The Eye of the World
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Chapter 43
Decisions and Apparitions
The
Aes Sedai appeared to know what Loial meant, but
she said nothing. Loial peered at the floor, rubbing under his nose
with a thick finger, as if he was abashed by his outburst. No one
wanted to speak.
“Why?” Rand asked at last. “Why would we die? What
are the Ways?”
Loial glanced at Moiraine. She turned away to take a
chair in front of the fireplace. The little cat stretched, its
claws scratching on the hearthstone, and languidly walked over to
butt its head against her ankles. She rubbed behind its ears with
one finger. The cat’s purring was a strange counterpoint to the Aes
Sedai’s level voice. “It is your knowledge, Loial. The Ways are the
only path to safety for us, the only path to forestalling the Dark
One, if only for a time, but the telling is yours.”
The Ogier did not appear comforted by her speech. He
shifted awkwardly on his chair before beginning. “During the Time
of Madness, while the world was still being broken, the earth was
in upheaval, and humankind was being scattered like dust on the
wind. We Ogier were scattered, too, driven from the
stedding, into the Exile and the Long Wandering, when the
Longing was graven on our hearts.” He gave Moiraine another
sidelong look. His long eyebrows drew down into two points. “I will
try to be brief, but this is not a thing that can be told too
briefly. It is of the others I must speak, now, those few Ogier who
held in their stedding while around them the world was
tearing apart. And of the Aes Sedai”—he avoided looking at
Moiraine, now—“the male Aes Sedai who were dying even as
they destroyed the world in their madness. It was to those Aes
Sedai—those who had so far managed to avoid the madness—that the stedding first made the offer of
sanctuary. Many accepted, for in the stedding they were
protected from the taint of the Dark One that was killing their
kind. But they were cut off from the True Source. It was not just
that they could not wield the One Power, or touch the Source; they
could no longer even sense that the Source existed. In the end,
none could accept that isolation, and one by one they left the
stedding, hoping that by that time the taint was gone. It
never was.”
“Some in Tar Valon,” Moiraine said quietly, “claim
that Ogier sanctuary prolonged the Breaking and made it worse.
Others say that if all of those men had been allowed to go mad at
once, there would have been nothing left of the world. I am of the
Blue Ajah, Loial; unlike the Red Ajah, we hold to the second view.
Sanctuary helped to save what could be saved. Continue,
please.”
Loial nodded gratefully. Relieved of a concern, Rand
realized.
“As I was saying,” the Ogier went on, “the Aes Sedai,
the male Sedai, left. But before they went, they gave a gift to the
Ogier in thanks for our sanctuary. The Ways. Enter a Waygate, walk
for a day, and you may depart through another Waygate a hundred
miles from where you started. Or five hundred. Time and distance
are strange in the Ways. Different paths, different bridges, lead
to different places, and how long it takes to get there depends on
which path you take. It was a marvelous gift, made more so by the
times, for the Ways are not part of the world we see around us, nor
perhaps of any world outside themselves. Not only did the Ogier so
gifted not have to travel through the world, where even after the
Breaking men fought like animals to live, in order to reach another
stedding, but within the Ways there was no Breaking. The
land between two stedding might split open into deep
canyons or rise in mountain ranges, but in the Way between them
there was no change.
“When the last Aes Sedai left the stedding,
they gave to the Elders a key, a talisman, that could be used for
growing more. They are a living thing in some fashion, the Ways and
the Waygates. I do not understand it; no Ogier ever has, and even
the Aes Sedai have forgotten, I am told. Over the years the Exile
ended for us. As those Ogier who had been gifted by the Aes Sedai
found a stedding where Ogier had returned from the Long
Wandering, they grew a Way to it. With the stonework we learned
during the Exile, we built cities for men, and planted the groves
to comfort the Ogier who did the building, so the Longing would not
overcome them. To those groves Ways were grown. There was a grove,
and a Waygate, at Mafal Dadaranell, but that city was razed during
the Trolloc Wars, no stone left standing on another, and the grove
was chopped down and burned for Trolloc fires.” He left no doubt
which had been the greater crime.
