The Path of Daggers

Torval cocked his head thoughtfully, but he had the words ready on his tongue. 'Nineteen deserters, so far. The M’Hael, he has ordered them killed whenever they are found, and their heads brought back for examples.' Plucking a bit of glazed pear from the proffered tray, he popped it into his mouth and smiled brightly. 'Three heads hang like fruit on the Traitor’s Tree at this moment.'

'Good,' Rand said levelly. Men who ran now could not be trusted not to run later, when lives depended on them standing. And these men could not be allowed to go their own way; those fellows back on the hills, if they escaped in a body, were less dangerous than one man trained in the Black Tower. The Traitor’s Tree? Taim was a great one for naming things. But men needed the trappings, the symbols and the names, the black coats and the pins, to help hold them together. Until it was time to die. 'The next time I visit the Black Tower, I want to see every deserter’s head.'

A second piece of candied pear, halfway to Torval’s mouth, dropped from his fingers and streaked the front of his fine coat. 'It might interfere with recruiting, making that sort of effort,' he said slowly. 'The deserters, they do not announce themselves.'

Rand held the other man’s gaze until it fell. 'How many losses in training?' he demanded. The sharp-nosed Asha’man hesitated. 'How many?'

Narishma leaned forward, staring intently at Torval. So did Hopwil. The servants continued their smooth, silent dance, offering their trays to men who no longer saw them. Boreane took advantage of Narishma’s preoccupation to make sure his silver mug held more hot water than spiced wine.

Torval shrugged, too casually. 'Fifty-one, all told. Thirteen burned out, and twenty-eight dead where they stood. The rest… The M’Hael, he adds something to their wine, and they do not wake.' Abruptly his tone turned malicious. 'It can come suddenly, at any time. One man began screaming that spiders were crawling beneath his skin on his second day.' He smiled viciously at Narishma and Hopwil, and nearly so at Rand, but it was to the other two he addressed himself, swinging his head between them. 'You see? Not to worry if you slide into madness. You’ll not hurt yourselves or a soul. You go to sleep… forever. Kinder than gentling, even if we knew how. Kinder than leaving you insane and cut off, yes?' Narishma stared back, taut as a harp-string, his mug forgotten in his hand. Hopwil was once more frowning at something only he could see.

'Kinder,' Rand said in a flat voice, setting the mug back beside him on the table. Something in the wine. My soul is black with blood, and damned. It was not a hard thought, not biting or edged; a simple statement of fact. 'A mercy any man might wish for, Torval.'

Torval’s cruel smile faded, and he stood breathing hard. The sums were easy; one man in ten destroyed, one man in fifty mad, and more surely to come. Early days yet, and no way till the day you died to know you had beaten the odds. Except that the odds would beat you, one way or another, in the end. Whatever else, Torval stood under that threat, too.

Abruptly Rand became aware of Boreane. It took a moment before he recognized the expression on her face, and when he did, he bit back cold words. How dare she feel pity! Did she think Tarmon Gai’don could be won without blood? The Prophecies of the Dragon demanded blood like rain!

'Leave us,' he told her, and she quietly gathered the servants. But she still carried compassion in her eyes as she herded them out.

Casting around for a way to change the mood, Rand found nothing. Pity weakened as surely as fear, and they had to be strong. To face what they had to face, they all must be steel. His making, his responsibility.

Lost in his own thoughts, Narishma peered into the steam rising from his wine, and Hopwil still tried to stare through the side of the tent. Torval cast sideways glances at Rand and struggled to put the scornful twist back on his mouth. Dashiva alone appeared unaffected, with his arms folded, studying Torval as a man might study a horse offered for sale.

Into the painfully stretching silence burst a husky, windblown young man in black, with the Sword and Dragon on his collar. Of an age with Hopwil, still not old enough to marry most places, Fedwin Morr wore intensity more closely than his shirt; he moved on his toes, and his eyes had the look of a hunting cat that knew itself hunted in turn. He had been different, once, and not so long ago. 'The Seanchan will move from Ebou Dar soon,' he said as he saluted. 'They mean to come against Illian next.' Hopwil gave a start and a gasp, jolted out of his dark study. Once again, Dashiva’s response was to laugh, mirthlessly this time.

