The Fires of Heaven

  Suddenly the cart gave a harder lurch than any before, then picked up speed as if the horse were reaching for a gallop. Bumping around like grain on a chaffing sieve, the three women stared at one another in surprise. Then Siuan levered herself up and pulled aside the canvas hiding the driver’s seat. Joni was gone. Throwing herself across the wooden seat, Siuan grabbed the reins and reared back, hauling the horse to a halt. Min threw open the back curtains, searching.

  The road ran through a thicket here, nearly a small forest of oak and elm, pine and leatherleaf. The dust of their short dash was still settling, some of it on Joni, where he lay sprawled by the side of the hard-packed dirt road sixty or so paces back.

  Instinctively Min leaped down and ran back to kneel beside the big man. He was still breathing, but his eyes were closed and a bloody gash on the side of his head was coming up in a purple lump.

  Leane pushed her aside and felt Joni’s head with sure fingers. “He will live,” she said crisply. “Nothing seems broken, but he will have a headache for days after he wakes.” Sitting back on her heels, she folded her hands, and her voice saddened. “There is nothing I can do for him in any case. Burn me, I promised myself I would not cry over it again.”

  “The question—” Min swallowed and started again. “The question is, do we load him in the back of the cart and take him on to the manor, or do we—go?” Light, I’m no better than Siuan!

  “We could carry him as far as the next farm,” Leane said slowly.

  Siuan came up to them, leading the cart horse as if afraid the placid animal might bite. One glance at the man on the ground, and she frowned. “He never had that falling off the cart. I don’t see root or rock here to cause it.” She started studying the wood around them, and a man rode out of the trees on a tall black stallion, leading three mares, one shaggy and two hands shorter than the others.

  He was a tall man in a blue silk coat, with a sword at his side, his hair curling to broad shoulders, darkly handsome despite a hardening as though misfortune had marked him deeply. And he was the last man Min expected to see.

  “Is this your work?” Siuan demanded of him.

  Logain smiled as he reined in beside the cart, though there was little amusement in it. “A sling is a useful thing, Mara. You are lucky I am here. I didn’t expect you to leave the village for some hours yet, and barely able to walk then. The local lord was indulgent, it seems.” Abruptly his face went even darker, and his voice was rough stone. “Did you think I would leave you to your fate? Maybe I should have. You made promises to me, Mara. I want the revenge you promised. I’ve followed you halfway to the Sea of Storms on this search, though you won’t tell me what for. I’ve asked no questions as to how you plan to give me what you promised. But I will tell you this now. Your time is growing short. End your search soon, and deliver your promises, or I will leave you to find your own way. You’ll quickly find most villages offer small sympathy to penniless strangers. Three pretty women alone? The sight of this,” he touched the sword at his hip, “has kept you safe more times than you can know. Find what you are seeking soon, Mara.”

  He had not been so arrogant at the beginning of their journey. Then he had been humbly thankful for their help—as humbly as a man like Logain could manage, anyway. It seemed that time—and a lack of results—had withered his gratitude.

  Siuan did not flinch away from his stare. “I hope to,” she said firmly. “But if you want to go, then leave our horses and go! If you won’t row, get out of the boat and swim by yourself! See how far you get with your revenge alone.”

  Logain’s big hands tightened on his reins until Min heard his knuckles crack. He shivered with emotions in strong check. “I will stay a while longer, Mara,” he said finally. “A little while longer.”

  For an instant, to Min’s eyes, a halo flared around his head, a radiant crown of gold and blue. Siuan and Leane saw nothing, of course, though they knew what she could do. Sometimes she saw things about people—viewings, she called them—images or auras. Sometimes she knew what they meant. That woman would marry. That man would die. Small matters or grand events, joyous or bleak, there was never any rhyme or reason to who or where or when. Aes Sedai and Warders always had auras; most people never did. It was not always pleasant, knowing.

  She had seen Logain’s halo before, and she knew what it meant. Glory to come. But for him, perhaps above all men, surely that made no sense at all. His horse and his sword and his coat had come from playing at dice, though Min was not certain how fair the games had been. He had nothing else, and no prospects except Siuan’s promises, and how could Siuan ever keep them? His very name was likely a death sentence. It just made no sense.

