The Great Hunt Read online

  “Elaida, for one, would never let me off so easily.” Moiraine watched her friend’s back intently. Light, what has come over her? She has never been like this before. Where is her strength, her fire? “But it will not come to that, Siuan.”

  The other woman went on as if she had not spoken. “For me, it would be different. Even stilled, an Amyrlin who has been pulled down cannot be allowed to wander about loose; she might be seen as a martyr, become a rallying point for opposition. Tetsuan and Bonwhin were kept in the White Tower as servants. Scullery maids, who could be pointed to as cautions as to what can happen to the mightiest. No one can rally around a woman who must scrub floors and pots all day. Pity her, yes, but not rally to her.”

  Eyes blazing, Moiraine leaned her fists on the table. “Look at me, Siuan. Look at me! Are you saying that you want to give up, after all these years, after all we have done? Give up, and let the world go? And all for fear of a switching for not getting the pots clean enough!” She put into it all the scorn she could summon, and was relieved when her friend spun to face her. The strength was still there, strained but still there. Those clear blue eyes were as hot with anger as her own.

  “I remember which of the two of us squealed the loudest when we were switched as novices. You had lived a soft life in Cairhien, Moiraine. Not like working a fishing boat.” Abruptly Siuan slapped the table with a loud crack. “No, I am not suggesting giving up, but neither do I propose to watch everything slide out of our hands while I can do nothing! Most of my troubles with the Hall stem from you. Even the Greens wonder why I haven’t called you to the Tower and taught you a little discipline. Half the sisters with me think you should be handed over to the Reds, and if that happens, you will wish you were a novice again, with nothing worse to look forward to than a switching. Light! If any of them remember we were friends as novices, I’d be there beside you.

  “We had a plan! A plan, Moiraine! Locate the boy and bring him to Tar Valon, where we could hide him, keep him safe and guide him. Since you left the Tower, I have had only two messages from you. Two! I feel as if I’m trying to sail the Fingers of the Dragon in the dark. One message to say you were entering the Two Rivers, going to this village, this Emond’s Field. Soon, I thought. He’s found, and she’ll have him in hand soon. Then word from Caemlyn to say you were coming to Shienar, to Fal Dara, not Tar Valon. Fal Dara, with the Blight almost close enough to touch. Fal Dara, where Trollocs raid and Myrddraal ride as near every day as makes no difference. Nearly twenty years of planning and searching, and you toss all our plans practically in the Dark One’s face. Are you mad?”

  Now that she had stirred life in the other woman, Moiraine returned to outward calm, herself. Calm, but firm insistence, too. “The Pattern pays no heed to human plans, Siuan. With all our scheming, we forgot what we were dealing with. Ta’veren. Elaida is wrong. Artur Paendrag Tanreall was never this strongly ta’veren. The Wheel will weave the Pattern around this young man as it wills, whatever our plans.”

  The anger left Amyrlin’s face, replaced by white-faced shock. “It sounds as if you are saying we might as well give up. Do you now suggest standing aside and watching the world burn?”

  “No, Siuan. Never standing aside.” Yet the world will burn, Siuan, one way or another, whatever we do. You could never see that. “But we must now realize that our plans are precarious things. We have even less control than we thought. Perhaps only a fingernail’s grip. The winds of destiny are blowing, Siuan, and we must ride them where they take us.”

  The Amyrlin shivered as if she felt those winds icy on the back of her neck. Her hands went to the flattened cube of gold, blunt, capable fingers finding precise points in the complex designs. Cunningly balanced, the top lifted back to reveal a curled, golden horn nestled within a space designed to hold it. She lifted the instrument and traced the flowing silver script, in the Old Tongue, inlaid around the flaring mouth.

  “ ‘The grave is no bar to my call,’ ” she translated, so softly she seemed to be speaking to herself. “The Horn of Valere, made to call dead heroes back from the grave. And prophecy said it would only be found just in time for the Last Battle.” Abruptly she thrust the Horn back into its niche and closed the lid as if she could no longer bear the sight of it. “Agelmar pushed it into my hands as soon as the Welcome was done. He said he was afraid to go into his own strongroom any longer, with it there. The temptation was too great, he said. To sound the Horn himself and lead the host that answered its call north through the Blight to level Shayol Ghul itself and put an end to the Dark One. He burned with the ecstasy of glory, and it was that, he said, that told him it was not to be him, must not be him. He could not wait to be rid of it, yet he wanted it still.”

