The Path of Daggers

his teeth.

When the shouting faded, narrow-face said, 'You do see?' He paused to cough, then hawked and spat, maybe for his chest and maybe for emphasis. A pitiful sight, all wet and rust, but his backbone was as tight as his bowstring. He ignored Rand’s glare as easily as he did Gregorin’s. 'You do ask us to go home unarmed, unable to defend ourselves or our families, while your people do burn and steal and kill. They do say the storm be coming,' he added, and looked surprised that he had, surprised and confused for a moment.

'The Aiel you’ve heard about are my enemies!' Not spider-webs of flame this time, but solid sheets of fury that wrapped tight around the Void. Rand’s voice was ice, though; it roared like the crack of winter. The storm was coming? Light, he was the storm! 'My Aiel are hunting them down. My Aiel hunt the Shaido, and they and Davram Bashere and most of the Companions hunt bandits, whatever they call themselves! I am the King of Illian, and I will allow no one to disrupt the peace of Illian!'

'Even if what you say do be true,' narrow-face began.

'It is!' Rand snapped. 'You have until midday to decide.' The man frowned uncertainly; unless the roiling clouds cleared, he might have a difficult time knowing midday. Rand gave him no relief. 'Decide wisely!' he said. Whirling Tai’daishar about, he spurred the gelding to a gallop back toward the ridge without waiting for the others.

Reluctantly he let go of the Power, forced himself not to hang on like a man clutching salvation with his fingernails as life and filth drained from him together. For an instant, he saw double; the world seemed to tilt dizzily. That was a recent problem, and he worried it might be part of the sickness that killed men who channeled, but the dizziness never lasted more than moments. It was the rest of letting go that he regretted. The world seemed to dull. No, it did dull, and became somehow less. Colors were washed-out, the sky smaller, compared to what they had been before. He wanted desperately to seize the Source again and wring the One Power out of it. Always it was so when the Power left him.

No sooner had saidin gone, though, than rage bubbled in its place, white-hot and searing, nearly as hot as the Power had been. The Seanchan were not enough, and brigands hiding behind his name? Deadly distractions he could not afford. Was Sammael reaching out from the grave? Had he sown the Shaido to sprout like thorns wherever Rand laid a hand? Why? The man could not have believed he would die. And if half the tales Rand heard were true, there were more in Murandy and Altara and the Light alone knew where! Many among the Shaido already taken prisoner had spoken of an Aes Sedai. Could the White Tower be involved somehow? Would the White Tower never give him peace? Never? Never.

Battling fury, he was blind to Gregorin and the rest catching up. When they topped the ridge among the waiting nobles, he drew rein so abruptly that Tai’daishar reared, pawing the air and flinging mud from his hooves. The nobles edged their mounts back, from his gelding, from him.

'I gave them to midday,' he announced. 'Watch them. I don’t want this lot breaking into fifty smaller bands and slipping away. I’ll be in my tent.' Except for wind-tossed cloaks they might have been stone, rooted to one spot as if he meant the command to watch for them personally. At that moment, he did not care if they stayed there till they froze or melted.

Without another word he trotted down the back slope of the ridge, followed by the two black-coated Asha’man and his Illianer banner-bearers. Fire and ice, and death was coming. But he was steel. He was steel.

Chapter 14 (Dragon's Fang) Message from the M’Hael

A mile west of the ridge, the camps began, men and horses and cook fires, wind-flailed banners and a few scattered tents clumped by nationality, by House, each camp a lake of churned mud separated from the others by stretches of brushy heath. Men mounted and afoot watched Rand’s streaming banners pass, and peered toward other camps to gauge reactions. When the Aiel had been present, these men had made a single huge camp, driven together by one of the few things they truly shared in common. They were not Aiel, and feared them however much they denied it. The world would die unless he succeeded, but he had no illusions that they shared any loyalty to him, or even believed that the fate of the world could not be made to accommodate their own concerns, their own desires for gold or glory or power. A handful did, perhaps, a bare handful, but for the most part, they followed because they feared him far more than they did the Aiel. Maybe more than they did the Dark One, in whom some did not really believe, not in the depths of their hearts, not that he could and would touch the world harder than he had already. Rand stood before their faces, and they believed in that. He accepted it, now. He had too many battles ahead of him to waste effort on one he could not win. So long as they followed and obeyed, it had to be enough.

