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

by Robert Jordan

Tenobia would die a maiden. Which meant her uncle Davram would succeed, if she left him alive after this, or else Davram’s heir.

A strip of red cloth was tied around Mendan’s temples and marked with the ancient symbol of Aes Sedai. Like the other men who wore that, like the Maidens, he seemed to be waiting for her to make a mistake. Well, they were not the first, and a great way from the most dangerous. Seventy-one years had passed since she had last made a serious mistake.

“There’s no hope, is there?” Turanna muttered in a thick voice. She wept silently, staring into the silver cup in her trembling hands at something distant and horrifying. “No hope.” “There is always a way if you only look for it,” Verin said, absently patting the woman’s shoulder. “You must always look.”

Nothing could change Turanna’s circumstances except Turanna, and that had to come from within herself.

Who should know better than an Aes Sedai that a sister had to wear many faces in the world? You could not always overawe people, or bludgeon them, either. Besides, far better to behave as a novice than be punished like one, especially when it earned you only pain and humiliation.

“No, I fear you must make your own way, somehow. Deal with things as they are. You are quite alone in this. I know they don’t let you speak to the others. Quite alone,” she sighed. Wide eyes stared at her as they might have at a red adder. “There’s no need to make it worse than it must be. Let me Heal you.”

From time to time he idly stroked one of the two mindtraps that hung on plain silken cords around his neck. At his touch, the blood-red crystal of the cour’souvra pulsed, swirls moving in endless depths like the beating of a heart. His real attention was on the game laid out before him on the table, thirty-three red pieces and thirty-three green arrayed across a playing surface of thirteen squares by thirteen. A re-creation of the early stages of a famous game. The most important piece, the Fisher, black-and-white like the playing surface, still waited in its starting place on the central square. A complex game, sha’rah, ancient long before the War of Power. Sha’rah, tcheran, and no’ri, the game now called simply “stones,” each had adherents who claimed it encompassed all the subtleties of life, but Moridin had always favored sha’rah. Only nine people living even remembered the game. He had been a master of it. Much more complex than tcheran or no’ri. The first object was capture of the Fisher. Only then did the game truly begin.

The Fisher held his attention, baiting him. Several pieces had varying moves, but only the Fisher’s attributes altered according to where it stood; on a white square, weak in attack yet agile and far-ranging in escape; on black, strong in attack but slow and vulnerable. When masters played, the Fisher changed sides many times before the end. The green-and-red goal-row that surrounded the playing surface could be threatened by any piece, but only the Fisher could move onto it. Not that he was safe, even there; the Fisher was never safe. When the Fisher was yours, you tried to move him to a square of your color behind your opponent’s end of the board. That was victory, the easiest way, but not the only one. When your opponent held the Fisher, you attempted to leave him no choice for the Fisher but to move onto your color. Anywhere at all along the goal-row would do; holding the Fisher could be more dangerous than not. Of course, there was a third path to victory in sha’rah, if you took it before letting yourself be trapped. The game always degenerated in a bloody melee, then, victory coming only with complete annihilation of your enemy.

The Fisher was always worked as a man, a bandage blinding his eyes and one hand pressed to his side, a few drops of blood dripping through his fingers. The reasons, like the source of the name, were lost in the mist of time. That troubled him sometimes, enraged him, what knowledge might be lost in the turnings of the Wheel, knowledge he needed, knowledge he had a right to. A right!

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. “Thank you, Lini,” Elayne murmured. Her old nurse was an irritating woman sometimes, never admitting that any of her charges had really grown up, but her advice was always good.

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.

