Crossroads of Twilight (Wheel of Time, #10)

by Robert Jordan

The Younglings were sealed to the White Tower. No one would ever forget that they had fought, on the very grounds of the Tower, to stop the rescue of a deposed Amyrlin. For good or ill, the tale would follow them to their graves. He was marked by that, as well, and by his own secrets. After all that bloodshed, he was the man who had let Siuan Sanche walk free. More importantly, though, Elayne bound him to the White Tower, and so did Egwene al’Vere, and he did not know which tied the tighter knot, the love of his sister or the love of his heart. To abandon one was to abandon all three, and while he breathed, he could not abandon Elayne or Egwene. ‘You have my word that I will do all I can,’ he said wearily. ‘What does Elaida want of me?’

a wise man tried to avoid battles he would not only lose, but look foolish losing.

rumors about the al’Thor boy going to Tar Valon to submit to Elaida, though she had done nothing to quell those. That tale had everyone from nobles to stablemen half afraid to breathe, which was very well and good for maintaining the peace. The Game of Houses had ground to a halt; well, compared to how matters normally were in Cairhien. The Aiel who came into the city from their huge camp a few miles east very likely helped, however much they were hated by the general run of folk. Everyone knew they followed the Dragon Reborn, and no one wanted to risk finding themselves on the wrong end of thousands of Aiel spears. Young al’Thor was much more useful absent than present. Rumors out of the west of Aiel raiding elsewhere – looting, burning, killing indiscriminately, so merchants’ hearsay claimed – gave people another reason to step gingerly with those here. In fact, there seemed to be no burrs to prick Cairhien out of its quiet, aside from the occasional street brawl between Foregaters and city folk who considered the noisy, brightly clad Foregaters as alien as the Aiel and a good deal safer to fight. The city was crowded to the attics, with people sleeping anywhere they could find shelter from the cold, yet food supplies were more than adequate if not overabundant, and trade was actually better than expected in winter. All in all, she should have felt content that she was carrying out Cadsuane’s instructions as well as the Green could wish for. Except that Cadsuane would ex...

Eighteen of those Dragonsworn sisters remained in Cairhien – Cadsuane had carried some away with her, then sent Alanna back to take off still more – and others of the eighteen besides Sashalle stood higher than she, but the Aiel Wise Ones kept them out of her way. In principle, she disapproved of how that was done – Aes Sedai could not be apprentices, not to anyone! It was outrageous!

Light, how the horror of yesterday became merely the uneasiness of today, once you grew accustomed.

The Green decided her stare was making no impression on Bethamin and turned it on Mat, instead. Had she been other than Aes Sedai, he would have said she looked sulky. Joline disliked explaining. ‘If you must know, someone is channeling.’ Teslyn and Edesina nodded, the Red sister reluctantly, the Yellow emphatically. ‘In the camp?’ he said in alarm. His right hand rose on its own to press against the silver foxhead under his shirt, but the medallion had not turned cold. ‘Far away,’ Joline replied, still unwilling. ‘To the north.’ ‘Much farther than any of us should be able to sense channeling,’ Edesina put in, a touch of fear in her voice. ‘The amount of saidar being wielded must be immense, inconceivable.’ She fell silent at a sharp glance from Joline, who turned back to study Mat as though deciding how much she had to tell him. ‘At that distance,’ she went on, ‘we wouldn’t be able to feel every sister in the Tower channeling. It has to be the Forsaken, and whatever they’re doing, we do not want to be any closer than we can avoid.’

This dream was fading quickly, in the manner of dreams, yet he remembered being a wolf and smelling . . . What? Something wolves hated more than they did Myrddraal. Something a wolf knew would kill him. The knowledge he had had in the dream was gone; only vague impressions remained. He had not been in the wolf dream, that reflection of this world where dead wolves lived on and the living could go to consult them. The wolf dream always remained clear in his head after he left, whether he had gone there consciously or not. Yet this dream still seemed real, and somehow urgent.

Is this referring to Isam?

