Sorilea herded the black-clad sisters out of the room, but at the last, she paused with one hand holding a door and looked back at Rand striding away from her toward the gilded throne. Her lips pursed thoughtfully. “That woman, Cadsuane Melaidhrin, is beneath this roof again today,” she said at last, to his back. “I think she believes you are afraid of her, Rand al’Thor, the way you avoid her whereabouts.” With that, she left.
For a long moment, Rand stood staring at the throne. Or maybe at something beyond it. Abruptly, he gave himself a shake and strode the remaining distance to pick up the Crown of Swords. On the point of setting it on his head, though, he hesitated, then put it back. Donning the coat, he left crown and scepter where they lay.
“I mean to find out what Cadsuane wants,” he announced. “She doesn’t come to the palace every day because she likes a trip through the snow. Will you come with me, Min? Maybe you’ll have a viewing.”
She was on her feet faster than any of those Aes Sedai. A visit with Cadsuane would likely be as pleasurable as a visit with Sorilea, yet anything was better than sitting there alone. Besides, maybe she would have a viewing. Fedwin fell in behind her and Rand with an alert look in his eyes.
The six Maidens outside in the tall vaulted hallway rose, but they did not follow. Somara was the only one Min knew; she gave Min a brief smile, and Rand a flat, disapproving stare. The others glowered. The Maidens had accepted his explanation about why he had gone without them in the first place, so any watchers would believe for as long as possible that he was still in Cairhien, but they still demanded to know why he had not sent for them afterward, and Rand had had no answers. He muttered something under his breath, and quickened his pace so Min had to stretch her legs to keep up.
“Watch Cadsuane carefully, Min,” he said. “And you, too, Morr. She’s up to some Aes Sedai scheme, but burn me if I can see what. I don’t know. There’s—”
A stone wall seemed to strike Min from behind; she thought she heard roaring, crashing. And then Rand was turning her over—she was lying on the floor?—looking down at her with the first fear she remembered seeing in those morning-blue eyes. It only faded when she sat up, coughing. The air was full of dust! And then she saw the corridor.
The Maidens were gone from in front of Rand’s doors. The doors themselves were gone, along with most of the wall, and a jagged hole nearly as big gaped in the wall opposite. She could see into his apartments clearly despite the dust, into devastation. Massive piles of rubble lay everywhere, and above, the ceiling yawned open to the sky. Snow swirled down onto flames dancing among the rubble. One of the massive blackwood posts of his bed stuck burning out of shattered stone, and she realized she could see all the way outside to the stepped towers veiled by the snowfall. It was as if a huge hammer had smashed into the Sun Palace. And had they been in there, instead of going to see Cadsuane . . . Min shivered.
“What . . . ?” she began unsteadily, then abandoned the useless question. Any fool would see what had happened. “Who?” she asked instead.
Covered in dust, hair every which way, and with tears in their coats, the two men looked as if they had been rolled along the corridor, and perhaps they had. She thought they were all a good ten paces farther from the doors than she remembered. From where the doors had been. In the distance, anxious shouts rose, echoing along the halls. Neither man answered her.
“Can I trust you, Morr?” Rand asked.
Fedwin met his gaze openly. “With your life, my Lord Dragon,” he said simply.
“That’s what I am trusting you with,” Rand said. His fingers brushed her cheek, and then he stood abruptly. “Guard her with your life, Morr.” Hard as steel, his voice. Grim as death. “If they’re still in the Palace, they’ll feel you try to make a gateway, and strike before you can finish. Don’t channel at all unless you must, but be ready. Take her down to the servants’ quarters, and kill anyone or anything that tries to get to her. Anyone!”
With a last look down at her—oh, Light, any other time, she would have thought she could die happily, seeing that look in his eyes!—he went running, away from the ruination. Away from her. Whoever had tried to kill him would be hunting for him.
Morr patted her on the arm with a dusty hand and gave her a boyish grin. “Don’t worry, Min. I’ll take care of you.”
But who was going to take care of Rand? Can I trust you, he had asked this boy who had been one of the first to come asking to learn. Light, who would make him safe?
