Crossroads of Twilight

  “Are you considering the possibility they can’t be defeated?” she asked calmly. Calmness always suited until you knew the facts, and usually after, too.

  The boy rounded on her, stiff-necked and eyes like ice. “I can defeat them eventually,” he said, struggling to keep his tone civil. That much was to the good. The less often she had to prove that she could and would punish transgressions of her rules, the better. “But - ” He cut off with a growl as the sounds of argument in the hallway penetrated the door.

  A moment later the door swung open, and Elza backed into the room, still arguing in a loud voice and trying to hold back two other sisters with her spread arms. Brian, her pale face flushed with color, was pushing the other Green ahead of her physically. Sarene, a woman so beautiful she made Brian look almost ordinary, wore a cooler expression, as might be expected from a White, but she was shaking her head in exasperation, and hard enough to make the colorful beads in her thin braids click together. Sarene possessed a temper, though she normally kept it sealed away tightly.

  “Bartol and Rashan do be coming,” Brian announced loudly, agitation thickening Illian in her speech. Those were her two Warders, left behind in Cairhien. “I did no send for them, but someone did Travel with them. An hour ago, I felt them suddenly closer, and just now, closer again. They are coming toward us now.”

  “My Vitalien, he also is coming closer,” Sarene said. “He will be here in a few hours, I think.”

  Elza let her arms drop, though from the stiffness of her back, she was still glaring at the two sisters. “My Fearil will be here shortly as well,” she muttered. He was her only Warder; it was said they were married, and Greens who married seldom took another another Warder at the same time. Cadsuane wondered whether she would have spoken if the others had not.

  “I didn’t expect it so soon,” the boy said softly. Softly, but there was steel in his voice. “But I shouldn’t have expected events to wait on me, should I, Cadsuane?”

  “Events never wait on anyone,” she said, standing. Brian flinched as if she had just noticed her, though Cadsuane was sure her face was as smooth as the boy’s. And maybe as stony, at that. What had brought those Warders from Cairhien, and who had Traveled with them, might be problems enough to go on with, but she thought she had gotten another answer from the boy, and she was going to have to consider very carefully how to advise him on it. Sometimes, the answers were thornier than the questions.

  CHAPTER 24

  A Strengthening Storm

  Midafternoon sunlight should have been slanting through the windows of Rand’s bedchamber, but a hard rain was falling outside, and all the lamps were lit to hold off a twilight darkness. Thunder rattled the glass-filled casements in the windows. It was a fierce storm that had rolled down out of the Dragonwall faster than a running horse and brought a deeper cold, almost deep enough for snow. The raindrops pelting the house were half-frozen slush, and despite blazing logs on the hearthstone, a chill clung to the room.

  Lying on his bed with his booted feet propped one atop the other on the coverlet, he stared up at the canopy and tried to put his thoughts in order. He could disregard the thunderstorm out­side, but Min, snuggling under his arm, was another matter. She did not try to distract him; she just did it without trying. What was he to do about her? About Elayne, and Aviendha. Those two were only vague presences in his head, at this distance from Caemlyn. At least, he assumed they were still in Caemlyn. Assuming was dangerous when it came to those two. All he had of them at the moment was a general sense of direction and the knowledge they were alive. Min’s body was pressed tight against his side, though, and the bond made her as vibrant inside his head as she was in the flesh. Was it too late to keep Min safe, to keep Elayne and Aviendha safe?

  What makes you think you can keep anyone safe? Lews Therin whis­pered in his head. The dead madman was an old friend, now. We are all going to die. Just hope that you aren’t the one who kills them. Not a welcome friend, just one he could not rid himself of. He no longer feared killing Min or Elayne or Aviendha any more than he feared going mad. Madder than he already was, at least, with a dead man in his head, and sometimes a foggy face he could almost recognize. Did he dare ask Cadsuane about either one?

  Trust no one, Lew Therin murmured, then gave a wry laugh. Including me.

