“It took a while to figure out what I had to do,” Narishma replied in a flat voice. “You didn’t tell me everything. You nearly killed me.”
That was ridiculous. Rand had told him everything he needed to know. He was sure of it. There was no point to trusting the man as far as he had, only to have him die and ruin everything. Carefully he tucked the bundle beneath his cot. His hands trembled with the urge to strip the wrappings away, to make sure they held what Narishma had been sent for. The man would not have dared return if they did not. “Get yourself into a proper coat before you join the others,” he said. “And Narishma . . . ” Rand straightened, fixing the other man with a steady gaze. “You tell anyone about this, and I will kill you.”
Kill the whole world, Lews Therin laughed, a moan of derision. Of despair. I killed the world, and you can, too, if you try hard.
Narishma struck himself hard on the chest with his fist. “As you command, my Lord Dragon,” he said sourly.
Bright and early the next morning, a thousand men of the Legion of the Dragon marched out of Illian, across the Causeway of the Northern Star, stepping to the steady beat of drums. Well, it was early, anyway. Thick gray clouds roiled across the sky, and a stiff sea breeze sharp with salt whipped cloaks and banners, muttering of another storm on the way. The Legion attracted a good bit of attention from the armsmen already in the camp, with their blue-painted Andoran helmets and their long blue coats worked on the chest with a red-and-gold Dragon. A blue pennant bearing the Dragon and a number marked each of the five companies. The Legionmen were different in many ways. For instance, they wore breastplates, but beneath their coats, so as not to hide the Dragons — the same reason the coats buttoned up one side — and every man carried a short-sword at his hip and a steel-armed crossbow, every one shouldered exactly the same as every other. The officers walked, each with a tall red plume on his helmet, just ahead of drum and pennant. The only horses were Morr’s mouse-colored gelding, at their head, and pack animals at the rear.
“Foot,” Weiramon muttered, slapping his reins on a gauntleted hand. “Burn my soul, they’re no good, foot. They’ll scatter at the first charge. Before.” The first of the column strode off the causeway. They had helped take Illian, and they had not scattered.
Semaradrid shook his head. “No pikes,” he muttered. “I have seen well-led foot hold, with pikes, but without . . . ” He made a sound of disgust in his throat.
Gregorin Panar, the third man sitting his saddle near Rand to watch the new arrivals, said nothing. Perhaps he had no prejudice against infantry — though if he did not, he would be one of only a handful of noblemen Rand had met without it — but he tried hard not to frown and almost succeeded. Everyone knew by now that the men with the Dragon on their chests bore arms because they had chosen to follow Rand, chosen to follow the Dragon Reborn, for no other reason than that they wanted to. The Illianer had to be wondering where they were going that Rand wanted the Legion and the Council of Nine was not trusted to know. For that matter, Semaradrid eyed Rand sideways. Only Weiramon was too stupid to think.
Rand turned Tai’daishar away. Narishma’s package had been rewrapped, into a thinner bundle, and tied beneath his left stirrup leather. “Strike the camp; we’re moving,” he told the three nobles.
This time, he let Dashiva weave the gateway to take them all away. The plain-faced fellow frowned at him and mumbled to himself — Dashiva actually seemed affronted, for some reason! — and Gedwyn and Rochaid, their horses shoulder-by-shoulder, watched with sardonic smiles as the silvery slash of light rotated into a hole in nothing. Watched Rand more than Dashiva. Well, let them watch. How often could he seize saidin and risk falling dizzily on his face before he really did fall? It could not be where they could see.
This time, the gateway took them to a wide road carved through the low, brushy foothills of mountains to the west. The Nemarellin Mountains. Not the equals of the Mountain of Mist, and not a patch on the Spine of the World, but they rose dark and severe against the sky, sharp peaks that walled the west coast of Illian. Beyond them lay Kabal Deep, and beyond that . . .
Men began to recognize the peaks soon enough. Gregorin Panar took one look around and nodded in sudden satisfaction. The other three Councilors and Marcolin reined close to him to talk while horsemen were still pouring through the gateway. Semaradrid required only a bit longer to puzzle it out, and Tihera, and they also looked as if they understood now.
The Silver Road ran from the City to Lugard, and carried all of the inland trade for the west. There was a Gold Road, too, that led to Far Madding. Roads and names alike dated from before there had been an Illian. Centuries of wagon wheels, hooves and boots had beaten them hard, and the cemaros could only skim them with mud. They were among the few reliable highways in Illian for moving large groups of men in winter. Everyone knew about the Seanchan in Ebou Dar by this time, though a good many of the tales Rand had heard among the armsmen made the invaders seem Trollocs’ meaner cousins. If the Seanchan intended to strike into Illian, the Silver Road was a good place to gather for defense.
Semaradrid and the others thought they knew what he planned: he must have learned that the Seanchan were coming, and the Asha’man were there to destroy them when they did. Given the stories about the Seanchan, no one seemed too upset that that left little for them to do. Of course, Weiramon had to have it explained to him finally, by Tihera, and he was upset, though he tried to mask it behind a grand speech about the wisdom of the Lord Dragon and the military genius of the Lord of the Morning, along with how he, personally, would lead the first charge against these Seanchan. A pure bull-goose fool. With luck, anyone else who learned of a gathering on the Silver Road would at least not be too much brighter than Semaradrid or Gregorin. With luck, no one who mattered would learn before it was too late.
