The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  Chiad was a beautiful woman with gray eyes and short, reddish blond hair hidden beneath the hood of her gai’shain robe. She grimaced at the question. “Gaul searched the entire Shaido camp to find me, and reports say he defeated twelve algai’d’siswai with his spear. Perhaps I shall have to make a bridal wreath for him after all, once this is all through.”

  Faile smiled.

  Chiad smiled back. “He did not expect that one of the men he killed would turn out to be the one to whom Bain was gai’shain. I do not think Gaul is happy to have both of us serving him.”

  “Foolish man,” Bain—the taller of the two—said. “Very like him to not watch where he jabbed his spear. He couldn’t kill the right man without accidentally slaying a few others.” Both women chuckled.

  Faile smiled and nodded; Aiel humor was beyond her. “Thank you very much for fetching these,” she said, holding up the small, cloth-wrapped bundle.

  “It was nothing,” Chiad said. “There were too many hands working that day, so it was easy. Alliandre Maritha Kigarin already waits for you at the trees. We should return to the camp.”

  “Yes,” Bain added. “Perhaps Gaul would like his back rubbed again, or water fetched for him. He grows so angry when we ask, but gai’shain gain honor only through service. What else are we to do?”

  The women laughed again, and Faile shook her head as they ran back toward the camp, white robes swishing. She cringed at the thought of having to wear such clothing again, if only because it made her think about her days of service to Sevanna.

  Lanky Arrela and graceful Lacile joined her at the base of the two willows. The Maiden guards stayed behind, watching from afar. A third Maiden joined those two, moving out of the shadows, likely sent by Bain and Chiad to protect Alliandre. Faile found the dark-haired queen standing at the base of the trees, looking like a lady again in a rich red gown with golden chains lacing her hair. It was an extravagant display, as if she were determined to disprove the days she’d spent acting as a servant. Alliandre’s gown made Faile more aware of her simple robe. But there wasn’t much she could have done without waking Perrin. Arrela and Lacile wore only the embroidered breeches and shirts common to those in Cha Faile.

  Alliandre carried a small lantern with the shutters drawn, letting out only a crack of light that illuminated her youthful face, topped by dark hair. “Did they find anything?” she asked. “Please tell me that they did.” She had always been impressively grounded, for a queen, if somewhat demanding. Her time in Malden seemed to have tempered the latter feature.

  “Yes.” Faile hefted the bundle. The four women huddled around her as she knelt on the ground, the tips of the short grass lit by the lantern, shining like tongues of flame. Faile unwrapped the bundle. The contents weren’t anything extraordinary. A small handkerchief of yellow silk. A belt of worked leather which had a pattern of bird feathers pressed into its sides. A black veil. And a thin leather band with a stone tied at the center.

  “That belt belonged to Kinhuin,” Alliandre said, pointing to it. “I saw him wearing it, before. . . .” She trailed off, then knelt and picked it up.

  “The veil is that of a Maiden,” Arrela said.

  “They’re different?” Alliandre asked with surprise.

  “Of course they are,” Arrela said, picking up the veil. Faile had never met the Maiden who had become Arrela’s protector, but the woman had fallen in the battle, though not as dramatically as Rolan and the others.

  The piece of silk was Jhoradin’s; Lacile hesitated, then took it in her hands, turning it over and revealing that there was a spot of blood on it. That left only the leather cord. Rolan had worn it at his neck, on occasion, beneath his cadin’sor. Faile wondered what it had meant to him, and if there was any significance to the single bit of stone, a rough-cut chunk of turquoise. She picked it up, then glanced at Lacile. Surprisingly, the slender woman seemed to be crying. Because Lacile had gone so quickly to the hefty Brotherless’s bed, Faile had assumed that her relationship with him had been one of necessity, not affection.

  “Four people are dead,” Faile said, mouth suddenly dry. She spoke formally, for that was the best way to keep the emotion from her voice. “They protected us, even cared for us. Though they were the enemy, we mourn them. Remember, though, that they were Aiel. For an Aiel, there are far worse ends than death in combat.”

