A Crown of Swords (25 page)

He ignored the comment, but could not stop a sigh. Somara and Enaila were the worst, yet none of the Maidens could decide whether he was the
Car’a’carn
, to be obeyed, or the only child of a Maiden ever known to the Maidens, to be cared for as a brother, bullied as a son for a few. Even Jalani there, not many years from playing with dolls, seemed to think he was her
younger
brother, while Corana, graying and nearly as leather-faced as Sulin, treated him like an older. At least they only did that around themselves, not often where other Aiel could hear. When it counted, he would be the
Car’a’carn
. And he owed it to them. They died for him. He owed them whatever they wanted.

“I don’t intend to spend all night here while you lot play Kiss the Daisies,” he said. Sulin gave him one of those looks—in dresses or in
cadin’sor
, women tossed those looks about like farmers scattering seed—but the Asha’man abandoned staring at the Maidens and slung the straps of their scrips over their shoulders. Push them hard, he had told Taim, make them weapons, and Taim had delivered. A good weapon moved as the man who held it directed. If only he could be sure it would not turn in his hand.

He had three destinations tonight, but one of those the Maidens could not be allowed to know. No one but himself. Which of the other two came first he had decided earlier, yet he hesitated. The journey would be known soon enough, yet there were reasons to keep it secret as he could.

When the gateway opened there in the middle of the room, a sweetish smell familiar to any farmer drifted through. Horse dung. Wrinkling her nose as she veiled, Sulin led half the Maidens through at a trot. After a glance to him, the Asha’man followed, drawing deeply on the True Source as they went, as much as they could hold.

Because of that, he could feel their strength as they passed him. Without that, it took some effort to tell a man could channel, longer still unless he cooperated. None were near as strong as he. Not yet, anyway; there was no saying how strong a man would be until he stopped growing stronger. Fedwin stood highest of the three, but he had what Taim called a bar. Fedwin did not really believe he could affect anything at a distance with the Power. The result was that at fifty paces his ability began to fade, and at a hundred he could not weave even a thread of
saidin
. Men gained strength faster than women, it seemed, and a good thing. These three were all strong enough to make a gateway of useful size, if just barely in Jonan’s case. Every Asha’man was that he had kept.

Kill them before it is too late, before they go mad
, Lews Therin whispered.
Kill them, hunt down Sammael, and Demandred, and all the Forsaken. I have to kill them all, before it is too late!
A moment of struggle as he attempted to wrest the Power away from Rand and failed. He seemed to try that more often of late, or to seize
saidin
on his own. The second was a bigger danger than the first. Rand doubted that Lews Therin could take the True Source away once Rand held it; he was not certain he could take it from Lews Therin, either, if the other reached it first.

What about me?
Rand thought again. It was nearly a snarl, and no less vicious for falling short. Wrapped in the Power as he was, anger spiderwebbed
across the outside of the Void, a fiery lace.
I can channel, too. Madness waits for me, but it already has you! You killed yourself, Kinslayer, after you murdered your wife and your children and the Light alone knows how many others. I won’t kill where I don’t have to! Do you hear me, Kinslayer?
Silence answered.

He drew a deep, uneven breath. That web of fire flickered, lightning in the distance. He had never spoken to the man—it was the man, not just a voice; a man, entire with memories—never spoken to him like that before. Perhaps it might drive Lews Therin away for good. Half the man’s mad rantings were tears over his dead wife. Did he want to drive Lews Therin away? His only friend in that chest.

He had promised Sulin to count to one hundred before following, but he did it by fives, then stepped more than a hundred and fifty leagues to Caemlyn.

Night had closed down on the Royal Palace of Andor, moonshadows cloaking delicate spires and golden domes, but a gentle breeze did nothing to break the heat. The moon hung above, still almost full, giving some light. Veiled Maidens scurried around the wagons lined up behind the largest of the palace stables. The odor of the stable muck the wagons hauled away every day had long since soaked into the wood. The Asha’man had hands to their faces, Eben actually pinching his nose shut.

“The
Car’a’carn
counts quickly,” Sulin muttered, but she lowered her veil. There would be no surprises here. No one would stay near those wagons who did not have to.

