The Fires of Heaven (52 page)

On a waist-high shelf stood a dark metal box. He opened it, revealing
lead walls two inches thick, with just enough space inside for a curved dagger in a golden sheath, a large ruby set in its hilt. Neither the gold nor the ruby, glittering dark as blood, interested him. Hastily he spilled a little wax to hold the candle beside the box and snatched up the dagger.

He sighed as soon as he touched it, stretched languorously. He was whole again, one with what had bound him so long ago, one with what in a very real way had given him life.

Iron hinges creaked faintly, and he darted for the door, baring the curved blade. The pale young woman opening the door had only time to gape, to try to leap back, before he slashed her cheek; in the same motion he dropped the sheath and seized her arm, jerked her past him into the storeroom. Putting his head out, he peered up and down the hallway. Still empty.

He took his time about pulling his head back and shutting the door again. He knew what he would find.

The young woman lay thrashing on the stone floor, trying and failing to scream. Her hands clawed at a face already black and bloated beyond recognition, the dark swelling oozing down onto her shoulders like thick oil. Her snowy skirts, banded in colors at the hem, flailed as her feet scrabbled uselessly. He licked at a splash of blood on his hand and giggled as he picked up the sheath.

“You are a fool.”

He spun, dagger reaching, but the air around him seemed to turn solid, encasing him from his neck to the soles of his boots. He hung there, on the balls of his feet, dagger extended to stab, staring at Alviarin as she shut the door behind her and leaned against it to study him. There had been no creak this time. The soft scraping of the dying girl’s slippers on the floorstones could never have masked it. He blinked away sweat that was suddenly stinging his eyes.

“Did you really think,” the Aes Sedai went on, “that there would be no guard on this room, no watch kept? A ward was set on that lock. That young fool’s task tonight was to monitor it. Had she done as she was supposed to, you would find a dozen Warders and as many Aes Sedai outside this door now. She is paying the price of her stupidity.”

The thrashing behind him stilled, and his eyes narrowed. Alviarin was not Yellow Ajah, but even so she could have made an attempt to Heal the young woman. And she had not raised the alarm the Accepted should have, either, or she would not now be here alone. “You are Black Ajah,” he whispered.

“A dangerous accusation,” she said calmly. It was not clear to which of
them it was dangerous. “Siuan Sanche tried to claim the Black Ajah was real when she was under the question. She begged to tell us of them. Elaida would not hear it, and will not. Tales of the Black Ajah are a vile slander against the Tower.”

“You are Black Ajah,” he said in a louder voice.

“You want to steal that?” She sounded as though he had not spoken. “The ruby is not worth it, Fain. Or whatever your name is. That blade is tainted so none but a fool would touch it except with tongs, or be near it for a moment longer than necessary. You can see what it did to Verine. So why did you come here and go straight to what you should not have known was here? You cannot have had time for any search.”

“I could dispose of Elaida for you. One touch of this, and even Healing will not save her.” He tried to gesture with the dagger, but could not budge it a hair; if he could have moved it, Alviarin would be dead by now. “You could be first in the Tower, not second.”

She laughed at him, cool contemptuous chimes. “Do you think I would not be first if I had wished it? Second suits me. Let Elaida claim credit for what she calls successes, and sweat for her failures, too. I know where the power lies. Now, answer my questions, or two corpses will be found here in the morning instead of one.”

There would be two in any case, whether he answered her with suitable lies or not; she did not mean to let him live. “I have seen Thakan’dar.” Saying that hurt; the memories it brought were agony. He refused to whimper, forced the words out. “The great sea of fog, rolling and crashing in silence against the black cliffs, the fires of the forges glowing red beneath, and lightning stabbing up into a sky fit to drive men mad.” He did not want to go on, but he made himself. “I have taken the path down to the belly of Shayol Ghul, down the long way with stones like fangs brushing my head, to the shore of a lake of fire and molten rock—”
No, not again!
“—that holds the Great Lord of the Dark in its endless depths. The heavens above Shayol Ghul are black at noon with his breath.”

Alviarin was standing upright now, eyes wide. Not fearful, but impressed. “I have heard of . . .” she began softly, then shook herself and stared at him piercingly. “Who are you? Why are you here? Did one of the For—the Chosen send you? Why was I not informed?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Are the tasks given to the likes of me for the likes of you to be knowing?” The accents of his native Lugard were strong again; in a way it was his native city. “Do the Chosen confide everything in you, then?” Something inside seemed to shout that this was
not the way, but he hated Aes Sedai, and that something inside him did, too. “Be careful, pretty little Aes Sedai, or they’ll be giving you to a Myrddraal for its sport.”

Her glare was icicles stabbing his eyes. “We shall see, Master Fain. I will clear away this mess you have made, and then we shall see which of us stands higher with the Chosen.” Eyeing the dagger, she backed from the room. The air around him did not soften until she had been gone a full minute.

Silently he snarled at himself. Fool. Playing the Aes Sedai’s game, groveling for them, then one moment of anger to ruin all. Sheathing the dagger, he nicked himself, and licked the wound before sticking the weapon under his coat. He was not at all what she thought. He had been a Darkfriend once, but he was beyond that, now. Beyond it, above it. Something different. Something more. If she managed to communicate with one of the Forsaken before he could dispose of her . . . Better not to try. No time to find the Horn of Valere now. There were followers awaiting him outside the city. They should still be waiting. He had put fear into them. He hoped some of the humans were still alive.

