The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time, #5)

by Robert Jordan

The sound of music drew him to Asmodean, seated by himself on a granite outcrop with his harp on his knee. The crimson banner’s staff had been twisted into the rocky soil, and the mule tethered to it. “You see, my Lord Dragon,” he said cheerfully, “your bannerman keeps loyally to his duties.” His voice and expression changed, and he said, “If you must have this thing, why not let Mat carry it, or Lan? Or Moiraine, for that matter? She would be glad to carry your banner, and clean your boots. Be careful of her. She is a devious woman. When a woman says she will obey you, of her own will, it is time to sleep lightly and watch your back.”

“No burning nets woven around my tent tonight? Do you finally begin to trust me?” Rand looked back over his shoulder. “I trust you like a brother. Until the day you betray me. You have a parole for what you’ve done, in return for your teaching, and a better bargain than you deserve, but the day you turn against me, I will tear it up and bury it with you.” Asmodean opened his mouth, but Rand forestalled him. “That is me talking, Natael. Rand al’Thor. Two Rivers folk don’t like people who try to stab them in the back.”

“A sword. How did you ever come by a sword? How did any Aiel come by a sword? Don’t tell me Kadere had this hidden in his wagons.” “I carried it in a blanket.” She sounded even more touchy now than she had about the price. “Even Bair said that would make it all right, so long as I did not actually touch it.” She shrugged uncomfortably, shifting and reshifting her shawl. “It was the treekiller’s sword. Laman’s. It was taken from his body as proof that he was dead, because his head could not be brought back so far. Since then it has passed from hand to hand, young men or fool Maidens who wanted to own the proof of his death. Only, each began to think of what it was, and soon sold it to another fool. The price has come down very far since it first was sold. No Aiel would lay hand to it even to remove the stones.”

Stiffly, she clapped, and one of the gai’shain appeared, immediately going to her knees to begin cleaning up the mess. “It is my tent,” he said pointedly. Aviendha sniffed at him in perfect imitation of Egwene. Those two women were definitely spending too much time together.

“Does that mean something special? Segade blossoms?” That was what he had sent her, the flowers she had never acknowledged. “That she has a prickly nature and means to keep it.” Another pause, broken by mutters. “Had she used leaves or flowers from sweetroot, it would have meant she claimed a sweet nature. Morning drop would mean she would be submissive, and . . . There are too many to list. It would take me days to teach all the combinations to you, and you do not need to know them. You will not have an Aiel wife. You belong to Elayne.”

Aviendha’s slow breathing seemed loud in his ears until he fell asleep, and then he dreamed a confused dream of Min and Elayne helping him throw Aviendha, wearing nothing but that necklace, over his shoulder, while she beat him over the head with a wreath of segade blossoms.

Why had anyone launched such a hopeless assault? No one but a fool attacked overwhelming force without a reason. That was the thought he could not pry out of his head. No one attacked without a reason.

“You did not expect me to take a hand, did you? I felt the Draghkar, but you could deal with those; you did. I have never liked Draghkar; we should never have made them. They have fewer brains than a Trolloc. Give them an order, and they still sometimes kill whatever is closest. If I had come out, if I had done something. . . . What if someone noticed? What if they realized it could not be you channeling? I—” “Well for you that you didn’t,” Rand cut him off, sitting cross-legged in the dark. “If I had felt you full of saidin out there tonight, I might have killed you.” The other man’s laugh was shaky. “I thought of that, too.”

Those men were all old enough to be his father and more, leaders of their people as surely as kings for all they disclaimed it, hardened leaders in battle. It seemed only yesterday that he had been a boy in more than age, a youth who asked and hoped rather than commanded and expected to be obeyed. He was changing faster than she could keep up with now.

“But why is my duty to the people never what I wish? Why must it be what I would rather die before doing?” “Aviendha, no one is going to make you marry, or have babies. Not even Sorilea.” Egwene wished she had sounded a bit less limp on that last. “You do not understand,” the other woman said softly, “and I cannot explain it to you.”

The Flame, the Blade and the Heart, it was called, a collection of tales about Birgitte and Gaidal Cain, Anselan and Barashelle, Rogosh Eagle-eye and Dunsinin, and a dozen more. Aviendha claimed that she liked it for the adventures and battles, and maybe she did, but every last story told of the love of a man and a woman, too. Egwene was willing to admit that that was what she liked, the sometimes stormy, sometimes tender threads of undying love.

