The Fires of Heaven (137 page)

He became aware of tears on his cheeks, and let
saidin
and the Void go. He wanted to feel this. “Aviendha!” Snatching her up, he whirled her around, with her staring down at him as if he had gone mad. He did not want to put her down, but he did. So he could hug Mat. Or try to.

Mat fended him off. “What’s the matter with you? You’d think you thought we were dead. Not that we weren’t, almost. Being a general has to be safer than this!”

“You’re alive.” Rand laughed. He brushed back Aviendha’s hair; she had lost her headscarf, and it hung loose around her neck. “I’m happy you’re alive. That’s all.”

He took in the plaza again, and his joy faded. Nothing could extinguish it, but the bodies lying in heaps where the Aiel had made their stand lessened it. Too many of them were not big enough to be men. There was Lamelle, veil gone and half her throat as well; she would never make him soup again. Pevin, both hands clutching the wrist-thick shaft of the Trolloc spear through his chest and the first expression on his face Rand had ever seen. Surprise. Balefire had cheated death for his friends, but not for others. Too many. Too many Maidens.

Take what you can have. Rejoice in what you can save, and do not mourn your losses too long
. It was not his thought, but he took it. It seemed a good way to avoid going mad before the taint on
saidin
drove him to it.

“Where did you go?” Aviendha demanded. Not angrily. If anything, she looked relieved. “One second you were there, the next you were gone.”

“I had to kill Rahvin,” he said quietly. She opened her mouth, but he put his fingers over it to silence her, then gently pushed her away. Take what you can have. “Leave it at that. He’s dead.”

Bael came limping up,
shoufa
still around his head but veil hanging
down his chest. There was blood on his thigh, and on the point of his one remaining spear as well. “The Nightrunners and Shadowtwisted are running,
Car’a’carn
. Some of the wetlanders have joined the dance against them. Even some of the armored men, though they danced against us at first.” Sulin was behind him, unveiled, a nasty red gash across her cheek.

“Hunt them down however long it takes,” Rand said. He began walking, not sure where as long as it was away from Aviendha. “I don’t want them loose on the countryside. Keep an eye on the Guards. I’ll find out later which of them were Rahvin’s men and which . . .” He walked on, talking and not looking back. Take what you can have.

T
he high window had more than enough room for Rand to stand in it, stretching far above his head and clearing his shoulders by two feet to either side. Shirtsleeves rolled up, he stared down at one of the Royal Palace’s gardens. Aviendha was trailing her hand in the fountain’s redstone basin, still intrigued by so much water with no purpose but to be looked at and keep ornamental fish alive. She had been more than indignant at first, when he told her she could not go chasing Trollocs through the streets. In fact, he was not sure she would not be down there now if not for a quiet escort of Maidens that Sulin did not think he had noticed. Neither was he supposed to have heard the white-haired Maiden remind her that she was
Far Dareis Mai
no longer and not yet a Wise One. Coatless, but wearing his hat against the sun, Mat was sitting on the coping of the basin, talking to her. No doubt probing for what she knew of whether the Aiel were preventing people from leaving; even if Mat did decide to accept his fate, it was unlikely he would ever stop complaining about it. Asmodean sat on a bench in the shade of a red myrtle tree, playing his harp. Rand wondered whether the man knew what had happened, or suspected. He should have no memory—for him, it never happened—but who could say what one of the Forsaken knew or could reason out?

A polite cough turned him away from the garden.

The window where he stood was a span and a half above the floor in
the west wall of the throne room, the Grand Hall where Queens of Andor had received embassies and pronounced judgment for nearly a thousand years. It was the only place he had thought he could be sure of watching Mat and Aviendha unseen and undisturbed. Rows of white columns twenty paces high marched down the sides of the hall. The light from the tall windows in the walls mingled with colored light from great windows set in the arching ceiling, windows where the White Lion alternated with portraits of early queens of the realm and scenes of great Andoran victories. Enaila and Somara did not appear impressed.

Rand let himself down by his fingertips. “Is there news from Bael?”

Enaila shrugged. “The hunt for Trollocs goes on.” By her tone, the diminutive woman would have liked to be part of that. Somara’s height made her seem even shorter. “Some of the city people give aid. Most hide. The city gates are held. None of the Shadowtwisted will escape, I think, but I fear some of the Nightrunners may.” Myrddraal were hard to kill, and just as hard to corner. Sometimes it was easy to believe the old tales that they rode shadows and could vanish by turning sideways.

“We brought you some soup,” Somara said, nodding her flaxen head toward a silver tray covered with a striped cloth, sitting on the dais that held the Lion Throne. Carved and gilded, with huge lion’s paws at the ends of its legs, the throne was a massive chair at the top of four white marble stairs, with a strip of red carpet leading up to it. The Lion of Andor, picked out in moonstones on a field of rubies, would have stood above Morgase’s head whenever she occupied that seat. “Aviendha says you have not eaten yet today. It is the soup Lamelle used to make for you.”

“I suppose none of the servants have come back,” Rand sighed. “One of the cooks, maybe? A helper?” Enaila shook her head scornfully. She would serve her time as
gai’shain
with a good grace, if it ever came to that, but the idea of anyone spending their entire life serving someone else disgusted her.

Climbing the stairs, he squatted to twitch the cloth aside. His nose twitched, too. By the smell, whichever of them had made it was no better a cook than Lamelle had been. The sound of a man’s boots coming up the hall gave him an excuse to turn his back on the tray. With any luck, he would not have to eat it.

