The Gathering Storm

by Robert Jordan

  “Interesting,” Cadsuane said, her voice cold. “And did you speak the words I prepared for you?”

  “I began to,” Tam said, “but I realized that it wasn’t working. He wouldn’t open up to me, and well he shouldn’t. A man using an Aes Sedai script with his own son! I don’t know what you did to him, woman, but I recognize hatred when I see it. You have a lot to explain to—”

  Tam cut off as he was suddenly lifted into the air by unseen hands. “You recall, perhaps, what I said about civility, boy?” Cadsuane asked.

  “Cadsuane!” Nynaeve said. “You don’t need to—”

  “It’s all right, Wisdom,” Tam said. He looked at Cadsuane. Min had seen her treat others like this, including Rand. He had always grown frustrated, and others she did it to were prone to bellowing.

  Tam stared her in the eyes. “I’ve known men who, when challenged, always turn to their fists for answers. I’ve never liked Aes Sedai; I was happy to be rid of them when I returned to my farm. A bully is a bully, whether she uses the strength of her arm or other means.”

  Cadsuane snorted, but the words had irked her, for she set Tam down.

  “Now,” Nynaeve said, as if she’d been the one to defuse the exchange, “perhaps we can get back to what is important. Tam al’Thor, I’d have expected you of all people to handle this better. Didn’t we warn you that Rand had grown unstable?”

  “Unstable?” Tam asked. “Nynaeve, that boy is right near insane. What has happened to him? I understand what battle can do to a man, but. . . .”

  “This is irrelevant,” Cadsuane said. “You realize, child, that might have been our last opportunity to save your son?”

  “If you’d explained to me how he regarded you,” Tam said, “it might have gone differently. Burn me! This is what I get for listening to Aes Sedai.”

  “This is what you get for being wool-headed and ignoring what you are told!” Nynaeve interjected.

  “This is what we all get,” Min said, “for assuming we can make him do what we want.”

  The room fell still.

  And suddenly Min realized that through their bond, she could feel Rand. Distant, to the west. “He’s gone,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Tam said, sighing. “He opened one of those gateways right on the balcony. Left me alive, though I could have sworn—looking in his eyes—that he meant to kill me. I’ve seen that look in the eyes of men before, and one of the two of us always ended up bleeding on the floor.”

  “What happened, then?” Nynaeve asked.

  “He . . . seemed to be distracted by something, suddenly,” Tam said. “He took that little statue and dashed through the gateway.”

  Cadsuane raised an eyebrow. “And did you see, by chance, where that gateway took him?”

  West, Min thought. Far to the west.

  “I’m not certain,” Tam admitted. “It was dark, though I thought. . . .”

  “What?” Nynaeve prodded.

  “Ebou Dar,” Min said, surprising them all. “He’s gone to destroy the Seanchan. Just as he told the Maidens he would.”

  “I don’t know about that last part,” Tam said. “But it did look like Ebou Dar.”

  “Light preserve us,” Corele whispered.

  CHAPTER 49

  Just Another Man

  Rand walked, stump shoved in the pocket of his coat, head down, carrying the access key securely wrapped in white linen and looped to his belt at his side. Nobody paid attention to him. He was just another man walking the streets of Ebou Dar. Nothing special, despite the fact that he was taller than most. He had reddish gold hair, maybe suggesting some Aiel blood. But a lot of strange people had fled to the city recently to seek Seanchan protection. What was one more?

  As long as a person wasn’t able to channel, he or she could find stability here. Safety.

  That bothered him. They were his enemies. They were conquerors. He felt their lands shouldn’t be peaceful. They should be terrible, full of suffering because of the tyrannical rule. But it wasn’t like that at all.

  Not unless you could channel. What the Seanchan did with this group of people was horrifying. Not all was well beneath this happy surface. And yet, it was shocking to realize how well they treated others.

  Tinkers camped outside the city in large groups. Their wagons had not moved for weeks, and it seemed they were forming villages. As Rand had moved among them, he’d heard some of them speak of settling down. Others had objected to this, of course. They were the Tinkers, the Traveling People. How would they find the Song if they did not search for it? It was as much a part of them as the Way of the Leaf.