  Without warning, Min punched him in the ribs hard enough to make him grunt. “You’re getting melancholy, sheepherder,” she growled. “If you’re worrying about me again, I swear, I’ll. . . .” She had so many different ways of growling, Min did, each matched to very different sensations through the bond. There was the light irritation he felt from her now, this time touched with worry, and sometimes there was a sharp edge as if she were refraining from snapping his head off. There was a growl that almost made him laugh from the amusement in her head, or as close to laughing as he had come in what seemed a very long time, and a throaty growl that would have heated his blood even without the bond.

  “None of that, now,” she said warningly, before he could move the hand resting on her back, and rolled off the bed to her feet, tugging her embroidered coat straight with a reproving look. Since bonding him, she was even better at reading his mind, and she had been good enough before. “What are you going to do about them, Rand? What is Cadsuane going to do?” Lightning flashed in the windows, almost bright enough to wash out the lamps, and thun­der boomed against the window glass.

  “I haven’t yet been able to see what she was going to do ahead of time, Min. Why should today be different?”

  The thick feather mattress sagged beneath him as he swung his legs over the side and sat up facing her. He almost pressed a hand to the old wounds in his side without thinking, then caught him­self and changed the movement to buttoning up his coat. Half-healed and never healing, those two overlapping wounds hurt since Shadar Logoth. Or maybe he was just more aware of how they throbbed, the heat of them a furnace of fever trapped in an area smaller than the palm of his hand. One, at least, he hoped, would begin to heal with Shadar Logoth gone. Maybe there had just not been enough time yet for him to feel any difference. It was not the same side that Min had fisted - she was always gentle with that, if not always with the rest of him - but he thought he had kept the pain hidden from her. No point in giving her something more to worry over. The concern in her eyes, and in her head, must be about Cadsuane. Or the others.

  The manor house and all of its outlying buildings were crowded, now. It had seemed inevitable that sooner or later some­one would try using the Warders left in Cairhien; their Aes Sedai had not blared that they were going off to find the Dragon Reborn, but neither had they been particularly secretive. Even so, he had never anticipated those who arrived with them. Davram Bashere with a hundred of his Saldaean light horse, dismounting in a wind-driven soaking rain and muttering about ruined saddles. Over half a dozen black-coated Asha’man who for some reason had not shielded themselves from the downpour. They rode with Bashere, but it had been like two parties arriving, a little distance between them always, a strong whiff of watchful wariness. And one of the Asha’man was Logain Ablar. Logain! An Asha’man, wearing the Sword and Dragon on his collar! Bashere and Logain both wanted to talk to him, but not in front of anyone, especially each other it seemed. Unexpected or not, though, they were hardly the most surprising of the visitors. He had thought the eight Aes Sedai must be more friends of Cadsuane, yet he would swear she had been as surprised as he to see most of them. Odder, all but one seemed to be with the Asha’man! Not prisoners, and certainly not guards, but Logain had been reluctant to explain with Bashere present, and Bashere reluctant to leave Logain the first chance to talk to Rand alone. Now they were all drying off and settling into their rooms, leaving him to try to put his thoughts in order. To the extent that he could, with Min close by. What would Cadsuane do? Well, he had tried to ask her advice. Events had outrun both of them, though. The decision had been made, whatever Cadsuane thought Lightning flashed again in the windows. Lightning se
emed to suit Cadsuane. You could never tell where it would strike.

  Alivia would finish her, Lews Therin muttered. She’s going to help us die; she’d remove Cadsuane for us, if you tell her to.

  I don’t want to kill her. Rand thought at the dead man. I can’t afford for her to die. Lews Therin knew that as well as he, but the man grumbled under his breath anyway. Since Shadar Logoth, he seemed a touch less mad, sometimes. Or maybe Rand was a touch more. After all, he took talking to a dead man in his head as a mat­ter of every day, and that was hardly sane.

  “You have to do something” Min muttered, folding her arms beneath her breasts. “Logain’s aura still speaks of glory, stronger than ever. Maybe he still thinks he’s the real Dragon Reborn. And there’s something . . . dark . . . in the images I saw around Lord Davram. If he turns against you, or dies. . . . I heard one of the sol­diers say Lord Dobraine might die. Losing even one of them would be a blow. Lose all three, and it might take you a year to recover.”

  “If you’ve seen it, then it’s going to happen. I have to do what I can, Min, not worry over what I can’t.” She gave him one of those looks women had in great store, as if he were trying to start an argument.

