Winter's Heart Read online

  Perhaps that was brusque, but Dobraine’s expression hardly changed. His eyebrows rose slightly at the name written on the second packet; that was all. He made a smooth bow. Cairhienin usually were smooth. “It shall be as you say. Forgive me, but you sound as though you mean to be gone a long while.”

  Rand shrugged. He trusted the High Lord as far as he trusted anyone. Almost as far. “Who can say? The times are uncertain. Make sure Headmistress Tarsin has whatever coin she needs, and the men starting the school in Caemlyn. The school in Tear, as well, until matters change there.”

  “As you say,” Dobraine repeated, tucking the packets into his coat. His face betrayed no emotion, now. An experienced player in the Game of Houses, was Dobraine.

  For her part, the Headmistress managed to look pleased and disgruntled at the same time, and busied herself smoothing her dress unnecessarily the way women did when hard-pressed not to speak their minds. Complain how she would about dreamers and philosophers, she was jealous of the Academy’s well-being. She would shed no tears if those other schools vanished and their scholars were forced to come to the Academy. Even the philosophers. What would she think of one particular order in Dobraine’s packet?

  “I’ve found everything I need,” Min said, coming out from the shelves staggering slightly under the weight of the three bulging cloth scrips that hung from her. Her plain brown coat and breeches were very like what she had worn when he first saw her in Baerlon. For some reason, she had grumbled over them until anyone who knew her would have thought he was asking her to put on a dress. She smiled now, though, with delight and a hint of mischief. “I hope those packhorses are where we left them, or my Lord Dragon will have to be fitted for a packsaddle.”

  Idrien gasped, scandalized to hear him addressed so, but Dobraine merely smiled a little. He had seen Min around Rand before.

  Rand got rid of them as quickly as possible then, since they had heard and seen as much as he wanted them to—sent them off with a final admonition that he had never been there at all. Dobraine nodded as if he had expected no less. Idrien looked thoughtful as she left. If she let anything slip where a servant could hear, or a scholar, it would be all over the City in two days. There was not much time in any case. Perhaps no one who could tell had been close enough to feel him open a gateway here, but anyone looking for the signs would be sure by now there was a ta’veren in the city. It was not his plan to be found yet.

  When the door closed behind them, he studied Min for a moment, then took one of the scrips and slung it from his shoulder.

  “Only one?” she said. Setting the others on the floor, she planted her fists on her hips and scowled. “Sometimes you really are a sheepherder. These bags must be a hundredweight each.” But she sounded more amused than upset.

  “You should have picked smaller books,” he told her, pulling on riding gloves to hide the Dragons. “Or lighter.” He turned toward the window, to fetch the leather scrip, and a wave of dizziness hit him. Knees turning to water, he stumbled. A shimmering face he could not make out flashed through his head. With an effort, he caught himself, forced his legs straight. And the whirling sensation vanished. Lews Therin panted hoarsely in the shadows. Could the face be his?

  “If you think you’ll make me carry them all that way, think again,” Min grumbled. “I’ve seen better pretending from stablehands. You could try falling down.”

  “Not this time.” He was ready for what happened when he channeled; he could control it to some extent. Usually. Most of the time. This dizziness without saidin was new. Maybe he had just turned too fast. And maybe pigs did fly. He settled the leather scrip’s strap over his free shoulder. The men in the stableyard were still busy. Building. “Min—”

  Her brows lowered immediately. She paused for an instant in drawing on her red gloves and began tapping her foot. A dangerous sign with any woman, especially one who carried knives. “We had this out, Rand bloody Dragon Reborn al’Thor! You are not leaving me behind!”

  “The thought never crossed my mind,” he lied. He was too weak; he could not make himself say the words, to make her stay. Too weak, he thought bitterly, and she might well die for it, the Light burn me forever!

  It will, Lews Therin promised softly.

  “I just thought you should know what we’ve been doing, and what we are going to do,” Rand went on. “I haven’t been very forthcoming, I suppose.” Gathering himself, he seized saidin. The room seemed to whirl, and he rode the avalanche of fire and ice and filth with nausea seething in his belly. He was able to stand erect without swaying, though. Barely. And just able to weave the flows of a gateway that opened into a snowy clearing where two saddled horses were tethered to a low branch of an oak.

  He was glad to see the animals still there. The clearing was well away from the nearest road, but there were still wanderers who had turned their backs on families and farms, trades and crafts, because the Dragon Reborn had broken all bonds. The Prophecies said so. On the other hand, a good many of those men and women, footsore and half-frozen now on top of it, were tired of searching without any notion what they were searching for. Even these nondescript mounts surely would have vanished with the first man to find them unattended. He had gold enough to buy others, but he did not think Min would have enjoyed the hour’s walk to the village where they had left the packhorses.

  Hurrying through into the clearing, pretending the change from floor to knee-deep snow caused his stumble, he only waited until she had snatched up her bags of books and staggered through after him before releasing the Power. They were five hundred miles from Cairhien, and nearer Tar Valon than anywhere else of note. Alanna had faded in his head when the gateway closed.

