The Fires of Heaven

by Jordan, Robert

  He held still for her to reach up and take his head in her hands. For her part, she had to suppress a wince. His fresh wounds were not serious, only numerous—what could have bitten him; she was sure most of these were bites—but the old wound, that half-healed, never-healing wound in his side, that was a sinkhole of darkness, a well filled with what she thought the taint of saidin must be like. She channeled the complex flows, Air and Water, Spirit, even Fire and Earth in small amounts, that made up Healing. He did not roar and flail about. He did not even blink. He shivered. That was all. Then he took her wrists and brought her hands down from his face. She was not reluctant. His new injuries were gone, every bite and scrape and bruise, but not the old wound. Nothing had changed about that. Anything short of death should be capable of being Healed, even that. Anything!

  “Is he dead?” he asked quietly. “Did you see him die?”

  “He’s dead, Rand. I saw.”

  He nodded. “But there are others still, aren’t there? Other . . . Chosen.”

  Nynaeve felt a stabbing sliver of fear from Moghedien, but she did not glance back. “Rand, you must go. Rahvin is dead, and this place is dangerous for you as you are. You must go, and not come back here in the body.”

  “I will go.”

  He did nothing that she could see or feel—of course, she could not—but for a moment she thought the hallway behind him had . . . turned in some way. But it did not look any different. Except . . . She blinked. There was no half-gone column in the colonnade beyond him, no hole in the stone railing.

  He went on as if nothing had happened. “Tell Elayne. . . . Ask her not to hate me. Ask her . . .” Pain twisted his face. For a moment she saw the boy she had known, looking as though something precious was being ripped away from him. She reached out to comfort him, and he stepped back, his face stone again, and bleak. “Lan was right. Tell Elayne to forget me, Nynaeve. Tell her I’ve found something else to love, and there’s no room left for her. He wanted me to tell you the same thing. Lan has found someone else, too. He said for you to forget him. Better never to have been born than to love us.” He stepped back again, three long steps, the hall seemed to turn dizzyingly with him in it—or part of the hall did—and he was gone.

  Nynaeve stared at where he had been, and not at the fitfully flickering reappearance of the damage to the colonnade. Lan had told him to say that?

  “A . . . remarkable man,” Moghedien said softly. “A very, very dangerous man.”

  Nynaeve stared at her. Something new was coming through the bracelet to her. Fear was still there, but muted by . . . Expectation might have been the best way to describe it.

  “I have been helpful, have I not?” Moghedien said. “Rahvin dead, Rand al’Thor saved. None of it would have been possible without me.”

  Nynaeve understood now. Hope more than expectation. Sooner or later Nynaeve would have to wake. The a’dam would vanish. Moghedien was trying to remind her of her aid—as if it had not had to be wrenched out of her—just in case Nynaeve might be steeling herself to kill before she went. “It is time for me to go, too,” Nynaeve said. Moghedien’s face did not alter, but fear strengthened and so did hope. A large silver cup appeared in Nynaeve’s hand, apparently filled with tea. “Drink this.”

  Moghedien edged back. “What—?”

  “Not poison. I could kill you easily enough without, if that was my aim. After all, what happens to you here is real in the waking world, too.” Hope much stronger than fear now. “It will make you sleep. A deep sleep; too deep to touch Tel’aran’rhiod. It’s called forkroot.”

  Moghedien took the cup slowly. “So I cannot follow you? I will not argue.” She tipped back her head and swallowed until the cup was empty.

  Nynaeve watched her. That much should put her down quickly. Yet a cruel streak made her speak. She knew it was cruel and did not care. Moghedien should not have any quiet rest at all. “You knew Birgitte was not dead.” Moghedien’s gaze narrowed slightly. “You knew who Faolain is.” The other woman’s eyes tried to widen, but she was already drowsy. Nynaeve could feel the forkroot’s effects spreading. She concentrated on Moghedien, held there in Tel’aran’rhiod. No easy sleep for one of the Forsaken. “And you knew who Siuan is, that she used to be the Amyrlin Seat. I’ve never mentioned that in Tel’aran’rhiod. Never. I’ll see you very shortly. In Salidar.”

