The Path of Daggers (The Wheel of Time, #8)

by Robert Jordan

Who would sup with the mighty must climb the path of daggers. —Anonymous notation found inked in the margin of a manuscript history (believed to date to the time of Artur Hawkwing)

Ethenielle

A queen was supposed to think, lead, and command, which no one could manage while trying to do what any soldier in her army could do better.

“The Blight seems almost asleep,” Terasian muttered, whiskers rasping as he rubbed his fleshy chin. “I’ve never seen it so quiet.” “The Shadow never sleeps,” Jagad put in quietly, and Terasian nodded as if that, too, was something to consider.

Illeisien

Four hands reached out and met, gripped, heart’s blood mingling, dripping to the ground, soaking into the stony dirt. “We are one, to the death,” Easar said, and they all spoke with him. “We are one, to the death.” By blood and soil, they were committed. Now they had to find Rand al’Thor. And do what needed to be done. Whatever the price.

She still had a task. Somehow, she had to keep young Rand alive until it was time for him to die.

Atha’an Miere.

She had announced her dislike at least twenty times already, but Nynaeve never surrendered just because she had lost.

Aan’allein.

“You are Aes Sedai, and I am a Warder,” he said in a deep, level voice. “Taking care of you is my duty.” His tone softened, conflicting sharply with his angular face and bleak, never-changing eyes. “Besides, caring for you is my heart’s desire, Nynaeve. You can ask or demand anything of me, but never to let you die without trying to save you. The day you die, I die.”

Aviendha had begun to suspect that the other woman often used silence and supposedly significant looks to cover ignorance. She suspected. Nynaeve knew little more about men, about dealing with one man, than she did herself. Facing them with knives and spears was much easier than loving one.

gai’shain,

Tripping someone who tried to walk too high was always fun, or watching it done, and even a short fall was worth a laugh.

Baradon.

There was no shame in feeling fear, only in giving way to it, or letting it show.

Lan coughed. “If any of the Forsaken are coming,” he said in a voice like polished stone, “they could be here any moment. Or that gholam could. In either case, it would be best to be elsewhere.” “With Aes Sedai, always a little patience,” Birgitte murmured as though quoting. “But the Windfinders don’t seem to have any,” she continued, “so you might do well to forget Teslyn and remember Renaile.” Elayne and Nynaeve turned stares on the Warders cold enough to give ten Stone Dogs pause. Neither liked running from the Shadowsouled and this gholam, for all they were the ones who had decided there was no choice. Certainly neither liked being reminded that they needed to run to meet the Windfinders almost as much as to escape the Forsaken. Aviendha would have studied those looks—Wise Ones did with a glance or a few words what she had always needed the threat of spear or fist for, only they usually did it faster and with more success—she would have studied Elayne and Nynaeve, except that their glares had no visible effect on the pair at all. Birgitte grinned and cut her eyes toward Lan, who shrugged back at her with obvious forbearance.

They did not understand. No comforting words or teas would cure what ailed her. She was enjoying talk of lace and embroidery! She did not know whether to growl in disgust or wail in despair. She was growing soft.

Nynaeve, however, was the reason Sumeko did not wilt like the rest whenever an Aes Sedai glanced in her direction. She had vowed to teach those women that they possessed backbones, though Aviendha did not completely understand why. Nynaeve was Aes Sedai herself; no Wise One would ever tell anyone to stand up to Wise Ones.

Aviendha herself found it peculiar; how could strength in the Power, something you were born with as surely as your eyes, weigh more heavily than the honor that years could bring?

“They will have their chance to try again, and if they fail, they still will not be sent away. No woman who can channel will be cut off from the Tower again. They will all be a part of the White Tower.”

Elayne had small patience with stupidity, in herself or others, and shouting insults when an enemy might be coming was the worst sort.

Cieryl

Rainyn

Eldase

Elayne clamped her teeth shut. She was not going to shout at them. Nynaeve always got better results with yells, anyway. But she did want to shake some sense into every one of them, shake them until their teeth rattled. Including Nynaeve, who was supposed to be getting everyone organized instead of staring into the trees. But what if it had been Rand who was going to die unless she could find a way to save him? Suddenly tears trembled on the edge of falling, stinging her eyes. Rand was going to die, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Peel the apple in your hand, girl, not the one on the tree, Lini’s thin voice seemed to whisper in her ear. Tears are for after; they just waste time before.

Then she realized what Aviendha was doing and nearly lost saidar in her shock. The gateway trembled as Aviendha carefully picked apart the weave that had made it. It shivered and flexed, the edges wavering. The last flows came loose, and instead of winking out, the opening shimmered, the view through it of the courtyard fading away until it evaporated like mist in the sun. “That is impossible!” Renaile said incredulously. An astonished murmur of agreement broke out among the Windfinders. The Kinswomen gaped at Aviendha, mouths working soundlessly.