  “Forthcoming?” Min said, sounding suspicious. Of his motives, he hoped, or anything but the truth. The dizziness and nausea faded slowly. “You have been as open as a mussel, Rand, but I am not blind. First we Traveled to Rhuidean, where you asked so many questions about this Shara place that anybody would think you meant to go there.” Frowning faintly, she shook her head as she fastened one of her burdens to the saddle of her brown gelding. She grunted with the effort, but she was not about to set the other bag of books down in the snow. “I never thought the Aiel Waste was like that. That city is bigger than Tar Valon, even if it is half ruined. And all those fountains, and the lake. I couldn’t even see the far side. I thought there wasn’t any water in the Waste. And it was as cold as here; I thought the Waste was hot!”

  “In summer, you fry during the day, but you still freeze at night.” He felt recovered enough to begin shifting his own burdens to the gray’s saddle. Almost enough. He did it anyway. “If you already know everything, what was I doing besides asking questions?”

  “The same as in Tear last night. Making sure every cat and blackbird knew you were there. In Tear, it was Chachin you asked about. It’s obvious. You are trying to confuse anyone who tries to find out where you are and where you’re going next.” The second bag of books balancing the first behind her saddle, she untied her reins and climbed into the saddle. “So, am I blind?”

  “Your eyes belong on an eagle.” He hoped his pursuers saw as clearly. Or that whoever directed them did. It would not do to have them haring off the Light knew where. “I need to lay some more false trails, I think.”

  “Why take the time? I know you have a plan, I know it concerns something in that leather scrip—a sa’angreal?—and I know it’s important. Don’t look so surprised. You barely let that bag out of your sight. Why not go ahead and do whatever it is you plan, then lay your false trails? And the real one, of course. You’re going to turn on them when they least expect, you said. You can hardly do that unless they follow where you want.”

  “I wish you’d never started reading Herid Fel’s books,” he muttered sourly, pulling himself into the gray’s saddle. His head spun only a little. “You puzzle out too much. Can I keep any secrets at all from you, now?”

  “You never could, woolhead,” she laughed, and then, con
tradicting herself, “What are you planning? Aside from killing Dashiva and the rest, I mean. I have a right to know if I’m traveling with you.” As if she had not insisted on traveling with him.

  “I’m going to cleanse the male half of the Source,” he said in a flat voice. A momentous announcement. A grand scheme, more than grand. Grandiose, most would say. He might have said he intended to take an afternoon stroll, for all of Min’s reaction. She simply looked at him, hands folded on the pommel of her saddle, until he went on.

  “I don’t know how long it will take, and once I start, I think everyone within a thousand miles of me who can channel will know something is happening. I doubt I’ll be able to just stop if Dashiva and the rest, or the Forsaken, suddenly appear to see what it is. The Forsaken, I can’t do anything about, but with luck, I can finish the others.” Maybe being ta’veren would give him the edge he needed so desperately.

  “Depend on luck, and Corlan Dashiva or the Forsaken, either one, will have you for breakfast,” she said, turning her horse out of the clearing. “Maybe I can think of a better way. Come on. There’s a warm fire at that inn. I hope you’re going to let us have a hot meal before we leave.”

  Rand stared after her incredulously. You would have thought five renegade Asha’man, not to mention the Forsaken, were less bother than a sore tooth. Booting the gray ahead in a spray of snow, he caught up to her and rode in silence. He still had a few secrets from her, this sickness that had begun affecting him when he channeled, for one. That was the real reason he had to deal with Dashiva and the others first. It gave him time to get over the sickness. If that was possible. If not, he was not sure the two ter’angreal riding behind his saddle were going to be any use at all.

  CHAPTER

  1

  Leaving the Prophet

  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 above the Aryth Ocean. 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.

  East the wind blew above the cold gray-green ocean swells, toward Tarabon, where ships already unloaded or waiting their turns to enter the harbor of Tanchico tossed at anchor for miles along the low coastline. More ships, great and small, filled the huge harbor, and barges ferrying people and cargo ashore, for there was no mooring empty at any of the city’s docks. The inhabitants of Tanchico had been fearful when the city fell to its new masters, with their peculiar customs and strange creatures and women held on leashes who could channel, and fearful again when this fleet arrived, mind-numbing in its size, and began disgorging not only soldiers but sharp-eyed merchants, and craftsfolk with the tools of their trades, and even families with wagons full of farm implements and unknown plants. There was a new King and a new Panarch to order the laws, though, and if King and Panarch owed fealty to some far distant Empress, if Seanchan nobles occupied many of the palaces and demanded deeper obeisance than any Taraboner lord or lady, life was little changed for most people, except for the better. The Seanchan Blood had small contact with ordinary folk, and odd customs could be lived with. The anarchy that had ripped the country apart was just a memory, now, and hunger with it. The rebels and bandits and Dragonsworn who had plagued the land were dead or captured or driven north onto Almoth Plain, those who had not yielded, and trade moved once more. The hordes of starving refugees that had clogged the city streets were back in their villages, back on their farms. And no more of the newest arrivals remained in Tanchico than the city could support easily. Despite the snows, soldiers and merchants, craftsfolk and farmers fanned out inland in their thousands and tens of thousands, but the icy wind lashed a Tanchico at peace and, after its harsh troubles, for the most part content with its lot.

