The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time, #3)

by Robert Jordan

A stone wall stops a blind woman as surely as one who can see it.

Nynaeve smiled grimly. “The best way to catch whoever set a trap is to spring it and wait for him to come. Or her, in this instance.”

“ ‘One pretty woman means fun at the dance. Two pretty women mean trouble in the house. Three pretty women mean run for the hills.’ ”

If you want the fun of the jig, you have to pay the harper sooner or later.

“Journey well and safely, Mat,” Egwene said. “And remember, if a woman does need a hero, she needs him today, not tomorrow.” The laughter bubbled out of her. He stared at the door closing behind them. Women, he decided for at least the hundredth time, were odd.

“And what do you mean to do about this . . . so-obvious trap?” the Amyrlin said softly, still staring over the kitchen, away from Nynaeve. “Do you mean to fall into this one, too?” Nynaeve’s face reddened. “I know this trap for a trap. Mother. And the best way to catch whoever set a trap is to spring it and wait for him—or her—to come.”

If you can’t hide what you are going to do, do it so everybody thinks you are a fool. Then they stand around waiting to see you fall on your face.

The bridge looked awfully narrow, running through darkness untouched by the tavern lights, arcing over a long fall to hard cobblestones, but he tossed the quarterstaff down and made himself follow before he could think about it too much. His boots thumped onto the bridge, and he let himself roll the way he had as a boy falling out of a tree. He fetched up against the waist-high railing. “Bad habits pay off in the long run,” he told himself as he got to his feet and picked up the staff.

“Why are you here in Tar Valon, Thom? It’s the last place I’d have expected to see you, the way you feel about Aes Sedai. I heard you were coining money in Cairhien.” “Cairhien,” the old gleeman muttered, the sharpness fading from his eyes again. “Such trouble it causes killing a man, even when he deserves killing.” He made a flourish with one hand and was holding a knife. Thom always had knives secreted about him. Drunk he might have been, but he held the blade steady enough. “Kill a man who needs killing, and sometimes others pay for it. The question is, was it worth doing anyway? There’s always a balance, you know. Good and evil. Light and Shadow. We would not be human if there wasn’t a balance.”

It was always best to know not only where you were going, but who you were dealing with, or they might just take your coat and boots and leave you to walk home through the rain in bare feet.

The High Lord Samon said the Aes Sedai meant to rule the world. Samon said they meant to crush every nation, put their foot on every man’s throat. Samon said Tear could no longer hold the Power out of its own lands and believe that was enough. Samon said Tear had its rightful day of glory coming, but Tar Valon stood between Tear and glory. “There’s no hope for it. Sooner or later they will have to be hunted down and killed, every last Aes Sedai. The High Lord Samon says the others might be saved—the young ones, the novices, the Accepted—if they’re brought to the Stone, but the rest must be eradicated. That’s what the High Lord Samon says. The White Tower must be destroyed.”

“The Creator is good, Perrin. The Father of Lies is evil. The Pattern of Age, the Age Lace itself, is neither. The Pattern is what is. The Wheel of Time weaves all lives into the Pattern, all actions. A pattern that is all one color is no pattern. For the Pattern of an Age, good and ill are the warp and the woof.”

He was obviously trying not to let on that he was pleased, but he looked like a cat having its ears scratched.

A spit dog trotted in his big wicker wheel, turning a long spit that held a haunch of lamb, a large piece of beef, five chickens, and a goose.

I do not like things I cannot account for.”

Elyas Machera had found a way to live with what he was, a man somehow linked with wolves, and he had not gone mad. Thinking back, Perrin was sure Elyas had been living that way for years before he ever met the man. He wants to be that way. He accepts it, anyway. That was no solution. Perrin did not want to live that way, did not want to accept. But if you have the bar stock to make a knife, you accept it and make a knife, even if you’d like a woodaxe. No! My life is more than iron to be hammered into shape.

“Well, thank you very much for that,” he said bitterly. “You did not have to scare me to death just so you could tell me there was no need to be frightened!”

For an instant she thought how good it would be to have her mother send her up to bed knowing everything would be better in the morning. Only mother can’t solve my problems for me anymore, and father can’t promise to chase away monsters and make me believe it. I have to do it myself now.

“Death comes for us all,” the Aiel said. “We can only choose how to face it when it comes.

Aviendha gave them a level look, but continued as if they had not spoken. “Except that now the Wise Ones say he is to be found here, beyond the Dragonwall. ‘Blood of our blood mixed with the old blood, raised by an ancient blood not ours.’ I do not understand it, but the Wise Ones spoke in such a way as to leave no doubts.”

“Egwene,” Elayne said, “you know who He Who Comes With the Dawn must be, don’t you?” Staring at Nynaeve’s back still well ahead of them, Egwene shook her head—Does she mean to race us to Jurene?—then almost stopped walking. “You do not mean—?” Elayne nodded. “I think so. I do not know much of the Prophecies of the Dragon, but I have heard a few lines. One I remember is, ‘On the slopes of Dragonmount shall he be born, born of a maiden wedded to no man.’ Egwene, Rand does look like an Aiel. Well, he looks like the pictures I have seen of Tigraine, too, but she vanished before he was born, and I hardly think she could have been his mother anyway. I think Rand’s mother was a Maiden of the Spear.”

For the young, death is an enemy they wish to try their strength against. For those of us a little older, she is an old friend, an old lover, but one we are not eager to meet again soon.”

“And you go out of your way to help people, do you? Strange how that has escaped my eye.” “I’ll help anyone who can pay,” Mat said firmly. “Only fools in stories do something for nothing.”

“Uh . . . Aludra? I have plenty, you can see. I thought perhaps. . . .” He held out the coins toward her. “I can always win more.” She paused with her cloak half around her shoulders, then smiled at Thom as she swept it the rest of the way on. “He is young yet, eh?” “He is young,” Thom agreed. “And not half so bad as he would like to think himself. Sometimes he is not.” Mat glowered at both of them and lowered his hand.

“Eat,” Moiraine said, looking straight at Zarine. “Remember that any meal can be your last. You chose to travel with us, so tonight you will eat fish. Tomorrow, you may die.”

“You speak as if you are already dead,” Lan said roughly. “The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, and the Shadow darkens the world. Heed me, Lan, and obey, as you swore to.” With that, she was gone.

She has to have a reason. Being in a bloody story isn’t reason enough for any but a madwoman!

As far as he was concerned, a man who decided to rob and kill deserved what he got when he lost the game.

Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.

‘Do not cut off your ears because you do not like your earrings,’ ” she muttered.

If you’ve been fool enough to eat mudfish, you do not go around telling people.

The Dark One is locked up where the Creator put him, and no Fetches or fangfish to scare children will get him out. Fools don’t frighten me unless they’re working the boat I’m riding.

Men fight when they should run, and fools fight when they should run.