Lord of Chaos (63 page)

For some reason he looked up at the great vaulted ceiling, with its colored windows depicting battles and queens, alternating with the White Lion. Those more than life-size women seemed to stare at him, in disapproval, wondering what he was doing there. Imagination, of course, but why? Because he had learned about Tigraine? Imagination, or madness?

“Someone has come I think you should see,” Bashere said at his elbow, and Rand jerked away from the women overhead. Had he really been glaring back at them? Bashere had one of his horsemen with him, a taller
fellow—not hard to be, beside Bashere—with a dark beard and mustaches, his tilted eyes green.

“Not unless it’s Elayne,” Rand said, more harshly than he meant, “or somebody with proof the Dark One is dead. I am going to Cairhien this morning.” He had had no such intention until the words left his mouth. Egwene was there. And the queens overhead were not. “It’s been weeks since I was there last. If I don’t keep an eye on them, some lord or lady will claim the Sun Throne behind my back.” Bashere looked at him strangely. He was explaining too much.

“As you say, but you will want to see this man first. He says he comes from Lord Brend, and I think he speaks truth.” The Aiel were on their feet in the instant; they knew who used that name.

For Rand’s part, he stared at Bashere in surprise. The last thing he expected was an emissary from Sammael. “Bring him in.”

“Hamad,” Bashere said with a jerk of his head, and the younger Saldaean trotted away.

A few minutes later Hamad returned with a knot of Saldaeans warily guarding a fellow in their midst. At first glance nothing about the man accounted for their caution. With no weapon visible, he wore a long gray coat with a raised collar, and a curly beard but no mustache, both in the Illianer fashion. He had a stub of a nose and a wide, grinning mouth. As he came closer, though, Rand realized that grin never altered by a hair. The man’s whole face seemed frozen in that one mirthful expression. By contrast, his dark eyes stared out of that mask, swimming with fear.

At ten paces, Bashere raised his hand, and the guard halted. The Illianer, staring at Rand, did not seem to notice until Hamad presented a sword point to his chest, making him stop or be run through. He only glanced at the slightly serpentine blade, then returned to staring at Rand with those terrified eyes in that grinning face. His hands hung at his sides, twitching as much as his face was still.

Rand started to close the distance, but abruptly Sulin and Urien were there, not exactly blocking his way, yet positioned so that he would have to push between them.

“I wonder what has been done to him?” Sulin said, studying the fellow. A number of Maidens and Red Shields had come out from the columns, some even veiled. “If he is not Shadowspawn, he is touched by the Shadow.”

“One like that might do things we cannot know,” Urien said. He was one of those with a scarlet strip of cloth around his temples. “Kill with a touch, perhaps. A pretty message that would be to send an enemy.”

Neither looked at Rand, not directly, but he nodded. Perhaps they were right. “How are you called?” he asked. Sulin and Urien moved a step to either side when they saw he would stay where he was.

“I do come from . . . from Sammael,” the man said woodenly through that grin. “I do bring a message for . . . for the Dragon Reborn. For you.”

Well, that was direct enough. Was he a Darkfriend, or just some poor soul Sammael had trapped in one of the nastier weavings Asmodean had talked about? “What message?” Rand said.

The Illianer’s mouth worked, struggled. What came out bore no relation to the voice he had used before. It was deeper, full of confidence, in a different accent. “We will stand on different sides, you and I, come the day of the Great Lord’s Return, but why should we kill each other now and leave Demandred and Graendal to contest for the world over our bones?” Rand knew that voice, in one of those scraps from Lews Therin that had settled in his mind. Sammael’s voice. Lews Therin snarled wordlessly. “Already you have much to digest,” the Illianer went on—or Sammael did. “Why bite off more? And hard chewing, even if you don’t find Semirhage or Asmodean taking you from behind while you are busy with it. I propose a truce between us, a truce until the Day of Return. If you do not move against me, I will not against you. I will pledge not to move east beyond the Plains of Maredo, nor further north than Lugard in the east or Jehannah in the west. You see, I leave the greater share by far to you. I do not claim to speak for the rest of the Chosen, but at least you know you have nothing to fear from me, or out of the lands I hold. I will pledge not to aid them in anything they do against you, nor to help them defend against you. You have done well so far in removing the Chosen from the field. I have no doubt you will continue to do well, better than before, knowing your southern flank is safe and the others fight without my aid. I suspect that on the Day of Return, there will be only you and I, as it should be. As it was meant to be.” The man’s teeth clicked shut, hidden behind that frozen grin. His eyes looked near madness.

Rand stared. A truce with Sammael? Even if he could have trusted the man to keep it, even if it meant one danger set aside until all the others were dealt with, it also meant leaving countless thousands to Sammael’s mercy, a quality the man had never had. He felt rage sliding across the surface of the Void, and realized he had seized
saidin.
That torrent of searing sweetness and freezing filth seemed to echo his anger. Lews Therin. Well enough that he should be mad in his madness. The echo resonated with his own fury till he could not tell one from the other.

“Take this message back to Sammael,” he said coldly. “Every death he has caused since waking, I lay at his feet and call due. Every murder he has ever done or caused, I lay at his feet and call due. He escaped justice in the Rorn M’doi, and at Nol Caimaine, and Sohadra. . . .” More of Lews Therin’s memories, but the pain of what had been done there, the agony of what Lews Therin’s eyes had seen, burned across the Void as if Rand’s. “. . . But I will see justice done now. Tell him, no truce with the Forsaken. No truce with the Shadow.”

