The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  The bridge did end, eventually, in a place that looked no different from its beginning. All Rand could see was what their little pool of light touched, but he had the impression that it was a large space, like a flat-topped hill, with bridges and ramps leaving all around it. An Island, Loial called it. There was another script-covered Guiding—Rand placed it in the middle of the Island, with no way of knowing if he was right or not. Loial read, then took them up one of the ramps, curving up and up.

  After an interminable climb, curving continuously, the ramp let off onto another Island just like the one where it had begun. Rand tried to imagine the curve of the ramp and gave up. This Island can’t be right on top of the other one. It can’t be.

  Loial consulted yet another slab filled with Ogier script, found another signpost column, led them onto another bridge. Rand no longer had any idea in what direction they were traveling.

  In their huddle of light in the dark, one bridge was exactly like another, except that some had breaks in the guardwalls and some did not. Only the degree of damage to the Guidings gave any difference to the Islands. Rand lost track of time; he was not even sure how many bridges they had crossed or how many ramps they had traveled. The Warder must have had a clock in his head, though. Just when Rand felt the first stir of hunger, Lan announced quietly that it was midday and dismounted to parcel out bread and cheese and dried meat from the pack horse. Perrin was leading the animal by that time. They were on an Island, and Loial was busily deciphering the directions on the Guiding.

  Mat started to climb down from his saddle, but Moiraine said, “Time is too valuable in the Ways to waste. For us, much too valuable. We will stop when it is time to sleep.” Lan was already back on Mandarb.

  Rand’s appetite slipped at the thought of sleeping in the Ways. It was always night there, but not the kind of night for sleeping. He ate while he rode, though, like everyone else. It was an awkward affair, trying to juggle his food, the lantern pole, and his reins, but for all of his imagined lack of appetite he licked the last crumbs of bread and cheese off his hands when he was done, and thought fondly of more. He even began to think the Ways were not so bad, not nearly as bad as Loial made out. They might have the heavy feel of the hour before a storm, but nothing changed. Nothing happened. The Ways were almost boring.

  Then the silence was broken by a startled grunt from Loial. Rand stood in his stirrups to peer past the Ogier, and swallowed hard at what he saw. They were in the middle of a bridge, and only a few feet ahead of Loial the bridge ended in a jagged gap.

  CHAPTER

  45

  What Follows in Shadow

  The light of their lanterns stretched just far enough to touch the other side, thrusting out of the dark like a giant’s broken teeth. Loial’s horse stamped a hoof nervously, and a loose stone fell away into the dead black below. If there was any sound of it striking bottom, Rand never heard it.

  He edged Red closer to the gap. As far down as he could thrust his lantern on its pole, there was nothing. Blackness below as blackness above, shearing off the light. If there was a bottom, it could be a thousand feet down. Or never. But on the other side, he could see what was under the bridge, holding it up. Nothing. Less than a span in thickness, and absolutely nothing underneath.

  Abruptly the stone under his feet seemed as thin as paper, and the endless drop over the edge pulled at him. The lantern and pole seemed suddenly heavy enough to pull him right out of the saddle. Head spinning, he backed the bay away from the abyss as cautiously as he had approached.

  “Is it to this you’ve brought us, Aes Sedai?” Nynaeve said. “All this just to find out we have to go back to Caemlyn after all?”

  “We do not have to go back,” Moiraine said. “Not all the way to Caemlyn. There are many paths along the Ways to any place. We need only go back far enough for Loial to find another path that will lead to Fal Dara. Loial? Loial!”

  The Ogier pulled himself away from staring at the gap with a visible effort. “What? Oh. Yes, Aes Sedai. I can find another path. I had. . . .” His eyes drifted back to the chasm, and his ears twitched. “I had not dreamed the decay had gone so far. If the bridges themselves are breaking, it may be that I cannot find the path you want. It may be that I cannot find a path back, either. The bridges could be falling behind us even now.”

  “There has to be a way,” Perrin said, his voice flat. His eyes seemed to gather the light, to glow golden. A wolf at bay, Rand thought, startled. That’s what he looks like.

