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

by Robert Jordan

“I have a lot to do yet. I need to find . . .” Couladin. Sammael. The men who were fighting and dying for him. “I need to find them.” He was so tired, but he could not sleep yet.

“What happened?” “Sammael,” Rand said, but not in answer.

“It is done, Rand,” the Warder said insistently. “All of it. Only a few Shaido remain south of the city.

“Done? We’ve won?” “You have won. Completely.”

Only a battle lost is sadder than a battle won. He seemed to remember saying that before, long ago. Perhaps he had read it.

He released the Source and the Void, and convulsed as saidin almost drove him under in that moment of retreat. He barely had time to realize his mistake. With the Power gone, exhaustion and pain crashed down on him.

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 ...

Asmodean said nothing, but his face was bleak, and Rand felt a trickle of saidin flowing into him from the man. Darkness came.

A celebration of still being alive. One more time they had walked under the Dark One’s nose and survived to tell the tale.

Almost dead yesterday, maybe dead tomorrow, but alive, gloriously alive, today.

What good was being alive if it meant liv...

All he needed now was for Moiraine to come asking questions about where he had been and why, nattering at him about ta’veren and duty, about the Pattern and Tarmon Gai’don, until his head spun.

“He was a man of much honor, Mat Cauthon. Better that you had captured him, but even by killing him, you have gained much ji. It was well that you sought him out.”

A leather cord tied in short flame-red hair held Couladin’s head atop the ten-foot pole near where the Aielmen were dancing. The thing seemed to be grinning. At him.

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.

The man had been cutting a swath into the pikemen with his spears, shouting for Rand to show himself, shouting that he was the true Car’a’carn.

Mat still did not know whether Couladin had recognized him, but it had made no difference, not when the fellow decided to carve a hole through him to find Rand. He did not know w...

“It matters that you should ask him for our rightful place at the head,” Talmanes said quickly. “You slew Couladin, and earned us that place.”

Melindhra’s hand tightened on the back of his neck, but he did not care.

At the beginning of it all lay Rand. And bloody ta’veren. He could not understand why doing something that seemed absolutely necessary and as close to harmless as he could make it always seemed to lead him deeper into the mire.

He glanced up the hill, and there she was. Moiraine, on her delicate-stepping white mare, with Lan on his black stallion towering at her side.

Couladin’s head really did appear to be grinning at him. He could almost hear the man speak.

There had to be some way out of this. There just had to be.

I cannot let him take control. I am me! Me! Fumbling beneath the blanket, he found the smooth round scar on his side, tender yet whole.

“Moiraine Sedai herself was near collapse from Healing wounded. Aan’allein had to carry her to her tent. Because of you, Rand al’Thor. Because Healing you took the last of her strength.”

“I understand that a man can kill or gentle himself doing what you did. Strength in the Power is useless if the body is exhausted.

Saidin can easily kill, if the body is exhausted. Or so I have heard.”

You had no right to push yourself near to death. Egwene and I tried to make you come with us when we grew too tired to continue, but you would not listen. You may be as much stronger than we as Egwene claims, yet you are still flesh.

You have toh, obligation, to the Aiel, Rand al’Thor, and you cannot fulfill it dead. You cannot do everything yourself.”

Egwene’s presence at the meeting of Wise Ones came as a surprise, and so did Moiraine’s absence—he would have expected her to be in the middle, twitching strings to her plans—but it turned out that one grew from the other.

“Mat killed Couladin?” he said incredulously when she was done. “Mat?” “Did I not say so?”

“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.”

So Mat had not escaped the pull of ta’veren to ta’veren after all. Or maybe it was the Pattern that had caught him, and being ta’veren himself.

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...

He was careful to use that name, even to himself, though another floated in the back of his mind now. Tel Janin Aellinsar. No history recorded the name, no fragment in the library at Tar Valon; Moiraine had told him everything the Aes Sedai knew of the Forsaken, and it was little more than was told in village tales.

And as Sammael, he would pay in full for every Maiden he had killed. The Maidens Rand had not been able to keep safe.

can rest when I’m dead,” he said, and wished he had not when she flinched as if he had hit her.

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.”

The High Lords to the left and the Cairhienin to the right. One battle done, and another, of a different sort if no less dangerous, beginning.

“In any case, I mean the Sun Throne for someone who has a right to it.”

“Meilan wants to give me a grand entry when I am ready, does he? So much the better that I see what’s what before he expects me.”

“Are you going to get my horse, Natael, or must I?” Asmodean’s bow was deep, formal, and on the surface, at least, sincere. “I serve the Lord Dragon.”

“If you keep on like this,” he said with a smile, “I will begin thinking you care for me.”

“You bring whoever you wish,” he told her in a tight, flat voice, “but I am the Car’a’carn, and I am going into the city.”

The One Power certainly would do him no good; he could not have embraced saidin if Sammael appeared in front of him, much less held onto it.

then the question would be whether he was the Car’a’carn, who must be obeyed, or just Rand al’Thor, another man entirely in their eyes.

“Couladin is dead, Rand al’Thor.” Startled, he stopped and stared at her. “What are you talking about?” Would Lan have told her? No one else knew. But why?

The High Lords of Tear sweated when Rand al’Thor looked at them, and the Cairhienin might offer him their throne. The greatest Aiel army the world had ever seen had crossed the Dragonwall on the orders of the Car’a’carn, the chief of chiefs.

Nations trembled at mention of the Dragon Reborn. Nations!