Knife of Dreams (100 page)

Abruptly, no more than ten paces away, she . . . flickered. For an instant, she was taller than most men, garbed all in black, surprise on her face, and though she still wore the veil, her head was covered with shortcut wavy black hair. Only an instant before the small woman returned, her step faltering as she let her white skirts fall, but another flicker, and the tall dark woman stood there, her face twisted in fury behind the veil. He recognized that face, though he had never seen it before. Lews Therin had, and that was enough.

“Semirhage,” he said in shock before he could stop the word, and suddenly everything seemed to happen at once.

He reached for the Source and found Lews Therin clawing for it, too, each of them jostling the other aside from reaching it. Semirhage flicked her hand, and a small ball of fire streaked toward him from her fingertips. She might have shouted something, an order. He could not leap aside; Min stood right behind him. Frantically trying to seize
saidin
, he flung up the hand holding the Dragon Scepter in desperation. The world seemed to explode in fire.

His cheek was pressed against the damp ground, he realized. Black flecks shimmered in his vision, and everything seemed faintly hazy, as if seen through water. Where was he? What had happened? His head felt
stuffed with wool. Something was prodding him in the ribs. His sword hilt. The old wounds were a hard knot of pain just above that. Slowly, he realized he was looking at the Dragon Scepter, or what was left of it. The spearpoint and a few inches of charred haft lay three paces away. Small, dancing flames were consuming the long tassel. The Crown of Swords lay beyond it.

Abruptly it came to him that he could feel
saidin
being channeled. His skin was goose bumps all over from
saidar
being wielded. The manor house. Semirhage! He tried to push himself up, and collapsed with a harsh cry. Slowly he pulled a left arm that seemed all pain up where he could see his hand. See where his hand had been. Only a mangled, blackened ruin remained. A stub sticking out of a cuff that gave off thin streamers of smoke. But the Power was still being channeled around him. His people were fighting for their lives. They might be dying. Min! He struggled to rise, and fell again.

As though thinking of her had summoned her, Min was crouching over him. Trying to shield him with her body, he realized. The bond was full of compassion and pain. Not physical pain. He would have known if she had the smallest injury. She was feeling pain for him. “Lie still,” she said. “You’ve. . . . You’ve been hurt.”

“I know,” he said hoarsely. Again, he reached for
saidin
, and for a wonder, this time Lews Therin did not try to interfere. The Power filled him, and that gave him the strength to push himself to his feet one-handed, preparing several very nasty weaves as he did so. Careless of his muddy coat, Min gripped his good arm as though she were trying to hold him upright. But the fighting was over.

Semirhage was standing stiffly with her arms at her sides, her skirts pressed against her legs, doubtless wrapped up in flows of Air. The hilt of one of Min’s knives stood out from her shoulder, and she must have been shielded, too, but her dark, beautiful face was contemptuous. She had been a prisoner before, briefly, during the War of the Shadow. She had escaped from high detention by frightening her jailers to the point that they actually smuggled her to freedom.

Others had been injured more seriously. A short dark
sul’dam
and tall pale-haired
damane
, linked by an
a’dam
, lay sprawled on the ground, staring up at the sun with already glazed eyes, and another pair were on their knees and clinging to one another, blood running down their faces and matting their hair. The other pairs stood as stiffly as Semirhage, and he could see the shields on three of the
damane
. They looked stunned. One of the
sul’dam
, a slender, dark-haired young woman, was weeping softly. Narishma’s face
was bloodied, too, and his coat appeared singed. So did Sandomere’s, and a bone jutted through his left coatsleeve, white smeared with red, until Nynaeve firmly pulled his arm straight and guided the bone back into place. Grimacing in pain, he gave a guttural groan. She cupped her hands around his arm over the break, and moments later he was flexing his arm and moving his fingers and murmuring thanks. Logain appeared untouched, as did Nynaeve and Cadsuane, who was studying Semirhage the way a Brown might study an exotic animal never before seen.