Rounding a corner, Rand stopped with a hand against one wall to seize the Source. A fool thing, not wanting Min to see him stagger when someone tried to kill him, but there it was. Not just any someone. A man, Demandred, or perhaps Asmodean come back at last. Maybe both; there had been an oddity, as if the weaving came from different directions. He had felt the channeling too late to do anything. He would have died, in his rooms. He was ready to die. But not Min, no, not Min. Elayne was better off, turning against him. Oh, Light, she was!
He seized the Source, and saidin flooded him with molten cold and freezing heat, with life and sweetness, filth and death. His stomach twisted, and the hallway in front of him doubled itself. For an instant, he thought he saw a face. Not with his eyes; in his head. A man, shimmering and unrecognizable, gone. He floated in the Void, empty, and full of the Power.
You won’t win, he told Lews Therin. If I die, I’ll die me!
I should have sent Ilyena away, Lews Therin whispered back. She would have lived.
Pushing the voice away as he pushed himself from the wall, Rand slipped along the Palace corridors with all the stealth he could muster, stepping lightly, gliding close to tapestry-hung walls, around gold-worked chests and gilded cabinets bearing fragile golden porcelains and ivory statuettes. His eyes searched for his attackers. They would not be satisfied short of finding his body, but they would be very careful in approaching his rooms in case he had survived by some ta’veren swirl of fate. They would wait, to see whether he stirred. In the Void, he was as near one with the Power as any man could live through. In the Void, as with a sword, he was one with his surroundings.
Frantic shouts and clamor rose in every direction, some screaming to know what had happened, others crying that the Dragon Reborn had gone mad. The bundle of frustration in his head that was Alanna provided one small comfort. She was out of the Palace, as she had been all morning, maybe even outside the city walls. He wished Min was, too. Sometimes he saw men and women down one hallway or another, black-liveried servants mainly, running, falling down and scrambling up to run again. They did not see him. With the Power in him, he could hear every whisper. Including the whisper of soft boots running, light-footed.
Backing against the wall beside a long table topped with porcelain, he quickly wove Fire and Air around himself and held very still wrapped in Folded Light.
Maidens appeared, a stream of them, veiled, and ran by without seeing him. Toward his apartments. He could not let them accompany him; he had promised, but to let them fight, not to lead them to slaughter. When he found Demandred and Asmodean, all the Maidens could do was die, and he already had five names to learn and add to his list. Somara of the Bent Peak Daryne was already there. A promise he had had to make, a promise he had to keep. For that promise alone, he deserved to die!
Eagles and women can only be kept safe in cages, Lews Therin said as though quoting, then abruptly began weeping as the last of the Maidens vanished.
Rand moved on, sweeping back and forth through the palace in arcs that slowly moved away from his apartments. Folded Light used very little of the Power—so little no man could have felt the use of saidin unless right on top of it—and he used it whenever anyone seemed about to see him. His attackers had not struck at his rooms on the chance he would be there. They had eyes-and-ears in the Palace. Maybe it had been ta’veren work that pulled him out of the apartments, if a ta’veren could work on himself, and maybe just happenstance, but perhaps his tugging at the Pattern could bring his attackers within
his grasp while they thought him dead or injured. Lews Therin chuckled at the thought. Rand could almost feel the man rubbing his hands in anticipation.
Three more times he had to hide behind the Power as veiled Maidens rushed by, and once when he saw Cadsuane sweeping along the corridor ahead with no fewer than six Aes Sedai at her heels, and not one other that he recognized besides her. They seemed to be hunting. He was not afraid of the gray-haired sister, precisely. No, of course not afraid! But he waited until she and her friends were well out of sight before letting his concealing weave go. Lews Therin did not chuckle over Cadsuane. He was deathly silent until she was gone.
Rand stepped away from the wall, a door opened right beside him, and Ailil peeked out. He had not known he was near her rooms. Behind her shoulder stood a dark woman with fat golden rings in her ears and a medallion-filled golden chain running across her left cheek to her nose ring. Shalon, Windfinder to Harine din Togara, the Atha’an Miere ambassador who had moved into the Palace with her retinue almost as Merana informed him of the agreement. And meeting with a woman who might want him dead. Their eyes popped at the sight of him.