“Waygates are all but impossible to destroy,”
Moiraine said, “and humankind not much less so. There are people at
Fal Dara still, though not the great city the Ogier built, and the
Waygate yet stands.”
“How did they make them?” Egwene asked. Her puzzled
look took in Moiraine and Loial both. “The Aes Sedai, the men. If
they couldn’t use the One Power in a stedding, how could
they make the Ways? Or did they use the Power at all? Their part of
the True Source was tainted. Is tainted. I don’t know much about
what Aes Sedai can do, yet. Maybe it’s a silly question.”
Loial explained. “Each stedding has a
Waygate on its border, but outside. Your question is not silly.
You’ve found the seed of why we do not dare travel the Ways. No
Ogier has used the Ways in my lifetime, and before. By edict of the
Elders, all the Elders of all the stedding, none may,
human or Ogier.
“The Ways were made by men wielding Power fouled by
the Dark One. About a thousand years ago, during what you humans
call the War of the Hundred Years, the Ways began to change. So
slowly in the beginning that none really noticed, they grew dank
and dim. Then darkness fell along the bridges. Some who went in
were never seen again. Travelers spoke of being watched from the
dark. The numbers who vanished grew, and some who came out had gone
mad, raving about Machin Shin, the Black Wind. Aes Sedai Healers
could aid some, but even with Aes Sedai help they were never the
same. And they never remembered anything of what had occurred. Yet
it was as if the darkness had sunken into their bones. They never
laughed again, and they feared the sound of the wind.”
For a moment there was silence but for the cat
purring beside Moiraine’s chair, and the snap and crackle of the
fire, popping out sparks. Then Nynaeve burst out angrily, “And you
expect us to follow you into that? You must be mad!”
“Which would you choose instead?” Moiraine asked
quietly. “The Whitecloaks within Caemlyn, or the Trollocs without?
Remember that my presence in itself gives some protection from the
Dark One’s works.”
Nynaeve settled back with an exasperated sigh.
“You still have not explained to me,” Loial said,
“why I should break the edict of the Elders. And I have no desire
to enter the Ways. Muddy as they often are, the roads men make have
served me well enough since I left Stedding Shangtai.”
“Humankind and Ogier, everything that lives, we are
at war with the Dark One,” Moiraine said. “The greater part of the
world does not even know it yet, and most of the few who do fight
skirmishes and believe they are battles. While the world refuses to
believe, the Dark One may be at the brink of victory. There is
enough power in the Eye of the World to undo his prison. If the
Dark One has found some way to bend the Eye of the World to his use . . . ”
Rand wished the lamps in the room were lit. Evening
was creeping over Caemlyn, and the fire in the fireplace did not
give enough light. He wanted no shadows in the room.
“What can we do?” Mat burst out. “Why are we so
important? Why do we have to go to the Blight? The Blight!”
Moiraine did not raise her voice, but it filled the
room, compelling. Her chair by the fire suddenly seemed like a
throne. Suddenly even Morgase would have paled in her presence.
“One thing we can do. We can try. What seems like chance is often
the Pattern. Three threads have come together here, each giving a
warning: the Eye. It cannot be chance; it is the Pattern. You three
did not choose; you were chosen by the Pattern. And you are here,
where the danger is known. You can step aside, and perhaps doom the
world. Running, hiding, will not save you from the weaving of the
Pattern. Or you can try. You can go to the Eye of the World, three
ta’veren, three centerpoints of the Web, placed where the
danger lies. Let the Pattern be woven around you there, and you may
save the world from the Shadow. The choice is yours. I cannot make
you go.”
“I’ll go,” Rand said, trying to sound resolute.
However hard he sought the void, images kept flashing through his
head. Tam, and the farmhouse, and the flock in the pasture. It had
been a good life; he had never really wanted anything more. There
was comfort—a small comfort—hearing Perrin and Mat
add their agreement to his. They sounded as dry-mouthed as he.
“I suppose there isn’t any choice for Egwene or me,
either,” Nynaeve said.
