The Fires of Heaven twot-5 Page 3

  She merely shrugged. "You can play with your toys as much as you wish, so far as I am concerned. You offer little in the way of hospitality, Rahvin, so you will forgive me if…" A silver pitcher rose from a small table by Rahvin's bed and tilted to pour dark wine into a gold-chased goblet. As the pitcher settled, the goblet floated to Lanfear's hand. He felt nothing beyond a slight tingle, of course, saw no flows being woven; he had never liked that. That she would be able to see as little of his weaving was only a slight redressing of the balance.

  "Why?" he demanded again.

  She sipped calmly before speaking. "Since you avoid the rest of us, a few of the Chosen will be coming here. I came first so you would know it was not an attack."

  "Others? Some plan of yours? What need have I of someone else's designs?" Suddenly he laughed, a deep, rich sound. "So it is no attack, is it? You were never one for attacking openly, were you? Not as bad as Moghedien, perhaps, but you did always favor the flanks and the rear. I will trust you this time, enough to hear you out. As long as you are under my eye." Who trusted Lanfear behind him deserved the knife he might well find in his back. Not that she was so very trustworthy even when watched; her temper was uncertain at best. "Who else is supposed to be part of this?"

  He had clearer warning this time — it was male work — as another gateway opened, showing marble arches open onto wide stone balconies, and gulls wheeling and crying in a cloudless blue sky. Finally a man appeared and stepped through, the way closing behind him.

  Sammael was compact, solid and larger-seeming than he truly was, his stride quick and active, his manner abrupt. Blue-eyed and golden-haired, with a neat square-trimmed beard, he would perhaps have been above the ordinary in looks except for a slanting scar, as if a red-hot poker had been dragged across his face from hairline to jaw. He could have had it removed as soon as it was made, all those long years ago, but he had elected not to.

  Linked to saidin as tightly as Rahvin — this close Rahvin could feel it, dimly — Sammael eyed him warily. "I expected serving maids and dancing girls, Rahvin. Have you finally wearied of your sport after all these years?' Lanfear laughed softly into her wine.

  "Did someone mention sport?"

  Rahvin had not even noticed the opening of a third gateway, showing a large room full of pools and fluted columns, nearly nude acrobats and attendants wearing less. Oddly, a lean old man in a wrinkled coat sat disconsolately among the performers. Two servants in filmy bits of nothing much, a well-muscled man bearing a wrought-gold tray and a beautiful, voluptuous woman anxiously pouring wine from a cut-crystal flagon into a matching goblet on the tray, followed the true arrival before the opening winked out.

  In any other company but Lanfear's, Graendal would have been accounted a stunningly beautiful woman, lush and ripe. Her gown was green silk, cut low. A ruby the size of a hen's egg nestled between her breasts, and a coronet encrusted with more rested on her long, sun-colored hair. Beside Lanfear she was merely plumply pretty. If the inevitable comparison bothered her, her amused smile gave no sign of it.

  Golden bracelets clattered as she waved a heavily beringed hand generally behind her; the female servant quickly slipped the goblet into her grasp with a fawning smile mirrored by the man. Graendal took no notice. "So," she said gaily. "Nearly half the surviving Chosen in one place. And no one trying to kill anyone. Who would have expected it before the Great Lord of the Dark returns? Ishamael did manage to keep us from one another's throats for a time, but this…"

  "Do you always speak so freely in front of your servants?" Sammael said with a grimace.

  Graendal blinked, glanced back at the pair as if she had forgotten them. "They won't speak out of turn. They worship me. Don't you?" The two fell to their knees, practically babbling their fervent love of her. It was real; they actually did love her. Now. After a moment, she frowned slightly, and the servants froze, mouths open in midword. "They do go on. Still, they won't bother you now, will they?"

  Rahvin shook his head, wondering who they were, or had been. Physical beauty was not enough for Graendal's servants; they had to have power or position as well. A former lord for a footman, a lady to draw her bath; that was Graendal's taste. Indulging herself was one thing, but she was wasteful. This pair might have been of use, properly manipulated, but the level of compulsion Graendal employed surely left them good for little more than decoration. The woman had no true finesse.

