The Fires of Heaven

  “Two,” Min said hoarsely. “Two others. And . . . And I’m one.”

  Mouth already open for the next question, for a moment Elayne could only stare. “You?” she got out at last.

  Min bristled. “Yes, me! Do you think I can’t fall in love? I didn’t want to, but I did, and that’s that.” She stalked past Elayne down the alleyway, and this time Elayne was slower to catch up.

  It certainly explained a few things. How nervously Min had always sidestepped talking about it. The embroidery on her lapels. And unless she was imagining it, Min was wearing rouge, too. How do I feel about it? she wondered. She could not sort it out. “Who is the third?” she asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” Min mumbled. “Only that she has a temper. Not Nynaeve, thank the Light.” She gave a weak laugh. “I don’t think I could have survived that.” Once more she gave Elayne a cautious sidelong look. “What does this mean between you and me? I like you. I never had a sister, but sometimes I feel like you. . . . I want to be your friend, Elayne, and I won’t stop liking you whatever happens, but I can’t stop loving him.”

  “I don’t very much like the idea of having to share a man,” Elayne said stiffly. That was certainly an understatement.

  “Me, neither. Only . . . Elayne, it shames me to admit it, but I will take him any way I can get him. Not that either of us has much choice. Light, he’s scrambled my whole life. Just thinking about him scrambles my brains.” Min sounded as if she did not know whether to laugh or cry.

  Elayne exhaled slowly. Not Min’s fault. Was it better that it was Min rather than, say, Berelain or somebody else she could not abide? “Ta’veren,” she said. “He bends the world around him. We are chips caught in a whirlpool. But I seem to recall you and me and Egwene saying we’d never let a man come between us being friends. We will work it out somehow, Min. And when we find out who the third is . . . Well, we’ll work that out, as well. Somehow.” A third! Could she be Berelain? Oh, blood and ashes!

  “Somehow,” Min said bleakly. “Meanwhile, you and I are caught here in a leg trap. I know there’s another, I know I can’t do anything about it, but I had enough trouble reconciling myself to you, and . . . Cairhienin women aren’t all like Moiraine. I saw a Cairhienin noblewoman in Baerlon once. On the surface, she made Moiraine look like Leane, but sometimes she said things, hinting. And her auras! I don’t think a man in the whole town was safe alone with her, not unless he was ugly, lame, and better yet, dead.”

  Elayne sniffed, but she managed to make her voice light. “Never you mind about that. We have another sister, you and I, one you’ve never met. Aviendha is keeping a close eye on Rand, and he doesn’t go ten steps without a guard of Aiel Maidens of the Spear.” A Cairhienin woman? At least she had met Berelain, knew something of her. No. She was not going to fret over it like some brainless girl. A grown woman dealt with the world as it was and made the best of it. Who could it be?

  They had come out into an open yard dotted with cold ashes. Huge kettles, most pitted where rust had been scrubbed away, stood against the encircling stone wall, which had been toppled in several places by trees growing up in it. Despite the shadows crossing the yard, two steaming kettles still sat on flames, and three novices, hair sweat-soaked and white skirts tied up, were hard at work on scrub boards stuck into broad washpots full of soapy water.

  With a glance at the shirts under Min’s arm, Elayne embraced saidar. “Let me help you with those.” Channeling to do assigned chores was forbidden—physical labor built character, so they said—but this could not be counted the same. If she swirled the shirts around in the water violently enough, there should be no reason to get their hands wet. “Tell me everything. Are Siuan and Leane as changed as they seem? How did you get here? Is Logain really here? And why are you laundering some man’s shirts? Everything.”

  Min laughed, plainly pleased to change the subject. “ ‘Everything’ will take a week. But I’ll try. First, I helped Siuan and Leane get out of the dungeon Elaida had stuck them in, and then . . .”

  Making appropriate sounds of amazement, Elayne channeled Air to lift one of the boiling kettles clear of its flames. She hardly noticed the novices’ incredulous stares; she was used to her own strength now, and it rarely occurred to her that she did things, without thinking, that some full Aes Sedai could not do at all. Who was the third woman? Aviendha had better be keeping a close eye on him.