  The others nodded, but Lacile met Faile’s eyes. For the two of them, it was different. When Perrin had barreled out of that alleyway—roaring in anger at seeing Faile and Lacile apparently being manhandled by Shaido—many things had happened very quickly. In the fray, Faile had distracted Rolan at just the right moment, making him hesitate. He’d done so out of concern for her, but that pause had allowed Perrin to kill him.

  Had Faile done it intentionally? She still didn’t know. So much had been going through her mind, so many emotions at seeing Perrin. She’d cried out, and . . . she could not decide if she’d been trying to distract Rolan to let him die by Perrin’s hand.

  For Lacile, there was no such wavering. Jhoradin had leaped in front of her, putting her behind him and raising his weapon against the intruder. She’d put a knife in his back, killing a man for the first time in her life. And it had been a man whose bed she’d shared.

  Faile had killed Kinhuin, the other member of the Brotherless who had protected them. He wasn’t the first man whose life she had taken—nor the first one she’d taken from behind. But he was the first man she’d killed who had seen her as a friend.

  There was nothing else that could have been done. Perrin had seen only Shaido, and the Brotherless had seen only an invading enemy. That conflict could not have ended without Perrin or the Brotherless dead. No amount of screaming would have stopped any of the men.

  But that made it more tragic. Faile steeled herself to keep her eyes from tearing up like Lacile’s. She hadn’t loved Rolan, and she was glad that Perrin was the one who had survived the conflict. But Rolan had been an honorable man, and she felt . . . dirtied, somehow, that his death had been her fault.

  This shouldn’t have had to be. But it was. Her father had often spoken of situations like this, when you had to kill people you liked just because you met them on the wrong side of the battlefield. She’d never understood. If she had to go back and do it again, she would take the very same actions. She wouldn’t be able to risk Perrin. Rolan had had to die.

  But the world seemed a sadder place to her for the necessity of it.

  Lacile turned away, sniffling softly. Faile knelt, taking a small flask of oil from the bundle Chiad had left. She took the leather strap and pulled off the stone, then set the strap in the center of the cloth bundle. She poured the oil on it, then used a tinder stick, lit at the lantern, to set the strap afire.

  She watched it burn, tiny little flames of blue and green, topped by orange. The scent of burning leather was shockingly similar to that of burning human flesh. The night was still, no wind to shake the flames, and so they danced freely.

  Alliandre doused the belt and put it on to the miniature fire. Arrela did the same with the veil. Finally, Lacile added the handkerchief. She was still crying.

  This was all they could do. There hadn’t been a way to see to the bodies in the chaos of leaving Malden. Chiad had said there was no dishonor in leaving them, but Faile had needed to do something. Some small way of honoring Rolan and the others.

  “Dead by our hand,” Faile said, “or simply dead from battle, these four showed us honor. As the Aiel would say, we have great toh to them. I don’t think it can be repaid. But we can remember them. The Brotherless and one Maiden showed us kindness when they didn’t need to. They kept their honor when others had abandoned it. If there is a redemption to be found for them, and for us, this will be it.”

  “There’s a Brotherless in Perrin’s camp,” Lacile said, eyes reflecting the flames of their pyre. “Niagen is his name; he is gai’shain to Sulin, the Maiden. I went to tell him of what the others did for us. He is a kind man.�
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  Faile closed her eyes. Lacile probably meant that she had gone to the bed of this Niagen. That wasn’t forbidden of gai’shain. “You can’t replace Jhoradin like that,” she said, opening her eyes. “Or undo what you did.”

  “I know,” Lacile said defensively. “But they were so full of humor, despite the terrible situation. There was something about them. Jhoradin wanted to take me back to the Three-fold Land, make me his wife.”

  And you’d never have done it, Faile thought. I know you wouldn’t have. But now that he’s dead, you realize the opportunity you lost.

  Well, who was she to chastise? Let Lacile do as she wished. If this Niagen was half the man that Rolan or the others had been, then perhaps Lacile would do well with him.