Rand let the gateway close as soon as the remaining Maidens came through, right behind him, and as it winked out of existence, Lews Therin whispered,
She is gone. Almost gone
. There was relief in his voice; the bond of Warder and Aes Sedai had not existed in the Age of Legends.

Alanna was not really gone, no more than she had been any time since bonding Rand against his will, but her presence had lessened, and it was the lessening that made Rand truly aware. You could become used to anything, begin taking it for granted. Near to her, he walked around with her emotions nestled in the back of his head, her physical condition as well, if he thought about it, and he knew exactly where she was as well as he knew his own his hand’s place, but just as with his hand, unless he thought about it, it just was. Only distance had any effect, but he could still
feel
that she was somewhere east of him. He wanted to be aware of her. Should Lews Therin fall silent and all the memories of the chest somehow be wiped from his head, he would still have the bond to remind him, “Never trust Aes Sedai.”

Abruptly he realized that Jonan and Eben still held
saidin
too. “Release,” he said sharply—that was the command Taim used—and he felt the Power vanish from them. Good weapons. So far.
Kill them before it’s too late
, Lews Therin murmured. Rand released the Source deliberately, and reluctantly. He always hated letting go of the life, the enhanced senses. Of the struggle. Inside, though, he was tense, a jumper ready to leap, ready to seize it once more. He always was, now.

I have to kill them
, Lews Therin whispered.

Shoving the voice back, Rand sent one of the Maidens, Nerilea, a square-faced woman, into the palace and began pacing alongside the wagons, thoughts spinning again, faster than before. He should not have come here. He should have sent Fedwin, with a letter. Spinning. Elayne. Aviendha. Perrin. Faile. Annoura. Berelain. Mat. Light, he should not have come. Elayne and Aviendha. Annoura and Berelain. Faile and Perrin and Mat. Flashes of color, quick motion just out of sight. A madman muttering angrily in the distance.

Slowly he became aware of the Maidens talking among themselves. About the smell. Implying that it came from the Asha’man. They wanted to be heard, or they would have been using handtalk; there was moonlight enough for that. Moonlight enough to see the color in Eben’s face, too, and how Fedwin’s jaw was set. Maybe they were not boys any longer, not since Dumai’s Wells certainly, but they were still only fifteen or sixteen. Jonan’s eyebrows had drawn down so far they seemed to be sitting on his cheeks. At least nobody had seized
saidin
again. Yet.

He started to step over to the three men, then raised his voice instead. Let them all hear. “If I can put up with foolishness from Maidens, so can you.”

If anything, the color in Eben’s face deepened. Jonan grunted. All three saluted Rand with fist to chest; then they turned to one another. Jonan said something in a low voice, glancing at the Maidens, and Fedwin and Eben laughed. The first time they saw Maidens they had stumbled between wanting to goggle at these exotic creatures they had only read about and wanting to run before the murderous Aiel of the stories killed them. Nothing much frightened them anymore. They needed to relearn fear.

The Maidens stared at Rand, and began talking with their hands, sometimes laughing softly. Wary of the Asha’man they might be, yet Maidens being Maidens—Aiel being Aiel—risk only made taunts more fun. Somara murmured aloud about Aviendha settling him down, which earned firm nods of approval. Nobody’s life was ever this tangled in the stories.

As soon as Nerilea returned saying that she had found Davram Bashere and Bael, the clan chief leading the Aiel here in Caemlyn, Rand took off his sword belt, and so did Fedwin. Jalani produced a large leather bag for the swords and the Dragon Scepter, holding it as if the swords were poisonous snakes, or perhaps long dead and rotten. Though in truth she would not have held it so gingerly in either case. Putting on a hooded cloak that Corana handed him, Rand held his wrists together behind his back, and Sulin bound them with a cord. Tightly, muttering to herself.

“This is nonsense. Even wetlanders would call it nonsense.”

He tried not to wince. She was strong, and using every ounce of it. “You have run away from us too often, Rand al’Thor. You have no care for yourself.” She considered him a brother of an age with herself, but irresponsible at times. “
Far Dareis Mai
carries your honor, and you have no care.”

Fedwin glowered while his own wrists were tied, though the Maiden binding him hardly put out much effort. Watching, Jonan and Eben frowned deeply. They disliked this plan as much as Sulin did. And understood it as little. The Dragon Reborn did not have to explain himself, and the
Car’a’carn
seldom did. No one said anything, though. A weapon did not complain.