Moiraine nodded. “You are part of the Pattern, too,
both of you, in some fashion. Perhaps not ta’veren—perhaps—but strong even so. I have known it since Baerlon.
And no doubt by this time the Fades know it, too. And Ba’alzamon.
Yet you have as much choice as the young men. You could remain
here, proceed to Tar Valon once the rest of us have gone.”
“Stay behind!” Egwene exclaimed. “Let the rest of you
go off into danger while we hide under the covers? I won’t do it!”
She caught the Aes Sedai’s eye and drew back a little, but not all
of her defiance vanished. “I won’t do it,” she muttered
stubbornly.
“I suppose that means both of us will accompany you.”
Nynaeve sounded resigned, but her eyes flashed when she added, “You
still need my herbs, Aes Sedai, unless you’ve suddenly gained some
ability I don’t know about.” Her voice held a challenge Rand did
not understand, but Moiraine merely nodded and turned to the
Ogier.
“Well, Loial, son of Arent son of Halan?”
Loial opened his mouth twice, his tufted ears
twitching, before he spoke. “Yes, well. The Green Man. The Eye of
the World. They’re mentioned in the books, of course, but I don’t
think any Ogier has actually seen them in, oh, quite a long time. I
suppose . . . But must it be the Ways?” Moiraine nodded, and his
long eyebrows sagged till the ends brushed his cheeks. “Very well,
then. I suppose I must guide you. Elder Haman would say it’s no
less than I deserve for being so hasty all the time.”
“Our choices are made, then,” Moiraine said. “And now
that they are made, we must decide what to do about them, and
how.”
Long into the night they planned. Moiraine did most
of it, with Loial’s advice concerning the Ways, but she listened to
questions and suggestions from everyone. Once dark fell Lan joined
them, adding his comments in that iron-cored drawl. Nynaeve made a
list of what supplies they needed, dipping her pen in the inkwell
with a steady hand despite the way she kept muttering under her
breath.
Rand wished he could be as matter-of-fact as the
Wisdom. He could not stop pacing up and down, as if he had energy
to burn or burst from it. He knew his decision was made, knew it
was the only one he could make with the knowledge he had, but that
did not make him like it. The Blight. Shayol Ghul was somewhere in
the Blight, beyond the Blasted Lands.
He could see the same worry in Mat’s eyes, the same
fear he knew was in his own. Mat sat with his hands clasped,
knuckles white. If he let go, Rand thought, he would be clutching
the dagger from Shadar Logoth instead.
There was no worry on Perrin’s face at all, but what
was there was worse: a mask of weary resignation. Perrin looked as
though he had fought something until he could fight it no longer
and was waiting for it to finish him. Yet sometimes . . .
“We do what we must, Rand,” he said. “The Blight . . . ” For an instant those yellow eyes lit with eagerness, flashing in
the fixed tiredness of his face, as if they had a life of their own
apart from the big blacksmith’s apprentice. “There’s good hunting
along the Blight,” he whispered. Then he shuddered, as if he had
just heard what he had said, and once more his face was
resigned.
And Egwene. Rand drew her apart at one point, over by
the fireplace where those planning around the table could not hear.
“Egwene, I . . . ” Her eyes, like big dark pools drawing him in, made
him stop and swallow. “It’s me the Dark One’s after, Egwene. Me,
and Mat, and Perrin. I don’t care what Moiraine Sedai says. In the
morning you and Nynaeve could start for home, or Tar Valon, or
anywhere you want to go, and nobody will try to stop you. Not the
Trollocs, not the Fades, not anybody. As long as you aren’t with
us. Go home, Egwene. Or go to Tar Valon. But go.”
He waited for her to tell him she had as much right
to go where she wanted as he did, that he had no right to tell her
what to do. To his surprise, she smiled and touched his cheek.
“Thank you, Rand,” she said softly. He blinked, and
closed his mouth as she went on. “You know I can’t, though.
