Moiraine pushed Egwene off of her while tremors still reverberated through the chamber, and scrambled erect. What had he done? And why? Going away? It was the worst of all her nightmares.
The Aiel had already regained their feet. Everyone else lay stunned or huddled on hands and knees. Except for Rand. He was on one knee, both hands holding Callandor’s hilt, with the blade driven halfway into the floorstones. The sword was clear crystal again. Sweat glistened on his face. He pried his hands away one finger at a time, held them cupped around the hilt yet not touching it. For a moment Moiraine thought he was going to take hold of it again, but instead he forced himself to his feet. He did have to force himself; she was certain of it.
“Look at this while I am gone.” His voice was lighter, more the way it had been when she first found him in his village, but no less sure or firm than it had been moments before. “Look at it, and remember me. Remember I will come back for it. If anyone wants to take my place, all they have to do is pull it out.” He waggled a finger at them, grinning almost mischievously. “But remember the price of failure.”
Turning on his heel, he marched out of the chamber, the Aiel falling in behind him. Staring at the sword rising out of the floor of the Heart, the Tairens got to their feet more slowly. Most looked ready to run, but too frightened to.
“That man!” Egwene grumbled, dusting off her green linen dress. “Is he mad?” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Moiraine, he isn’t, is he? Is he? Not yet.”
“The Light send he is not,” Moiraine muttered. She could not take her eyes from the sword any more than the Tairens could. The Light take the boy. Why could he not have remained the amenable youngling she had found in Emond’s Field? She made herself start after Rand. “But I will find out.”
Half-running, they caught up quickly in a broad, tapestry-lined hallway. The Aiel, veils hanging loose now but easily raised if needed, moved aside without slowing. They glanced at her, and at Egwene, hard faces unchanging but eyes touched by the wariness Aiel always had around Aes Sedai.
How they could be uneasy at her while calmly following Rand, she did not understand. Learning more than fragments about them was difficult. They answered questions freely—about anything that was of no interest to her. Her informants and her own eavesdropping overheard nothing, and her network of eyes-and-ears would no longer try. Not since one woman had been left bound and gagged, hanging by her ankles from battlements and staring wild-eyed at the four-hundred-foot drop beneath her, and not since the man who had simply disappeared. The man was just gone; the woman, refusing to go higher than the ground floor, had been a constant reminder until Moiraine sent her into the country.
Rand did not slow down any more than the Aiel when she and Egwene fell in on either side of him. His glance was wary, too, but in a different way, and touched with exasperated anger. “I thought you were gone,” he said to Egwene. “I thought you went with Elayne and Nynaeve. You should have. Even Tanchico is … . Why did you stay?”
“I won’t be staying much longer,” Egwene said. “I am going to the Waste with Aviendha, to Rhuidean, to study with the Wise Ones.”
He missed a step as the girl mentioned the Waste, glancing at her uncertainly, then strode on. He seemed composed now, too much so, a boiling teakettle with the lid strapped down and the spout plugged. “Do you remember swimming in the Waterwood?” he said quietly. “I used to float on my back in a pool and think the hardest thing I’d ever have to do was plow a field, unless maybe it was shearing sheep. Shearing from sunup till bedtime, hardly stopping to eat until the clip was in.”
“Spinning,” Egwene said. “I hated it worse than scrubbing floors. Twisting the threads makes your fingers so sore.”
“Why did you do it?” Moiraine demanded before they could go on with this childhood reminiscing.
He gave her a sidelong look, and a smile mocking enough to belong to Mat. “Could I really have hung her, for trying to kill a man who was plotting to kill me? Would there be more justice in that than in what I did?” The grin slid from his face. “Is there justice in anything I do? Sunamon will hang if he fails. Because I said so. He’ll deserve it after the way he’s tried to take advantage, with never a care if his own people starved, but he’ll not go to the gallows for that. He will hang because I said he would. Because I said it.”
Egwene laid a hand on his arm, but Moiraine would not allow him to sidestep. “You know that is not what I mean.”
