The Great Hunt (71 page)

“I’m going to get some sleep,” he muttered, picking up his saddlebags. “They can’t have carried off all the beds.”

Upstairs, he did find beds, but only a few still had mattresses, and those so lumpy he thought it might be more comfortable to sleep on the floor. Finally he chose a bed where the mattress simply sagged in the middle. There was nothing else in the room except one wooden chair and a table with a rickety leg.

He took off his wet things, putting on a dry shirt and breeches before lying down, since there were no sheets or blankets, and propped his sword beside the head of the bed. Wryly, he thought that the only thing dry he had for a coverlet was the Dragon’s banner; he left it safely buckled inside the saddlebags.

Rain drummed on the roof, and thunder growled overhead, and now and again a lightning flash lit the windows. Shivering, he rolled this way and that on the mattress, seeking some comfortable way to lie, wondering if the banner would not do for a blanket after all, wondering if he should ride on to Falme.

He rolled to his other side, and Ba’alzamon was standing beside the chair with the pure white length of the Dragon’s banner in his hands. The room seemed darker there, as if Ba’alzamon stood on the edge of a cloud of oily black smoke. Nearly healed burns crisscrossed his face, and as Rand looked, his pitch-dark eyes vanished for an instant, replaced by endless caverns of fire. Rand’s saddlebags lay by his feet, buckles undone, flap thrown back where the banner had been hidden.

“The time comes closer, Lews Therin. A thousand threads draw tight, and soon you will be tied and trapped, set to a course you cannot change. Madness. Death. Before you die, will you once more kill everything you love?”

Rand glanced at the door, but he made no move except to sit up on the side of the bed. What good to try running from the Dark One? His throat felt like sand. “I am not the Dragon, Father of Lies!” he said hoarsely.

The darkness behind Ba’alzamon roiled, and furnaces roared as Ba’alzamon laughed. “You honor me. And belittle yourself. I know you too well. I have faced you a thousand times. A thousand times a thousand. I know you to your miserable soul, Lews Therin Kinslayer.” He laughed again; Rand put a hand in front of his face against the heat of that fiery mouth.

“What do you want? I will not serve you. I will not do anything that you want. I’ll die first!”

“You
will
die, worm! How many times have you died across the span of the Ages, fool, and how much has death availed you? The grave is cold and lonely, save for the worms. The grave is mine. This time there will be no rebirth for you. This time the Wheel of Time will be broken and the world remade in the image of the Shadow. This time your death will be forever! Which will you choose? Death everlasting? Or life eternal—and power!”

Rand hardly realized that he was on his feet. The void had surrounded him,
saidin
was there, and the One Power flowed into him. That fact almost cracked the emptiness. Was this real? Was it a dream? Could he channel in a dream? But the torrent rushing into him swept away his doubts. He hurled it at Ba’alzamon, hurled the pure One Power, the force that turned the Wheel of Time, a force that could make seas burn and eat mountains.

Ba’alzamon took half a step back, holding the banner clutched before him. Flames leaped in his wide eyes and mouth, and the darkness seemed to cloak him in shadow. In the Shadow. The Power sank into that black mist and vanished, soaked up like water on parched sand.

Rand drew on
saidin
, pulled for more, and still more. His flesh seemed so cold it must shatter at a touch; it burned as if it must boil away. His bones felt on the point of crisping to cold crystal ash. He did not care; it was like drinking life itself.

“Fool!” Ba’alzamon roared. “You will destroy yourself!”

Mat.
The thought floated somewhere beyond the consuming flood.
The dagger. The Horn. Fain. Emond’s Field. I can’t die yet.

He was not sure how he did it, but suddenly the Power was gone, and
saidin,
and the void. Shuddering uncontrollably, he fell to his knees beside the bed, arms wrapped around himself in a vain effort to stop their twitching.