After all was said and done, Elayne, at least, was Aes Sedai at an age when most initiates of the Tower still wore novice white and very few had reached the Accepted. And she and Nynaeve had agreed to that bargain, hardly a display of wisdom and acumen. Not just the Sea Folk getting the Bowl, but twenty sisters going to the Atha’an Miere, subject to their laws, required to teach anything the Windfinders wanted to learn and unable to leave until others came to replace them. Windfinders allowed to enter the Tower as guests, allowed to learn whatever they wished, leave whenever they wished. Those alone would make the Hall scream, and probably Egwene as well, yet the rest. . . . Every last one of the older sisters thought she would have found a way around making that bargain. Perhaps they really could have. Elayne did not believe it, but she was not sure.

It’s one of the things men are for, taking the blame, she remembered Lini saying once, and laughing while she did. They usually deserve it, even if you don’t know exactly how.

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.

Elayne was reminded of another of Lini’s sayings. No knife is sharper than a sister’s hate.

Awkwardly, they turned, hobbling and stumbling and groaning. It seemed quite ludicrous; heroes in stories never got hurt so they could barely stand.

Gingerly, the three of them sat down to wait. That was another thing heroes in stories never did, Elayne thought with a sigh. She hoped she could be a queen to make her mother proud, but it was clear that she would never make a hero.

Too many personalities. Too many goals.

‘Three things annoy to distraction: a tooth that aches, a shoe that pinches, and a man that chatters.’

Only a fool killed a deer when he knew there was a wounded bear behind his back.

If you’re afraid, then ride on!” “You always fling that in my face,” he sighed, settling back on his heels. She could not see his eyes, but she could feel them. “Ride on if you wish, you say. Once, there was a soldier loved a queen from afar, knowing it was hopeless, knowing he could never dare speak. Now the queen is gone, and only a woman remains, and I hope. I burn with hope! If you want me to leave, Maighdin, say it. One word. ‘Go!’ A simple word.”

He had no right to be right when she wanted him to be wrong! The illogic of that thought infuriated her.

Neither curtsied, a pleasant surprise. Lini did, a quick bend of the knee before she darted after the other two muttering about “knowing their place.” Perrin suspected Lini was one of those women who saw her “place” as being in charge. Come to think of it, most women did. That was the way of the world, it seemed, not just the Two Rivers.

Without him, they would be with their families, getting ready for the day’s chores around the farm, milking cows and cutting firewood instead of wondering whether they might have to kill or be killed before sunset.

They were his responsibility, and he had already gotten too many of them killed.

Any serious trouble with Aiel usually meant someone dead, and not the Aiel.

Giving a man advice about his wife is a good way to get your innards spilled.”

You could not train men to be weapons without expecting a certain amount of arrogance, yet Rand did not like Torval. But then, he had no need of Lews Therin’s voice to be suspicious of any man in a black coat. How far did he truly trust even Flinn? Yet he had to lead them. The Asha’man were his making, his responsibility.

He did not want to contemplate any encounter between Asha’man and Aes Sedai who knew what they were facing; blood and regret could be the only outcome, whatever happened. The Asha’man were not aimed at the White Tower, though, no matter what Taim thought. It was a convenient belief, however, if it made Tar Valon step warily. An Asha’man only needed to know how to kill. If there were enough to do that at the right place and time, if they lived long enough to, that was all they had been created for.

Had Fel been killed because he might have puzzled out the riddle? Rand had a hint at the answer, or thought he might, a guess that could be disastrously wrong. Hints and riddles were not answers, yet he had to do something.

There had been Amyrlins who reigned in strength, Amyrlins who managed an even balance with the Hall, and Amyrlins who had had as little power as she, or less upon rare occasions, well-hidden in the secret histories of the White Tower. Several had frittered away power and influence, falling from strength to weakness, but in over three thousand years, precious few had managed to move in the other direction. Egwene very much wished she knew how Myriam Copan and the rest of that bare handful had managed. If anyone had ever thought to write that down, the pages were long lost.

As simple as that. The first step down a road that would see her on the Amyrlin Seat in Tar Valon, or else deliver her firmly into the grasp of the Hall, with nothing left to decide except whether it was Romanda or Lelaine who told her what to do. Somehow, such a pivotal moment should have been accompanied by fanfares of trumpets, or at the least, thunder in the sky. It was always that way in stories.