  East the wind blew for leagues, gusting and fading, dividing but never dying, east and veering to the south, across forests and plains wrapped in winter, bare-branched and brown-grassed, at last crossing what had once been the border between Tarabon and Amadicia. A border still, but only in name, the customs posts dismantled, the guards gone. East and south, around the southern reaches of the Mountains of Mist, swirling across high-walled Amador. Conquered Amador. The banner atop the massive Fortress of the Light snapped in the wind, the golden hawk it bore truly seeming to fly with lightning bolts clutched in its talons. Few natives left their homes except at need, and those few hurried along the frozen streets, cloaks clutched around them and eyes down. Eyes down not just to mind footing on slick paving stones but to avoid looking at the occasional Seanchan riding by on a beast like a bronze-scaled cat the size of a horse, or steel-veiled Taraboners guarding groups of onetime Children of the Light, now chained and laboring like animals to haul refuse wagons out of the city. A bare month and a half in the Seanchan fold, the people of Amadicia’s capital city felt the bitter wind like a scourge, and those who did not curse their fate meditated on what sins had brought them to this.

  East the wind howled over a desolated land where as many villages lay burned and farms ruined as held people. Snow blanketed charred timbers and abandoned barns alike, softening the view even as it added freezing to starvation as a way of dying. Sword and axe and spear had been there already, and remained to kill again. East, until the wind moaned a dirge over unwalled Abila. No banners flew above the town’s watchtowers, for the Prophet of the Lord Dragon was there, and the Prophet needed no banner save his name. In Abila, people shivered harder at the name of the Prophet than they did for the wind. People elsewhere shivered at that name, too.

  Striding out of the tall merchant’s house where Masema lived, Perrin let the wind whip his fur-lined cloak as he pulled on his gloves. The midday sun gave no warmth, and the air bit deep. He kept his face smooth, but he was too angry to feel the cold. Keeping his hands from the axe at his belt was an effort. Masema—he would not call the man Prophet, not in his own head he would not!—Masema was very likely a fool, and very certainly insane. A powerful fool, more powerful than most kings, and mad with it.

  Masema’s guards filled the street from side to side and stretched around the corners of the next streets, bony fellows in stolen silks, beardless apprentices in torn coats, once-plump merchants in the remains of fine woolens. Their breath was white mist, and some shivered without a cloak, but every man clutched a spear, or a crossbow with the bolt in place. Still, none looked outwardly hostile. They knew he claimed acquaintance with the Prophet, and they gaped as if expecting him to leap into the air and fly. Or at least turn somersaults. He filtered out the smell of woodsmoke from the town’s chimneys. The lot of them stank of old sweat and unwashed bodies, of eagerness and fear. And of a strange fever he had not recognized before, a reflection of the madness in Masema. Hostile or not, they would kill him, or anyone, at Masema’s word. They would butcher nations at Masema’s word. Smelling them, he felt a coldness deeper than any winter wind. He was gladder than ever that he had refused to let Faile come with him.

  The men he had left with the mounts were playing at dice alongside the animals, or going though the motions of it, on a space of paving stones scraped mostly clear of snowy slush. He did not trust Masema as far as he could throw his bay, and nor did they. They were paying more mind to the house, and the guards, than to their game. The three Warders sprang to their feet as soon as he appeared, their eyes going to his companions coming out behind him. They knew what their Aes Sedai had felt inside there. Neald was slower, pausing to scoop up the dice and coins. The Asha’man was a popinjay, always stroking his curled mustaches, strutting and smirking at women, but he stood on the balls of his feet now, wary as a cat.

  “I thought we’d have to fight our way out of there for a time,” Elyas murmured at Perrin’s shoulder. His golden eyes were calm, though. A lanky old man in a broad-brimmed hat, with graying hair that hung down his back to his waist an
d a long beard fanning across his chest. A long knife at his belt, not a sword. But he had been a Warder. He still was, in a way.

  “That’s the only thing that went right,” Perrin told him, taking Stayer’s reins from Neald. The Asha’man quirked an eyebrow questioningly, but Perrin shook his head, not caring what the question was, and Neald, with a twist to his mouth, handed Elyas the reins of his mouse-colored gelding before climbing onto his own dapple.

  Perrin had no time for the Murandian’s sulks. Rand had sent him to bring back Masema, and Masema was coming. As always of late when he thought of Rand, colors swirled in his head, and as always, he ignored them. Masema was too great a problem for Perrin to waste thought fretting over colors. The bloody man thought it blasphemy for anyone but Rand to touch the One Power. Rand, it seemed, was not really mortal; he was the Light made flesh! So there would be no Traveling, no quick leap to Cairhien through a gateway made by one of the Asha’man, no matter how Perrin had tried to bring Masema around. They would have to ride the whole four hundred leagues or more, through the Light alone knew what. And keep it secret who they were, and Masema as well. Those had been Rand’s orders.

  “There’s only one way I can see to do it, boy,” Elyas said as if he had spoken aloud. “A slim chance. We might have had better odds knocking the fellow on the head and fighting clear anyway.”