Feeling disgusted with himself as much as angry at the man, Rand unraveled the weave and let him drop. Manhandling him was like picking a fight with a boy of ten. He could not see the shield that constricted the other man’s access to saidin—it was female work—but he knew it was there. Moving a goblet was about the extent of Natael’s ability, now. Luckily the shield had been hidden from female eyes, too. Natael called the trick “inverting”; he did not seem able to explain it, though. “And if she’d seen my face and was suspicious? I was as startled as if that goblet had flown at me by itself!” He stuck his pipe back between his teeth and sent up furious streams of smoke.
“She still wouldn’t suspect.” Settling back onto the cushions, the other man took up the harp again, strumming a line of music that had a devious sound. “How could anyone suspect? I do not entirely believe the situation myself.” If there was even a touch of bitterness in his voice, Rand could not detect it.
He was not entirely sure he believed it either, though he had worked hard enough for it. The man in front of him, Jasin Natael, had another name. Asmodean.
Idly playing the harp, Asmodean did not look like one of the dreaded Forsaken. He was even moderately handsome; Rand supposed he would be attractive to women. It often seemed strange that evil had left no outward mark. He was one of the Forsaken, and far from trying to kill him, Rand hid what he was from Moiraine and everyone else. He needed a teacher.
If what was true for the women Aes Sedai called “wilders” also held for men, he had only one chance in four of surviving the attempt to learn to use the Power on his own. That was discounting the madness. His teacher had to be a man; Moiraine and others had told him often enough that a bird could not teach a fish to fly, nor a fish a bird to swim. And his teacher had to be someone experienced, someone who already knew all the things he needed to learn. With Aes Sedai gentling men who could channel as soon as they were found—and fewer were found every year—that left small choices. A man who had simply discovered he could channel would know no more than he did. A false Dragon who could channel—if Rand could find one not already caught and gentled—would not be likely to give up his own dreams of glory for another claiming to be the Dragon Reborn. What remained, what Rand had lured to him, was one of the Forsaken.
Asmodean plucked random chords as Rand took a seat on a cushion facing him. It was well to remember that the man had not changed, not inside, from the day so long ago when he had pledged his soul to the Shadow. What he did now, he did under duress; he had not come to the Light. “Do you ever think of turning back, Natael?” He was always careful of the name; one breath of “Asmodean,” and Moiraine would be sure he had gone over to the Shadow. Moiraine and maybe others. Neither he nor Asmodean might survive that.
The man’s hands froze on the strings, his face utterly blank. “Turn back? Demandred, Rahvin, any of them would kill me on sight, now. If I was lucky. Except Lanfear perhaps, and you will understand if I don’t want to put her to the test. Semirhage could make a boulder beg for mercy and thank her for death. And as for the Great Lord—”
“The Dark One,” Rand broke in sharply around his pipestem. The Great Lord of the Dark was what Darkfriends called the Dark One. Darkfriends and the Forsaken.
Asmodean bowed his head briefly in acquiescence. “When the Dark One breaks free . . .” If his face had been expressionless before, now it was bleak in every line. “Suffice it to say that I will find Semirhage and give myself to her before I’ll face the—the Dark One’s punishment for betrayal.”
“As well you are here to teach me, then.”
Mournful music began to flow from the harp, speaking of loss and tears. “ ‘The March of Death,’ ” Asmodean said over the music, “the final movement of The Grand Passions Cycle, composed some three hundred years before the War of Power by—”
Rand cut him off. “You are not teaching me very well.”
“As well as may be expected, under the circumstances. You can grasp saidin every time you try, now, and tell one flow from another. You can shield yourself, and the Power does what you want it to.” He stopped playing and frowned, not looking at Rand. “Do you think Lanfear really intended me to teach you everything? If she had wanted that, she would have contrived to stay close so she could link us. She wants you to live, Lews Therin; but this time she means to be stronger than you.”
“Don’t call me that!” Rand snapped, but Asmodean did not seem to hear.
