The manor house and all of its outlying buildings were crowded, now. It had seemed inevitable that sooner or later someone would try using the Warders left in Cairhien; their Aes Sedai had not blared that they were going off to find the Dragon Reborn, but neither had they been particularly secretive. Even so, he had never anticipated those who arrived with them. Davram Bashere with a hundred of his Saldaean light horse, dismounting in a wind-driven soaking rain and muttering about ruined saddles. Over half a dozen black-coated Asha’man who for some reason had not shielded themselves from the downpour. They rode with Bashere, but it had been like two parties arriving, a little distance between them always, a strong whiff of watchful wariness. And one of the Asha’man was Logain Ablar. Logain! An Asha’man, wearing the Sword and Dragon on his collar! Bashere and Logain both wanted to talk to him, but not in front of anyone, especially each other it seemed. Unexpected or not, though, they were hardly the most surprising of the visitors. He had thought the eight Aes Sedai must be more friends of Cadsuane, yet he would swear she had been as surprised as he to see most of them. Odder, all but one seemed to be with the Asha’man! Not prisoners, and certainly not guards, but Logain had been reluctant to explain with Bashere present, and Bashere reluctant to leave Logain the first chance to talk to Rand alone. Now they were all drying off and settling into their rooms, leaving him to try to put his thoughts in order. To the extent that he could, with Min close by. What would Cadsuane do? Well, he had tried to ask her advice. Events had outrun both of them, though. The decision had been made, whatever Cadsuane thought. Lightning flashed again in the windows. Lightning seemed to suit Cadsuane. You could never tell where it would strike.
Alivia would finish her, Lews Therin muttered. She’s going to help us die; she’d remove Cadsuane for us, if you tell her to.
I don’t want to kill her, Rand thought at the dead man. I can’t afford for her to die. Lews Therin knew that as well as he, but the man grumbled under his breath anyway. Since Shadar Logoth, he seemed a touch less mad, sometimes. Or maybe Rand was a touch more. After all, he took talking to a dead man in his head as a matter of every day, and that was hardly sane.
“You have to do something,” Min muttered, folding her arms beneath her breasts. “Logain’s aura still speaks of glory, stronger than ever. Maybe he still thinks he’s the real Dragon Reborn. And there’s something . . . dark . . . in the images I saw around Lord Davram. If he turns against you, or dies . . . I heard one of the soldiers say Lord Dobraine might die. Losing even one of them would be a blow. Lose all three, and it might take you a year to recover.”
“If you’ve seen it, then it’s going to happen. I have to do what I can, Min, not worry over what I can’t.” She gave him one of those looks women had in great store, as if he were trying to start an argument.
A scratching at the door brought his head around and made Min shift her stance. He suspected she had slipped a throwing knife out of her sleeve and was hiding it behind her wrist. The woman carried more knives tucked about her than Thom Merrilin had. Or Mat. Colors whirled in his head, almost resolving into . . . what? A man on a wagon seat? Not the face that sometimes appeared in his thoughts, anyway, and the scene was gone in an instant, without any of the dizziness that accompanied the face.
“Come,” he called, standing up.
Elza spread her dark green skirts in an elegant curtsy when she entered, her eyes bright on his face. A pleasant-appearing woman, and coolly complacent as a cat, she hardly seemed to see Min. Of all the sisters who had sworn to him, Elza was the most eager. The only eager one, really. The others had their reasons for swearing, their explanations, and of course Verin and the sisters who came to find him at Dumai’s Wells had no real choice facing a ta’veren, but for all Elza’s outer coolness, she seemed to burn inside with a passion to see he reached Tarmon Gai’don. “You said to let you know when the Ogier came,” she said, never taking her eyes from his face.
“Loial!” Min shouted gleefully, tucking the knife back up her sleeve as she rushed past Elza, who blinked at the sight of the blade. “I could have killed Rand for letting you get off to your room before I saw you!” The bond said she did not mean it. Not exactly.
“Thank you,” Rand told Elza, listening to the sounds of merriment from the sitting room, Min’s light laughter and Loial’s quake of Ogier mirth, like the earth laughing. Thunder rolled across the sky.
