A Crown of Swords

by Jordan, Robert

  She broke in on him sharply. “No! I am going where you go, Rand al’Thor. You need me, and you know it.” The last sounded more plea than demand, but when a woman planted her fists on her hips that way and fixed her eyes to you, she was not begging.

  “I am going, too,” Loial added, leaning on his long-hafted axe. “You always manage to do things when I’m somewhere else.” His voice took on a plaintive edge. “It won’t do, Rand. It will not do for the book. How can I write about things if I am not there?”

  Still looking at Min, Rand half-raised a hand toward her, then let it fall. She met his gaze levelly.

  “This is . . . madness.” Holding his reins stiffly, Dashiva booted the plump mare closer to Rand’s black. Reluctance twisted his features; perhaps even Asha’man worried at being too near Rand. “All it needs is one man with a . . . a bow, or a knife, and you don’t see him in time. Send one of the Asha’man to do what needs doing, or more, if you think it’s necessary. A gateway to the palace, and it can be done before anyone knows what has happened.”

  “And sit here past dark,” Rand cut in, reining his gelding around to face Dashiva, “until they know this place well enough to open one? That way brings bloodshed for sure. They’ve seen us from the walls, unless they’re blind. Sooner or later they will send somebody to find out who we are, and how many.” The rest of the column remained hidden behind the rise, and the banners were down there, too, but men sitting their horses on a ridge with Maidens for company would indeed attract curiosity. “I will do this my way.” His voice rose in anger, and he smelled of cold fury. “Nobody dies unless it can’t be avoided, Dashiva. I’ve had a bellyful of death. Do you understand me? Nobody!”

  “As my Lord Dragon commands.” The fellow inclined his head, but he sounded sour, and he smelled. . . .

  Perrin rubbed his nose. The smell . . . skittered, dodging wildly through fear and hate and anger and a dozen more emotions almost too quickly to make out. He no longer doubted the man was mad, however good a face the fellow put on. Perrin no longer really cared, either. This close. . . .

  Digging his heels into Stepper’s flanks, he started for the city and Faile, not waiting for the rest, barely noticing Aram close behind. He did not have to see Aram to know he would be there. All he could think of was Faile. If he got Swallow safely into the city. . . . He made himself keep Stepper at no more than a quick walk. A galloping rider drew eyes, and questions, and delays. At that pace, the others caught up with Aram and him fast enough, those who were coming. Min had gotten her way, it seemed, and so had Loial. The Maidens fanned out ahead, some giving Perrin sympathetic looks as they trotted by. Chiad studied the ground until she was beyond him.

  “I still don’t like this plan,” Havien muttered on one side of Rand. “Forgive me, my Lord Dragon, but I do not.”

  Dobraine, on Rand’s other side, grunted. “We have been over that, Mayener. If we did as you want, they would close the gates on us before we covered a mile.” Havien growled something under his breath and danced his horse a few paces. He had wanted every man to follow Rand into the city.

  Perrin glanced over his shoulder, past the Asha’man. Damer Flinn, recognizable by his coat, and a few of the Two Rivers men were visible on the ridge, standing and holding their horses. Perrin sighed. He would not have minded having the Two Rivers men along. But Rand was probably right, and Dobraine had backed him up.

  A few men could enter where a small army could not. If the gates were shut, the Aiel would have to besiege the city, if they still would, and then the killing began anew. Rand had stuffed the Dragon Scepter into one of the geldings’ saddlebags so just the carved butt stuck out, and that plain coat looked like nothing the Dragon Reborn would wear. For the Asha’man, nobody in the city had any idea what a black coat meant. A few men were easier to kill than a small army, too, even if most of them could channel. Perrin had seen an Asha’man take a Shaido spear through his belly, and the man had died no harder than any other.

  Dashiva grumbled under his breath; Perrin caught “hero” and “fool” in equally disparaging tones. Without Faile, he might have agreed. Once Rand peered toward the Aiel encampment sprawled over the hills two or three miles east of the city, and Perrin held his breath, but whatever thoughts Rand had, he kept on the road. Nothing mattered more than Faile. Nothing, whether or not Rand saw it so.