“If you planned this between you—trapping me—” Rand sensed a surge in Asmodean, as if the Forsaken were testing the shield Lanfear had woven around him; women who could channel saw a glow surrounding another woman who had embraced saidar and felt her channeling clearly, but he never saw anything around Asmodean and felt little. “If you worked it out together, then you let her outfox you on more levels than one. I’ve told you I am not a very good teacher, especially without a link. You did plan it between you, didn’t you?” He did look at Rand then, sidelong but still intent. “How much do you remember? Of being Lews Therin, I mean. She said you recalled nothing at all, but she could lie to the Gr—the Dark One himself.”
“This time she spoke the truth.” Seating himself on one of the cushions, Rand channeled one of the clan chiefs’ untouched silver goblets to him. Even such a brief touch of saidin was exhilarating—and fouling. And hard to release. He did not want to talk about Lews Therin; he was tired of people thinking he was Lews Therin. The bowl of his pipe had grown hot with all the puffing, so he held it by the stem and gestured with it. “If linking will help you teach me, why don’t we link?”
Asmodean looked at him as if he had asked why they did not eat rocks, then shook his head. “I continually forget how much you don’t know. You and I cannot. Not without a woman to join us. You could ask Moiraine, I suppose, or the girl Egwene. One of them might be able to reason out the method. So long as you don’t mind them finding out who I am.”
“Don’t lie to me, Natael,” Rand growled. Well before meeting Natael he had learned that a man’s channeling and a woman’s were as different as men and women themselves, but he took little the man said on trust. “I’ve heard Egwene and others talk about Aes Sedai linking their powers. If they can do it, why not you and I?”
“Because we can’t.” Exasperation filled Asmodean’s tone. “Ask a philosopher if you want to know why. Why can’t dogs fly? Perhaps in the grand scheme of the Pattern, it’s a balance for men being stronger. We cannot link without them, but they can without us. Up to thirteen of them can, anyway, a small mercy; after that, they need men to make the circle larger.”
Rand was sure he had caught a lie, this time. Moiraine said that in the Age of Legends men and women had been equally strong in the Power, and she could not lie. He said as much, adding, “The Five Powers are equal.”
“Earth, Fire, Air, Water, and Spirit.” Natael strummed a chord for each. “They are equal, true, and it is also true that what a man can do with one, a woman can also. In kind, at least. But that has nothing to do with men being stronger. What Moiraine believes to be truth, she tells as truth whether or not it is; one of a thousand weaknesses in those fool Oaths.” He played a bit of something that did indeed sound foolish. “Some women have stronger arms than some men, but in general it is the other way around. The same holds with strength in the Power, and in about the same proportion.”
Rand nodded slowly. It did make a kind of sense. Elayne and Egwene were considered two of the strongest women to train in the Tower for a thousand years or more, but he had tested himself against them once, and later Elayne had confessed that she felt like a kitten seized by a mastiff.
Asmodean was not finished. “If two women link, they do not double their strength—linking is not as simple as adding together the power of each—but if they are strong enough, they can match a man. And when they take the circle to thirteen, then you must be wary. Thirteen women who can barely channel could overpower most men, linked. The thirteen weakest women in the Tower could overpowe
r you or any man, and barely breathe hard. I came across a saying in Arad Doman. ‘The more women there are about, the softer a wise man steps.’ It would not be bad to remember it.”
Rand shivered, thinking of a time when he had been among many more than thirteen Aes Sedai. Of course, most of them had not known who he was. If they had . . . If Egwene and Moiraine linked . . . He did not want to believe Egwene had gone that far toward the Tower and away from their friendship. Whatever she does, she does with her whole heart, and she’s becoming Aes Sedai. So is Elayne.
Swallowing half his wine did not completely wash the thought away. “What more can you tell me about the Forsaken?” It was a question he was sure he had asked a hundred times, but he always hoped there was a scrap more to dig out. Better than thinking about Moiraine and Egwene linking to . . .
