The conversation reminded him of their time in Tear, stealing hidden kisses in the Stone between sessions of political training. Rand had fallen in love with her during those days. Real love. Not the admiration of a boy falling off a wall, looking at a princess—back then, he hadn’t understood love any more than a farmboy swinging a sword understood war.
Their love was born of the things they shared. With Elayne, he could speak of politics and the burden of rule. She understood. She truly did, better than anyone he knew. She knew what it was to make decisions that changed the lives of thousands. She understood what it was to be owned by the people of a nation. Rand found it remarkable that, though they had often been apart, their connection held. In fact, it felt even stronger. Now that Elayne was queen, now that they shared the children growing within her.
“You wince,” Elayne said.
Rand looked up from his broth. Elayne’s dinner was half-finished—he had been making her speak a great deal. She seemed through anyway, and held a warm cup of tea.
“I what?” Rand asked.
“You wince. When I mentioned the contingents fighting for Andor, you flinched, just a little.”
It was not surprising she had noticed—Elayne had been the one to teach him to watch for minor tells in the expressions of those with whom he spoke.
“All of these people fight under my name,” Rand said. “So many people I do not even know will die for me.”
“That has ever been the burden of a ruler at war.”
“I should be able to protect them,” Rand said.
“If you think you can protect everyone, Rand al’Thor, you are far less wise than you pretend.”
He looked at her, meeting her eyes. “I don’t believe I can, but their deaths weigh on me. I feel as if I should be able to do more, now that I remember. He tried to break me, and he failed.”
“Is that what happened that day atop Dragonmount?”
He hadn’t spoken of it to anyone. He pulled his seat closer to hers. “Up there, I realized that I had been thinking too much on strength. I wanted to be hard, so hard. In driving myself so, I risked losing the ability to care. That was wrong. For me to win, I must care. That, unfortunately, means I must allow myself pain at their deaths.”
“And you remember Lews Therin now?” she whispered. “Everything he knew? That is not just an air you put on?”
“I am him. I always was. I remember it now.”
Elayne breathed out, eyes widening. “What an advantage.”
Of all the people he had told that to, only she had responded in such a way. What a wonderful woman.
“I have all of this knowledge, yet it doesn’t tell me what to do.” He stood up, pacing. “I should be able to fix it, Elayne. No more should need to die for me. This is my fight. Why must everyone else go through such suffering?”
“You deny us the right to fight?” she said, sitting up straight.
“No, of course not,” Rand said. “I could deny you nothing. I just wish that somehow … somehow I could make this all stop. Shouldn’t my sacrifice be enough?”
She stood, taking his arm. He turned to her.
Then she kissed him.
“I love you,” she said. “You are a king. But if you would try to deny the good people of Andor the right to defend themselves, the right to stand in the Last Battle…” Her eyes flared, her cheeks flushed. Light! His comments had truly made her angry.
He never quite knew what she was going to say or do, and that excited him. Like the excitement of watching nightflowers, knowing that what was to come would be beautiful, but never knowing the exact form that beauty would take.
“I said I wouldn’t deny you the right to fight,” Rand said.
“It’s about more than just me, Rand. It’s about everyone. Can you understand that?”
“I suppose that I can.”
“Good.” Elayne settled back down and took a sip of her tea, then grimaced.
“It’s gone bad?” Rand asked.
“Yes, but I’m used to it. Still, it’s almost worse than drinking nothing at all, with how spoiled everything is.”
Rand walked to her and took the cup from her fingers. He held it for a moment, but did not channel. “I brought you something. I forgot to mention it.”
“Tea?”
“No, this is just an aside.” He handed the cup back to her and she took a sip.
Her eyes widened. “It’s wonderful. How do you do it?”
“I don’t,” Rand said, sitting. “The Pattern does.”
“But—”
“I am ta’veren,” Rand said. “Things happen around me, unpredictable things. For the longest time, there was a balance. In one town, someone would discover a great treasure unexpectedly under the stairs. In the next I visited, people would discover that their coins were fakes, passed to them by a clever counterfeiter.