The largest of the camps was his own, and here Illianer Companions in green coats with yellow cuffs rubbed shoulders with Tairen Defenders of the Stone in fat-sleeved coats striped black-and-gold and an equal number of Cairhienin drawn from forty-odd Houses, in dark colors, some with con stiff above their heads. They cooked at different fires, slept apart, picketed their horses apart, and eyed one another warily, but they mingled. The safety of the Dragon Reborn was their responsibility, and they took the job seriously. Any of them might betray him, but not while the others were there to watch. Old hatreds and new dislikes would bring betrayal of any plot before the betrayer stopped to think.

A ring of steel stood guard around Rand’s tent, a huge peaked thing of green silk embroidered all over with bees in thread-of-gold. It had belonged to his predecessor, Mattin Stepaneos, and had come with the crown, in a manner of speaking. Companions in burnished conical helmets stood side by side with Defenders in helmets ridged and rimmed, and Cairhienin in bell-shaped helms, ignoring the wind, barred faceguards hiding their features, halberds slanted precisely. Not one moved a hair when Rand drew rein, but a bevy of servants came running to attend to him and the Asha’man. A bony woman in the green-and-yellow vest of a groom from the Royal Palace in Illian took his bridle, while his stirrup was held by a bulbous-nosed fellow in the black-and-gold livery of the Stone of Tear. They tugged forelocks to him, and cast only one sharp look at one another. Boreane Carivin, a stout pale little woman in a dark dress, self-importantly offered him a silver tray of damp cloths from which steam rose. Cairhienin, she watched the other two, though more as if making sure they did their tasks properly than with the animosity for each other they barely hid. But with care, still. What worked with the soldiers worked with the servants as well.

Drawing off his gauntlets, Rand waved away Boreane’s tray. Damer Flinn had risen from an ornately carved bench in front of the tent as Rand dismounted. Bald except for a ragged white fringe, Flinn looked more a grandfather than an Asha’man. A leather-tough grandfather with a stiff leg, who had seen more of the world than a farm. The sword at his hip looked as if it belonged, as well it should on a former soldier of the Queen’s Guard. Rand trusted him more than most. Flinn had saved his life, after all.

Flinn saluted, fist to chest, and when Rand acknowledged him with a nod, limped closer and waited until the grooms left with the horses before speaking in a low voice. 'Torval’s here. Sent by the M’Hael, he says. He wanted to wait in the council tent. I told Narishma to watch him.' That had been Rand’s command, though he was not sure why he had given it; no one who came from the Black Tower was to be left alone. Hesitating, Flinn fingered the Dragon on his black collar. 'He wasn’t happy to hear you’d raised all of us.'

'Wasn’t he, now,' Rand said softly, tucking his gloves behind his sword belt. And because Flinn still looked uncertain, he added, 'You all earned it.' He had been about to send one of the Asha’man to Taim — the Leader, the M’Hael, as the Asha’man all called him — but now Torval could carry the message. In the council tent? 'Have refreshments sent,' he told Flinn, then motioned Hopwil and Dashiva to follow.

Flinn saluted again, but Rand was already striding away, black mud squelching around his boots. No cheers rose for him in the blustering wind. He could recall when there had been. If that was not one of Lews Therin’s memories. If Lews Therin had ever been real. A flash of color just beyond the edge of sight, the feel of someone about to touch him from behind. With an effort, he focused himself.

The council tent was a large red-striped pavilion that had once sat on the Plains of Maredo, now pitched in