A Crown of Swords

  Stopping at the base of the spire, a thick stone needle covered with flowing script, he peered ahead. Whoever had moved was gone; only fools or the madly brave went inside in Shadar Logoth at night. The evil that stained Shadar Logoth, the evil that had murdered Aridhol, had not died with Aridhol. Farther along the street, a tendril of silver-gray fog wavered out of a window, creeping toward another that came to meet it from a wide gap in a high stone wall. The depths of that gap shone as though a full moon lay inside. With the night, Mashadar roamed its city prison, a vast presence that could appear in a dozen places at once, a hundred. Mashadar’s touch was not a pleasant way to die. Inside Rand, the taint on saidin beat harder; the distant fire in his side flickered like ten thousand lightnings, one on top of the last. Even the ground seemed to pound beneath his boots.

  He turned, half-thinking to leave now. Very likely, Sammael had gone, now that Mashadar was out. Very likely the man had lured him here in the hope he would search the ruins until Mashadar killed him. He turned, and stopped, crouching against the spire. Two Trollocs were creeping down that street, bulky shapes in black mail, half again as tall as he, or more. Spikes stood out on the shoulders and elbows of their armor, and they carried spears with long black points and wicked hooks. To his saidin-filled eyes, their faces stood out clearly, one distorted by an eagle’s beak where mouth and nose should have been, the other by a boar’s tusked snout. Every line of their creeping shouted fear; Trollocs loved killing, loved blood, but Shadar Logoth terrified them. There would be Myrddraal about; no Trolloc would have entered this city without Myrddraal to drive it. No Myrddraal would have entered without Sammael driving. All of which meant Sammael must still be here, or these Trollocs would be running for the gates, not hunting. And they were hunting. That boar’s snout was snuffling the air for a scent.

  Abruptly a figure in rags leaped from a window above the Trollocs, falling on them with spear already stabbing. An Aiel, a woman, shoufa wrapped around her head but veil hanging. The eagle-beaked Trolloc shrieked as her spearpoint stabbed deep into its side, stabbed again. As its companion fell, kicking, boar-snout spun with snarl, thrusting viciously, but she ducked low under the black hooked point and stabbed up into the creature’s stomach, and it went down in a thrashing heap with the other.

  Rand was on his feet and running before he thought. “Liah!” he shouted. He had thought her dead, abandoned here by him, dead for him. Liah, of the Cosaida Chareen; that name blazed on the list in his head.

  She whirled to confront him, spear ready in one hand, round bull-hide buckler in the other. The face he remembered as pretty despite scars on both cheeks was contorted with rage. “Mine!” she hissed threateningly through her teeth. “Mine! No one may come here! No one!”

  He stopped in his tracks. That spear waited, eager to seek his ribs too. “Liah, you know me,” he said softly. “You know me. I’ll take you back to the Maidens, back to your spear-sisters.” He held out his hand.

  Her rage melted into a twisted frown. She tilted her head to one side. “Rand al’Thor?” she said slowly. Her eyes widened, falling to the dead Trollocs, and a look of horror spread across her face. “Rand al’Thor,” she whispered, fumbling the black veil into place across her face with the hand that held her spear. “The Car’a’carn!” she wailed. And fled.

  He hobbled after her, scrambling over piles of rubble spread across the street, falling, ripping his coat, falling again and nearly ripping it off, rolling and picking himself up on the run. The weakness of his body was distant, and the pain of it, but even floating deep in the Void, he could only push that body so hard. Liah vanished into the night. Around the next black-shadowed corner, he thought.

  He limped around that as fast as he could. And nearly ran into four black mailed Trollocs and a Myrddraal, inky cloak hanging unnaturally still down its back as the Fade moved. The Trollocs snarled in surprise, yet shock lasted less than a heartbeat. Hooked spears and scythe-curved swords rose; the Myrddraal’s dead-black blade was in its fist, a blade that gave wounds almost as deadly as Fain’s dagger.

