“We cannot remain in Caemlyn, but by any road, Myrddraal and Trollocs will be on us before we have gone ten miles. And just at this point we hear of a threat to the Eye of the World, not from one source, but three, each seeming independent of the others. The Pattern is forcing our path. The Pattern still weaves itself around you three, but what hand now sets the warp, and what hand controls the shuttle? Has the Dark One’s prison weakened enough for him to exert that much control?”
“There’s no need for that kind of talk!” Nynaeve said sharply. “You’ll only frighten them.”
“But not you?” Moiraine asked. “It frightens me. Well, perhaps you are right. Fear cannot be allowed to affect our course. Whether this is a trap or a timely warning, we must do what we must, and that is to reach the Eye of the World quickly. The Green Man must know of this threat.”
Rand gave a start. The Green Man? The others stared, too, all but Loial, whose broad face looked worried.
“I cannot even risk stopping in Tar Valon for help,” Moiraine continued. “Time traps us. Even if we could ride out of the city unhindered, it would take many weeks to reach the Blight, and I fear we no longer have weeks.”
“The Blight!” Rand heard himself echoed in a chorus, but Moiraine ignored them all.
“The Pattern presents a crisis, and at the same time a way to surmount it. If I did not know it was impossible, I could almost believe the Creator is taking a hand. There is a way.” She smiled as if at a private joke, and turned to Loial. “There was an Ogier grove here at Caemlyn, and a Waygate. The New City now spreads out over where the grove once stood, so the Waygate must be inside the walls. I know not many Ogier learn the Ways now, but one who has a Talent and learns the old Songs of Growing must be drawn to such knowledge, even if he believes it will never be used. Do you know the Ways, Loial?”
The Ogier shifted his feet uneasily. “I do, Aes Sedai, but—”
“Can you find the path to Fal Dara along the Ways?”
“I’ve never heard of Fal Dara,” Loial said, sounding relieved.
“In the days of the Trolloc Wars it was known as Mafal Dadaranell. Do you know that name?”
“I know it,” Loial said reluctantly, “but—”
“Then you can find the path for us,” Moiraine said. “A curious turn, indeed. When we can neither stay nor leave by any ordinary means, I learn of a threat to the Eye, and in the same place there is one who can take us there in days. Whether it is the Creator, or fate, or even the Dark One, the Pattern has chosen our path for us.”
“No!” Loial said, an emphatic rumble like thunder. Everyone turned to look at him and he blinked under the attention, but there was nothing hesitant about his words. “If we enter the Ways, we will all die—or be swallowed by the Shadow.”
CHAPTER
43
Decisions and Apparitions
The Aes Sedai appeared to know what Loial meant, but she said nothing. Loial peered at the floor, rubbing under his nose with a thick finger, as if he was abashed by his outburst. No one wanted to speak.
“Why?” Rand asked at last. “Why would we die? What are the Ways?”
Loial glanced at Moiraine. She turned away to take a chair in front of the fireplace. The little cat stretched, its claws scratching on the hearthstone, and languidly walked over to butt its head against her ankles. She rubbed behind its ears with one finger. The cat’s purring was a strange counterpoint to the Aes Sedai’s level voice. “It is your knowledge, Loial. The Ways are the only path to safety for us, the only path to forestalling the Dark One, if only for a time, but the telling is yours.”
The Ogier did not appear comforted by her speech. He shifted awkwardly on his chair before beginning. “During the Time of Madness, while the world was still being broken, the earth was in upheaval, and humankind was being scattered like dust on the wind. We Ogier were scattered, too, driven from the stedding, into the Exile and the Long Wandering, when the Longing was graven on our hearts.” He gave Moiraine another sidelong look. His long eyebrows drew down into two points. “I will try to be brief, but this is not a thing that can be told too briefly. It is of the others I must speak, now, those few Ogier who held in their stedding while around them the world was tearing apart. And of the Aes Sedai”—he avoided looking at Moiraine, now—“the male Aes Sedai who were dying even as they destroyed the world in their madness. It was to those Aes Sedai—those who had so far managed to avoid the madness—that the stedding first made the offer of sanctuary. Many accepted, for in the stedding they were protected from the taint of the Dark One that was killing their kind. But they were cut off from the True Source. It was not just that they could not wield the One Power, or touch the Source; they could no longer even sense that the Source existed. In the end, none could accept that isolation, and one by one they left the stedding, hoping that by that time the taint was gone. It never was.”
“Some in Tar Valon,” Moiraine said quietly, “claim that Ogier sanctuary prolonged the Breaking and made it worse. Others say that if all of those men had been allowed to go mad at once, there would have been nothing left of the world. I am of the Blue Ajah, Loial; unlike the Red Ajah, we hold to the second view. Sanctuary helped to save what could be saved. Continue, please.”
Loial nodded gratefully. Relieved of a concern, Rand realized.
“As I was saying,” the Ogier went on, “the Aes Sedai, the male Sedai, left. But before they went, they gave a gift to the Ogier in thanks for our sanctuary. The Ways. Enter a Waygate, walk for a day, and you may depart through another Waygate a hundred miles from where you started. Or five hundred. Time and distance are strange in the Ways. Different paths, different bridges, lead to different places, and how long it takes to get there depends on which path you take. It was a marvelous gift, made more so by the times, for the Ways are not part of the world we see around us, nor perhaps of any world outside themselves. Not only did the Ogier so gifted not have to travel through the world, where even after the Breaking men fought like animals to live, in order to reach another stedding, but within the Ways there was no Breaking. The land between two stedding might split open into deep canyons or rise in mountain ranges, but in the Way between them there was no change.