Moiraine Sedai told us what Min saw, in Baerlon. You should have
told me who Min was. I thought . . . Well, Min says I am part of
this, too. And Nynaeve. Maybe I’m not ta’veren,” she
stumbled over the word, “but the Pattern sends me to the Eye of the
World, too, it seems. Whatever involves you, involves me.”
“But, Egwene—”
“Who is Elayne?”
For a minute he stared at her, then told the simple
truth. “She’s the Daughter-Heir to the throne of Andor.”
Her eyes seemed to catch fire. “If you can’t be
serious for more than a minute, Rand al’Thor, I do not want to talk
to you.”
Incredulous, he watched her stiff back return to the
table, where she leaned on her elbows next to Moiraine to listen to
what the Warder was saying. I need to talk to Perrin, he
thought. He knows how to deal with women.
Master Gill entered several times, first to light the
lamps, then to bring food with his own hands, and later to report
on what was happening outside. Whitecloaks were watching the inn
from down the street in both directions. There had been a riot at
the gates to the Inner City, with the Queen’s Guards arresting
white cockades and red alike. Someone had tried to scratch the
Dragon’s Fang on the front door and been sent on his way by
Lamgwin’s boot.
If the innkeeper found it odd that Loial was with
them, he gave no sign of it. He answered the few questions Moiraine
put to him without trying to discover what they were planning, and
each time he came he knocked at the door and waited till Lan opened
it for him, just as if it were not his inn and his library. On his
last visit, Moiraine gave him the sheet of parchment covered in
Nynaeve’s neat hand.
“It won’t be easy this time of night,” he said,
shaking his head as he perused the list, “but I’ll arrange it
all.”
Moiraine added a small wash-leather bag that clinked
as she handed it to him by the drawstrings. “Good. And see that we
are wakened before daybreak. The watchers will be at their least
alert, then.”
“We’ll leave them watching an empty box, Aes Sedai.”
Master Gill grinned.
Rand was yawning by the time he shuffled out of the
room with the rest in search of baths and beds. As he scrubbed
himself, with a coarse cloth in one hand and a big yellow cake of
soap in the other, his eyes drifted to the stool beside Mat’s tub.
The golden-sheathed tip of the dagger from Shadar Logoth peeked
from under the edge of Mat’s neatly folded coat. Lan glanced at it
from time to time, too. Rand wondered if it was really as safe to
have around as Moiraine claimed.
“Do you think my da’ll ever believe it?” Mat laughed,
scrubbing his back with a long-handled brush. “Me, saving the
world? My sisters won’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
He sounded like the old Mat. Rand wished he could
forget the dagger.
It was pitch-black when he and Mat finally got up to
their room under the eaves, the stars obscured by clouds. For the
first time in a long while Mat undressed before getting into bed,
but he casually tucked the dagger under his pillow, too. Rand blew
out the candle and crawled into his own bed. He could feel the
wrongness from the other bed, not from Mat, but from beneath his
pillow. He was still worrying about it when sleep came.
From the first he knew it was a dream, one of those
dreams that was not entirely dream. He stood staring at the wooden
door, its surface dark and cracked and rough with splinters. The
air was cold and dank, thick with the smell of decay. In the
distance water dripped, the splashes hollow echoes down stone
corridors.
Deny it. Deny him, and his power fails.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on The Queen’s
Blessing, on his bed, on himself asleep in his bed. When he opened
his eyes the door was still there. The echoing splashes came on his
heartbeat, as if his pulse counted time for them. He sought the
flame and the void, as Tam had taught him, and found inner calm,
but nothing outside of him changed. Slowly he opened the door and
went in.
Everything was as he remembered it in the room that
seemed burned out of the living rock. Tall, arched windows led onto
an unrailed balcony, and beyond it the layered clouds streamed like
a river in flood. The black metal lamps, their flames too bright to
look at, gleamed, black yet somehow as bright as silver. The fire
roared but gave no heat in the fearsome fireplace, each stone still
vaguely like a face in torment.
All was the same, but one thing was different. On the
polished tabletop stood three small figures, the rough, featureless
shapes of men, as if the sculptor had been hasty with his clay.