  “It will be as the Wheel weaves,” Moiraine said, “but I do not believe the decay is as fast as you fear. Look at the stone, Loial. Even I can tell that this is an old break.”

  “Yes,” Loial said slowly. “Yes, Aes Sedai. I can see it. There is no rain or wind here, but that stone has been in the air for ten years, at least.” He nodded with a relieved grin, so happy with the discovery that for a moment he seemed to forget his fear. Then he looked around and shrugged uncomfortably. “I could find other paths more easily than Mafal Dadaranell. Tar Valon, for instance? Or Stedding Shangtai. It’s only three bridges to Stedding Shangtai from the last Island. I suppose the Elders want to talk to me by this time.”

  “Fal Dara, Loial,” Moiraine said firmly. “The Eye of the World lies beyond Fal Dara, and we must reach the Eye.”

  “Fal Dara,” the Ogier agreed reluctantly.

  Back at the Island Loial pored over the script-covered slab intently, drooping eyebrows drawn down as he muttered half to himself. Soon he was talking completely to himself, for he dropped into the Ogier language. That inflected tongue sounded like deep-voiced birds singing. It seemed odd to Rand that a people so big had such a musical language.

  Finally the Ogier nodded. As he led them to the chosen bridge, he turned to peer forlornly at the signpost beside another. “Three crossings to Stedding Shangtai.” He sighed. But he took them on past without stopping and turned onto the third bridge beyond. He looked back regretfully as they started across, though the bridge to his home was hidden in the dark.

  Rand took the bay up beside the Ogier. “When this is over, Loial, you show me your stedding, and I’ll show you Emond’s Field. No Ways, though. We’ll walk, or ride, if it takes all summer.”

  “You believe it will ever be over, Rand?”

  He frowned at the Ogier. “You said it would take two days to reach Fal Dara.”

  “Not the Ways, Rand. All the rest.” Loial looked over his shoulder at the Aes Sedai, talking softly with Lan as they rode side-by-side. “What makes you believe it will ever be over?”

  The bridges and ramps led up and down and across. Sometimes a white line ran off into the dark from the Guiding, just like the line they had followed from the Waygate in Caemlyn. Rand saw that he was not the only one who eyed those lines curiously, and a little wistfully. Nynaeve, Perrin, Mat, and even Egwene left the lines reluctantly. There was a Waygate at the other end of each of them, a gate back into the world, where there was sky and sun and wind. Even the wind would have been welcome. Leave them they did, under the Aes Sedai’s sharp eye. But Rand was not the only one to look back even after dark swallowed Island and Guiding and line.

  Rand was yawning by the time Moiraine announced that they would stop for the night on one of the Islands. Mat looked at the blackness all around them and snickered loudly, but he got down as quickly as anyone else. Lan and the boys unsaddled and hobbled the horses while Nynaeve and Egwene set up a small oil stove to make tea. Looking like the base of a lantern, it was what Lan said Warders used in the Blight, where the wood could be dangerous to burn. The Warder produced tripod legs from the baskets they took off the pack horse, so the lantern poles could be set in a circle around their campsite.

  Loial examined the Guiding for a moment, then dropped down crosslegged and rubbed a hand across the dusty, pockmarked stone. “Once things grew on the Islands,” he said sadly. “All the books tell of it. There was green grass to sleep on, soft as any feather bed. Fruit trees to spice the food you’d b
rought with an apple or a pear or a bellfruit, sweet and crisp and juicy Whatever the time of year outside.”

  “Nothing to hunt,” Perrin growled, then looked surprised that he had spoken.

  Egwene handed Loial a cup of tea. He held it without drinking, staring at it as if he could find the fruit trees in its depths.

  “Aren’t you going to set wards?” Nynaeve asked Moiraine. “Surely there must be worse than rats in this. Even if I haven’t seen anything, I can still feel.”

  The Aes Sedai rubbed her fingers against her palms distastefully. “You feel the taint, the corruption of the Power that made the Ways. I will not use the One Power in the Ways unless I must. The taint is so strong that Whatever I tried to do would surely be corrupted.”