“Why give up your freedom?” “Give up?” Siuan laughed. “I’ll be giving up nothing.” Her back straightened, and her voice began to gain strength, and then passion. “The Oaths are what make us more than simply a group of women meddling in the affairs of the world. Or seven groups. Or fifty. The Oaths hold us together, a stated set of beliefs that bind us all, a single thread running through every sister, living or dead, back to the first to lay her hands on the Oath Rod. They are what make us Aes Sedai, not saidar. Any wilder can channel. Men may look at what we say from six sides, but when a sister says, ‘This is so,’ they know it’s true, and they trust. Because of the Oaths. Because of the Oaths, no queen fears that sisters will lay waste to her cities. The worst villain knows he’s safe in his life with a sister unless he tries to harm her. Oh, the Whitecloaks call them lies, and some people have strange ideas about what the Oaths entail, but there are very few places an Aes Sedai cannot go, and be listened to, because of the Oaths. The Three Oaths are what it is to be Aes Sedai, the heart of being Aes Sedai. Throw that on the rubbish heap, and we’ll be sand washing away in the tide. Give up? I will be gaining.”

Siuan and her bloody Law of Unintended Consequences!

You got further plucking the chicken in front of you than trying to start on one up a tree.

It was too late to be frightened once you grabbed the wolf by the ears.

Be sure of yourself, girl, Lini had always told her, but not too sure, and she did try.

It was not a pleasant journey at all. It was one long lesson in one of Lini’s favorite sayings. It isn’t the stone you see that trips you on your nose.

What was Taim up to, creating new ranks? The important thing was that the man made weapons. The important thing was that the weapons stayed sane long enough to be used.

Like most of the great cities, Illian had a name for exotic mystery, free-handed tapsters, and willing women. At least among men who had never been there, even when it was their own capital. Ignorance always inflated a city’s reputation for such things.

Bashere went on anyway, graying eyebrows lowered, gravely serious. “I expect thousands cheered her, called her the hope of Shiota, maybe even believed she was. In her time, she might have been as feared and respected as Artur Hawkwing was later, but now even the Brown sisters may not know her name. When you die, people begin to forget, who you were and what you did, or tried to do. Everybody dies eventually, and everybody is forgotten, eventually, but there’s no bloody point dying before your time comes.” “I don’t intend to,” Rand said sharply. He knew where he was meant to die, if not when. He thought he did.

“We’ll do better next time,” Bashere murmured. He ran his gaze around the valley, then shook his head. “The worst mistake is to make the same one twice, and we won’t.”

“Six up, and half a dozen down,” Bashere said softly. He scraped mud from one of his thick mustaches with a fingernail. “Or as some of my tenants say, what you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts.” What in the Light was a roundabout? A great help that was!

“Times are, you seize the advantage and ride on,” Bashere growled. “Other times, you take your winnings and go home.

“Small failures bring small costs; great failures bring painfully great costs.

Who knows a woman’s heart? Lews Therin chuckled wryly. He sounded in one of his saner moods. Most women will shrug off what a man would kill you for, and kill you for what a man would shrug off.

If you won’t be satisfied with a whole litter of fat piglets, he had muttered, if you have to rush into the woods to find the old sow, then don’t get too fancy, or she’ll gut you. No plan of battle survives first contact, Lews Therin said in Rand’s head.

Madness waits for some, Lews Therin whispered. It creeps up on others.

“Under the Light, I vow to speak no word that is not true. Under the Light, I vow to make no weapon for one man to kill another. Under the Light, I vow not to use the One Power as a weapon except against Dark-friends or Shadowspawn, or in the last defense of my life, the life of my Warder, or that of another sister.”

Sometimes six and six make a dozen, and sometimes they make a mess.