Beside one stood a wolf, its clear detail emphasized by the
crudeness of the man-shape, and another clutched a tiny dagger, a
point of red on the hilt glittering in the light. The last held a
sword. The hair stirring on the back of his neck, he moved close
enough to see the heron in exquisite detail on that small
blade.
His head jerked up in panic, and he stared directly
into the lone mirror. His reflection was still a blur, but not so
misty as before. He could almost make out his own features. If he
imagined he was squinting, he could nearly tell who it was.
“You’ve hidden from me too long.”
He whirled from the table, breath rasping his throat.
A moment before he had been alone, but now Ba’alzamon stood before
the windows. When he spoke caverns of flame replaced his eyes and
mouth.
“Too long, but not much longer.”
“I deny you,” Rand said hoarsely. “I deny that you
hold any power over me. I deny that you are.”
Ba’alzamon laughed, a rich sound rolling from fire.
“Do you think it is that easy? But then, you always did. Each time
we have stood like this, you have thought you could defy me.”
“What do mean, each time? I deny you!”
“You always do. In the beginning. This contest
between us has taken place countless times before. Each time your
face is different, and your name, but each time it is you.”
“I deny you.” It was a desperate whisper.
“Each time you throw your puny strength against me,
and each time, in the end, you know which of us is the master. Age
after Age, you kneel to me, or die wishing you still had strength
to kneel. Poor fool, you can never win against me.”
“Liar!” he shouted. “Father of Lies. Father of Fools
if you can’t do better than that. Men found you in the last Age, in
the Age of Legends, and bound you back where you belong.”
Ba’alzamon laughed again, peal after mocking peal,
until Rand wanted to cover his ears to shut it out. He forced his
hands to stay at his sides. Void or no, they were trembling when
the laughter finally stopped.
“You worm, you know nothing at all. As ignorant as a
beetle under a rock, and as easily crushed. This struggle has gone
on since the moment of creation. Always men think it a new war, but
it is just the same war discovered anew. Only now change blows on
the winds of time. Change. This time there will be no drifting
back. Those proud Aes Sedai who think to stand you up against me. I
will dress them in chains and send them running naked to do my
bidding, or stuff their souls into the Pit of Doom to scream for
eternity. All but those who already serve me. They will stand but a
step beneath me. You can choose to stand with them, with the world
groveling at your feet. I offer it one more time, one last time.
You can stand above them, above every power and dominion but mine.
There have been times when you made that choice, times when you
lived long enough to know your power.”
Deny him! Rand grabbed hold to what he could
deny. “No Aes Sedai serve you. Another lie!”
“Is that what they told you? Two thousand years ago I
took my Trollocs across the world, and even among Aes Sedai I found
those who knew despair, who knew the world could not stand before
Shai’tan. For two thousand years the Black Ajah has dwelt among the
others, unseen in the shadows. Perhaps even those who claim to help
you.”
Rand shook his head, trying to shake away the doubts
that came welling up in him, all the doubts he had had about
Moiraine, about what the Aes Sedai wanted with him, about what she
planned for him. “What do you want from me?” he cried. Deny
him! Light help me deny him!
“Kneel!” Ba’alzamon pointed to the floor at his feet.
“Kneel, and acknowledge me your master! In the end, you will. You
will be my creature, or you will die.”
The last word echoed through the room, reverberating
back on itself, doubling and redoubling, till Rand threw up his
arms as if to shield his head from a blow. Staggering back until he
thumped into the table, he shouted, trying to drown the sound in
his ears. “Noooooooooooo!”
As he cried out, he spun, sweeping the figures to the
floor. Something stabbed his hand, but he ignored it, stomping the
clay to shapeless smears underfoot. But when his shout failed, the
echo was still there, and growing stronger:
die-die-die-die-die-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE
The sound pulled on him like a whirlpool, drawing him
in, ripping the void in his mind to shreds. The light dimmed, and
his vision narrowed down to a tunnel with Ba’alzamon standing tall
in the last spot of brightness at the end, dwindling until it was
the size of his hand, a fingernail, nothing. Around and around the
echo whirled him, down into blackness and death.
