Knife of Dreams twot-11

by Robert Jordan

  As for himself, he could not look at any of them without the litany of women who had died for him, women he had killed, starting up in his head. Moiraine Damodred. Her above all. Her name was written inside his skull in fire. Liah of the Cosaida Chareen, Sendara of the Iron Mountain Taardad. Lamelle of the Smoke Water Miagoma, Andhilin of the Red Salt Goshien, Desora of the Musara Reyn… So many names. Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night muttering that list, with Min holding him and murmuring to him as if soothing a child. He always told her he was all right and wanted to go back to sleep, yet after he closed his eyes, he did not sleep until the list had been completed. Sometimes Lews Therin chanted it with him.

  Min looked up from the volume she had open on the table, one of Herid Fel’s books. She devoured those, and used the note he had sent Rand before his murder, the one where he said she was a distraction because she was so pretty, as a bookmark. Her short blue coat, embroidered with white flowers on the sleeves and lapels, was cut to fit snugly over her bosom, where her creamy silk blouse showed a touch of cleavage, and her big dark eyes, framed by dark ringlets to her shoulders, held a pleased light. He could feel her pleasure through the bond. She liked him looking at her. Without a doubt the bond told her how much he liked looking. Oddly enough, it said she liked looking at him, too. Pretty? He hummed, thumbing his earlobe. She was beautiful. And tied to him tighter than ever. She and Elayne and Aviendha. How was he to keep them safe now? He forced himself to smile back at her around his pipestem. unsure how well the deception was working. A touch of irritation had entered the bond from her end, though why she should become irritable whenever she thought he was worrying about her was beyond him. Light, she wanted to protect him’t

  “Rand isn’t very talkative, Loial,” she said, no longer smiling. Her low, almost musical voice held no anger, but the bond told another story. “In fact, sometimes he’s about as talkative as a mussel.” The look she directed at Rand made him sigh. It seemed there would be a great deal of talking once they were alone together. “I can’t tell you much, myself, but I’m sure Cadsuane and Venn will tell you anything you want to know. Others will, too. Ask them if you want more than yes and no and two words besides.’’

  Stout little Verin. knitting in a chair beside Nynaeve, appeared startled to hear her name mentioned. She blinked vaguely, as though wondering why it had been. Cadsuane, at the far end of the table with her sewing basket open beside her, only took her attention away from her embroidery hoop long enough to glance at Loial. Golden ornaments swayed, dangling from the iron-gray bun atop her head. It was only that, a glance, not a frown, yet Loial’s ears twitched. Aes Sedai always impressed him, and Cadsuane more than any other.

  “Oh, I will, Min. I will,” he said. “But Rand is central to my book.” With no sand jar at hand, he began blowing gently on the page of his notebook to dry the ink, but Loial being Loial, he still talked between puffs. “You never give enough detail. Rand. You make me drag everything out of you. Why, you never even mentioned being imprisoned in Far Madding until Min did. Never mentioned it! What did the Council of Nine say when they offered you the Laurel Crown? And when you renamed it? I can’t think they liked that. What was the coronation like? Was there feasting, a festival, parades? How many Forsaken came against you at Shadar Logoth? Which ones? What did it look like at the end? What did he feel like? My book won’t be very good without the details. I hope Mat and Perrin give me better answers.’’ He frowned, long eyebrows grazing his cheeks. “I hope they’re all right.”

  Colors spun in Rand’s head, twin rainbows swirled in water. He knew how to suppress them, now, but this time he did not try. One resolved into a brief image of Mat riding through forest at the head of a line of mounted folk. He seemed to be arguing with a small, dark woman who rode beside him, taking his hat off and peering into it, then cramming it back onto his head. That lasted only moments, then was replaced by Perrin sitting over winecups in a common room or tavern with a man and a woman who wore identical red coats ornately trimmed with blue and yellow. Odd garments. Perrin looked grim as death, his companions wary. Of him?

  “They’re well.” he said, calmly ignoring a piercing look from Cadsuane. She did not know everything, and he intended to keep it that way. Calm on the surface, content, blowing smoke rings. Inside was another matter. Where are they? he thought angrily, pushing down another appearance of the colors. That was as easy as breathing, now. I need them, and they’re off for a day at the Ansaline Gardens’.

