Rand was so astonished that the Void collapsed, and saidin vanished. Raindrops began to trickle through his hair and seep through his coat, but for a moment, clutching his saddle’s high pommel to hold himself upright, seeing four women instead of two, he was too stunned to notice. How much did they know? They had heard? How many people knew? How did anyone know? Light, rumor had him killing Morgase, Elayne, Colavaere, a hundred women probably, and each in a worse way than the last! He swallowed against the urge to sick up. That was only partly saidin’s fault. Burn me, how many spies are there watching me? The thought was a growl.
The dead watch, Lews Therin whispered. The dead never close their eyes. Rand shivered.
“I do try to be careful of women,” he told them when he could speak. Faster than a man, and for half the reason. “That’s why I want keep you close the next few days. But if you really dislike the idea so much, I could tell off one of the Asha’man. You’d be safe at the Black Tower.” Anaiyella squeaked prettily, but her face went gray.
“Thank you, no,” Ailil said after a moment, absolutely calm. “I suppose I had best confer with my lance-captain about what to expect.” But she paused in turning her mare away, and regarded Rand with a sidelong look. “My brother Toram is . . . impetuous, my Lord Dragon. Even rash. I am not.”
Anaiyella smiled much too sweetly at Rand, and actually wriggled slightly before following, but once she faced away from him, she dug in her heels and worked her jewel-handled quirt, quickly passing the other woman. That white gelding showed a surprising turn of speed.
At last all was ready, the columns formed, snaking back over the low hills.
“Begin,” Rand told Gedwyn, who wheeled his horse and began barking orders to his men. The eight Dedicated rode forward and dismounted on the ground they had memorized, facing the mountains. One of them looked familiar, a grizzled fellow whose pointed Tairen beard appeared odd on his wrinkled countryman’s face. Eight vertical lines of sharp blue light turned and became openings that showed slightly different views of a long, sparsely wooded mountain valley rising to a steep pass. In Altara. In the Venir Mountains.
Kill them, Lews Therin wept pleadingly. They’re too dangerous to live! Without thought, Rand suppressed the voice. Another man channeling often brought that reaction from Lews Therin, or even a man who could. He no longer wondered why.
Rand muttered a command, and Flinn blinked in surprise before hurrying to join the line and weave a ninth gateway. None was as large as Rand could make, but any would pass a cart, if closely. He had intended to do that himself, but he did not want to chance seizing saidin again in front of everyone. He noticed Gedwyn and Rochaid watching him, wearing identical knowing smiles. And Dashiva as well, frowning, lips moving as he talked to himself. Was it his imagination, or was Narishma eyeing him askance too? And Adley? Morr?
Rand shivered before he could stop himself. Mistrust of Gedwyn and Rochaid was simple sense, but was he coming down with what Nynaeve had called the dreads? A kind of madness, a crippling dark suspicion of everyone and everything? There had been a Coplin, Benly, who thought everybody was scheming against him. He had starved to death when Rand was a boy, refusing to eat for fear of poison.
Ducking low on Tai’daishar’s neck, Rand heeled the gelding through the largest gateway. Flinn’s, as it happened, but he would have ridden through one made by Gedwyn right then. He was the first onto Altaran soil.
The others followed quickly, the Asha’man first of all. Dashiva stared in Rand’s direction, frowning, and Narishma, too, but Gedwyn immediately began directing his Soldiers. One by one, they rushed forward, opened a gateway and darted through, dragging their mounts behind them. Ahead up the valley, bright flashes of light told of gateways opening and closing. The Asha’man could Travel short distances without first memorizing the ground they left from, and cover ground far faster than riding. In short order, only Gedwyn and Rochaid remained, aside from the Dedicated holding the gateways. The others would be fanning out westward, searching for Seanchan. The Saldaeans were through from Illian, and mounting. Legionmen spread into the trees at a trot, crossbows held ready. In this country, they could move as fast afoot as men on horseback.
As the rest of the army began emerging, Rand rode up the valley in the direction the Asha’man had gone. Mountains rose high behind him, a wall fronting the Deep, but west the peaks ran almost to Ebou Dar. He quickened the gelding’s pace to a canter.
