The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time, #4)

by Robert Jordan

The Shadow shall rise across the world, and darken every land, even to the smallest corner, and there shall be neither Light nor safety. And he who shall be born of the Dawn, born of the Maiden, according to Prophecy, he shall stretch forth his hands to catch the Shadow, and the world shall scream in the pain of salvation. All Glory be to the Creator, and to the Light, and to he who shall be born again. May the Light save us from him.

There was a difference between being proud of a grand fireplace in your hall and walking into the flames.

Despite all she had seen since entering the Tower, despite her fear, none of it had really touched her personally until now. Disaster striking the Tower would spread far from Tar Valon, yet she was not of the Tower and never could be. But Gawyn was someone she knew, someone she liked, and he was going to be hurt more than the blood told, hurt somehow deeper than wounds to his flesh.

“So you will protect her whether she wants it or not?” She said it in a flat voice meant to let him know he was making a mistake, but he missed the warning and nodded agreement. “That has been my duty since the day she was born. My blood shed before hers; my life given before hers. I took that oath when I could barely see over the side of her cradle; Gareth Bryne had to explain to me what it meant. I won’t break it now. Andor needs her more than it needs me.” He spoke with a calm certainty, an acceptance of something natural and right, that sent chills through her. She had always thought of him as boyish, laughing and teasing, but now he was something alien.

“I’ll tell you all of it, and much good it does either of us. The first time I ever saw Rand, I saw three women’s faces, and one of them was mine. I’ve never seen anything about myself before or since, but I knew what it meant. I was going to fall in love with him. All three of us were.”

“Will you listen?” he shouted, glaring, and she jumped. He had never shouted at her before, not like that. She raised her chin and shifted her shoulders, but she did not say anything. He went on. “I think I am part of Rand’s destiny, somehow. Mat, too. I think he can’t do what he has to unless we do our part, as well. That is the duty. How can I walk away if it might mean Rand will fail?”

One of the Forsaken had tried to kill him. Or all of them had. It must have been that, unless the Dark One was free already, in which case he did not think he would have faced anything as easy or as simple as this. So he held his link to the True Source. Unless I did it myself. Can I hate what I am enough to try to kill myself? Without even knowing it? Light, I have to learn to control it. I have to!

Limping to the foot of the bed, he lowered himself onto the chest there and laid Callandor across his knees, bloody hands resting on the glowing blade. With that in his hands, even one of the Forsaken would fear him. In a moment he would send for Moiraine to Heal his wounds. In a moment he would speak to the Aiel outside, and become the Dragon Reborn again. But for now, he only wanted to sit, and remember a shepherd named Rand al’Thor.

“You don’t seem to care if he has gone off. Burn me, he’s important, too. What are you going to do if he’s gone? Or dead, the Light send it not so.” “What they least expect.” Rand’s eyes looked like morning mist covering the dawn, blue-gray with a feverish glow seeping through. His voice had a knife edge. “That is what I have to do in any case. What everyone least expects.”

Moiraine frowned. “It still does not respond,” she murmured, half to herself. “It will not heal completely.” “That is the one that will kill me, isn’t it?” he asked her softly, then quoted, “‘His blood on the rocks of Shayol Ghul, washing away the Shadow, sacrifice for man’s salvation.’” “You read too much,” she said sharply, “and understand too little.” “Do you understand more? If you do, then tell me.” “He is only trying to find his way,” Lan said suddenly. “No man likes to run forward blindly when he knows there is a cliff somewhere ahead.”

“You must learn to control it, and I do not mean just because of things like this. If you do not learn to control the Power, it will kill you. You know that. I have told you often enough. You must teach yourself. You must find it within yourself.” “I did nothing except survive,” he said in a dry voice. She opened her mouth, but he went on. “Do you think I could channel and not know it? I didn’t do it in my sleep. This happened awake.”

“Don’t try to harry me, Moiraine.” He was blood filthy, half naked, more than half leaning on Callandor to stay sitting up, but he managed to fill those words with quiet command. “I will not run for you, either.”

She would have denied wearing the dress for Lan, Moiraine’s Warder—she would have if Egwene had dared make the suggestion—but green, blue and white seemed to be Lan’s favorite colors on women, and every dress that was not green, blue or white had vanished from Nynaeve’s wardrobe.