Suddenly gateways began opening all around the manor house, spilling out mounted Asha’man and Aes Sedai and Warders, veiled Maidens and Bashere riding at the head of his horsemen. An Asha’man and Aes Sedai in a ring of two could make a gateway considerably larger than those Rand could alone. So someone had managed to give the signal, a red sunburst in the sky. Every Asha’man was full of
saidin
, and Rand assumed the Aes Sedai were equally full of
saidar
. The Maidens began spreading out into the trees.

“Aghan, Hamad, search the house!” Bashere shouted. “Matoun, form the lancers! They’ll be on us as soon as they can!” Two soldiers thrust their lances into the ground and leapt down to run inside drawing their swords while the others began arraying themselves in two ranks.

Ayako flung herself from her saddle and rushed to Sandomere not even bothering to hold her skirts out of the mud. Merise rode to Narishma before swinging down right in front of him and taking his head in her hands without a word. He jerked, his back arching and nearly pulling his head free, as she Healed him. She had little facility with Nynaeve’s method of Healing.

Ignoring the turmoil, Nynaeve gathered her skirts in bloodied hands and hurried to Rand. “Oh, Rand,” she said when she saw his arm, “I’m so sorry. I. . . . I’ll do what I can, but I can’t fix it the way it was.” Her eyes were filled with anguish.

Wordlessly, he held out his left arm. It throbbed with agony. Strangely, he could still feel his hand. It seemed he should be able to make a fist with the fingers that were no longer there. His goose bumps intensified as she drew more deeply on
saidar
, the tendrils of smoke vanished from his cuff, and she gripped his arm above the wrist. His entire arm began tingling, and the pain drained away. Slowly, blackened skin was replaced by smooth skin that seemed to ooze down until it covered the small lump that had been the base of his hand. It was a miraculous thing to see. The scarlet-and-gold
scaled dragon grew back, too, as much as it could, ending in a bit of the golden mane. He could
still
feel the whole hand.

“I’m so sorry,” Nynaeve said again. “Let me delve you for any other injuries.” She asked, but did not wait, of course. She reached up to cup his head between her hands, and a chill ran through him. “There’s something wrong with your eyes,” she said with a frown. “I’m afraid to try fixing that without studying on it. The smallest mistake could blind you. How well can you see? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two. I can see fine,” he lied. The black flecks were gone, but everything still seemed seen through water, and he wanted to squint against a sun that appeared to glare ten times brighter than it had. The old wounds in his side were knotted with pain.

Bashere climbed down from his compact bay in front of him and frowned at the stump of his left arm. Unbuckling his helmet, he took it off and held it under his arm. “At least you’re alive,” he said gruffly. “I’ve seen men hurt worse.”

“Me, too,” Rand said. “I’ll have to learn the sword all over again, though.” Bashere nodded. Most forms required two hands. Rand bent to pick up the crown of Illian, but Min released his arm and hurriedly handed the crown to him. He settled it on his head. “I’ll have to work out new ways to do everything.”

“You must be in shock,” Nynaeve said slowly. “You’ve just suffered a grievous injury, Rand. Maybe you’d better lie down. Lord Davram, have one of your men bring a saddle to put his feet up.”

“He’s not in shock,” Min said sadly. The bond was full of sadness. She had taken hold of his arm as if to hold him up again. “He lost a hand, but there’s nothing to do about it, so he’s left it behind already.”

“Wool-headed fool,” Nynaeve muttered. Her hand, still smeared with Sandomere’s blood, drifted toward the thick braid hanging over her shoulder, but she yanked it back down. “You’ve been hurt badly. It’s all right to grieve. It’s all right to feel stunned. It’s normal!”

“I don’t have time,” he told her. Min’s sadness threatened to overflow the bond. Light, he was all right! Why did she feel so sad?

Nynaeve muttered half under her breath about “woolhead” and “fool” and “man-stubborn,” but she was not finished. “Those old wounds in your side have broken open,” she almost growled. “You aren’t bleeding badly, but you
are
bleeding. Maybe I can finally do something about them.”

But as hard as she tried—and she tried three times—nothing changed.
He still felt the slow trickle of blood sliding down his ribs. The wounds were still a throbbing knot of pain. Finally, he pushed her hand gently away from his side.

“You’ve done what you can, Nynaeve. It’s enough.”