“That is better, Lews Therin.” Ba’alzamon tossed the banner to the floor and put his hands on the chair back; wisps of smoke rose from between his fingers. The shadow no longer encompassed him. “There is your banner, Kinslayer. Much good will it do you. A thousand strings laid over a thousand years have drawn you here. Ten thousand woven throughout the Ages tie you like a sheep for slaughter. The Wheel itself holds you prisoner to your fate Age after Age. But I can set you free. You cowering cur, I alone in the entire world can teach you how to wield the Power. I alone can stop it killing you before you have a chance to go mad. I alone can stop the madness. You have served me before. Serve me again, Lews Therin, or be destroyed forever!”

“My name,” Rand forced between chattering teeth, “is Rand al’Thor.” His shivering forced him to squeeze his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, he was alone.

Ba’alzamon was gone. The shadow was gone. His saddlebags stood against the chair with the buckles done up and one side bulging with the bulk of the Dragon’s banner, just as he had left it. But on the chair back, tendrils of smoke still rose from the charred impressions of fingers.

CHAPTER
42

Falme

N
ynaeve pressed Elayne back into the narrow alleyway between a cloth merchant’s shop and a potter’s works as the pair of women linked by a silvery leash passed by, heading down the cobblestone street toward Falme harbor. They did not dare allow that pair to come too close. The people in the street made way for those two even more quickly than they did for Seanchan soldiers, or the occasional noble’s palanquin, thickly curtained now that the days were cold. Even the street artists did not offer to draw them in chalks or pencils, although they pestered everyone else. Nynaeve’s mouth tightened as her eyes followed the
sul’dam
and the
damane
through the crowd. Even after weeks in the town, the sight sickened her. Perhaps it sickened her more, now. She could not imagine doing that to any woman, not even Moiraine or Liandrin.

Well, maybe Liandrin
, she admitted sourly. Sometimes, at night, in the small, smelly room the two of them had rented above a fishmonger, she thought of what she would like to do to Liandrin when she got her hands on her. Liandrin even more than Suroth. More than once she had been shocked at her own cruelty, even while she was delighted at her inventiveness.

Still trying to keep the pair in sight, her eyes fell on a bony man, well down the street, before the shifting throng hid him again. She had only a flash of a big nose in a narrow face. He wore a rich bronze velvet robe of Seanchan cut over his clothes, but she thought that he was no Seanchan, though the servant following him was, and a servant of high degree, with one temple shaved. The local people had not taken to Seanchan fashions, particularly that one.
That looked like Padan Fain,
she thought incredulously.
It couldn’t be. Not here.

“Nynaeve,” Elayne said softly, “could we move on, now? That fellow selling apples is looking at his table as if he’s thinking he had more a few moments ago, and I would not want him wondering what I have in my pockets.”

They both wore long coats made of sheepskin, with the fleece turned in and bright red spirals embroidered across the breast. It was country garb, but it passed well enough in Falme, where many people had come in from the farms and villages. Among so many strangers the two of them had been able to sink in unnoticed. Nynaeve had combed out her braid, and her gold ring, the serpent eating its own tail, now nestled under her dress beside Lan’s heavy ring on the leather cord around her neck.

The large pockets of Elayne’s coat bulged suspiciously.

“You stole those apples?” Nynaeve hissed quietly, pulling Elayne out into the crowded street. “Elayne, we don’t have to steal. Not yet, anyway.”

“No? How much money do we have left? You have been ‘not hungry’ very often at mealtimes the last few days.”

“Well, I am not hungry,” Nynaeve snapped, trying to ignore the hollow in her middle. Everything cost considerably more than she had expected; she had heard local people complaining about how prices had risen since the Seanchan came. “Give me one of those.” The apple Elayne dug out of her pocket was small and hard, but it crunched with a delicious sweetness when Nynaeve bit into it. She licked the juice from her lips. “How did you manage to—” She jerked Elayne to a halt and peered into her face. “Did you . . . ? Did you . . . ?” She could not think of a way to say it with so many streaming by, but Elayne understood.

