The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  Motion outside the window caused Isam to glance to the side. The Chosen didn’t look as a group of black-hooded figures passed. The winds didn’t cause the cloaks of these figures to stir.

  They were accompanied by carriages; an unusual sight in the Town. The carriages moved slowly, but still rocked and thumped on the uneven street. Isam didn’t need to see into the carriages’ curtained windows to know that thirteen women rode inside, matching the number of Myrddraal. None of the Samma N’Sei returned to the street. They tended to avoid processions like this. For obvious reasons, they had … strong feelings about such things.

  The carriages passed. So. Another had been caught. Isam would have assumed that the practice had ended, once the taint was cleansed.

  Before he turned back to look at the floor, he caught sight of something more incongruous. A small, dirty face watching from the shadows of an alleyway across the street. Wide eyes but a furtive posture. Moridin’s passing, and the coming of the thirteens, had driven the Samma N’Sei off the street. Where they were not, the urchins could go in some safety. Maybe.

  Isam wanted to scream at the child to go. Tell it to run, to risk crossing the Blight. To die in the stomach of a Worm was better than to live in this Town, and suffer what it did to you. Go! Flee! Die!

  The moment passed quickly, the urchin retreating to the shadows. Isam could remember being that child. He’d learned so many things then. How to find food that you could mostly trust, and wouldn’t vomit back up once you found out what was in it. How to fight with knives. How to avoid being seen or noticed.

  And how to kill a man, of course. Everyone who survived long enough in the Town learned that particular lesson.

  The Chosen was still looking at his cup. It was her reflection she was looking at, Isam realized. What did she see there?

  “I will need help,” Isam finally said. “The Dragon Reborn has guards, and he is rarely in the dream.”

  “Help has been arranged,” she said softly. “But you are to find him, hunter. None of this playing as you did before, trying to draw him to you. Lews Therin will sense such a trap. Besides, he will not deviate from his cause now. Time is short.”

  She spoke of the disastrous operation in the Two Rivers. Luc had been in charge then. What knew Isam of real towns, real people? Almost, he felt a longing for those things, though he suspected that was really Luc’s emotion. Isam was just a hunter. People held little interest for him beyond the best places for an arrow to enter so as to hit the heart.

  That Two Rivers operation, though … it stank like a carcass left to rot. He still didn’t know. Had the point really been to lure al’Thor, or had it been to keep Isam away from important events? He knew his abilities fascinated the Chosen; he could do something that they could not. Oh, they could imitate the way he stepped into the dream, but they needed channeling, gateways, time.

  He was tired of being a pawn in their games. Just let him hunt; stop changing the prey with each passing week.

  One did not say such things to the Chosen. He kept his objections to himself.

  Shadows darkened the doorway to the inn, and the serving woman disappeared into the back. That left the place completely empty save for Isam and the Chosen.

  “You may stand,” she said.

  Isam did, hastily, as two men stepped into the room. Tall, muscular and red-veiled. They wore brown clothing like Aiel, but didn’t carry spears or bows. These creatures killed with weapons far deadlier.

  Though he kept his face impassive, Isam felt a surge of emotion. A childhood of pain, hunger and death. A lifetime of avoiding the gaze of men like these. He fought hard to keep himself from trembling as they strode to the table, moving with the grace of natural predators.

  The men dropped their veils and bared their teeth. Burn me. Their teeth were filed.

  These had been Turned. You could see it in their eyes—eyes that weren’t quite right, weren’t quite human.

  Isam nearly fled right then, stepping into the dream. He couldn’t kill both of these men. He’d have been reduced to ash before he managed to take down one of them. He’d seen Samma N’Sei kill; they often did it just to explore new ways of using their powers.

  They didn’t attack. Did they know this woman was Chosen? Why, then, lower their veils? Samma N’Sei never lowered their veils except to kill—and only for the kills they were most eagerly anticipating.

  “They will accompany you,” the Chosen said. “You shall have a handful of the Talentless as well to help deal with al’Thor’s guards.” She turned to him and, for the first time, she met his eyes. She seemed … revolted. As if she were disgusted to need his aid.

