The Dragon Reborn (3 page)

“What proof have you?” Niall made his voice sound as if he doubted the point. “You have prisoners?”

“No, my Lord Captain Commander. As Child Byar no doubt told you, Bornhald managed to hurt them badly enough that they dispersed. And certainly no one we’ve questioned would admit to supporting a false Dragon. As for proof . . . it lies in two parts. If my Lord Captain Commander will permit me?”

Niall gestured impatiently.

“The first part is negative. Few ships have tried to cross the Aryth Ocean, and most never returned. Those that did, turned back before they ran out of food and water. Even the Sea Folk will not cross the Aryth, and they sail wherever there is trade, even to the lands beyond the Aiel Waste. My Lord Captain Commander, if there
are
any lands across the ocean, they are too far to reach, the ocean too wide. To carry an army across it would be as impossible as flying.”

“Perhaps,” Niall said slowly. “It is certainly indicative. What is your second part?”

“My Lord Captain Commander, many of those we questioned spoke of monsters fighting for the Darkfriends, and held to their claims even under the last degree of the question. What could they be but Trollocs and other Shadowspawn, in some way brought down from the Blight?” Carridin spread his hands as if that were conclusive. “Most people think Trollocs are only travelers’ tales and lies, and most of the rest think they were all killed in the Trolloc Wars. What other name would they put to a Trolloc but monster?”

“Yes. Yes, you may be right, Child Carridin. May be, I say.” He would not give Carridin the satisfaction of knowing he agreed.
Let him work awhile
. “But what of him?” He indicated the rolled drawings. If he knew Carridin, the Inquisitor had copies in his own chambers. “How dangerous is he? Can he channel the One Power?”

The Inquisitor merely shrugged. “Perhaps he can channel, perhaps not. Aes Sedai could no doubt make people believe a cat could channel, if they wanted to. As to how dangerous he is. . . . Any false Dragon is dangerous until he is put down, and one with Tar Valon openly behind him is ten times dangerous. But he is less dangerous now than he will be in half a year, unchecked. The captives I questioned had never seen him, had no idea where he is now. His forces are fragmented. I doubt there are more than two hundred gathered in any one place. The Taraboners or the Domani, either one, could sweep them away if they weren’t so busy fighting each other.”

“Even a false Dragon,” Niall said dryly, “is not enough to make them forget four hundred years of squabbling over possession of Almoth Plain. As if either of them ever had the strength to hold it.” Carridin’s face did not change, and Niall wondered how he could keep so calm.
You will not be calm much longer, Questioner
.

“It is of no import, my Lord Captain Commander. Winter keeps them all in their camps, except for scattered skirmishes and raids. When the
weather warms enough for troops to move. . . . Bornhald took only half his legion to their deaths on Toman Head. With the other half, I will hunt this false Dragon to his death. A corpse is not dangerous to anyone.”

“And if you face what it seems Bornhald faced? Aes Sedai channeling the Power to kill?”

“Their witchery doesn’t protect them from arrows, or a knife in the dark. They die as quickly as anyone else.” Carridin smiled. “I promise you, I will be successful before summer.”

Niall nodded. The man was confident, now. Sure the dangerous questions would already have come, if they were coming.
You should have remembered, Carridin, I was accounted a fine tactician
. “Why,” he said quietly, “did you not take your own forces to Falme? With Darkfriends on Toman Head, an army of them holding Falme, why did you try to stop Bornhald?”

Carridin blinked, but his voice remained steady. “At first they were only rumors, my Lord Captain Commander. Rumors so wild, no one could believe. By the time I learned the truth, Bornhald had joined battle. He was dead, and the Darkfriends scattered. Besides, my task was to bring the Light to Almoth Plain. I could not disobey my orders to chase after rumors.”

“Your task?” Niall said, his voice rising as he stood. Carridin topped him by a head, but the Inquisitor stepped back. “Your task? Your task was to seize Almoth Plain! An empty bucket that no one holds except by words and claims, and all you had to do was fill it. The nation of Almoth would have lived again, ruled by the Children of the Light, with no need to pay lip service to a fool of a king. Amadicia and Almoth, a vise gripping Tarabon. In five years we would have held sway there as much as here in Amadicia. And you made a dog’s dinner of it!”