  Moiraine nodded. Agelmar was familiar with the Prophecy of the Horn; most who fought the Dark One were. “ ‘Let whosoever sounds me think not of glory, but only of salvation.’ ”

  “Salvation.” The Amyrlin laughed bitterly. “From the look in Agelmar’s eyes, he didn’t know whether he was giving away salvation or rejecting the condemnation of his own soul. He only knew he had to be rid of it before it burned him up. He has tried to keep it secret, but he says there are rumors in the keep already. I do not feel his temptation, yet the Horn still makes my skin crawl. He will have to take it back into his strongroom until I leave. I could not sleep with it even in the next room.” She rubbed frown lines from her forehead and sighed. “And it was not to be found until just before the Last Battle. Can it be that close? I thought, hoped, we would have more time.”

  “The Karaethon Cycle.”

  “Yes, Moiraine. You do not have to remind me. I’ve lived with the Prophecies of the Dragon as long as you.” The Amyrlin shook her head. “Never more than one false Dragon in a generation since the Breaking, and now three loose in the world at one time, and three more in the past two years. The Pattern demands a Dragon because the Pattern weaves toward Tarmon Gai’don. Sometimes doubt fills me, Moiraine.” She said it musingly, as if wondering at it, and went on in the same tone. “What if Logain was the one? He could channel, before the Reds brought him to the White Tower, and we gentled him. So can Mazrim Taim, the man in Saldaea. What if it is him? There are sisters in Saldaea already; he may be taken by now. What if we have been wrong since the start? What happens if the Dragon Reborn is gentled before the Last Battle even begins? Even prophecy can fail if the one prophesied is slain or gentled. And then we face the Dark One naked to the storm.”

  “Neither of them is the one, Siuan. The Pattern does not demand a Dragon, but the one true Dragon. Until he proclaims himself, the Pattern will continue to throw up false Dragons, but after that there will be no others. If Logain or the other were the one, there would be no others.”

  “ ‘For he shall come like the breaking dawn, and shatter the world again with his coming, and make it anew.’ Either we go naked in the storm, or cling to a protection that will scourge us. The Light help us all.” The Amyrlin shook herself as if to throw off her own words. Her face was set, as though bracing for a blow. “You could never hide what you were thinking from me as you do from everyone else, Moiraine. You have more to tell me, and nothing good.”

  For answer Moiraine took the leather pouch from her belt and upended it, spilling the contents on the table. It appeared to be only a heap of fragmented pottery, shiny black and white.

  The Amyrlin Seat touched one bit curiously, and her breath caught. “Cuendillar.”

  “Heartstone,” Moiraine agreed. The making of cuendillar had been lost at the Breaking of the World, but what had been made of heartstone had survived the cataclysm. Even those objects swallowed by the earth or sunk in the sea had survived; they must have. No known force could break cuendillar once it was complete; even the One Power directed against heartstone only made it stronger. Except that some power had broken this.

  The Amyrlin hastily assembled the pieces. What they formed was a disk the size of a man’s hand, half blacker than pitch and half whiter than snow, the c
olors meeting along a sinuous line, unfaded by age. The ancient symbol of Aes Sedai, before the world was broken, when men and women wielded the Power together. Half of it was now called the Flame of Tar Valon; the other half was scrawled on doors, the Dragon’s Fang, to accuse those within of evil. Only seven like it had been made; everything ever made of heartstone was recorded in the White Tower, and those seven were remembered above all. Siuan Sanche stared at it as she would have at a viper on her pillow.

  “One of the seals on the Dark One’s prison,” she said finally, reluctantly. It was those seven seals over which the Amyrlin Seat was supposed to be Watcher. The secret hidden from the world, if the world ever thought of it, was that no Amyrlin Seat had known where any of the seals were since the Trolloc Wars.

