The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  Would the tests never end?

  No, he thought. Not until the final one. The one that matters most.

  Cadsuane stopped in the path, causing him to stop as well. “Do you have a gift for me as well?”

  “I am giving them to those I care about.”

  That actually made her smile more deeply. “Our interactions have not always been smooth, Rand al’Thor.”

  “That would be one way to say it.”

  “However,” she continued, eyeing him, “I will have you know that I am pleased. You have turned out well.”

  “So I have your permission to save the world?”

  “Yes.” She looked upward, where the dark clouds boiled. They began to split at his presence, as he did not try to mask it or keep them back.

  “Yes,” Cadsuane repeated, “you have my permission. So long as you do it soon. That darkness grows.”

  As if in concert with her words, the ground rumbled. It did that more and more lately. The camp shook, and men stumbled, wary.

  “There will be Forsaken,” Rand said. “Once I enter. Someone will need to face them. I intend to ask Aviendha to lead the resistance against them. She could use your aid.”

  Cadsuane nodded. “I will do my part.”

  “Bring Alivia,” Rand said. “She is strong, but I worry about putting her with others. She does not understand limits in the way that she should.”

  Cadsuane nodded again, and from the look in her eyes, he wondered if she’d already planned to do just that. “And the Black Tower?”

  Rand set his jaw. The Black Tower was a trap. He knew it was a trap. Taim wanted to lure Rand into a place where he couldn’t escape through a gateway.

  “I sent Perrin to help.”

  “And your determination to go yourself?”

  I have to help them. Somehow. I let Taim gather them. I can’t just leave them to him …

  “You still aren’t certain,” Cadsuane said, dissatisfied. “You’d risk yourself, you’d risk us all, stepping into a trap.”

  “I…”

  “They’re free.” Cadsuane turned to walk away. “Taim and his men have been cast out of the Black Tower.”

  “What?” Rand demanded, taking her by the arm.

  “Your men there freed themselves,” Cadsuane said. “Though, from what I’ve been told, they took a beating doing it. Few know it. Queen Elayne might not be able to use them in battle for some time. I don’t know the details.”

  “They freed themselves?” Rand said.

  “Yes.”

  They did it. Or Perrin did.

  Rand exulted, but a wave of guilt slammed against him. How many had been lost? Could he have saved them, if he’d gone? He’d known for days now of their predicament, and yet he’d left them, obeying Moiraine’s insistent counsel that this was a trap he could not afford to spring.

  And now they’d escaped it.

  “I wish that I’d been able to draw an answer out of you,” Cadsuane said, “about what you intended to do there.” She sighed, then shook her head. “You have cracks in you, Rand al’Thor, but you’ll have to do.”

  She left him.

  * * *

  “Deepe was a good man,” Antail said. “He survived the fall of Maradon. He was on the wall when it blew, but he lived and kept fighting. The Dreadlords came for him eventually, sending an explosion to finish the job. Deepe spent the last moments throwing weaves at them. He died well.”

  The Malkieri soldiers raised cups toward Antail, saluting the fallen. Lan raised his own cup, though he stood just outside the ring of men around the fire. He wished Deepe had followed orders. He shook his head, downing his wine. Though it was night, Lan’s men were on rotation to be awake in case of an attack.

  Lan turned his cup between two fingers, thinking of Deepe again. He found he couldn’t drum up anger at the man. Deepe had wanted to kill one of the Shadow’s most dangerous channelers. Lan couldn’t say he would turn down a similar opportunity, if it were given him.

  The men continued their toasts to the fallen. It had become a tradition every evening, and had spread among all of the Borderlander camps. Lan found it encouraging that the men here were starting to treat Antail and Narishma as fellows. The Asha’man were aloof, but Deepe’s death had forged a link between the Asha’man and the ordinary soldiers. Now they’d all paid the butcher’s bill. The men had seen Antail grieving, and had invited him to make a toast.

  Lan stepped away from the fire and walked through the camp, stopping by the horselines to check on Mandarb. The stallion was holding up well, though he bore a large wound on his left flank where his coat would never grow back; it seemed to be healing well. The grooms still spoke in hushed tones about how the wounded horse had appeared out of the night following the fight where Deepe had died. Many riders had been killed or unhorsed in the fighting that day. Very few horses had escaped the Trollocs and made their way back to camp.