“Rand al’Thor,” Moiraine told the air in a low, tight voice, “is a mule-headed, stone-willed fool of a … a … a man!” Elayne lifted her chin angrily. Her childhood nurse, Lini, used to say you could weave silk from pig bristles before you could make a man anything but a man. But that was no excuse for Rand. “We breed them that way in the Two Rivers.” Nynaeve was suddenly all half-suppressed smiles and satisfaction. She seldom hid her dislike of the Aes Sedai half as well as she thought she did.

My mother says men are different from us. She says we want to be in love, but only with the one we want; a man needs to be in love, but he will love the first woman to tie a string to his heart.

With so many exclaiming over their strength—everyone said she and Elayne would be among the strongest Aes Sedai, if not the strongest, in a thousand years or more—she had assumed they were as strong as he. Near to it, at least. She had just been rudely disabused. Perhaps Nynaeve could come close, if she was angry enough, but Egwene knew she herself could never have done what he just had, split her flows that many ways, worked that many things at once. Working two flows at once was far more than twice as hard as working one of the same magnitude, and working three much more than twice again working two. He had to have been weaving a dozen. He did not even look tired, yet exertion with the Power took energy. She very much feared he could handle her and Elayne both like kittens. Kittens he might decide to drown, if he went mad.

Egwene. It was foolish to feel hurt because she said she no longer loved him. Why should he expect her to have feelings for him that he did not have for her? Yet it did hurt. A relief, but not a pleasant one.

“The last time I spared you a moment, you and Nynaeve tied me up with the Power like a pig for market so you could rummage through my room. Friends don’t steal from friends.” He grimaced.

“You have been marked.” She smiled wryly. “Estates in Cairhien? I may have had estates in those lands, once. The land has changed so much that nothing is as it was. Selene is only a name I sometimes use, Lews Therin. The name I made my own is Lanfear.”

“Tomorrow, I will tell you what I am going to do.” Some of it, he would. The thought of Moiraine’s face if he told her everything made him want to laugh. If he knew everything himself, yet. Lanfear had given him almost the last piece, without knowing it. One more step, tonight. The hand holding Callandor by his side trembled. With that, he could do anything. I am not mad yet. Not mad enough for that. “Tomorrow. A good night to us all, the Light willing.” Tomorrow he would begin to unleash another kind of lightning. Another lightning that might save him. Or kill him. He was not mad yet.

“Burn me, Perrin. Burn me! I want to g-g—See? I can’t even say it, now. Like my head knows I’ll do it if I say it. I can’t even get it out in my mind!” “Different paths. We’ve been sent down different paths before.” “Different paths be bloodied,” Mat grunted. “I’ve had all I want of Rand, and Aes Sedai, shoving me down their bloody paths. I want to go where I want for a change, do what I want!” He turned for the door, but Perrin’s voice halted him. “I hope your path is a happy one, Mat. The Light send you pretty girls and fools who want to gamble.” “Oh, burn me, Perrin. The Light send you what you want, too.” “I expect it will.” He did not sound happy at the prospect.

“Give it to a servant. Or one of the Aiel.” “You will not do as I ask?” she asked incredulously. “No. Haven’t you been listening to me?”

“What fate?” The three were on their feet atop the pedestals, and he could not tell which shrieked which answer. “To marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons!” “To die and live again, and live once more a part of what was!” “To give up half the light of the world to save the world!” Together they howled like steam escaping under pressure. “Go to Rhuidean, son of battles! Go to Rhuidean, trickster! Go, gambler! Go!”

“Oh, I went through, all right. A bunch of bloody liars, if you ask me! What are they? Made me think of snakes.” “Not liars, I think.” Rand sounded as if he wished they were. “No, not that. They were afraid of me, right from the first. And when that tolling started … . The sword kept them back; they wouldn’t even look at it. Shied away. Hid their eyes. Did you get your answers?” “Nothing that makes sense,” Mat muttered.

“Did you find out what you wanted?” Rand asked finally. “Did you?” A bright flame leaped into existence, balanced above Rand’s palm. Not the smooth glowing sphere of the Aes Sedai, but a rough blaze like a torch. As Rand moved to leave, Mat added another question. “Are you really going to just let the Whitecloaks do whatever they want back home? You know they’re heading for Emond’s Field. If they are not there already. Yellow eyes, the bloody Dragon Reborn. It’s too much, otherwise.” “Perrin will do … what he has to do to save Emond’s Field,” Rand replied in a pained voice. “And I must do what I have to, or more than Emond’s Field will fall, and to worse than Whitecloaks.”