The smile went at last. “My Lord Captain Commander,” Carridin protested. “How could I foresee what happened? Yet another false Dragon. Tarabon and Arad Doman finally going to war after so long merely growling at each other. And Aes Sedai revealing their true selves after three thousand years of dissembling! Even with that, though, all is not lost. I can find and destroy this false Dragon before his followers unite. And once the Taraboners and Domani have weakened themselves, they can be cleared from the plain without—”

“No!” Niall snapped. “Your plans are done with, Carridin. Perhaps I should hand you over to your own Questioners right now. The High Inquisitor would not object. He is gnashing his teeth to find someone to blame for what happened. He would never put forward one of his own, but I doubt he’d quibble if I named you. A few days under the question, and
you would confess to anything. Name yourself Darkfriend, even. You would go under the headsman’s axe inside a week.”

There was sweat beading on Carridin’s forehead. “My Lord Captain Commander. . . .” He stopped to swallow. “My Lord Captain Commander seems to be saying there is another way. If he will but speak it, I am sworn to obey.”

Now
, Niall thought.
Now to toss the dice
. Prickles ran across his skin, as if he were in battle and had suddenly realized that every man for a hundred paces around him was an enemy. Lord Captain Commanders did not go to the headsman, but more than one had been known to die suddenly and unexpectedly, swiftly mourned and swiftly replaced by men with less dangerous ideas.

“Child Carridin,” he said firmly, “you will make certain that this false Dragon does not die. And if any Aes Sedai come to oppose rather than support him, you will make use of your ‘knives in the dark.’ ”

The Inquisitor’s jaw dropped. Yet he recovered quickly, eyeing Niall in a speculative fashion. “To kill Aes Sedai is a duty, but. . . . To allow a false Dragon to roam free? That . . . that would be . . . treason. And blasphemy.”

Niall drew a deep breath. He could sense the unseen knives waiting in the shadows. But he was committed, now. “It is no treason to do what must be done. And even blasphemy can be tolerated for a cause.” Those two sentences alone were enough to kill him. “Do you know how to unite people behind you, Child Carridin? The quickest way? No? Loose a lion—a rabid lion—in the streets. And when panic grips the people, once it has turned their bowels to water, calmly tell them you will deal with it. Then you kill it, and order them to hang the carcass up where everyone can see. Before they have time to think, you give another order, and it will be obeyed. And if you continue to give orders, they will continue to obey, for you will be the one who saved them, and who better to lead?”

Carridin moved his head uncertainly. “Do you mean to . . . take it all, my Lord Captain Commander? Not just Almoth Plain, but Tarabon and Arad Doman as well?”

“What I mean is for me to know. It is for you to obey as you are sworn to do. I expect to hear of messengers on fast horses leaving for the plain by tonight. I am certain you know how to word the orders so no one suspects what they should not. If you must harry someone, let it be the Taraboners and Domani. It would not do to have them kill my lion. No, under the Light, we shall force peace between them.”

“As my Lord Captain Commander commands,” Carridin said smoothly. “I hear and obey.” Too smoothly.

Niall smiled a cold smile. “In case your oath is not strong enough, know this. If this false Dragon dies before I command his death, or if he is taken by the Tar Valon witches, you will be found one morning with a dagger in your heart. And should any . . . accident . . . befall me—even if I should die of old age—you will not survive me the month.”

“My Lord Captain Commander, I have sworn to obey—”

“So you have.” Niall cut him off. “See that you remember it. Now, go!”

“As my Lord Captain Commander commands.” This time Carridin’s voice was not so steady.

The door closed behind the Inquisitor. Niall rubbed his hands together. He felt cold. The dice were spinning, with no way of telling what pips would show when they stopped. The Last Battle truly was coming. Not the Tarmon Gai’don of legend, with the Dark One breaking free to be faced by the Dragon Reborn. Not that, he was sure. The Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends might have made a hole in the Dark One’s prison at Shayol Ghul, but Lews Therin Kinslayer and his Hundred Companions had sealed it up again. The counterstroke had tainted the male half of the True Source forever and driven them mad, and so begun the Breaking, but one of those ancient Aes Sedai could do what ten of the Tar Valon witches of today could not. The seals they had made would hold.