  A scratching at the door brought his head around and made Min shift her stance. He suspected she had slipped a throwing knife out of her sleeve and was hiding it behind her wrist. The woman carried more knives tucked about her than Thorn Merrilin had. Or Mat. Colors whirled in his head, almost resolving into . . . what? A man on a wagon seat? Not the face that sometimes appeared in his thoughts, anyway, and the scene was gone in an instant, without any of the dizziness that accompanied the face.

  “Come,” he called, standing up.

  Elza spread her dark green skirts in an elegant curtsy when she entered, her eyes bright on his face. A pleasant-appearing woman, and coolly complacent as a cat, she hardly seemed to see Min. Of all the sisters who had sworn to him, Elza was the most eager. The only eager one, really. The others had their reasons for swearing, their explanations, and of course Verin and the sisters who came to find him at Dumai’s Wells had no real choice facing a ta’veren, but for all Elza’s outer coolness, she seemed to burn inside with a passion to see he reached Tarmon Gai’don. “You said to let you know when the Ogier came,” she said, never taking her eyes from his face.

  “Loial!” Min shouted gleefully, tucking the knife back up her sleeve as she rushed past Elza, who blinked at the sight of the blade. “I could have killed Rand for letting you get off to your room before I saw you!” The bond said she did not mean it. Not exactly.

  “Thank you,” Rand told Elza, listening to the sounds of merri­ment from the sitting room, Min’s light laughter and Loial’s quake of Ogier mirth, like the earth laughing. Thunder rolled across the sky.

  Perhaps the Aes Sedai’s passion extended to wanting to know what he said to Loial, because her lips thinned, and she hesitated before making another curtsy and sweeping out of the bedchamber. A brief pause in the sounds of pleasure announced her passage across the sitting room, and their resumption her departure. Only then did he seize the Power. He tried never to let anyone see him do that.

  Fire flooded into him, hotter than the sun, and cold to make the worst blizzard seem spring, all a swirling rage that dwarfed the storm outside, threatening to scour him away for a moment’s inat­tention. Seizing saidin was a war for survival. But the green of the cornices was suddenly greener, the black of his coat blacker, the gold of its embroidery more golden. He could see the grain of the vine-carved bedposts, see faint marks left by the craftsman’s sand­ing all those years ago. Saidin made him feel as if he had been half-blind and numb without it. That was a part of what he felt.

  Clean, Lews Therin whispered. Pure and clean again.

  It was. The foulness that had marked the male half of the Power since the Breaking was gone. That did not stop nausea from rising in Rand, though, the violent urge to bend double and empty himself on the floor. The room seemed to spin for an instant, and he had to put a hand on the nearest bedpost to steady himself. He did not know why he should still feel this sickness, with the taint gone. Lews Therin did not know, or would not tell. But the sick­ness was the reason he could not let anyone see him take hold of saidin, if he could help it. Elza might burn to see him reach the Last Battle, but too many others wanted to see him fall, not all of them Darkfriends.

  In that moment of weakness, the dead man reached for saidin. Rand could feel him clawing for it greedily. Was it harder than it had been to push him away? In some ways, Lews Therin seemed more solidly part of him since Shadar Logoth. It did not matter. He had only so far left to go before he could die. He just had to last that far. Drawing a deep breath, he ignored the lingering traces of sickness in his belly and strode into the sitting room to the crash of thunder.

  Min stood in the middle of the room holding one of Loial’s hands in both of hers and smiling up at him. It took both of her hands to hold one of Loial’s, and the pair did not come close to cov­ering it. The top of his head missed the plaster ceiling by little more than a foot. He had donned a fresh coat of dark blue wool, the bottom flaring over baggy trousers to the tops of his knee-high boots, but for once his pockets did not bulge with the angular shapes of books. Eyes the size of teacups lit up at the sight of Rand, and the grin on his wide mouth really did split his face in two. The tufted ears sticking up through his shaggy hair quivered with plea­sure.