  A good half-mile short of the gates, they rode into another camp, one that made Perrin frown. It was big enough for a city itself, a thick band of ramshackle brush huts and rickety tents made from scraps, on burned-over ground, clinging to the high gray walls as far as he could see. This had been called Foregate once, warren of twisting streets and alleys, before the Shaido burned it. Some of the people stared in silence as the strange party passed, at an Ogier, and Aiel Maidens, but most scuttled about their business with wary, sullen faces and a care to notice nothing that was not right in front of them. The bright colors and often tattered cast-off finery worn by Foregaters mingled with the somber garb more usual for Cairhienin, the plain dark clothes of villagers and farmers. The Foregaters had been in the city when Perrin left, along with thousands of refugees from deeper inside the country. Many of those faces bore bruises and worse, cuts and slashes, often unbandaged. Colavaere must have put them out. They would not have left the shelter of the walls on their own; Foregaters and refugees alike feared the return of the Shaido the way a man who had been seared to the bone feared hot iron.

  The road ran straight through the camp to the Jangai Gates, three tall square arches flanked by towers. Helmeted men lounged up on the battlements, peering down through the gaps in the stone teeth. Some stared off toward the men on the hilltop, and here and there an officer with a con held a looking glass to his eye. Rand’s small party drew inquiring glances. Men ahorseback and Aiel Maidens; not common companions. Crossbows showed atop the serrated wall, but no one raised a weapon. The iron-bound gates stood open. Perrin held his breath. He wanted very much to gallop for the Sun Palace and Faile.

  Just inside the gates sat a squat stone guard house, where strangers to the city were supposed to register before entering. A square-faced Cairhienin officer watched them pass with a disgruntled frown, eyeing the Maidens uneasily. He just stood there, watching.

  “As I told you,” Dobraine said once they were by the guard house. “Colavaere gave free access to the city for Coronation Festival. Not even someone under order of arrest can be denied or detained. It is tradition.” He sounded relieved, though. Min sighed audibly, and Loial let out a breath that could have been heard two streets over. Perrin’s chest was still too tight for sighing. Swallow was inside Cairhien. Now, if he could only get her to the Royal Palace.

  Up close, Cairhien carried out what it had promised from afar. The highest of the hills lay inside the walls, but terraced and faced with stone till they no longer seemed hills at all. Broad, crowded streets met at right angles. In this city, even the alleys made a grid. The streets rose and fell reluctantly with the hills, often simply cutting through. From shops to palaces, the buildings were all stark squares and severe rectangles, even the great buttressed towers, each wrapped in scaffolding on a hilltop, the once-fabled topless towers of Cairhien, still being rebuilt after burning in the Aiel War. The city seemed harder than stone, a bruising place, and shadows stretching across everything heightened the effect. Loial’s tufted ears twitched almost without stopping; a worried frown creased his forehead, and his dangling eyebrows brushed his cheek.

  There were few signs of Coronation Festival, or High Chasaline. Perrin had no notion what the Festival might entail, but in the Two Rivers, the Day of Reflection was a time of merriment and forgetting the bleakness of winter. Here, a near hush hung in the air, despite the number of people. Anywhere else, Perrin might have thought it the unnatural heat dragging people’s spirits down, but except for Foregaters, Cairhienin were a sober, austere lot. On the surface, at least; what lay underneath, he would as soon not think about. The hawkers and cart-peddlers he re
membered were gone from the streets, the musicians and tumblers and puppet shows. Those people would be in the ragtag camp outside the walls. A few closed, dark-painted sedan chairs threaded through the quiet throngs, some with House banners a little larger than con standing stiffly above. They moved as slowly as the ox-carts with goad-wielding drivers walking alongside, axles squealing in the stillness. Outlanders stood out, no matter how little color they wore, because few except outlanders rode. The almost inevitably shorter natives looked like pale-faced crows in their dark garb. Aiel stood out too, of course. Whether one alone or ten together, they walked in clearings through the crowds; eyes darted away and space just opened up around them wherever they went.

  Aiel faces turned toward the party as it made its slow way through the crowds. Even if not all recognized Rand in his green coat, they knew who a tall wetlander escorted by Maidens must be. Those faces sent a chill down Perrin’s spine: considering. They made him thankful Rand had left all of the Aes Sedai behind. Aside from the Aiel, the Dragon Reborn moved through a river of unconcern that parted for the Maidens and closed in again behind the Asha’man.