  Last night, Rand had listened to them at one of the campfires. They’d welcomed him in, fed him, never asking who he was. He’d kept the dragon on his hand hidden and the access key carefully tucked in his coat pocket, looking at that fire burning down to coals.

  He hadn’t ever been to Ebou Dar itself; he’d only visited the hills to the north, where he’d fought the Seanchan while wielding Callandor. That had been a place of failure. Now he had returned to Altara. But for what?

  In the morning, when the gates to the city had opened, he made his way inside with the others who had arrived at night. The Tinkers had taken them all in; apparently, they were receiving a ration of food from the Seanchan to house after-hour travelers. That was only one of their many occupations. They mended pots, sewed uniforms and did other odd jobs. For this, they received the protection of rulers for the first time in their long history.

  He’d spent long enough with the Aiel to pick up some of their disdain for the Tinkers. Yet that disdain warred with his knowledge that the Tuatha’an—in many ways—followed more true, traditional Aiel ways. Rand could remember what it was like to live as they had. In the visions of Rhuidean, he had followed the Way of the Leaf. He’d also seen the Age of Legends. He’d lived those lives, the lives of others, for a few brief moments.

  He walked along the packed streets of the muggy city, still in something of a daze. Last night, he had traded his fine black coat to a Tinker for a common brown cloak, ragged on the bottom and stitched in places. Not a Tinker cloak, just one that a Tinker had sewn up for a man who had never returned to claim it. It made him stand out less, even if it did require him to carry the access key looped to his belt, rather than his deep pocket. The Tinker also gave him a walking staff, which Rand used as he walked, slouching slightly. Height might make him memorable. He wanted to be invisible to these people.

  He had nearly killed his father. He hadn’t been forced to by Semirhage, or by Lews Therin’s influence. No excuses. No argument. He, Rand al’Thor, had tried to kill his own father. He’d drawn in the Power, made the weaves and nearly released them.

  Rand’s rage was gone, replaced by loathing. He’d wanted to make himself hard. He’d needed to be hard. But this was where hardness had brought him. Lews Therin had been able to claim madness for his atrocities. Rand had nothing, no place to hide, no refuge from himself.

  Ebou Dar. It was a busy, bulging city, split in half by its large river. Rand walked the west side, through squares edged with beautiful statues and streets lined with row upon row of white houses, many several stories high. He often passed men fighting with fists or knives, and nobody making any effort to break them apart. Even the women wore knives at their necks in jeweled scabbards, hanging above low-cut dresses worn over colorful petticoats.

  He ignored them all. Instead, he thought on the Tinkers. Tinkers were safe here, but Rand’s own father wasn’t safe in his empire. Rand’s friends feared him; he had seen it in Nynaeve’s eyes.

  The people here weren’t afraid. Seanchan officers moved through the crowds, wearing those insectlike helms. The people made way for them, but out of respect. When Rand heard commoners speaking, they were glad for the stability. They actually praised the Seanchan for conquering them!

  Rand crossed a short, canal-spanning bridge. Small boats idled down the waterway, boatmen calling greetings to one another. There didn’t seem
to be any sense of order to the city layout; where he expected houses, he found shops, and instead of similar shops clustering together— as was common in most cities—here they were scattered, haphazard. On the other side of the bridge, he passed a tall, white mansion, then a tavern right next to it.

  A man in a colorful silk vest jostled Rand on the street, then offered a lengthy, overly polite apology. Rand hurried on, lest the man want to start a duel.

  This did not seem like an oppressed people. There was no undercurrent of resentment. The Seanchan had a much better hold on Ebou Dar than Rand had on Bandar Eban, and the people here were happy—even prosperous! Of course, Altara—as a kingdom—had never been very strong. Rand knew from his tutors that the Crown’s authority hadn’t extended much beyond the borders of the city. It was much the same for the other places the Seanchan had conquered. Tarabon, Amadicia, Almoth Plain. Some were more stable than Altara, others less, but all would welcome security.