“People died in terrible ways; others were saved by a miracle of chance. Deaths and births. Marriages and divisions. I once saw a feather drift down from the sky and fall point-first into the mud so it stuck there. The next ten that fell did the same thing. It was all random. Two sides to a flipping coin.”
“This tea is not random.”
“Yes, it is,” Rand said. “But, you see, I get only one side of the coin these days. Someone else is doing the bad. The Dark One injects horrors into the world, causing death, evil, madness. But the Pattern … the Pattern is balance. So it works, through me, to provide the other side. The harder the Dark One works, the more powerful the effect around me becomes.”
“The growing grass,” Elayne said. “The splitting clouds. The food unspoiled…”
“Yes.” Well, some other tricks helped on occasion, but he didn’t mention them. He fished in his pocket for a small pouch.
“If what you say is true,” Elayne replied, “then there can never be good in the world.”
“Of course there can.”
“Will the Pattern not balance it out?”
He hesitated. That line of reasoning cut too close to the way he had begun thinking before Dragonmount—that he had no options, that his life was planned for him. “So long as we care,” Rand said, “there can be good. The Pattern is not about emotions—it is not even about good or evil. The Dark One is a force from outside of it, influencing it by force.”
And Rand would end that. If he could.
“Here,” Rand said. “The gift I mentioned.” He pushed the pouch toward her.
She looked at him, curious. She untied the strings, and took from it a small statue of a woman. She stood upright, with a shawl about her shoulders, though she did not look like an Aes Sedai. She had a mature face, aged and wise, with a wise look about her and a smile on her face.
“An angreal?” Elayne asked.
“No, a Seed.”
“A … seed?”
“You have the Talent of creating ter’angreal,” Rand said. “Creating angreal requires a different process. It begins with one of these, an object created to draw your Power and instill it into something else. It takes time, and will weaken you for several months, so you should not attempt it while we are at war. But when I found it, forgotten, I thought of you. I had wondered what I could give you.”
“Oh, Rand, I have something for you as well.” She hurried over to an ivory jewelry chest that rested on a camp table and took a small object from it. It was a dagger with a short, dull blade and a handle made of deerhorn wrapped in gold wire.
Rand glanced at the dagger quizzically. “No offense, but that looks like a poor weapon, Elayne.”
“It’s a ter’angreal, something that may be of use when you go to Shayol Ghul. With it, the Shadow cannot see you.” She reached up to touch his face.
He placed his hand on hers.
They stayed together long into the night.
CHAPTER
10
The Use of Dragons
Perrin rode Stayer, light cavalry from Elayne’s forces following behind him: Whitecloaks, M
ayeners, Ghealdanin, joined by some of the Band of the Red Hand. Only a fraction of their armies. That was the point.
They swept along diagonally toward the Trollocs camped outside of Caemlyn. The city still smoldered; Elayne’s plan with the oil had driven the creatures out, for the most part, but some still held the walls above.
“Archers,” Arganda yelled, “loose!” His voice would be lost to most in the roar of the charge, the snorting of horses, the gallop of hooves. Enough would hear to start shooting, and the rest knew what to do anyway.
Perrin leaned low, hoping his hammer would not be needed on this sortie. They charged past the Trollocs, sweeping in front of them, launching arrows; then they turned away from the city.
Perrin glanced over his shoulder as he rode, and he was rewarded with the sight of Trollocs falling. The Band followed after Perrin’s cavalry, getting close enough to launch arrows.
Trolloc arrows followed—thick and black, almost like spears, loosed from enormous bows. Some of Perrin’s riders fell, but his attack had been swift.
The Trollocs didn’t break from their position outside the city walls. The riders slowed, Arganda coming up beside Perrin, watching over his shoulder.
“They still aren’t charging,” Arganda said.
“Then we’ll hit them again and again,” Perrin said. “Until they break.”
