The Fires of Heaven (104 page)

Egwene’s presence at the meeting of Wise Ones came as a surprise, and so did Moiraine’s absence—he would have expected her to be in the middle, twitching strings to her plans—but it turned out that one grew from the other. The new-come Wise Ones had wanted to meet with one of the Aes Sedai who followed the
Car’a’carn,
and although she was back on her feet after Healing him, Moiraine claimed to have no time. Egwene had been routed from her blankets as a replacement.

That made Aviendha laugh. She had been outside when Sorilea and Bair practically dragged Egwene from her tent, trying to pull on her clothes while they hustled her along. “I called to her that she would have to dig holes in the ground with her teeth this time if she had been caught in a misdeed, and she was so sleepy she believed me. She began protesting that she would not, so hard that Sorilea began demanding what she had done to think she deserved to. You should have seen Egwene’s face.” She laughed so hard that she nearly toppled over.

Asmodean actually looked at her askance—though why he should, being what and who he was, was beyond Rand—but Rand only waited patiently until she caught her breath. For Aiel humor, this was mild. More the sort of thing he would have expected from Mat than from any woman, but mild even so.

When she straightened, wiping her eyes, he said, “What of the Shaido, then? Or are their Wise Ones also at this conclave?”

She answered still giggling into her wine; she considered the Shaido finished, hardly worth considering now. Thousands of prisoners had been taken, with a trickle still being brought in, and the fighting had died down except for a few small skirmishes here and there. Yet the more he got out of her, the less he could see them as done for. With the four clans keeping Han occupied, the bulk of Couladin’s people had crossed the Gaelin in good order, even carrying away most of the Cairhienin prisoners they had captured. Worse, they had destroyed the stone bridges behind them.

That did not concern her, but it did him. Tens of thousands of Shaido north of the river, no way to get at them until the bridges were replaced, and even wooden spans would take time. It was time that he did not have.

At the very end, when it seemed there was no more to say on the Shaido, she told him what made him forget worrying about the Shaido and what trouble they would cause. She just tossed it in, as if she had almost forgotten.

“Mat killed Couladin?” he said incredulously when she was done. “Mat?”

“Did I not say so?” The words were sharp, but halfhearted. Peering at him over her winecup, she seemed more interested in how he would take the news than in whether he doubted her word.

Asmodean plucked a few chords of something martial; the harp seemed to echo to drums and trumpets. “In some ways, a young man of as many surprises as you. I truly look forward to meeting the third of you, this Perrin, one day.”

Rand shook his head. So Mat had not escaped the pull of
ta’veren
to
ta’veren
after all. Or maybe it was the Pattern that had caught him, and being
ta’veren
himself. Either way, he suspected Mat was not too happy right that moment. Mat had not learned the lesson that he had. Try to run away, and the Pattern pulled you back, often roughly; run in the direction the Wheel wove you, and sometimes you could manage a little control over your life. Sometimes. With luck, maybe more than any expected, at least in the long haul. But he had more urgent concerns than Mat, or the Shaido.

A glance at the entrance told him the sun was well up, though all he saw otherwise was two Maidens squatting just outside, spears across their
knees. A night and most of a morning with him unconscious, and Sammael had either not tried to find him or had failed.

He was careful to use that name, even to himself, though another floated in the back of his mind now. Tel Janin Aellinsar. No history recorded the name, no fragment in the library at Tar Valon; Moiraine had told him everything the Aes Sedai knew of the Forsaken, and it was little more than was told in village tales. Even Asmodean had always called him Sammael, if for a different reason. Long before the War of the Shadow ended, the Forsaken had embraced the names men had given them, as if symbols of rebirth in the Shadow. Asmodean’s own true name—Joar Addam Nessosin—made the man flinch, and he claimed to have forgotten the others in the course of three thousand years.

Perhaps there was no real reason to hide what was going on inside his head—maybe it was only an attempt to deny reality to himself—but Sammael the man would remain. And as Sammael, he would pay in full for every Maiden he had killed. The Maidens Rand had not been able to keep safe.