He nodded; this time his smile had a frightening, rictus quality. “Callandor. With that in my hands, I can do anything. Anything. I know I can do anything. But now, it’s a weight off my shoulders. You don’t understand, do you?” She did not, though it nettled her that he saw it. She kept silent, and he went on. “Perhaps it will help if you know it comes from the Prophecies.
“Into the heart he thrusts his sword,
into the heart, to hold their hearts.
Who draws it out shall follow after,
What hand can grasp that fearful blade?
“You see? Straight from the Prophecies.”
“You forget one thing,” she told him tightly. “You drew Callandor in fulfillment of prophecy. The safeguards that held it awaiting you for three thousand years and more are gone. It is the Sword That Cannot Be Touched no longer. I could channel it free myself. Worse, any of the Forsaken could. What if Lanfear returns? She could use Callandor no more than I, but she could take it.” He did not react to the name. Because he did not fear her—in which case he was a fool—or for another reason? “If Sammael or Rahvin or any male Forsaken puts his hand on Callandor, he can wield it as well as you. Think of facing the power you give up so casually. Think of that power in the hands of the Shadow.”
“I almost hope they’ll try.” A threatening light shone in his eyes; they seemed gray storm clouds. “There is a surprise awaiting anyone who tries to channel Callandor out of the Stone, Moiraine. Do not think of taking it to the Tower for safekeeping; I could not make the trap pick and choose. The Power is all it needs to spring and reset, ready to trap again. I am not giving Callandor up forever. Just until I … .” He took a deep breath. “Callandor will stay there until I come back for it. By being there, reminding them of who I am and what I am, it makes sure I can come back without an army. A haven of sorts, with the likes of Alteima and Sunamon to welcome me home. If Alteima survives the justice her husband and Estanda will mete out, and Sunamon survives mine. Light, what a wretched tangle.”
He could not make it selective, or would not? She was determined not to underrate what he might be capable of. Callandor belonged in the Tower, if he would not wield it as he should, in the Tower till he would wield it. “Just until” what? He had been intending to say something other than “until I come back.” But what?
“And where are you going? Or do you mean to keep it a mystery?” She was quietly vowing not to let him escape again, to turn him somehow if he meant to go running off to the Two Rivers, when he surprised her.
“Not a mystery, Moiraine. Not from you and Egwene, anyway.” He looked at Egwene and said one word. “Rhuidean.”
Wide-eyed, the girl appeared as astounded as if she had never heard the name before. For that matter, Moiraine felt scarcely less. There was a murmur among the Aiel, but when she glanced back they were striding along with no expression whatsoever. She wished she could make them leave, but they would not go at her command, and she would not ask Rand to send them away. It would not help her with him to ask favors, especially when he might well refuse.
“You are not an Aiel clan chief, Rand,” she said firmly, “and have no need to be one. Your struggle is on this side of the Dragonwall. Unless … . Does this come from your answers in the ter’angreal? Cairhien, and Callandor, and Rhuidean? I told you those answers can be cryptic. You could be misunderstanding them, and that could prove fatal. To more than you.”
“You must trust me, Moiraine. As I have so often had to trust you.” His face might as well have belonged to an Aie
l for all she could read in it.
“I will trust you for now. Just do not wait to seek my guidance until it is too late.” I will not let you go to the Shadow. I have worked too long to allow that. Whatever it takes.
CHAPTER 22
Out of the Stone
It was a strange procession Rand led out of the Stone and eastward, with white clouds shading the midday sun and a breath of air stirring across the city. By his order there had been no announcement, no proclamation, but slowly word spread of something: citizens stopped whatever they were doing and ran for vantage points. The Aiel were marching through the city, marching out of the city. People who had not seen them come in the night, who had only half-believed they were in the Stone at all, increasingly lined the streets along the route, filled the windows, even climbed onto slate rooftops, straddling roof peaks and upturned corners. Murmurs ran as they counted the Aiel. These few hundred could never have taken the Stone. The Dragon banner still flew above the fortress. There must yet be thousands of Aiel in there. And the Lord Dragon.