“Only a little. I made that stack of old melons with the soft spots fall, and when he started putting them back. . . .” She did not even have the grace, as Nynaeve saw it, to blush or look embarrassed. Unconcernedly eating one of the apples, she shrugged. “There is no need to frown at me like that. I looked carefully to make sure there was no
damane
close.” She sniffed. “If I were being held prisoner, I would not help my captors find other women to enslave. Although, the way these Falmen behave, you would think they were lifelong servants of those who should be their enemies to the death.” She looked around, openly contemptuous, at the people hurrying by; it was possible to follow the path of any Seanchan, even common soldiers and even at a distance, by the ripples of bowing. “They should resist. They should fight back.”

“How? Against . . . that.”

They had to step to the side of the street along with everyone else as a Seanchan patrol neared, climbing from the direction of the harbor. Nynaeve managed the bow, hands on knees, with face schooled to a perfect smoothness; Elayne was slower, and made her bow with a distasteful twist of her mouth.

There were twenty armored men and women in the patrol, riding horses, for which Nynaeve was grateful. She could not become used to seeing people riding things that looked like bronze-scaled, tailless cats, and a rider on one of the flying beasts was always enough to make her feel dizzy; she was glad there were so few of them. Still, two leashed creatures trotted along with the patrol, like wingless birds with coarse leather skin, and sharp beaks higher above the cobblestones than the helmeted heads of the soldier. Their long, sinewy legs looked as if they could run faster than any horse.

She straightened slowly after the Seanchan were gone. Some of those who had bowed for the patrol came close to running; no one was comfortable at the sight of the Seanchan’s beasts except the Seanchan themselves. “Elayne,” she said softly as they resumed their climb, “if we are caught, I swear that before they kill us, or do whatever they do, I will beg them on bended knees to let me stripe you from top to bottom with the stoutest switch I can find! If you still can’t learn to be careful, maybe it’s time to think about sending you back to Tar Valon, or home to Caemlyn, or anywhere but here.”

“I am careful. At least I looked to be sure there was no
damane
close by. What about you? I have seen you channel with one in plain sight.”

“I made sure they weren’t looking at me,” Nynaeve muttered. She had had to ball up all her anger at women being chained like animals to manage it. “And I only did it once. And it was only a trickle.”

“A trickle? We had to spend three days hiding in our room breathing fish while they searched the town for whoever had done it. Do you call that being careful?”

“I had to know if there was a way to unfasten those collars.” She thought there was. She would have to test one more collar at least before she was certain, and she was not looking forward to it. She had thought, like Elayne, that the
damane
must all be prisoners eager to escape, but it had been the woman in the collar who raised the pry.

A man pushing a barrow that bumped over the cobblestones passed by them, crying his services to sharpen scissors and knives. “They should resist, somehow,” Elayne growled. “They act as if they do not see anything that happens around them if there’s a Seanchan in it.”

Nynaeve only sighed. It did not help that she thought Elayne was at least partly right. At first she had thought some of the Falmen submission, at least, must be a pose, but she had found no evidence of any resistance at all. She had looked at first, hoping to find help in freeing Egwene and Min, but everyone took fright at the merest hint that they might oppose the Seanchan, and she stopped asking before she drew the wrong sort of attention. In truth, she could not imagine how the people
could
fight.
Monsters and Aes Sedai. How can you fight monsters and Aes Sedai?

Ahead stood five tall stone houses, among the largest in the town, all together making up a block. One street short of them, Nynaeve found an alleyway beside a tailor shop, where they could keep an eye on some of the tall houses’ entrances, at least. It was not possible to see every door at once—she did not want to risk letting Elayne go off on her own to watch more—but it was not wise to go any closer. Above the rooftops, on the next street, the golden hawk banner of the High Lord Turak flapped in the wind.

Only women went in or out of those houses, and most of those were
sul’dam,
alone or with
damane
in tow. The buildings had been taken over by the Seanchan to house the
damane.
Egwene had to be in there, and likely Min; they had found no sign of Min so far, though it was possible she was as hidden by the crowds as they. Nynaeve had heard many tales of women and girls being seized on the streets or brought in from the villages; they all went into those houses, and if they were seen again, they wore a collar.