  “They will accompany you,” she had said. Not “They will serve you.”

  Bloody son of a dog. This was going to be a hateful job.

  * * *

  Talmanes threw himself to the side, narrowly avoiding the Trolloc’s axe. The ground trembled as the axe broke cobblestones; he ducked and rammed his blade through the creature’s thigh. The thing had a bull’s snout, and it threw back its head to bellow.

  “Burn me, but you have horrid breath,” Talmanes growled, whipping his sword free and stepping back. The thing went down on one leg, and Talmanes hacked off its weapon hand.

  Panting, Talmanes danced back as his two companions struck the Trolloc through the back with spears. You always wanted to fight Trollocs in a group. Well, you always wanted to fight anyone with a team on your side, but it was more important with Trollocs, considering their size and strength.

  Corpses lay like heaps of trash in the night. Talmanes had been forced to fire the city gate’s guardhouses to give light; the half-dozen or so guards who had remained were now recruits in the Band, for the time being.

  Like a black tide, the Trollocs began to retreat from the gate. They’d overextended themselves in pushing for it. Or, rather, being pushed for it. There had been a Halfman with this crew. Talmanes lowered his hand to the wound in his side. It was wet.

  The guardhouse fires were burning low. He’d have to order a few of the shops set on fire. That risked letting the blaze spread, but the city was already lost. No sense in holding back now. “Brynt!” he yelled. “Set that stable aflame!”

  Sandip came up as Brynt went running past with a torch. “They’ll be back. Soon, probably.”

  Talmanes nodded. Now that the fighting was done, townspeople began to flood out of alleys and recesses, timidly making for the gate and—presumably—safety.

  “We can’t stay here and hold this gate,” Sandip said. “The dragons…”

  “I know. How many men did we lose?”

  “I don’t have a count yet. A hundred, at least.”

  Light, Mat’s going to have my hide when he hears about that. Mat hated losing troops. There was a softness to the man equal to his genius—an odd, but inspiring, combination. “Send some scouts to watch the city roadways nearby for approaching Shadowspawn. Heap some of these Trolloc carcasses to make barriers; they’ll work as well as anything else. You, soldier!”

  One of the wearied soldiers walking past froze. He wore the Queen’s colors. “My Lord?”

  “We need to let people know this gate out of the city is safe. Is there a horn call that Andoran peasants would recognize? Something that would bring them here?”

  “‘Peasants,’ ” the man said thoughtfully. He didn’t seem to like the word. They didn’t use it often, here in Andor. “Yes, the Queen’s March.”

  “Sandip?”

  “I’ll set the sounders to it, Talmanes,” Sandip said.

  “Good.” Talmanes knelt to clean his sword on a fallen Trolloc’s shirt, his side aching. The wound wasn’t bad. Not by normal terms. Just a nick, really.

  The shirt was so grimy he almost hesitated to wipe his weapon, but Trolloc blood was bad for a blade, so he swabbed down the sword. He stood up, ignoring the pain in his side, then walked toward the gate, where he’d tied Selfar. He hadn’t dared trust the horse against Shadowspawn. He was a good geld
ing, but not Borderland-trained.

  None of the men questioned him as he climbed into the saddle and turned Selfar westward, out of the city gate, toward those mercenaries he’d seen watching earlier. Talmanes wasn’t surprised to find that they’d moved closer to the city. Fighting drew warriors like fire drawing cold travelers on a winter night.

  They hadn’t joined in the battle. As Talmanes rode up, he was greeted by a small group of the sell-swords: six men with thick arms, and—likely—thick wits. They recognized him and the Band. Mat was downright famous these days, and so was the Band, by association. They undoubtedly also noticed the Trolloc bloodstains on Talmanes’ clothing and the bandage at his side.

  That wound had really begun to burn fiercely now. Talmanes reined in Selfar, then patiently patted at his saddlebags. I stowed some tabac here somewhere …

  “Well?” one of the mercenaries asked. The leader was easy to pick out; he had the finest armor. A man often became leader of a band like this by staying alive.