  Rand stopped and leaned against another white building, this one a farrier’s shop. He raised his stump to his head, trying to clear his mind.

  He didn’t want to confront what he had nearly done back in the Stone. He didn’t want to confront what he had done: weaving Air and shoving Tam to the ground, threatening him; raving.

  Rand couldn’t focus on that. He had not come to Ebou Dar to gawk like a farmboy. He had come to destroy his enemies! They defied him; they needed to be eliminated. For the good of all nations.

  But if he drew that much power through the access key, what damage would he cause? How many lives would he end? And would he not simply light a beacon for the Forsaken, as he had in cleansing saidin?

  Let them come. He straightened up. He could defeat them.

  It was time to attack. Time to burn the Seanchan off the land. He set aside his staff and took the key off its strap at his belt, but could not force himself to unwrap it from its linen shroud. He stared at it in his hand for a time, then continued to walk, idly leaving the staff behind. It felt so odd to be just another foreigner. The Dragon Reborn walked among this people, and they did not know him. To them, Rand al’Thor was far off. The Last Battle was secondary to whether or not they could get their chickens to market, or whether their son would recover from his cough, or whether they would be able to afford that new silk vest they had been wanting.

  They would not know Rand until he destroyed them.

  It will be a mercy, Lews Therin whispered. Death is always a mercy. The madman didn’t sound as crazy as he once had. In fact, his voice had started to sound an awful lot like Rand’s own voice.

  Rand stopped atop another bridge, looking over at the city’s massive white-walled palace, home to the Seanchan court. It rose four stories high, with rings of gold at the base of its four domes and more gold at the tips of its many spires. The Daughter of the Nine Moons would be found in there. He could give those walls a purity they had never known, a perfection. That would make the building complete, in a way, in the moment before it faded into nothingness.

  He unwrapped the access key, just another foreigner, standing on the muddy bridge. After destroying the palace, he would have to be quick. He’d send off bursts of balefire to destroy the ships in the harbor, then use something more mundane to rain fire on the city itself, throw it into a panic. The chaos would delay his enemies’ reaction. After that, he would Travel to the garrisons at the city gates and destroy them. He vaguely remembered scout reports of supply camps to the north, well stocked with both soldiers and foodstuffs. He would destroy them next.

  From there, he’d need to move on to Amador, then to Tanchico and others. He’d Travel quickly, never remaining in one place long enough to be caught by the Forsaken. A flickering light of death, like a burning ember, flaring to life here, then there. Many would die, but most would be Seanchan. Invaders.

  He stared down at the access key. Then he seized saidin.

  The sickness washed across him more powerfully than it ever had before. The force of it knocked him to the ground like a physical blow. He cried out, barely noticing when he hit the stones. He groaned, gripping the access key, curling around it. His insides seemed to burn, and he turned his head, rolling onto his shoulder and vomiting onto the bridge.

  But he held on to saidin. He needed the power. The succulent, beautiful power. Even the stench of his own vomit seemed more real to him, more sweet, for the power within him.

  He opened his eyes. People were gathered around him, concerned. A Seanchan patrol was approaching. Now was the time. He had to strike.

  But he could not. The people looked so concerned. So worried. They cared.

  Screaming in frustration, Rand made a gateway, causing the people to jump back in shock. He stumbled to his feet and threw himself through, scrabbling on all fours, as the Seanchan soldiers drew swords and yelled unfamiliar words.

  Rand landed on a large stone disc of black and white, the air around him a void of darkness. The portal closed behind, locking Ebou Dar away, and the disc began to move. It floated through the void, lit by some strange ambient light. Rand curled up on the disc, cradling the access key, breathing deeply.

  Why can’t I be strong enough? He didn’t know if the thought was his or if it was Lews Therin’s. The two were the same. Why can’t I do what I must?

  The disc traveled for a short time, the only sound in the void that of his breathing. The disc looked like one of the seals to the Dark One’s prison, split with a sinuous line dividing the black from the white. Rand lay directly atop it. They called the black half the Dragon’s Fang. To the people, it symbolized evil. Destruction.

