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

by Robert Jordan

Mat would have been useful, with his new-found knowledge. No. He would not think of his friends, of what he would do to them before it was all done.

Rand took note of him but said not a word, only thumbed his pipe full of tabac and seized saidin long enough to light it.

The sounds washed over Rand, though, touching nothing. Tears were a luxury he could no longer afford, not even inside.

Men would die today. A great many men, even if everything went perfectly. Nothing he did now would change it; today would run out according to the Pattern.

There would be a next time, and one beyond that, and beyond again.

“Bad luck to talk of what will be,” Han muttered. The skim was very thin on him, of course. “Fate will decide.”

He would need every spear to bring order to this side of the Dragonwall. That was a bone between him and Couladin every bit as much as the rest.

Life was only a dream, and all dreams had to end.

Aiel did not run toward death, yet they did not run from it either.

To Rand’s surprise Lan appeared just as he was ready to go out himself. The Warder’s cloak hung down his back, disturbing the vision as it rippled with his movements.

“Waste always angers her.” “It angers us all,” Rand snapped.

You can make a sword from the Power, or kill without, but suddenly you are wearing steel on your hip again. Why?”

“It’s hardly fair to use the Power that way. Especially against someone who can’t channel. I might as well fight a child.”

“You mean to kill Couladin yourself,” he said at last in flat tones. “That sword against his spears.”

“Couladin won’t rest while I live, not so long as we both wear these.”

And truth to tell, he would not rest himself until only one living man bore the Dragons.

If he was the Dragon Reborn, if he had any right to demand that any nation follow him, much less Cairhien, then he owed them justice.

“Then have him beheaded when he’s taken,” Lan said harshly. “Set a hundred men, or a thousand, with no purpose but to find and take him. But do not be fool enough to fight him!

You are good with a blade now—very good—but Aielmen are all but born with spear and buckler in hand. A spear through your h...

“I am not the Dragon Reborn. The fate of the world does not rest on me.”

Without Moiraine, he would have been wherever the fighting was hottest. If anything, he looked to be regretting those claims at the moment.

Even in the darkness the Warder looked startled. For a moment anyway, his head jerking up; nothing surprised Lan for long.

“I’ve decided I can do the most good from the tower,” he said, his face going hot. “As the Car’a’carn commands,” Sulin replied without a hint of mockery, just as if it had been his idea from the first.

Women seemed to enjoy jabbing the needle in just when you thought the danger was past.

When she saw him glancing at her, she tripped over nothing, and he had to catch her arm to keep her from falling. Avoiding his eyes, she jerked free. Maybe he would not have to worry about any needles from her.

Reaching out, he seized saidin. Icy fire scoured the outside of the Void that surrounded what was Rand al’Thor.

A memory slid across the emptiness. Not his; Lews Therin’s. For once he did not care. In an instant he channeled, and a ball of fire enveloped the top of a hill nearly five miles away, a churning mass of pale yellow flame.

Ilyena, my love, forgive me!

Clutching the rail until his knuckles ached, he forced himself back to calmness, forced the emptiness to hold. Thereafter he refused to listen to the thoughts in his head. Instead he concentrated everything on channeling, on methodically searing one hill after another.

A man could not be too careful if he wanted to stay alive on this day and this ground.

It came as a shock when he heeled Pips to a gallop downslope. What under the Light am I doing? Well, he could not just stand by and let them all go to their deaths like geese to the knife. He would warn them. That was all. Tell what lay in wait ahead, then he was gone.

Mat did not precisely enjoy having a foot and a half of steel pointed at him, and still less three times over, but obviously one man was no threat, even riding like a madman.

“Halt here! Now! By order of the Lord Dragon! Else he’ll channel your head into your belly and feed you your own feet for breakfast!”

“No offense intended . . . ah . . . Lord Mat. I am Melanril, of House Asegora. How may I serve the Lord Dragon?”

“I am no lord. And if you want to question what Rand lets people know, ask him.”

That set the fellow back; he was not about to question the Lord bloody Dragon about anything.

“Don’t stare up there!” Mat snapped. The fools. In a minute they would be calling the charge! “Keep your eyes on me. On me!”

If he had not been Rand’s friend they probably would have trampled him and Pips both.

“You bloody do it,” Mat roared, reining Pips close to Melanril’s horse, “or if the bloody Aiel don’t kill you, Rand will, and whatever he leaves, I’ll chop into sausage myself!”

Lead? Him? I’m a gambler, not a soldier. A lover.

“You just be there when you’re supposed to be.”

Dozens of riderless horses told how well they were doing.

Mat thought grimly. Standing in his stirrups, he raised the sword-bladed spear high, then swept it forward, shouting, “Los! Los caba’drin!”

He would have had the words back if he could, and not because they were Old Tongue; it was a boiling cauldron down in the valley. But whether or not any of the Cairhienin understood a command of “horsemen forward” in the Old Tongue, they understood the gesture, especially when he dropped back into his saddle and dug in his heels.

Rand’s shirt clung to him with the sweat of effort, but he kept his coat on for protection from the wind gusting toward Cairhien.

Wrapped in the Void, he was only distantly aware of the weariness, dimly perceiving the ache in arms and shoulders, in the small of his back, a throb around the tender scar in his side.

With the Power in him, he could make out individual leaves on the trees at a hundred paces, but whatever happened to him physically should have been as if it were happening to someone else.

The Power was that sweet, taint or no.

He was near the brink, yet he was stronger than Egwene or Aviendha.

So they were taking turns, giving each other a rest. It would have been nice to have someone do that with him, but he did not regret telling Asmodean to stay in his tent.