The Fires of Heaven (25 page)

“The Chosen,” she said absently. For a moment she chewed a full underlip. “I have watched the girl’s dreams, too. Egwene. Once I thought you had feelings for her. Do you know who she dreams of? Morgase’s son and stepson. The son, Gawyn, most often.” Smiling, she put on a tone of mock shock. “You would not believe a simple country girl could have such dreams.”

She was trying to test his jealousy, he realized. She really thought he warded his dreams to hide thoughts of another woman! “The Maidens guard me closely,” he said dryly. “If you want to know how close, look at Isendre’s dreams.”

Spots of color flared in her cheeks. Of course. He was not supposed to see what she was trying. Confusion rolled outside the Void. Or did she think . . . ? Isendre? Lanfear knew she was a Darkfriend. Lanfear had brought Kadere and the woman to the Waste in the first place. And planted most of the jewelry Isendre was accused of stealing; Lanfear’s spite was cruel even when petty. Still, if she thought he could love her, Isendre being a Darkfriend was probably no obstacle in her eyes.

“I should have let them send her off to try reaching the Dragonwall,” he went on casually, “but who knows what she might have said to save
herself? I must protect her and Kadere to some extent in order to protect Asmodean.”

The color faded, but as she opened her mouth again, a knock came at the door. Rand bounded to his feet. No one would recognize Lanfear, yet if a woman were discovered in his room, a woman whom none of the Maidens below had seen enter, questions would be asked and he had no answers.

But Lanfear already had a gateway open, to somewhere full of white silk hangings and silver. “Remember that I am your only hope of surviving, my love.” It was a very cool voice in which to call someone that. “Beside me, you need fear nothing. Beside me, you can rule—everything that is or will be.” Lifting her snowy skirts, she stepped through, and the gateway winked shut.

The knock sounded again before he could make himself push away
saidin
and haul open the door.

Enaila peered past him suspiciously, muttering, “I thought perhaps Isendre. . . .” She gave him an accusing look. “Spear-sisters are searching everywhere for you. No one saw you return.” With a shake of her head, she straightened; she always tried to stand as tall as possible. “The chiefs have come to speak with the
Car’a’carn
,” she said formally. “They wait below.”

They waited on the columned portico, as it turned out, being men. The sky was still dark, but the first glimmers of dawn lined the mountains to the east. If they felt any impatience with the two Maidens who stood between them and the tall doors, it did not show on their shadowed faces.

“The Shaido are moving,” Han barked as soon as Rand appeared. “And the Reyn, the Miagoma, the Shiande. . . . Every clan!”

“Joining Couladin, or me?” Rand demanded.

“The Shaido are moving toward the Jangai Pass,” Rhuarc said. “For the others, it is too early to tell. But they are on the march with every spear not needed to defend the holds, herds and flocks.”

Rand only nodded. All of his determination not to let anyone else dictate what he would do, and now this. Whatever the other clans intended, Couladin had to plan a crossing into Cairhien. So much for his grand schemes of imposing peace, if the Shaido ravaged Cairhien even further while he sat in Rhuidean waiting for the other clans.

“Then we move for the Jangai, too,” he said finally.

“We cannot catch him if he means to cross,” Erim cautioned, and Han added sourly, “If any of the others are joining him, we will be caught strung out like blindworms in the sun.”

“I won’t sit here until I find out,” Rand said. “If I can’t catch Couladin,
I mean to be right behind him into Cairhien. Rouse the spears. We leave as soon after first light as you can manage.”

Giving him that odd Aiel bow used only on the most formal occasions, one foot forward and one hand extended, the chiefs departed. Only Han said anything. “To Shayol Ghul itself.”

Y
awning in the early-morning grayness, Egwene pulled herself up onto her fog-colored mare, then had to handle her reins smartly as Mist frisked about. The animal had not been ridden in weeks. Aiel not only preferred their own legs, they avoided riding almost completely, though they did use packhorses and pack mules. Even if there had been enough wood to build wagons, the terrain in the Waste was not hospitable to wheels, as more than one peddler had learned to his or her sorrow.

She was not looking forward to the long journey west. The mountains hid the sun now, but the heat would grow by the hour once it climbed clear, and there would be no convenient tent to duck into at nightfall. She was not certain that Aiel garb was suitable for riding, either. The shawl, worn over her head, always did a surprisingly good job of keeping the sun off, but those bulky skirts would bare her legs to the thigh if she was not careful. Blisters worried her as much as modesty.
The sun on one side, and
. . . A month out of the saddle should not have softened her that much. She hoped it had not, or this would be a
very
long journey.

Once she had settled Mist down, Egwene found Amys looking at her, and shared a smile with the Wise One. All of that running the night before was not the reason she was still sleepy; if anything, it had helped her sleep even more soundly. She
had
found the other woman’s dreams last night, and in celebration they had sipped tea in the dream, in Cold Rocks
Hold, early on an evening when children were playing among the crop-planted terraces and a pleasant breeze blew down the valley as the sun sank.

Of course, that would not have been enough to steal her rest, but she had been so exultant that when she left Amys’ dreams, she did not stop; she could not, not then, no matter what Amys would have said. There had been dreams all around, though with most she had no idea whose they were. With most, not all. Melaine had been dreaming of suckling a babe at her breast, and Bair of one of her dead husbands, both of them young and yellow-haired. She had been especially careful not to enter those; the Wise Ones would have known an intruder in an instant, and she shuddered to think of what they would have done before letting her go.