  "Should I expect more, Lanfear?" he growled. "Have you convinced Demandred to stop thinking he is all but the Great Lord's heir?"

  "I doubt he is arrogant enough for that," Lanfear replied smoothly. "He can see where it took Ishamael. And that is the point. A point Graendal raised. Once we were thirteen, immortal. Now four are dead, and one has betrayed us. We four are all who meet here today, and enough."

  "Are you certain Asmodean went over?" Sammael demanded. "He never had the courage to take a chance before. Where did he find the heart to join a lost cause?"

  Lanfear's brief smile was amused. "He had the courage for an ambush he thought would set him above the rest of us. And when his choice became death or a doomed cause, it took little courage for him to choose."

  "And little time, I'll wager." The scar made Sammael's sneer even more biting. "If you were close enough to him to know all of this, why did you leave him alive? You could have killed him before he knew you were there."

  "I am not as quick to kill as you. It is final, with no going back, and there are usually other, more profitable ways. Besides, to put it in terms you would understand, I did not want to launch a frontal assault against superior forces."

  "Is he really so strong?" Rahvin asked quietly. "This Rand al'Thor. Could he have overwhelmed you, face-to-face?" Not that he himself could not, if it came to it, or Sammael, though Graendal would likely link with Lanfear if either of the men tried. For that matter, both women were probably filled to bursting with the Power right that moment, ready to strike at the slightest suspicion of either man. Or of each other. But this farmboy. An untrained shepherd! Untrained unless Asmodean was trying.

  "He is Lews Therin Telamon reborn," Lanfear said just as softly, "and Lews Therin was as strong as any." Sammael absently rubbed the scar across his face; it had been Lews Therin who gave it to him. Three thousand years ago and more, well before the Breaking of the World, before the Great Lord was imprisoned, before so much, but Sammael never forgot.

  "Well," Graendal put in, "have we come around at last to what we are here to discuss?"

  Rahvin gave a displeased start. The two servants were frozen still— or again, rather. Sammael muttered in his beard.

  "If this Rand al'Thor really is Lews Therin Telamon reborn," Graendal went on, settling herself on the man's back where he crouched on all fours, "I am surprised you haven't tried to snuggle him into your bed, Lanfear. Or would it be so easy? I seem to remember Lews Therin led you by the nose, not the other way around. Squelched your little tantrums. Sent you running to fetch his wine, in a manner of speaking." She set her own wine on the tray, held out rigidly by the sightlessly kneeling woman. "You were so obsessed with him you'd have stretched out at his feet if he said 'rug'."

  Lanfear's dark eyes glittered for a moment before she regained control of herself. "He may be Lews Therin reborn, but he is not Lews Therin himself."

  "How do you know?" Graendal asked, smiling as if it were all a joke. "It may well be that, as many believe, all are born and reborn as the Wheel turns, but nothing like this has ever happened that I have read. A specific man reborn according to prophecy. Who knows what he is?"

  Lanfear gave a disparaging smirk. "I have observed him closely. He is no more than the shepherd he seems, still more naive than not." Scorn faded to seriousness. "But now he has Asmodean, weak ally as he is. And even before Asmodean, four of the Chosen have died confronting him."

  "Let him whittle away the dead wood," Sammael said gruffly. He wove flows of Air to drag a chair across the carpet and sprawled with his boots crossed at the ankl
e and one arm over the low, carved back. Anyone who believed he was at ease was a fool; Sammael had always liked to dupe his enemies into thinking they could take him by surprise. "More for the rest of us on the Day of Return. Or do you think he might win Tarmon Gai'don, Lanfear? Even if he stiffens Asmodean's backbone, he has no Hundred Companions this time. With Asmodean or alone, the Great Lord will extinguish him like a broken sar-light."