  But Rand was necessary destruction. Why had the Pattern pushed him so hard if he didn’t need to destroy? Originally, he had tried to avoid killing—but there had been little chance of that working. Then he’d made himself avoid killing women. That had proven impossible.

  He was destruction. He just had to accept that. Someone had to be hard enough to do what was necessary, didn’t they?

  A gateway opened, and he stumbled to his feet, clutching the access key. He stepped from the Skimming platform and out onto an empty meadow. The place where he’d fought the Seanchan once with Callandor. And failed.

  He stared at this place for a long time, breathing in and out, then spun another gateway. This one opened onto a field of snow, and icy wind blasted at him. He stepped through, feet crunching into the snow, and let the gateway close.

  Here, the world spread before him.

  Why have we come here? Rand thought.

  Because, Rand replied. Because we made this. This is where we died.

  He stood on the very point of Dragonmount, the lone peak that had erupted where Lews Therin had killed himself three thousand years before. To one side, he could see down hundreds of feet to where the side of the mountain opened into a blasted-out chasm. The opening was enormous, larger than it looked from profile. A wide oval of red, blazing, churning rock. It was as if a chunk of the mountain were simply missing, torn away, leaving the peak to rise into the air but the entire side of the mountain gone.

  Rand stared down into that seething chasm. It was like the maw of a beast. Heat burned from below and flakes of ash twisted into the sky.

  The dun sky was clouded above him. The ground seemed equally distant, barely visible, like a quilt marked with patterns. Here a patch of green that was a forest. There a stitch that was a river. To the east, he saw a small speck in the river, like a floating leaf caught in the tiny current. Tar Valon.

  Rand sat down, the snow crunching beneath his weight. He set the access key into the bank before him and wove Air and Fire to keep himself warm.

  Then he rested his elbows on his knees and his head on his hand, staring at the diminutive statue of the man with the globe.

  To think.

  CHAPTER 50

  Veins of Gold

  Wind blew around Rand as he sat at the top of the world. His weaving of Air and Fire had melted away the snow around him, exposing a jagged gray-bl
ack tip of rock about three paces wide. The peak was like a broken fingernail jutting into the sky, and Rand sat atop it. As far as he could tell, it was the very tip of Dragonmount. Perhaps the highest point in the world.

  He sat upon his small outcropping, the access key sitting on the rock in front of him. The air was thin here, and he’d had trouble breathing until he’d found a way to weave Air so that it compressed slightly around him. Like the weave that warmed him, he wasn’t certain how he’d done it. He vaguely remembered Asmodean trying to teach him a similar weave, and Rand hadn’t been able to get it right. Now it came naturally. Lews Therin’s influence, or his own growing familiarity with the One Power?

  Dragonmount’s broken, open mouth lay several hundred feet beneath him, to the left. The scents of ash and sulphur were pungent, even at this distance. The maw was black with ash and red from molten rock and blazing fires.

  He still held to the Source. He didn’t dare let go. This last time he’d seized it had been the worst he could remember, and he feared that the sickness would overpower him if he tried again.

  He had been here for hours. And yet he did not feel tired. He stared at the ter’angreal. Thinking.

  What was he? What was the Dragon Reborn? A symbol? A sacrifice? A sword, meant to destroy? A sheltering hand, meant to protect?

  A puppet, playing a part over and over again?

  He was angry. Angry at the world, angry at the Pattern, angry at the Creator for leaving humans to fight against the Dark One with no direction. What right did any of them have to demand Rand’s life of him?

  Well, Rand had offered that life to them. It had taken him a great while to accept his death, but he had made his peace. Wasn’t that enough? Did he have to be in pain until the end?

  He had thought that if he made himself hard enough, it would take away the pain. If he couldn’t feel, then he couldn’t hurt.

  The wounds in his side pulsed in agony. For a time, he’d been able to forget them. But the deaths he had caused rubbed his soul raw. That list starting with Moiraine. Everything had begun to go wrong at her death. Before that, he’d still had hope.