She nodded almost as if Elayne had spoken, swung up onto her mouse-colored gelding, and rode to where the other Warders were waiting. They greeted her with nods and began discussing something in low voices. By the glances directed at the sisters, the “something” had to do with taking care of Aes Sedai whether Aes Sedai wanted care taken or not.

Elayne wished she did not know. About the catching part, at least. About the fact that Rand had caught her. Snatching the flecks of jealousy that suddenly were floating through her, she pushed them into a sack and stuffed it into the back of her head. Then she jumped up and down on it for good measure. When a woman plays the fool, look for the man. That was one of Lini’s favorites. Another was, Kittens tangle your yarn, men tangle your wits, and it’s simple as breathing for both.

He was about to turn away when the outlines of the gateway suddenly began to flex and tremble. Transfixed, he watched until the opening simply—melted. He had never been a man to give way to obscenities, but several rose in his mind. What had the woman done? These barbarous rustics offered too many surprises. A way to Heal being severed, however imperfectly. That was impossible! Except that they had done it. Involuntary rings. Those Warders and the bond they shared with their Aes Sedai. He had known of that for a long, long time, but whenever he thought he had the measure of them, these primitives revealed some new skill, did something that no one in his own Age had dreamed of. Something the pinnacle of civilization had not known! What had the girl done?

He disliked people meddling with his carefully laid plans. Those who did so and lived, lived to pay.

Adeleas

Chilares

“He will listen to advice, even when he doesn’t like hearing it,” she said abruptly, her face reddening. Light, for all her talk about shame, in some areas Aviendha had none. And it seemed that she herself no longer had any, either! “But if I tried to push him, he dug in his heels even when it was plain that I was right. Was he that way with you?”

Others at the farm beside Alise possessed sharp eyes. “Aes Sedai!” a woman howled in tones suitable for announcing the end of the world. Perhaps she was, for her world.

Garenia Rosoinde,

There was a saying that no woman was finished with the Tower until it was finished with her, but truthfully, once the White Tower touched you, it never was finished.

She could hear another voice, not Lini’s this time, but her mother’s. What you order done, you must be willing to do with your own hand. As a queen, what you order done, you have done. If she did break the law. . . . Her mother’s voice again. Even a queen cannot be above the law, or there is no law. And Lini’s. You can do whatever you wish, child. So long as you’re willing to pay the price.

No sooner had she disappeared behind it, than Elayne felt the use of the Power within, a weave that must have blanketed the room inside. A ward against eavesdropping, certainly. They would not want stray ears to catch whatever Ispan said. Then another use hit her, and suddenly the silence from within was more ominous than any shrieks that ward would contain.

Aviendha found a dagger with gold wire wrapped around a hilt of rough deer-horn; the blade was dull, and by all evidence, always had been. She kept turning that over and over in her fingers—her hands actually began to tremble—until Elayne took it away from her and put it with the others on the cistern’s lid.

“Tebreille

It was a very good thing she had not wanted to focus the flows for this circle, Elayne realized; what the woman was doing required years more study than she had. Many years more. Suddenly, she realized something else. That ever-changing lacework of saidar bent itself around something else, something unseen that made the column solid. She swallowed, hard. The Bowl was drawing saidin as well as saidar.

Still Caire wove, and the column danced to her bidding, saidar and saidin together, and the spiderweb altered and flowed like a lopsided kaleidoscope spinning across the heavens, vanishing into the distance, on and on and on.

“Take everyone who will go to Andor with you, Elayne. I’ll. . . . I’ll meet you there. Mat’s in the city. I have to go back for him. Burn the boy; he came for me, and I have to.”

She had to think like a queen. The Rose Crown is heavier than a mountain, her mother had told her, and duty will make you weep, but you must bear and do what must be done.

“Shadowspawn,” Merilille murmured in amazement. “Here! At least that proves it’s the Forsaken in Ebou Dar.” “Not Shadowspawn,” Elayne said hollowly. Nynaeve’s face was a picture of anguish; she knew, too. “They call it a raken. It’s the Seanchan. We must go, Nynaeve, and take every woman at the farm with us. Whether we killed that thing or not, more will come. Anyone we leave behind will be wearing a damane leash by tomorrow morning.”

“Go on,” she told Nynaeve. “I’ll wait for the rest until you are all out of sight.” Nynaeve stared out, her jaw hanging. “It has to be done,” Elayne sighed. “The Seanchan will be at the farm in hours, for sure. Even if they wait until tomorrow, what if one of the damane has the Talent to read residues? Nynaeve, I won’t give Traveling to the Seanchan. I won’t!”

Megairil.

Elayne stared at her. She had stayed, knowing that? To risk your life was one thing, but to risk losing the ability to channel. . . . “I want us to adopt each other as first-sisters, Aviendha. As soon as we can find Wise Ones.” What they were to do about Rand, she could not imagine. The very idea that they would both marry him—and Min, too!—was worse than ridiculous. But of this, she was sure. “I don’t need to know any more about you. I want to be your sister.” Gently, she kissed Aviendha’s blood-stained cheek.

Chulein