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

by Robert Jordan

And his paths shall be many, and who shall know his name, for he shall be born among us many times, in many guises, as he has been and ever will be, time without end. His coming shall be like the sharp edge of the plow, turning our lives in furrows from out of the places where we lie in our silence. The breaker of bonds; the forger of chains. The maker of futures; the unshaper of destiny.

What I do, I do because there is no other way. He is hunting me again, and this time one of us has to die, I think. There is no need for those around me to die, also. Too many have died for me already. I do not want to die either, and will not, if I can manage it. There are lies in dreams, and death, but dreams hold truth, too.

“You describe the hall called the Heart of the Stone, in the fortress called the Stone of Tear, as if you had stood in it. And the shining sword is Callandor, the Sword That Is Not a Sword, the Sword That Cannot Be Touched.”

“The Prophecies of the Dragon say the Stone of Tear will never fall till Callandor is wielded by the Dragon’s hand. The fall of the Stone of Tear will be one of the greatest signs of the Dragon’s Rebirth. If Rand holds Callandor, the whole world must acknowledge him as the Dragon.”

“Callandor will be but one fulfillment of The Karaethon Cycle, as his birth on the slopes of Dragonmount was the first. He has yet to break the nations, or shatter the world. Even scholars who have studied the Prophecies for their entire lives do not know how to interpret them all. What does it mean that he ‘shall slay his people with the sword of peace, and destroy them with the leaf’? What does it meant that he ‘shall bind the nine moons to serve him’? Yet these are given equal weight with Callandor in the Cycle. There are others. What ‘wounds of madness and cutting of hope’ has he healed? What chains has he broken, and who put into chains? And some are so obscure that he may already have fulfilled them, although I am not aware of it. But, no. Callandor is far from the end of it.”

“Those who can channel the One Power,” Moiraine said quietly, “those who are particularly strong in Spirit, can sometimes force their dreams on others.”

“Half of them remember dreaming of swords the last four nights running. Some remember a place with great columns, and five say the sword was crystal, or glass. Masema says he saw Rand holding it last night.”

“No, but they’re important. The things I see always are. Turning points in people’s lives, or what’s fated. It’s always important.”

“One more thing,” she said slowly. “If you meet a woman—the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen—run!”

‘Heart of the Dark. Ba’alzamon. Name hidden within name shrouded by name. Secret buried within secret cloaked by secret. Betrayer of Hope. Ishamael betrays all hope. Truth burns and sears. Hope fails before truth. A lie is our shield. Who can stand against the Heart of the Dark? Who can face the Betrayer of Hope? Soul of shadow, Soul of the Shadow, he is—’

In all of these worlds, whatever their other variations, a few things are constant. One is that the Dark One is imprisoned in all of them.”

“Paradox, child. The Dark One is the embodiment of paradox and chaos, the destroyer of reason and logic, the breaker of balance, the unmaker of order.”

The Dragon Reborn will face the Lord of the Grave;

The Dark One will try to distort the Pattern, if he can.

The point is that there is a third constant besides the Creator and the Dark One. There is a world that lies within each of these others, inside all of them at the same time. Or perhaps surrounding them. Writers in the Age of Legends called it Tel’aran’rhiod, “the Unseen World.” Perhaps “the World of Dreams” is a better translation. Many people—ordinary folk who could not think of channeling—sometimes glimpse Tel’aran’rhiod in their dreams, and even catch glimmers of these other worlds through it. Think of some of the peculiar things you have seen in your dreams. But a Dreamer, child—a true Dreamer—can enter Tel’aran’rhiod.”

Beside the ter’angreal, Alanna suddenly spoke. “There is some sort of—resonance.” She never took her eyes from the arches. “An echo, almost. I do not know from where.”

“Every woman I have ever watched come out of there has asked that question. The answer is, no one knows.

“Myself, I believe it is not real. But the danger is. Remember that.” She stopped in front of the next glow-filled arch. “Are you ready?”

“They can turn me, Egwene.” His breathing was so tortured, she wished she could weep. “If they take me—the Myrddraal—the Dreadlords—they can turn me to the Shadow. If madness has me, I cannot fight them. I won’t know what they are doing till it is too late. If there is even a spark of life left when they find me, they can still do it.

“He said the Myrddraal and the Dreadlords could force him.”

“This is something known only to a few, child, even in the Tower. You should not learn it now, if ever, but I will tell you. There is—a weakness in being able to channel. That we learn to open ourselves to the True Source means that we can be—opened to other things.” Egwene shuddered. “Calm yourself, child. It is not so easily done. It is a thing not done, so far as I know—Light send it has not been done!—since the Trolloc Wars. It took thirteen Dreadlords—Darkfriends who could channel—weaving the flows through thirteen Myrddraal. You see? Not easily done. There are no Dreadlords today. This is a secret of the Tower, child. If others knew, we could never convince them they were safe. Only one who can channel can be turned in this way. The weakness of our strength. Everyone else is as safe as a fortress; only their own deeds and will can turn them to the Shadow.”

There had been a dream of Rand, reaching for a sword that seemed to be made of crystal, never seeing the fine net dropping over him. And one of him kneeling in a chamber where a parched wind blew dust across the floor, and creatures like the one on the Dragon banner, but much smaller, floated on that wind, and settled into his skin. There had been a dream of him walking down into a great hole in a black mountain, a hole filled with a reddish glare as from vast fires below, and even a dream of him confronting Seanchan.

