The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  “Harad Dakar?” Rand said, and Ingtar snorted.

  “Does no one learn history any longer? Harad Dakar, the capital city of Hardan, which nation this once was that we are riding across.”

  “I’ve seen an old map,” Rand replied in a tight voice. “I know about the nations that aren’t there anymore. Maredo, and Goaban, and Caralain. But there wasn’t any Hardan on it.”

  “There were once others that are gone now, too,” Loial said. “Mar Haddon, which is now Haddon Mirk, and Almoth. Kintara. The War of the Hundred Years cut Artur Hawkwing’s empire into many nations, large and small. The small were gobbled up by the large, or else united, like Altara and Murandy. Forced together would be a better word than united, I suppose.”

  “So what happened to them?” Mat demanded. Rand had not noticed Perrin and Mat ride up to join them. They had been at the rear, as far from Rand al’Thor as they could get, the last he had seen.

  “They could not hold together,” the Ogier replied. “Crops failed, or trade failed. People failed. Something failed in each case, and the nation dwindled. Often neighboring countries absorbed the land, when the nations were gone, but they never lasted, those annexations. In time, the land truly was abandoned. Some villages hang on here and there, but mostly they have all gone to wilderness. It is nearly three hundred years since Harad Dakar was finally abandoned, but even before that it was a shell, with a king who could not control what happened inside the city walls. Harad Dakar itself is completely gone now, I understand. All the towns and cities of Hardan are gone, the stone carted away by farmers and villagers for their own use. Most of the farms and villages made with it are gone, too. So I read, and I’ve seen nothing to change it.”

  “It was quite a quarry, Harad Dakar, for almost a hundred years,” Ingtar said bitterly. “The people left, finally, and then the city was hauled away, stone by stone. All faded away, and what has not gone is fading. Everything, everywhere, fading. There is hardly a nation that truly controls the land it claims on a map, and there is hardly a land that claims today on a map what it did even a hundred years ago. When the War of the Hundred Years ended, a man rode from one nation into another without end from the Blight to the Sea of Storms. Now we can ride through wilderness claimed by no nation for almost the whole of the land. We in the Borderlands have our battle with the Blight to keep us strong, and whole. Perhaps they did not have what they needed to keep them strong. You say they failed, Builder? Yes, they failed, and what nation standing whole today will fail tomorrow? We are being swept away, humankind. Swept away like flotsam on a flood. How long until there is nothing left but the Borderlands? How long before we, too, go under, and there is nothing left but Trollocs and Myrddraal all the way to the Sea of Storms?”

  There was a shocked silence. Not even Mat broke it. Ingtar rode lost in his own dark thoughts.

  After a time the scouts came galloping back, straight in the saddles, lances erect against the sky. “A village ahead, my Lord. We were not seen, but it lies directly in our line of march.”

  Ingtar shook himself out of his brown study, but did not speak until they had reached the crest of a low ridge looking down on the village, and then it was only to command a halt while he dug a looking glass from his saddlebags and raised it to peer at the village.

  Rand studied the village with interest. It was as big as Emond’s Field, though that was not very big compared to some of the towns he had seen since leaving the Two Rivers, much less the cities. The houses were all low and plastered with white clay, and they appeared to have grass growing on sloping roofs. A dozen windmills, scattered through the village, turned lazily, their long, cloth-covered arms flashing white in the sun. A low wall encircled the village, grassy dirt and chest high, and outside that was a wide ditch with sharpened stakes thick in the bottom. There was no gate in the one opening he could see in the wall, but he supposed it could be blocked easily enough with a cart or wagon. He could not see any people.

  “Not even a dog in sight,” Ingtar said, returning the looking glass to his saddlebags. “Are you sure they did not see you?” he asked the scouts.

  “Not unless they have the Dark One’s own luck, my Lord,” one of the men replied. “We never crested the rise. We didn’t see anyone moving then either, my Lord.”

  Ingtar nodded. “The trail, Hurin?”

  Hurin drew a deep breath. “Toward the village, my Lord. Straight to it, as near as I can tell from here.”