“You swore, Loial. Do you mean to break your oath?” The Ogier looked like misery stacked on misery. His shoulders slumped and his ears drooped, the corners of his wide mouth turned down and the ends of his long eyebrows draggled onto his cheeks. “She tricked you, Loial.” Perrin wondered if they could hear his teeth grinding. “She deliberately tricked you.”

“Burn you, Perrin Aybara, answer me!” Loial eyed her worriedly. “Perrin, are you certain you could not—” “No,” Perrin interrupted gently. “She is muleheaded, and she likes playing tricks. I won’t dance so she can laugh.”

“You are very full of yourself, al’Lan Mandragoran. We do as we must, as you will.” “Full of myself, Nynaeve al’Meara? I am full of myself?”

After a while Lan set Nynaeve back on her feet. She swayed a bit as she straightened her dress and patted her hair furiously. “You have no right …” she began in a breathless voice, then stopped to swallow. “I will not be manhandled in that fashion for the whole world to see. I will not!” “Not the whole world,” he replied. “But if they can see, they can hear as well. You have made a place in my heart where I thought there was no room for anything else. You have made flowers grow where I cultivated dust and stones. Remember this, on this journey you insist on making. If you die, I will not survive you long.” He gave Nynaeve one of his rare smiles. If it did not exactly soften his face, at least it made it less hard. “And remember also, I am not always so easily commanded, even with letters from the Amyrlin.”

Her smile was just short of laughter, but she spoke as if reading from a page. “Thomdril Merrilin. Called the Gray Fox, once, by some who knew him, or knew of him. Courtbard at the Royal Palace of Andor in Caemlyn. Morgase’s lover for a time, after Taringail died. Fortunate for Morgase, Taringail’s death. I do not suppose she ever learned he meant her to die and himself to be Andor’s first king. But we were speaking of Thom Merrilin, a man who, it was said, could play the Game of Houses in his sleep. It is a shame that such a man calls himself a simple gleeman. But such arrogance to keep the same name.”

Logain had proclaimed himself the Dragon Reborn, had been captured and gentled. Whatever glory he might have had as a false Dragon was far behind him now. All that remained for him was the despair of the gentled, like a man who had been robbed of sight and hearing and taste, wanting to die, waiting for the death that inevitably came to such men in a few years. He glanced at her, perhaps not seeing her; his eyes looked hopelessly inward. So why had he worn a halo that shouted of glory and power to come?

She turned to Loial anyway. “Are you ready to go on? Good. Find me this Waygate, Loial. We have stayed here too long. If you let a stray puppy stay close to you, it begins to think you will take care of it, and that will never do.” “Faile,” Loial protested, “are you not carrying this too far?”

The Aielman scratched his head. “Do you know what you are doing, Perrin?” “No,” Perrin admitted, “but there’s no reason for Faile to know that.”

“The Light send you a safe journey, my Lady,” he added. The merest flicker of his eyes toward Nynaeve said that wish was for Elayne alone. Nynaeve had to learn how to make allowances and give consideration; truly she did.

Coine sounded startled. “Aes Sedai, I am Sailmistress. I doubt your presence embarrassed Toram, and I would not apologize to him for that if it did. Trade is his, but I am Sailmistress. I must make up to him—and it will not be easy, since I must keep the reason secret still—because he is right, and I could not think quickly enough to give him a reason beyond what I would give a raw hand. That scar on his face he earned clearing the Seanchan from Wavedancer’s decks. He has older scars earned defending my ship, and I have only to put out my hand to have gold placed in it because of his trading. It is the things I cannot tell him I must make up to him, because he deserves to know.”

“I was rousted out of my house no more than half an hour gone,” he said carefully, “by a man you know, I think. A tall, stone-faced man calling himself Lan.” Nynaeve’s eyebrows rose slightly. “He came on behalf of another man you know. A … shepherd, I was told. I was given a great quantity of gold and told to accompany you. Both of you. I was told that if you do not return safely from this journey … . Shall we just say it would be better to drown myself than come back? Lan was emphatic, and the … shepherd no less so in his message. The Sailmistress tells me I cannot have passage unless you agree. I am not without certain skills that can be useful.”

