“I have to guard the door!” he called back.
“Light, man. You expect someone to walk off with it? Get over here.”
Jame grumbled but made his way over to the bar beside Mat, settling down on a stool. Kathana put a mug of ale down, and he took it up to his lips, staring straight ahead. “I’m watching you,” he muttered to Mat.
Mat was not certain this was the right inn for him, but he also was not certain he would be able to escape with his head unless he ate the woman’s food as instructed. He took a taste; it was pretty good. She had moved over and was wagging a finger while lecturing a man at one of the tables. She seemed the type who would lecture a tree for growing in the wrong spot.
This woman, Mat thought, must never be allowed to enter the same room as Nynaeve. At least not when I’m within shouting distance.
Kathana came bustling back. She wore a marriage knife at her neck, though Mat did not stare for more than a few seconds on account of him being a married man. She had her skirt pinned up on the side after the fashion of Ebou Dari commoners. As she came back to the bar and readied a plate of food for Jame, Mat noticed him watching her fondly, and made a guess. “You two been married long?” Mat asked.
Jame eyed him. “No,” he finally said. “Haven’t been on this side of the ocean for long.”
“I suppose that would make sense,” Mat said, taking a drink of the ale she set before him. It was not bad, considering how awful most things tasted these days. This was only a little awful.
Kathana walked over to the dicing men and demanded they eat more food, as they were looking pale. It was a wonder this Jame fellow did not weigh as much as two horses. She did talk some, though, so perhaps he could wiggle the information he needed out of her.
“There don’t seem to be as many duels as there used to be,” Mat said to her as she passed.
“That’s because of a Seanchan rule,” Kathana said, “from the new Empress, may she live forever. She didn’t forbid duels entirely, and a bloody good thing she didn’t. The Ebou Dari won’t riot at something as unimportant as being conquered, but take away our duels… then you’ll see something. Anyway, duels now have to be witnessed by an official of the government. You can’t duel without answering a hundred different questions and paying a fee. It’s drained the whole life out of it all.”
“It has saved lives,” Jame said. “Men can still die by each other’s knives if they are determined. They simply have to give themselves time to cool down and think.”
“Duels aren’t about thinking,” Kathana said. “But I suppose it does mean that I don’t have to worry about your pretty face being cut up on the street.”
Jame snorted, resting his hand on his sword. The hilt, Mat noticed for the first time, was marked with herons—though he could not see if the blade was or not. Before Mat could ask another question, Kathana marched away and began squawking at some men who had spilled ale on their table. She did not seem the type to stand in one place for very long.
“How’s the weather, to the north?” Jame asked, eyes still straight ahead.
“Dreary,” Mat replied, honestly. “As everywhere.”
“Men say it’s the Last Battle,” Jame said.
“It is.”
Jame grunted. “If it is, it would be a bad time for interfering with politics, wouldn’t you think?”
“Bloody right it would be,” Mat said. “People need to stop playing games and have a look at the sky.”
Jame eyed him. “That’s the truth. You should listen to what you are saying.”
Light, Mat thought. He must think I’m a spy of some sort. “It’s not my choice,” Mat said. “Sometimes, people will only listen to what they want to hear.” He took another bite of his meat, which tasted as good as could be expected. Eating a meal these days was like going to a dance where there were only ugly girls. This, however, was among the better of the bad that he had had the misfortune of eating, lately.
“A wise man might just learn the truth,” Jame said. “You have to find the truth first,” Mat said. “It’s harder than most men think.”
From behind, Kathana snorted, bustling past. “The ‘truth’ is something men debate in bars when they’re too drunk to remember their names. That means it’s not in good company. I wouldn’t put too much stock in it, traveler.”
“The name’s Mandevwin,” Mat said.
“I’m sure it is,” Kathana said. She looked him over then. “Has anyone ever told you that you should wear a hat? It would fit the missing eye quite well.”
“Is that so,” Mat said dryly. “You give fashion advice as well as force-feeding men?”