  Lan patted Mandarb’s neck. “We’ll rest soon, my friend,” he said softly. “I promise.”

  Mandarb snorted in the darkness, and nearby, several of the other horses nickered.

  “We’ll make a home,” Lan said. “The Shadow defeated, Nynaeve and I will reclaim Malkier. We’ll make the fields bloom again, cleanse the lakes. Green pastures. No more Trollocs to fight. Children to ride on your back, old friend. You can spend your days in peace, eating apples and having your pick of mares.”

  It had been a very long time since Lan had thought of the future with anything resembling hope. Strange to find it now, in this place, in this war. He was a hard man. At times, he felt he had more in common with the rocks and the sand than he did with the men who laughed together beside the fire.

  That was what he’d made of himself. It was the person he’d needed to be, a person who could someday journey toward Malkier and uphold the honor of his family. Rand al’Thor had begun to crack that shell, and then Nynaeve’s love had ripped it apart completely.

  I wonder if Rand ever knew, Lan thought, taking out the currycomb and working on Mandarb’s coat. Lan knew what it was like to be chosen, from childhood, to die. He knew what it was like to be pointed toward the Blight and told he would sacrifice his life there. Light, but he did. Rand al’Thor would probably never know how similar the two of them were.

  Lan brushed Mandarb for a time, though he was bone tired. Perhaps he should have slept. Nynaeve would have told him to sleep. He played out the conversation in his head, allowing himself a smile. She’d have won, explaining that a general needed sleep and that there were plenty of grooms to care for the horses.

  But Nynaeve wasn’t there. He kept brushing.

  Someone approached the horselines. Lan heard the footsteps long before the person arrived, of course. Lord Baldhere retrieved a brush from the groom station, nodding to one of the guards there, and walked toward his own horse. Only then did he notice Lan.

  “Lord Mandragoran?” he said.

  “Lord Baldhere,” Lan said, nodding toward the Kandori. Queen Ethenielle’s Swordbearer was slender, with streaks of white in his otherwise black hair. Though Baldhere was not one of the great captains, he was a fine commander, and had served Kandor well since his king’s death. Many had assumed that the Queen would marry Baldhere. That, of course, was foolish; Ethenielle looked at him as she would a brother. Besides, anyone who paid attention would know that Baldhere clearly preferred men to women.

  “I am sorry to disturb you, Dai Shan,” Baldhere said. “I had not realized that anyone else would be here.” He moved to withdraw.

  “I was nearly done,” Lan said. “Do not let me stop you.”

  “The grooms do well enough,” Baldhere said. “I wasn’t here to check on their work. I have found, at times, that doing something simple and familiar helps me think.”

  “You’re not the only one to have noticed that,” Lan said, continuing to brush Mandarb.

  Baldhere chuckled, then fell silent for a moment. Finally, he spoke. “Dai Shan,” he said, “are you wo
rried about Lord Agelmar?”

  “In what regard?”

  “I worry that he’s pushing himself too hard,” Baldhere said. “Some of the choices he is making … they confuse me. It’s not that his battle decisions are bad. They simply strike me as too aggressive.”

  “It is war. I don’t know that one can be too aggressive in defeating one’s enemy.”

  Baldhere fell quiet for a time. “Of course. But did you notice the loss of Lord Yokata’s two cavalry squadrons?”

  “That was unfortunate, but mistakes do happen.”

  “This isn’t one that Lord Agelmar should have made. He’s been in situations like this before, Dai Shan. He should have seen.”

  It had happened during a recent raid against the Trollocs. The Asha’man had been setting fire to Fal Eisen and the surrounding countryside. At Agelmar’s orders, Yokata had taken his cavalry in a swing around a large hill to attack the right flank of the Trolloc army advancing on the Asha’man. Using a classic pincer movement, Agelmar was to send in more cavalry against the enemy’s left flank, and the Asha’man would turn to meet the Trollocs head-on.