  Rand did not even try to draw the heron-mark sword at his side. Death in a tattered red coat, he channeled, and a sword of fire was in his hands, pulsing darkly with the throb of saidin, sweeping an eyeless head from its shoulders. Simpler to have destroyed them all the way he had seen the Asha’man kill at Dumai’s Wells, but changing the weaves now, trying to change, might take a fatal moment. Those swords could kill even him. He danced the forms in a darkness lit by the flame in his hands, shadows flying across faces above him, faces with wolves’ muzzles and goats’ faces contorted in screams as his fiery blade sliced through black mail and the flesh beneath as if they were water. Trollocs depended on numbers and overwhelming ferocity; facing him, and that sword of the Power, they might as well have stood stock-still, unarmed.

  The sword vanished from his hands. Still poised at the end of the form called Twisting the Wind, he stood among death. The last Trolloc to fall still thrashed, goat horns scraping on the fragmented pavement. The headless Myrddraal yet flung its arms about, of course, booted feet scrabbling wildly; Halfmen did not die quickly, even headless.

  No sooner did the sword disappear than silver lightning lanced down from the cloudless, starry sky.

  The first bolt struck with a deafening roar not four paces away. The world turned white, and the Void collapsed. The ground bounced under him as another bolt struck, and another. He had not realized he was on his face until then. The air crackled. Dazed, he pushed himself up, half falling as he ran from a hail of lightning that ripped the street apart to a thunder of collapsing buildings. Straight ahead he staggered, not caring where, so long as it was away.

  Suddenly his head cleared enough for him to see where he was, reeling across a vast stone floor covered with tumbled chunks of stone, some as big as he. Here and there, dark uneven holes gaped in the floorstones. All around rose high walls, and tier upon tier of deep balconies that ran all the way around. Only a small portion of what had once been a vast roof remained, at one corner. Stars shone bright overhead.

  He lurched another step, and the floor gave way beneath him. Desperately he flung out his hands; with a jolt, the right hand caught hold of a rough edge. He dangled into pitch-blackness. The fall beneath his boots might be a few spans into a basement, or a mile for all he could tell. He could latch bands of Air to the jagged rim of the hole above his head to help pull himself out, except . . . Somehow, Sammael had sensed the relatively small amount of saidin used in the sword. There had been a delay before the lightnings struck, but he could not say how long he had taken killing the Trollocs. A minute? Seconds?

  With a heave, he swung his left arm up, trying to catch the edge of the hole. Pain no longer buffered by the Void stabbed through his side like a dagger going in. Spots danced in his vision. Worse, his right hand slipped on crumbling stone, and he could feel his fingers weakening. He was going to have to . . .

  A hand grabbed his right wrist. “You are a fool,” a man’s deep voice said. “Count yourself lucky I don’t care to see you die today.” The hand began drawing him up. “Are you going to help?” the voice demanded. “I don’t intend to carry you on my shoulders, or kill Sammael for you.”

  Shaking off his shock, Rand reached up and grabbed the rim of the hole, pulling despite the agony of his side. Despite the agony, he managed to acquire the Void again, too, and seize saidin. He did not channel, but he wanted to be ready.

  His head and shoulders came above the floor, and he could see the other man, a big fellow little older than he, with hair black as the night and a coat black as an Asha’man’s. Rand had never seen him before. At least he was not one of the Forsaken; those faces he knew. He thought he did, anyway. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  Still heaving, the man barked a laugh. “Just say I’m a wanderer passing through. Do you really want to talk now?”

  Saving his breath, Rand struggled upward, getting his chest over the lip, his waist. Abruptly he realiz
ed that a glow bathed the floor around them like the glow of a full moon.

  Twisting to look over his shoulder, he saw Mashadar. Not a tendril, but a shining silver-gray wave rolling out of one of the balconies, arching over their heads. Descending.

  Without a thought, his free hand rose, and balefire shot upward, a bar of liquid white fire slicing across the wave sinking toward them. Dimly he was aware of another bar of pale solid fire rising from the other man’s hand that was not clasping his, a bar slashing the opposite way from his. The two touched.

  Head ringing like a struck gong, Rand convulsed, saidin and the Void shattering. Everything was doubled in his eyes, the balconies, the chunks of stone lying about the floor. There seemed to be a pair of the other man overlapping one another, each clutching his head between two hands. Blinking, Rand searched for Mashadar. The wave of shining mist was gone; a glow remained in the balconies above, but dimming, receding, as Rand’s eyes began to clear. Even mindless Mashadar fled balefire, it seemed.