* * *
“Our attacks are continuing, Your Majesty,” the messenger said, riding through a gateway made by a pair of Kinswomen to where Elayne had her camp in the Wood. “Lord Goldeneyes sends word; they’ll continue through the day, if need be.”
She nodded, and the messenger rode back the way he had come. Braem Wood slumbered, trees bare, as if in winter. “It takes too much work to relay information back and forth to me,” Elayne said with dissatisfaction. “I wish we could have made those ter’angreal work; Aviendha said that one let you see over distance, and another talk that way. But wish and want trip the feet, as Lini says. Still, if I could see the fighting with my own eyes—”
Birgitte said nothing. Eyes forward, the golden-haired Warder gave no sign at all that she’d heard the comment.
“After all,” Elayne said, “I can defend myself, as I have proven on a number of occasions.”
No response. The two horses walked softly beside one another, hooves on soft earth. The camp around them had been designed to be broken down and moved on the run. The soldiers’ “tents” were canvas tarps set over ropes pulled tight between trees. The only travel furniture was that of her own pavilion and the battle pavilion. The Kinswomen had one group ready with gateways to move Elayne and her commanders further into the woods.
Most of her forces waited at the ready, like a taut bow with the arrow nocked. She would not engage the Trollocs on their terms, however. By report, some of their fists still topped the city walls, and attacking directly would be a disaster, with them raining death on her from above.
She would draw them out. If that required patience, so be it. “I’ve decided,” Elayne continued to Birgitte. “I’ll just hop through a gateway to take a look at the Trolloc army myself. From a safe distance. I could—”
Birgitte reached beneath her shirt and removed the rose medallion she wore. It worked as the imperfect foxhead copies had. Mat had the original foxhead and two copies; Mellar had escaped with another copy.
“You try anything like that,” Birgitte said, eyes still forward, “and I’ll throw you over my bloody shoulder like a drunken man with a barmaid on a rowdy night and carry you back to camp. Light help me, I’ll do it, Elayne.”
Elayne frowned. “Remind me why, exactly, I gave you one of those medallions?”
“I’m not sure,” Birgitte said. “It showed remarkable foresight and an actual sense of self-preservation. Completely unlike you.”
“I hardly think that is fair, Birgitte.”
“I know! It is extremely unfair for me to have to deal with you. I wasn’t certain you’d noticed. Are all young Aes Sedai as reckless as you are, or did I just end up with the pick of this particular litter?”
“Stop whining,” Elayne muttered, maintaining a smile and a nod for the men who saluted as she passed. “I’m beginning to wish I had a Tower-trained Warder. Then, at least, I wouldn’t hear so much sauce.”
Birgitte laughed. “I don’t think you understand Warders half as well as you think you do, Elayne.”
Elayne let the matter die as they passed the Traveling ground, where Sumeko and the other Kinswomen were shuttling messengers back and forth from the battlefields. For now, Elayne’s agreement with them held.
In her dress pocket, Elayne carried Egwene’s—the Amyrlin Seat’s—official reply regarding the Kin and what Elayne had done. Elayne could almost sense heat radiating from the letter, but it was hidden behind official language and an agreement that now wasn’t the time to worry about such things.
Elayne would have to do more work there. Egwene would eventually see the logic of letting the Kinswomen work in Andor, beneath Elayne’s supervision. Just beyond the Traveling ground she noticed a tired-looking Shienaran accepting a waterskin from one of the Two Rivers men. The top-knotted man had an eyepatch and familiar features.
“Uno?” Elayne asked with shock, pulling Moonshadow to a halt.
He started, nearly spilling water over himself as he drank. “Elayne?” he asked, wiping his brow with his sleeve. “I’d heard that you’re the flaming—the Queen now. I guess that’s what should have happened, with you being the bloody Daughter-Heir. Sorry. The Daughter-Heir. Not bloody at all.” The Shienaran man grimaced.
“You can swear all you want, Uno,” Elayne said dryly. “Nynaeve isn’t around. What are you doing here?”