  CHAPTER

  51

  News Comes to Cairhien

  A thin thread of blue smoke rising from the plain, short-stemmed pipe clenched in his teeth, Rand rested one hand on the balcony’s stone railing and looked into the garden below. Sharp shadows were lengthening; the sun was a red ball falling through a cloudless sky. Ten days in Cairhien, and this seemed the first moment he had stood still when he was not asleep. Selande stood close by his side, pale face tilted up to watch him, not the garden. Her hair was not so elaborately done as that of a woman of higher rank, but it still added half a foot to her height. He tried to ignore her, but it was difficult to ignore a woman who insisted on pressing her firm bosom against your arm. The meeting had gone on long enough for him to want a moment’s break. He had known it for a mistake as soon as Selande followed him out.

  “I know a secluded pool,” she said softly, “where this heat might be escaped. A sheltered pool, where nothing would disturb us.” The music of Asmodean’s harp drifted out through the square arches behind them. Something light, cool sounding.

  Rand puffed a little more vigorously. The heat. Nothing compared to the Waste, but . . . Autumn should be coming on, yet the afternoon felt like the depths of summer. A rainless summer. Shirt-sleeved men in the garden were spreading water from buckets, doing it late to avoid evaporation, but too much was brown or dying. The weather could not be natural. The burning sun mocked him. Moiraine agreed, and Asmodean, but neither knew what to do or how, any more than he did. Sammael. Sammael he could do something about.

  “Cool water,” Selande murmured, “and you and I alone.” She snuggled closer, though he did not see how it was possible.

  He wondered when the next taunt would come. No dashing off in a temper, whatever Sammael did. Once his methodical buildup in Tear was done, then he would loose the lightning. One crushing stroke to put an end to Sammael, and add Illian to his bag at the same time. With Illian, Tear and Cairhien, plus an army of Aiel big enough to overwhelm any nation in weeks, he . . .

  “Would you not like to swim? I do not swim well myself, but surely you will teach me.”

  Rand sighed. For a moment he wished Aviendha was there. No. The last thing he wanted was a bruised Selande running screaming with her clothes half torn off.

  Hooding his eyes, he looked down at her and spoke quietly around his pipe. “I can channel.” She blinked, drawing back without moving a muscle. They never understood why he would bring that up; for them it was something to be glossed over, ignored if possible. “They say I’ll go mad. But I’m not mad yet. Not yet.” He chuckled from deep in his chest, then cut it off abruptly, made his face blank. “Teach you to swim? I’ll hold you up in the water with the Power. Saidin is tainted, you know. The Dark One’s touch. You won’t feel it, though. All around you, but you’ll not feel a thing.” Another chuckle, with a hint of a wheeze. Her dark eyes were as wide and round as they would go, her smile a sickly rictus. “Later, then. I want to be alone, to think about . . .” He bent as if to kiss her, and with a squeak, she dropped a curtsy so sudden that at first he thought her legs had collapsed.

  Backing away, curtsying hurriedly at every other step, she babbled about the honor of serving him, her deepest wish to serve him, all in a voice on the brink of hysteria, until she bumped into one of the square arches. A final, half-bend of her knees, and she darted inside.

  With a grimace, he turned back to the railing. Frightening women. She would have made excuses had he asked her to leave him, would have taken a command as only a temporary setback unless it was to stay out of his sight, an
d even then. . . . Maybe word would spread this time. He had to keep a short rein on his temper; it ran away too easily of late. It was the drought he could do nothing about, the problems that sprang up like weeds wherever he looked. A few moments more alone with his pipe. Who would rule a nation when he could have easier work, such as carrying water uphill in a sieve?

  Across the garden, between two of the Royal Palace’s stepped towers, he had a view of Cairhien, harshly lit and shadowed, mastering the hills more than flowing over them. His crimson flag with the ancient Aes Sedai symbol hung limply above one of those two towers, a long copy of the Dragon Banner over the other. That one flew a dozen places in the city, including the tallest of the great unfinished towers, right in front of him. Shouting had done as little as orders there; neither Tairens nor Cairhienin could believe he really meant that he only wanted one, and Aiel did not care about banners one way or another.