Rand rode easily in his shirtsleeves, sure none of the onlookers could take him for anyone out of the ordinary. An outlander, rich enough to ride—and on a superb dappled stallion, best of the Tairen bloodstock—a rich man traveling in the oddest of odd company, but surely just another man for that. Not even the leader of this strange company; that title was surely assigned to Lan or Moiraine despite the fact that they rode some little distance behind him, directly ahead of the Aiel. The soft awed susurration that accompanied his passing certainly rose for the Aiel, not him. These Tairen folk might even take him for a groom, riding his master’s horse. Well, no, not that; not out in front as he was. It was a fine day, anyway. Not sweltering, merely warm. No one expected him to mete out justice, or rule a nation. He could simply enjoy riding in anonymity, enjoy the rare breeze. For a time he could forget the feel of his heron-branded palms on the reins. For a little longer anyway, he thought. A little longer.
“Rand,” Egwene said, “do you really think it was right to let the Aiel take all those things?” He looked around as she heeled her gray mare, Mist, up beside him. From somewhere she had gotten a dark green dress with narrow divided skirts, and a green velvet band held her hair at the nape of her neck.
Moiraine and Lan still hung back half a dozen strides, she on her white mare in a full-skirted blue silk riding dress slashed with green, her dark hair caught in a golden net, he astride his great black warhorse, in a color-shifting Warder’s cloak that probably brought as many oohs and aahs as the Aiel. When the breeze stirred the cloak, shades of green and brown and gray rippled across it; when it hung still it somehow seemed to fade into whatever was beyond it, so the eye appeared to be seeing through parts of Lan and his mount. It was not comfortable to look at.
Mat was there, too, slumped in his saddle and looking resigned, trying to keep apart from the Warder and Aes Sedai. He had chosen a nondescript brown gelding, an animal he called Pips; it took a good eye to notice the deep chest and strong withers that promised blunt-nosed Pips could likely match Rand’s stallion or Lan’s for speed and endurance. Mat’s decision to come had been a surprise; Rand still did not know why. Friendship, maybe, and then again, maybe not. Mat could be odd in what he did and why.
“Didn’t your friend Aviendha explain to you about ‘the fifth’?” he asked.
“She mentioned something, but … . Rand, you don’t think she … took … things, too?”
Behind Moiraine and Lan, behind Mat, behind Rhuarc at their head, the Aiel walked in long lines to either side of loaded pack mules, rank on rank four abreast. When Aiel took one of the holds of an enemy clan in the Waste, by custom—or maybe law; Rand did not understand it exactly—they carried away one-fifth of all it contained, excepting only food. They had seen no reason not to treat the Stone the same. Not that the mules held more than the barest fraction of a fraction of a fifth of the Stone’s treasures. Rhuarc said greed had killed more men than steel. The wickerwork pack hampers, topped with rolled carpets and wall hangings, were lightly laden. Ahead lay an eventual hard crossing of the Spine of the World, and then a far harder trek across the Waste.
When do I tell them? he wondered. Soon, now; it has to be soon. Moiraine would doubtless think it daring, a bold stroke; she might even approve. Maybe. She thought she knew his whole plan, now, and made no bones of disapproving that; no doubt she wanted it over and done as soon as possible. But the Aiel … . What if they refuse? Well, if they refuse, they refuse. I have to do it. As for the fifth … . He did not think it would have been possible to stop the Aiel from taking it even had he wanted to, and he had not; they had earned their rewards, and he had no care to help Tairen lords keep what they had wrung from their people over generations.
“I saw her showing Rhuarc a silver bowl,” he said aloud. “From the way her sack clinked when she stuffed the bowl in, there was more silver in there. Or maybe gold. Do you disapprove?”
“No.” She drew the word out slowly, with a touch of doubt, but then her voice firmed. “I just hadn’t thought of her … . The Tairens would not have stopped at a fifth if the positions had been reversed. They’d have carted away whatever wasn’t part of the stonework, and stolen all the carts to haul it. Just because a people’s ways are different doesn’t mean they are wrong, Rand. You should know that.”
He laughed softly. This was almost like old times, he ready to explain why and how she was wrong, and she snatching his position and tossing his own unvoiced explanation at him. His stallion danced a few steps, catching his mood. He patted the dapple’s arched neck. A good day.