  “We know the Dark One is stirring, Siuan. We know his prison cannot stay sealed forever. Human work can never match the Creator’s. We knew he has touched the world again, even if, thank the Light, only indirectly. Darkfriends multiply, and what we called evil but ten years ago seems almost caprice compared with what now is done every day.”

  “If the seals are already breaking. . . . We may have no time at all.”

  “Little enough. But that little may be enough. It will have to be.”

  The Amyrlin touched the fractured seal, and her voice grew tight, as if she were forcing herself to speak. “I saw the boy, you know, in the courtyard during the Welcome. It is one of my Talents, seeing ta’veren. A rare Talent these days, even more rare than ta’veren, and certainly not of much use. A tall boy, a fairly handsome young man. Not much different from any young man you might see in any town.” She paused to draw breath. “Moiraine, he blazed like the sun. I’ve seldom been afraid in my life, but the sight of him made me afraid right down to my toes. I wanted to cower, to howl. I could barely speak. Agelmar thought I was angry with him, I said so little. That young man . . . he’s the one we have sought these twenty years.”

  There was a hint of question in her voice. Moiraine answered it. “He is.”

  “Are you certain? Can he . . . ? Can he . . . channel the One Power?”

  Her mouth strained around the words, and Moiraine felt the tension, too, a twisting inside, a cold clutching at her heart. She kept her face smooth, though. “He can.” A man wielding the One Power. That was a thing no Aes Sedai could contemplate without fear. It was a thing the whole world feared. And I will loose it on the world. “Rand al’Thor will stand before the world as the Dragon Reborn.”

  The Amyrlin shuddered. “Rand al’Thor. It does not sound like a name to inspire fear and set the world on fire.” She gave another shiver and rubbed her arms briskly, but her eyes suddenly shone with a purposeful light. “If he is the one, then we truly may have time enough. But is he safe here? I have two Red sisters with me, and I can no longer answer for Green or Yellow, either. The Light consume me, I can’t answer for any of them, not with this. Even Verin and Serafelle would leap on him the way they would a scarlet adder in a nursery.”

  “He is safe, for the moment.”

  The Amyrlin waited for her to say more. The silence stretched, until it was plain she would not. Finally the Amyrlin said, “You say our old plan is useless. What do you suggest now?”

  “I have purposely let him think I no longer have any interest in him, that he may go where he pleases for all of me.” She raised her hands as the Amyrlin opened her mouth. “It was necessary, Siuan. Rand al’Thor was raised in the Two Rivers, where Manetheren’s stubborn blood flows in every vein, and his own blood is like rock beside clay compared to Manetheren’s. He must be handled gently, or he will bolt in any direction but the one we want.”

  “Then we’ll handle him like a newborn babe. We’ll wrap him in swaddling clothes and play with his toes, if that’s what you think we need. But to what immediate purpose?”

  “His two friends, Matrim Cauthon and Perrin Aybara, are ripe to see the world before they sink back into the obscurity of the Two Rivers. If they can sink back; they are ta’veren, too, if lesser than he. I will induce them to carry the Horn of Valere to Illian.” She hesitated, frowning. “There is . . . a problem with Mat. He carries a dagger from Shadar Logoth.”

  “Shadar Logoth! Light, why did you ever let them get near that place. Every stone of it is tainted. There isn’t a pebble safe to carry away. Light help us, if Mordeth touched the boy. . . .” The Amyrlin sounded as though she were strangling. “If that happened, the world would be doomed.”

  “But it did not, Siuan. We do what we must from necessity, and it was necessary. I have done enough so that Mat will not infect others, but he had the dagger too long before I knew. The link is still there. I had thought I must take him to Tar Valon to cure it, but with so many sisters present, it might be done here. So long as there are a few you can trust not to see Darkfriends where there are none. You and I and two others will suffice, using my angreal.”

  “Leane will do for one, and I can find another.” Suddenly the Amyrlin Seat gave a wry grin. “The Hall wants that angreal back, Moiraine. There are not very many of them left, and you are now considered . . . unreliable.”

  Moiraine smiled, but it did not touch her eyes. “They will think worse of me before I am done. Mat will leap at the chance to be so big a part of the legend of the Horn, and Perrin should not be hard to convince. He needs something to take his mind off his own troubles. Rand knows what he is—some of it, at least; a little—and he is afraid of it, naturally. He wants to go off somewhere alone, where he cannot hurt anyone. He says he will never wield the Power again, but he fears not being able to stop it.”