  Abruptly another image was floating his head, a man’s face, and his breath caught. For the first time, it came without any dizziness. For the first time, he could see it clearly in the moments before it vanished. A blue-eyed man with a square chin, perhaps a few years older than himself. Or rather, he saw it clearly for the first time in a long while. It was the face of the stranger who had saved his life in Shadar Logoth when he fought Sammael. Worse…

  He was aware of me, Lews Therin said. He sounded sane for a change. Sometimes he did, but the madness always returned eventually. How can a face appearing in my mind be aware of me?

  If you don’t know, how do yon expect me to? Rand thought. But I was aware of him, as well. It had been a strange sensation, as if he were… touching… the other man somehow. Only not physically. A residue hung on. It seemed he only had to move a hair’s breadth, in any direction. to touch him again. I think he saw my face, too.

  Talking to a voice in his head no longer seemed peculiar. In truth, it had not for quite a long time. And now… ? Now, he could see Mat and Perrin by thinking of them or hearing their names, and he had this other face coming to him unbidden. More than a face, apparently. What was holding conversations inside his own skull alongside that? But the man had been aware, and Rand of him.

  When our streams of balefire touched in Shadar Logoth, it must have created some sort of link between us. I can’t think of any other explanation. That was the only time we ever met. He was using their so-called True Power. It had to be that. I felt nothing, saw nothing except his stream of balefire. Having bits of knowledge seem his when he knew they came from Lews Therin no longer seemed odd, either. He could remember the Ansaline Gardens, destroyed in the War of the Shadow, as well as he did his father’s farm. Knowledge drifted the other way, too. Lews Therin sometimes spoke of Emond’s Field as if he had grown up there. Does that make any sense to you?

  Oh. Light, why do I have this voice in my head? Lews Therin moaned. Why can I not die? Oh, Ilyena, my precious Ilyena, I want to join you. He trailed off into weeping. He often did when he spoke of the wife he had murdered in his madness.

  It did not matter. Rand suppressed the sound of the man crying. pushed it down to a faint noise on the edge of hearing. He was certain that he was right. But who was the fellow? A Darkfriend, for sure, but not one of the Forsaken. Lews Therin knew their faces as well as he knew his own, and now Rand did, too. A sudden thought made him grimace. How aware of him was the other man? Ta’veren could be found by their effect on the Pattern, though only the Forsaken knew how. Lews Therin certainly had never mentioned knowing-their “conversations” were always brief, and the man seldom gave information willingly-and nothing had drifted across from him on the subject. At least, Lanfear and Ishamael had known how. but no one had found him that way since they had died. Could this link be used in the same fashion? They could all be in danger. More danger than usual, as if the usual were not enough.

  “Are you well, Rand?” Loial asked worriedly, screwing the leaf-engraved silver cap onto his ink jar. The glass of that was so thick it could have survived anything short of being hurled against stone, but Loial handled it as though it were fragile. In his huge hands, it looked fragile. “I thought the cheese tasted off, but you ate a good bit of it.”

  “I’m fine,” Rand said, but of course. Nynaeve paid him no heed. She was out of her chair and gliding down the room in a flash, blue skirts swirling. Goose bumps popped out on his skin as she embraced saidar and stretched to lay her hands on h
is head. An instant later, a chill rippled through him. The woman never askedl Sometimes she behaved as if she were still the Wisdom in Emond’s Field and he would be heading back to the farm come morning.

  “You’re not ill,” she said in tones of relief. Spoiled food was causing all sorts of sickness among the servants, some of it serious. People would have died except for the presence of Asha’man and Aes Sedai to give Healing. Reluctant to cost their lord scarce money by throwing food out. despite all the admonitions Cadsuane and Nynaeve and the other Aes Sedai gave them, they fed themselves things that should have been tossed on the midden heap. A different tingling centered briefly around the double wound in his left side.

  “That wound is no better,” she said with a frown. She had tried Healing it, succeeding no better than Flinn had. That did not sit well with her. Nynaeve took failure as a personal insult. “How can you even stand up? You must be in agony.”

  “He ignores it,” Min said flatly. Oh. yes, there would be words.