Pedron Niall was a man of cold logic, and he had reasoned out how Tarmon Gai’don would be. Bestial Trolloc hordes rolling south out of the Great Blight as they had in the Trolloc Wars, two thousand years before, with the Myrddraal—the Halfmen—leading, and perhaps even new human Dreadlords from among the Darkfriends. Humankind, split into nations squabbling among themselves, could not stand against that. But he, Pedron Niall, would unite humankind behind the banners of the Children of the Light. There would be new legends, to tell how Pedron Niall had fought Tarmon Gai’don, and won.

“First,” he murmured, “loose a rabid lion in the streets.”

“A rabid lion?”

Niall spun on his heel as a bony little man with a huge beak of a nose slipped from behind one of the hanging banners. There was just a glimpse of a panel swinging shut as the banner fell back against the wall.

“I showed you that passage, Ordeith,” Niall snapped, “so you could come when I summoned you without half the fortress knowing, not so you could listen to my private conversation.”

Ordeith made a smooth bow as he crossed the room. “Listen, Great Lord? I would never do such a thing. I only just arrived and could not avoid hearing your final words. No more than that.” He wore a half-mocking smile, but it never left his face that Niall had ever seen, even when the fellow had no reason to know anyone was watching.

A month before, in the dead of winter, the gangly little man had arrived in Amadicia, ragged and half-frozen, and somehow managed to talk his way through all the layers of guards to Pedron Niall himself. He seemed to know things about events on Toman Head that were not in Carridin’s voluminous if obscure reports, or in Byar’s tale, or in any other report or rumor that had come to Niall. His name was a lie, of course. In the Old Tongue, Ordeith meant “wormwood.” When Niall challenged him on it, though, all he said was, “Who we were is lost to all men, and life is bitter.” But he was clever. It had been he who helped Niall see the pattern emerging in events.

Ordeith moved to the table and took up one of the drawings. As he unrolled it enough to reveal the young man’s face, his smile deepened to nearly a grimace.

Niall was still irritated that the man had come unsummoned. “You find a false Dragon funny, Ordeith. Or does he frighten you?”

“A false Dragon?” Ordeith said softly. “Yes. Yes, of course, it must be. Who else could it be.” And he barked a shrill laugh that grated on Niall’s nerves. Sometimes Niall thought Ordeith was at least half-mad.

But he is clever, mad or not
. “What do you mean, Ordeith? You sound as if you know him.”

Ordeith gave a start, as though he had forgotten the Lord Captain Commander was there. “Know him? Oh, yes, I know him. His name is Rand al’Thor. He comes from the Two Rivers, in the backcountry of Andor, and he is a Darkfriend so deep in the Shadow it would make your soul cringe to know the half.”

“The Two Rivers,” Niall mused. “Someone else mentioned another Darkfriend from there, another youth. Strange to think of Darkfriends coming from a place like that. But truly they are everywhere.”

“Another, Great Lord?” Ordeith said. “From the Two Rivers? Would that be Matrim Cauthon or Perrin Aybara? They are of an age with him, and close behind in evil.”

“His name was given as Perrin,” Niall said, frowning. “Three of them, you say? Nothing comes out of the Two Rivers but wool and tabac. I doubt if there is another place men live that is more isolated from the rest of the world.”

“In a city, Darkfriends must hide their nature to one extent or another. They must associate with others, with strangers come from other places and leaving to take word of what they have seen. But in quiet villages, cut off from the world, where few outsiders ever go. . . . What better places for all to be Darkfriends?”

“How is it you know the names of three Darkfriends, Ordeith? Three Darkfriends from the far end of forever. You keep too many secrets, Wormwood, and pull more surprises from your sleeve than a gleeman.”

“How can any man tell
all
that he knows, Great Lord,” the little man said smoothly. “It would be only prattle, until it becomes useful. I will tell you this, Great Lord. This Rand al’Thor, this Dragon, has deep roots in the Two Rivers.”

“False Dragon!” Niall said sharply, and the other man bowed.

“Of course, Great Lord. I misspoke myself.”

Suddenly Niall became aware of the drawing crumpled and torn in Ordeith’s hands. Even while the man’s face remained smooth except for that sardonic smile, his hands twitched convulsively around the parchment.

“Stop that!” Niall commanded. He snatched the drawing away from Ordeith and smoothed it as best he could. “I do not have so many likenesses of this man that I can allow them to be destroyed.” Much of the drawing was only a smudge, and a rip ran across the young man’s breast, but miraculously the face was untouched.