‘They were wolves, once. The souls of wolves, anyway, caught and twisted by the Shadow. That was the core used to make Darkhounds, the Shadowbrothers. I think that’s why the wolves have to be at the Last Battle. Or maybe Darkhounds were made because wolves will be there, to fight them. The Pattern makes Sovarra lace look like a piece of string, sometimes. Anyway, it was a long time ago, during the Trolloc Wars as near as I can make out, and the War of the Shadow before that. Wolves have long memories. What a wolf knows is never really forgotten while other wolves remain alive. They avoid talking about Darkhounds, though, and they avoid Darkhounds, too. A hundred wolves could die trying to kill one Shadowbrother. Worse, if they fail, the Darkhound can eat the souls of those that aren’t quite dead yet, and in a year or so, there’d be a new pack of Shadowbrothers that didn’t remember ever being wolves. I hope they don’t remember, anyway.’ Perrin reined in, though he itched to keep moving. Shadowbrothers. The wolves’ name for Darkhounds had taken on a new grimness. ‘Can they eat a man’s soul, Elyas? Say a man who can talk to wolves?’ Elyas shrugged. Only a handful of people could do what they did, as far as either man knew. An answer to that question might come only at the point of death. More importantly right then, if they had been wolves, once, they must be intelligent enough to report what they found. Masuri had implied as much. Foolishness to hope otherwise. How long befo...

‘Listen to me carefully,’ Annoura said, the words rushing out of her. She rose up out of the snow enough to reach over Marline and seize a fistful of Perrin’s cloak. ‘Something is happening, perhaps wonderful, perhaps terrible, but in any case momentous, more so than anything in recorded history! We must know what! Grady can take us there, close enough to see. I could take us if I knew the weaves. We must know!’

Abruptly concerns over her babe and channeling and what Aes Sedai might or might not know were pushed right out of her head. She could feel someone channeling saidar. Not Aviendha, not someone on one of the surrounding mountains, not anyone near as close as that. This was distant, like a beacon blazing on a far mountaintop in the night. A very distant mountain. She could not imagine how much of the One Power was needed for her to feel channeling at that distance. Every woman in the world who could channel must be able to sense this. To point straight to it. And the beacon lay to the west. Nothing had changed in the bond with Rand, she could not have said exactly where he was within a hundred miles, but she knew. ‘He’s in danger,’ she said. ‘We must go to him, Aviendha.’ Aviendha gave herself a shake and stopped staring westward. The glow remained around her, and Elayne could feel that she had drawn on the Source as deeply as she could. But even as Aviendha turned to her, she felt the amount of saidar the other woman held dwindle. ‘We must not, Elayne.’ Aghast, Elayne twisted in Fireheart’s saddle to stare at her. ‘You want to abandon him? To that!’ No one could handle so much of saidar, not the strongest circle, not unaided. Supposedly a sa’angreal existed, greater than anything else ever made, and if what she had heard was correct, that might be able to handle this. Maybe. But from what she had heard, no woman could use it and live, not without ter’angreal made for the pu...

Choosing who would be Queen of Andor was quite simple, boiled down to essentials. There were over four hundred Houses in the realm, but only nineteen strong enough that others would follow where they led. Usually, all nineteen stood behind the Daughter-Heir, or most of them, unless she was plainly incompetent. House Mantear had lost the throne to Trakand when Mordrellen died only because Tigraine, the Daughter-Heir, had vanished and Mantear had begun running heavily to boy children. And because Morgase Trakand had gathered thirteen Houses in her support. Only ten of the nineteen were necessary to ascend the throne, by law and custom. Even claimants who still thought they should have the throne themselves usually fell in with the rest, or at least fell silent and gave up their pursuit, once another woman had ten Houses at her back. Things had been bad enough when she had three declared rivals, but now Naean and Elenia were united behind Arymilla Marne, of all people, the least likely of the three to have succeeded, and that meant she had two Houses – two large enough to count; Matherin and those eighteen others she had visited were too small – her own Trakand and Dyelin’s Taravin, to face six. Oh, Dyelin insisted that Carand, Coelan and Renshar would come to Elayne, and Norwelyn and Pendar and Traemane besides, but the first three wanted Dyelin herself on the throne, and the last three seemed to have gone into hibernation. Dyelin was firm in her loyalty, though, and tireles...

Always plan ahead, Lini used to say, but worry too hard over next year, and you can trip over tomorrow.

Eagerly, Aviendha embraced the Source, but before she had begun to weave a thread, she let saidar go and turned her head to stare toward the dark-paneled wall. Toward the west. So did Elayne, and Monaelle, and Sumeko. The beacon that had been burning for so long had just vanished. One instant it had been there, that raging blaze of saidar, and then it was gone as if it had never existed. Sumeko’s massive bosom heaved as she drew a deep breath. ‘I think something very wonderful or very terrible has happened today,’ she said softly. ‘And I think I am afraid to learn which.’