Settling in to wait, Rand thought it would only be another day or so, but as the days stretched out, he began to wonder whether he might be nearly as big a fool as Weiramon.
Most of the Asha’man were out searching across Illian and Tear and the Plains of Maredo for the rest of those Rand wanted. Searching through the cemaros. Gateways and Traveling were all very well, but even Asha’man took time to find who they sought when downpours hid anything fifty paces away and quagmires dragged rumor to a near halt. Searching Asha’man passed within a mile of their quarry in ignorance, and turned only to learn the men had moved on again. Some had farther to go, seeking people not necessarily eager to be found. Days passed before the first brought news.
The High Lord Sunamon joined Weiramon, a fat man with an unctuous manner — toward Rand, at least. Smooth in his fine silk coat, always smiling, he was voluble in his declarations of loyalty, but he had plotted against Rand so long that he probably did so in his sleep. The High Lord Torean came, with his lumpy farmer’s face and his vast wealth, stammering about the honor of riding once more at the Lord Dragon’s side. Gold concerned Torean more than anything else, except possibly the privileges Rand had taken away from the nobles in Tear. He seemed particularly dismayed to learn there were no serving girls in the camp, and not so much as a village nearby where compliant farmgirls might be found. Torean had schemed against Rand every bit as often as Sunamon. Maybe even more than Gueyam, or Maraconn, or Aracome.
There were others. There was Bertome Saighan, a short, ruggedly handsome man with the front of his head shaved. He supposedly did not mourn the death of his cousin Colavaere too greatly, both because that made him the new High Seat of House Saighan and because rumor said Rand had executed her. Or murdered her. Bertome bowed and smiled, and his smile never reached his dark eyes. Some said he had been very fond of his cousin. Ailil Riatin came, a slim dignified woman with big dark eyes, not young but quite pretty, protesting that she had a Lance-captain to lead her armsmen and no desire to take the field in person. Protesting her loyalty for the Lord Dragon, too. But her brother Toram claimed the throne Rand meant for Elayne, and it was whispered that she would do anything for Toram, anything at all. Even join with his enemies; to hamper or to spy or both, of course. Dalthanes Annallin came, and Amondrid Osiellin, and Doressin Chuliandred, lords who had supported Colavaere’s seizure of the Sun Throne when they thought Rand would never return to Cairhien.
Cairhienin and Tairen, they were brought in one by one, with fifty retainers, or at most a hundred. Men and women he trusted even less than he did Gregorin or Semaradrid. Most were men, not because he thought the women any less dangerous — he was not that big a fool; a woman would kill you twice as fast as a man, and usually for half the reason! — but because he could not bring himself to take any woman except the most dangerous, where he was going. Ailil could smile warmly while she calculated where to plant the knife in your ribs. Anaiyella, a willowy simpering High Lady who gave a fair imitation of a beautiful goosebrain, had returned to Tear from Cairhien and openly begun talking of herself for the as-yet-nonexistent throne of Tear. Perhaps she was a fool, but she had managed to gain a great deal of support, both among nobles and in the streets.
So he gathered them in, all the folk who had been too long out from under his eye. He could not watch all of them all the time, but he could not afford to let them forget that he did watch sometimes. He gathered them, and he waited. For two days. Gnashing his teeth, he waited. Five days. Eight.
Rain was beating a diminishing drum on his tent when the last man he was waiting for finally arrived.
Shaking a small torrent from his oiled-cloth cape, Davram Bashere blew out his thick, gray-streaked mustaches in disgust and tossed the cape over a barrel chair. A short man with a great hooked beak of a nose, he seemed larger than he was. Not because he strutted, but because he assumed that he was as tall as any man present, and other men took him so. Wise men did. The wolf-headed ivory baton of the Marshal-General of Saldaea, tucked carelessly behind his sword belt, had been earned on scores of battlefields and at as many council tables. He was one of the very few men Rand would trust with his life.
“I kn
ow you don’t like explaining,” Bashere muttered, “but I could use a little illumination.” Adjusting his serpentine sword, he sprawled in another chair and flung a leg over the arm of it. He always seemed at his ease, but he could uncoil faster than a whip. “That Asha’man fellow wouldn’t say more than you needed me yesterday, yet he said not to bring more than a thousand men. I only had half that with me, but I brought them. It can’t be a battle. Half the sigils I saw out there belong to men who’d bite their tongues if they saw a fellow behind you with a knife, and most of the rest to men who’d try to hold your attention. If they hadn’t paid the knife man in the first place.”
Seated behind his writing table in his shirtsleeves, Rand wearily pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. With Boreane Carivin left behind, the lamp wicks needed proper trimming, and a faint haze of smoke hung in the air. Besides, he had been awake most of the night poring over the maps scattered across the table. Maps of southern Altara. No two agreed on very much.
“If you’re going to fight a battle,” he told Bashere, “who better to pay the butcher’s bill than men who want you dead? Anyway, it isn’t soldiers who’ll win this battle. All they have to do is keep anybody from sneaking up on the Asha’man. What do you think of that?”
Bashere snorted so hard that his heavy mustaches stirred. “I think it’s a deadly stew, is what I think. Somebody’s going to choke to death on it. The Light send it isn’t us.” And then he laughed as if that were a fine joke.
Lews Therin laughed, too.
Chapter 22
Gathering Clouds