Knife of Dreams (69 page)

Turning his back on them, he strode to the nearest window and stood rolling the teacup between his palms. The window was sized decently, though the panes set in the carved casement were no larger than those in the rooms below. The rain had dwindled to a drizzle falling from a gray sky, and despite bubbles in the glass he could make out the trees beyond the fields, pine and sourgum and the occasional oak, all full of new growth. Algarin’s people tended their forest well, clearing out the deadfall to rob wildfire of its tinder. Fire had to be used carefully.

The words came more easily now that he could not see the others watching him. Should he begin with the Longing? Could they dare leave if they would begin dying in a handful of years? No, that question would have been addressed first thing and suitable answers found, else the Stump
would have finished inside a year. Light, if he did address the Stump. . . . For a moment, he saw the crowds standing all around him, hundreds and hundreds of men and women waiting to hear his words, perhaps several thousand. His tongue tried to cling to the roof of his mouth. He blinked, and there was only the bubbled glass before him, and the trees. He had to do it. He was not particularly brave, whatever Erith thought, but he had learned about bravery watching humans, watching them hang on no matter how strong the winds grew, fight when they had no hope, fight and win because they fought with desperate courage. Suddenly, he knew what to say.

“In the War of the Shadow, we did not huddle in our
stedding
, hoping no Trollocs or Myrddraal would be driven to enter. We did not open the Book of Translation and flee. We marched alongside the humans and fought the Shadow. In the Trolloc Wars, we neither hid in the
stedding
nor opened the Book of Translation. We marched with the humans and fought the Shadow. In the darkest years, when hope seemed gone, we fought the Shadow.”

“And by the War of the Hundred Years we had learned not to get ourselves tangled in human affairs,” his mother put in. That was allowed. Speaking could turn into a debate unless the pure beauty of your words held the listeners. She had once spoken from sunrise to sunset in favor of a very unpopular position without a single interruption, and the next day, no one had risen to Speak against her. He could not form beautiful sentences. He could only say what he believed. He did not turn from the window.

“The War of the Hundred Years was a human affair, and none of ours. The Shadow
is
our affair. When it is the Shadow that must be fought, our axes have always grown long handles. Perhaps in a year, or five, or ten, we will open the Book of Translation, but if we do it now, we cannot run away with any real hope of safety. Tarmon Gai’don is coming, and on that hangs the fate not only of this world, but of any world we might flee to. When fire threatens the trees, we do not run away and hope that the flames will not follow us. We fight. Now the Shadow is coming like wildfire, and we dare not run from it.” Something was moving among the trees, all along the line he could see. A herd of cattle? A very big herd, if so.

“That isn’t bad,” his mother said. “Much too plainspoken to carry any weight at a
stedding
Stump much less the Great Stump, of course, but not bad. Go on.”

“Trollocs,” he breathed. That was what it was, thousands of Trollocs in black, spiked mail spilling out of the trees at a run with scythe-curved swords raised, shaking their spiked spears, some carrying torches. Trollocs as far as he could see to left and right. Not thousands. Tens of thousands.

Erith pushed in beside him at the window and gasped. “So many! Are we going to die, Loial?” She did not sound afraid. She sounded . . . excited!

“Not if I can warn Rand and the others.” He was already starting for the door. Only Aes Sedai and Asha’man could save them now.

“Here, my boy, I think we may need these.”

He turned just in time to catch the long-handled axe that Elder Haman tossed him. The other man’s ears were back all the way, laid flat against his skull. Loial realized his own were, too.

“Here, Erith,” his mother said calmly, lifting down one of the pruning knives. “If they get inside, we will try to hold them at the stairs.”

“You are my hero, Husband,” Erith said as she took the knife’s shaft in hand, “but if you get yourself killed, I will be very angry with you.” She sounded as if she meant it.

And then he and Elder Haman were running down the corridor together, pounding down the stairs, bellowing at the tops of their lungs a warning, and a battle cry that had not been heard in over two thousand years. “Trollocs coming! Up axes and clear the field! Trollocs coming!”

“. . . so I will take care of Tear, Logain, while you—” Abruptly Rand wrinkled his nose. It was not that he actually smelled a rotting midden heap suddenly, but he felt as if he did, and the feeling was getting stronger.