“Do you agree with Siuan, Leane?” Anaiya asked mildly. Siuan had never been able to understand why Moiraine liked the woman. Trying to get her to do anything she did not want to was like hitting a sack of feathers. She did not stand up to you, or argue; she just silently refused to move.

Siuan did not want her sympathy. “You seem to have forgotten Logain, and why I dragged him all the way here from Tar Valon.” She had not meant to bring this up herself, but if they were going to let it lie wallowing . . . “My ‘crackbrained’ idea?” “Very well, Siuan,” Sheriam said. “Why?” “Because the first step to pulling Elaida down is for Logain to reveal to the Tower, to the world if need be, that the Red Ajah set him up as a false Dragon so that he could be pulled down.”

“You can give the world a true Amyrlin.” Leane spoke not to the White sister, but to all of them, eyeing each in turn, sure of what she was saying yet at the same time offering a suggestion that she merely hoped they would take. It had been Siuan who pointed out that the techniques she employed on men could be adapted for women. “I saw Aes Sedai from every Ajah save the Red in the common room, and in the streets. Have them elect a Hall of the Tower here, and let that Hall select a new Amyrlin. Then you can present yourselves to the world as the true White Tower, in exile, and Elaida as a usurper. With Logain’s revelations added in, can you doubt who the nations will accept as the real Amyrlin Seat?” The idea took hold. Siuan could see them turning it over in their minds. Whatever the others thought, only Sheriam voiced a word against. “It will mean that the Tower truly is broken,” the green-eyed woman said sadly.

She would rather wade naked through a school of silverpike than have these women realize that she was trying to manipulate them.

Bryne, here? It’s impossible! It is mad! Surely the man could not have followed them all this way for . . . Oh yes, he could and would. That one would.

“First, the command is mine. You tell me what to do, but I decide how. You give commands to me, and I give them to the soldiers under me, not you. Not unless I have agreed to it first.” Several mouths opened, Carlinya’s and Beonin’s first, but he continued. “I assign men, I promote them, and I discipline them. Not you. Second, if I tell you it can’t be done, you will consider what I say. I don’t ask to usurp your authority”—small chance they would allow that—“yet I do not want to waste men because you do not understand war.” It would happen, but no more than once, if he was lucky. “Third, if you begin this, you will stay the course. I will be putting my head in a noose, and every man who follows along with me, and should you decide half a year from now that Elaida as Amyrlin is preferable to war, you will pull that noose tight for every one of us who can be hunted down. The nations may stay out of a civil war in the Tower, but they’ll not let us live if you abandon us. Elaida will see to that. “If you will not agree to these, then I do not know that I can serve you. Whether you bind me with the Power for Dromand here to slit my throat or I end attainted and hung, death is still the end.”

Domani women never promised half what you thought they did, and they gave only as much as they chose and changed their minds either way in a blink.

She shuddered visibly. “At least I can come near Natael.” Come near him? Once the Maidens had caught her sneaking to the man’s tent, they had practically begun stuffing her into it every night. She always put the best face on matters. “Not that he tells me anything. Wait. Be patient. Keep silent. Make accommodation with fate, whatever that means. He says that every time I try to ask a question. For the most part, all he wants to do is play music I’ve never heard before and make love.” She never had anything more to say about the gleeman.

Edorion had called them like hounds, but men should not look at anyone as if they were dogs gazing at a master.

“I promised my near-sister to watch you.” She seemed to be speaking to herself as much as to him, in a low, almost expressionless voice. “I ran from you as hard as I could, to shield my honor. And you followed me even here. The rings do not lie, and I can run no more.” Her tone firmed decisively. “I will run no more.”

He was not sure of that at all, really. He thought he might love her, but he thought he might love Elayne, too. And for some reason, Min kept creeping in. You’re as big a lecher as Mat.

A slight tightening of his eyes caught Rand’s attention. “What?” “Just that she took it strangely. She laughed out loud and went running off. A few minutes later, there must have been twenty Far Dareis Mai beneath the window, shouting and beating their spears on their bucklers for a good hour or more. I must say, my Lord Dragon, some of the suggestions they called up startled even me.”

“Don’t you understand?” Elayne broke in, haughtiness all gone in excitement and fervor. She leaned forward to put a hand on Nynaeve’s knee, and her eyes shone, she was so delighted with herself. “It is a ter’angreal, Nynaeve. And I think I can make one.” She said each word slowly and deliberately, then laughed and rushed on. “If I can make this one, I can make others. Maybe I can even make angreal and sa’angreal. No one in the Tower has been able to do that in thousands of years!”