  The look Lanfear gave him bristled with contempt. "How many of us will be alive when the Great Lord is freed at last? Four gone already. Will he come after you next, Sammael? You might like that. You could finally get rid of that scar if you defeated him. But I forget. How many times did you face him in the War of Power? Did you ever win? I cannot seem to remember." Without pause she rounded on Graendal. "Or it might be you. He is reluctant to hurt women for some reason, but you won't even be able to make Asmodean's choice. You cannot teach him any more than a stone could. Unless he decides to keep you as a pet. That would be a change for you, would it not? Instead of deciding which of your pretties pleases you best, you could learn to please."

  Graendal's face contorted, and Rahvin prepared to shield himself against whatever the two women might hurl at one another, prepared to Travel at even a whiff of balefire. Then he sensed Sammael gathering the Power, sensed a difference in it — Sammael would call it seizing a tactical advantage — and bent to grab the other man's arm. Sammael shook him off angrily, but the moment had passed. The two women were looking at them now, not each other. Neither could know what had almost happened, but clearly something had passed between Rahvin and Sammael, and suspicion lit their eyes.

  "I want to hear what Lanfear has to say." He did not look at Sammael, but meant it for him. "There must be more to this than a foolish attempt to frighten us." Sammael jerked his head in what might have been a nod or merely disgruntlement. It would have to do.

  "Oh, there is, though a little fright could not hurt." Lanfear's dark eyes still held distrust, but her voice was as clear as still water. "Ishamael tried to control him and failed, tried to kill him in the end and failed, but Ishamael tried bullying and fear, and bullying does not work with Rand al'Thor."

  "Ishamael was more than half-mad," Sammael muttered, "and less than half-human."

  "Is that what we are?" Graendal arched an eyebrow. "Merely human? Surely we are something more. This is human." She stroked a finger down the cheek of the woman kneeling beside her. "A new word will have to be created to describe us."

  "Whatever we are," Lanfear said, "we can succeed where Ishamael failed." She was leaning slightly forward, as if to force the words on them. Lanfear seldom showed tension. Why now?

  "Why only we four?" Rahvin asked. The other "why" would have to wait.

  "Why more?" was Lanfear's reply. "If we can present the Dragon Reborn kneeling to the Great Lord on the Day of Return, why share the honor — and the rewards — further than need be? And perhaps he can even be used to — how did you put it, Sammael? — whittle away the dead wood."

  It was the sort of answer Rahvin could understand. Not that he trusted her, of course, or any of the others, but he understood ambition. The Chosen had plotted among themselves for position up to the day Lews Therin had imprisoned them in sealing up the Great Lord's prison, and they had begun again the day they were freed. He just had to be sure Lanfear's plot did not disrupt his own plans. "Speak on," he told her.

  "First, someone else is trying to control him. Perhaps to kill. I suspect Moghedien or Demandred. Moghedien has always tried to work from the shadows, and Demandred always did hate Lews Therin." Sammael smiled, or perhaps grimaced, but his hatred was a pale thing beside Demandred's, though for better cause.

  "How do you know it is not one of us here?" Graendal asked glibly.

  Lanfear's smile showed as many teeth as the other woman's, and as little warmth. "Because you three choose to carve out niches for yourselves and secure your power while the rest slash at each other. And other reasons. I told you I keep a close watch on Rand al'Thor."

  It was true, what she said of them. Rahvin himself preferred diplomacy and manipulation to open conflict, though he would not shy from it if needed. Sammael's way had always been armies and conquest; he would not go near Lews Therin, even reborn as a shepherd, until he was sure of victory. Graendal, too, followed conquest, though her methods did not involve soldiers; for all her concern with her toys, she took one solid step at a time. Openly to be sure, as the Chosen reckoned such things, but never stretching too far at any step.

  "You know I can keep an eye on him unseen," Lanfear continued, "but the rest of you must stay clear or run the risk of detection. We must draw him back…"

  Graendal leaned forward, interested, and Sammael began to nod as she went on. Rahvin reserved judgment. It might well work. And if not… If not, he saw several ways to shape events to his advantage. This might work out very well indeed.