  “Kinhuin had only just started looking out for me,” Alliandre said. “I know what he wished for, but he never demanded it. I think he was planning to leave the Shaido, and would have helped us escape. Even if I turned him down, he would have helped us.”

  “Marthea hated what the other Shaido did,” Arrela said. “But she stayed with them for her clan. She died for that loyalty. There are worse things to die for.”

  Faile watched the last embers of the miniature pyre flicker out. “I think Rolan actually loved me,” she said. And that was all.

  The four rose and returned to the camp. The past was a field of embers and ash, an old Saldaean proverb said, the remnants of the fire that was the present. Those embers blew away behind her. But she kept Rolan’s turquoise stone. Not for regret, but for remembrance.

  Perrin lay awake in the still night, smelling the canvas of his tent and the unique scent of Faile. She wasn’t there, though she had been recently. He’d dozed off, and now she was gone. Perhaps to the privy.

  He stared up in the darkness, trying to make sense of Hopper and the wolf dream. The more he thought about it, the more determined he grew. He would march to the Last Battle—and when he did, he wanted to be able to control the wolf inside of him. He wanted either to be free of all of these people who followed him, or to learn how to accept their loyalty.

  He had some decisions to make. They wouldn’t be easy, but he’d make them. A man had to do hard things. That was the way of life. That was what had gone wrong with the way he’d handled Faile’s capture. Instead of making decisions, he’d avoided them. Master Luhhan would have been disappointed in him.

  And that led Perrin to another decision, the hardest of all. He was going to have to let Faile ride into danger, perhaps risk her again. Was that a decision? Could he make such a decision? The mere thought of her in danger made him want to sick up. But he would have to do something.

  Three problems. He would face them and he would decide. But he would consider them first, because that was what he did. A man was a fool to make decisions without thinking first.

  But the decision to face his problems brought him a measure of peace, and he rolled over and drifted back to sleep.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Last That Could Be Done

  Semirhage sat alone in the small room. They had taken away her chair and given her no lantern or candle.

  Blast this cursed Age and its cursed people! What she would have given for glowbulbs on the walls. During her days, prisoners hadn’t been denied light. Of course, she had locked several of her experiments away in total darkness, but that was different. It had been important to discover what effect the lack of light would have on them. These so-called Aes Sedai who held her, they had no rational reason for leaving her in darkness. They just did it to humiliate her.

  She pulled her arms closer, huddling against the wooden wall. She did not cry. She was of the Chosen! So what if she had been forced to abase herself? She was not broken.

  But . . . the fool Aes Sedai no longer regarded her as they had. Semirhage hadn’t changed, but they had. Somehow, in one swoop, that cursed woman with the paralis-net in her hair had unraveled Semirhage’s authority with the entire lot of them.

  How? How had she lost control so quickly? She shuddered as she remembered being turned over the woman’s knees and spanked. And the nonchalance of it. The only emotion in the woman’s voice had been a slight annoyance. She’d treated Semirhage—one of the Chosen!—as if she were barely worthy of notice. That had galled more than the blows.

  It would not happen again. Semirhage would be ready for the blows next time, and she would give them no weight. Yes, that would work. Wouldn’t it?

  She shuddered again. She had tortured hundreds, perhaps thousands, in the name of understanding and reason. Torture made sense. You truly saw what a person was made of, in more ways than one, when you began to slice into them. That was a phrase she’d used on numerous occasions. It usually made her smile.

  This time it did not.

  Why couldn’t they have given her pain? Broken fingers, cuts into her flesh, coals in the pits of her elbows. She had steeled her mind to each of these things, preparing for them. A small, eager part of herself had looked forward to them.

  But this? Being forced to eat food off the floor? Being treated like a child in front of those who had regarded her with such awe?

  I will kill her, she thought, not for the first time. I will remove her tendons, one at a time, using the Power to heal her so that she lives to experience the pain. No. No, I’ll do something new to her. I will show her agony that hasn’t been known to anyone in any Age!

  “Semirhage.” A whisper.