“You were talking of your epic,” she said, trying to guide him back, but he shook his shaggy white head. “I was talking of change. My epic, if I compose it—and Loial’s book—will be no more than seed, if we are both lucky. Those who know the truth will die, and their grandchildren’s grandchildren will remember something different. And their grandchildren’s grandchildren something else again. Two dozen generations, and you may be the hero of it, not Rand.”

“The men will give you a different answer,” the Windfinder said, smiling, “speaking of strength and grandness and the like as men will, but this is the truth. A ship is alive, and he is like a man, with a true man’s heart.” She rubbed the rail fondly, as if stroking something alive, something that could feel her caress. “Treat him well and care for him properly, and he will fight for you against the worst sea. He will fight to keep you alive even after the sea has long since given him his own deathstroke. Neglect him, though, ignore the small warnings he gives of danger, and he will drown you in a flat sea beneath a cloudless sky.”

“He will not confide in anyone, Moiraine. He hides his pains, and hopes he can deal with them before anyone notices.” Anger flashed across Egwene’s face. “The wool-brained mule!”

“You must trust me, Moiraine. As I have so often had to trust you.” His face might as well have belonged to an Aiel for all she could read in it. “I will trust you for now. Just do not wait to seek my guidance until it is too late.”

Mat’s decision to come had been a surprise; Rand still did not know why. Friendship, maybe, and then again, maybe not. Mat could be odd in what he did and why.

“I want to talk about Elayne.” “What about her?” he asked warily. He touched his pouch, where two letters crinkled against a small hard object. If they had not both been in the same elegantly flowing hand, he would not have believed they came from the same woman. And after all that kissing and snuggling. The High Lords were easier to understand than women.

“You have treated Elayne badly. I would not care, but Elayne is near sister to Egwene, who is my friend. Yet Egwene likes you still, so for her sake I will try.”

For not asking her to stay when he knew she wouldn't? Sigh.

“I don’t take chances, Moiraine. Mat’s the fellow for chances.” Rand forced his right hand open; the angreal, the fat little man, had driven the point of its sword into his flesh, right into the branded heron. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I did need one a little stronger. A little bit, maybe … .” He gave a huffing laugh. “It worked, Moiraine. That is what’s important. I’ve outrun them all. It worked.” “That is what matters,” Lan said, nodding.

Bair’s wrinkled face was expressionless, but sympathy touched her pale blue eyes. “We have told too much already, Moiraine. What a dreamwalker sees is what is likely to happen, not what surely will. Those who move with too much knowledge of the future inevitably find disaster, whether from complacency at what they think must come or in their efforts to change it.” “It is the mercy of the rings that the memories fade,” Amys said. “A woman knows some things—a few—that will happen; others she will not recognize until the decision is upon her, if then. Life is uncertainty and struggle, choice and change; one who knew how her life was woven into the Pattern as well as she knew how a thread was laid into a carpet would have the life of an animal. If she did not go mad. Humankind is made for uncertainty, struggle, choice and change.”

“Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.”

“Getting to be my lucky coin. Flame, I go in with you; head, I stay out.” He flipped the gold coin quickly, before Rand could object. Somehow he missed grabbing it; the mark careened off his fingertips, clinked to the pavement, bounced twice … . And landed on edge. He glared at Rand accusingly. “Do you do this sort of thing on purpose? Can’t you control it?”

Mat scanned the walls, then glared, turning to take them all in, standing up there on their pedestals staring down at him. “Done? What is done? I see no door. You lying goat-fathered—” “Fool,” a woman said in a whispered growl, and others repeated it. Fool. Fool. Fool. “Wise to ask leavetaking, when you set no price, no terms.” “Yet fool not to first agree on price.” “We will set the price.” They spoke so quickly he could not tell which said what. “What was asked will be given.” “The price will be paid.”

“That one will come later,” she said. “The stone that never falls will fall to announce his coming. Of the blood, but not raised by the blood, he will come from Rhuidean at dawn, and tie you together with bonds you cannot break. He will take you back, and he will destroy you.”

“I think we must find a stedding soon or die,” the first Ogier woman said. “I feel a … longing … in my bones. We must find a stedding. We must.” “I cannot help you,” Jonai said sadly. He felt a tightness in his chest. The land changed beyond knowing, changing still so the plain traveled last year might be mountains this. The Blighted Lands growing. Myrddraal and Trollocs still alive. People stealing, people with faces like animals, people who did not recognize Da’shain or know them. He could barely breathe. The Ogier, lost. The Aiel, lost. Everything lost.