  “Watch sharp,” Ingtar commanded, gathering his reins. “And do not believe that they’re friendly just because they smile. If there is anyone there.” He led them down toward the village at a slow walk, and reached up to loosen his sword in its scabbard.

  Rand heard the sounds of others behind him doing the same. After a moment, he eased his, too. Trying to stay alive was not the same as trying to be a hero, he decided.

  “You think these people would help Darkfriends?” Perrin asked Ingtar. The Shienaran was slow in answering.

  “They have no great love for Shienarans,” he said finally. “They think we should protect them. Us, or the Cairhienin. Cairhien did claim this land, once the last King of Hardan died. All the way to the Erinin, they claimed it. They could not hold it, though. They gave up the claim nearly a hundred years ago. The few people who still live here don’t have to worry about Trollocs this far south, but there are plenty of human brigands. That’s why they have the wall, and the ditch. All their villages do. Their fields will be hidden in hollows around here, but no one will live outside the wall. They would swear fealty to any king who would give them his protection, but we have all we can do against the Trollocs. They do not love us for it, though.” As they reached the opening in the low wall, he added again, “Watch sharp!”

  All the streets led toward a village square, but there was no one in the streets, no one peering from a window. Not even a dog moved, not so much as a chicken. Nothing living. Open doors swung, creaking in the wind, counterpoint to the rhythmic squeak of the windmills. The horses’ hooves sounded loud on the packed dirt of the street.

  “Like at the ferry,” Hurin muttered, “but different.” He rode hunched in his saddle, head down as if he were trying to hide behind his own shoulders. “Violence done, but . . . I don’t know. It was bad here. It smells bad.”

  “Uno,” Ingtar said, “take one file and search the houses. If you find anyone, bring them to me in the square. Do not frighten them this time, though. I want answers, not people running for their lives.” He led the other soldiers toward the center of the village as Uno got his ten dismounted.

  Rand hesitated, looking around. The creaking doors, the squealing windmills, the horses’ hooves, all made too much noise, as if there were not another sound in the world. He scanned the houses. The curtains in an open window beat against the outside of the house. They all seemed lifeless. With a sigh he got down and walked to the nearest house, then stopped, staring at the door.

  It’s just a door. What are you afraid of? He wished he did not feel as if there was something waiting on the other side. He pushed it open.

  Inside was a tidy room. Or had been. The table was set for a meal, ladder-back chairs gathered around, some plates already served. A few flies buzzed above bowls of turnips and peas, and more crawled on a cold roast sitting in its own congealed grease. There was a slice half carved from the roast, the fork still standing stuck in the meat and the carving knife lying partway in the platter as if dropped. Rand stepped inside.

  Blink.

  A smiling, bald-headed man in rough clothes laid a slice of meat on a plate held by a woman with a worn face. She was smiling, too, though. She added peas and turnips to the plate and passed it to one of the children lining the table. There were half a dozen children, boys and girls, from nearly grown down to barely tall enough to look over the table. The woman said something, and the girl taking the plate from her laughed. The man started to cut another slice.

  Suddenly another girl screamed, pointing at the door to t
he street. The man dropped the carving knife and whirled, then he screamed, too, face tight with horror, and snatched up a child. The woman grabbed another, and motioned desperately to the others, her mouth working frantically, silently. They all scrabbled toward a door in the back of the room.

  That door burst open, and—

  Blink.

  Rand could not move. The flies buzzing over the table sounded louder. His breath made a cloud in front of his mouth.

  Blink.

  A smiling, bald-headed man in rough clothes laid a slice of meat on a plate held by a woman with a worn face. She was smiling, too, though. She added peas and turnips to the plate and passed it to one of the children lining the table. There were half a dozen children, boys and girls, from nearly grown down to barely tall enough to look over the table. The woman said something, and the girl taking the plate from her laughed. The man started to cut another slice.

