Winter's Heart

by Jordan, Robert

  The neat cuts were like those made skinning an animal. It hit Perrin suddenly. Someone had cut Faile’s clothes off! His voice shook. “They only took women?”

  A round-faced young Maiden named Briain shook her head. “Three men would have been made gai’shain, I think, but they fought too hard and were killed with knife or spear. All the rest died by arrow.”

  “It is not like that, Perrin Aybara,” Elienda said hurriedly, sounding shocked. A tall woman with wide shoulders, she managed to look almost motherly, though he had seen her knock a man down with her fist. “Harming a gai’shain is like harming a child, or a blacksmith. It was wrong to take wetlanders, but I cannot believe they will break custom that far. I am sure they will not even be punished, if they can be meek until they are recovered. There are others who will show them.” Others; Bain and Chiad again.

  “What direction did they go?” he asked. Could Faile be meek? He could not picture her that way. At least let her try, till he could find her.

  “Almost south,” Sulin replied. “Much nearer south than east. After the snow hid their tracks, Jondyn Barran saw other traces. What the others are following. I believe him. He sees as much as Elyas Machera. There is much to see.” Thrusting her spears behind the bow case on her back, she hung her buckler from the hilt of her heavy belt knife. Her fingers flashed handtalk, and Elienda unfastened a second, larger bundle and handed it to her. “Many people are moving out there, Perrin Aybara, and strange things. This you must see first, I think.” Sulin unfolded another cut dress, this one green. He thought he remembered it on Alliandre. “These, we recovered where your wife was taken.” Inside, forty or fifty Aiel arrows shifted in a heap. There were dark stains on the shafts, and he caught the scent of dried blood.

  “Taardad,” Sulin said, picking out an arrow and immediately throwing it to the ground. “Miagoma.” She tossed two more aside. “Goshien.” Those brought a grimace to her face; she was Goshien. Clan by clan, she named them all except the Shaido, dropping arrows until just over half lay scattered around her. She held up the cut dress holding the remainder in both hands, then spilled them. “Shaido,” she said significantly.

  Clutching Faile’s dress to his chest—her scent eased the pain in his heart, and made it worse at the same time—Perrin frowned at the arrows jumbled on the snow. Already, some were half buried in the fresh fall. “Too many Shaido,” he said at last. They should all be bottled up in Kinslayer’s Dagger, five hundred leagues distant. But if some of their Wise Ones had learned to Travel . . . Maybe even one of the Forsaken . . . Light, he was rambling like a fool—what would the Forsaken have to do with this?—rambling when he had to think. His brain felt as weary as the rest of him. “The others are men who wouldn’t accept Rand as the car’a’carn.” Those cursed colors flashed in his head. He had no time for anything but Faile. “They joined the Shaido.” Some of the Maidens averted their eyes. Elienda glared at him. They knew that some had done what he said, but it was one of those things they did not like to hear said aloud. “How many altogether, do you reckon? Not the whole clan, surely?” If the Shaido were here in a body, there would be more than rumors of distant raids. Even among all the other troubles, all of Amadicia would know.

  “Near enough to be going on with, I’m thinking,” Wynter muttered under his breath. Perrin was not meant to hear.

  Reaching in among the bundles tied to the ornate saddle, Sulin drew out a rag doll dressed in cadin’sor. “Elyas Machera found this just before we turned back, about forty miles from here.” She shook her head, and for a moment her voice and scent became . . . startled. “He said he smelled it beneath the snow. He and Jondyn Barran found scrapes on the trees they said were caused by carts. Very many carts. If there are children . . . I think it may be a whole sept, Perrin Aybara. Perhaps more than one. Even a single sept will have at least a thousand spears, and more at need. Every man but the blacksmiths will pick up a spear at need. They are days south of us. Perhaps more days than I think, in this snow. But I believe those who took your wife are going to meet them.”

  “This blacksmith has picked up a spear,” Perrin murmured. A thousand, maybe more. He had over two thousand, counting the Winged Guards and Arganda’s men. Against Aiel, though, the numbers would favor the Shaido. He fingered the doll in Sulin’s sinewy hand. Was a Shaido child weeping over the loss of her doll? “We go south.”