He was as gentle as he could be, but he had to be quick. A few moments after the door opened, he was tucking a somewhat rumpled Ailil beneath her bed alongside Shalon. Perhaps they were not part of what was happening. Perhaps. Safe was better than sorry. Glaring at him above mouths wadded full of Ailil’s scarves, the two women writhed against the torn strips of bedsheet he had used to bind their wrists and ankles. The shield he had tied off on Shalon would hold her for a day or two before the knot unraveled, but someone would find them and cut their other bonds before too much longer.
Worrying about that shield, he opened the door enough to check the hallway, and hurried out, along the empty corridor. He could not have left the Windfinder free to channel, but shielding a woman was not a matter of dribbles of the Power. If one of his attackers had been close enough . . . But he saw no one down any of the crossing corridors, either.
Fifty paces beyond Ailil’s rooms, the corridor opened into a square-railed balcony of blue marble with broad stairs at either end, fronting a square chamber with a high, vaulted ceiling and the same sort of balcony at the other side. Tapestries ten paces long hung along the walls, birds soaring to the skies in rigid patterns. Below, Dashiva stood looking about, licking his lips uncertainly. Gedwyn and Rochaid were with him! Lews Therin chittered of killing.
“. . . telling you I felt nothing,” Gedwyn was saying. “He’s dead!”
And Dashiva saw Rand, at the head of the stairs.
The only warning he had was the sudden snarl that contorted Dashiva’s face. Dashiva channeled, and with no time to think, Rand wove—as so often, he did not know what; something dredged from Lews Therin’s memories; he was not even sure he created the weave entirely himself, or whether Lews Therin snatched at saidin—Air and Fire and Earth woven around himself just so. The fire that leaped from Dashiva erupted, shattering marble, flinging Rand back down the hallway, bounding and rolling in his cocoon.
That barrier would keep out anything short of balefire. Including air to breathe. Rand released it panting, scraping along the floor, with the crash of the explosions still ringing in the air, dust still hanging and bits of broken marble tumbling. As much as for breath, though, he let it go because what could keep the Power out, kept it in. Before he stopped sliding, he channeled Fire and Air, but woven much differently than for Folded Light. Thin red wires leaped from his left hand, fanning out as they sliced through the intervening stone toward where Dashiva and the others had been standing. From his left sped balls of flame, Fire woven with Air, faster than he could count, and they burned through the stone before exploding in that chamber. One continuous deafening roar made the Palace tremble. Dust that had fallen rose up again, and pieces of stone bounced.
Almost immediately, though, he was up and running, back past Ailil’s apartments. The man who struck and stayed in one spot was asking to die. He was ready to die, but not yet. Snarling soundlessly, he sped down another hall, descended narrow servants’ stairs, and came out on the floor below.
He took care making his way back to where he had seen Dashiva, deadly weaves ready to fling at so much as a glimpse.
I should have killed them all in the beginning, Lews Therin panted. I should have killed them all!
Rand let him rage.
The large chamber seemed to have been washed in fire. Only charred fragments licked by flames remained of the tapestries, and great gouges a pace across had been burned into floor and walls. The stairs Rand had been about to descend ended in a ten-foot gap halfway down. Of the three men, there was no sign. They would not have been consumed completely. Something would have remained.
A servant in a black coat cautiously poked his head from a tiny door beside the stairs on the other side of the chamber. His eyes fell on Rand, rolled up in his head, and he fell forward in a heap. Another servant peeped out of a corridor, then gathered her skirts and raced back the way she had come, shrieking at the top of her lungs that the Dragon Reborn was killing everyone in the Palace.
Rand slipped out of the chamber grimacing. He was very good at frightening people who could not harm him. Very good at destroying.
To destroy, or be destroyed, Lews Therin laughed. When that’s your choice, is there a difference?
Somewhere in the Palace, a man channeled enough of the Power to make a gateway. Dashiva and the others fleeing? Or wanting him to think that?
He walked the corridors of the Palace, no longer bothering to hide. Everyone else seemed to be. The few servants he saw, fled screaming. Corridor after corridor, he hunted, filled near to bursting with saidin, full of fire and ice trying to annihilate him as surely as Dashiva had, full of the taint worming its way into his soul. He had no need of Lews Therin’s ragged laughter and ravings to be filled with a desire to kill.