  Suddenly another girl screamed, pointing at the door to the street. The man dropped the carving knife and whirled, then he screamed, too, face tight with horror, and snatched up a child. The woman grabbed another, and motioned desperately to the others, her mouth working frantically, silently. They all scrabbled toward the door in the back of the room.

  That door burst open, and—

  Blink.

  Rand struggled, but his muscles seemed frozen. The room was colder; he wanted to shiver, but he could not move even that much. Flies crawled all over the table. He groped for the void. The sour light was there, but he did not care. He had to—

  Blink.

  A smiling, bald-headed man in rough clothes laid a slice of meat on a plate held by a woman with a worn face. She was smiling, too, though. She added peas and turnips to the plate and passed it to one of the children lining the table. There were half a dozen children, boys and girls, from nearly grown down to barely tall enough to look over the table. The woman said something, and the girl taking the plate from her laughed. The man started to cut another slice.

  Suddenly another girl screamed, pointing at the door to the street. The man dropped the carving knife and whirled, then he screamed, too, face tight with horror, and snatched up a child. The woman grabbed another, and motioned desperately to the others, her mouth working frantically, silently. They all scrabbled toward a door in the back of the room.

  That door burst open, and—

  Blink.

  The room was freezing. So cold. Flies blackened the table; the walls were a shifting mass of flies, the floor, the ceiling, all black with them. They crawled on Rand, covering him, crawled over his face, his eyes, into his nose, his mouth. Light, help me. Cold. The flies buzzed like thunder. Cold. It penetrated the void, mocking the emptiness, encasing him in ice. Desperately he reached for the flickering light. His stomach twisted, but the light was warm. Warm. Hot. He was hot.

  Suddenly he was tearing at . . . something. He did not know what, or how. Cobwebs made of steel. Moonbeams carved from stone. They crumbled at his touch, but he knew he had not touched anything. They shriveled and melted with the heat that surged through him, heat like a forge fire, heat like the world burning, heat like—

  It was gone. Panting, he looked around with wide eyes. A few flies lay on the half-carved roast, in the platter. Dead flies. Six flies. Only six. There were more in the bowls, half a dozen tiny black specks among the cold vegetables. All dead. He staggered out into the street.

  Mat was just coming out of a house across the street, shaking his head. “Nobody there,” he told Perrin, still on his horse. “It looks like they just got up in the middle of supper and walked away.”

  A shout came from the square.

  “They’ve found something,” Perrin said, digging his heels into his horse’s flanks. Mat scrambled into his saddle and galloped after him.

  Rand mounted Red more slowly; the stallion shied as if feeling his unease. He glanced at the houses as he rode slowly toward the square, but he could not make himself look at them for long. Mat went in one, and nothing happened to him. He resolved not to set foot inside another house in that village no matter what. Booting Red, he quickened his pace.

  Everyone was standing like statues in front of a large building with wide double doors. Rand did not think it could be an inn; there was no sign, for one thing. Perhaps a village meeting place. He joined the silent circle, and stared along with the rest.

  There was a man spread-eagled across the doors with thick spikes through wrists and shoulders. More spikes had been driven into his eyes to hold his head up. Dark, dried blood made fans down his cheeks. Scuff marks on the wood behind his boots showed that he had been alive when it was done. When it began, anyway.

  Rand’s breath caught. Not a man. Those black clothes, blacker than black, had never been worn by any human. The wind flapped an end of the cloak caught behind the body—which it did not always, he knew too well; the wind did not always touch those clothes—but there had never been any eyes in that pale, bloodless face.

  “Myrddraal,” he breathed, and it was as if his speaking released all the others. They began to move again, and breathe.

  “Who,” Mat began, and had to stop to swallow. “Who could do this to a Fade?” His voice squeaked at the end.

  “I don’t know,” Ingtar said. “I do not know.” He looked around, examining faces, or perhaps counting to be sure everyone was there. “And I do not think we will learn anything here. We ride. Mount! Hurin, find the trail out of this place.”

  “Yes, my Lord. Yes. With pleasure. That way, my Lord. They’re still heading south.”