  But the Shadow’s leaders had seen through the maneuver. Before Agelmar and the Asha’man could act, a large contingent of Trollocs had come over the hill to hit Yokata’s own right flank, while the remainder hit Yokata head-on, enveloping his cavalry.

  The cavalry had been killed to the last man. Immediately after, the Trollocs went after the Asha’man, who had barely been able to save themselves.

  “He is tired, Dai Shan,” Baldhere said. “I know Agelmar. He would never have made a mistake like that if he were awake and alert.”

  “Baldhere, anyone could have made a mistake like that.”

  “Lord Agelmar is one of the great captains. He should see the battle differently than ordinary men do.”

  “Are you certain you aren’t expecting too much of him?” Lan asked. “Agelmar is just a man. We all are, at the end of the day.”

  “I … Perhaps you are right,” Baldhere said, hand on his sword, as if worried. He wasn’t carrying the Queen’s weapon, of course—he did that only when she was acting in her station. “I guess it comes down to an instinct, Lan. An itch. Agelmar seems tired a lot, and I worry it’s affecting his ability to plan. Please, just watch him.”

  “I’ll watch,” Lan said.

  “Thank you,” Baldhere said. He seemed less troubled now than when he’d approached.

  Lan gave Mandarb a final pat, left Baldhere to tend his horse and walked through camp to the command tent. He went in; the tent was lit and well guarded, though the soldiers on guard weren’t allowed clear views of the battle maps.

  Lan moved around the hung cloths that obscured the entry and nodded to the two Shienaran commanders, subordinates to Agelmar, who attended this inner sanctum. One was studying the maps spread out on the floor. Agelmar himself wasn’t there. A leader needed to sleep sometime.

  Lan squatted, looking at the map. After tomorrow’s retreat, it appeared that they would reach a place called Blood Springs, named for the way the rocks beneath the water made the river seem to run red. At Blood Springs, they would have a slight advantage of height because of the adjacent hills, and Agelmar wanted to stage an offensive against the Trollocs with bowmen and cavalry lines working together. And, of course, there would be more burning of the land.

  Lan knelt on one knee, looking over Agelmar’s notes about which army would fight where and how he’d divide the attacks. It was ambitious, but nothing looked particularly troublesome to Lan.

  As he was studying, the tent flaps rustled, and Agelmar himself entered, speaking softly with Lady Ells of Saldaea. He stopped when he saw Lan, excusing himself quietly from his conversation. He approached Lan.

  Agelmar did not slump with exhaustion, but Lan had learned to read beyond a man’s posture for signs of tiredness. Redness to the eyes. Breath that smelled faintly of flatwort, an herb chewed to keep the mind alert when one had been up too long. Agelmar was tired—but so was everyone else in camp.

  “Do you approve of what you see, Dai Shan?” Agelmar asked, kneeling.

  “It is very aggressive for a retreat.”

  “Can we afford any other action?” Agelmar asked. “We leave a swath of burned land behind us, destroying Shienar almost as surely as if the Shadow had taken her. I will bring Trolloc blood to quench those ashes.”

  Lan nodded.

  “Baldhere came to you?” Agelmar asked.

  Lan looked up sharply.

  Agelmar smiled wanly. “I assume it was regarding the loss of Yokata and his men?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was a mistake, to be certain,” Agelmar said. “I wondered if anyone would confront me on it; Baldhere is one to believe I should never have made such an error.”

  “He thinks you’re pushing yourself too hard.”

  “He is clever in tactics,” Agelmar said, “but he does not know so much as he thinks. His head is full of the stories of great captains. I am not without flaw, Dai Shan. This will not be my only error. I will see them, as I saw this one, and learn from them.”

  “Still, perhaps we should see that you get more sleep.”

  “I am perfectly hale, Lord Mandragoran. I know my limits; I have spent my entire life learning them. This battle will push me to my utmost, and I must let it.”

  “But—”

  “Relieve me or let me be,” Agelmar said, cutting in. “I will listen to advice—I am not a fool—but I will not be second-guessed.”

  “Very well,” Lan said, rising. “I trust your wisdom.”

  Agelmar nodded, lowering his eyes to his maps. He was still working on his plans when Lan finally left to turn in.