‘But I have to keep the White Tower alive – against Tarmon Gai’don – to stand between the world and the Asha’man – and the Tower will die if this comes to sisters killing one another in the streets of Tar Valon.’ That had already happened once. It could not be allowed a second time. ‘If the White Tower dies, hope dies. I shouldn’t have to tell you that again.’

Anger made for hasty decisions and rash words that sometimes were hard to take back.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Egwene pressed the heels of her palms against her lids. That hardly seemed to affect the pulsing needle in her head. Maybe Rand was in company with a Black sister, or had been. Maybe he had used Compulsion on Aes Sedai. Bad enough on anyone, but somehow worse used on Aes Sedai, more ominous. What was dared against Aes Sedai was ten times, a hundred times, as likely to be used against those who could not defend themselves. Eventually they would have to deal with him, somehow. She had grown up with Rand, yet she could not allow that to influence her. He was the Dragon Reborn, now, the hope of the world and at the same time maybe the single greatest threat the world faced. Maybe? The Seanchan could not do as much damage as the Dragon Reborn. And she was going to use the possibility that he had Compelled sisters. The Amyrlin Seat really was a different woman from that innkeeper’s daughter.

‘Tell us what you did see, Akarrin,’ Moria said as soon as the White Sitter turned away. Aledrin stiffened visibly, and when she took her seat, her face was utterly expressionless, but bright spots of color highlighted her cheeks. Moria should have waited. She must have been very anxious. By tradition – there were many more traditions and customs than laws, and the Light knew there were more laws than anyone really knew, often contradictory layers of law laid down over the centuries, but tradition and custom ruled Aes Sedai as much as Tower law ever had, perhaps more so – by tradition, Akarrin addressed her response to the Amyrlin Seat. ‘What we saw, Mother, was a roughly circular hole in the ground,’ she said, nodding for emphasis at nearly every other word. She seemed to choose those words carefully, as if to make sure she was absolutely clear to everyone. ‘It may have been a precise circle, originally, shaped like half of a ball, but the sides have collapsed in some places. The hole is approximately three miles across and perhaps a mile and a half deep.’ Someone gasped loudly, and Akarrin frowned as though whoever it was had tried to interrupt. She went on without pausing, however. ‘We could not be entirely certain of the depth. The bottom is covered with water and ice. We believe it may become a lake, eventually. In any event, we were able to ascertain our exact location without too much difficulty, and we are prepared to say that the hole is located where the city cal...

‘The ancient literature is quite clear, though little studied, I fear. It gathers dust rather than readers. Writings collected in the earliest years of the Tower make it plain that circles were not limited to thirteen, in the Age of Legends. The precise mechanism – I should say, the precise balance – is unknown, but it should not be too difficult to work out. For those of you who have not spent the time you should have in the Tower library, the manner of increasing the size of a circle involves . . . ’ For the first time, she faltered, and visibly forced herself to continue. ‘ . . . involves the inclusion of men who can channel.’

‘When you do be drowning,’ Moria replied, equally quiet, ‘you do grab at whatever branch floats by, even when you can no be sure it will support your weight until you have hold. The water has no closed over our heads yet, Romanda, but we be drowning. We do be drowning.’

Delana’s face had turned decidedly greenish. She looked as if she might be the one to sick up rather than Sheriam.

Probably more out of fear of someone discovering the truth about Halima.

‘The lesser consensus standing,’ she announced in an unsteady voice, ‘an agreement will be sought with . . . with the Black Tower.’ Inhaling deeply, she straightened to her full height, and her voice gained strength. She was back onto familiar ground. ‘In the interest of unity, I ask for the greater consensus to stand.’

Aviendha smiled into her teacup. Not an amused smile; she seemed relieved, for some reason. Her voice was serious, though. ‘You Aes Sedai always think men are fools. Quite often, they are not. More often than you think, at least. Take a care with these Asha’man. Mazrim Taim is far from a fool, and I think he is a very dangerous man.’