Even as he made the resolution, he grimaced. He had made a beginning by sending Weiramon back to Tear—the Light willing, only he and Weiramon knew how much of one, so far—but he could not go chasing off after Sammael, whatever he wanted or vowed. Not yet. There were matters to be seen to here in Cairhien, first. Aviendha might think he did not understand
ji’e’toh,
and perhaps he did not, but he understood duty, and he had one to Cairhien. Besides, there were ways to tail it in with Weiramon.

Sitting up—and trying not to show the effort of it—he covered himself as decently as he could in the blanket and wondered where his clothes were; he did not see anything but his boots, standing over behind Aviendha. She probably knew. It might have been
gai’shain
who undressed him, but it could just as easily have been she. “I need to go into the city. Natael, have Jeade’en saddled and brought up.”

“Tomorrow, perhaps,” Aviendha told him firmly, catching Asmodean’s coatsleeve as he started to rise. “Moiraine Sedai said you would need to rest for—”

“Today, Aviendha. Now. I don’t know why Meilan isn’t here, if he’s alive, but I mean to find out. Natael, my horse?”

She put on a stubborn face, but Asmodean jerked his arm free, smoothing the wrinkled velvet, and said, “Meilan was here, and others.”

“He was not to be told—” Aviendha began angrily, then tightened her mouth before finishing, “He needs to rest.”

So the Wise Ones thought they could keep things from him. Well, he was not as weak as they believed. He tried to stand, holding the blanket close, and turned the motion into shifting his position when his legs refused to cooperate. Maybe he was as weak as they thought. But he did not intend to let that stop him.

“I can rest when I’m dead,” he said, and wished he had not when she flinched as if he had hit her. No, she would not have flinched at a blow. His staying alive was important to her for the Aiel’s sake, and a threat there could hurt her more than a fist. “Tell me about Meilan, Natael.”

Aviendha kept a sullen silence, though if looks had had anything to do with it, Asmodean would have been struck dumb as well.

A rider had come from Meilan in the night, bearing flowery praises and assurances of undying loyalty. At dawn Meilan himself appeared, with the six other High Lords of Tear who were in the city and a small host of Tairen soldiers who fingered sword hilts and gripped lances as though more than half expecting to fight the Aiel who had stood silently watching them ride in.

“It came close,” Asmodean said. “This Meilan is not used to being thwarted, I think, and the others scarcely more so. Especially the lumpy-faced one—Torean?—and Simaan. That one has eyes as sharp as his nose. You know I am used to dangerous company, but these men are as dangerous in their way as any I have known.”

Aviendha sniffed loudly. “Whatever they are used to, they had no choice with Sorilea and Amys and Bair and Melaine on one side, and Sulin with a thousand
Far Dareis Mai
on the other. And there were some Stone Dogs,” she conceded, “and a few Water Seekers and some Red Shields. If you truly serve the
Car’a’carn
as you claim, Jasin Natael, you should guard his rest as they do.”

“It is the Dragon Reborn I follow, young woman. The
Car’a’carn,
I leave to you.”

“Go on, Natael,” Rand said impatiently, earning a sniff for himself.

She was right concerning the Tairens’ choices, though perhaps the Maidens and others fingering their veils had concerned them more than the Wise Ones. In any case, even Aracome, a graying, slender man with a long-smoldering temper, had been near bursting aflame by the time they reined their horses around, and Gueyam, bald as a stone and wide as a blacksmith, was white-faced in rage. Asmodean was not sure whether it had been the
certainty of being overwhelmed that stopped them drawing swords, or the realization that if they somehow managed to cut a path to Rand, he was unlikely to welcome them with his allies’ blood on their blades.

“Meilan’s eyes were bulging out of his head,” the man finished. “But before leaving, he shouted out his allegiance and fealty to you. Perhaps he thought you might hear. The others echoed him quickly, yet Meilan added something that made them stare. ‘I make a gift of Cairhien to the Lord Dragon,’ he said. Then he announced that he would prepare a grand triumph for you when you’re ready to enter the city.”