  That made everyone as silent as Loial. Lan settled down to his meal methodically, as if he were stoking a fire, the food less important than fueling his body. Moiraine ate well, too, and as tidily as if they were not squatting on bare stone quite literally in the middle of nowhere, but Rand only picked at his food. The tiny flame of the oil stove gave just enough heat to boil water, but he crouched toward it as if he could soak up warmth. His shoulders brushed Mat and Perrin. They all made a tight circle around the stove. Mat held his bread and meat and cheese forgotten in his hands, and Perrin set his tin plate down after only a few bites. The mood became more and more glum, and everyone looked down, avoiding the dark around them.

  Moiraine studied them as she ate. Finally she put her plate aside and patted her lips with a napkin. “I can tell you one cheerful thing. I do not think Thom Merrilin is dead.”

  Rand looked at her sharply. “But . . . the Fade. . . .”

  “Mat told me what happened in Whitebridge,” the Aes Sedai said. “People there mentioned a gleeman, but they said nothing of him dying. They would have, I think, if a gleeman had been killed. Whitebridge is not so big as for a gleeman to be a small thing. And Thom is a part of the Pattern that weaves itself around you three. Too important a part, I believe, to be cut off yet.”

  Too important? Rand thought. How could Moiraine know . . . ? “Min? She saw something about Thom?”

  “She saw a great deal,” Moiraine said wryly. “About all of you. I wish I could understand half of what she saw, but even she does not. Old barriers fail. But whether what Min does is old or new, she sees true. Your fates are bound together. Thom Merrilin’s, too.”

  Nynaeve gave a dismissive sniff and poured herself another cup of tea.

  “I don’t see how she saw anything about any of us,” Mat said with a grin. “As I remember it, she spent most of her time looking at Rand.”

  Egwene raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You didn’t tell me that, Moiraine Sedai.”

  Rand glanced at her. She was not looking at him, but her tone had been too carefully neutral. “I talked to her once,” he said. “She dresses like a boy, and her hair is as short as mine.”

  “You talked to her. Once.” Egwene nodded slowly. Still not looking at him, she raised her cup to her lips.

  “Min was just somebody who worked at the inn in Baerlon,” Perrin said. “Not like Aram.”

  Egwene choked on her tea. “Too hot,” she muttered.

  “Who’s Aram?” Rand asked. Perrin smiled, much like Mat’s smile in the old days when he was up to mischief, and hid behind his cup.

  “One of the Traveling People,” Egwene said casually, but red spots bloomed in her cheeks.

  “One of the Traveling People,” Perrin said blandly. “He dances. Like a bird. Wasn’t that what you said, Egwene? It was like flying with a bird?”

  Egwene set her cup down deliberately. “I don’t know if anyone else is tired, but I’m going to sleep.”

  As she rolled herself up in her blankets, Perrin reached over to nudge Rand in the ribs and winked. Rand found himself grinning back. Burn me, if I didn’t come out best for a change. I wish I knew as much about women as Perrin.

  “Maybe, Rand,” Mat said slyly, “you ought to tell Egwene about Farmer Grinwell’s daughter, Else.” Egwene lifted her head to stare first at Mat, then at him.

  He hastily got up to fetch his own blankets. “Sleep sounds good to me right now.”

  All the Emond’s Field people began seeking their blankets then, and Loial, too. Moiraine sat sipping her tea. And Lan. The Warder did not look as if he ever intended to sleep, or needed to.

  Even rolled up for sleep, no one wanted to get very far from the others. They made a small circle of blanket-covered mounds right around the stove, almost touching one another.

  “Rand,” Mat whispered, “was there anything between you and Min? I barely got a look at her. She was pretty, but she must be nearly as old as Nynaeve.”

  “What about this Else?” Perrin added from the other side of him. “She pretty?”

  “Blood and ashes,” he mumbled, “can’t I even talk to a girl? You two are as bad as Egwene.”

  “As the Wisdom would say,” Mat chided mockingly, “watch your tongue. Well, if you won’t talk about it, I’m going to get some sleep.”

  “Good,” Rand grumbled. “That’s the first decent thing you’ve said.”