Before the sun rose he was out of the Tower, off the island of Tar Valon. Al’Thor was out there, somewhere. And he was whole again.

U
nder the looming Spine of the World, Rand guided Jeade’en up the stony slope from the foothills that began the foot of Jangai Pass. The Dragonwall pierced the sky, dwarfing all other mountains, its snowcapped peaks defying the baking afternoon sun. The tallest thrust well above clouds that mocked the Waste with promises of rain that had never come. Rand could not imagine why a man would want to climb a mountain, but it was said that men who had tried to scale these heights turned back, overcome with fear and unable to breathe. He could well believe that a man might grow too afraid to breathe, attempting to climb so high.

“. . . yet though the Cairhienin are consumed with the Game of Houses,” Moiraine was saying at his shoulder, “they will follow you so long as they know that you are strong. Be firm with them, but I would ask you to be fair also. A ruler who gives true justice . . .”

He tried to ignore her, as he did the other riders, and the creak and rumble of Kadere’s wagons, making heavy going further back. The broken gorges and gullies of the Waste were behind them, but these rugged rising hills, nearly as barren, were little better for wagons. No one had traveled this path in over twenty years.

Moiraine talked at him that way from daybreak to sunset whenever he let her. Her lectures could be on small things—details of court behavior,
say, in Cairhien or Saldaea or somewhere else—or on large: the political influence of the Whitecloaks, or perhaps the effects of trade on rulers’ decisions to go to war. It was as if she meant to see him educated, as a noble would be, or should be, before he reached the other side of the mountains. It was surprising how often what she said reflected what anyone back in Emond’s Field would have called simple common sense. And also how often it did not.

Occasionally she came out with something startling; for instance, that he should trust no woman of the Tower except herself, Egwene, Elayne and Nynaeve, or the news that Elaida was now the Amyrlin Seat. Oath to obey or no, she would not tell him how she knew that. She said it was someone else’s place to tell if she chose, someone else’s secret, and she could not usurp it. He suspected the Wise One dreamwalkers, though they had stared him right in the eye and refused to say aye or nay. He wished he could make them swear Moiraine’s oath; they interfered between him and the chiefs continually, as if they wanted him to go through them to reach the chiefs.

Right that minute he did not want to think about Elaida or the Wise Ones, or listen to Moiraine. Now he wanted to study the pass ahead, a deep gap in the mountains that twisted as though a blunt axe had tried to chop through again and again, never quite succeeding. A few minutes’ hard ride, and he could be in it.

On one side of the pass mouth a sheer cliff had been smoothed over a hundred-pace width and carved, a wind-weathered snake entwining a staff a good three hundred spans high; monument or marker or ruler’s sigil, it surely dated from some lost nation before Artur Hawkwing, perhaps even before the Trolloc Wars. He had seen remnants before from nations long vanished; often even Moiraine did not know their source.

High on the other side, so far up that he was not sure he was seeing what he thought, just below the snow line, stood something even stranger. Something that made the first monument of a few thousand years a commonplace. He could have sworn it was the remnants of shattered buildings, shining gray against the darker mountain, and stranger still, what appeared to be a dock of the same material, as for ships, slanting drunkenly down the mountain. If he was not imagining it, that had to date from before the Breaking. The face of the world had been changed utterly in those years. This could well have been an ocean’s floor, before. He would have to ask Asmodean. Even if he had had the time, he did not think he would want to try reaching that altitude to find out for himself.

At the foot of the huge snake lay Taien, a high-walled town of moderate
size, a remnant itself of the time when Cairhien had been allowed to send caravans across the Three-fold Land, and wealth had flowed from Shara along the Silk Path. There appeared to be birds above the town, and dark blotches at regular intervals along the gray stone walls. Mat stood in Pips’ stirrups, shading his eyes with that broad-brimmed hat to peer up the pass, frowning. Lan’s hard face wore no expression at all, yet he appeared just as intent; a gust of wind, a little cooler here, whipped his color-shifting cloak around him, and for a moment all of him from shoulders to boots seemed to blend into the rocky hills and sparse thornbushes.

“Are you listening to me?” Moiraine said suddenly, reining her white mare closer. “You must—!” She took a deep breath. “Please, Rand. There is so much that I must tell you, so much that you need to know.”

The hint of pleading in her tone made him glance at her. He could remember when he had been overawed by her presence. Now she seemed quite small, for all her regal manner. A fool thing, that he should feel protective of her. “There is plenty of time ahead of us, Moiraine,” he said gently. “I don’t pretend to think I know as much of the world as you. I mean to keep you close from now on.” He barely realized how great a change that was from when
she
was keeping
him
close. “But I have something else on my mind right now.”

“Of course.” She sighed. “As you wish. We have plenty of time yet.”

Rand heeled the dappled gray stallion to a trot, and the others followed. The wagons quickened, too, though they could not keep up on the slope. Asmodean’s—Jasin Natael’s—patch-covered gleeman’s cloak rippled behind him like the banner he carried at his stirrup, brilliant red with the white-and-black symbol of the ancient Aes Sedai at its center. His face wore a sullen glower; he had not been best pleased at having to be the bannerman. Under that sign he would conquer, the Prophecy of Rhuidean said, and perhaps it would not frighten the world so much as the Dragon Banner, Lews Therin’s banner, that he had left flying over the Stone of Tear. Few would know this sign.