Nodding, Rand took up the Dragon Scepter. After all, he carried it for remembrance. The Seanchan danced to their own tune, not the song he wished for.

If Rand received the announcement in silence, Torval did not. Finding his sneer, he raised a contemptuous eyebrow. 'Did they tell you all that, now?' he said mockingly. 'Or have you learned to read minds? Let me tell you something, boy. I have fought, against Amadicians and Domani both, and no army takes a city then packs itself up to march a thousand miles! More than a thousand miles! Or do you think they can Travel?'

Morr met Torval’s derision calmly. Or if it unsettled him at all, the only sign he gave was running a thumb down his long sword hilt. 'I did talk to some of them. Most were Taraboners, and more landing by ship every day, or near enough.' Shouldering past Torval to the table, he favored the Taraboner with a level look. 'All stepping right quick whenever anybody with a slurring way of speech opened a mouth.' The older man opened his, angrily, but the younger pressed on hurriedly, to Rand. 'They’re putting soldiers all along the Venir Mountains. Five hundred, sometimes a thousand together. All the way to Arran Head already. And they’re buying or taking every wagon and cart within twenty leagues of Ebou Dar, and the animals to draw them.'

'Carts!' Torval exclaimed. 'Wagons! Is it that they mean to hold a market fair, do you think? And what fool would march an army through mountains when there are perfectly good roads?' He noticed Rand watching him, and cut off with a small frown, suddenly uncertain.

'I told you to stay low, Morr.' Rand let anger touch his voice. The young Asha’man had to step back as he jumped down from the table. 'Not to go asking the Seanchan their plans. To look and stay low.'

'I was careful; I didn’t wear my pins.' Morr’s eyes did not change for Rand, still hunter and hunted in one. He seemed to be boiling inside. Had Rand not known better, he would have thought Morr held the Power, struggling to survive saidin even as it gave him life ten times over. His face seemed to want to sweat. 'If any of the men I talked to knew where they’re going next, they didn’t say, and I didn’t ask, but they were willing to complain over a mug of ale about marching all the time and never standing still. In Ebou Dar, they were soaking up all the ale in the city as fast as they could, because they say they have to march again. And they’re gathering wagons, just like I said.' That all came out in a rush, and he clamped his teeth at the end as though to trap more words that wanted to fly from his tongue.

Smiling suddenly, Rand clapped him on the shoulder. 'You did well. The wagons would have been enough, but you did well. Wagons are important,' he added, turning to Torval. 'If an army feeds off the country, it eats what it finds. Or not, if it doesn’t.' Torval had not flickered an eyelid at hearing of Seanchan in Ebou Dar. If that tale had reached the Black Tower, why had Taim not mentioned it? Rand hoped his smile did not look a snarl. 'It’s harder to arrange supply trains, but when you have one you know there’s fodder for the animals and beans for the men. The Seanchan organize everything.'

Sorting through the maps, he found the one he wanted and spread it out, weighted at one side with his sword and at the other with the Dragon Scepter. The coast between Illian and Ebou Dar stared up at him, rimmed for most of its length by hills and mountains, dotted with fishing villages and small towns. The Seanchan did organize. Ebou Dar had been theirs barely more than a week, but the merchants’ eyes-and-ears wrote of repairs well under way on the damage done to the city in its taking, of clean sickhouses set up for the ill, of food and work arranged for the poor and those driven from their homes by troubles inland. The streets and the surrounding countryside were patrolled so that no one need fear footpads or bandits, day or night, and while merchants were welcome, smuggling had been cut to a trickle if not less. Those honest Illianer merchants had been surprisingly glum about the smuggling. What were the Seanchan organizing now?

The others gathered around the table as Rand perused the map. There were roads hard along the coast, but poor straggling things, marked as little more than cart paths. The broad trade roads lay inland, avoiding the worst of the terrain and the worst of what the Sea of Storms had to offer. 'Men raiding out of those mountains could make passage difficult for anyone trying to use the inland roads,' he said finally. 'By controlling the mountains, they make the roads safe as a city street. You’re right, Morr. They are coming to Illian.'

Leaning on his fists, Torval glared at Morr, who had been right when he was wrong. A grievous sin, perhaps, in Torval’s book. 'Even so, it will be months before they can trouble you here,' he said sullenly. 'A hundred