  He was turning to mount Stepper when Sulin touched his arm to stop him. “I told you we saw other things. Twice, Elyas Machera found horse droppings and campfires under the snow. Many horses, and many campfires.”

  “Thousands,” Alharra put in; His black eyes met Perrin’s levelly, and his voice was matter-of-fact. He was simply reporting what was. “Five, maybe ten or more; it’s hard to tell. But soldiers’ camps. The same men both places, I think. Machera and Barran agree. Whoever it is, they’re heading near enough south, too. Maybe they have nothing to do with the Aiel, but they could be following.”

  Sulin gave the Warder an impatient frown and continued with barely a pause for his interruption. “Three times we saw flying creatures like those you say the Seanchan use, huge things with ribbed wings and people riding their backs. And twice we saw tracks like this.” Bending, she picked up one of the arrows and drew a rounded shape a little like a large bear’s paw in the snow, but with six toes longer than a man’s fingers. “Sometimes it shows claws,” she said, marking them, longer even than one of the big bears in the Mountains of Mist. “It has a long stride. I think it runs very fast. Do you know what it is?”

  He did not—he had never heard of anything with six toes except the cats in the Two Rivers; he had been surprised to find cats elsewhere only had five—but he could make a safe guess. “Another Seanchan animal.” So there were Seanchan to the south as well as Shaido, and—what?—Whitecloaks, or a Seanchan army. It could not be anyone else. He trusted Balwer’s information. “We still go south.” The Maidens stared at him as if he had told them it was snowing.

  Pulling himself up into Stepper’s saddle, he turned back toward the column. The Warders walked, leading their weary hordes. The Maidens took Alliandre’s gelding with them as they trotted to where the Wise Ones were standing. Masuri and Seonid were riding to meet their Warders. He wondered why they all had not come to stick their noses in. Perhaps it was as simple as letting him be alone with his grief if the news turned out bad. Perhaps. In his head, he tried to fit everything together. The Shaido, however many they were. The Seanchan. The mounted army, whether Whitecloak or Seanchan. It was like the puzzles Master Luhhan had taught him to make, intricate twists of metal that slid apart and slipped back together like a dream, if you knew the trick. Only, his head felt muddled, groping at pieces that would not slide anywhere.

  The Two Rivers men were all mounted again when he reached them. Those who had been on the ground with their bows ready looked a little abashed. They all eyed him uneasily, tentatively.

  “She’s alive,” he said, and it was as if every man of them started breathing again. They took the rest of his news with a strange impassiveness, some even nodding as though they had expected no less.

  “Won’t be the first time we’ve faced long odds,” Dannil said. “What do we do, my Lord?”

  Perrin grimaced. The man was still stiff as an oak. “For starters, we’re Traveling forty miles due south. After that, I will see. Neald, you go ahead and find Elyas and the others. Tell them what I’m doing. They will be a good deal further on, by this time. And have a care. You can’t fight ten or a dozen Wise Ones.” A whole sept should have at least that many who could channel. And if it was more than one? A bog he had to cross when he came to it.

  Neald nodded before turning his gelding back toward the camp, where he had already memorized the ground. There were only a few more orders to give. Riders had to be sent to find the Mayeners and Ghealdanin, who would be moving apart as they camped apart. Grady thought he could memorize the ground right there before they could join up, so there was no need to turn
everything around and follow Neald back. And that left only one thing.

  “I need to find Masema, Dannil,” Perrin said. “Somebody who can give him a message, anyway. With luck, I won’t be long.”

  “You go among that filth alone, my Lord, and you’ll need luck,” Dannil replied. “I heard some of them talking about you. Said you’re Shadowspawn, because of your eyes.” His gaze met Perrin’s golden eyes and slid sideways. “Said you’d been tamed by the Dragon Reborn, but still Shadowspawn. You ought to take a few dozen men to watch your back.”

  Perrin hesitated, patting Stepper’s neck. A few dozen men would not be enough if Masema’s people really thought he was Shadowspawn and decided to take matters into their own hands. All the Two Rivers men together might not be enough. Maybe he did not need to tell Masema, just let him learn for himself.

