The Wheel of Time, page 157
Yelling, Rand beat at his clothes as they smoked and charred and fell in ashes, beat with hands that blackened and shriveled as naked flesh cracked and peeled away in the flames. He screamed. Pain beat at the void inside him, and he tried to crawl deeper into the emptiness. The glow was there, the tainted light just out of sight. Half mad, no longer caring what it was, he reached for saidin, tried to wrap it around him, tried to hide in it from the burning and the pain.
As suddenly as the fire began, it was gone. Rand stared wonderingly at his hand sticking out of the red sleeve of his coat. There was not so much as a singe on the wool. I imagined it all. Frantically, he looked around. Ba’alzamon was gone. Hurin shifted in his sleep; the sniffer and Loial were still only two mounds sticking up out of the low fog. I did imagine it.
Before relief had a chance to grow, pain stabbed his right hand, and he turned it up to look. There across the palm was branded a heron. The heron from the hilt of his sword, angry and red, as neatly done as though drawn with an artist’s skill.
Fumbling a kerchief from his coat pocket, he wrapped it around his hand. The hand throbbed, now. The void would help with that—he was aware of pain in the void, but he did not feel it—but he put the thought out of his head. Twice now, unknowing—and once on purpose; he could not forget that—he had tried to channel the One Power while he was in the void. It was with that that Ba’alzamon wanted to tempt him. It was that that Moiraine and the Amyrlin Seat wanted him to do. He would not.
CHAPTER 16
In the Mirror of Darkness
“You should not have done it, Lord Rand,” Hurin said when Rand woke the others just at daybreak. The sun yet hid below the horizon, but there was light enough to see. The fog had melted away while dark still held, fading reluctantly. “If you use yourself up to spare us, my Lord, who will see to getting us home?”
“I needed to think,” Rand said. Nothing showed the fog had ever been, or Ba’alzamon. He fingered the kerchief wrapped around his right hand. There was that to prove Ba’alzamon had been there. He wanted to be away from this place. “Time to be in the saddle if we are going to catch Fain’s Darkfriends. Past time. We can eat flatbread while we ride.”
Loial paused in the act of stretching, his arms reaching as high as Hurin could have standing on Rand’s shoulders. “Your hand, Rand. What happened?”
“I hurt it. It’s nothing.”
“I have a salve in my saddlebags—”
“It is nothing!” Rand knew he sounded harsh, but one look at the brand would surely bring questions he did not want to answer. “Time’s wasting. Let us be on our way.” He set about saddling Red, awkwardly because of his injured hand, and Hurin jumped to his own horse.
“No need to be so touchy,” Loial muttered.
A track, Rand decided as they set out, would be something natural in that world. There were too many unnatural things there. Even a single hoofprint would be welcome. Fain and the Darkfriends and the Trollocs had to leave some mark. He concentrated on the ground they passed over, trying to make out any trace that could have been made by another living thing.
There was nothing, not a turned stone, not a disturbed clod of earth. Once he looked at the ground behind them, just to reassure himself that the land did take hoofprints; scraped turf and bent grass marked their passage plainly, yet ahead the ground was undisturbed. But Hurin insisted he could smell the trail, faint and thin, but still heading south.
Once again the sniffer put all his attentions on the trail he followed, like a hound tracking deer, and once again Loial rode lost in his own thoughts, muttering to himself and rubbing the huge quarterstaff held across his saddle in front of him.
They had not been riding more than an hour when Rand saw the spire ahead. He was so busy watching for tracks that the tapering column already stood thick and tall above the trees in the middle distance when he first noticed it. “I wonder what that is.” It lay directly in their path.
“I don’t know what it can be, Rand,” Loial said.
“If this—if this was our own world, Lord Rand. . . .” Hurin shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “Well, that monument Lord Ingtar was talking about—the one to Artur Hawkwing’s victory over the Trollocs—it was a great spire. But it was torn down a thousand years ago. There’s nothing left but a big mound, like a hill. I saw it, when I went to Cairhien for Lord Agelmar.”
“According to Ingtar,” Loial said, “that is still three or four days ahead of us. If it is here at all. I don’t know why it should be. I don’t think there are any people here at all.”