A glimpse of a black coat ahead, and his hand shot up, fire streaking, exploding, tearing away the corner where the two hallways met. Rand let the weave subside, but did not let it go. Had he killed him?
“My Lord Dragon,” a voice shouted from beyond the torn stonework, “it’s me, Narishma! And Flinn!”
“I didn’t recognize you,” Rand lied. “Come here.”
“I think maybe your blood’s hot,” Flinn’s voice called. “I think maybe we should wait for everybody to cool down.”
“Yes,” Rand said slowly. Had he really tried to kill Narishma? He did not think he could claim the excuse of Lews Therin. “Yes, that might be best. For a little while longer.” There was no answer. Did he hear boots retreating? He forced his hands down and turned another way.
He searched through the Palace for hours without finding a sign of Dashiva or the others. The corridors and great halls, even the kitchens, were empty of people. He found nothing, and learned nothing. No. He realized that he had learned one thing. Trust was a knife, and the hilt was as sharp as the blade.
Then he found pain.
The small stone-walled room was deep below the Sun Palace and warm despite the lack of a fireplace, but Min felt cold. Three gilded lamps on the tiny wooden table gave more than enough light. Rand had said that from there, he could get her away even if someone tried to root the Palace out of the ground. He had not sounded as if he were joking.
Holding the crown of Illian on her lap, she watched Rand. Watched Rand watching Fedwin. Her hands tightened on the crown, and loosened immediately at the stabs of those small swords hidden among the laurel leaves. Strange, that the crown and scepter should have survived when the Dragon Throne itself was a pile of gilded splinters buried in rubble. A large leather scrip beside her chair, with Rand’s sword belt and scabbarded sword resting against it, held what else he had been able to salvage. Strange choices for the most part, in her estimation.
You brainless loobie, she thought. Not thinking about what’s right in front of you won’t make it go away.
Rand sat cross-legged on the bare stone floo
r, still covered in dust and scratches, his coat torn. His face might have been carved. He seemed to watch Fedwin without blinking. The boy was sitting on the floor, too, his legs sprawled out. Tongue caught between his teeth, Fedwin was concentrating on making a tower out of blocks of wood. Min swallowed hard.
She could still remember the horror when she realized the boy “guarding” her now had the mind of a small child. The sadness remained, too—Light, he was only a boy! it was not right!—but she hoped Rand still had him shielded. It had not been easy, talking Fedwin into playing with those wooden blocks instead of pulling stones out of the walls with the Power to make a “big tower to keep you safe in.” And then she had sat guarding him until Rand came. Oh, Light, she wanted to cry. For Rand even more than Fedwin.
“You hide yourself in the depths, it appears.”
The deep voice was not finished speaking from the doorway before Rand was on his feet, facing Mazrim Taim. As usual, the hook-nosed man wore a black coat with blue-and-gold Dragons spiraling up the arms. Unlike the other Asha’man, he had neither Sword nor Dragon on his high collar. His dark face wore nearly as little expression as Rand’s. Now, staring at Taim, Rand seemed to be gritting his teeth. Min surreptitiously eased a knife in her coatsleeve. As many images and auras danced around one as the other, but it was not a viewing that made her suddenly wary. She had seen a man trying to decide whether to kill another before, and she was seeing it again.
“You come here holding saidin, Taim?” Rand said, much too softly. Taim spread his hands, and Rand said, “That’s better.” But he did not relax.
“It was just that I thought I might be stabbed by accident,” Taim said, “making my way here through corridors packed with those Aiel women. They seem agitated.” His eyes never left Rand, but Min was sure he had noticed her touching her knife. “Understandably, of course,” he went on smoothly. “I cannot express my joy at finding you alive after seeing what I did above. I came to report deserters. Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered, but these are Gedwyn, Rochaid, Torval, and Kisman. It seems they were malcontented over events in Altara, but I never thought they would go this far. I haven’t seen any of the men I left with you.” For an instant, his gaze flickered to Fedwin. For no more than an instant. “There were . . . other . . . casualties? I will take this one with me, if you wish.”
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