The man approaching up the long, red-and-white-tiled floor was certainly no Andorman, in his short gray coat and those baggy trousers stuffed into boots turned down at the knee. Slender and only a hand taller than Enaila, he had a hooked beak of a nose and dark tilted eyes. Gray streaked
his black hair and a thick mustache like down-curved horns around his wide mouth. He paused to make a leg and bow slightly, handling the curved sword at his hip gracefully despite the fact that incongruously he carried two silver goblets in one hand and a sealed pottery jar in the other.

“Forgive my intrusion,” he said, “but there was no one to announce me.” His clothes might be plain and even travel-worn, but he had what appeared to be an ivory rod capped with a golden wolf’s head thrust behind his sword belt. “I am Davram Bashere, Marshal-General of Saldaea. I am here to speak with the Lord Dragon, who rumors in the city say is here in the Royal Palace. I assume that I address him?” For an instant his eyes went to the glittering Dragons twining red-and-gold around Rand’s arms.

“I am Rand al’Thor, Lord Bashere. The Dragon Reborn.” Enaila and Somara had moved between Rand and the man, each with a hand on the hilt of her long-bladed knife, poised to veil. “I am surprised to find a Saldaean lord in Caemlyn, much less wanting to speak to me.”

“In truth, I rode to Caemlyn to speak to Morgase, but I was put off by Lord Gaebril’s toadies—King Gaebril, I should say? Or does he still live?” Bashere’s tone said he doubted it, and did not care one way or the other. He did not pause. “Many in the city say Morgase is dead, as well.”

“They’re both dead,” Rand said bleakly. He sat down on the throne, his head resting against the moonstone Lion of Andor. The throne had been sized for women. “I killed Gaebril, but not before he killed Morgase.”

Bashere quirked an eyebrow. “Should I hail King Rand of Andor, then?”

Rand leaned forward angrily. “Andor has always had a queen, and it still does. Elayne was Daughter-Heir. With her mother dead, she is queen. Maybe she has to be crowned first—I don’t know the law—but she is queen as far as I am concerned. I am the Dragon Reborn. That is as much as I want, and more. What is it you want of me, Lord Bashere?”

If his anger disturbed Bashere at all, the man gave no outward sign. Those tilted eyes watched Rand carefully, but not uneasily. “The White Tower allowed Mazrim Taim to escape. The false Dragon.” He paused, then went on when Rand said nothing. “Queen Tenobia did not want Saldaea troubled again, so I was sent to hunt him down once more and put an end to him. I have followed him south for many weeks. You need not fear I’ve brought a foreign army into Andor. Except for an escort of ten, the rest I left camped in Braem Wood, well north of any border Andor has claimed in two hundred years. But Taim is in Andor. I am sure of it.”

Rand leaned back again, hesitating. “You cannot have him, Lord Bashere.”

“May I ask why not, my Lord Dragon? If you wish to use Aiel to hunt him, I have no objection. My men will remain in Braem Wood until I return.”

This part of his plan he had not meant to reveal so soon. Delay could be costly, but he had intended to have a firm hold on the nations first. Yet it might as well begin now. “I am announcing an amnesty. I can channel, Lord Bashere. Why should another man be hunted down and killed or gentled because he can do what I can? I will announce that any man who can touch the True Source, any man who wants to learn, can come to me and have my protection. The Last Battle is coming, Lord Bashere. There may not be time for any of us to go mad before, and I would not waste one man for the risk anyway. When the Trollocs came out of the Blight in the Trolloc Wars, they marched with Dreadlords, men and women who wielded the Power for the Shadow. We will face that again at Tarmon Gai’don. I don’t know how many Aes Sedai will be at my side, but I won’t turn away any man who channels if he will march with me. Mazrim Taim is mine, Lord Bashere, not yours.”

“I see.” It was flatly said. “You have taken Caemlyn. I hear that Tear is yours, and Cairhien soon will be if it is not already. Do you mean to conquer the world with your Aiel and your army of men channeling the One Power?”

“If I must.” Rand said it just as levelly. “I’ll welcome any ruler as an ally who welcomes me, but so far all I’ve seen is maneuvering for power, or outright hostility. Lord Bashere, there’s anarchy in Tarabon and Arad Doman, and not far from it in Cairhien. Amadicia is eyeing Altara. The Seanchan—you may have heard rumors of them in Saldaea; the worst are likely true—the Seanchan on the other side of the world eyeing us all. Men fighting their own petty battles with Tarmon Gai’don on the horizon. We need peace. Time before the Trollocs come, before the Dark One breaks free, time to ready ourselves. If the only way I can find time and peace for the world is to impose it, I will. I don’t want to, but I will.”

“I have read
The Karaethon Cycle
,” Bashere said. Putting the goblets under his arm for a moment, he broke the wax seal on the jar and filled them with wine. “More importantly, Queen Tenobia has read the Prophecies, too. I cannot speak for Kandor, or Arafel, or Shienar. I believe they will come to you—not a child in the Borderlands but knows the Shadow waits in the Blight to descend on us—but I cannot speak for them.” Enaila
eyed the goblet he handed her suspiciously, but she climbed the stairs to hand it to Rand. “In truth,” Bashere continued, “I cannot even speak for Saldaea. Tenobia rules; I am only her general. But I think once I send a fast rider to her with a message, the return will be that Saldaea marches with the Dragon Reborn. In the meanwhile, I offer you my services, and those of nine thousand Saldaean horse.”

Rand swirled the goblet, staring down into the dark red wine. Sammael in Illian, and other Forsaken the Light alone knew where. Seanchan waiting across the Aryth Ocean, and men here ready to leap for their own advantage and profit whatever it cost the world. “Peace is far off yet,” he said softly. “It will be blood and death for some time to come.”