The sniffer put his eyes back on the ground. “That’s just it, isn’t it, Builder? No people, but there it is ahead of us. Maybe we ought to keep clear of it, my Lord Rand. No telling what it is, or who’s there, in a place like this.”
Rand drummed his fingers on the high pommel of his saddle for a moment, thinking. “We have to stick as close to the trail as we can,” he said finally. “We don’t seem to be getting any closer to Fain as it is, and I don’t want to lose more time, if we can avoid it. If we see any people, or anything out of the ordinary, then we’ll circle around until we pick it up again. But until then, we keep on.”
“As you say, my Lord.” The sniffer sounded odd, and he gave Rand a quick, sidelong look. “As you say.”
Rand frowned for a moment before he understood, and then it was his turn to sigh. Lords did not explain to those who followed them, only to other lords. I didn’t ask him to take me for a bloody lord. But he did, a small voice seemed to answer him, and you let him. You made the choice; now the duty is yours.
“Take the trail, Hurin,” Rand said.
With a flash of relieved grin, the sniffer heeled his horse onward.
The weak sun climbed as they rode, and by the time it was overhead, they were only a mile or so from the spire. They had reached one of the streams, in a gully a pace deep, and the intervening trees were sparse. Rand could see the mound it was built on, like a round, flat-topped hill. The gray spire itself rose at least a hundred spans, and he could just make out now that the top was carved in the likeness of a bird with outstretched wings.
“A hawk,” Rand said. “It is Hawkwing’s monument. It must be. There were people here, whether there are now or not. They just built it in another place here, and never tore it down. Think of it, Hurin. When we get back, you’ll be able to tell them what the monument really looked like. There will only be three of us in the whole world who have ever seen it.”
Hurin nodded. “Yes, my Lord. My children would like to hear that tale, their father seeing Hawkwing’s spire.”
“Rand,” Loial began worriedly.
“We can gallop the distance,” Rand said. “Come on. A gallop will do us good. This place may be dead, but we’re alive.”
“Rand,” Loial said, “I don’t think that is a—”
Not waiting to hear, Rand dug his boots into Red’s flanks, and the stallion sprang forward. He splashed across the shallow ribbon of water in two strides, then scrabbled up the far side. Hurin launched his horse right behind him. Rand heard Loial calling behind them, but he laughed, waved for the Ogier to follow, and galloped on. If he kept his eyes on one spot, the land did not seem to slip and slide so badly, and the wind felt good on his face.
The mound covered a good two hides, but the grassy slope rose at an easy slant. The gray spire reared into the sky, squared and broad enough despite its height to seem massive, almost squat. Rand’s laughter died, and he pulled Red up, his face grim.
“Is that Hawkwing’s monument, Lord Rand?” Hurin asked uneasily. “It doesn’t look right, somehow.”
Rand recognized the harsh, angular script that covered the face of the monument, and he recognized some of the symbols chiseled on the breadth, chiseled as tall as a man. The horned skull of the Dha’vol Trollocs. The iron fist of the Dhai’mon. The trident of the Ko’bal, and the whirlwind of the Ahf’frait. There was a hawk, too, carved near the bottom. With a wingspan of ten paces, it lay on its back, pierced by a lightning bolt, and ravens pecked at its eyes. The huge wings atop the spire seemed to block the sun.
He heard Loial galloping up behind him.
“I tried to tell you, Rand,” Loial said. “It is a raven, not a hawk. I could see it clearly.” Hurin turned his horse, refusing even to look at the spire any longer.
“But how?” Rand said. “Artur Hawkwing won a victory over the Trollocs here. Ingtar said so.”
“Not here,” Loial said slowly. “Obviously not here. ‘From Stone to Stone run the lines of it, between the worlds that might be.’ I’ve been thinking on it, and I believe I know what ‘the worlds that might be’ are. Maybe I do. Worlds our world might have been if things had happened differently. Maybe that’s why it is all so . . . washed-out looking. Because it’s an ‘if,’ a ‘maybe.’ Just a shadow of the real world. In this world, I think, the Trollocs won. Maybe that’s why we have not seen any villages or people.”