Perhaps the Aes Sedai’s passion extended to wanting to know what he said to Loial, because her lips thinned, and she hesitated before making another curtsy and sweeping out of the bedchamber. A brief pause in the sounds of pleasure announced her passage across the sitting room, and their resumption her departure. Only then did he seize the Power. He tried never to let anyone see him do that.
Fire flooded into him, hotter than the sun, and cold to make the worst blizzard seem spring, all a swirling rage that dwarfed the storm outside, threatening to scour him away for a moment’s inattention. Seizing saidin was a war for survival. But the green of the cornices was suddenly greener, the black of his coat blacker, the gold of its embroidery more golden. He could see the grain of the vine-carved bedposts, see faint marks left by the craftsman’s sanding all those years ago. Saidin made him feel as if he had been half-blind and numb without it. That was a part of what he felt.
Clean, Lews Therin whispered. Pure and clean again.
It was. The foulness that had marked the male half of the Power since the Breaking was gone. That did not stop nausea from rising in Rand, though, the violent urge to bend double and empty himself on the floor. The room seemed to spin for an instant, and he had to put a hand on the nearest bedpost to steady himself. He did not know why he should still feel this sickness, with the taint gone. Lews Therin did not know, or would not tell. But the sickness was the reason he could not let anyone see him take hold of saidin, if he could help it. Elza might burn to see him reach the Last Battle, but too many others wanted to see him fall, not all of them Darkfriends.
In that moment of weakness, the dead man reached for saidin. Rand could feel him clawing for it greedily. Was it harder than it had been to push him away? In some ways, Lews Therin seemed more solidly part of him since Shadar Logoth. It did not matter. He had only so far left to go before he could die. He just had to last that far. Drawing a deep breath, he ignored the lingering traces of sickness in his belly and strode into the sitting room to the crash of thunder.
Min stood in the middle of the room holding one of Loial’s hands in both of hers and smiling up at him. It took both of her hands to hold one of Loial’s, and the pair did not come close to covering it. The top of his head missed the plaster ceiling by little more than a foot. He had donned a fresh coat of dark blue wool, the bottom flaring over baggy trousers to the tops of his knee-high boots, but for once his pockets did not bulge with the angular shapes of books. Eyes the size of teacups lit up at the sight of Rand, and the grin on his wide mouth really did split his face in two. The tufted ears sticking up through his shaggy hair quivered with pleasure.
“Lord Algarin has Ogier guest rooms, Rand,” he boomed in a voice like a deep drum. “Can you imagine it? Six of them! Of course, they haven’t been used in some time, but they’re aired out every week, so there isn’t any mustiness, and the bedsheets are very good linen. I thought I’d be back to doubling myself up in a human-sized bed. Umm. We aren’t staying here long, are we?” His long ears sagged a little, then began to twitch uneasily. “I don’t think we should. I mean, I might get used to having a real bed, and that wouldn’t do if I’m going to stay with you. I mean . . . Well, you know what I mean.”
“I know,” Rand said softly. He could have laughed at the Ogier’s consternation. He should have laughed. Laughter just seemed to have escaped him, lately. Spinning a web against eavesdropping around the room, he knotted it so he could release saidin. The last traces of nausea began to fade immediately. He could control the sickness, usually, with an effort, but there was no point when he did not have to. “Di
d any of your books get wet?” Loial’s main concern coming in had been to check on his books.
Suddenly it struck him that he had thought of what he had done as spinning a web. That was how Lews Therin would put it. That sort of thing happened too often, the other man’s turns of phrase drifting into his head, the other man’s memories mingling with his. He was Rand al’Thor, not Lews Therin Telamon. He had woven a ward and tied off the weave, not spun a web and knotted it. But the one came to him as easily as the other.
“My Essays of Willim of Maneches got damp,” Loial said disgustedly, rubbing his upper lip with a finger the thickness of a sausage. Had he been careless shaving, or was that the beginning of a mustache beneath his wide nose? “The pages may spot. I shouldn’t have been so careless, not with a book. And my book of notes took some wet, too. But the ink didn’t run. Everything is still readable, but I really need to make a case to protect . . .” Slowly, a frown crept onto his face, dangling the long ends of his eyebrows onto his cheeks. “You look tired, Rand. He looks tired, Min.”