  Even now, deep inside the palace, he could hear the murmur of a city jammed to bursting. Refugees from every corner of the land, more afraid to return to their homes than they were to have the Dragon Reborn in their midst. Merchants seeping in, selling whatever people could afford to buy and buying whatever people could not afford to keep. Lords and armed men rallying to his banner, or to someone’s. Hunters for the Horn thinking it must be found near him; a dozen Foregaters, or a hundred, were ready to sell it to any of them. Ogier stonemasons down from Stedding Tsofu to see if there was work for their fabled skills. Adventurers, some of whom might have been bandits a week gone, come to see what they could pick up. There had even been a hundred or so Whitecloaks, though they had galloped out as soon as it was clear the siege had been lifted. Did Pedron Niall’s ingathering of the Whitecloaks concern him? Egwene gave him hints of things, but she saw matters from the White Tower, wherever she stood. The Aes Sedai point of view was not his.

  At least the wagon trains full of grain were beginning to arrive from Tear with some regularity. Hungry people could riot. He wished he could have simply left it at being glad they were not so hungry anymore, but there it was. The bandits were fewer. And the civil war had not resumed. Yet. More good news. He had to make certain it stayed that way before he could leave. A hundred things to take care of before he could go after Sammael. Only Rhuarc and Bael remained of the chiefs he really trusted, those who had marched from Rhuidean with him. But if the four clans who had joined him late could not be trusted on the march to Tear, could he trust them loose in Cairhien? Indirian and the others had acknowledged him as Car’a’carn, but they knew him as little as he knew them. The message that morning might be a problem. Berelain, First of Mayene, was only a few hundred miles south of the city, on her way to join him with a small army; he had no idea how she had led it across Tear. Oddly, her letter had asked if Perrin was with him. No doubt she feared Rand might forget her small country if she did not remind him. It might almost be a pleasure to watch her spar with the Cairhienin, the latest in a long line of Firsts who had managed to keep Tear from swallowing their country by playing the Game of Houses. Perhaps if he put her in charge here . . . He would be taking Meilan and the other Tairens with him when the time came. If it ever came.

  This was no better than what was waiting inside. Tapping the dottle from his pipe, he ground out the tabac’s last sparks under his boot. No need to risk fire to the garden; it would go up like a torch. The drought. The unnatural weather. He realized he was snarling silently. First work on what he knew he could do something about. It took an effort to smooth his face before he went in.

  Asmodean, as well dressed as any lord, with falls of lace at his neck, plucked a soothing melody from his harp in one corner, leaning against the dark severe paneling as if lounging at his leisure. The others who were sitting bobbed out of their chairs at Rand’s appearance, and back down at his sharp gesture. Meilan, Torean and Aracome occupied carved-and-gilded chairs on one side of the deep red and gold carpet, each with a young Tairen lord at his back, mirroring the Cairhienin on the other side. Dobraine and Maringil had a young lord apiece behind them, too, each with the front of his head shaved and powdered like Dobraine’s. A white-faced Selande stood at Colavaere’s shoulder, and trembled when Rand looked at her.

  Schooling his face, he strode down the carpet to his own chair. That chair alone was reason to control his features. It was a new gift from Colavaere and the other two, in what they imagined was the Tairen style. He must like Tairen gaudiness; he ruled Tear, had sent them here. Carved Dragons held it up, all sparkling red and gold with enamel and gilt, and great sunstones for their golden eyes. Two more made the arms, and others climbed the tall back. Countless craftsmen must have gone without sleep since his arrival to make the thing. He felt like a fool sitting on it. Asmodean’s music had changed; it had a grand sound, now, a triumphal march.

  And yet, there was an added wariness in those dark Cairhienin eyes watching him, a wariness reflected in the Tairens. It had been there before he went outside, too. Perhaps in attempting to curry favor they had made a mistake that was only now dawning on them. They had all tried to ignore who he was, pretend he was simply some young lord who had conquered them, who could be dealt with and manipulated. That chair—that throne—held up in front of them who and what he really was.

  “Are the soldiers moving on schedule, Lord Dobraine?” The harp faded away as soon as he opened his mouth, Asmodean apparently absorbed in preening it.

  The leathery man smiled grimly. “They are, my Lord Dragon.” No more than that. Rand had no illusions that Dobraine liked him more than any of the others did, or that he would not try to gain advantage where he could, but Dobraine actually seemed ready to hold to the oath he had sworn. The colorful slashes down the chest of his coat were worn from a breastplate being buckled over them.