“Shadowspawn,” Cadsuane said quietly, putting down her embroidery and rising. His skin tingled as she embraced the Source. Or maybe it was Alivia, walking briskly toward the windows after the Green sister. Min stood, drawing a pair of throwing knives from her coatsleeves.

At the same instant, through the thick walls, he faintly heard Ogier shouting. There was no mistaking those deep, drumlike voices. “Trollocs coming! Up axes and clear the field!”

With an oath, he leaped to his feet and ran to a window. Trollocs in the thousands came running through the light rain across the newly planted fields, Trollocs as tall as Ogier and taller, Trollocs with rams’ horns and goats’ horns, wolves’ snouts, boars’ snouts, Trollocs with eagles’ beaks and crests of feathers, muddy earth splashing beneath boots and hooves and paws. Silent as death they ran. Black-clad Myrddraal galloped behind them, cloaks hanging as if they were standing still. He could see thirty or forty. How many more on other sides of the house?

Others had heard the Ogier’s cries, or maybe just looked out a window. Lightning began to fall among the charging Trollocs, silvery bolts that
struck with a roar and hurled huge bodies in every direction. In other places, the ground erupted in flames, fountaining dirt and parts of Trollocs, heads, arms, legs wheeling through the air. Balls of fire struck them and exploded, each killing dozens. But on they ran, as fast as horses if not faster. Rand could not see the weaves that drew some of those lightning bolts. Now that they were discovered, the Trollocs began to shout, a wordless roar of rage. In the thatch-roofed outbuildings, large sturdy barns and stables, some of Bashere’s Saldaeans stuck their heads out and quickly pulled them back again, drawing the doors shut behind them.

“You told your Aes Sedai they could channel to defend themselves?” he said calmly.

“Do I look fool enough not to?” Logain snarled. At another window, he already held
saidin
, nearly as much as Rand could draw. He was weaving as fast as he could. “Do you intend to help or just watch, my Lord Dragon?” There was entirely too much sarcasm in that, but now was not the time to bring it up.

Drawing a deep breath, Rand gripped the casement on either side of the window against the dizziness that would come—the Dragons’ golden-maned heads on the backs of his hands seemed to writhe—and reached out to seize the Power. His head spun as
saidin
flooded into him, icy flames and crumbling mountains, a chaos trying to pull him under. But blessedly clean. He still felt the wonder of that. His head spun and his stomach wanted to empty itself, the odd illness that should have gone with the taint, yet that was not why he clung to the casement even harder. The One Power filled him—but in that moment of dizziness, Lews Therin had seized it away from him. Numb with horror, he stared at the Trollocs and Myrddraal racing toward the outbuildings. With the Power in him, he could make out the pins fastened to massive mailed shoulders. The silver whirlwind of the Ahf’frait band and the blood-red trident of the Ko’bal. The forked lightning of the Ghraem’lan and the hooked axe of the Al’ghol. The iron fist of the Dhai’mon and the red, bloodstained fist of the Kno’mon. And there were skulls. The horned skull of the Dha’vol and the piled human skulls of the Ghar’ghael and the skull cloven by a scythe-curved sword of the Dhjin’nen and the dagger-pierced skull of the Bhan’sheen. Trollocs liked skulls, if they could be said to like anything. It seemed the twelve principal bands might all be involved, and some of the lesser. He saw pins he did not recognize. What seemed a staring eye, a dagger-pierced hand, a man-shape wrapped in flames. They neared the outbuildings, where swords were beginning to thrust through the thatch as the
Saldaeans tried to cut ways onto the roofs. Thatch was tough. They would need to work desperately hard. Odd, the thoughts that came when a madman who wanted to die might well kill you in the next heartbeat.