The thump as he hit the floor woke him, still
struggling to swim up out of that darkness. The room was dark, but
not so dark as that. Frantically he tried to center on the flame,
to shovel fear into it, but the calm of the void eluded him.
Tremors ran down his arms and legs, but he held the image of the
single flame until the blood stopped pounding in his ears.
Mat was tossing and twisting on his bed, groaning in
his sleep. “ . . . deny you, deny you, deny you . . . ” It faded off
into unintelligible moans.
Rand reached out to shake him awake, and at the first
touch Mat sat up with a strangled grunt. For a minute Mat stared
around wildly, then drew a long, shuddering breath and dropped his
head into his hands. Abruptly he twisted around, digging under his
pillow, then sank back clutching the ruby-hilted dagger in both
hands on his chest. He turned his head to look at Rand, his face
hidden in shadow. “He’s back, Rand.”
“I know.”
Mat nodded. “There were these three figures . . . ”
“I saw them, too.”
“He knows who I am, Rand. I picked up the one with
the dagger, and he said, ‘So that’s who you are.’ And when I looked
again, the figure had my face. My face, Rand! It looked like flesh.
It felt like flesh. Light help me, I could feel my own hand
gripping me, like I was the figure.”
Rand was silent for a moment. “You have to keep
denying him, Mat.”
“I did, and he laughed. He kept talking about some
eternal war, and saying we’d met like that a thousand times before,
and . . . Light, Rand, the Dark One knows me.”
“He said the same thing to me. I don’t think he
does,” he added slowly. “I don’t think he knows which of us . . . ”
Which of us what?
As he levered himself up, pain stabbed his hand.
Making his way to the table, he managed to get the candle lit after
three tries, then spread his hand open in the light. Driven into
his palm was a thick splinter of dark wood, smooth and polished on
one side. He stared at it, not breathing. Abruptly he was panting,
plucking at the splinter, fumbling with haste.
“What’s the matter?” Mat asked.
“Nothing.”
Finally he had it, and a sharp yank pulled it free.
With a grunt of disgust he dropped it, but the grunt froze in his
throat. As soon as the splinter left his fingers, it vanished.
The wound was still there in his hand, though,
bleeding. There was water in the stoneware pitcher. He filled the
basin, his hands shaking so that he splashed water onto the table.
Hurriedly he washed his hands, kneading his palm till his thumb
brought more blood, then washed them again. The thought of the
smallest sliver remaining in his flesh terrified him.
“Light,” Mat said, “he made me feel dirty, too.” But
he still lay where he was, holding the dagger in both hands.
“Yes,” Rand said. “Dirty.” He fumbled a towel from
the stack beside the basin. There was a knock at the door, and he
jumped. It came again. “Yes?” he said.
Moiraine put her head into the room. “You are awake
already. Good. Dress quickly and come down. We must be away before
first light.”
“Now?” Mat groaned. “We haven’t had an hour’s sleep
yet.”
“An hour?” she said. “You have had four. Now hurry,
we do not have much time.”
Rand shared a confused look with Mat. He could
remember every second of the dream clearly. It had begun as soon as
he closed his eyes, and lasted only minutes.
Something in that exchange must have communicated
itself to Moiraine. She gave them a penetrating look and came all
the way in. “What has happened? The dreams?”
“He knows who I am,” Mat said. “The Dark One knows my
face.”
Rand held up his hand wordlessly, palm toward her.
Even in the shadowed light from the one candle the blood was
plain.
The Aes Sedai stepped forward and grasped his upheld
hand, her thumb across his palm covering the wound. Cold pierced
him to the bone, so chill that his fingers cramped and he had to
fight to keep them open. When she took her fingers away, the chill
went, too.
He turned his hand, then, stunned, scrubbed the thin
smear of blood away. The wound was gone. Slowly he raised his eyes
to meet those of the Aes Sedai.
“Hurry,” she said softly. “Time grows very
short.”
He knew she was not speaking of the time for their
leaving anymore.
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