  Moghedien’s eyes rolled up her head. Nynaeve was not sure whether it was the forkroot or a faint, but it did not matter. She released the other woman, and Moghedien winked out. The silver collar rang as it hit the floor tiles. Elayne would be happy about that, at least.

  Nynaeve stepped out of the Dream.

  Rand trotted along the corridors of the Palace. There seemed to be less damage than he remembered, but he did not really look. He strode out into the great courtyard at the front of the Palace. Blasts of Air knocked the tall gates half off their hinges. Beyond lay a huge oval plaza, and what he had been searching for. Trollocs and Myrddraal. Rahvin was dead, and the other Forsaken were elsewhere, but there were Trollocs and Myrddraal to kill in Caemlyn.

  They were fighting, a milling mass of hundreds, perhaps thousands, surrounding something he could not see through their black-mailed numbers, as tall as a Myrddraal on its horse. Just barely he could make out his crimson banner deep in their midst. Some swung round to face the Palace as the gates were hurled asunder.

  Yet Rand stopped dead. Balls of fire rolled through the packed black-mailed mass, and burning Trollocs lay everywhere. It could not be.

  Not daring to hope or think, he channeled. Shafts of balefire leaped from his hands as fast as he could weave them, narrower than his little finger, precise and cut off as soon as they struck. They were much less powerful than the one he had used against Rahvin at the end, than any he had used against Rahvin, but he could not risk one slicing through to those trapped in the center of all those Trollocs. It made little difference. The first-struck Myrddraal seemed to reverse colors, become a white-clad black shape, then it was drifting motes that vanished as its horse fled madly. Trollocs, Myrddraal, every one that turned toward him went the same, and then he began carving into the backs of those still facing the other way, so a continuous haze of sparkling dust seemed to fill the air, renewed as it evaporated.

  They could not stand against that. Bestial cries of rage turned to howls of fear, and they fled in every direction except toward him. He saw one Myrddraal try to turn them and be trampled under, rider and horse, but the rest spurred their animals away.

  Rand let them go. He was busy staring at the veiled Aiel bursting out of their encirclement with spears and heavy-bladed knives. It was one of them carrying the banner; Aiel did not carry banners, but this one, a bit of red headband showing beneath his shoufa, did. There were battles going on down some of the streets leading from the plaza, too. Aiel against Trollocs. Townsfolk against Trollocs. Even armored men in the uniform of the Queen’s Guards against Trollocs. Apparently some who were willing to kill a queen could not stomach Trollocs. Rand only barely noticed, though. He was searching through the Aiel.

  There. A woman in a white blouse, one hand holding up her bulky skirts as she slashed at a fleeing Trolloc with a short knife; an instant later flames enveloped the bear-snouted figure.

  “Aviendha!” Rand did not know he was running until he shouted. “Aviendha!”

  And there was Mat, coat torn and blood on his sword-blade spearpoint, leaning on the black shaft watching the Trollocs flee, content to let someone else do the fighting now that that was possible. And Asmodean, sword held awkwardly and trying to look every way at once in case any Trolloc decided to turn back. Rand could sense saidin in him, though weakly; he did not think much of Asmodean’s fighting had been with that blade.

  Balefire. Balefire that burned a thread out of the Pattern. The stronger that balefire was, the further back that burning went. And whatever that person had done no longer had happened. He did not care if his blast at Rahvin had unraveled half the Pattern. Not
if this was the result.

  He became aware of tears on his cheeks, and let saidin and the Void go. He wanted to feel this. “Aviendha!” Snatching her up, he whirled her around, with her staring down at him as if he had gone mad. He did not want to put her down, but he did. So he could hug Mat. Or try to.

  Mat fended him off. “What’s the matter with you? You’d think you thought we were dead. Not that we weren’t, almost. Being a general has to be safer than this!”

  “You’re alive.” Rand laughed. He brushed back Aviendha’s hair; she had lost her headscarf, and it hung loose around her neck. “I’m happy you’re alive. That’s all.”

  He took in the plaza again, and his joy faded. Nothing could extinguish it, but the bodies lying in heaps where the Aiel had made their stand lessened it. Too many of them were not big enough to be men. There was Lamelle, veil gone and half her throat as well; she would never make him soup again. Pevin, both hands clutching the wrist-thick shaft of the Trolloc spear through his chest and the first expression on his face Rand had ever seen. Surprise. Balefire had cheated death for his friends, but not for others. Too many. Too many Maidens.

