“I doubt he is arrogant enough for that,” Lanfear replied smoothly. “He can see where it took Ishamael. And that is the point. A point Graendal raised. Once we were thirteen, immortal. Now four are dead, and one has betrayed us. We four are all who meet here today, and enough.”
“Are you certain Asmodean went over?” Sammael demanded. “He never had the courage to take a chance before. Where did he find the heart to join a lost cause?”
Lanfear’s brief smile was amused. “He had the courage for an ambush he thought would set him above the rest of us. And when his choice became death or a doomed cause, it took little courage for him to choose.”
“And little time, I’ll wager.” The scar made Sammael’s sneer even more biting. “If you were close enough to him to know all of this, why did you leave him alive? You could have killed him before he knew you were there.”
“I am not as quick to kill as you. It is final, with no going back, and there are usually other, more profitable ways. Besides, to put it in terms you would understand, I did not want to launch a frontal assault against superior forces.”
“Is he really so strong?” Rahvin asked quietly. “This Rand al’Thor. Could he have overwhelmed you, face-to-face?” Not that he himself could not, if it came to it, or Sammael, though Graendal would likely link with Lanfear if either of the men tried. For that matter, both women were probably filled to bursting with the Power right that moment, ready to strike at the slightest suspicion of either man. Or of each other. But this farmboy. An untrained shepherd! Untrained unless Asmodean was trying.
“He is Lews Therin Telamon reborn,” Lanfear said just as softly, “and Lews Therin was as strong as any.” Sammael absently rubbed the scar across his face; it had been Lews Therin who gave it to him. Three thousand years ago and more, well before the Breaking of the World, before the Great Lord was imprisoned, before so much, but Sammael never forgot.
“Well,” Graendal put in, “have we come around at last to what we are here to discuss?”
Rahvin gave a displeased start. The two servants were frozen still—or again, rather. Sammael muttered in his beard.
“If this Rand al’Thor really is Lews Therin Telamon reborn,” Graendal went on, settling herself on the man’s back where he crouched on all fours, “I am surprised you haven’t tried to snuggle him into your bed, Lanfear. Or would it be so easy? I seem to remember Lews Therin led you by the nose, not the other way around. Squelched your little tantrums. Sent you running to fetch his wine, in a manner of speaking.” She set her own wine on the tray, held out rigidly by the sightlessly kneeling woman. “You were so obsessed with him you’d have stretched out at his feet if he said ‘rug.’ ”
Lanfear’s dark eyes glittered for a moment before she regained control of herself. “He may be Lews Therin reborn, but he is not Lews Therin himself.”
“How do you know?” Graendal asked, smiling as if it were all a joke. “It may well be that, as many believe, all are born and reborn as the Wheel turns, but nothing like this has ever happened that I have read. A specific man reborn according to prophecy. Who knows what he is?”
Lanfear gave a disparaging smirk. “I have observed him closely. He is no more than the shepherd he seems, still more naive than not.” Scorn faded to seriousness. “But now he has Asmodean, weak ally as he is. And even before Asmodean, four of the Chosen have died confronting him.”
“Let him whittle away the dead wood,” Sammael said gruffly. He wove flows of Air to drag a chair across the carpet and sprawled with his boots crossed at the ankle and one arm over the low, carved back. Anyone who believed he was at ease was a fool; Sammael had always liked to dupe his enemies into thinking they could take him by surprise. “More for the rest of us on the Day of Return. Or do you think he might win Tarmon Gai’don, Lanfear? Even if he stiffens Asmodean’s backbone, he has no Hundred Companions this time. With Asmodean or alone, the Great Lord will extinguish him like a broken sar-light.”
The look Lanfear gave him bristled with contempt. “How many of us will be alive when the Great Lord is freed at last? Four gone already. Will he come after you next, Sammael? You might like that. You could finally get rid of that scar if you defeated him. But I forget. How many times did you face him in the War of Power? Did you ever win? I cannot seem to remember.” Without pause she rounded on Graendal. “Or it might be you. He is reluctant to hurt women for some reason, but you won’t even be able to make Asmodean’s choice. You cannot teach him any more than a stone could. Unless he decides to keep you as a pet. That would be a change for you, would it not? Instead of deciding which of your pretties pleases you best, you could learn to please.”
Graendal’s face contorted, and Rahvin prepared to shield himself against whatever the two women might hurl at one another, prepared to Travel at even a whiff of balefire. Then he sensed Sammael gathering the Power, sensed a difference in it—Sammael would call it seizing a tactical advantage—and bent to grab the other man’s arm. Sammael shook him off angrily, but the moment had passed. The two women were looking at them now, not each other. Neither could know what had almost happened, but clearly something had passed between Rahvin and Sammael, and suspicion lit their eyes.
“I want to hear what Lanfear has to say.” He did not look at Sammael, but meant it for him. “There must be more to this than a foolish attempt to frighten us.” Sammael jerked his head in what might have been a nod or merely disgruntlement. It would have to do.
“Oh, there is, though a little fright could not hurt.” Lanfear’s dark eyes still held distrust, but her voice was as clear as still water. “Ishamael tried to control him and failed, tried to kill him in the end and failed, but Ishamael tried bullying and fear, and bullying does not work with Rand al’Thor.”
“Ishamael was more than half-mad,” Sammael muttered, “and less than half-human.”
“Is that what we are?” Graendal arched an eyebrow. “Merely human? Surely we are something more. This is human.” She stroked a finger down the cheek of the woman kneeling beside her. “A new word will have to be created to describe us.”
“Whatever we are,” Lanfear said, “we can succeed where Ishamael failed.” She was leaning slightly forward, as
if to force the words on them. Lanfear seldom showed tension. Why now?
“Why only we four?” Rahvin asked. The other “why” would have to wait.
“Why more?” was Lanfear’s reply. “If we can present the Dragon Reborn kneeling to the Great Lord on the Day of Return, why share the honor—and the rewards—further than need be? And perhaps he can even be used to—how did you put it, Sammael?—whittle away the dead wood.”
It was the sort of answer Rahvin could understand. Not that he trusted her, of course, or any of the others, but he understood ambition. The Chosen had plotted among themselves for position up to the day Lews Therin had imprisoned them in sealing up the Great Lord’s prison, and they had begun again the day they were freed. He just had to be sure Lanfear’s plot did not disrupt his own plans. “Speak on,” he told her.
“First, someone else is trying to control him. Perhaps to kill. I suspect Moghedien or Demandred. Moghedien has always tried to work from the shadows, and Demandred always did hate Lews Therin.” Sammael smiled, or perhaps grimaced, but his hatred was a pale thing beside Demandred’s, though for better cause.
“How do you know it is not one of us here?” Graendal asked glibly.
Lanfear’s smile showed as many teeth as the other woman’s, and as little warmth. “Because you three choose to carve out niches for yourselves and secure your power while the rest slash at each other. And other reasons. I told you I keep a close watch on Rand al’Thor.”
It was true, what she said of them. Rahvin himself preferred diplomacy and manipulation to open conflict, though he would not shy from it if needed. Sammael’s way had always been armies and conquest; he would not go near Lews Therin, even reborn as a shepherd, until he was sure of victory. Graendal, too, followed conquest, though her methods did not involve soldiers; for all her concern with her toys, she took one solid step at a time. Openly to be sure, as the Chosen reckoned such things, but never stretching too far at any step.
“You know I can keep an eye on him unseen,” Lanfear continued, “but the rest of you must stay clear or run the risk of detection. We must draw him back. . . .”