“He’s been doing too much, but he’s resting now,” Min said defensively, and Rand did smile. A little. Min would always defend him, even to his friends. “You are resting, sheepherder,” she added, letting go of Loial’s huge hand and planting her fists on her hips. “Sit down and rest. Oh, sit down, Loial. I’ll put a crick in my neck if I keep staring up at you.”
Loial chuckled, the bellowing of a bull muted in his throat, as he examined one of the straight-back chairs dubiously. Compared to him, it seemed a chair made for a child. “Sheepherder. You don’t know how good it is to hear you calling him sheepherder, Min.” He sat down cautiously. The plain-carved chair creaked under his weight, and his knees stuck up in front of him. “I am sorry, Rand, but it is funny, and I haven’t heard much to laugh at these past months.” The chair was holding. With a quick glance toward the hall door, he added, a little too loudly, “Karldin doesn’t have much sense of humor.”
“You can speak freely,” Rand told him. “We’re safe behind a . . . a ward.” He had almost said behind a shield, which was not the same thing. Except that he knew it was.
He was too weary to sit, just as he was too tired to find sleep easily most nights—his bones ached with it—so he went to stand in front of the fireplace. Winds gusting across the chimney top made the flames dance on the split logs and sometimes let a small puff of smoke into the room, and he could hear the rain drumming away at the windows, but the thunder seemed to have moved on. Maybe the storm was ending. Clasping his hands behind his back, he turned away from the fire. “What did the Elders say, Loial?”
Instead of answering straightaway, Loial looked at Min as if seeking encouragement or support. Perched on the edge of a blue armchair with her knees crossed, she smiled at the Ogier and nodded, and he sighed heavily, a wind gusting through deep caverns. “Karldin and I visited every stedding, Rand. All but Stedding Shangtai, of course. I couldn’t go there, but I left a message everywhere we went, and Daiting isn’t far from Shangtai. Someone will carry it there. The Great Stump is meeting in Shangtai, and that will attract crowds. This is the first time a Great Stump has been called in a thousand years, not since you humans fought the War of the Hundred Years, and it was Shangtai’s turn. They must be considering something very important, but no one would tell me why it was called. They won’t tell you about any Stump until you have a beard,” he muttered, fingering a narrow patch of stubble on his broad chin. Apparently, he intended to remedy his lack, though it was not certain that he could. Loial was over ninety years old, now, yet for an Ogier, that was still a boy.
“The Elders?” Rand asked patiently. You had to be patient with Loial, with any Ogier. They did not see time the way humans did—who among humans would think of whose turn it was after a thousand years?—and Loial tended to go on at length, given half a chance. Great length.
Loial’s ears twitched, and he gave Min another look, received another encouraging smile in return. “Well, as I said, I visited all the stedding but Shangtai. Karldin wouldn’t go inside. He’d rather sleep every night under a bush than be cut off from the Source for a minute.” Rand did not say a word, but Loial raised his hands from his knees, palms out. “I am getting to the point, Rand. I am. I did what I could, but I don’t know whether it was enough. The stedding in the Borderlands told me to go home and leave matters to older and wiser heads. So did Shadoon and Mardoon, in the mountains on the Shadow Coast. The other stedding agreed to guard the Waygates. I don’t think they really believe there’s any danger, but they agreed, so you know they will keep a close guard. And I’m sure someone will take word to Shangtai. The Elders in Shangtai never liked having a Waygate right outside the stedding. I must have heard Elder Haman say a hundred times that it was dangerous. I know they’ll agree to have it watched.”