Mat stood on a village green, playing at bowls. The thatchroofed houses were vague, in the manner of dreams – sometimes the roofs were slate; sometimes the houses seemed of stone, sometimes wood – but he was sharp and clear, dressed in a fine green coat and that wide-brimmed black hat, just as he had been the day he rode into Salidar. There was not another human being in sight. Rubbing the ball between his hands, he took a short run and casually rolled it across the smooth grass. All nine pins fell, scattered as if they had been kicked. Mat turned and picked up another ball, and the pins were back upright. No, there was a fresh set of pins. The old still lay where they had fallen. He hurled the ball again, a lazy underhanded bowl. And Egwene wanted to scream. The pins were not turned pieces of wood. They were men, standing there watching the ball roll toward them. None moved until the ball sent them flying. Mat turned to pick up another ball, and there were more new pins, new men, standing in orderly formation among the men lying sprawled on the ground as if dead. No, they were dead. Unconcerned, Mat bowled. It was a true dream; she knew that long before it faded. A glimpse of a future that might come to pass, a warning of what should be watched for. True dreams were always possibilities, not certainties – she often had to remind herself of that; Dreaming was not Foretelling – but this was a dire possibility. Every one of those human pins had represented thousands of men. ...

This probably points towards the Last Battle.

She was climbing another path along a cliff shrouded in clouds, but this was a broad ledge of smoothly paved white stone, and there were no rocks underfoot. The cliff itself was chalky white and as smooth as if polished. Despite the clouds, the pale stone almost gleamed. She climbed quickly and soon realized that the ledge was spiraling around. The cliff was actually a spire. No sooner did that thought occur than she was standing on the top of it, a flat polished disc walled by mist. Not quite flat, though. A small white plinth stood centered in that circle, supporting an oil-lamp made of clear glass. The flame on that lamp burned bright and steady, without flickering. It was white, too. Suddenly a pair of birds flashed out of the mist, two ravens black as night. Streaking across the spire-top, they struck the lamp and flew on without so much as a pause. The lamp spun and wobbled, dancing around atop the plinth, flinging off droplets of oil. Some of those drops caught fire in midair and vanished. Others fell around the short column, each supporting a tiny, flickering white flame. And the lamp continued to wobble on the edge of falling. Egwene woke in darkness with a jolt. She knew. For the first time, she knew exactly what a dream meant. But why would she dream of a Seanchan woman saving her, and then of the Seanchan attacking the White Tower? An attack that would shake the Aes Sedai to their core and threaten the Tower itself. Of course, it was only a possibility. But the...

voice. ‘I suppose it was all the talk of the Black Tower in the Hall yesterday. I tested for resonance. They were killed with saidin.’ A grimace of disgust crossed her face. ‘I think someone just wove solid flows of Air around their heads and let them smother.’ Shuddering, she drew her cloak closer. Egwene wanted to shudder, too. She was surprised she did not. Anaiya, dead. Smothered. A deliberately cruel way of killing, used by someone who had hoped to leave no traces. ‘Have you told anyone, yet?’

Aran'gar's work.

Remain hidden and rouse not even the slightest hint of suspicion, Mesaana had commanded. That seemed over-timid when the Black Ajah had walked the Tower with impunity since its founding, but when one of the Chosen commanded, only a fool disobeyed. At least, if there was any chance of being found out.

The Tower Library was divided into twelve depositories, at least insofar as the world knew,

She could not pull her eyes away from the stairs falling away in front of her. Elaida surely suspected her, but if there was no more to it than that, she could always manufacture a hunt. It just had to include Elaida herself as a threat to be extinguished. Delivered to the Great Lord. Her fingers fluttered to her forehead again. She had the Black Ajah at her command. Smooth, unblemished skin. Talene had been there, in Elaida’s rooms. Why had she looked at Yukiri and Doesine that way? Talene was Black, though she did not know that Alviarin was, of course. Would any mark show in a mirror? Was there something that others could see? If she had to manufacture a scheme for Elaida’s supposed hunters, Talene might be a place to start. She tried to trace the route any message would have taken from heart to heart before it reached Talene, but she could not stop staring down the stairs, seeing her body bounce and break its way to the bottom. The Great Lord had marked her.

Alivia would finish her, Lews Therin muttered. She’s going to help us die; she’d remove Cadsuane for us, if you tell her to. I don’t want to kill her, Rand thought at the dead man. I can’t afford for her to die. Lews Therin knew that as well as he, but the man grumbled under his breath anyway. Since Shadar Logoth, he seemed a touch less mad, sometimes. Or maybe Rand was a touch more. After all, he took talking to a dead man in his head as a matter of every day, and that was hardly sane.

Saidin made him feel as if he had been half-blind and numb without it. That was a part of what he felt. Clean, Lews Therin whispered. Pure and clean again.