  Logain’s humor returned as suddenly as it had gone. Pulling a fat, roughly woven purse from his belt, he jangled it at them. “I’ve come by a few coins. We won’t have to sleep in another barn for a while.”

  “We heard of it,” Siuan said dryly. “I suppose I should have expected no better from you.”

  “Think of it as a contribution to your search.” She stretched out her hand, but he tied the purse back to his belt with a faintly mocking grin. “I would not want to taint your hand with stolen coin, Mara. Besides, this way perhaps I can be sure you won’t run off and leave me.” Siuan looked as if she could have bitten a nail in two, but she said nothing. Standing in his stirrups, Logain peered down the road toward Kore Springs. “I see a flock of sheep coming this way, and a pair of boys. Time for us to ride. They’ll carry word of this as fast as they can run.” Settling back down, he glanced at Joni, still lying there unconscious. “And they’ll fetch help for that fellow. I don’t think I hit him hard enough to hurt him badly.”

  Min shook her head; the man continually surprised her. She would not have thought he would spare a second thought for a man whose head he had just cracked.

  Siuan and Leane wasted no time scrambling into their high-cantled saddles, Leane onto the gray mare she called Moonflower, Siuan onto Bela, the short, shaggy mare. It was more of a scramble for Siuan. She was no horsewoman; after weeks in the saddle she still treated sedate Bela like a fiery-eyed warhorse. Leane handled Moonflower with effortless ease. Min knew she was somewhere in between; she climbed onto Wildrose, her bay, with considerably more grace than Siuan, considerably less than Leane.

  “Do you think he will come after us?” Min asked as they started south, away from Kore Springs, at a trot. She meant the question for Siuan, but it was Logain who answered.

  “The local lord? I doubt he thinks you important enough. Of course, he may send a man, and he’ll certainly spread your descriptions. We will ride as far as we can manage before stopping, and again tomorrow.” It seemed he was taking charge.

  “We aren’t important enough,” Siuan said, bouncing awkwardly in her saddle. She might have been wary of Bela, but the look she directed at Logain’s back said his challenge to her authority would not last long.

  For herself, Min hoped Bryne considered them unimportant. He probably did. As long as he never learned their real names. Logain quickened the stallion’s pace, and she heeled Wildrose to keep up, putting her thoughts ahead, not behind.

  Tucking his leather gauntlets behind his sword belt, Gareth Bryne picked up the curl-brimmed velvet hat from his writing table. The hat was the latest fashion from Caemlyn. Caralin had seen to that; he had no care for fashion, but she thought he should dress suitably for his position, and it was the silks and velvets she laid out for him in the mornings.

  As he set the high-crowned hat on his head, he caught sight of his shadowy reflection in one of the study windows. Fitting that it was so wavery and thin. Squint as much as he would, his gray hat and gray silk coat, embroidered with silver scrolls down the sleeves and collar, looked nothing like the helmet and armor he was used to. That was over and done. And this . . . This was something to fill empty hours. That was all.

  “Are you certain you want to do this, Lord Gareth?”

  He turned from the window to where Ca
ralin stood beside her own writing table, across the room from his. Hers was piled with the estate account books. She had run his estates all the years he had been gone, and without doubt she still made a better job of it than he did.

  “If you had set them to work for Admer Nem, as the law required,” she went on, “this would be none of your affair at all.”

  “But I did not,” he told her. “And would not if I had it to do again. You know as well as I do, Nem and his male kin would be trying to corner those girls day and night. And Maigan and the rest of the women would make their lives the Pit of Doom, that is if all three girls didn’t accidentally fall down a well and drown.”

  “Even Maigan would not use a well,” Caralin said dryly, “not with the weather we’ve been having. Still, I take your point, Lord Gareth. But they have had most of a day and a night to run in any direction. You will locate them as soon by sending out word of them. If they can be found.”

  “Thad can find them.” Thad was over seventy, but he could still track yesterday’s wind across stone by moonlight, and he had been more than happy to turn the brickyard over to his son.

  “If you say so, Lord Gareth.” She and Thad did not get on. “Well, when you bring them back, I can certainly use them in the house.”