Settling herself on a crate beside Elayne, she dug into the other woman’s coat for a handful of the small apples. There were fewer local folk in the streets here. Everyone knew what the houses were, and everyone avoided them, just as they avoided the stables where the Seanchan kept their beasts. It was not difficult to keep an eye on the doors through spaces between the passersby. Just two women stopping for a bite; just two more people who could not afford to eat at an inn. Nothing to attract more than a passing glance.

Eating mechanically, Nynaeve tried once more to plan. Being able to open the collar—if she really could—did no good at all unless she could reach Egwene. The apples did not taste so sweet anymore.

From the narrow window of her tiny room under the eaves, one of a number roughly walled together from whatever had been there before, Egwene could see the garden where
damane
were being walked by their
sul’dam.
It had been several gardens before the Seanchan knocked down the walls that separated them and took the big houses to keep their
damane.
The trees were all but leafless, but the
damane
were still taken out for air, whether they wanted it or not. Egwene watched the garden because Renna was down there, talking with another
sul’dam
, and as long as she could see Renna, then Renna was not going to enter and surprise her.

Some other
sul’dam
might come—there were many more
sul’dam
than
damane
, and every
sul’dam
wanted her turn wearing a bracelet; they called it being complete—but Renna still had charge of her training, and it was Renna who wore her bracelet four times out of five. If anyone came, they would find no impediment to entering. There were no locks on the doors of
damane
’s rooms. Egwene’s room held only a hard, narrow bed, a washstand with a chipped pitcher and bowl, one chair and a small table, but it had no room for more.
Damane
had no need of comfort, or privacy, or possessions.
Damane
were possessions. Min had a room just like this, in another house, but Min could come and go as she would, or almost as she would. Seanchan were great ones for rules; they had more, for everyone, than the White Tower did for novices.

Egwene stood far back from the window. She did not want any of the women below to look up and see the glow that she knew surrounded her as she channeled the One Power, probing delicately at the collar around her neck, searching futilely; she could not even tell whether the band was woven or made of links—sometimes it seemed one, sometimes the other—but it seemed all of a piece all the time. It was only a tiny trickle of the Power, the merest drip that she could imagine, but it still beaded sweat on her face and made her stomach clench. That was one of the properties of the
a’dam;
if a
damane
tried to channel without a
sul’dam
wearing her bracelet, she felt sick, and the more of the Power she channeled, the sicker she became. Lighting a candle beyond the reach of her arm would have made Egwene vomit. Once Renna had ordered her to juggle her tiny balls of light with the bracelet lying on the table. Remembering still made her shudder.

Now, the silver leash snaked across the bare floor and up the unpainted wooden wall to where the bracelet hung on a peg. The sight of it hanging there made her jaws clench with fury. A dog leashed so carelessly could have run away. If a
damane
moved her bracelet as much as a foot from where it had last been touched by a
sul’dam
. . . . Renna had made her do that, too—had made her carry her own bracelet across the room. Or try to. She was sure it had only been minutes before the
sul’dam
snapped the bracelet firmly on her own wrist, but to Egwene the screaming and the cramps that had had her writhing on the floor had seemed to go on for hours.

Someone tapped at the door, and Egwene jumped, before she realized it could not be a
sul’dam.
None of them would knock first. She let
saidar
go, anyway; she was beginning to feel decidedly ill. “Min?”

“Here I am for my weekly visit,” Min announced as she slipped inside and shut the door. Her cheeriness sounded a little forced, but she always did what she could to keep Egwene’s spirits up. “How do you like it?” She spun in a little circle, showing off her dark green wool dress of Seanchan cut. A heavy, matching cloak hung over her arm. There was even a green ribbon catching up her dark hair, though her hair was hardly long enough for it. Her knife was still in its sheath at her waist, though. Egwene had been surprised when Min first showed up wearing it, but it seemed the Seanchan trusted everyone. Until they broke a rule.

“It’s pretty,” Egwene said cautiously. “But, why?”