“I have told everything I know.” Asmodean sighed heavily. “We were hardly close friends at the best. Do you believe I am holding back something? I don’t know where the others are, if that is what you want. Except Sammael, and you knew he’d taken Illian for his kingdom before I told you. Graendal was in Arad Doman for a time, but I expect she has gone now; she likes her comforts too well. I suspect Moghedien is or was in the west somewhere as well, but no one ever finds the Spider unless she wants to be found. Rahvin has a queen for one of his pets, but your guess is as good as mine as to what country she rules for him. And that is all I know that might help locate them.”
Rand had heard all that before; it seemed he had heard all Asmodean had to say of the Forsaken fifty times already. So often that at moments it seemed he had always known what the man was telling him. Some of it he almost wished he had never learned—what Semirhage found amusing, for instance—and some made no sense. Demandred had gone over to the Shadow because he envied Lews Therin Telamon? Rand could not imagine envying someone enough to do anything because of it, and surely not that. Asmodean claimed it had been the thought of immortality, of endless Ages of music, that had seduced him; he claimed to have been a noted composer of music, before. Senseless. Yet in that mass of often blood-chilling knowledge might lie keys to surviving Tarmon Gai’don. Whatever he told Moiraine, he knew he would have to face them then, if not before. Emptying the goblet, he set it on the floor tiles. Wine would not wash out facts.
The bead curtain rattled, and he looked over his shoulder as gai’shain entered, white-robed and silent. While some began gathering up the food and drink that had been laid out for him and the chiefs, another, a man, carried a large silver tray to the table. On it were covered dishes, a silver cup, and two large, green-striped pottery pitchers. One would hold wine, the other water. A gai’shain woman brought in a gilded lamp, already lit, and set it beside the tray. Through the windows, the sky was beginning to take on the yellow-red of sunset; in the brief time between baking and freezing, the air actually felt comfortable.
Rand stood as the gai’shain departed, but did not follow immediately. “What do you think of my chances when the Last Battle comes, Natael?”
Asmodean hesitated in pulling red-and-blue-striped wool blankets from behind his cushions and looked up at him, head tilted in that sideways manner of his. “You found . . . something . . . in the square the day we met here.”
“Forget that,” Rand said harshly. There had been two, not one. “I destroyed it, in any case.” He thought Asmodean’s shoulders slumped a trifle.
“Then the—Dark One—will consume you alive. As for me, I intend to open my veins the hour I know he is free. If I get the chance. A quick death is better than what I’ll find elsewhere.” He tossed the blankets aside and sat staring glumly at nothing. “Better than going mad, certainly. I’m as subject to that as you, now. You broke the bonds that protected me.” There was no bitterness in his voice, only hopelessness.
“What if there was another way to shield against the taint?” Rand demanded. “What if it could be removed somehow? Would you still kill yourself then?”
Asmodean’s barked laugh was utterly acid. “The Shadow take me, you must be beginning to think you really are the bloody Creator! We are dead. Both of us. Dead! Are you too blind with pride to see it? Or just too thick-witted, you hopeless shepherd?”
Rand refused to be drawn. “Then why not go ahead and end it?” he asked in a tight voice. I wasn’t too blind to see what you and Lanfear were up to. I wasn’t too thick-witted to fool her and trap you. “If there’s no hope, no chance, not the smallest shred . . . then why are you still alive?”
Still not looking at him, Asmodean rubbed the side of his nose. “I once saw a man hanging from a cliff,” he said slowly. “The brink was crumbling under his fingers, and the only thing near enough to grasp was a tuft of grass, a few long blades with roots barely clinging to the rock. The only chance he had of climbing back up on the cliff. So he grabbed it.” His abrupt chuckle held no mirth. “He had to know it would pull free.”
“Did you save him?” Rand asked, but Asmodean did not answer.
As Rand started for the doorway, the sounds of “The March of Death” began again behind him.