  Sleep was not easily come by, though. The stone was hard, however Rand lay, and he could feel the pits through his blanket. There was no way to imagine he was anywhere but in the Ways, made by the men who had broken the world, tainted by the Dark One. He kept picturing the broken bridge, and the nothing under it.

  When he turned one way he found Mat looking at him; looking through him, really. Mocking was forgotten when the dark around them was remembered. He rolled the other way, and Perrin had his eyes open, too. Perrin’s face was less afraid than Mat’s, but he had his hands on his chest, tapping his thumbs together worriedly.

  Moiraine made a circuit of them, kneeling by each person’s head and bending down to speak softly. Rand could not hear what she said to Perrin, but it made his thumbs stop. When she bent over Rand, her face almost touching his, she said in a low, comforting voice, “Even here, your destiny protects you. Not even the Dark One can change the Pattern completely. You are safe from him, so long as I am close. Your dreams are safe. For a time, yet, they are safe.”

  As she passed from him to Mat, he wondered if she thought it was that simple, that she could tell him he was safe and he would believe it. But somehow he did feel safe—safer, at least. Thinking that, he drifted into sleep and did not dream.

  Lan woke them. Rand wondered if the Warder had slept; he did not look tired, not even as tired as those who had laid some hours on the hard stone. Moiraine allowed enough time to make tea, but only one cup apiece. They ate breakfast in the saddle, Loial and the Warder leading. It was the same meal as the others, bread and meat and cheese. Rand thought it would be easy to get tired of bread and meat and cheese.

  Not long after the last crumb was licked off a finger, Lan said quietly, “Someone is following us. Or something.” They were in the middle of a bridge, both ends of it hidden.

  Mat jerked an arrow from his quiver and, before anyone could stop him, loosed it in the dark behind them.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have done this,” Loial muttered. “Never deal with an Aes Sedai except in a stedding.”

  Lan pushed the bow down before Mat could nock another. “Stop that, you village idiot. There’s no way to tell who it is.”

  “That’s the only place they’re safe,” the Ogier went on.

  “What else would be in a place like this besides something evil?” Mat demanded.

  “That’s what the Elders say, and I should have listened to them.”

  “We are, for one,” the Warder said dryly.

  “Maybe it’s another traveler,” Egwene said hopefully. “An Ogier, perhaps.”

  “Ogier have more sense than to use the Ways,” Loial growled. “All but Loial, who has no sense at all. Elder Haman always said it, and it’s true.”

  “What do you feel, Lan?” Moiraine asked. “Is it something that serves the Dark One?”

  The Warder
shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he said as if that surprised him. “I cannot tell. Perhaps it’s the Ways, and the taint. It all feels wrong. But whoever it is, or what ever, he’s not trying to catch us. He almost caught up at the last Island and scampered back across the bridge so as not to. If I fall behind, I might surprise him though, and see who, or what, he is.”

  “If you fall behind, Warder,” Loial said firmly, “you’ll spend the rest of your life in the Ways. Even if you can read Ogier, I have never heard or read of a human who could find his path off the first Island lacking an Ogier guide. Can you read Ogier?”

  Lan shook his head again, and Moiraine said, “So long as he does not trouble us, we will not trouble him. We have no time. No time.”

  As they rode off the bridge onto the next Island, Loial said, “If I remember the last Guiding correctly, there is a path from here that leads toward Tar Valon. Half a day’s journey at most. Not quite as long as it will take us to reach Mafal Dadaranell. I’m sure that—”

  He cut off as the light of their lanterns reached the Guiding. Near the top of the slab, deeply chiseled lines, sharp and angular, made wounds in the stone. Suddenly Lan’s alertness was no longer hidden. He remained easily erect in his saddle, but Rand had the sudden impression that the Warder could feel everything around him, even feel the rest of them breathing. Lan began circling his stallion around the Guiding, spiraling outward. He rode as if he were ready to be attacked, or to attack himself.

  “This explains much,” Moiraine said softly, “and it makes me afraid. So much. I should have guessed. The taint, the decay. I should have guessed.”

  “Guessed what?” Nynaeve demanded just as Loial asked, “What is it? Who did this? I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it.”