  Something in her voice, casual as it was, pricked his attention. A touch of satisfaction. Practically from the day he arrived home Caralin had introduced a succession of pretty maids and farmgirls into the manor house, all willing and eager to help the lord forget his miseries. “They are oathbreakers, Caralin. I fear it’s the fields for them.”

  A brief, exasperated tightening of her lips confirmed his suspicions, but she kept her tone indifferent. “The other two perhaps, Lord Gareth, but the Domani girl’s grace would be wasted in the fields, and would suit serving at table very well. A remarkably pretty young woman. Still, it will be as you wish, of course.”

  So that was the one Caralin had picked out. A remarkably pretty young woman indeed. Though oddly different from the Domani women he had met. A touch hesitant here, a touch too fast there. Almost as if she were just now trying out her arts for the first time. That was impossible, of course. Domani women trained their daughters to twine men around their fingers almost from the cradle. Not that she had been ineffective, he admitted. If Caralin had sprung her on him among the farmgirls . . . Remarkably pretty.

  So why was it not her face that kept filling his mind? Why did he find himself thinking of a pair of blue eyes? Challenging him as though wishing she had a sword, afraid and refusing to yield to fear. Mara Tomanes. He had been sure she was one to keep her word, even without oaths. “I will bring her back,” he muttered to himself. “I will know why she broke oath.”

  “As you say, my Lord,” Caralin said. “I thought she might do for your bedchamber maid. Sela is getting a bit old to be running up and down the stairs to fetch for you at night.”

  Bryne blinked at her. What? Oh. The Domani girl. He shook his head at Caralin’s foolishness. But was he being any less foolish? He was the lord here; he should remain here to take care of his people. Yet Caralin had taken better care than he knew how, all the years he was gone. He knew camps and soldiers and campaigns, and maybe a bit of how to maneuver in court intrigues. She was right. He should take off his sword and this fool hat, and have Caralin write out their descriptions, and . . .

  Instead, he said, “Keep a close eye on Admer Nem and his kin. They’ll try to cheat you as much as they can.”

  “As you say, my Lord.” The words were perfectly respectful; the tone told him to go teach his grandfather to shear sheep. Chuckling to himself, he went outside.

  The manor house was really little more than a tremendously overgrown farmhouse, two rambling stories of brick and stone under a slate roof, added to again and again by generations of Brynes. House Bryne had owned this land—or it had owned them—since Andor was wrought from the wreckage of Artur Hawkwing’s empire a thousand years before, and for all that time it had sent its sons off to fight Andor’s wars. He would fight no more wars, but it was too late for House Bryne. There had been too many wars, too many battles. He was the last of the blood. No wife, no son, no daughter. The line ended with him. All things had to end; the Wheel of Time turned.

  Twenty men waited beside saddled horses on the stone-paved yard in front of the manor house. Men even grayer than he, mostly, if they had hair. Experienced soldiers all, former squadmen, squadron leaders and bannermen who had served with him at one time or another in his career. Joni Shagrin, who had been Senior Bannerman of the Guards, was right at the front with a bandage around his temples, though Bryne knew for a fact his daughters had set their children to keep him in his bed. He was one of the few who had any family, here or anywhere else. Most had chosen to come serve Gareth Bryne again rather than drink away their pensions over reminiscences no one but another old soldier wanted to hear.

  All wore swords belted over their coats, and a few carried long, steel-tipped lances that had hung for years on a wall until this morning. Every saddle had a fat blanket roll behind, and bulging saddlebags, plus a pot or kettle and full water bags, just as if they were riding out on campaign instead of a week’s jaunt to chase down three women who set fire to a barn. Here was a chance to relive old days, or pretend to.

  He wondered if that was what was rousting him out. He was certainly too old to go riding off after a set of pretty eyes on a woman young enough to be his daughter. Maybe his granddaughter. I am not that big a fool, he told himself firmly. Caralin could manage things better with him not getting in the way.

  A lanky bay gelding came galloping up the oak lane that led down to the road, and the rider threw himself out of the saddle before the animal came to a full stop; the man half-stumbled but still managed to put fist to heart in a proper salute. Barim Halle, who served under him as a senior squadman years ago, was hard and wiry, with a leather egg for a head and white eyebrows that seemed to be trying to make up for the lack of other hair. “You been recalled to Caemlyn, my Captain-General?” he panted.