  “Lord Algarin has Ogier guest rooms, Rand,” he boomed in a voice like a deep drum. “Can you imagine it? Six of them! Of course, they haven’t been used in some time, but they’re aired out every week, so there isn’t any mustiness, and the bedsheets are very good linen. I thought I’d be back to doubling myself up in a human-sized bed. Umm. We aren’t staying here long, are we?” His long ears sagged a little, then began to twitch uneasily. “I don’t think we should. I mean, I might get used to having a real bed, and that wouldn’t do if I’m going to stay with you. I mean. . . . Well, you know what I mean.”

  “I know,” Rand said softly. He could have laughed at the Ogier’s consternation. He should have laughed. Laughter just seemed to have escaped him, lately. Spinning a web against eaves­dropping around the room, he knotted it so he could release saidin. The last traces of nausea began to fade immediately. He could control the sickness, usually, with an effort, but there was no point when he did not have to. “Did any of your books get wet?” Loial’s main concern coming in had been to check on his books.

  Suddenly it struck him that he had thought of what he had done as spinning a web. That was how Lews Therin would put it. That sort of thing happened too often, the other man’s turns of phrase drifting into his head, the other man’s memories mingling with his. He was Rand al’Thor, not Lews Therin Telamon. He had woven a ward and tied off the weave, not spun a web and knotted it. But the one came to him as easily as the other.

  “My Essays of Willim of Maneches got damp,” Loial said disgust­edly, rubbing his upper lip with a finger the thickness of a sausage. Had he been careless shaving, or was that the beginning of a mus­tache beneath his wide nose? “The pages may spot. I shouldn’t have been so careless, not with a book. And my book of notes took some wet, too. But the ink didn’t run. Everything is still readable, but I really need to make a case to protect. . . .” Slowly, a frown crept onto his face, dangling the long ends of his eyebrows onto his cheeks. “You look tired, Rand. He looks tired, Min.”

  “He’s been doing too much, but he’s resting now,” Min said defensively, and Rand did smile. A little. Min would always defend him, even to his friends. “You are resting, sheepherder,” she added, letting go of Loial’s huge hand and planting her fists on her hips. “Sit down and rest. Oh, sit down, Loial. I’ll put a crick in my neck if I keep staring up at you.”

  Loial chuckled, the bellowing of a bull muted in his throat, as he examined one of the straight-back chairs dubiously. Compared to him, it seemed a chair made for a child. “Sheepherder. You don’t kno
w how good it is to hear you calling him sheepherder, Min.” He sat down cautiously. The plain-carved chair creaked under his weight, and his knees stuck up in front of him. “I am sorry, Rand, but it is funny, and I haven’t heard much to laugh at these past months.” The chair was holding. With a quick glance toward the hall door, he added, a little too loudly, “Karldin doesn’t have much sense of humor.”

  “You can speak freely,” Rand told him. “We’re safe behind a . . . a ward.” He had almost said behind a shield, which was not the same thing. Except that he knew it was.

  He was too weary to sit, just as he was too tired to find sleep easily most nights - his bones ached with it - so he went to stand in front of the fireplace. Winds gusting across the chimney top made the flames dance on the split logs and sometimes let a small puff of smoke into the room, and he could hear the rain drumming away at the windows, but the thunder seemed to have moved on. Maybe the storm was ending. Clasping his hands behind his back, he turned away from the fire. “What did the Elders say, Loial?”

  Instead of answering straightaway, Loial looked at Min as if seeking encouragement or support. Perched on the edge of a blue armchair with her knees crossed, she smiled at the Ogier and nod­ded, and he sighed heavily, a wind gusting through deep caverns. “Karldin and I visited every stedding, Rand. All but Stedding Shangtai, of course. I couldn’t go there, but I left a message everywhere we went, and Daiting isn’t far from Shangtai. Someone will carry it there. The Great Stump is meeting in Shangtai, and that will attract crowds. This is the first time a Great Stump has been called in a thousand years, not since you humans fought the War of the Hundred Years, and it was Shangtai’s turn. They must be consider­ing something very important, but no one would tell me why it was called. They won’t tell you about any Stump until you have a beard,” he muttered, fingering a narrow patch of stubble on his broad chin. Apparently, he intended to remedy his lack, though it was not certain that he could. Loial was over ninety years old, now, yet for an Ogier, that was still a boy.