Flows of Air pushed the casement in front of him out in a shower of shattered glass and fragmented wood.
My hands
, Lews Therin panted.
Why can’t I move my hands? I need to raise my hands!
Earth, Air and Fire went into a weave Rand did not know, six of them at once. Except that as soon as he saw the spinning, he did know. Blossom of Fire. Six vertical red shafts appeared among the Trollocs, ten feet tall and thinner than Rand’s forearm. The nearest Trollocs would be hearing their shrill whine, but unless memories had been passed down from the War of the Shadow, they would not realize they were hearing death. Lews Therin spun the last thread of Air, and fire blossomed. With a roar that shook the manor house, each red shaft expanded in a heartbeat to a disc of flame thirty feet across. Horned heads and snouted heads flew into the air, and pinwheeling arms, booted legs and legs that ended in paws or hooves. Trollocs a hundred paces and more away from the explosions went down, and only some got up again. Even as he was spinning those webs, Lews Therin spun six others, Spirit touched with Fire, the weave for a gateway, but then he added touches of Earth, so, and so. The familiar silvery-blue vertical streaks appeared, spaced out not far from the manor house, ground Rand knew well, rotating into—not openings, but the misty back of a gateway, four paces by four. Rather than remaining open, they rotated shut again, opening and shutting continuously. And rather than remaining fixed, they sped toward the Trollocs. Gateways and yet not. Deathgates. As soon as the Deathgates began to move, Lews Therin knotted the webs, a loose knotting that would hold only for minutes before allowing the whole weave to dissipate, and began spinning again. More Deathgates, more Blossoms of Fire, rattling the walls of the house, blowing Trollocs apart, flinging them down. The first of the speeding Deathgates struck the Trollocs and carved through them. It was not just the slicing edge of the constantly opening and closing gateways. Where a Deathgate passed, there simply were no Trollocs remaining.
My hands!
the madman howled.
My hands!

Slowly Rand raised his hands, stuck them through the opening. Immediately Lews Therin wove Fire and Earth in intricate combination, and red filaments flashed from Rand’s fingertips, ten from each, fanning out. Arrows of Fire, this. He knew. As soon as those vanished, more appeared, so fast that they seemed to flicker rather than actually go away. Trollocs struck by the filaments jerked as flesh and blood, heated in a flash beyond
boiling, erupted, jerked and fell, holes blown entirely through their thick bodies. Often, two or three behind fell victim as well before a filament died. He spread his fingers and moved his hands slowly from side to side, spreading death across the whole line. Blossoms of Fire appeared that were not his weaving, and Deathgates, slightly smaller than Lews Therin’s, and Arrows of Fire that must have been Logain’s. The other Asha’man were paying attention, but few would be where they could see those last two webs spun.

Trollocs fell by the hundreds, the thousands, riven by lightning bolts and balls of fire, Blossoms of Fire and Deathgates and Arrows of Fire, the earth itself exploding beneath their feet, yet on they raced, roaring and waving their weapons, Myrddraal riding close behind, black-bladed swords in hand. As they reached the outbuildings, some of the Trollocs surrounded them, pounding on the doors with their fists, prying at the boards of the walls with their swords and spears, tossing flaming torches onto the thatched roofs. Saldaeans up there, working their horsebows as fast as they could, kicked the torches back down, but some hung up on the edges of the roof, and flames began catching even on damp thatch.

The fires
, Rand thought at Lews Therin.
The Saldaeans will burn! Do something!

Lews Therin made no reply, only wove death as fast as he could and hurled it at the Trollocs, Deathgates and Arrows of Fire. A Myrddraal, riddled by half a dozen red filaments, was flung from its saddle, then another. A third lost its head to an Arrow of Fire in an explosion of boiled blood and flesh, but that one rode on, waving its sword, as if it did not know it was dead. Rand was seeking them out. If the Myrddraal were all killed, the Trollocs might well turn and run.

Deathgates and Arrows of Fire only, Lews Therin spun now. The mass of Trollocs was too close to the manor house for Blossoms of Fire. Some of the Asha’man apparently did not realize that right away. The room shook to great booms, the whole manor house shook, as if struck by huge sledgehammers, shook as though about to shake apart, and then there were no more explosions, except where a fireball erupted or the ground itself exploded to throw Trollocs like broken toys. The sky seemed to rain lightning. Silver-blue bolts struck continuously so close to the house that the hair on Rand’s arms and chest tried to lift, the hair on his head.

Some of the Trollocs succeeded in forcing open the doors to one of the barns and began flooding inside. He shifted his hands, cutting down those still outside with flickering red filaments that blew holes in them. Some had managed to get inside, but those the Saldaeans would have to deal
with themselves. On another barn and a stable, flames were beginning to ripple up the thatch, men coughing from the acrid smoke as they shot their bows.