  Unsteadily, he got to his feet and offered a hand. “I think we best move quickly. What happened there?”

  The other man pushed himself up with a grimace at Rand’s proffered hand. He was easily as tall as Rand, rare except among the Aiel. “I don’t know what happened,” he snarled. “Run, if you want to live.” He suited his own words immediately, dashing toward a row of open arches. Not in the nearest wall. Mashadar had come from that one.

  Fumbling for the Void, Rand limped after him as fast as he could, but before they were completely across the floor, the lightnings fell again, a storm of silver arrows. The two of them darted through the archways pursued by the thunder of walls and floor collapsing behind them, by clouds of dust and a hail of stones. Shoulders hunched and an arm across his face, Rand ran coughing through a broad room where trembling arches supported the ceiling and bits of stone rained down.

  He burst out into a street before he knew it, stumbling three steps before stopping. The pain in his side made him want to bend over, but he thought his legs might give way if he did. His wounded foot throbbed; it seemed a year ago that that red wire of Fire and Air had stabbed his heel. His rescuer stood watching him; covered with dust head to toe, the fellow managed to look a king.

  “Who are you?” Rand asked again. “One of Taim’s men? Or did you teach yourself? You can go to Caemlyn, you know, to the Black Tower. You don’t have to live afraid of Aes Sedai.” For some reason, saying that made him frown; he could not understand why.

  “I have never been afraid of Aes Sedai,” the man snapped, then drew a deep breath. “You probably should leave here now, but if you intend to stay and kill Sammael, you had better try thinking like him. You have shown you can. He always liked destroying a man in sight of one of that man’s triumphs, if he could. Lacking that, somewhere the man had marked as his would do.”

  “The Waygate,” Rand said slowly. If he could be said to have marked anything in Shadar Logoth, it had to be the Waygate. “He’s waiting near the Waygate. And he has traps set.” Wards as well, it seemed, like those in Illian, to detect a man channeling. Sammael had planned this well.

  The man laughed wryly. “You can find the way, it seems. If you’re led by the hand. Try not to stumble. A great many plans will have to be relaid if you let yourself be killed now.” Turning, he started across the street for an alleyway just ahead of them.

  “Wait,” Rand called. The fellow kept on, not looking back. “Who are you? What plans?” The man vanished into the alley.

  Rand teetered after him, but when he reached the mouth of the narrow alley, it was empty. Unbroken walls ran a good hundred paces to another street, where a glow told of yet another part of Mashadar abroad, but the man was gone. Which was purely impossible. The fellow had had time to make a gateway, of course, if he knew how, but the residue would have been visible, and besides, that much of saidin being woven so near would have shouted at him.

  Suddenly he realized that he had not felt saidin when the man made balefire, either. Just thinking of that, of the two streams touching, made his vision double again. Just for an instant, he could see the man’s face again, sharp where everything else blurred. He shook his head until it cleared. “Who in the Light are you?” he whispered. And after a moment, “What in the Light are you?”

  Whoever or whatever, the man was gone, though. Sammael was still in Shadar Logoth. With an effort he managed to regain the Void once more. The taint on saidin vibrated now, humming its way deep into him; the Void itself vibrated. But the weakness of watery muscles and the pain of injuries faded. He was going to kill one of the Forsaken before this night was done.

  Limping, he ghosted through the dark streets, placing his feet with great care. He still made noise, but the night was full of noise now. Shrieks and guttural cries sounded in the distance. Mindless Mashadar killed whatever it found, and Trollocs were dying in Shadar Logoth tonight as they had once long, long ago. Sometimes down a crossing street he saw Trollocs, two or five or a dozen, occasionally with a Halfman but most often not. None saw him, and he did not bother them. Not simply because Sammael would detect any channeling. Those Trollocs and Myrddraal that Mashadar did not kill were still dead. Sammael had almost certainly brought them by the Ways, but apparently he did not realize just how Rand had marked the Waygate here.