Bashere caught him before he reached the pass. The man’s bay was small — most of the Saldaeans rode small horses — but quick. “No Seanchan here, it seems,” he said almost idly, stroking his mustaches with a knuckle. “But there could have been. Tenobia’s likely to have my head on a pike soon enough for following a live Dragon Reborn, much more a dead one.”
Rand scowled. Maybe he could take Flinn, to watch his back, and Narishma, and . . . Flinn had saved his life; the man had to be true. Men could change, though. And Narishma? Even after . . .? He felt cold at the risk he had taken. Not the dreads. Narishma had proved true, but it still had been a mad risk. As mad as running from stares he was not even sure were real, running to where he had no notion what was waiting. Bashere was right, but Rand did not want to talk about it further.
The slopes leading up into the pass were bare stone and boulders of all sizes, but among the natural stone lay weathered pieces of what must have once been a huge statue. Some were just recognizable as worked stone, others more so. A beringed hand nearly big as his chest, gripping a sword hilt with a broken stub of blade wider than his hand. A great head, a woman with cracks across her face and a crown that seemed to be made of upthrusting daggers, some still whole.
“Who do you think she was?” he asked. A queen, of course. Even if merchants or scholars had worn crowns in some distant time, only rulers and generals earned statues.
Bashere twisted in his saddle to study the head before speaking. “A Queen of Shiota, I’ll wager,” he said finally. “Not older. I saw a statue made in Eharon once, and it was so worn you couldn’t say whether it was man or woman. A conqueror, or they wouldn’t have shown her with a sword. And I seem to recall Shiota gave a crown like that to rulers who expanded the borders. Maybe they called it the Crown of Swords, eh? A Brown sister might be able to tell you more.”
“It isn’t important,” Rand told him irritably. They did look like swords.
Bashere went on anyway, graying eyebrows lowered, gravely serious. “I expect thousands cheered her, called her the hope of Shiota, maybe even believed she was. In her time, she might have been as feared and respected as Artur Hawkwing was later, but now even the Brown sisters may not know her name. When you die, people begin to forget, who you were and what you did, or tried to do. Everybody dies eventually, and everybody is forgotten, eventually, but there’s no bloody point dying before your time comes.”
“I don’t intend to,” Rand said sharply. He knew where he was meant to die, if not when. He thought he did.
The corner of his eye caught motion, back down where bare stone gave way to brush and a few small trees. Fifty paces away, a man stepped into the open and raised a bow, smoothly drawing fletchings to cheek. Everything seemed to happen at once.
Snarling, Rand hauled Tai’daishar around, watching the archer adjust to follow. He seized saidin and sweet life and filth poured into him together. His head spun. There were two archers. Bile rose in his throat as he fought wild, uncontrolled surges of the Power that tried to sear him to the bone and freeze his flesh solid. He could not control them; it was all he could do to stay alive. Desperately, he fought to clear his sight, to be able to see well enough to weave the flows he could barely form, with nausea flooding him as strongly as the Power. He thought he heard Bashere shout. Two archers loosed.
Rand should have died. At that range, a boy could have hit his target. Maybe being ta’veren saved him. As the archer let fly, a covey of gray-winged quail burst up almost at his feet uttering piercing whistles. Not enough to throw off an experienced
man, and indeed, the fellow only flinched a hair. Rand felt the wind of the arrow’s passage against his cheek.
Fireballs the size of fists suddenly struck the archer. He screamed as his arm spun away, hand still gripping the bow. Another took his left leg at the knee, and he fell shrieking.
Leaning out of his saddle, Rand vomited onto the ground. His stomach tried to heave up every meal he had ever eaten. The Void and saidin left with a sickening wrench. It was nearly more than he could manage not to fall.
When he could sit upright again, he took the white linen handkerchief Bashere silently offered, and wiped his mouth. The Saldaean frowned with concern, as well he might. Rand’s stomach wanted to find more to spew out. He thought his face must be pale. He drew a deep breath. Losing saidin that way could kill you. But he could still sense the Source; at least saidin had not burned him out. At least he could see properly; there was only one Davram Bashere. But the illness seemed a little worse each time he seized saidin.