  The Royal Palace of Cairhien, the Sun Palace, the Palace of the Rising Sun in Splendor—Cairhienin were great ones for names, each more extravagant than the last—stood atop the highest hill in the city, a dark mass of square stone with stepped towers looming over everything. The street, the Way of the Crown, became a long broad ramp rising toward the palace, and Perrin drew a deep breath as they started up. Faile was up there. She had to be, and safe. Whatever else, she had to be safe. He touched the knot holding Swallow’s reins to a ring on his pommel, stroked the axe at his waist. The horses’ shod hooves rang loudly on the paving stones. The Maidens made no sound at all.

  The guards on the great, open bronze gates watched their slow approach and exchanged glances. They were colorful for Cairhienin soldiers, ten men with the Rising Sun in gold on their dark breastplates and scarves in House Saighan’s colors tied below the heads of their halberds. Perrin could have written out their thoughts. Thirteen men on horseback, but in no hurry, and only two wearing armor, one in Mayener red. Any trouble would come from Caraline Damodred and Toram Riatin, and Mayeners had no place in that. And there was a woman, and an Ogier. Surely they intended no trouble. Still, three dozen or so Maidens trotting ahead of the horses hardly looked as though they were coming for tea. For an instant all hung balanced. Then a Maiden veiled herself. The guards jerked as if goosed, and one slanted his halberd and darted for the gates. Two steps he took, and stopped, rigid as a statue. Every guard stood stiff; nothing moved but their heads.

  “Good,” Rand murmured. “Now tie off the flows and leave them for later.”

  Perrin shrugged uncomfortably. The Asha’man had spread out behind, taking up most of the width of the ramp; they must be using the Power. Very likely the eight of them could tear the whole palace apart. Maybe Rand could have by himself. But if those towers began spewing crossbow bolts, they would die with everyone else, caught in the open on this ramp that no longer seemed so wide.

  Nobody sped up. Any eyes at the tall narrow windows of the palace, on the colonnaded walks high above, must see nothing out of the ordinary. Sulin flashed Maiden hand-talk, and the one who had veiled lowered the black cloth hurriedly, face flushing. A slow walk, up the stone ramp. Some of the guards’ helmeted heads shook wildly, eyes rolling; one seemed to have fainted, slumping upright with his chin on his chest. Their mouths strained, open, but no sound came out. Perrin tried not to think about what had gagged them. A slow walk, through the open bronze gates, into the main courtyard.

  There were no soldiers here. The stone balconies around the courtyard stood empty. Liveried servants rushed out with downcast eyes to take the horses’ reins and hold stirrups. Stripes of red and yellow and silver ran down the sleeves of otherwise dark coats and dresses, and each had the Rising Sun small on the left breast. That was more color than Perrin had seen on a Cairhienin servant before. They could not see the guards outside, and likely would have done little different if they had. In Cairhien, servants played their own version of Daes Dae’mar, the Game of Houses, but they pretended to ignore the doings of those above them. Taking too much notice of what happened among your betters—or at least, being seen to take notice—might mean being caught up in it. In Cairhien, maybe in most lands, ordinary folk could be crushed unnoticed where the mighty walked.

  A blocky woman led Stepper and Swallow away without really looking at him. Swallow was inside the Sun Palace, and it made no difference. He still did not know whether Faile was alive or dead. A fool boy’s fool fancy.

  Shifting his axe at his hip, he followed Rand up the broad gray stairs at the far end of the courtyard, and nodded when Aram reached over his shoulder again to ease his sword. Liveried men swung open the great doors at the head of the stairs, bronze like the outer gates and marked large with the Rising Sun of Cairhien.

  Once, the entry hall would have stunned Perrin with its grandeur. Thick square columns of dark marble held a square-vaulted ceiling ten paces above floor tiles that alternated dark blue and deep gold. Gilded Rising Suns marched around the cornices, and friezes carved in the walls showed Cairhienin triumphs in battle. The hall was empty, save for a handful of young men clustered beneath one of the friezes who fell silent when Perrin and the rest entered.