  Talmanes fished his second-best pipe out of his saddlebag. Where was that tabac? He never took the best pipe into battle. His father had called that bad luck.

  Ah, he thought, pulling out the tabac pouch. He placed some in the bowl, then removed a lighting twig and leaned over to stick it into a torch held by a wary mercenary.

  “We aren’t going to fight unless paid,” the leader said. He was a stout man, surprisingly clean, though he could have done with a beard trim.

  Talmanes lit his pipe, puffing smoke out. Behind him, the horns started blowing. The Queen’s March turned out to be a catchy tune. The horns were accompanied by shouts, and Talmanes looked back. Trollocs on the main thoroughfare, a larger batch this time.

  Crossbowmen fell into ranks and began loosing at an order Talmanes couldn’t hear.

  “We’re not—” the head man began again.

  “Do you know what this is?” Talmanes asked softly around his pipe. “This is the beginning of the end. This is the fall of nations and the unification of humankind. This is the Last Battle, you bloody fool.”

  The men shuffled uncomfortably.

  “Do you … do you speak for the Queen?” the leader said, trying to salvage something. “I just want to see my men taken care of.”

  “If you fight,” Talmanes said, “I’ll promise you a great reward.”

  The man waited.

  “I promise you that you’ll continue to draw breath,” Talmanes said, taking another puff.

  “Is that a threat, Cairhienin?”

  Talmanes blew out smoke, then leaned down from his saddle, putting his face closer to the leader. “I killed a Myrddraal tonight, Andoran,” he said softly. “It nicked me with a Thakan’dar blade, and the wound has gone black. That means I have a few hours at best before the blade’s poison burns me from the inside out and I die in the most agonizing way a man can. Therefore, friend, I suggest that you trust me when I tell you that I really have nothing to lose.”

  The man blinked.

  “You have two choices,” Talmanes said, turning his horse and speaking loudly to the troop. “You can fight like the rest of us and help this world see new days, and maybe you’ll earn some coin in the end. I can’t promise that. Your other option is to sit here, watch people be slaughtered and tell yourselves that you don’t work for free. If you’re lucky, and the rest of us salvage this world without you, you’ll draw breath long enough to be strung up by your cowardly necks.”

  Silence. Horns blew from the darkness behind.

  The chief sell-sword looked toward his companions. They nodded in agreement.

  “Go help hold that gate,” Talmanes said. “I’ll recruit the other mercenary bands to help.”

  * * *

  Leilwin surveyed the multitude of camps dotting the place known as the Field of Merrilor. In the darkness, with the moon not due to rise for some time, she could almost imagine that the cook fires were shipborne lanterns in a busy port at night.

  That was probably a sight she would never see again. Leilwin Shipless was not a captain; she would never be one again. To wish otherwise was to defy the very nature of who she had become.

  Bayle put a hand on her shoulder. Thick fingers, rough from many days of work. She reached up and rested her hand on his. It had been simple to slip through one of those gateways being made at Tar Valon. Bayle knew his way around the city, though he had grumbled about being there. “This place do set the hairs on my arms to points,” he’d said, and, “I did wish to never walk these streets again. I did wish it.”

  He’d come with her anyway. A good man, Bayle Domon. As good as she’d found in these unfamiliar lands, despite moments of unsavory trading in his past. That was behind him. If he didn’t understand the right way of things, he did try.

  “This do be a sight,” he said, scanning the quiet sea of lights. “What want you to do now?”

  “We find Nynaeve al’Meara or Elayne Trakand.”

  Bayle scratched at his bearded chin; he wore it after the Illianer style, with the upper lip shaved. The hair on his head was of varying lengths; he’d stopped shaving a portion of his head, now that she had freed him. She’d done that so they could marry, of course.

  It was well; the shaven head would have drawn attention here. He’d done quite well as so’jhin once certain … issues had been resolved. In the end, however, she had to admit that Bayle Domon was not meant to be so’jhin. He was too rough-cut, and no tide would ever soften those sharp edges. That was how she wanted him, though she’d never say so out loud.

