouching behind a fallen log, Osan'gar panted from the exertion of running. Those months masquerading as Corlan Dashiva had not made him any fonder of exercise. The explosions that had almost killed him died away, then started up again somewhere in the distance, and he cautiously raised himself enough to peek over the log. Not that he supposed a piece of wood was very much protection. He had never been a soldier, not really. His talents, his genius, lay elsewhere. The Trollocs were his making, and thus the Myrddraal that had sprung from them, and many other creatures that had rocked the world and made his name famous. The access key blazed with saidin, but he could feel lesser amounts being wielded, too, in various directions.

  He had expected others of the Chosen to be here ahead of him, had hoped they might have finished the task before he arrived, but plainly they had not. Plainly al'Thor had brought along some of those Asha'man, and by the amount of saidin that had gone into the eruptions that targeted him, Callandor as well. And maybe some of his tame, so-called Aes Sedai.

  Crouching again, he bit his lip. This forest was a very dangerous place, more so than he had expected, and nowhere for a genius. But the fact remained that Moridin terrified him. The man had always terrified him, from the very beginning. He had been mad with power before they were sealed into the Bore, and since they had been freed, he seemed to think that he was the Great Lord. Moridin would find out somehow if he fled, and kill him. Worse, if al'Thor succeeded, the Great Lord might decide to kill both of them, and Osan'gar as well. He did not care whether they died, but he did very much about himself.

  He was not good at judging time by the sun, but it was obviously still short of noon. Hauling himself from the ground, he dabbed at the dirt on his clothes, then gave up in disgust and began to skulk from tree to tree in what he imagined was a stealthy manner. It was toward the key that he skulked. Perhaps
one of the others would finish the man before he got close to it, but if not, perhaps he would find the chance to be a hero. Carefully, of course.

  Verin frowned at the apparition making its way through the trees off to her left. She could think of no other term for a woman walking through the forest in gems and a gown that shifted through every color from black to white and sometimes even turned transparent! She was not hurrying, but she was heading toward the hill where Rand was. And unless Verin was very much mistaken, she was one of the Forsaken.

  "Are we just going to watch her?" Shalon whispered furiously. She had been upset that she was not the one to meld the flows, as if a wilder's strength counted with Aes Sedai, and hours tramping through the woods had not improved her temper.

  "We must do something," Kumira said softly, and Verin nodded.

  "I was just deciding what." A shield, she decided. A captive Forsaken might prove very useful.

  Using the full strength of her circle, she wove her shield, and watched aghast as it rebounded. The woman was already embracing saidar, though no light shone around her, and she was immensely strong!

  Then she had no time for thought of anything as the golden-haired woman spun around and began channeling. Verin could not see the weaves, but she knew when she was fighting off an attack on her life, and she had come too far to die here.

  Eben hitched his cloak around himself and wished he were better at ignoring the cold. Simple cold, he could ignore, but not the wind that had sprung up since the sun passed its zenith. The three sisters linked to him simply let the wind take their cloaks as they tried to watch every direction at once. Daigian was leading the circle—because of him, he thought—but she was drawing so lightly that he felt barely a whisper of saidin passing through him. She would not want to face that until she had to. He lifted her cowl back into place on her head, and she smiled at him from its depths. The bond carried her affection to him, and his own back, he supposed. With time, he thought he might come to love this little Aes Sedai.

  The torrent of saidin far behind him had a tendency to wash out his awareness of other channeling, but he could feel others wielding the Power. The battle had been joined, elsewhere, and so far all the four of them had done was walk. He did not mind that much, really. He had been at Dumai's Wells, and fought the Seanchan, and he had learned that battles were more fun in a book than in the flesh. What did irk him was that he had not been given control of the circle. Of course, Jahar had not, but he figured Merise amused herself by making Jahar balance a cookie on his nose. Damer had been given control of that circle, though. Just because the man had a few years on him—well, more than a few; he was older than Eben's da—was no reason for Cadsuane to look at him as if he were a—

  "Can you help me? I seem to have lost my way, and my horse." The woman who stepped from behind a tree ahead of them did not even have a cloak. Instead, she wore a gown of deep green silk cut so low that half of her lush bosom was exposed.

  Waves of black hair surrounded a beautiful face, with green eyes that sparkled as she smiled.

  "A strange place to be riding," Beldeine said suspiciously. The pretty Green had not been pleased when Cadsuane put Daigian in charge, and she had taken every opportunity to state her opinion of Daigian's decisions.

  "I hadn't meant to ride so far," the woman said coming closer. "I see you're all Aes Sedai. With a… groom? Do you know what all the commotion is about?"

  Suddenly, Eben felt the blood drain from his face. What he felt was impossible! The green-eyed woman frowned in surprise, and he did the only thing that he could.

  "She's holding saidin!" he shouted, and threw himself at her as he felt Daigian draw deeply on the Power.