The messenger lifted a spasming hand to wipe sweat from his face. No, not sweat. His hand came away red. Crimson droplets oozed from his pores, and he trembled head to foot. Hamad gasped and stepped back, and he was not the only one. Bashere knuckled his mustaches with a grimace, and even the Aiel stared. Painted red, the Illianer collapsed in a convulsing heap, blood spreading around him in a dark, glistening pool smeared by his thrashing.

Rand watched him die, buried deep in the Void, feeling nothing. The Void walled off emotion, and there was nothing he could have done in any case. Had he known Healing, he did not think it would have stopped that.

“I think,” Bashere said slowly, “maybe Sammael will have his answer when this fellow does not return. I have heard of killing a messenger who brought bad news, but never killing him to tell you the news was bad.”

Rand nodded. The death changed nothing; it changed no more than learning of Tigraine had. “Have someone see to his burial. A prayer will not hurt, even if it doesn’t help either.” Why did those queens in their colored windows still seem accusing? Surely they had seen as bad in their lifetimes, maybe even in this chamber. He could still point to Alanna, feel her; the Void was no shield. Could he trust Egwene? She kept secrets. “I may spend the night in Cairhien.”

“A strange end to a strange man,” Aviendha said, stepping around the dais. Small doors behind it led to robing rooms, and from there to corridors beyond.

Rand started to step between her and what lay on the red-and-white tiles, then stopped. After one curious glance, Aviendha ignored the body. When she was a Maiden of the Spear she had surely seen as many men die as he ever had. By the time she gave up the spear, she had probably killed as many as he had then seen die.

It was him she concentrated on, running her eyes over him to make sure he had taken no hurt. Some of the Maidens smiled at her, and they opened a path to Rand, pushing Red Shields aside where necessary, but she
stayed where she was, readjusting her shawl and studying him. It was a good thing that whatever the Maidens thought, she only stayed near him because the Wise Ones told her to, to spy on him, because he found himself wanting to put his arms around her right there. Good that she did not want him. He had given her the ivory bracelet she wore, roses among thorns, suiting her nature. It was her only piece of jewelry except for a silver necklace, the intricate patterns the Kandori called snowflakes. He did not know who had given her that.

Light!
he thought disgustedly. Wanting Aviendha
and
Elayne, when he knew he could have neither.
You’re worse than Mat ever thought of being.
Even Mat had the sense to stay away from a woman if he thought he would harm her.

“I must go to Cairhien too,” she said.

Rand grimaced. One attraction of a night in Cairhien was that it would be a night without her in the same room.

“It has nothing to do with . . .” she began sharply, then bit her full underlip, blue-green eyes flashing. “I must speak with the Wise Ones, with Amys.”

“Of course,” he told her. “No reason you shouldn’t.” There was always the chance he could manage to leave her behind there.

Bashere touched his arm. “You were going to watch my horsemen go through their paces again this afternoon.” The tone was casual, yet his tilted eyes gave the words heavy weight.

It
was
important, but Rand felt a need to be out of Caemlyn, out of Andor. “Tomorrow. Or the day after.” He had to be away from the eyes of those queens, wondering whether one of their blood—Light, he was!—would tear their land apart as he had so many others. Away from Alanna. If only for a night, he had to be away.

Gathering his sword belt from beside the throne with a flow of Air, and the scepter too, Rand opened the gateway right there before the dais, a slash of light that rotated, widening to give a view of an empty dark-paneled chamber more than six hundred miles from Caemlyn, in the Sun Palace, the Royal Palace of Cairhien. Set aside for his use this way, the room held no furnishings, but dark blue floor tiles and wood-paneled walls glistened from polishing. Windowless, the room was bright anyway; eight gilded stand-lamps burned day and night, mirrors magnifying the oil-fed flames. He paused to buckle on his sword while Sulin and Urien opened the door to the corridor and led veiled Maidens and Red Shields through before him.

In this case he thought their caution ridiculous. The broad corridor outside, the only way to reach the room, was already crowded with thirty or so
Far Aldazar Din
, Brothers of the Eagle, and nearly two dozen of Berelain’s Mayeners in red-painted breastplates and rimmed potlike helmets that came down to the nape of the neck in back. If there was one place anywhere that Rand knew he needed no Maidens, it was Cairhien, more so even than Tear.

A Brother of the Eagle was already loping down the hallway by the time Rand appeared, and a Mayener awkwardly clutching spear and shortsword
as he followed the taller Aielman. In fact, a small army trailed after the
Far Aldazar Din
, servants in various liveries, a Tairen Defender of the Stone in burnished breastplate and black-and-gold coat, a Cairhienin soldier with the front of his head shaved, his breastplate much more battered than the Tairen’s, two young Aielwomen in dark heavy skirts and loose white blouses whom Rand thought he recognized as apprentices to Wise Ones. News of his arrival would spread quickly. It always did.

At least Alanna was far away. Verin, too, but most of all Alanna. He still felt her, even at this distance, just a vague impression that she was somewhere to the west. Like the feel of a hand just a hair from touching the back of his neck. Was there any way to get free of her? He seized
saidin
again for a moment, but that still made no difference.

You never escape the traps you spin yourself.
Lews Therin’s murmur sounded confused.
Only a greater power can break a power, and then you’re trapped again. Trapped forever so you cannot die.