  They rode away leaving the dead Myrddraal where it hung, the wind stirring its black cloak. Hurin was first beyond the wall, not waiting on Ingtar for a change, but Rand came close behind him.

  CHAPTER 11

  Glimmers of the Pattern

  For once, Ingtar called a halt to the day’s march with the sun still golden above the horizon. The toughened Shienarans were feeling the effects of what they had seen in the village. Ingtar had not stopped so early before, and the campsite he chose had the look of a place that could be defended. It was a deep hollow, almost round, and big enough to hold all the men and horses comfortably. A sparse thicket of scrub oak and leatherleaf covered the outer slopes. The rim itself stood more than high enough to hide anyone in the campsite even without the trees. The height nearly passed for a hill, in that country.

  “All I’m bloody saying,” he heard Uno tell Ragan as they dismounted, “is that I bloody saw her, burn you. Just before we found the goat-kissing Halfman. The same flaming woman as at the flaming ferry. She was there, and then she bloody wasn’t. You say what you bloody want to, but you watch how you flaming say it, or I’ll bloody skin you myself, and burn the goat-kissing hide, you sheep-gutted milk-drinker.”

  Rand paused with one foot on the ground and the other still in the stirrup. The same woman? But there wasn’t any woman at the ferry, just some curtains blowing in the wind. And she couldn’t have gotten to that village ahead of us if there had been. The village. . . .

  He shied away from the thought. Even more than the Fade nailed to the door, he wanted to forget that room, and the flies, and the people who were there and not there. The Halfman had been real—everybody had seen that—but the room. . . . Maybe I’m finally going mad. He wished Moiraine was there to talk to. Wishing for an Aes Sedai. You are a fool. You’re well out of that, now stay out. But am I out? What happened there?

  “Packhorses and supplies in the middle,” Ingtar commanded as the lancers went about setting up camp. “Rub the horses down, then saddle them again in case we must move quickly. Every man sleeps by his mount, and there’ll be no fires tonight. Watch changes every two hours. Uno, I want scouts out, as far as they can ride and return before dark. I want to know what is out there.”

  He’s feeling it, Rand thought. It isn’t just some Darkfriends and a few Trollocs and maybe a Fade anymore. Just some Darkfriends and a few Trollocs, and maybe a Fade! Even a few days before there would not have
been any “just” about it. Even in the Borderlands, even with the Blight less than a day’s ride, Darkfriends and Trollocs and Myrddraal had been bad enough for a nightmare, then. Before he had seen a Myrddraal nailed to a door. What in the Light could have done that? What not in the Light? Before he had walked into a room where a family had had their supper and their laughter cut off. I must have imagined it. I must have. Even in his own head he did not sound very convincing. He had not imagined the wind on the tower top, or the Amyrlin saying—

  “Rand?” He jumped as Ingtar spoke at his shoulder. “Are you going to stay all night with one foot in the stirrup?”

  Rand put his other foot on the ground. “Ingtar, what happened back at that village?”

  “Trollocs took them. The same as the people at the ferry. That is what happened. The Fade. . . .” Ingtar shrugged and stared down at a flat, canvas-wrapped bundle, large and square, in his arms; he stared at it as if he saw hidden secrets he would rather not know. “The Trollocs took them for food. They do it in villages and farms near the Blight, too, sometimes, if a raid gets past the border towers in the night. Sometimes we get the people back, and sometimes not. Sometimes we get them back and almost wish we hadn’t. Trollocs don’t always kill before they start butchering. And Halfmen like to have their . . . fun. That’s worse than what the Trollocs do.” His voice was as steady as if he were talking of every day, and perhaps he was, for a Shienaran soldier.

  Rand took a deep breath to steady his stomach. “The Fade back there didn’t have any fun, Ingtar. What could nail a Myrddraal to a door, alive?”

  Ingtar hesitated, shaking his head, then pushed the big bundle at Rand. “Here. Moiraine Sedai told me to give you this at the first camp south of the Erinin. I don’t know what is in it, but she said you would need it. She said to tell you to take care of it; your life may depend on it.”