“Let’s see if there’s enough left of this fellow to talk,” he told Bashere. There was not.
Rochaid was on his knees, calmly searching through the corpse’s torn, bloodstained coat. Besides his missing arm and leg, the dead man had a blackened hole as big as his head all the way through his chest. It was Eagan Padros; his sightless eyes stared at the sky in surprise. Gedwyn ignored the body at his feet, studying Rand instead, as cold as Rochaid. Both men held saidin. Surprisingly, Lews Therin only moaned.
In a clatter of hooves on stone, Flinn and Narishma came galloping up the rise, followed by nearly a hundred Saldaeans. As they came close, Rand could feel the Power in the grizzled old man and the younger, maybe as much as they could hold. They had both leaped up in strength since Dumai’s Wells. That was the way of it with men; women seemed to gain smoothly, but men suddenly jumped. Flinn was stronger than Gedwyn or Rochaid either one, and Narishma not far behind. For the time being; there was no way to know how it would end. None came close to matching Rand, though. Not yet, anyway. There was no way to tell what time would bring. Not the dreads.
“It seems it’s well we decided to follow you, my Lord Dragon.” Gedwyn’s voice assumed concern, just shy of mocking. “Are you suffering from a tender stomach this morning?”
Rand just shook his head. He could not take his eyes from Padros’ face. Why? Because he had conquered Illian? Because the man had been loyal to “Lord Brend”?
With a loud exclamation, Rochaid ripped a washleather pouch from Padros’ coat pocket and upended it. Bright golden coins spilled onto the stony ground, bouncing and clinking. “Thirty crowns,” he growled. “Tar Valon crowns. No doubt who paid him.” He snatched a coin and tossed it up for Rand, but Rand made no effort to catch it, and it glanced off his arm.
“There’s plenty of Tar Valon coin to be found,” Bashere said calmly. “Half the men in this valley have a few in their pockets. I do, myself.” Gedwyn and Rochaid swiveled to look at him. Bashere smiled behind his thick mustaches, or at least showed teeth, but some of the Saldaeans shifted uneasily in their saddles and fingered belt pouches.
Up where the pass leveled off for a bit between steep mountain slopes, a slash of light rotated into a gateway, and a top-knotted Shienaran in a plain black coat trotted through, pulling his horse behind him. It appeared the first Seanchan had been found, and not too far away if the man was back so quickly.
“Time to move,” Rand told Bashere. The man nodded, but he did not stir. Instead, he studied the two Asha’man standing near Padros. They ignored him.
“What do we do with him?” Gedwyn demanded, gesturing to the corpse. “We ought to send him back to the witches, at least.”
“Leave him,” Rand replied.
Are you ready to kill now? Lews Therin asked. He did not sound insane at all.
Not yet, Rand thought. Soon.
Digging his heels into Tai’daishar’s flanks, he galloped back down toward his army. Dashiva and Flinn followed closely, and Bashere and the hundred Saldaeans. They were all looking around as if they expected another attempt on his life. To the east, black clouds were building among the peaks, another cemaros storm. Soon.
The hilltop camp was well laid out, with a meandering stream close by for water and good lines of sight to the likeliest ways into the long mountain meadow. Assid Bakuun did not feel pride in the camp. During thirty years in the Ever Victorious Army, he had made hundreds of camps; he would as soon have felt pride in walking across a room without falling down. Nor did he feel pride in where he was. Thirty years serving the Empress, might she live forever, and while there had been the occasional rebellion by some mad upstart with eyes on the Crystal Throne, the bulk of those years had been spent preparing for this. For two generations, while the great ships were built to carry the Return, the Ever Victorious Army had trained and prepared. Bakuun certainly had been proud when he learned he was to be one of the Forerunners. Surely he could be forgiven dreams of retaking the lands stolen from Artur Hawkwing’s rightful heirs, even wild dreams to completing this new Consolidation before the Corenne came. Not such a wild dream after all, as it turned out, but not at all the way he had imagined.