The strings of beads fell together behind him, and the five Maidens who had been waiting in the wide, empty hall flowed easily to their feet from where they had been squatting on the pale blue tiles. They were all but one tall for women, though not for Aielwomen. Their leader, Adelin, lacked little more than a hand of being able to look him in the eyes. The exception, a fiery redhead named Enaila, was no taller than Egwene, and extremely touchy about being so short. Like the clan chiefs’, their eyes were all blue or gray or green, and their hair, light brown or yellow or red, was cut short except for a tail at the nape of the neck. Full quivers balanced the long-bladed knives at their belts, and they wore cased horn bows on their backs. Each carried three or four short, long-bladed spears and a round, bull-hide buckler. Aielwomen who did not want hearth and children had their own warrior society, Far Dareis Mai, the Maidens of the Spear.
He acknowledged them with a small bow, which made them smile; it was not an Aiel custom, at least not the way he had been taught to do it. “I see you, Adelin,” he said. “Where is Joinde? I thought she was with you earlier. Has she taken ill?”
“I see you, Rand al’Thor,” she replied. Her pale yellow hair seemed paler framing her sun-dark face, which had a fine white scar across one cheek. “In a way she has. She had been talking to herself all day, and not an hour ago, she went off to lay a bridal wreath at the feet of Garan, of the Jhirad Goshien.” Some of the others shook their heads; marrying meant giving up the spear. “Tomorrow is his last day as her gai’shain. Joinde is Black Rock Shaarad,” she added significantly. It was significant; marriages came frequently with men or women taken gai’shain, but very seldom between clans with blood feud, even blood feud in abeyance.
“It is an illness that spreads,” Enaila said heatedly. Her voice was usually as hot as her hair. “One or two Maidens make their bridal wreaths every day since we came to Rhuidean.”
Rand nodded with what he hoped they took for sympathy. It was his fault. If he told them, he wondered how many would still risk staying near him. All, probably; honor would hold them, and they had no more fear than the clan chiefs. At least it was only marriages, so far; even Maidens would think marrying better than what some had experienced. Maybe they would. “I will be ready to go in a moment,” he told them.
“We will wait with patience,” Adelin said. It hardly seemed patience; standing there, they all appeared poised on the edge of sudden movement.
It really did take him only a moment to do what he wanted, weave flows of Spirit and Fire into a box around the room and tie them so the weave held on its own. Anyone could go in or out—except a man who could channel. For himself—or Asmodean—walking through that doorway would be like walking through a wall of solid flame. He had discovered the weave—and that Asmodean, blocked, was too weak to channel through it—by accident. No one was likely to question the doings of a gleeman, but if someone did, Jasin Natael had simply cho
sen to sleep as far from Aiel as he could manage in Rhuidean. That was a choice that Hadnan Kadere’s drivers and guards, at least, could sympathize with. And this way Rand knew exactly where the man was of a night. The Maidens asked him no questions.
He turned away. The Maidens followed him, spread out and wary as if they expected an attack right there. Asmodean was still playing the lament.
Arms outstretched to either side, Mat Cauthon walked the wide white coping of the dry fountain, singing to the men who watched him in the fading light.
“We’ll drink the wine till the cup is dry,
and kiss the girls so they’ll not cry,
and toss the dice until we fly
to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows.”
The air felt cool after the day’s heat, and he thought briefly of buttoning up his fine green silk coat with the golden embroidery, but the drink the Aiel called oosquai had put a buzz in his head like giant flies, and the thought flittered away. The white stone figures of three women stood on a platform in the dusty basin, twenty feet tall and unclothed. Each had been made with one hand upraised, the other holding a huge stone jar tilted over her shoulder for water to pour from, but one was missing her head and upraised hand, and on another the jar was a shattered ruin.
“We’ll dance all night while the moon runs free,
and dandle the lasses upon our knee,
and then you’ll ride along with me,
to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows.”
“A fine song to be singing about death,” one of the wagon drivers shouted in a heavy Lugarder accent. Kadere’s men kept themselves in a tight knot apart from the Aielmen around the fountain; they were all tough, hard-faced men, but every one was sure any Aiel would slit his throat for a wrong glance. They were not far wrong. “I heard my old grandmother talk about Jak o’ the Shadows,” the big-eared Lugarder went on. “ ’Tisn’t right to sing about death that way.”
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