She swatted him on the back of the head with her cleaning rag. “Eat your food.”
“Look, friend,” Jame said, turning toward him. “I know what you are and why you are here. The fake eye bandage is not fooling me. You have throwing knives tucked into your sleeves and six more on your belt that I can count. I’ve never met a man with one eye who could throw worth a dried bean. She’s not as easy a target as you foreigners think. You’ll never make it into the palace, let alone through her bodyguards. Go find some honest work instead.”
Mat gaped at the man. He thought Mat was an assassin? Mat reached up and took off the bandage, exposing the hole where his eye had been.
Jame started at that.
“There are assassins,” Mat said calmly, “after Tuon?”
“Don’t use her name like that,” Kathana said, beginning to snap her cleaning rag at him again.
Mat reached up beside his head without looking, catching the tip of the rag. He held Jame’s eyes with his single one, not flinching.
“There are assassins,” Mat repeated calmly, “after Tuon?”
Jame nodded. “Mostly foreigners who don’t know the right way of things. Several have moved through the inn. Only one admitted the reason he was here. I saw that his blood fed the dusty earth of the dueling grounds.”
“Then I count you a friend,” Mat said, standing. He reached into his bundle and took out his hat and put it upon his head. “Who is behind it? Who has brought them in, put the bounty on her head?”
Nearby, Kathana inspected his hat and nodded in satisfaction. Then she hesitated and squinted at his face.
“This isn’t what you think,” Jame said. “He isn’t hiring the best assassins. They’re foreigners, so they aren’t meant to succeed.”
“I don’t care how bloody likely their chances are,” Mat said. “Who is hiring them?”
“He’s too important for you to—”
“Who?” Mat said softly.
“General Lunal Galgan,” Jame said. “Head of the Seanchan armies. I can’t make you out, friend. Are you an assassin, or are you here hunting assassins?”
“I’m no bloody assassin,” Mat said, pulling the brim of his hat down and picking up his bundle. “I never kill a man unless he demands it—demands it with screams and thunder so loudly, I figure it would be impolite not to agree to the request. If I stab you, friend, you’ll know that it is coming, and you will know why. I promise you that.”
“Jame,” Kathana hissed. “It’s him.”
“What now?” Jame asked as Mat brushed past, raising his covered ashandarei to his shoulder.
“The one the guards have been looking for!” Kathana said. She looked to Mat. “Light! Every soldier in Ebou Dar has been told to watch for your face. How did you make it through the city gates?”
“By luck,” Mat said, then stepped out into the alleyway.
* * *
“What are you waiting for?” Moiraine asked.
Rand turned toward her. They stood in Lan’s command tent in Shienar. He could smell the smoke of burning fields, set aflame by Lan and Lord Agelmar’s troops as they withdrew from the Gap.
They were burning the lands they would rather defend. A desperate tactic, but a good one. It was the sort of all-in tactic that Lews Therin and his people in the Age of Legends had been hesitant to try, at least at first
. It had cost them dearly then.
The Borderlanders showed no such timidity.
“Why are we here?” Moiraine pressed, stepping up to him. His Maidens guarded the tent from the inside; better to not let the enemy know Rand was here. “You should be at Shayol Ghul right now. That is your destiny, Rand al’Thor. Not these lesser fights.”
“My friends die here.”
“I thought you were beyond such weaknesses.”
“Compassion is not a weakness.”
“Is it not?” she said. “And if, in sparing your enemy because of compassion, you allow them to kill you? What then, Rand al’Thor?”
He had no answer.
“You cannot risk yourself,” Moiraine said. “And regardless of whether or not you agree that compassion itself can be a weakness, acting foolishly because of it certainly is.”
He had often thought about the moment when he had lost Moiraine. He had agonized over her death, and he still reveled in her return. At times, however, he had forgotten how… insistent she could be.