“There’s an old saying in the Two Rivers,” Rand said dryly. “ ‘The louder a man tells you he’s honest, the harder you must hold on to your purse.’ ” Another said, “The fox often offers to give the duck its pond.” Cairhien was his without gifts from Meilan.

He had no doubts about the man’s loyalty. It would last just as long as Meilan believed he would be destroyed if caught betraying Rand. If caught; that was the hook. Those seven High Lords in Cairhien had been the most assiduous in trying to see him dead in Tear. That was why he had sent them here. Had he executed every Tairen noble who plotted against him, there might have been none left. At the time, handing them anarchy, famine and civil war to deal with a thousand miles from Tear had seemed a good way to put a crimp in their schemes while doing some good where it needed doing. Of course, he had not even known Couladin existed then, much less that the man would lead him to Cairhien.

It would be easier if this was a story,
he thought. In stories, there were only so many surprises before the hero knew everything he needed; he himself never seemed to know a quarter of everything.

Asmodean hesitated—that old saying about shouting men might be applied to him, too, as he was no doubt aware—but when Rand said no more, he added, “I think he wants to be King of Cairhien. Subject to you, of course.”

“And preferably with me far away.” Meilan probably expected Rand to return to Tear, and to
Callandor
. Meilan certainly would never be afraid of too much power.

“Of course.” Asmodean sounded even drier than Rand had. “There was another visit between those two.” A dozen Cairhienin lords and ladies, without retainers, came cloaked and with faces hidden in their hoods despite the heat. Plainly they knew that the Aiel despised Cairhienin, and just as plainly returned the sentiment, yet they were as nervous that Meilan might discover they had come as that the Aiel might decide to kill them. “When
they saw me,” Asmodean said wryly, “half seemed ready to kill me for fear I was Tairen. You have
Far Dareis Mai
to thank that you still have a bard.”

Few as they were, the Cairhienin had still been harder to turn back than Meilan, growing sweatier and more white-faced by the minute, but stubbornly demanding to see the Lord Dragon. It was a measure of their desire that when demands failed, they finally descended to open begging. Asmodean might have thought Aiel humor odd or harsh, but he chuckled over nobles in silk coats and riding dresses trying to pretend he was not there as they knelt to catch at the Wise Ones’ woolen skirts.

“Sorilea threatened to have them stripped and flogged back to the city.” His muted laughter turned disbelieving. “They actually discussed it among themselves. Had the requirement allowed them to reach you, I do believe some would have accepted.”

“Sorilea should have done it,” Aviendha put in, surprisingly agreeable. “The oathbreakers have no honor. At last Melaine had the Maidens throw them across their horses like bundles and run the animals from camp, with the oathbreakers hanging on as they might.”

Asmodean nodded. “But before that, two of them did speak to me, once they were certain I was not a Tairen spy. Lord Dobraine, and Lady Colavaere. They clouded everything in so many hints and innuendos that I cannot be certain, but I would not be surprised if they mean to offer you the Sun Throne. They could bandy words with . . . some people I used to be acquainted with.”

Rand barked a laugh. “Maybe they will. If they can manage the same terms as Meilan.” He had not needed Moiraine to tell him that Cairhienin played the Game of Houses in their sleep, nor Asmodean to tell him they would try it with the Forsaken. The High Lords to the left and the Cairhienin to the right. One battle done, and another, of a different sort if no less dangerous, beginning. “In any case, I mean the Sun Throne for someone who has a right to it.” He ignored the speculation on Asmodean’s face; perhaps the man had tried to help him the night before and perhaps he had not, but he did not trust the fellow enough to let him know half of his plans. However much Asmodean’s future might be tied to his, his loyalty was all necessity, and he was still the same man who had chosen to give his soul to the Shadow. “Meilan wants to give me a grand entry when I am ready, does he? So much the better that I see what’s what before he expects me.” It came to him why Aviendha had become so agreeable, even helping the talk along. As long as he sat here
talking, he was doing exactly what she wanted. “Are you going to get my horse, Natael, or must I?”

Asmodean’s bow was deep, formal, and on the surface, at least, sincere. “I serve the Lord Dragon.”