  Cyndane slowed at the sight of the woman standing among the trees a hundred paces ahead of her, a tall yellow-haired woman who simply watched her come closer. The feel of battles being fought with the Power in other places made her wary at the same time it gave her hope. The woman was plainly dressed in wool, but incongruously decked with gems as if she were a great lady. With saidar in her, Cyndane could see the faint lines at the corners of the woman's eyes. Not one of those who called themselves Aes Sedai, then. But who? And why did she stand there as if she would bar Cyndane's way? It did not really matter. Channeling now would give her away, but she had time. The key still shone as a beacon of the Power. Lews Therin still lived. No matter how fierce the other woman's eyes, a knife would do for her, if she really thought she could be a bar. And just in case she proved to be what they called a wilder, Cyndane prepared a small present for her, a reversed web she would not even see until it was too late.

  Abruptly the light of saidar appeared around the woman, but the ready ball of fire streaked from Cyndane's hand, small enough to escape detection she hoped, but enough to burn a hole through this woman who—

  Just as it reached the woman, almost close enough to singe her garments, the web of Fire unraveled. The woman did not do anything; the net simply came apart! Cyndane had never heard of a ter'angreal that would break a web, but it must be that.

  Then the woman struck back at her, and she suffered her second shock. She was stronger than Cyndane had been before the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn held her! That was impossible; no woman could be stronger. She must have an angreal, too. Shock lasted only the time it took her to slice the other woman's flows. She did not know how to reverse them. Maybe that would be enough advantage. She would see Lews Therin die! The taller woman jerked as her cut flows snapped back into her, but even as she shifted her feet with the blow, she channeled again. Snarling, Cyndane fought back, and the earth heaved beneath their feet. She would see him die! She would.

  The high hilltop was not very near to the access key, but even so the key shone so brightly in Moghedien's head that she hungered for just a sip at that immense flow of saidar. To hold so much, the thousandth part of so much, would be ecstasy. She hungered, but this wooded vantage was as near as she intended going. Only the threat of Moridin's hands caressing her cour'souvra had driven her to Travel here at all, and she had delayed coming, prayed that it would be over before she was forced to. Always she had worked in secrecy, but she had had to flee an attack as soon as she arrived, and in widely separated places in the forest spread out before her, lightnings and fires woven of saidar and others that must have been saidin flashed and flared beneath the midafternoon sun. Black smoke rose in plumes from burning clumps of trees, and thunderous explosions rolled through the air.

  Who fought, who lived, who died were all matters of indifference to her. Except that it would be pleasant if Cyndane or Graendal perished. Or both. Moghedien would not, not thrashing about in the middle of a battle. And if that were not bad enough, there was what stood beyond the shining key, an immense flattened dome of black in the forest, as though night had turned to stone. She flinched as a ripple passed across the dark surface and the dome heaved perceptibly higher. Madness to go any closer to that, whatever it was. Moridin would not know what she did here, or did not do.

  Retreating to the back of the hilltop, away from the shining key and the strange dome, she sat down to do what she had done so often in the past. Watch from the shadows, and survive.

  Inside his head, Rand was screaming. He was sure that he was screaming, that Lews Therin was screaming, but he could not hear either voice in the roar. The foul ocean of the taint was flooding through him, howling with its speed. Tidal waves of vileness crashed over him. Raging gales of filth ripped at him. The only reason he knew that he still held the Power was the taint. Saidin could be shifting, flaring, about to kill him, and he would never know. That putrid flood overwhelmed everything else, and he hung on by his fingernails to keep from being swept away on it. The taint was moving. That was all that counted, now. He had to hold on!

  "What can you tell me, Min?" Cadsuane kept her feet despite her weariness. Holding that shield through most of a day was enough to tire anyone.

  There had not been an attack on the hilltop for some time, and in fact, it seeme
d the only active channeling she could sense was what Nynaeve and the boy were doing. Elza was pacing an endless circle around the crest of the hill, still linked to Merise and Jahar, but there was nothing for her to do at the moment except scan the hills around them. Jahar was sitting on a stone with Callandor shining faintly in the crook of his arm. Merise sat on the ground beside him with her head on his knee, and he was stroking her hair.

  "Well, Min?" Cadsuane demanded.

  The girl looked up angrily from the depression in the stony ground where Tomas and Moad had bundled her and Harine. At least the men had sense enough to accept that they could not fight any part of this fight. Harine wore a sullen scowl, and more than once it had been necessary for one of the men to restrain Min from going to young al'Thor. They had actually had to take her knives away, after she tried to use the blades on them.

  "I know he's alive," the girl muttered, "and I think he's hurting. Only, if I can feel enough to think he's hurting, then he's in agony. Let me go to him."

  "You would only get in the way now."

  Ignoring the girl's frustrated groan, Cadsuane walked across the uneven ground to where Rand and Nynaeve sat, but for a moment she did not look at them. Even at a distance of miles, the black dome looked immense, rearing a thousand feet at its height. And it was swelling. The surface looked like black steel, though it did not sparkle in the afternoon sun. If anything, the light seemed to dim around it.

  Rand was sitting as he had since the beginning, an unmoving, unseeing statue with sweat rolling down his face. If he was in agony as Min said, he showed no sign of it. And if he was, Cadsuane did not know what she could do, what she dared to do. Disturbing him now in any way might have dire consequences. Glancing at that rising dead-black dome, Cadsuane grunted. Having let him begin in the first place might have dire consequences, too.