Rand’s skin crawled. Where Trollocs won, they did not leave humans alive except for food. If they had won across an entire world. . . . “If the Trollocs had won, they would be everywhere. We’d have seen a thousand of them by now. We’d be dead since yesterday.”
“I do not know, Rand. Perhaps, after they killed the people, they killed one another. Trollocs live to kill. That is all they do; that is all they are. I just don’t know.”
“Lord Rand,” Hurin said abruptly, “something moved down there.”
Rand whirled his horse, ready to see charging Trollocs, but Hurin was pointing back the way they had come, at nothing. “What did you see, Hurin? Where?”
The sniffer let his arm drop. “Right at the edge of that clump of trees there, about a mile. I thought it was . . . a woman . . . and something else I couldn’t make out, but. . . .” He shivered. “It’s so hard to make out things that aren’t under your nose. Aaah, this place has my guts all awhirl. I’m likely imagining things, my Lord. This is a place for queer fancies.” His shoulders hunched as if he felt the spire pressing on them. “No doubt it was just the wind, my Lord.”
Loial said, “There’s something else to consider, I’m afraid.” He sounded troubled again. He pointed southward. “What do you see off there?”
Rand squinted against the way things far off seemed to slide toward him. “Land like what we’ve been crossing. Trees. Then some hills, and mountains. Nothing else. What do you want me to see?”
“The mountains,” Loial sighed. The tufts on his ears drooped, and the ends of his eyebrows were down on his cheeks. “That has to be Kinslayer’s Dagger, Rand. There aren’t any other mountains they could be, unless this world is completely different from ours. But Kinslayer’s Dagger lies more than a hundred leagues south of the Erinin. A good bit more. Distances are hard to judge in this place, but. . . . I think we will reach them before dark.” He did not have to say any more. They could not have covered over a hundred leagues in less than three days.
Without thinking, Rand muttered, “Maybe this place is like the Ways.” He heard Hurin moan, and instantly regretted not keeping a rein on his tongue.
It was not a pleasant thought. Enter a Waygate—they could be found just outside Ogier stedding, and in Ogier groves—enter and walk for a day, and you could leave by another Waygate a hundred leagues from where you started. The Ways were dark, now, and foul, and to travel them meant to risk death or madness. Even Fades feared to travel the Ways.
“If it is, Rand,” Loial said slowly, “can a misstep kill us here, too? Are there things we have not yet seen that can do worse than kill us?” Hurin moaned again.
They had been drinking the water, riding along as if they had not a concern in the world. Unconcern would kill quickly in the Ways. Rand swallowed, hoping his stomach would settle.
“It is too late for worrying about what is past,” he said. “From here on, though, we will watch our step.” He glanced at Hurin. The sniffer’s head had sunk between his shoulders, and his eyes darted as if he wondered what would leap at him, and from where. The man had run down murderers, but this was more than he had ever bargained for. “Hold on to yourself, Hurin. We are not dead, yet, and we won’t be. We will just have to be careful from here on. That’s all.”
It was at that moment they heard the scream, thin with distance.
“A woman!” Hurin said. Even this much that was normal seemed to rouse him a little. “I knew I saw—”
Another scream came, more desperate than the first.
“Not unless she can fly,” Rand said. “She’s south of us.” He kicked Red to a dead run in two strides.
“Be careful you said!” Loial shouted after him. “Light, Rand, remember! Be careful!”
Rand lay low on Red’s back, letting the stallion run. The screams drew him on. It was easy to say be careful, but there was terror in that woman’s voice. She did not sound as if she had time for him to be careful. On the edge of another stream, in a sheer-banked channel deeper than most, he drew rein; Red skidded in a shower of stones and dirt. The screams were coming. . . . There!
He took it all in at a glance. Perhaps two hundred paces away, the woman stood beside her horse in the stream, both of them backed against the far bank. With a broken length of branch, she was fending off a snarling . . . something. Rand swallowed, stunned for a moment. If a frog were as big as a bear, or if a bear had a frog’s gray-green hide, it might look like that. A big bear.
Not letting himself think about the creature, he leaped to the ground, unlimbering his bow. If he took the time to ride closer, it might be too late. The woman was barely keeping the . . . thing . . . at the edge of the branch. It was a fair distance—he kept blinking as he tried to judge it; the distance seemed to change by spans every time the thing moved—yet a big target. His bandaged hand made drawing awkward, but he had an arrow loosed almost before his feet were set.