Perrin with a falcon on his shoulder, and Perrin with a hawk. Only the hawk held a leash in her talons—Egwene was somehow convinced both hawk and falcon were female—and the hawk was trying to fasten it around Perrin’s neck.

Mat, placing his own left eye on a balance scale. Mat, hanging by his neck from a tree limb.

Item. A rod of clear crystal, smooth and perfectly clear, one foot long and one inch in diameter. Use unknown.

Item. A figurine of an unclothed woman in alabaster, one hand tall. Use unknown.

A disc, apparently of simple iron yet untouched by rust, three inches in diameter, finely engraved on both sides ...

Item. Too many items, and more than half the “use unknowns” last studied by Corianin Nedeal. Th...

wooden carving of a hedgehog, no bigger than the last joint of a man’s thumb. Such a simple thing, and surely harmless. Any woman who tried to channel through it went to sleep. Half a day of peaceful, dreamless sleep, but it was too close not to make her skin crawl.

Three more had to do with sleep in some way.

It was almost a relief to read of a fluted rod of black stone, a full pace in length, that produced balefire, with the notation DANGEROUS AND ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO CONTROL writ so strong in...

“Item. A carved cluster of six spotted dice, joined at the corners, less than two inches across. Use unknown,

“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.”

The Sword That Cannot Be Touched is a sa’angreal, girl. Only two more powerful were ever made, and thank the Light, neither of those was ever used. With Callandor in your hands, child, you could level a city at one blow. If you die keeping that out of the Black Ajah’s hands—you, and Egwene, and Elayne, all three—you’ll have done a service to the whole world, and cheap at the price.”

“It is better to be the hammer than the nail.”

“We seek the one foretold,” Bain said. She was holding a sleeping Dailin so Chiad could slip a shirt of brown linen onto her. “He Who Comes With the Dawn.” “He will lead us out of the Three-fold Land,” Chiad added. “The prophecies say he was born of Far Dareis Mai.”

‘Blood of our blood mixed with the old blood, raised by an ancient blood not ours.’

Thousands of Aiel crossed the Spine of the World, but apparently they saw themselves more like thief-takers, or headsmen, come after King Laman of Cairhien for the crime of cutting down Avendoraldera. To the Aiel, it was not a war; it was an execution.”

Avendoraldera, according to one of Verin’s lectures, had been an offshoot of the Tree of Life itself, brought to Cairhien some five hundred years ago as an unprecedented offer of peace from the Aiel, given along with the right to cross the Waste, a right otherwise given to none but peddlers, gleemen, and the Tuatha’an. Much of Cairhien’s wealth had been built on the trade in ivory and perfumes and spices and, most of all, silk, from the lands beyond the Waste. Not even Verin had any idea of how the Aiel had come by a sapling of Avendesora—for one thing, the old books were clear that it made no seed; for another, no one knew where the Tree of Life was, except for a few stories that were clearly wrong, but surely the Tree of Life could have nothing to do with the Aiel—or of why the Aiel had called the Cairhienin the Watersharers, or insisted their trains of merchant wagons fly a banner bearing the trefoil leaf of Avendesora.

Egwene supposed, grudgingly, that she could understand why they had started a war—even if they did not think it was one—after King Laman cut down their gift to make a throne unlike any other in the world. Laman’s Sin, she had heard it called. According to Verin, not only had Cairhien’s trade across the Waste ended with the war, but those Cairhienin who ventured into the Waste now vanished. Verin claimed they were said to be “...

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.”

“Heed me, Lan. Should I fail, you will know it, and you will be compelled to return to the White Tower. I would not change that even if I had time. I do not mean you to die in a vain attempt to avenge me. Take Perrin with you. It seems the Shadow has made his importance in the Pattern known to me, if not clear. I was a fool. Rand is so strongly ta’veren that I ignored what it must mean that he had two others close by him. With Perrin and Mat, the Amyrlin may still be able to affect the course of events. With Rand loose, she will have to. Tell her what has happened, my Gaidin.”

“Darkhound,” Lan said, and Zarine gasped. Loial moaned softly. For an Ogier. “A Darkhound leaves no mark on dirt, blacksmith, not even on mud, but stone is another matter. There hasn’t been a Darkhound seen south of the Mountains of Dhoom since the Trolloc Wars. This one was hunting for something, I’d say. And now that it has found it, it has gone to tell its master.”

Mat, rattling a dice cup. His opponent stared at Mat with eyes of fire. Mat did not seem to see the man, but Perrin knew him.

A darkness formed among the clouds, a hole into somewhere else. Egwene and Nynaeve and Elayne stood looking at a huge metal cage, with a raised door held on a heavy spring. They stepped in and reached up together to loose the catch. The barred door snapped down behind them. A woman with her hair all in braids laughed at them, and another woman all in white laughed at her. The hole in the sky closed, and there were only clouds.

Dangerous. You have been warned, Young Bull. Too young. Too new yet.

What is real is not real. What is not real is real. Flesh is a dream, and dreams have flesh.

The Last Hunt comes. Sadness filled the sending, and a sense of inevitability. What will be must be.

Shadowbrothers! Hopper crouched, looking to either side as if he almost expected an attack. Long since we have seen the Shadowbrothers. You must go, Young Bull. Great danger! Flee the Shadowbrothers!

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.