“I will move against the Dark One when the time is right,” Rand said, “but not before. He must think I am with the armies, that I am waiting to seize more ground before striking at him. We must coax his commanders to commit their forces southward, lest we be overwhelmed at Shayol Ghul once I enter.”
“It will not matter,” Moiraine said. “You will face him, and that will be the time of determination. All spins on that moment, Dragon Reborn. All threads in the Pattern are woven around your meeting, and the turning of the Wheel pulls you toward it. Do not deny that you feel it.”
“I feel it.”
“Then go.”
“Not yet.”
She took a deep breath. “Stubborn as ever.”
“And a good thing,” Rand said. “Stubbornness is what brought me this far.” Rand hesitated, then fished in his pocket. He came out with something bright and silvery—a Tar Valon mark. “Here,” he said, holding it out to her. “I’ve been saving this.”
She pursed her lips. “It cannot be…”
“The same one? No. That is long lost, I fear. I’ve been carrying this one around as a token, almost without realizing what I’d been doing.”
She took the coin, turning it over in her fingers. She was still inspecting it when the Maidens looked with alertness toward the tent flap. A second later, Lan lifted the flap and strode in, flanked by two Malkieri men. The three could have been brothers, with those grim expressions and hard faces.
Rand stepped up, resting his hand on Lan’s shoulder. The man did not look tired—a stone could not look tired—but he did look worn. Rand understood that feeling.
Lan nodded to him, then looked at Moiraine. “Have you two been arguing?”
Moiraine tucked the mark away, face becoming impassive. Rand didn’t know what to make of the interaction between the two of them since Moiraine’s return. They were civil, but there was a distance between them that he had not expected.
“You should listen to Moiraine,” Lan said, turning back to Rand. “She has prepared for these days longer than you have been alive. Let her guide you.”
“She wants me to leave this battlefield,” Rand said, “and strike immediately for Shayol Ghul instead of trying to fight those channelers for you so you can retake the Gap.”
Lan hesitated. “Then perhaps you should do as she—”
“No,” Rand said. “Your position here is dire, old friend. I can do something, and so I will. If we can’t stop those Dreadlords, they’ll have you retreating all the way back to Tar Valon.”
“I have heard what you did at Maradon,” Lan said. “I will not turn away a miracle here if one is determined to find us.”
“Maradon was a mistake,” Moiraine said tersely. “You cannot afford to expose yourself, Rand.”
“I cannot afford not to, either. I won’t just sit back and let people die! Not when I can protect them.”
“The Borderlanders do not need to be sheltered,” Lan said.
“No,” Rand replied, “but I’ve never known one who would refuse a sword when one was offered in a time of need.”
Lan met his eyes, then nodded. “Do what you can.”
Rand nodded to the two Maidens, who nodded back.
“Sheepherder,” Lan said.
Rand raised an eyebrow.
Lan saluted him, arm across his chest, bowing his head.
Rand nodded back. “There is something for you on the floor over there, Dai Shan.”
Lan frowned, then walked to a pile of blankets. There were no tables in this tent. Lan knelt, then raised a bright, silvery crown—thin, yet strong. “The crown of Malkier,” he whispered. “This was lost!”
“My smiths did what they could with old drawings,” Rand said. “The other is for Nynaeve; I think it will suit her. You have ever been a king, my friend. Elayne taught me to rule, but you… you taught me how to stand. Thank you.” He turned to Moiraine. “Keep a space clear for my return.”
Rand seized the One Power and opened a gateway. He left Lan kneeling, holding the crown, and followed his Maidens out onto a black field. Burned stalks crunched beneath his boots and smoke wreathed the air.
The Maidens immediately sought shelter in a small depression in the field, huddling against the blackened earth, prepared to weather the storm.
Because one was certainly brewing. Trollocs milled in a large mass before Rand, prodding at the soil and at the remains of farmhouses. The River Mora rushed nearby; this was the first cultivated land south of Tarwin’s Gap. Lan’s forces had burned it before preparing to retreat downriver ahead of the Trolloc advance.