Suddenly it struck him that he had thought of what he had done as spinning a web. That was how Lews Therin would put it. That sort of thing happened too often, the other man’s turns of phrase drifting into his head, the other man’s memories mingling with his. He was Rand al’Thor, not Lews Therin Telamon. He had woven a ward and tied off the weave, not spun a web and knotted it. But the one came to him as easily as the other.

The Creator had made the world and then left humankind to make of it what they would, a heaven or the Pit of Doom by their choosing. The Creator had made many worlds, watched each flower or die, and gone on to make endless worlds beyond. A gardener did not weep for each blossom that fell.

Dress poor when you want a small favor, and fine when you want a large one.

‘Noal has been telling us about Co’dansin, Mat,’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s another name for Shara. Did you know the Ayyad tattoo their faces? That’s what they call women who can channel, in Shara.’

‘Fortune rides like the sun on high with the fox that makes the ravens fly. Luck his soul, the lightning his eye, He snatches the moons from out of the sky.’ The broken-nosed old man looked around as if just realizing anyone else was there. ‘I’ve been trying to remember that. It’s from the Prophecies of the Dragon.’

Strategy. Think to the future. Do the unexpected. The next night, he brought a small red paper flower made by one of the show’s seamstresses. And presented it to a startled Selucia. Setalle’s eyebrows rose, and even Tuon seemed taken aback. Tactics. Put your opponent off balance. Come to think, women and battles were not that different. Both wrapped a man in fog and could kill him without trying. If he was careless.

Mat grinned. ‘The question is, does she mean to marry me? The strangest people marry, sometimes.’ When you knew you were going to hang, the only thing to do was grin at the noose.

When fate gripped you by the throat, there was nothing to do but grin.

Jurador made its money from salt, though, and salt made a great deal of money. The town’s shops should offer any sort of material a woman could wish.

The gate guards seemed incurious about strangers, or at least about a man and two women afoot. Hard-faced fellows in white-painted breastplates and conical helmets with what looked like horsetails for crests, they ran impassive eyes over the cloaked women, lingering suspiciously a moment on Mat for some reason, and then returned to leaning on their halberds and staring blankly at the road. They were local men, most likely, in any case not Seanchan. The salt merchants and the local lady, Aethelaine, who apparently said whatever the salt merchants told her to, had sworn the Oaths of Return without hesitation and offered to pay a salt tax before they were asked. No doubt the Seanchan would get around to installing some sort of official here eventually, just to keep an eye on everything, but for the moment, they had more important uses for their soldiers.

It was a prosperous, busy town, Jurador, with stone-paved streets, most of them wide and all lined with stone buildings roofed in reddish tiles. Houses and inns rubbed shoulders with stables and taverns, in a noisy jumble with a blacksmith’s clanging hammer on an anvil here and the racketing of a rugweaver’s looms there, and everywhere, it seemed, coopers hammering bands on tight barrels for transporting salt. Hawkers cried pins and ribbons, meat pies and roasted nuts from trays, or winter-wrinkled turnips and sorry plums from barrows. On every street men and women stood guard over the display goods on narrow tables in front of their shops and bellowed lists of what was offered within.

Picking out the salt merchants’ houses was easy, though, three stories of stone rather than two, covering eight times as much ground as any others, each with a columned walk overlooking the street and shielded by white wrought-iron screens between the columns. The lower windows on most houses had those screens, though not always painted. That much was reminiscent of Ebou Dar, but little else was, beyond the olive complexions of the people. There were no deep necklines exposing cleavage here, no skirts sewn up to display colored petticoats. The women wore embroidered dresses with high necks right up to their chins, a little embroidery for the common folk, a great deal for the richer, who wore cloaks embroidered top to bottom and sheer veils hanging over their faces from combs of gold-work or carved ivory stuck into dark, coiled braids. The men’s short coats were worked almost as thickly, in colors just as bright, and rich or poor, most men wore a long belt knife with a blade a little less curved than those in Ebou Dar. Rich or poor, the fellows did have a tendency to fondle their knife hilts as if expecting a fight, so maybe that was the same.

The Lady Aethelaine’s palace appeared no different from the outside than the salt merchants’ mansions, but it was located on the town’s main square, a wide expanse of polished stone where a broad round marble fountain sprayed water into the air. People filled their buckets and big pottery water jars...

We rode on the winds of the rising storm, We ran to the sounds on the thunder. We danced among the lightning bolts, and tore the world asunder. Anonymous fragment of a poem believed written near the end of the previous Age, known as some as the Third Age, sometimes attributed to the Dragon Reborn