  His ears caught a bluetit’s trill from the trees to the west, followed a moment later by a second that everyone could hear, and the decision was taken away from him. He was sure of it, and wondered whether this was part of being ta’veren. He reined Stepper around and waited.

  The Two Rivers men knew what it meant, hearing that particular bird from back home. Men coming, more than a handful, and not necessarily peaceful. It would have been a crookbill trilling if they were friends, and a mocker’s cry of alarm had they been clearly unfriendly. This time, they behaved better. Along the west side of the column, every second man as far as Perrin could see in the snow dismounted and handed his reins to the man next to him, then readied his bow.

  The strangers appeared through the scattered trees spread out in a line as if to increase the impression of their numbers. They were perhaps a hundred, with two in advance, but their slow advance did seem ominous. Half carried lances, not couched but held as though ready be tucked under an arm. At a steady walk they came on. Some wore armor, a breastplate or a helmet but rarely both. Still, they were better armed than the general run of Masema’s followers. One of the pair out front was Masema himself, his zealot’s face staring out of his cloak’s cowl like a rabid mountain cat staring out of a cave. How many of those lances had borne a red streamer yesterday morning?

  Masema stopped his men with a raised hand only when he was just a few paces from Perrin. Pushing back his hood, he ran his gaze along the dismounted men with their bows. He seemed unaware of the snow hitting his bare scalp. His companion, a bigger man with a sword on his back and another at his saddlebow, kept his cowl up, but Perrin thought his head was shaved, too. That one managed to study the column and watch Masema with equal intensity. His dark eyes burned almost as much as Masema’s. Perrin thought about telling them that at this range, a Two Rivers longbow would put a pile shaft right through a breastplate, and out the wearer’s back besides. He considered mentioning Seanchan. Discretion, Berelain had counseled. Perhaps it was a fine thing, in the circumstances.

  “You were coming to meet me?” Masema said abruptly. Even the man’s voice seethed with intensity. Nothing was ever casual on his tongue. Anything he had to say was important. The pale triangular scar on his cheek pulled his sudden smile crooked. There was no warmth in it anyway. “No matter. I am here, now. As you no doubt know by now, those who follow the Lord Dragon Reborn—the Light illumine his name!—refuse to be left behind. I cannot demand it of them. They serve him as I do.”

  Perrin saw a tide of flame rolling across Amadicia into Altara and perhaps beyond, leaving death and devastation behind. He took a deep breath, sucking cold into his lungs. Faile was more important than anything. Anything! If he burned for it, then he burned. “Take your men east.” He was shocked at how steady his voice was. “I will catch up when I can. My wife has been kidnapped by Aiel, and I’m heading south to get her back.” For once, he saw Masema surprised.

  “Aiel? So they are more than rumor?” He frowned at the Wise Ones on the far side of the column. “South, you say?” Folding his gloved hands on the pommel of his saddle, he turned his study to Perrin. Insanity filled the man’s scent; Perrin could not find anything but madness in it. “I will come with you,” Masema said at last, as if reaching a decision. Odd, he had been impatient to reach Rand without delay. So long as he did not have to be touched by the Power to do so, at least. “All those who follow the Lord Dragon Reborn—the Light illumine his name!—will come. Killing Aiel savages is doing the Light’s work.” His eyes flickered toward the Wise Ones, and his smile was even colder than before.

  “I would appreciate the help,” Perrin lied. That rabble would be useless against Aiel. Still, they numbered in the thousands. And they had held off armies, if not armies of Aiel. A piece of that puzzle in his head shifted. Ready to drop with fatigue, he could not make out exactly how, just that it had. In any case, it was not going to happen. “They have a long lead on me, though. I intend to Travel, to use the One Power, to catch up. I know how you feel about that.”

  Uneasy murmurs ran through the men behind Masema, and they eyed one another and shifted weapons. Perrin caught muttered curses and also “yellow eyes” and “Shadowspawn.” The second shaven-headed man glared at Perrin as though he had blasphemed, but Masema just stared, trying to bore a hole into Perrin’s head and see what lay inside.

  “He would be grieved if harm came to your wife,” the madman said at last. The emphasis named Rand as clearly as the name Masema did not allow to be spoken. “There will be a . . . dispensation, in this one instance. Only to find your wife, because you are his friend. Only this.” He spoke calmly—calmly for him—but his deep-set eyes were dark fire, his face contorted with unknowing rage.