“When the last Aes Sedai left the stedding, they gave to the Elders a key, a talisman, that could be used for growing more. They are a living thing in some fashion, the Ways and the Waygates. I do not understand it; no Ogier ever has, and even the Aes Sedai have forgotten, I am told. Over the years the Exile ended for us. As those Ogier who had been gifted by the Aes Sedai found a stedding where Ogier had returned from the Long Wandering, they grew a Way to it. With the stonework we learned during the Exile, we built cities for men, and planted the groves to comfort the Ogier who did the building, so the Longing would not overcome them. To those groves Ways were grown. There was a grove, and a Waygate, at Mafal Dadaranell, but that city was razed during the Trolloc Wars, no stone left standing on another, and the grove was chopped down and burned for Trolloc fires.” He left no doubt which had been the greater crime.
“Waygates are all but impossible to destroy,” Moiraine said, “and humankind not much less so. There are people at Fal Dara still, though not the great city the Ogier built, and the Waygate yet stands.”
“How did they make them?” Egwene asked. Her puzzled look took in Moiraine and Loial both. “The Aes Sedai, the men. If they couldn’t use the One Power in a stedding, how could they make the Ways? Or did they use the Power at all? Their part of the True Source was tainted. Is tainted. I don’t know much about what Aes Sedai can do, yet. Maybe it’s a silly question.”
Loial explained. “Each stedding has a Waygate on its border, but outside. Your question is not silly. You’ve found the seed of why we do not dare travel the Ways. No Ogier has used the Ways in my lifetime, and before. By edict of the Elders, all the Elders of all the stedding, none may, human or Ogier.
“The Ways were made by men wielding Power fouled by the Dark One. About a t
housand years ago, during what you humans call the War of the Hundred Years, the Ways began to change. So slowly in the beginning that none really noticed, they grew dank and dim. Then darkness fell along the bridges. Some who went in were never seen again. Travelers spoke of being watched from the dark. The numbers who vanished grew, and some who came out had gone mad, raving about Machin Shin, the Black Wind. Aes Sedai Healers could aid some, but even with Aes Sedai help they were never the same. And they never remembered anything of what had occurred. Yet it was as if the darkness had sunken into their bones. They never laughed again, and they feared the sound of the wind.”
For a moment there was silence but for the cat purring beside Moiraine’s chair, and the snap and crackle of the fire, popping out sparks. Then Nynaeve burst out angrily, “And you expect us to follow you into that? You must be mad!”
“Which would you choose instead?” Moiraine asked quietly. “The Whitecloaks within Caemlyn, or the Trollocs without? Remember that my presence in itself gives some protection from the Dark One’s works.”
Nynaeve settled back with an exasperated sigh.
“You still have not explained to me,” Loial said, “why I should break the edict of the Elders. And I have no desire to enter the Ways. Muddy as they often are, the roads men make have served me well enough since I left Stedding Shangtai.”
“Humankind and Ogier, everything that lives, we are at war with the Dark One,” Moiraine said. “The greater part of the world does not even know it yet, and most of the few who do fight skirmishes and believe they are battles. While the world refuses to believe, the Dark One may be at the brink of victory. There is enough power in the Eye of the World to undo his prison. If the Dark One has found some way to bend the Eye of the World to his use. . . .”
Rand wished the lamps in the room were lit. Evening was creeping over Caemlyn, and the fire in the fireplace did not give enough light. He wanted no shadows in the room.
“What can we do?” Mat burst out. “Why are we so important? Why do we have to go to the Blight? The Blight!”
Moiraine did not raise her voice, but it filled the room, compelling. Her chair by the fire suddenly seemed like a throne. Suddenly even Morgase would have paled in her presence. “One thing we can do. We can try. What seems like chance is often the Pattern. Three threads have come together here, each giving a warning: the Eye. It cannot be chance; it is the Pattern. You three did not choose; you were chosen by the Pattern. And you are here, where the danger is known. You can step aside, and perhaps doom the world. Running, hiding, will not save you from the weaving of the Pattern. Or you can try. You can go to the Eye of the World, three ta’veren, three centerpoints of the Web, placed where the danger lies. Let the Pattern be woven around you there, and you may save the world from the Shadow. The choice is yours. I cannot make you go.”
“I’ll go,” Rand said, trying to sound resolute. However hard he sought the void, images kept flashing through his head. Tam, and the farmhouse, and the flock in the pasture. It had been a good life; he had never really wanted anything more. There was comfort—a small comfort—hearing Perrin and Mat add their agreement to his. They sounded as dry-mouthed as he.
“I suppose there isn’t any choice for Egwene or me, either,” Nynaeve said.
Moiraine nodded. “You are part of the Pattern, too, both of you, in some fashion. Perhaps not ta’veren—perhaps—but strong even so. I have known it since Baerlon. And no doubt by this time the Fades know it, too. And Ba’alzamon. Yet you have as much choice as the young men. You could remain here, proceed to Tar Valon once the rest of us have gone.”
“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 know
s 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.
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