  “It hurts no worse standing than sitting,” he told Nynaeve, gently taking her hands from his head. Simple truth. So was what Min had said. He could not afford to let pain make him a prisoner.

  One of the twinned doors creaked open to admit a white-haired man in a worn yellow coat trimmed with red and blue that hung loosely on his bony frame. His bow was halting, a fault of his joints rather than disrespect. “My Lord Dragon,” he said in a voice nearly as creaky as the hinges, “Lord Logain has returned.”

  Logain did not wait on invitations, entering practically on the serving man’s heels. A tall man with dark hair curling to his shoulders, and dark for a Ghealdanin, women likely thought him handsome, yet there was a streak of darkness inside him as well. He wore his black coat with the Sword and the Dragon on the high collar, and a long-hiked sword on his hip, but he had made an addition, a round enameled pin on his shoulder showing three golden crowns in u field of blue. Had the man adopted a sigil? The old man’s hairy eye-brows shot up in surprise, and he looked to Rand as if inquiring whether he wanted Logain removed.

  “The news from Andor is fair enough, I suppose,” Logain said. tucking black gauntlets behind his sword belt. He offered Rand a minimal bow, the slightest bending of his back. “Elayne still holds Caem-lyn, and Arymilla still holds her siege, but Elayne has the advantage since Arymilla can’t even stop food getting in. much less reinforcements. No need to scowl. I kept out of the city. Black coats aren’t exactly welcome there, in any case. The Borderlanders are still in the same place. You were wise to stay clear of them, it seems. Rumor says there are thirteen Aes Sedai with them. Rumor says they’re looking for you. Has Bashere gotten back yet?” Nynaeve gave him a scowl and moved away from Rand gripping her braid tightly. Aes Sedai bonding Asha’man was all very well in her book, but not the reverse.

  Thirteen and looking for him? He had stayed clear of the Border-landers because Elayne did not welcome his help-interference, she called it, and he had begun to see that she had the right of it; the Lion Throne was hers to gain, not his to give-but perhaps it was as well that he had. The Borderland rulers all had ties to the White Tower, and no doubt Elaida was still eager to get her hands on him. Her and that mad proclamation about no one approaching him except through her. If she believed that would force him to come to her, she was a fool.

  “Thank you, that will be all, Ethin. Lord Logain?” he asked as the serving man bowed himself out with a last disgruntled glance at Logain. Rand thought the man would have tried had he told him to haul Logain out.

  “The title is his by birth,” Cadsuane said without looking up from her embroidery. She would know; she had helped capture him back when he was calling himself the Dragon Reborn, him and Taim both. Her hair ornaments bobbed as she nodded to herself. “Phaw! A minor lordling with a scrap of land in the mountains, most of it all but straight up and down. But King Johanin and the Crown High Council stripped him of his lands and title after he became a false Dragon.”

  Small spots of color appeared in Logain’s cheeks, yet his voice was cool and composed. “They could take my estate, but they could not take away who I am.”

  Still seemingly intent on her embroidery needle. Cadsuane laughed softly. Verin’s knitting needles had stopped. She was studying Logain, a plump sparrow studying an insect. Alivia had shifted her intense gaze to the man, too, and Harilin and Enaila seemed to be just going through the motions of their game. Min appeared to be reading still, but each hand rested near the opposite cuff of her coatsleeves. She kept some of her knives hidden there. None of them trusted him.

  Rand frowned. The man could call himself whatever he wanted so long as he did what he was supposed to. but Cadsuane prodded him and anyone else in a black coat nearly as much as she did Rand himself. He was unsure how far to trust Logain either, yet he had to work with the tools he had to hand. “Is it done?” With Logain here, Loial was uncapping his ink jar again.

  “More than half the Black Tower is in Arad Doman and Illian. I sent all the men with bonded Aes Sedai except those here, as you ordered.” Logain walked to the table while he talked, found a blue-glazed pitcher that still held wine among the plates and scraps, and filled a green-glazed cup. There was very little silver in the house. “You should have let me bring more men here. The numbers tilt too much to Aes Sedai for my liking.”

  Rand grunted. “Since part of that is your doing, you can live with it. Others will have to, as well. Go on.”