  “It do be late, Leilwin,” he said. “Perhaps we should wait until morning.”

  No. There was a quiet to the camps, true, but it was not the quiet of slumber. It was the quiet of ships waiting for the right winds.

  She knew little of what was happening here—she hadn’t dared open her mouth in Tar Valon to ask questions, lest her accent reveal her as Seanchan. A gathering of this size did not occur without dedicated planning. She was surprised at the immensity of it; she’d heard of the meeting here, one that most of the Aes Sedai had come to attend. This exceeded anything she’d anticipated.

  She started across the field, and Bayle followed, both of them joining the group of Tar Valon servants they had been allowed to accompany, thanks to Bayle’s bribe. His methods did not please her, but she had been able to think of no other way. She tried not to think too much about his original contacts in Tar Valon. Well, if she was never to be on a ship again, then Bayle would find no more opportunities for smuggling. That was a small comfort.

  You’re a ship’s captain. That’s all you know, all you want. And now, Shipless. She shivered, and clenched her hands into fists to keep from wrapping her arms around herself. To spend the rest of her days on these unchanging lands, never able to move at a pace brisker than what a horse could provide, never to smell the deep-sea air, never to point her prow toward a horizon, hoist anchor, set sail and simply …

  She shook herself. Find Nynaeve and Elayne. She might be Shipless, but she would not let herself slip into the depths and drown. She set her course and started walking. Bayle hunched down slightly, suspicious, and tried to watch all around them at once. He also glanced at her a few times, lips drawn to a line. She knew what that meant, by now.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Leilwin, what do we be doing here?”

  “I’ve told you. We need to find—”

  “Yes, but why? What do you think you will do? They do be Aes Sedai.”

  “They showed me respect before.”

  “And so you do think they’ll take us in?”

  “Perhaps.” She eyed him. “Speak it, Bayle. You have something on your mind.”

  He sighed. “Why do we need be taken in, Leilwin? We could find ourselves a ship somewhere, in Arad Doman. Where there do be no Aes Sedai or Seanchan.”

  “I wouldn’t run the kind of ship you prefer.”

  He regarded her flatly. “I do know how to run an honest business, Leilwin. It w
ould no be—”

  She raised a hand, quieting him, then rested it on his shoulder. They stopped on the pathway. “I know, my love. I know. I’m speaking words to distract, to set us spinning in a current that goes nowhere.”

  “Why?”

  That single word scratched at her like a splinter under a fingernail. Why? Why had she come all this way, traveling with Matrim Cauthon, putting herself dangerously near the Daughter of the Nine Moons? “My people live with a grave misconception of the world, Bayle. In doing so, they create injustice.”

  “They did reject you, Leilwin,” he said softly. “You do no longer be one of them.”

  “I will always be one of them. My name was revoked, but not my blood.”

  “I do be sorry for the insult.”

  She nodded curtly. “I am still loyal to the Empress, may she live forever. But the damane … they are the very foundation for her rule. They are the means by which she creates order, by which she holds the Empire together. And the damane are a lie.”

  Sul’dam could channel. The talent could be learned. Now, months after she had discovered the truth, her mind could not encompass all of the implications. Another might have been more interested in the political advantage; another might have returned to Seanchan and used this to gain power. Almost, Leilwin wished she had done that. Almost.

  But the pleas of the sul’dam … growing to know those Aes Sedai, who were nothing like what she’d been taught …

  Something had to be done. And yet, in doing it, did she risk causing the entire Empire to collapse? Her movements must be considered very, very carefully, like the last rounds of a game of shal.

  The two continued to follow the line of servants in the dark; one Aes Sedai or another often sent servants for something they’d left in the White Tower, so traveling back and forth was common—a good thing for Leilwin. They passed the perimeter of the Aes Sedai camp without being challenged.

  She was surprised at the ease of it until she spotted several men alongside the path. They were very easy to miss; something about them blended into the surroundings, particularly in the darkness. She noticed them only when one moved, breaking off from the others to fall into step a short distance behind her and Bayle.