Rand nodded slowly. Ogier never lied, or at least the few who made the attempt were so poor at it that they seldom tried a second time. An Ogier’s word was taken as seriously as anyone else’s sworn oath. The Waygates would be guarded closely. Except for those in the Borderlands, and in the mountains south of Amadicia and Tarabon. From gate to gate, a man could journey from the Spine of the World to the Aryth Ocean, from the Borderlands to the Sea of Storms, all in a strange world somehow outside of time, or maybe alongside it. Two days walking along the Ways could carry you a hundred miles, or five hundred, depending on the paths you chose. And if you were willing to risk the dangers. You could die very easily in the Ways, or worse. The Ways had turned dark and corrupted long ago. Trollocs did not care about that, though, at least not when they had Myrddraal driving them. Trollocs cared only for killing, especially when they had Myrddraal driving them. And nine Waygates would remain unwatched, with the danger that any of them might open up to let out Trollocs by the tens of thousands. Setting any sort of guard without the stedding’s cooperation might be impossible. Many people did not believe Ogier existed, and few of those who did wanted to meddle without leave. Maybe the Asha’man, if he had enough he could trust.
Suddenly, he realized that he was not the only one who was tired. Loial looked worn and gaunt. His coat was rumpled and hung loosely on him. It was dangerous for an Ogier to be outside the stedding too long, and Loial had left his home a good five years ago. Maybe those brief visits over the last few months had not been enough for him. “Maybe you should go home now, Loial. Stedding Shangtai is a only a few days from here.”
Loial’s chair creaked alarmingly as he sat bolt upright. His ears shot upright, too, in alarm. “My mother will be there, Rand. She’s a famous Speaker. She would never miss a Great Stump.”
“She can’t have come all the way back from the Two Rivers already,” Rand told him. Loial’s mother was supposedly a famous walker, too, yet there were limits, even for Ogier.
“You don’t know my mother,” Loial muttered, a drum booming darkly. “She’ll still have Erith in tow, too. She will.”
Min leaned toward the Ogier, a dangerous light in her eyes. “The way you talk about Erith, I know you want to marry her, so why do you keep running from her?”
Rand studied her from the fireplace. Marriage. Aviendha assumed that he would marry her, and Elayne and Min as well, in the Aiel fashion. Elayne appeared to think so, too, strange as that seemed. He thought she did. What did Min think? She had never said. He should never have let them bond him. The bond would smother them in grief when he died.
Loial’s ears trembled with caution, now. Those ears were one reason Ogier made poor liars. He made placating gestures as though Min were the larger of them. “Well, I do want to, Min. Of course, I do. Erith is beautiful, and very perceptive. Did I ever tell you how carefully she listened to me explain about . . . ? Of course, I did. I tell everybody I meet. I do want to marry her. But not yet. It isn’t like with you humans, Min. You do everything Rand asks. Erith will expect me to settle down and stay home. Wives never let a husband go anywhere or do anything, if it means leaving the stedding for more than a few days.
I have my book to finish, and how can I do that if I don’t see everything Rand does? I’m sure he’s done all sorts of things since I left Cairhien, and I know I’ll never get it all down right. Erith just wouldn’t understand. Min? Min, are you angry with me?”
“What makes you think I’m angry?” she said coolly.
Loial sighed heavily, and so clearly in relief that Rand almost stared. Light, the Ogier actually thought she meant she was not angry! Rand knew he was feeling his way in the dark when it came to women, even Min—maybe especially Min—but Loial had better learn a lot more than he already knew before he married his Erith. Otherwise, she would skin him out like a sick goat. Best to get him out of the room before Min did Erith’s job for her. Rand cleared his throat.
“Think on it overnight, Loial,” he said. “Maybe you’ll change your mind by morning.” Part of him hoped Loial would. The Ogier had been too long from home. Another part of him, though . . . He could use Loial, if what Alivia had told him about the Seanchan was true. Sometimes, he disgusted himself. “In any case, I need to talk to Bashere, now. And Logain.” His mouth tightened around the name. What was Logain doing in Asha’man black?
Loial did not stand. Indeed, his expression grew more troubled, ears slanting back and eyebrows drooping. “Rand, there’s something I need to tell you. About the Aes Sedai who came with us.”
Lightnings flared anew outside the windows as he went on, and the thunder crashed overhead harder than ever. With some storms, a lull only meant the worst was coming.
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