  She froze, looking up in the darkness. That voice had been soft, like a chill wind, yet still sharp and biting. Had she imagined it? He couldn’t be there, could he?

  “You have failed greatly, Semirhage,” the voice continued, so soft. A faint light shone underneath the door, but the voice came from inside her cell. The light seemed to grow brighter, and it flushed a deep red, illuminating the hem of a figure in a black cloak standing before her. She looked up. The ruddy light revealed a face of white, the color of dead skin. The face had no eyes.

  She immediately knelt to the floor, prostrating herself on the aged wood. Though the figure before her looked like a Myrddraal, it was much taller and much, much more important. She shivered as she remembered the voice of the Great Lord himself, speaking to her.

  When you obey Shaidar Haran, you obey me. When you disobey. . . .

  “You were to capture the boy, not kill him,” the figure whispered in a hiss, like steam escaping through cracks between pot and lid. “You took his hand and nearly his life. You have revealed yourself and have lost valuable pawns. You have been captured by our enemies, and now they have broken you.” She could hear the smile on its lips. Shaidar Haran was the only Myrddraal she had ever seen bear a smile. But, then, she did not think this thing was truly a Myrddraal.

  She did not reply to its charges. One did not lie, or even make excuses, before this figure.

  Suddenly, the shield blocking her vanished. Her breath caught. Saidar had returned! Sweet power. However, as she reached for it, she hesitated. Those imitation Aes Sedai outside would feel it if she channeled.

  A cold, long-nailed hand touched her chin. The flesh of it felt like dead leather. It rotated her face upward to meet the eyeless gaze. “You have been given one last chance,” the maggotlike lips whispered. “Do. Not. Fail.”

  The light faded. The hand at her chin withdrew. She continued to kneel, fighting down terror. One last chance. The Great Lord always rewarded failure in . . . imaginative ways. She had given such rewards before, and had no desire to receive them. They would make any torture or punishment these Aes Sedai could imagine look childish.

  She forced herself to her feet, feeling her way around the room. She reached the door and, holding her breath, tried it.

  The door opened. She slipped out of the room without letting the hinges creak. Outside, three corpses lay on the ground, slumped free of their chairs. The women who had been maintaining her shield. There was someone else there, kneeling on the floor before the three of them. One of the Aes Sedai. A woman in green, with br
own hair, pulled back into a tail, her head bowed.

  “I live to serve, Great Mistress,” the woman whispered. “I am instructed to tell you that there is Compulsion in my mind you are to remove.”

  Semirhage raised an eyebrow; she hadn’t realized there were any of the Black among those Aes Sedai here. Removing Compulsion could have a very . . . nasty effect on a person. Even if the Compulsion were weak or subtle, the brain could be harmed seriously by removing it. If the Compulsion were strong . . . well, it was quite interesting to watch.

  “Also,” the woman said, handing something forward, wrapped in cloth. “I am to give you this.” She removed the cloth, revealing a dull-colored metallic collar, and two bracelets. The Domination Band. Crafted during the Breaking, strikingly similar to the a’dam Semirhage had spent so much time working with.

  With this ter’angreal, a male channeler could be controlled. A smile finally broke through Semirhage’s fear.

  Rand had only visited the Blight on a single occasion, though he could faintly remember having come to this area on several occasions, before the Blight infected the land. Lews Therin’s memories. Not his own.

  The madman took to hissing and muttering angrily as they rode through the Saldaean scrub. Even Tai’daishar grew skittish as they moved northward.

  Saldaea was a brown landscape of brushland and dark soil, nowhere near as barren as the Aiel Waste, but hardly a soft or lush land. Homesteads were common, but they had nearly the look of forts, and young children held themselves like trained warriors. Lan had once told him that among Borderlanders, a boy became a man when he earned the right to carry a sword.

  “Has it occurred to you,” Ituralde said, riding on Rand’s left, “that what we are doing here could constitute an invasion?”

  Rand nodded toward Bashere, who rode through the brush at Rand’s right. “I bring with me troops of their own blood,” he said. “The Saldaeans are my allies.”