  “No,” Bryne said, too sharply. “What do you mean riding in here as though you had Cairhienin cavalry on your tail?” Some of the other horses were frisking, catching the bay’s mood.

  “Never rode that hard unless we was chasing them, my Lord.” Barim’s grin faded when the man saw he was not laughing. “Well, my Lord, I seen the horses, and I reckoned—” The man took another look at his face and cut off that line. “Well, actually, I got some news, too. I been over to New Braem to see my sister, and I heard plenty.”

  New Braem was older than Andor—“old” Braem had been destroyed in the Trolloc Wars, a thousand years before Artur Hawkwing—and it was a good place for news. A middling-sized border town well to the east of his estates, on the road from Caemlyn to Tar Valon. Even with Morgase’s current attitude, the merchants would keep that road busy. “Well, out with it, man. If there’s news, what is it?”

  “Uh, just trying to figure where to start, my Lord.” Barim straightened unconsciously, as though making a report. “Most important, I reckon, they say Tear has fallen. Aielmen took the Stone itself, and the Sword That Cannot Be Touched has flat been touched. Somebody drew it, they say.”

  “An Aielman drew it?” Bryne said incredulously. An Aiel would die before he touched a sword; he had seen it happen, in the Aiel War. Though it was said Callandor was not really a sword at all. Whatever that meant.

  “They didn’t say, my Lord. I heard names; Ren somebody or other most often. But they was talking it like fact, not rumor. Like everybody knew.”

  Bryne’s forehead creased in a frown. Worse than troubling, if true. If Callandor had been drawn, then the Dragon was Reborn. According to the Prophecies, that meant the Last Battle was coming, the Dark One breaking free. The Dragon Reborn would save the world, so the Prophecies said. And destroy it. This was news enough by itself to have set Halle galloping, if he had thought twice.

  But the leathery fellow was not finished. “W
ord come down from Tar Valon is near as big, my Lord. They say there’s a new Amyrlin Seat. Elaida, my Lord, who was the Queen’s advisor.” Blinking suddenly, Halle hurried on; Morgase was forbidden ground, and every man on the estate knew it, though Bryne had never said so. “They say the old Amyrlin, Siuan Sanche, was stilled and executed. And Logain died, too. That false Dragon they caught and gentled last year. They talked it like it was true, my Lord. Some of them claimed they was in Tar Valon when it all happened.”

  Logain was no great news, even if he had started a war in Ghealdan by claiming to be the Dragon Reborn. There had been several false Dragons the last few years. He could channel, though; that was a fact. Until the Aes Sedai gentled him. Well, he was not the first man to be caught and gentled, cut off from the Power so he could never channel again. They said men like that, whether false Dragons or just poor fools the Red Ajah took against, never lived long. It was said they gave up wanting to live.

  Siuan Sanche, though, that was news. He had met her once, nearly three years ago. A woman who demanded obedience and gave no reasons. Tough as an old boot, with a tongue like a file and a temper like that of a bear with a sore tooth. He would have expected her to tear any upstart claimant limb from limb with her bare hands. Stilling was the same as gentling for a man, but more rare by far. Especially for an Amyrlin Seat. Only two Amyrlins in three thousand years had suffered that fate, so far as the Tower admitted, though it was possible they could have hidden two dozen more; the Tower was very good at hiding what they wanted hidden. But an execution on top of stilling seemed unnecessary. It was said women survived stilling no better than men did gentling.

  It all stank of trouble. Everyone knew the Tower had secret alliances, strings tied to thrones and powerful lords and ladies. With a new Amyrlin raised in this fashion, some would surely try to test whether the Aes Sedai still watched as closely. And once this fellow in Tear quelled any opposition—not that there was likely to be much if he really did have the Stone—he would move, against Illian or Cairhien. The question was, how quickly could he move? Would forces be gathered against him, or for him? He had to be the true Dragon Reborn, but the Houses would go both ways, and the people, too. And if petty squabbles broke out because the Tower—