“The Amyrlin,” he said. “She flaming wanted a messenger, and I was bloody chosen. Already gave Egwene’s bloody report to your commanders, for all the bloody good it will do. We’ve set up our flaming battle positions and started scouting out Kandor, and the place is a bloody mess. You want details?”
Elayne smiled. “I’ll hear the report from my commanders, Uno,” she said. “Have a rest, and go have a flaming bath, you son of a shepherd’s boil.”
Uno blew a mouthful of water out at the comment. Elayne smiled. She’d heard that last curse from a soldier just the day before, and still didn’t know why it was considered to be so vile. It had the proper effect.
“I … No flaming bath for me,” Uno said. “Er, Your Majesty. I’ve had my five minutes of rest. The Trollocs could attack soon up in bloody Kandor, and I won’t have the others fighting without me.” He saluted her, hand across chest, and bowed before hurrying back toward the Traveling ground.
“Pity,” Birgitte said, “he was a good drinking companion. I’d have liked him to stay a little while.” Through the bond, Elayne felt a different reaction from her, as she watched Uno’s backside.
Elayne blushed. “There’s no time for that right now. Either of those things.”
“Just looking,” Birgitte said innocently. “I suppose we should go listen to the reports from the other battlefields.”
“We should,” Elayne said firmly.
Birgitte didn’t voice her annoyance, but Elayne could feel it. Birgitte hated battle planning, something Elayne found odd in a woman who had fought in thousands of battles, a hero who had saved countless lives during some of the great moments in history.
They came to the battle pavilion, one of the few full-sized tents the army carried. Inside, she found Bashere conferring with several of the commanders: Abell Cauthon, Gallenne and Trom, second-in-command of the Whitecloaks. Galad himself, like Perrin, was with the harrying forces at Caemlyn. Elayne found Trom surprisingly agreeable—much more so than Galad himself.
“Well?” she asked.
“Your Majesty,” Trom said, bowing. He didn’t like the fact that she was Aes Sedai, but he hid it well. The others in the room saluted, though Bashere gave merely a friendly wave, then pointed at their battle maps.
“Reports from all fro
nts are in,” Bashere said. “Refugees from Kandor are flocking to the Amyrlin and her soldiers, and that includes a fair number of fighting men. House soldiers or merchant guards, for the most part. Lord Ituralde’s forces still await the Lord Dragon before moving on Shayol Ghul.” Bashere knuckled his mustache. “Once they move into that valley, there won’t be any retreat available.”
“And the Borderlander army?” Elayne asked.
“Holding,” Bashere said, pointing to another map, showing Shienar. Elayne wondered, idly, if Uno wished he were fighting with the rest of his people at the Gap. “Last messenger said they feared being overwhelmed, and were considering a controlled retreat.”
Elayne frowned. “Are things so bad there? They were supposed to hold until I could finish the Trollocs in Andor and join them. That was the plan.”
“It was,” Bashere agreed.
“You’re going to tell me that a plan, in warfare, lasts only until the first sword is drawn,” Elayne said. “Or maybe until the first arrow falls?”
“First lance is raised,” Bashere said under his breath.
“I realize that,” Elayne said, stabbing a finger at the map. “But I also know that Lord Agelmar is a good enough general to hold a pack of Trollocs, especially with the Borderlander armies there to back him up.”
“They are holding for now,” Bashere said. “But they’re still being mightily pressed.” He held up a hand to her objection. “I know you’re worried about a retreat, but I counsel that you shouldn’t try to overrule Agelmar. He deserves his reputation as a great captain, and he’s there, while we are far away. He will know what to do.”
She took a deep breath. “Yes. You are right. Do see if Egwene can send him any troops. Meanwhile, we need to win our battle here quickly.” Fighting on four fronts was going to drain resources quickly.
Elayne had not only familiar terrain to fight on, but also the best odds. If the other armies could hold steady while she obliterated the Trollocs in Andor, she could join Lan and Agelmar and turn the Gap from a stalemate into a victory. From there, she could reinforce Egwene and reclaim Kandor.
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