When Sulin stepped around in front of Rand, she took one look at his face, and her breath caught. “They did this to you,” she said softly, and reached for her heavy-bladed belt knife. A foot or more of steel, it was almost a short-sword, though none but a fool would say that to an Aiel.

“Pull up the hood,” Rand told her roughly. “The whole point of this is that no one recognize me before I reach Bael and Bashere.” She hesitated, peering into his eyes. “I said, pull it up,” he growled. Sulin could kill most men with her bare hands, but her fingers were gentle settling the hood around his face.

With a laugh, Jalani snatched the hood down over his eyes. “Now you can be sure no one will know you, Rand al’Thor. You must trust us to guide your feet.” Several Maidens laughed.

Stiffening, he barely stopped short of seizing
saidin
. Barely. Lews Therin snarled and gibbered. Rand forced himself to breathe normally. It was not total darkness. He could see moonlight below the edge of the hood. Even so, he stumbled when Sulin and Enaila took his arms and led him forward.

“I thought you were old enough to walk better than that,” Enaila murmured in mock surprise. Sulin’s hand moved. It took him a moment to realize she was stroking his arm.

All he could see was what lay just before him, the moonlit flagstones of the stableyard, then stone steps, floors of marble by lamplight, sometimes with a long runner of carpet. He strained his eyes at the movement of shadows, felt for the telltale presence of
saidin
, or worse, the prickling that announced a woman holding
saidar
. Blind like this, he might not know he was under attack until too late. He could hear the whisper of a few servants’ feet as they hurried on nighttime chores, but no one challenged five Maidens apparently escorting two hooded prisoners. With Bael and Bashere living in the palace and policing Caemlyn with their men, doubtless stranger sights had been seen in these corridors. It was like walking a maze. But then he had been in one maze or another since leaving Emond’s Field, even when he had thought that he walked a clear path.

Would I know a clear path if I saw one?
he wondered.
Or have I been at this so long I’d think it was a trap?

There are no clear paths. Only pitfalls and tripwires and darkness
. Lews Therin’s snarl sounded sweaty, desperate. The way Rand felt.

When Sulin finally led them into a room and shut the door, Rand tossed his head violently to throw back the hood—and stared. Bael and Davram he had expected, but not Davram’s wife, Deira, nor Melaine, nor Dorindha.

“I see you,
Car’a’carn
.” Bael, the tallest man Rand had ever seen, sat cross-legged on the green-and-white floor tiles in his
cadin’sor
, an air about him even at ease that said he was ready to move in a heartbeat. The clan chief of the Goshien Aiel was not young—no clan chief was—and there was gray in his dark reddish hair, but anyone who thought him soft with age was in for a sad surprise. “May you always find water and shade. I stand with the
Car’a’carn
, and my spears stand with me.”

“Water and shade may be all very well,” Davram Bashere said, hooking a leg over the gilded arm of his chair, “but myself I would settle for chilled wine.” Little taller than Enaila, he had his short blue coat undone, and sweat glistened on his dark face. Despite his apparent indolence, he looked even harder than Bael, with his fierce tilted eyes, and his eagle’s beak of a nose above thick gray-streaked mustaches. “I offer congratulations on your escape, and your victory. But why do you come disguised as a prisoner?”

“I prefer to know whether he is bringing Aes Sedai down on us,” Deira put in. A large woman gowned in gold-worked green silk, Faile’s mother stood as tall as any Maiden there except Somara, long black hair slashed with white at the temples, her nose only a little less bold than her husband’s. Truth, she could give him lessons in looking fierce, and she was
very like her daughter in one respect. Her loyalty was to her husband, not Rand. “You’ve taken Aes Sedai
prisoner
! Are we now to expect the entire White Tower to descend upon our heads?”

“If they do,” Melaine said sharply, adjusting her shawl, “they will be dealt with as they deserve.” Sun-haired, green-eyed and beautiful, no more than a handful of years older than Rand by her face, she was a Wise One, and married to Bael. Whatever had caused the Wise Ones to change their view of Aes Sedai, Melaine, Amys and Bair had changed the most.