“That’s a fine horse,” she said. “What have you named him?”
“Jeade’en,” he said cautiously, losing some of his good spirits. He was a little ashamed of the name, of his reasons for choosing it. One of his favorite books had always been The Travels of Jain Farstrider, and that great traveler had named his horse Jeade’en—True Finder, in the Old Tongue—because the animal had always been able to find the way home. It would have been nice to think Jeade’en might carry him home one day. Nice, but not likely, and he did not want anyone suspecting the cause for the name. Boyish fancies had no place in his life now. There was not much room for anything but what he had to do.
“A fine name,” she said absently. He knew she had read the book, too, and half-expected her to recognize the name, but she seemed to be mulling over something else, chewing her lower lip pensively.
He was content with silence. The last dregs of the city gave way to country and pitiful scattered farms. Not even a Congar or a Coplin, Two River folk notorious for laziness among other things, would keep a place as run-down and ramshackle as these rough stone houses, walls slanting as if about to topple over on the chickens scratching in the dirt. Sagging barns leaned against laurels or spicewoods. Roofs of cracked and broken slates all looked as if they leaked. Goats bleated disconsolately in stone pens that might have been thrown together hastily that morning. Barefoot men and women hoed stoop-shouldered in unfenced fields, not looking up even when the large party was passing. Redbeaks and thrushes warbling in the small thickets were not enough to lighten the feel of oppressive gloom.
I have to do something about this. I … . No, not now. First things first. I’ve done what I could for them in a few weeks. I can’t do anything more now. He tried not to look at the tumbledown farms. Were the olive groves in the south as bad? The people who worked those did not even own the land; it all belonged to High Lords. No. The breeze. Nice, the way it cuts the heat. I can enjoy it a bit longer. I have to tell them, soon now.
“Rand,” Egwene said abruptly, “I want to talk to you.” Something serious by her expression; those big dark eyes, fixed on him, held a light reminiscent of Nynaeve’s when she was about to lecture. “I want to talk about Elayne.”
“What about her?” he asked warily. He touched his pouch, where two letters crinkled against a small hard object. If they had not both been in the same elegantly flowing hand,
he would not have believed they came from the same woman. And after all that kissing and snuggling. The High Lords were easier to understand than women.
“Why did you let her go in that way?”
Puzzled, he stared at her. “She wanted to go. I’d have had to tie her up to stop her. Besides, she’ll be safer in Tanchico than near me—or Mat—if we are going to attract bubbles of evil the way Moiraine says. You would be, too.”
“That isn’t what I mean at all. Of course she wanted to go. And you had no right to stop her. But why didn’t you tell her you wished she would stay?”
“She wanted to go,” he repeated, and grew more confused when she rolled her eyes as if he were speaking gibberish. If he had no right to stop Elayne, and she wanted to go, why was he supposed to try to talk her out of it? Especially when she was safer gone.
Moiraine spoke, right behind him. “Are you ready to tell me the next secret? It has been clear you were keeping something from me. At the least I might be able to tell you if you are leading us over a cliff.”
Rand sighed. He had not heard her and Lan closing up on him. And Mat as well, although still holding a distance between himself and the Aes Sedai. Mat’s face was a study, doubt and reluctance and grim determination all running across it by turns, especially when he glanced at Moiraine. He never looked at her directly, only from the edge of his eye.
“Are you sure you want to come, Mat?” Rand asked.
Mat shrugged and affected a grin, not a very confident one. “Who could pass up a chance to see bloody Rhuidean?” Egwene raised her eyebrows at him. “Oh, pardon my language, Aes Sedai. I’ve heard you say as bad, and for less cause, I’ll wager.” Egwene stared at him indignantly, but spots of color in her cheeks said he had scored a hit.
“Be glad Mat is here,” Moiraine said to Rand, her voice cool, and not pleased. “You made a grave error letting Perrin run off, hiding his going from me. The world rests on your shoulders, but they must both support you or you will fall, and the world with you.” Mat flinched, and Rand thought he very nearly turned his gelding and rode away on the spot.