  “As well he might. Easier to give up drinking water.”

  “Exactly. And he wants to be free from Aes Sedai.” Moiraine gave a small, mirthless smile. “Offered the chance to leave Aes Sedai behind and still stay with his friends a while longer, he should be as eager as Mat.”

  “But how is he leaving Aes Sedai behind? Surely you must travel with him. We can’t lose him now, Moiraine.”

  “I cannot travel with him.” It is a long way from Fal Dara to Illian, but he has traveled almost as far already. “He must be let off the leash for a time. There is no help for it. I have had all of their old clothes burned. There has been too much opportunity for some shred of what they were wearing to have fallen into the wrong hands. I will cleanse them before they leave; they will not even realize it has been done. There will be no chance they can be tracked that way, and the only other threat of that kind is locked away here in the dungeon.” The Amyrlin, midway in nodding approval, gave her a questioning look, but she did not pause. “They will travel as safely as I can manage, Siuan. And when Rand needs me in Illian, I will be there, and I will see that it is he who presents the Horn to the Council of Nine and the Assemblage. I will see to everything in Illian. Siuan, the Illianers would follow the Dragon, or Ba’alzamon himself, if he came bearing the Horn of Valere, and so will the greater part of those gathered for the Hunt. The true Dragon Reborn will not need to gather a following before nations move against him. He will begin with a nation around him and an army at his back.”

  The Amyrlin dropped back into her chair, but immediately leaned forward. She seemed caught between weariness and hope. “But will he proclaim himself? If he’s afraid. . . . The Light knows he should be, Moiraine, but men who name themselves as the Dragon want the power. If he does not. . . .”

  “I have the means to see him named Dragon whether he wills it or not. And even if I somehow fail, the Pattern itself will see him named Dragon whether he wills it or not. Remember, he is ta’veren, Siuan. He has no more control over his fate than a candle wick has over the flame.”

  The Amyrlin sighed. “It’s risky, Moiraine. Risky. But my father used to say, ‘Girl, if you won’t take a chance, you’ll never win a copper.’ We have plans to make. Sit down; this won’t be done quickly. I will send for wine and cheese.”

  Moiraine shook her head. “We have been closeted alone too long already. If any did try listening and fou
nd your Warding, they will be wondering already. It is not worth the risk. We can contrive another meeting tomorrow.” Besides, my dearest friend, I cannot tell you everything, and I cannot risk letting you know I am holding anything back.

  “I suppose you are right. But first thing in the morning. There’s so much I have to know.”

  “The morning,” Moiraine agreed. The Amyrlin rose, and they hugged again. “In the morning I will tell you everything you need to know.”

  Leane gave Moiraine a sharp look when she came out into the anteroom, then darted into the Amyrlin’s chamber. Moiraine tried to put on a chastened face, as if she had endured one of the Amyrlin’s infamous upbraidings—most women, however strong-willed, returned from those big-eyed and weak-kneed—but the expression was foreign to her. She looked more angry than anything else, which served much the same purpose. She was only vaguely aware of the other women in the outer room; she thought some had gone and others come since she went in, but she barely looked at them. The hour was growing late, and there was much to be done before the morning came. Much, before she spoke to the Amyrlin Seat again.

  Quickening her step, she moved deeper into the keep.

  The column would have made an impressive sight under the waxing moon, moving through the Tarabon night to the jangle of harness, had there been anyone to see it. A full two thousand Children of the Light, well mounted, in white tabards and cloaks, armor burnished, with their train of supply wagons, and farriers, and grooms with the strings of remounts. There were villages in this sparsely forested country, but they had left roads behind, and stayed clear of even farmers’ crofts. They were to meet . . . someone . . . at a flyspeck village near the northern border of Tarabon, at the edge of Almoth Plain.

  Geofram Bornhald, riding at the head of his men, wondered what it was all about. He remembered too well his interview with Pedron Niall, Lord Captain Commander of the Children of the Light, in Amador, but he had learned little there.