  Chapter 1

  (Lion Rampant)

  Fanning the Sparks

  The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the great forest called Braem Wood. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

  South and west it blew, dry, beneath a sun of molten gold. There had been no rain for long weeks in the land below, and the late-summer heat grew day by day. Brown leaves come early dotted some trees, and naked stones baked where small streams had run. In an open place where grass had vanished and only thin, withered brush held the soil with its roots, the wind began uncovering long-buried stones. They were weathered and worn, and no human eye would have recognized them for the remains of a city remembered in story yet otherwise forgotten.

  Scattered villages appeared before the wind crossed the border of Andor, and fields where worried farmers trudged arid furrows. The forest had long since thinned to thickets by the time the wind swept dust down the lone street of a village called Kore Springs. The springs were beginning to run low this summer. A few dogs lay panting in the swelter, and two shirtless boys ran, beating a stuffed bladder along the ground with sticks. Nothing else stirred, save the wind and the dust and the creaking sign above the door of the inn, red brick and thatch-roofed like every other building along the street. At two stories, it was the tallest and largest structure in Kore Springs, a neat and orderly little town. The saddled horses hitched in front of the inn barely twitched their tails. The inn's carved sign proclaimed the Good Queen's Justice.

  Blinking against the dust, Min kept an eye pressed to the crack in the shed's rough wall. She could just make out one shoulder of the guard on the shed door, but her attention was all for the inn further on. She wished the name were less ominously apt. Their judge, the local lord, had apparently arrived some time ago, but she had missed seeing him. No doubt he was hearing the farmer's charges; Admer Nem, along with his brothers and cousins and all their wives, had seemed in favor of an immediate hanging before one of the lord's retainers happened by. She wondered what the penalty was here for burning up a man's barn, and his milkcows with it. By accident, of course, but she did not think that would count for much when it all began with trespass.

  Logain had gotten away in the confusion, abandoning them — he would, burn him! — and she did not know whether to be happy about that or not. It was he who had knocked Nem down when they were discovered just before dawn, sending the man's lantern flying into the straw. The blame was his, if anyone's. Only sometimes he had trouble watching what he said. Perhaps as well he was gone…

  Twisting to lean back against the wall, she wiped sweat from her brow, though it only sprang out again. The inside of the shed was stifling, but her two companions did not appear to notice. Siuan lay stretched out on her back in a dark woolen riding dress much like Min's, staring at the
shed roof, idly tapping her chin with a straw. Coppery-skinned Leane, willowy and as tall as most men, sat cross-legged in her pale shift, working on her dress with needle and thread. They had been allowed to keep their saddlebags, after they were searched for swords or axes or anything else that might help them escape.

  "What's the penalty for burning down a barn in Andor?" Min asked.

  "If we are lucky," Siuan replied without moving, "a strapping in the village square. Not so lucky, and it will be a flogging."

  "Light!" Min breathed. "How can you call that luck?"

  Siuan rolled onto her side and propped herself up on an elbow. She was a sturdy woman, short of beautiful though beyond handsome, and looked no more than a few years older than Min, but those sharp blue eyes had a commanding presence that did not belong on a young woman awaiting trial in a backcountry shed. Sometimes Siuan was as bad as Logain about forgetting herself; maybe worse. "When a strapping is done," she said in a brook-no-nonsense, do-not-be-foolish tone, "it is done, and we can be on our way. It wastes less of our time than any other penalty I can think of. Considerably less than hanging, say. Though I don't think it will come to that, from what I remember of Andoran law."

  Wheezing laughter shook Min for a moment; it was that or cry. "Time? The way we are going, we've nothing but time. I swear we have been through every village between here and Tar Valon, and found nothing. Not a glimmer, not a whisper. I don't think there is any gathering. And we are on foot, now. From what I overheard, Logain took the horses with him. Afoot and locked in a shed awaiting the Light knows what!"

  "Watch names," Siuan whispered sharply, shooting a meaning glance at the rough door with the guard on the other side. "A flapping tongue can put you in the net instead of the fish."