They were good men, and she did not like lying to them, or hiding things from them. Not unless it was absolutely necessary, anyway. Nynaeve claimed that you had to manage men for their own good, but there was such a thing as taking it too far. It was not right to lead a man into dangers he knew nothing of.

“If she had not asked me, Moghedien would be teaching her to beg right now. She has as little caution as Gaidal.” Birgitte’s dry tone sounded odd with her wet cheeks. “She did not drag me into this by my hair. If she claims responsibility for the consequences, then she claims responsibility for my actions.” If anything, she sounded angry. “I am a free woman, and I made my own choices. She did not decide for me.”

“You take responsibility for my actions,” Birgitte broke in fiercely. “I chose to speak to you in Tel’aran’rhiod. I chose to help you. I chose to track Moghedien. And I chose to take you to see her. Me! Not you, Nynaeve, me! I was not your puppet, your pack hound, then, and I will not be now.” Nynaeve swallowed hard and gripped her skirts more tightly. She had no right to be angry with this woman. No right at all. But Birgitte had every right. “You did what I asked. It is my fault that you . . . that you are here. It is all my fault!” “Have I mentioned fault? I see none. Only men and dim-witted girls take blame where there is none, and you are neither.”

She supposed it was one way to find money for the poor. Simply rob anyone who was not poor. Of course, that would just make everyone poor in the end, but it might work for a time. She wondered if Uno and Ragan knew the whole of it. People who claimed they were collecting money to help others often had a way of letting a good bit stick in their own pockets, or else they liked the power that spreading it about gave them, liked it far too much.

He made the most rabid Whitecloak she had ever seen appear mild.

“I mean no harm to you, now or ever; I swear it by my mother’s name. You say that you are what you are? I know what you are. And what you are not. Perhaps half the reason I wear this,” he touched an edge of his snowy cloak, “is because the Tower sent you out—you and Elayne and Egwene—for the Light knows what reason, when you are what you are. It was like sending a boy who has just learned to hold a sword into battle, and I will never forgive them. There is still time for both of you to turn aside; you do not have to carry that sword. The Tower is too dangerous for you or my sister, especially now. Half the world is become too dangerous for you! Let me help you to safety.” The tightness slid from his voice, though it took on a raw edge. “I beg you, Nynaeve. If anything happened to Elayne . . . I half-wish that Egwene were with you, so I could . . .” Scrubbing a hand through his hair, he looked left and right, searching for how to convince her. Uno and Ragan held their blades ready to drive through his body, but he did not appear to see them. “In the name of the Light, Nynaeve, please allow me to do what I can.”

That last was not strictly true. In some strange way he was tied to Rand’s success or failure in Tarmon Gai’don, him and Perrin both, three ta’veren all tangled together. The histories would probably only mention Rand. Small chance he or Perrin would find any place in the stories. And then there was the Horn of Valere. Which he did not want to think about, and would not. Not until he had to.

If Rand could not tell Lan Mat’s secrets, he would not spread them before one of the Forsaken, however tame he appeared. This time he deliberately made his tone rough, and pointed the length of spear at the man. “Play it, unless you know a sadder. Play something to make your soul weep. If you have one still.” Natael gave him an ingratiating smile and a seated bow, but he went white around the eyes. It was indeed “The March of Death” that he began, yet it had a sharper edge on his harp than ever before, a dirgelike keen that surely would make any soul weep. He stared fixedly at Rand as if hoping to see some effect.

“I said let me through,” he demanded the instant the sound died. As if he had told them to begin again, they did. “Far Dareis Mai carries the honor of the Car’a’carn. Far Dareis Mai carries the honor of the Car’a’carn.” Sulin just stood there looking at him. After a moment Lan leaned close to murmur dryly, “A woman is no less a woman because she carries a spear. Did you ever meet one who could be diverted from anything she really wanted? Give over, or we will stand here all day while you argue and they chant at you.” The Warder hesitated, then added, “Besides which, it does make sense.”

After hours of channeling without rest, he was that tired. At the same time, he had to fight saidin itself harder, to put more of his strength into keeping it from burning him to ash where he stood, from burning his mind to ash. It was ever more difficult to hold off saidin’s destruction, more difficult to resist the desire to draw more, more difficult to handle what he did draw. A nasty downward spiral, and hours to go before the battle was decided.

Almost like the after-image burned into his eyes earlier, he could trace the weave, though it was fading. To his surprise, it led west, not back toward the tents. Not Asmodean, then. “Sammael.”