Rand’s dreams had been a challenge, of course, one she could not fail to face. Now that she could flit from dream to dream, how could she not try where the Wise Ones failed? Only, attempting to enter his dreams had been like running headlong into an invisible stone wall. She knew that his dreams lay on the other side, and she was sure she could find a way through, but there had been nothing to work on, nothing to pry at. A wall of nothing. It was a problem she meant to worry at until she solved it. Once she put her mind on something, she could be as persistent as a badger.

All around her
gai’shain
were bustling about, loading the Wise Ones’ camp onto mules. Before long, only an Aiel or someone just as skilled at tracking would be able to tell there had ever been tents on that patch of hard clay. The same activity covered the surrounding mountain slopes, and the hubbub extended into the city, as well. Not everyone would be going, but thousands would. Aiel thronged the streets, and Master Kadere’s train of wagons stood strung out across the great plaza, laden with Moiraine’s selections, the three white-painted water wagons at the end of the line like huge barrels on wheels behind twenty-mule teams. Kadere’s own wagon, at the head of the column, was a little white house on wheels, with steps at the back and a metal stovepipe sticking out of the flat roof. The thick, hawk-nosed merchant, all in ivory-colored silk today, swept off his incongruously battered hat as she rode past, his dark, tilted eyes not sharing in the wide smile he flashed at her.

She ignored him frostily. His dreams had been decidedly dark and unpleasant, where they were not lewd as well.
He ought to have his head dunked in a
cask
of bluespine tea,
she thought grimly.

Approaching the Roof of the Maidens, she threaded her way through scurrying
gai’shain
and patiently standing mules. To her surprise, one of those loading the Maidens’ things wore a black robe, not white. A woman, by the
size of her, and staggering under the weight of a cord-tied bundle on her back. Bending as she guided Mist past, to get a look inside the woman’s cowl, Egwene saw Isendre’s haggard face, sweat already rolling down her cheeks. She was glad the Maidens had stopped letting the woman go outside—or sending her out—more naked than not, but it did seem needlessly cruel to robe her in black. If she was sweating so hard already, she would nearly die once the day’s heat took hold.

Still,
Far Dareis Mai
business was none of hers. Aviendha had told her so gently but firmly. Adelin and Enaila had been little short of rude about it, and a wiry, white-haired Maiden named Sulin had actually threatened to haul her back to the Wise Ones by her ear. Despite her efforts to persuade Aviendha to stop addressing her as “Aes Sedai,” it had been irritating to find that after walking a fine line of uncertainty toward her, the rest of the Maidens had come down on the side of her being just another pupil of the Wise Ones. Why, they would not even let her past the door of the Roof unless she claimed to be on an errand.

The quickness with which she heeled Mist on through the crowd had nothing to do with acceptance of
Far Dareis Mai
justice, or her uncomfortable awareness that some of the Maidens were eyeing her, no doubt ready to lecture if they thought she intended to interfere. It even had little to do with her dislike of Isendre. She did not want to think about her glimpse of the woman’s dreams, just before Cowinde had come to rouse her. They had been nightmares of torture, of things being done to the woman that sent Egwene fleeing in horror, and with something dark and evil laughing as it watched her run. No wonder Isendre looked haggard. Egwene had started up out of her sleep so quickly that Cowinde had jumped back from laying a hand on her shoulder.

Rand was in the street in front of the Maidens’ Roof, wearing a
shoufa
against the coming sun and a blue silk coat with enough gold embroidery to befit a palace, though it hung open halfway down the front. His belt had a new buckle, an elaborate thing shaped like a Dragon. He really was beginning to think a great deal of himself, that was clear. Standing beside Jeade’en, his dappled stallion, he was talking with the clan chiefs and some of the Aiel traders who would be staying in Rhuidean.

Jasin Natael, nearly at Rand’s heels, with his harp on his back and holding the reins of a saddled mule bought from Master Kadere, was even more elaborately dressed, with silver embroidery nearly hiding his black coat, and spills of white lace at his neck and cuffs. Even his boots were worked in
silver where they turned down at the knee. The gleeman’s cloak with its patches did spoil the effect, but gleemen were odd folk.

The male traders wore the
cadin’sor,
and though their belt knives were smaller than those of warriors, Egwene knew they could all handle a spear if called to; they had something, if not all, of the deadly grace of their brothers who carried the spear. The women traders, in loose white
algode
blouses and full woolen skirts, head scarves and shawls, were more easily distinguishable. Except for Maidens and
gai’shain
—and Aviendha—Aielwomen all wore multiple bracelets and necklaces of gold and ivory, silver and gemstones, some of Aiel make, some traded for, and some looted. Among Aiel traders, though, the women displayed twice as many, if not more.

She caught part of what Rand was telling the traders.

“. . . give the Ogier stonemasons a free hand on some of what they build, at least. On as much as you can make yourselves. There’s no point in just trying to remake the past.”

So he was having them send to the
stedding
for Ogier to rebuild Rhuidean. That was good. Much of Tar Valon was Ogier work, and where they were left to their own devices their buildings were enough to take the breath away.

Mat was already up on his gelding, Pips, with his wide-brimmed hat pulled down and the butt of that odd spear resting on his stirrup. As usual, his high-collared green coat looked slept in. She had avoided his dreams. One of the Maidens, a very tall golden-haired woman, gave Mat a roguish grin that seemed to embarrass him. And well it should; she was much too old for him. Egwene sniffed,
I know very well what
he
was dreaming about, thank you very much!
She only reined in beside him to look around for Aviendha.