“Fool.” She did growl, this time. “How can it be enough when you’re still bleeding?”

“Who is the tall woman?” Bashere asked. He understood, at least. You did not waste time on what could not be mended. “They didn’t try passing
her
off as the Daughter of the Nine Moons, did they? Not after telling me she was a little thing.”

“They did,” Rand replied, and explained briefly.

“Semirhage?” Bashere muttered incredulously. “How can you be sure?”

“She’s Anath Dorje, not . . . not what you called her,” a honey-skinned
sul’dam
said loudly in a twangy drawl. Her dark eyes were tilted, and her hair was streaked with gray. She looked the eldest of the
sul’dam
, and the least frightened. It was not that she did not look afraid, but she controlled it well. “She’s the High Lady’s Truthspeaker.”

“Be silent, Falendre,” Semirhage said coldly, looking over her shoulder. Her gaze promised pain. The Lady of Pain was good at delivering on her promises. Prisoners had killed themselves on learning it was she who held them, men and women who managed to open a vein with teeth or fingernails.

Falendre did not seem to see it, though. “You don’t command me,” she said scornfully. “You’re not even
so’jhin
.”

“How
can
you be sure?” Cadsuane demanded. Those golden moons and stars, birds and fishes, swung as she moved her piercing gaze from Rand to Semirhage and back.

Semirhage saved him the effort of thinking up a lie. “He’s insane,” she said coolly. Standing there stiff as a statue, Min’s knife hilt still sticking out beside her collarbone and the front of her black dress glistening with blood, she might have been a queen on her throne. “Graendal could explain it better than I. Madness was her specialty. I will try, however. You know of people who hear voices in their heads? Sometimes, very rarely, the voices they hear are the voices of past lives. Lanfear claimed he knew things from our own Age, things only Lews Therin Telamon could know. Clearly, he is hearing Lews Therin’s voice. It makes no difference that his voice is real, however. In fact, that makes his situation worse. Even Graendal usually failed to achieve reintegration with someone who heard a real voice. I understand the descent into terminal madness can be . . . abrupt.” Her lips curved in a smile that never touched her dark eyes.

Were they looking at him differently? Logain’s face was a carved mask, unreadable. Bashere looked as though he still could not believe. Nynaeve’s mouth hung open, and her eyes were wide. The bond. . . . For a long moment, the bond was full of . . . numbness. If Min turned away from him, he did not know whether he could stand it. If she turned away, it would be the best thing in the world for her. But compassion and determination as strong as mountains replaced numbness, and love so bright he thought he could have warmed his hands over it. Her grip on his arm tightened, and he tried to put a hand over hers. Too late, he remembered and snatched the nub of his hand away, but not before it had touched her. Nothing in the bond wavered by a hair.

Cadsuane moved closer to the taller woman and looked up at her. Facing one of the Forsaken seemed to faze her no more than facing the Dragon Reborn did. “You’re very calm for a prisoner. Rather than deny the charge, you give evidence against yourself.”

Semirhage shifted that cold smile from Rand to Cadsuane. “Why should I deny myself?” Pride dripped from every word. “I am Semirhage.” Someone gasped, and a number of the
sul’dam
and
damane
started trembling and weeping. One
sul’dam
, a pretty, yellow-haired woman, suddenly vomited down the front of herself, and another, stocky and dark, looked as if she might.

Cadsuane simply nodded. “I am Cadsuane Melaidhrin. I look forward to long talks with you.” Semirhage sneered. She had never lacked courage.

“We thought she was the High Lady,” Falendre said hurriedly, and haltingly at the same time. Her teeth seemed near to chattering, but she forced words out. “We thought we were being honored. She took us to a room in the Tarasin Palace where there was a . . . a hole in the air, and we stepped through to this place. I swear it on my eyes! We thought she was the High Lady.”

“So, no army rushing toward us,” Logain said. You could not have told from his tone whether he was relieved or disappointed. He bared an inch of his sword and thrust it back into its scabbard hard. “What do we do with them?” He jerked his head toward the
sul’dam
and
damane
. “Send them to Caemlyn like the others?”