  “Dobraine and Rhuarc will send a Soldier with a message as soon as they find anyone in charge of more than a village. The Council of Merchants claim King Alsalam still reigns, but they wouldn’t or couldn’t produce him or say where he is, they seem to be at one another’s throats themselves, and Bandar Eban is more than half deserted and given over to the mob.” Logain grimaced into his winecup. “Gangs of strongarms provide what little order there is, and they extort food and coin from the people they claim to protect and take whatever else they want, including women.” The bond suddenly held white-hot rage, and Nynaeve growled in her throat. “Rhuarc has set about putting an end to that, but it was already turning into a battle when I left,” Logain finished.

  “Strongarms won’t hold out long against Aiel. If Dobraine can’t find anyone in charge, then he will have to be, for the time being.” If Alsalam was dead, as seemed likely, he would have to appoint a Steward for the Lord Dragon in Arad Doman. But who? It would have to be someone the Domani would accept.

  The other man took a long swallow of wine. “Taim wasn’t pleased at me taking so many men out of the Tower and not telling him where they were going. I thought he was going to rip up your order. He tried every trick to learn where you are. Oh, he burns to know that. His eyes were practically on fire. I wouldn’t put it past him to have had me put to the question if I’d been fool enough to meet him without company. One thing pleased him, though: that I didn’t take any of his cronies. That was plain on his face.” He smiled, a dark smile, not amused. “There are forty-one of those now, by the way. He’s given over a dozen men the Dragon pin in the past few days, and he has above fifty more in his ’special’ classes, most of them men recruited just lately. He’s planning something, and I doubt you’ll like it.”

  I told you to kill him when you had the chance. Lews Therin cackled in mad mirth. I told you. And now it’s too late. Too late.

  Rand angrily expelled a stream of blue-gray smoke. “Give over,” he said, meaning it for both Logain and Lews Therin. “Taim built the Black Tower till it nearly matches the White Tower for numbers, and it grows every day. If he’s a Darkfriend the way you claim, why would he do that?”

  Logain met his stare levelly. “Because he couldn’t stop it. From what I’ve heard, even in the beginning there were men who could Travel who weren’t his toad-eaters, and he had no excuse to do all the recruiting himself. But he’s made a Tower of his own hidden inside the Black Tower, and the men in it are loyal to him, not you. He amended the deserters’ list and sends his apologies for an ‘h
onest mistake.’ but you can wager all you own it was no mistake.”

  And how loyal was Logain? If one false Dragon chafed at following the Dragon Reborn, why not another? He might think he had cause. He had been far more famous as a false Dragon than Taim, more successful, gathering an army that swept out of Ghealdan and nearly reached Lugard on its way to Tear. Half the known world had trembled at the name Logain. Yet Mazrim Taim commanded the Black Tower while Logain Ablar was only another Asha’man. Min still saw an aura of glory around him. Just how that glory was to be achieved was beyond her viewing, however.

  He took the pipe from his mouth, and the bowl was hot against the heron branded into his palm. He must have been puffing away furiously without being aware of it. The trouble was, Taim and Logain were lesser problems. They had to wait. The tools at hand. He made an effort to keep his voice even. “Taim took their names off the list. That’s the important thing. If he’s showing favoritism, I’ll put an end to it when I have time. But the Seanchan have to come first. And maybe Tarmon Gai’don, too.”

  “If?” Logain growled, slamming his cup down on the table so hard that it broke. Wine spread across the tabletop and dripped over the edge. Scowling, he wiped his damp hand on his coat. “Do you think I’m imagining things?” His tone grew more heated by the word. “Or making them up? Do you think this is jealousy, al’Thor? Is that what you think?”

  “You listen to me,” Rand began, raising his voice against a peal of thunder.

  “I told you I expected you and your friends in black coats to be civil to me, my friends and my guests,” Cadsuane said sternly, “but I’ve decided that must be expanded to include each other.” Her head was still bent over her embroidery hoop, but she spoke as if she were shaking a finger under their noses. “At least when I am present. That means if you continue squabbling, I may have to spank both of you.” Harilin and Enaila began laughing so hard they got the string of their game in a snarl. Nynaeve laughed, too, though she tried to hide it behind her hand. Light, even Min smiled!