The shaft sank into the leathery hide for half its length, and the creature spun to face Rand. Rand took a step back despite the distance. That huge, wedge-shaped head had never been on any animal he could imagine, nor that wide, horny-lipped beak of a mouth, hooked for ripping flesh. And it had three eyes, small, and fierce, and ringed by hard-looking ridges. Gathering itself, the thing bounded toward him down the stream in great, splashing leaps. To Rand’s eye, some of the leaps seemed to cover twice as much distance as others, though he was sure they were all the same.
“An eye,” the woman called. She sounded surprisingly calm, considering her screams. “You must hit an eye to kill it.”
He drew the fletching of another arrow back to his ear. Reluctantly, he sought the void; he did not want to, but it was for this that Tam had taught him, and he knew he could never make the shot without it. My father, he thought with a sense of loss, and emptiness filled him. The quavering light of saidin was there, but he shut it away. He was one with the bow, with the arrow, with the monstrous shape leaping toward him. One with the tiny eye. He did not even feel the arrow leave the bowstring.
The creature rose in another bound, and at the peak, the arrow struck its central eye. The thing landed, fountaining another huge splash of water and mud. Ripples spread out from it, but it did not move.
“Well shot, and bravely,” the woman called. She was on her horse, riding to meet him. Rand felt vaguely surprised that she had not run once the thing’s attention was diverted. She rode past the bulk, still surrounded by the ripples of its dying, without even a downward glance, scrambled her horse up the bank and dismounted. “Few men would stand to face the charge of a grolm, my Lord.”
She was all in white, her dress divided for riding and belted in silver, and her boots, peeking out from under her hems, were tooled in silver, too. Even her saddle was white, and silver-mounted. Her snowy mare, with its arched neck and dainty step, was almost as tall as Rand’s bay. But it was the woman herself—she was perhaps Nynaeve’s age, he thought—who held his eyes. She was tall, for one thing; a hand taller and she could almost look him in the eyes. For another, she was beautiful, ivory-pale skin contrasting sharply with long, night-dark hair and black eyes. He had seen beautiful women. Moiraine was beautiful, if cool, and so was Nynaeve, when her temper did not get the better of her. Egwene, and Elayne, the Daughter-Heir of Andor, were each enough to take a man’s breath. But this woman. . . . His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth; he felt his heart start beating again.
“Your retainers, my Lord?”
Startled, he looked around. Hurin and Loial had joined them. Hurin was staring the way Rand knew he had been, and even the Ogier seemed fascinated. “My friends,” he said. “Loial, and Hurin. My name is Rand. Rand al’Thor.”
“I have never thought of it before,” Loial said abruptly, sounding as if he were talking to himself; “but if there is such a thing as perfect human beauty, in face and form, then you—”
“Loial!” Rand shouted. The Ogier’s ears stiffened in embarrassment. Rand’s own ears were red; Loial’s words had been too close to what he himself was thinking.
The woman laughed musically, but the next instant she was all regal formality, like a queen on her throne. “I am called Selene,” she said. “You have risked your life, and saved mine. I am yours, Lord Rand al’Thor.” And, to Rand’s horror, she knelt before him.
Not looking at Hurin or Loial, he hastily pulled her to her feet. “A man who will not die to save a woman is no man.” Immediately he disgraced himself by blushing. It was a Shienaran saying, and he knew it sounded pompous before it was out of his mouth, but her manner had infected him, and he could not stop it. “I mean. . . . That is, it was. . . .” Fool, you can’t tell a woman saving her life was nothing. “It was my honor.” That sounded vaguely Shienaran and formal. He hoped it would do; his mind was as blank of anything else to say as if he were still in the void.
Suddenly he became conscious of her eyes on him. Her expression had not changed, but her dark eyes made him feel as if he were naked. Unbidden, the thought came of Selene with no clothes. His face went red again. “Aaah! Ah, where are you from, Selene? We have not seen another human being since we came here. Is your town nearby?” She looked at him thoughtfully, and he stepped back. Her look made him too aware of how close to her he was.