  CHAPTER

  19

  The Choice of a Patch

  Elayne found Bashere pacing on the east bank of the river.

  Riverbanks were among the few places that still felt alive to her. So much was lifeless these days, trees that did not put forth leaves, grass that did not grow, animals that huddled in their dens and refused to move.

  The rivers kept flowing. There was a sense of life to that, though the plants were dreary.

  The Alguenya was one of those deceptively mighty rivers that looked placid from a distance, but could pull a woman under its surface until she drowned. She remembered Bryne making a lesson of that to Gawyn once during a hunting trip they’d taken along it. He’d been speaking to her, too. Maybe to her primarily, though he’d always been careful not to overstep himself with the Daughter-Heir.

  Be careful of currents, he’d said. River currents are one of the most dangerous things under the Light, but only because men underestimate them. The surface looks still because nothing is fighting it. Nothing wants to. The fish go along with it and men stay out of it, all except the fools who think to prove themselves.

  Elayne stepped down the rocky bank, toward Bashere. Her guards stayed behind—Birgitte wasn’t with them just now. She was seeing to the archer companies miles downriver, where they were busy pounding the Trollocs building rafts to get them across the river. Birgitte’s archers and Talmanes’ dragons were doing an outstanding job of reducing the Trolloc numbers there, but it was still only a matter of time before their vast army would pour across the Alguenya.

  Elayne had pulled her forces out of Andor a week before, and she and Bashere had been pleased with their progress. Until they had discovered the trap.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” she asked, stepping up beside Bashere, who stood at the river’s bank.

  Bashere glanced at her, then nodded. “We don’t have anything like it, back home.”

  “What of the Arinelle?”

  “It doesn’t grow this big until it’s outside of Saldaea,” he said absently. “This is almost like an ocean, settled right here, dividing bank from bank. It makes me smile, thinking of how the Aiel must have regarded it after first crossing the Spine.”

  The two of them were silent for a time.

  “How bad is
it?” Elayne finally asked.

  “Bad,” Bashere said. “I should have realized, burn me. I should have seen.”

  “You can’t plan for everything, Bashere.”

  “Pardon,” he said, “but that is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  Their march eastward from Braem Wood had gone according to plan. Burning the bridges across the Erinin and the Alguenya, they had taken out large numbers of Trollocs trying to cross after them. Elayne was now on the road that went upriver to the city of Cairhien. Bashere had planned to set up their final confrontation with the Trollocs in hills along the road that lay twenty leagues south of Cairhien.

  The Shadow had outthought them. Scouts had spotted a second army of Trollocs just to the north of their current position, marching east, heading toward the city of Cairhien itself. Elayne had stripped that city of defenders to fill out her army. Now it was filled only with refugees—and was as crowded as Caemlyn had been.

  “How did they do it?” she asked. “Those Trollocs couldn’t have come down from Tarwin’s Gap.”

  “There hasn’t been enough time for that,” Bashere agreed.

  “Another Waygate?” she asked.

  “Perhaps,” Bashere said. “Perhaps not.”

  “How, then?” she asked. “Where did that army come from?” That army of Trollocs was almost close enough to knock on the city gates. Light!

  “I made the mistake of thinking like a human,” Bashere said. “I accounted for Trolloc marching speed, but not for how the Myrddraal might push them. A foolish mistake. The army in the woods must have split in two, with half taking a northeastern route through the woods toward Cairhien. It’s the only thing I can think of.”

  “We’ve been moving as quickly as we can,” Elayne said. “How could they have overtaken us?” Her army had gateways. She couldn’t move everyone through them, as she didn’t have enough channelers to hold gateways for long periods. However, she could move the supply carts, the wounded, and the camp followers through. That let them march at the speed of trained soldiers.

  “We’ve moved as quickly as we could safely,” Bashere said. “A human commander would never have pushed his forces into such a terrible march. The terrain they went through had to have been awful—the rivers they had to cross, the forests, the wetlands, Light! They must have lost thousands of Trollocs to fatigue during such a march. The Fades risked it, and now they have us in a pincer. The city could be destroyed as well.”