  Perrin opened his mouth, then closed it without speaking. The sun might as well rise in the west as Masema say what he just had. Suddenly Perrin thought that Faile might be safer with the Shaido than he was here and now.

  CHAPTER

  7

  The Streets of Caemlyn

  Elayne’s entourage attracted plenty of attention as it rode through Caemlyn, along streets that rose and fell with the hills of the city. The Golden Lily on the breast of her fur-lined crimson cloak was sufficient to identify her for citizens of the capital, but she kept her hood back, framing her face so the single golden rose on the coronet of the Daughter-Heir was clearly visible. Not just Elayne, High Seat of House Trakand, but Elayne the Daughter-Heir. Let everyone see, and know.

  The domes of the New City glinted white and gold in the pale morning light, and icicles sparkled on the bare branches of the trees down the center of the main streets. Even nearing its zenith the sun lacked warmth, despite a blessedly cloudless sky. Luckily, there was no wind today. The air was cold enough to frost her breath, yet with the paving stones cleared of snow even on the narrower, twisting ways, the city was alive again, the streets full and bustling. Carters and wagon drivers, harnessed by their work as surely as the horses between the shafts, clutched their cloaks in resignation as they made slow passage through the throng. A huge water wagon rumbled by, empty by the sound, on its way to be refilled for fighting the too-frequent arsons. A few hawkers and street peddlers braved the chill to cry their wares, but most folk hurried about their tasks, eager to be indoors as soon as possible. Not that hurrying meant moving very fast. The city bulged, its population swollen beyond that of Tar Valon. In such a swarm, even the few who were mounted moved no faster than a man could walk. In the whole morning she had seen only two or three carriages inching along the streets. If their passengers were not invalids or facing miles ahead, they were fools.

  Everyone who saw her and her party paused at the very least, some pointing her out to others, or hoisting a child for a better view so one day they could tell their own children they had seen her. Whether they said they had seen the future Queen or simply a woman who held the city for a time was the question. Most people simply stared, but now and then a handful of voices cried out “Trakand! Trakand!” or even “Elayne and Andor!” as she passed. Better if there had been more cheering, yet silence was preferable to jeers. Andorans were outspoken folk, none more so than Caem
lyners. Rebellions had begun and queens lost their thrones because Caemlyners voiced their displeasure in the streets.

  An icy thought made Elayne shiver. Who holds Caemlyn holds Andor, the ancient saying went; it was not exactly true, as Rand had demonstrated, yet Caemlyn was Andor’s heart. She had laid claim to the city—the Lion Banner and Trakand’s Silver Keystone shared pride of place on the towers of the outer wall—but she did not yet hold the heart of Caemlyn, and that was far more important than holding stone and mortar.

  They will all cheer me, one day, she promised herself. I will earn their acclaim. Today, though, the crowded ways felt lonely between those few upraised voices. She wished Aviendha were there, just for her company, but Aviendha saw no reason to climb onto a horse simply to move about the city. Anyway, Elayne could feel her. It was different from the bond with Birgitte, yet she could feel her sister’s presence in the city, like sensing an unseen person in the same room, and it was comforting.

  Her companions drew their own share of attention. After barely three years as Aes Sedai, Sareitha’s dark square face had not yet achieved agelessness, and she looked a prosperous merchant in her fine bronze-colored woolens with a large silver-and-sapphires brooch holding her cloak. Her Warder, Ned Yarman, rode at her heels, and he certainly caught eyes. A tall, broad-shouldered young man with bright blue eyes and corn-yellow hair curling to his shoulders, he wore a shimmering Warder’s cloak that made him appear a disembodied head floating above a tall gray gelding that was not entirely there either, where the cloak draped its haunches. There was no mistaking what he was, or that his presence announced an Aes Sedai. The others, maintaining a circle around Elayne as they made a way through the crowd, attracted just as many eyes, though. Eight women in the red coats and burnished helmets and breastplates of the Queen’s Guard were not something seen every day. Or ever before, come to that. She had chosen them out from the new recruits herself for that very reason.