  Maringil shifted forward on his chair, whip-slender and tall for a Cairhienin, white hair almost touching his shoulders. His forehead was not shaved, and his coat, stripes nearly to his knees, bore no visible wear. “We need those men here, my Lord Dragon.” Hawk’s eyes blinked at the gilded throne, focused on Rand again. “There are many bandits at large in the land yet.” He shifted again, so he did not have to look at the Tairens. Meilan and the other two were smiling faintly.

  “I have set Aiel to hunting bandits,” Rand said. They did have orders to sweep up any brigands in their path. And to not go out of their way to find them. Even Aiel could not do that and move quickly. “I’m told that three days ago, Stone Dogs killed nearly two hundred near Morelle.” That was near the southernmost line claimed by Cairhien in recent years, halfway to the River Iralell. No need to let this lot know that those Aiel might be as far as the river by now. They could cover long distances faster than horses.

  Maringil persisted, frowning uneasily. “There is another reason. Half of our land west of the Alguenya is in the hands of Andor.” He hesitated. They all knew Rand had grown up in Andor; a dozen rumors made him a son of one Andoran House or another, even a son of Morgase herself, either cast off because he could channel or fled before he could be gentled. The slender man went on as if tiptoeing barefoot and blindfolded among daggers. “Morgase does not seem to be reaching for more as yet, but what she has already must be taken back. Her heralds have even proclaimed her right to the—” He stopped abruptly. None of them knew who Rand meant the Sun Throne for. Maybe it was Morgase.

  Colavaere’s dark gaze had Rand on balance scales again; she had said little today. She would not until she learned why Selande’s face was so white.

  Suddenly Rand was tired, of nobles balking, of all the manuevering in Daes Dae’mar. “Andoran claims to Cairhien will be taken care of when I am ready. Those soldiers will go to Tear. You will follow the High Lord Meilan’s good example of obedience, and I’ll hear no more on it.” He swung toward the Tairens. “Your example is a good one, Meilan, isn’t it? And yours, Aracome? If I ride out tomorrow, I won’t find a thousand Defenders of the Stone camped ten miles south who were supposed to be on their way back to Tear two day
s ago, will I? Or two thousand armsmen from Tairen Houses?”

  Those faint smiles faded with each word. Meilan became very still, dark eyes glittering, and Aracome’s narrow face went pale, whether from anger or fear it was hard to say. Torean dabbed at his lumpy face with a silk handkerchief pulled from his sleeve. Rand ruled in Tear, and meant to rule; Callandor driven into the Heart of the Stone proved that. That was why they had not protested against his sending Tairen soldiers to Cairhien. They thought to carve new estates, perhaps kingdoms, here, far from where he ruled.

  “You will not, my Lord Dragon,” Meilan said finally. “Tomorrow I will ride with you so you may see for yourself.”

  Rand did not doubt it. A rider would be dispatched south as soon as the man could arrange it, and by tomorrow those soldiers would be far on toward Tear. It would do. For now. “I am done, then. You may leave me.”

  A few starts of surprise, masked so quickly they might have been imagined, and they were rising, bowing and curtsying, Selande and the young lords backing away. They had expected more. An audience with the Dragon Reborn was always long, and tortuous as they saw it, with him firmly bending them the way he meant them to go, whether it was declaring that no Tairen could claim lands in Cairhien without marrying into a Cairhienin House, or refusing to allow the expulsion of Foregaters, or making laws apply to nobles that had never applied to any but commoners before.

  His eyes followed Selande for a moment. She was not the first in the last ten days. Nor the tenth, or even the twentieth. He had been tempted, at least at first. When he rejected slender, plump promptly replaced her, as tall or dark, for Cairhienin anyway, replaced short or fair. A constant search for the woman who would please him. The Maidens turned back those who tried to sneak into his quarters at night, firmly but more gently than Aviendha had handled the one she caught. Aviendha apparently took Elayne’s ownership of him with little short of deadly seriousness. Yet her Aiel sense of humor seemed to find tormenting him very satisfying; he had seen the satisfaction on her face when he groaned and hid his face as she started undressing for the night. Thus he could have resented her deadly seriousness if he had not quickly understood what was behind that string of pretty young women.