  Take what you can have. Rejoice in what you can save, and do not mourn your losses too long. It was not his thought, but he took it. It seemed a good way to avoid going mad before the taint on saidin drove him to it.

  “Where did you go?” Aviendha demanded. Not angrily. If anything, she looked relieved. “One second you were there, the next you were gone.”

  “I had to kill Rahvin,” he said quietly. She opened her mouth, but he put his fingers over it to silence her, then gently pushed her away. Take what you can have. “Leave it at that. He’s dead.”

  Bael came limping up, shoufa still around his head but veil hanging down his chest. There was blood on his thigh, and on the point of his one remaining spear as well. “The Nightrunners and Shadowtwisted are running, Car’a’carn. Some of the wetlanders have joined the dance against them. Even some of the armored men, though they danced against us at first.” Sulin was behind him, unveiled, a nasty red gash across her cheek.

  “Hunt them down however long it takes,” Rand said. He began walking, not sure where as long as it was away from Aviendha. “I don’t want them loose on the countryside. Keep an eye on the Guards. I’ll find out later which of them were Rahvin’s men and which . . .” He walked on, talking and not looking back. Take what you can have.

  CHAPTER

  56

  Glowing Embers

  The high window had more than enough room for Rand to stand in it, stretching far above his head and clearing his shoulders by two feet to either side. Shirtsleeves rolled up, he stared down at one of the Royal Palace’s gardens. Aviendha was trailing her hand in the fountain’s redstone basin, still intrigued by so much water with no purpose but to be looked at and keep ornamental fish alive. She had been more than indignant at first, when he told her she could not go chasing Trollocs through the streets. In fact, he was not sure she would not be down there now if not for a quiet escort of Maidens that Sulin did not think he had noticed. Neither was he supposed to have heard the white-haired Maiden remind her that she was Far Dareis Mai no longer and not yet a Wise One. Coatless, but wearing his hat against the sun, Mat was sitting on the coping of the basin, talking to her. No doubt probing for what she knew of whether the Aiel were preventing people from leaving; even if Mat did decide to accept his fate, it was unlikely he would ever stop complaining about it. Asmodean sat on a bench in the shade of a red myrtle tree, playing his harp. Rand wondered whether the man knew what had happened, or suspected. He should have no memory—for him, it never happened—but who could say what one of the Forsaken knew or could reason out?

  A polite cough turned him away from the garden.

  The window where he stood was a span and a half above the floor in the west wall of the throne room, the Grand Hall where Queens of Andor had received embassies and pronounced judgment for nearly a thousand years. It was the only place he had thought he could be sure of watching Mat and Aviendha unseen and undisturbed. Rows of white columns twenty paces high marched down the sides of the hall. The light from the tall windows in the walls mingled with colored light from great windows set in the arching ceiling, windows where the White Lion alternated with portraits of early queens of the realm and scenes of great Andoran victories. Enaila and Somara did not appear impressed.

  Rand let himself down by his fingertips. “Is there news from Bael?”

  Enaila shrugged. “The hunt for Trollocs goes on.” By her tone, the diminutive woman would have liked to be part of that. Somara’s height made her seem even shorter. “Some of the city people give aid. Most hide. The city gates are held. None of the Shadowtwisted will escape, I think, but I fear some of the Nightrunners may.” Myrddraal were hard to kill, and just as hard to corner. Sometimes it was easy to believe the old tales that they rode shadows and could vanish by turning sideways.

  “We brought you some soup,” Somara said, nodding her flaxen head toward a silver tray covered with a striped cloth, sitting on the dais that held the Lion Throne. Carved and gilded, with huge lion’s paws at the ends of its legs, the throne was a massive chair at the top of four white marble stairs, with a strip of red carpet leading up to it. The Lion of Andor, picked out in moonstones on a field of rubies, would have stood above Morgase’s head whenever she occupied that seat. “Aviendha says you have not eaten yet today. It is the soup Lamelle used to make for you.”