  Not all men, he realized. All wore swords, but four of the seven were women, in coats and snug breeches much like Min’s, their hair cut short as the men’s. Not that that was particularly short; men and women alike had it gathered in a kind of tail that reached their shoulders, tied with a dark ribbon. One of the women wore green a little paler than normal for Cairhienin, and another bright blue; all the rest were in dark colors, with a few bright stripes across their chests. They studied Rand’s party—with an especial view for himself, Perrin realized; his yellow eyes took people aback, although he hardly noticed it anymore unless somebody jumped, or made a commotion—studied in silence until the last of the Asha’man was in and the doors swung shut. The boom of the closing covered a moment of fierce whispering; then they came swaggering closer, the women strutting even more arrogantly than the men, which took some doing. Even the way they knelt was arrogant.

  The green-clad woman glanced at the one in blue, who had her head down, and said, “My Lord Dragon, I am Camaille Nolaisen. Selande Darengil leads our society. . . .” She blinked at a fierce look from the woman in blue. Despite the glare, Selande smelled afraid to her bones, if Perrin was making out who was who properly. Clearing her throat, Camaille went on, “We did not think—We did not expect you to return—so soon.”

  “Yes,” Rand said softly. “I doubt anyone thought I would return—so soon. None of you has any reason to be afraid of me. None at all. If you believe anything, believe that.” Surprisingly, he looked right at Selande when he said that. Her head whipped up, and as she stared at him, the fear smell faded. Not completely, but down to a tatter. How had Rand known it was there? “Where is Colavaere?” Rand asked.

  Camaille opened her mouth, but it was Selande who answered. “In the Grand Hall of the Sun.” Her voice grew stronger as she spoke, the scent of her fear growing weaker. Oddly, a slight tinge of jealousy touched it once, just for an instant, when she glanced at Min. Sometimes his sense of smell was more confusing than enlightening. “It is the third Sunset Convocation,” she went on. “We are not important enough to attend. Besides, I think we of the societies make her uneasy.”

  “The third,” Dobraine muttered. “The ninth sunset after her coronation already. She wasted no time. At least they will all be together. No one of any rank or pretension will miss it, Cairhienin or Tairen.”

  Drawing herself up on her knees, Selande managed to make it seem she was meeting Rand eye-to-eye. “We are ready to dance the blades for you, my Lord Dragon.” Sulin shook her head, wincing, and another Maiden groaned audibly; several looked and smelled ready to do some violence then and there. The Aiel could not decide what to
make of these young wetlanders. The problem in Aiel eyes were that they were trying to be Aiel, in a way, to follow ji’e’toh, their version of it, anyway. These seven were not the lot; hundreds of the idiots, at least, could be found all over the city, organized into societies in imitation of the Aiel. Half the Aiel Perrin had heard mention them wanted to help; the other half wanted to strangle them.

  For himself, he did not care whether they mangled ji’e’toh to mincemeat. “Where is my wife?” he demanded. “Where is Faile?” The young fools exchanged guarded looks. Guarded!

  “She is in the Grand Hall of the Sun,” Selande said slowly. “She—she is one of Queen—of Colavaere’s lady attendants.”

  “Put your eyes back in your head, Perrin,” Min whispered. “She must have a good reason. You know she must.”

  Shrugging inside his coat, Perrin tried to gather himself. One of Colavaere’s attendants? Whatever her reason, it must be good. That much he was sure of. But what could it be?

  Selande and the others were passing those guarded looks about again. One of the men, a young fellow with a pointed nose, whispered fierce and low, “We swore not to tell anyone! Not anyone! On water oath!”

  Before Perrin could demand to be told Rand spoke. “Selande, lead the way to the Grand Hall. There will be no blades. I am here to see justice done, to all who deserve it.”

  Something in his voice made Perrin’s hackles rise. A hardness grim as a hammer’s face. Faile did have a good reason. She had to.

  CHAPTER

  5

  A Broken Crown

  Wide and tall as the corridors were, they felt close, and dim despite tall gilded stand-lamps with mirrors on every branch, lit wherever daylight could not penetrate. Tapestries hung few and far between on the walls, scenes of hunt or battle with people and animals arranged more precisely than ever nature had. Scattered niches held bowls and vases and now and then a small statue, in gold or silver or alabaster, but even the statues seemed to emphasize that they were stone or metal, as if the sculptors had tried to banish curves.