  Well short of the square where the Waygate lay, Rand stopped and looked around. Nearby, a tower stood seemingly whole. Not nearly as tall as some, its top still rose more than fifty paces above the ground. The dark doorway at its base was empty, the wood long rotted away and the hinges gone to dust. Through blackness relieved only by faint starlight through the windows, he climbed the winding stairs slowly, small clouds puffing up beneath his boots, every second step a stab of pain up his leg. Distant pain. On the tower top, he leaned against the smooth parapet to catch his breath. The idle thought came that he would never hear the end if Min learned of this. Min, or Amys, or Cadsuane for that matter.

  Across missing rooftops, he could see the great square that had been one of the most important in Aridhol. Once an Ogier grove had covered this part of the land, but within thirty years after the Ogier who had built the oldest parts of the city departed, the residents had cut down the trees to make room for expanding Aridhol. Palaces and the remains of palaces surrounded the huge square, the glow of Mashadar shining deep inside a few windows, and a huge mound of rubble covered one end, but in the center stood the Waygate, apparently a tall broad piece of stone. He was not close enough to see the delicately carved leaves and vines that covered it, but he could make out the toppled pieces of high fence that had once surrounded it. Power-wrought metal lying in a heap, they gleamed untarnished in the night. He could also see the trap he had woven around the Waygate, inverted so no eye but his could see it. No way to tell by looking whether the Trollocs and Halfmen really had passed through it, yet if they had, they would die before long. A nasty thing. Whatever traps Sammael had made down there were invisible to him, but that was expected. Likely they were not very pleasant either.

  At first, he could not see Sammael, but then someone moved among the fluted, flaring columns of a palace. Rand waited. He wanted to be sure; he had only one chance. The figure stepped forward, out of the columns and a pace into the square, head swinging this way and that. Sammael, with snowy lace shining at his throat, waiting to see Rand walk into the square, into the traps. Behind him, the glow in the windows of the palace brightened. Sammael peered into the darkness lying across the square, and Mashadar oozed out of the windows, thick billows of silver-gray fog sliding together, merging as they loomed above his head. Sammael walked a little to one side, and the wave began to descend, slowly picking up speed as it fell.

  Rand shook his head. Sammael was his. The flows needed for balefire seemed to gather themselves, despite the far echo of Cadsuane’s voice. He raised his hand.

  A scream tore the darkness, a woman shrieking in agony beyond knowing. Rand saw Sammael turn to stare toward the great mound of rubble
even as his own eyes flashed that way. Atop the mound a shape stood outlined against the night sky in coat and breeches, a single thin tendril of Mashadar touching her leg. Arms outstretched, she thrashed about, unable to move from the spot, and her wordless wail seemed to call Rand’s name.

  “Liah,” he whispered. Unconsciously he reached out, as though he could stretch his arm across the intervening distance and pull her away. Nothing could save what Mashadar touched, though, no more than anything could have saved him had Fain’s dagger plunged into his heart. “Liah,” he whispered. And balefire leaped from his hand.

  For less than a heartbeat, the shape of her still seemed to be there, all in stark blacks and snowy whites, and then she was gone, dead before her agony began.

  Screaming, Rand swept the balefire down toward the square, the rubble collapsing on itself, swept down death out of time — and let saidin go before the bar of white touched the lake of Mashadar that now rolled across the square, billowing past the Waygate toward rivers of glowing gray that flowed out from another palace on the other side. Sammael had to be dead. He had to be. There had not been time for him to run, no time to weave a gateway, and if he had, Rand would have felt saidin being worked. Sammael was dead, killed by an evil almost as great as himself. Emotion raced across the outside of the Void; Rand wanted to laugh, or perhaps cry. He had come here to kill one of the Forsaken, but instead he had killed a woman he had abandoned here to her fate.

  For a long time he stood on the tower top while the waning moon crossed the sky, almost at its half, stood watching Mashadar fill the square completely, till only the very top of the Waygate rose above the surface of the fog. Slowly it began to ebb away, hunting elsewhere. If Sammael had been alive, he could have killed the Dragon Reborn easily then. Rand was not sure that he would have cared. Finally he opened a gateway for Skimming and made a platform, a railless disc, half white and half black. Skimming was slower than Traveling; it took him at least half an hour to reach Illian, and the whole way, he burned Liah’s name into his mind again and again, flailing himself with it. He wished he could cry. He thought he had forgotten how.