  “I suppose none of the servants have come back,” Rand sighed. “One of the cooks, maybe? A helper?” Enaila shook her head scornfully. She would serve her time as gai’shain with a good grace, if it ever came to that, but the idea of anyone spending their entire life serving someone else disgusted her.

  Climbing the stairs, he squatted to twitch the cloth aside. His nose twitched, too. By the smell, whichever of them had made it was no better a cook than Lamelle had been. The sound of a man’s boots coming up the hall gave him an excuse to turn his back on the tray. With any luck, he would not have to eat it.

  The man approaching up the long, red-and-white-tiled floor was certainly no Andorman, in his short gray coat and those baggy trousers stuffed into boots turned down at the knee. Slender and only a hand taller than Enaila, he had a hooked beak of a nose and dark tilted eyes. Gray streaked his black hair and a thick mustache like down-curved horns around his wide mouth. He paused to make a leg and bow slightly, handling the curved sword at his hip gracefully despite the fact that incongruously he carried two silver goblets in one hand and a sealed pottery jar in the other.

  “Forgive my intrusion,” he said, “but there was no one to announce me.” His clothes might be plain and even travel-worn, but he had what appeared to be an ivory rod capped with a golden wolf’s head thrust behind his sword belt. “I am Davram Bashere, Marshal-General of Saldaea. I am here to speak with the Lord Dragon, who rumors in the city say is here in the Royal Palace. I assume that I address him?” For an instant his eyes went to the glittering Dragons twining red-and-gold around Rand’s arms.

  “I am Rand al’Thor, Lord Bashere. The Dragon Reborn.” Enaila and Somara had moved between Rand and the man, each with a hand on the hilt of her long-bladed knife, poised to veil. “I am surprised to find a Saldaean lord in Caemlyn, much less wanting to speak to me.”

  “In truth, I rode to Caemlyn to speak to Morgase, but I was put off by Lord Gaebril’s toadies—King Gaebril, I should say? Or does he still live?” Bashere’s tone said he doubted it, and did not care one way or the other. He did not pause. “Many in the city say Morgase is dead, as well.”

  “They’re both dead,” Rand said bleakly. He sat down on the throne, his head resting against the moonstone Lion of Andor. The throne had been sized for women. “I killed Gaebril, but not before he killed Morgase.”

  Bashere quirked an eyebrow. “Should I hail King Rand of Andor, then?”

  Rand leaned forward angrily. “Andor has always had a queen, and it still d
oes. Elayne was Daughter-Heir. With her mother dead, she is queen. Maybe she has to be crowned first—I don’t know the law—but she is queen as far as I am concerned. I am the Dragon Reborn. That is as much as I want, and more. What is it you want of me, Lord Bashere?”

  If his anger disturbed Bashere at all, the man gave no outward sign. Those tilted eyes watched Rand carefully, but not uneasily. “The White Tower allowed Mazrim Taim to escape. The false Dragon.” He paused, then went on when Rand said nothing. “Queen Tenobia did not want Saldaea troubled again, so I was sent to hunt him down once more and put an end to him. I have followed him south for many weeks. You need not fear I’ve brought a foreign army into Andor. Except for an escort of ten, the rest I left camped in Braem Wood, well north of any border Andor has claimed in two hundred years. But Taim is in Andor. I am sure of it.”

  Rand leaned back again, hesitating. “You cannot have him, Lord Bashere.”

  “May I ask why not, my Lord Dragon? If you wish to use Aiel to hunt him, I have no objection. My men will remain in Braem Wood until I return.”

  This part of his plan he had not meant to reveal so soon. Delay could be costly, but he had intended to have a firm hold on the nations first. Yet it might as well begin now. “I am announcing an amnesty. I can channel, Lord Bashere. Why should another man be hunted down and killed or gentled because he can do what I can? I will announce that any man who can touch the True Source, any man who wants to learn, can come to me and have my protection. The Last Battle is coming, Lord Bashere. There may not be time for any of us to go mad before, and I would not waste one man for the risk anyway. When the Trollocs came out of the Blight in the Trolloc Wars, they marched with Dreadlords, men and women who wielded the Power for the Shadow. We will face that again at Tarmon Gai’don. I don’t know how many Aes Sedai will be at my side, but I won’t turn away any man who channels if he will march with me. Mazrim Taim is mine, Lord Bashere, not yours.”