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

by Robert Jordan

He finally found them when he noticed the gold-embroidered cuff of a red coatsleeve sticking out from under Aviendha. She had been sitting on them all along. She grunted sourly when he asked her to move, but she did it. Finally.

He could not help smiling smugly as he finished dressing, buckled on his sword and took up the tasseled Seanchan spearhead.

Maidens leaped to their feet when he ducked out of the tent quickly to hide the unsteadiness of his legs. He was not sure how far he succeeded. Aviendha kept to his side as though she not only intended to catch him if he fell over but fully expected him to.

The Dragon had been Reborn. The Last Battle was coming. And if he stayed close to Rand al’Thor, he would see his family avenged before the world was destroyed.

The world would end, surely, but it did not matter, nothing did, so long as he saw that vengeance.

His face was absolutely blank, but he held the banner st...

Yet he could not help remembering how easily these same people had violated their own laws and customs already. Couladin might have begun the violation or ordered it, but they had followed and obeyed.

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.”

The trouble was that the name did imply—more than implied—ownership; that was out of Lews Therin’s memories, too. It did not seem possible to own people, but if it was, he did not want to. All I want is to use them, he thought wryly.

They know that you will destroy us . . .” Her control faltered for the space of one deep breath. “But many believe that you will kill us all in endless dances of the spear, a sacrifice to atone for the sin.

I have even heard some say that the Aiel are now your dream, and that when you wake from this life, we will be no more.”

A grim set of beliefs, that. Bad enough that he had revealed a past they saw as shaming. It was a wonder they had not all left him. Or gone mad.

We will save what can be saved, Rand al’Thor. We do not hope to do more.”

We. She included herself among the Wise Ones, just as Egwene and Elayne included themselves among Aes Sedai.

“They believe many things I could wish they did not.” He grinned in spite of himself. So she did not believe he needed his ears boxed. That was a pleasant change since waking.

Surely Moiraine would want to accompany him into Cairhien; she might have crammed his head full, but it always seemed there was another piece she wanted to fit in, and this once in particular he could do with her presence and advice.

He had become too trusting. Best to be as wary of her as of Asmodean.

Trust no one, he thought bleakly. For an instant he did not know whether it was his thought or Lews Therin’s, but in the end he decided it did not matter.

Everybody had their own goals, their own desires. Much the best to trust no one c...

Yet he wondered, with another man oozing through the back of his mind, how far...

“Make way for the Lord Dragon Rand al’Thor! The Light illumine the Lord Dragon! All glory to the Dragon Reborn!”

Aviendha sniffed loudly at his back, and again when he laughed. She did not understand, and he had no intention of explaining.

What amused him was that however hard Tairens or Cairhienin or anyone else tried to puff up his head, he could rely on her and the Maidens, at least, to take the swelling down. And Egwene. And Moiraine. And Elayne and Nynaeve, for that matter, if he ever saw either again. Come to think of it, the lot of them seemed to make that a large part of their life’s work.

It was the people who stilled his mirth. Worn and ragged as they were, jammed together like sheep in a too-small pen, they cheered.

I meant to give you a grand entry, befitting the Dragon Reborn.” “I have had one,” Rand said, and the other man blinked. “As you say, my Lord Dragon.”

To believe that the Prophecies of the Dragon would be fulfilled someday was one thing; to have them fulfilled, and his own power diminished by them, was quite another.

“All glory to the Dragon Reborn! All glory to the Lord Dragon and Tear! All glory to the Lord Dragon and the High Lord Meilan!”

but burn me if there isn’t one Aiel woman who’ll learn I’m the Car’a’carn!

Each man knew Rand had no reason to be friendly toward him, but each had to wonder if his own greeting was only to cover something real with someone else.

For himself, Rand thought that Moiraine would be proud of him, and so would Thom Merrilin.

“Inside,” he said, more sharply than he intended, and the seven High Lords jumped as if suddenly recalling who and what he was.

“The Dragon Reborn comes,” intoned a white-haired man just inside the huge gilded doors worked with the Rising Sun.

“All hail the Lord Dragon Rand al’Thor. All glory to the Lord Dragon.”

“Hail the Lord Dragon Rand al’Thor! All glory to the Lord Dragon! The Light illumine the Lord Dragon!” The silence that followed seemed twice as still by comparison.

Rand only grunted. They wished to serve him? He did not need Moiraine to know that these lesser nobles hoped to become greater on estates carved out of Cairhien.

Every eye was on Rand, and if the Tairens were in a fury, the Cairhienin were still ice, with only hints of a thaw in the considering way they studied him.

“But I do not need so many banners for myself. Let one Dragon banner remain, on the highest tower of the city so all who approach can see, but let the rest be taken down and replaced with the banners of Cairhien.

This is Cairhien, and the Rising Sun must and will fly proudly. Cairhien has her own honor, which she shall keep.” The chamber erupted in a roar so suddenly that Maidens hefted their spears, a roar that reverberated from wall to wall.

The Cairhienin nobles were cheering every bit as loudly as the people in the streets had, capering and waving their arms like Foregaters at festival.

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.

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.

Thinking up reasons not to worry was easier than not worrying, though.

Three days shut up with Elayne except when they went to perform was beginning to feel like three weeks. Or three months.

“If you can think of anything except how to show more of your legs than you already are, it might interest you to know that she was in my dreams, too. She said Rand won a great victory at Cairhien yesterday.”

“I do hope Rand is all right.” Nynaeve sniffed; Egwene had said he would need days of rest before he was on his feet again but he had been Healed.

“No one has ever taught him he mustn’t overextend himself. Doesn’t he know the Power can kill him if he draws too much, or weaves when tired? That much is the same for him as for us.”

There is so much to learn. The more I do learn, the more I know how much I don’t know yet.”