“Aren’t you going to look at an old friend, Hadnan?”
That melodious voice jerked Kadere around, gaping at a hatchet-nosed face, dark eyes almost hidden by rolls of fat. “Keille?” It was impossible. No one survived alone in the Waste except Aiel. She had to be dead. But there she stood, white silk straining over her bulk, ivory combs standing tall in her dark curls.
A faint smile on her lips, she turned with a grace that still surprised him in a woman so large and lightly climbed the steps into his wagon.
For a moment he hesitated, then hurried after her. He would as soon Keille Shaogi really had died in the Waste—the woman was bossy and obnoxious; she need not think she was getting a penny of the little he had managed to salvage—but she stood as high as Jasin Natael. Perhaps she would answer a few questions. At the least, he would have someone to work with. At the worst, someone to put blame on. Power went with standing high, but so did blame for the failures of those beneath you. More than once he had fed his superiors to those still higher up in order to cover himself.
Carefully closing the door, he turned—and would have screamed if his throat had not clenched too tight for sound.
The woman who stood there wore white silk, but she was not fat. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, eyes like dark, bottomless mountain pools, woven silver belting her narrow waist, silver crescents in her shimmering black hair. Kadere knew that face from his dreams.
His knees thudding to the floor shook breath loose. “Great Mistress,” he said hoarsely, “how may I serve?”
Lanfear might have been looking at an insect, one she might crush beneath her slipper or might not. “By showing your obedience to my commands. I have been too busy to watch Rand al’Thor myself. Tell me what he has done, aside from conquering Cairhien, what he plans to do.”
“It is difficult, Great Mistress. One such as myself cannot come close to such as he.” An insect, those cool eyes said, allowed to live so long as it was useful. Kadere racked his brain for everything he had seen or heard or imagined. “He is sending Aiel south in huge numbers, Great Mistress, though I do not know why. The Tairens and Cairhienin do not seem to notice, but I don’t think they can tell one Aiel from another.” Neither could he. He would not dare lie to her, but if she thought he had more use than he did . . . “He has founded a school of some sort, in a city palace that belonged to a House with no survivors. . . .” At first there was no way to tell whether she liked what she was hearing, but as he went on, her face began to darken.
“What is it you want me to see, Moiraine?” Rand said impatiently, tying Jeade’en’s reins to one wheel of the last wagon in line.
She was standing on tiptoe to peer over the side of the wagon bed at a pair of casks that seemed familiar. Unless he was mistaken, they held the two cuendillar seals, packed in wool for protection now that they were no longer unbreakable. He felt the Dark One’s taint strongly here; it almost seemed to come from the casks, a faint miasma as from something rotting in a hidden place.
“It will be safe here,” Moiraine murmured. Lifting her skirts gracefully, she started up the line of wagons. Lan heeled her, a half-tame wolf, the cloak hanging down his back all disturbing ripples of color and nothingness.
Rand glared. “Did she tell you what it was, Egwene?”
“Just that you had to see something. That you had to come here, anyway.”
“You must trust Aes Sedai,” Aviendha said, almost as levelly, but with a hint of doubt. Mat snorted.
“Well, I mean to find out now. Natael, go tell Bael I’ll be with him in—”
At the other end of the line, the side of Kadere’s wagon exploded, splinters scything down Aiel and townsfolk. Rand knew; he did not need goose bumps prickling his skin to know. He raced toward the wagon, after Moiraine and Lan. Time seemed to slow, everything happening at once, as if the air were jelly clinging to each moment.
Lanfear stepped out into stunned silence except for the moans and screams of the injured, something limp and pale and red-streaked hanging from her hand, dragging behind her as she walked down invisible steps. Her face was a mask carved of ice. “He told me, Lews Therin,” she almost screamed, flinging the pale thing into the air. Something caught it, inflated it for a moment into a bloody, transparent statue of Hadnan Kadere; his skin, removed whole. The figure collapsed and fell as Lanfear’s voice rose to a screech. “You let another woman touch you! Again!”
Moments clinging, all happening at once.
Before Lanfear reached the stones of the quay, Moiraine lifted her skirts higher and began running straight toward her. Quick as she was, Lan was quicker, ignoring her shout of, “No, Lan!” Sword coming out, long legs carried him ahead of her, color-shifting cloak waving behind as he charged. Suddenly he seemed to run into an invisible stone wall, bounce back, try to stagger forward again. One step, and as if a giant hand had smashed him aside, he flew ten paces through the air, crashing to the stones.
While he was in midair, Moiraine jerked forward, feet skidding along the pavement, until she was face to face with Lanfear. It was
only for a moment. The Forsaken looked at her as though wondering what could have gotten in her way, then Moiraine was flung to one side so hard she rolled over and over until she disappeared beneath one of the wagons.
The quayside was in turmoil. Just moments since Kadere’s wagon erupted, yet only the blind could not know the One Power was being wielded by the woman in white. Along the docks axes flashed, cutting ropes, freeing barges as their crews desperately fended the craft toward open water and flight. Bare-chested dockmen and dark-clothed townsfolk struggled to jump aboard. In the other direction men and women milled and screamed as they fought to pass through the gates into the city. And among them, cadin’sor-clad figures veiled themselves and rushed at Lanfear with spears or knives or bare hands. There could be no doubt she was the source of the attack, no doubt she fought with the Power. They ran to dance the spears regardless.
Fire rolled over them in waves. Arrows of it pierced those who came on with their clothes in flames. It was not as if Lanfear battled them, or even paid them any real mind. She might have been brushing aside gnats or bitemes. Those who fled burned as well as those who tried to fight. She moved toward Rand as if nothing else existed.
Heartbeats only.
Three steps she had taken when Rand seized the male half of the True Source, molten steel and steel-shattering ice, sweet honey and midden heap. Deep in the Void, the fight for survival was distant, the battle before him scarely less. As Moiraine vanished beneath the wagon, he channeled, pulling the heat from Lanfear’s fires, sinking it into the river. Flames that a moment before engulfed human forms, vanished. In the same instant he wove the flows again, and a misty gray dome came into being, a long oval enclosing him and Lanfear and most of the wagons, an almost transparent wall that shut out all not already within. Even as he tied the weave, he was not sure what it was or where it had come from—some memory of Lews Therin’s perhaps—but Lanfear’s fires struck it and stopped. He could see people outside dimly, too many thrashing and flailing—he had taken the flames, not the searing of flesh; that stench still hung in the air—but none would burn now that had not already. Bodies lay inside, too, mounds of charred cloth, some stirring feebly, moaning. She did not care; her channeled flames winked out; the gnats were dispelled; she never glanced aside.
Heartbeats. He was cold in the emptiness of the Void, and if he felt sorrow for the dead and dying and scarred, the feeling was so far off it might not have been. He was cold itself. Emptiness itself. Only the rage of saidin filled him.
Movement to either side. Aviendha and Egwene, eyes concentrated on Lanfear. He had meant to shut them out from this. They must have raced with him. Mat and Asmodean; outside; the wall missed the final few wagons. In icy calm he channeled Air to snare Lanfear; Egwene and Aviendha could shield her while he distracted her.
Something severed his flows; they snapped back so hard that he grunted.
“One of them?” Lanfear snarled. “Which is Aviendha?” Egwene threw her head back and wailed, eyes bulging, the world’s agony shrieking from her mouth. “Which?” Aviendha rose on tiptoes, shuddering, howls chasing Egwene’s as they climbed higher and higher.