A returning patrol of fifty Taraboner lancers rode up the hillside, red and green stripes painted across their solid breastplates, veils of mail hiding their thick mustaches. They rode well, and even fought well, when they had decent leaders. More than ten times as many were already among the cook fires, or down at the picket lines tending their mounts, and three patrols were still out. Bakuun had never expected to find himself with well over half his command descendants of thieves. And unashamed of it; they would look you straight in the eyes. The patrol’s commander bowed low to him as their muddy-legged horses passed, but many of the others went on talking in their peculiar accents, speaking too fast for Bakuun to understand without listening hard. They had peculiar notions of discipline, too.
Shaking his head, Bakuun strode across to the sul’dam’s large tent. Larger than his, of necessity. Four of them were sitting on stools outside in their dark blue dresses with the forked lightning on the skirts, enjoying the sun during this break in the storms. Those were rare enough, now. The gray-clad damane sat at their feet, with Nerith braiding her pale hair. Talking to her, as well, all of them joining in and laughing softly. The bracelet on the end of the silvery a’dam’s leash lay on the ground. Bakuun grunted sourly. He had a favorite wolfhound, back home, and even talked to him sometimes, but he never expected Nip to carry on a conversation!
“Is she well?” he asked Nerith, not for the first time. Or the tenth. “Is everything well with her?” The damane dropped her eyes and went silent.
“She is quite well, Captain Bakuun.” A square-faced woman, Nerith put the proper degree of respect into her voice and not a whisker beyond. But she stroked the damane’s head soothingly while she talked. “Whatever the indisposition, it is gone, now. A small thing, in any case. Nothing to worry about.” The damane was trembling.
Bakuun grunted again. Not far from the answer he had received before. Something had been wrong, though, back in Ebou Dar, and not just with this damane. The sul’dam had all been as tight-lipped as clams — and the Blood would not say anything, of course, not to the likes of him! — but he had heard too many whispers. They said the damane were all sick, or insane. Light, he had not seen a single one used around Ebou Dar once the city was secured, not even for a victory display of Sky Lights, and who had ever heard the like of that!
“Well, I hope she . . . ” he began, and cut off as a raken appeared, sweeping through the eastern pass. Its great leathery wings beat powerfully for height, and right above the hill it suddenly tilted and cut a tight circle, one wingtip pointed almost straight down. A thin red streamer fell away under the weight of a lead ball.
Bakuun swallowed a curse. Fliers were always showing off, but if this pair injured one of his men delivering their scouting report, he would have their hides no matter who he had to face to get them. He would not have wanted to fight
without fliers to scout, but they were coddled like some Blood’s favorite pet.
Arrow-straight the streamer plummeted. The lead weight struck the ground and bounced on the crest, almost beside the tall thin message pole, which was too long to lower unless there was a message to send. Besides, when it was left down somebody was always stepping a horse on the thing and breaking the joins.
Bakuun strode straight to his tent, but his First Lieutenant was already waiting with the mud-stained streamer and the message tube. Tiras was a bony man a head taller than him, with an unfortunate scrap of beard clinging to the point of his chin.
The report rolled up in the thin metal tube, on a slip of paper Bakuun could almost see through, was written simply. He had never been forced to ride on raken or to’raken — the Light be thanked, and the Empress, might she live forever, be praised! — but he doubted it was easy to handle a pen in a saddle strapped to the back of a flying lizard. What it said made him flip open the lid of his small camp desk and write hurriedly.
“There’s a force not ten miles east of here,” he told Tiras. “Five or six times our number.” Fliers exaggerated sometimes, but not often by much. How had that many penetrated these mountains so far without being spotted before? He had seen the coast to the east, and he wanted his burial prayers paid for before he tried a landing there. Burn his eyes, the fliers boasted they would see a flea move anywhere in the range. “No reason to think they know we’re here, but I’d not mind a few reinforcements.”
Tiras laughed. “We’ll give them a brush of the damane, and that will be that if they outnumber us by twenty times.” His only real fault was a touch of overconfidence. A good soldier, though.
“And if they have a few . . . Aes Sedai?” Bakuun said quietly, hardly stumbling over the name, as he stuffed the flier’s report back into the tube with his own brief message. He had not really believed anyone could let those . . . women run free.
Tiras’ face showed that he remembered the tales about an Aes Sedai weapon. The red streamer floated behind him as he ran with the message tube.