There were tens of thousands of the beasts here. Perhaps more. Rand raised his arms, forming a fist, drawing in a deep breath. In the pouch at his belt, he carried a familiar object. The small fat man with the sword, the angreal he had recently found at Dumai’s Wells. He had returned there for one last look and found it buried in the mud. It had been useful at Maradon. Nobody knew he had it. That was important.
But there was more to what he would do here than tricks. Trollocs shouted as the winds whipped up around Rand. This was not the result of channeling, not yet.
It was Rand. Being here. Confronting him.
Seas grew choppy when different streams of water crashed into one another. Winds grew powerful when hot air and cool mixed. And where Light confronted Shadow… storms grew. Rand shouted, letting his nature stir the tempest. The Dark One pressed upon the land, seeking to smother it. The Pattern needed equalization. It needed balance.
It needed the Dragon.
The winds grew more powerful, lightning breaking the air, black dust and burned stalks flipping up, twisting about in the maelstrom. Rand finally channeled as Myrddraal forced the Trollocs to attack him; the beasts charged against the wind, and Rand directed the lightning.
It was so much easier to direct than control. With a storm already in place, he didn’t need to force the lightning—he needed only to cajole it.
Strikes destroyed the front groups of Trollocs, a hundred bolts of lightning in succession. The pungent scent of burned flesh soon swirled in the storm, joining the charred stalks of grain. Rand roared as the Trollocs kept coming. Deathgates sprang up around him, gateways that zipped across the ground like water striders, sweeping Trollocs into death. Shadowspawn could not survive Traveling.
The stormwinds rose around Rand as he struck down those Trollocs who tried to reach him. The Dark One thought to rule here? He would see that this land already had a king! He would see that the fight would not—
A shield tried to sever Rand from the Source. He laughed, spinning, trying to pinpoint the shield’s origin. “Taim!” he yelled, though the storm captured his voice and overwhelmed it. “I had hoped you would come!”
This was the fight that Lews Therin had constantly demanded of him, a fight Rand hadn’t dared begin. Not until now, not until he had control. He summoned his strength, but then another shield struck at him, and another.
Rand drew in more of the One Power, tapping nearly all that he could through the fat man angreal. Shields continued to snap at him like biting flies. None were strong enough to sever him from the Source, but there were dozens of them.
Rand calmed himself. He sought peace, the peace of destruction. He was life, but he was also death. He was the manifestation of the land itself.
He struck, destroying an unseen Dreadlord hiding in the rubble of a burned building nearby. He summoned fire and directed it at a second, burning him to nothingness.
He could not see the weaves of the women out there—he could only feel their shields.
Too weak. Each shield was too weak, and yet their attacks had him worried. They had come quickly, at least three dozen Dreadlords, each trying to cut him off from the Source. This was dangerous—that they had anticipated him. That was why they had hit Lan so hard with channelers. To draw Rand out.
Rand fought off the attacks, but none of them were in danger of truly shielding him. A single person could not cut off someone holding as much saidin as he was. They should have…
He saw it right before it happened. The other attacks were cover, feints. One that was coming would be created by a circle of men and women. A man would be leading.
There! A shield slammed against him, but Rand had had just enough time to prepare. He channeled Spirit in the tempest, weaving by instinct from Lews Therin’s memories, and rebuffed the shield. He shoved it away, but could not destroy it.
Light! That had to be a full circle. Rand grunted as the shield slipped closer to him; it made a vibrant pattern in the sky, motionless despite the tempest. Rand resisted it with his own surge of Spirit and Air, holding it back as if it were a knife hanging above his throat.
He lost control of the tempest.
Lightning crashed around him. The other channelers wove to enhance the storm—they didn’t try to control it, for they didn’t need to. It being out of control served them, as at any moment, it could strike Rand.
He roared again, louder this time, more determined. I will beat you, Taim! I will finally do what I should have months ago!
But he did not let the anger, the wildness, force him into conflict. He couldn’t afford to. He had learned better than that.