To his surprise, Asmodean was also helping out with the wounded, the water bag hanging from each shoulder looking decidedly odd with his dark velvet coat and white lace.

He was aware of faces turned up to him as he toppled from his saddle, mouths moving, hands reaching to grab him, cushion his fall. “Moiraine!” Lan shouted, voice hollow in Rand’s ears. “He is bleeding badly!” Sulin had his head cradled in her arms. “Hold on, Rand al’Thor,” she said urgently. “Hold on.” Asmodean said nothing, but his face was bleak, and Rand felt a trickle of saidin flowing into him from the man. Darkness came.

Sought Couladin out? He had done his best to keep the pikes between him and any of the Shaido. But that arrow had clipped the side of his head, and he was on the ground before he knew it, struggling to get to his feet with the fight raging all around him, laying about him with the raven-marked spear, trying to make it back to Pips. Couladin had appeared as if springing out of air, veiled for killing, but there had been no mistaking those bare arms, entwined with Dragons glittering gold-and-red.

“She has been here twice since sunrise, though she said you would recover. I think she was not so certain last night. Nor was I.” Pulling his gilded harp around in front of him, he fussed with it, speaking in an idle tone. “I did what I could for you, of course—my life and fortune are tied to yours—but my talents lie elsewhere than Healing, you understand.” He strummed a few notes to demonstrate.

Asmodean plucked a few chords of something martial; the harp seemed to echo to drums and trumpets. “In some ways, a young man of as many surprises as you. I truly look forward to meeting the third of you, this Perrin, one day.”

Mat had not learned the lesson that he had. Try to run away, and the Pattern pulled you back, often roughly; run in the direction the Wheel wove you, and sometimes you could manage a little control over your life. Sometimes.

Long before the War of the Shadow ended, the Forsaken had embraced the names men had given them, as if symbols of rebirth in the Shadow. Asmodean’s own true name—Joar Addam Nessosin—made the man flinch, and he claimed to have forgotten the others in the course of three thousand years.

If you truly serve the Car’a’carn as you claim, Jasin Natael, you should guard his rest as they do.” “It is the Dragon Reborn I follow, young woman. The Car’a’carn, I leave to you.”

“There’s an old saying in the Two Rivers,” Rand said dryly. “ ‘The louder a man tells you he’s honest, the harder you must hold on to your purse.’ ” Another said, “The fox often offers to give the duck its pond.” Cairhien was his without gifts from Meilan.

Rand opened his mouth to ask the meaning—he knew a scant few words of the Old Tongue, no more—when interpretation floated to the surface in his mind. Siswai’aman. Literally, the spear of the Dragon. “Sometimes,” Asmodean chuckled, “it is difficult to see the difference between oneself and one’s enemies. They want to own the world, but it seems you already own a people.”

They were ashamed of what they had been—followers of the Way of the Leaf—and at the same time ashamed that they had abandoned their pledge to it.

“What do the Wise Ones believe?” he asked, as quietly as she. “That what must be, will be. We will save what can be saved, Rand al’Thor. We do not hope to do more.”

This was all necessary, so Moiraine said—and so agreed a voice in his head that he knew for Lews Therin’s—but to him it was part of the delay. He must have their loyalty, if only on the surface, in order to begin making Cairhien secure, and that beginning, at least, had to be made before he could move on Sammael. And that I will do! I have too much to do yet to let him go on stabbing at my ankles from the bushes! He will find out what it means to rouse the Dragon! He did not understand why those coming before him began to sweat and lick their lips as they knelt and stammered the words of fealty. But then, he could not see the cold light burning in his own eyes.

“Both of you stop it this minute,” she said, eyeing them in turn with equal haughtiness. “Lini always said ‘Waiting turns men into bears in a barn, and women into cats in a sack,’ but you will stop clawing at one another right now! I will not put up with it any longer!”

“You seized the Riversnake, didn’t you? Why?” “Riverserpent,” he corrected, eyeing her incredulously. “You did ask me to secure you passage.” “I didn’t ask you to start a riot!” “A riot?” Elayne put in. “A war. An invasion. All begun over this vessel.” Galad answered calmly. “I gave Nynaeve my word, sister. My first duty is to see you safely on your way to Caemlyn. And Nynaeve, of course. The Children would have had to fight this Prophet soon or late.” “Couldn’t you simply have let us know the ship was here?” Nynaeve asked wearily. Men and their word. It was all very admirable, sometimes, but she should have listened when Elayne said he did what he saw as right no matter who was hurt.