The Path of Daggers (The Wheel of Time 8)

I would not mind you in my head, Lews Therin said, sounding almost sane, if you were not so clearly mad.

Ebou Dar. Rand tightened his hand on the Dragon Scepter, and Lews Therin cackled.

Chapter 24

A Time for Iron

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A dozen leagues east of Ebou Dar, raken glided in out of the cloud-streaked sunrise to land in a long pasture marked as the fliers’ field by colored streamers on tall poles. The brown grasses had been trampled and scored days since. All of the creatures’ grace in the air was lost as soon as their claws touched the ground in a lumbering run, leathery pinions thirty paces or more wide held high as if the animal wanted to sweep itself back upward. There was little beauty, either, in the raken that ran awkwardly down the field beating ribbed wings, fliers crouching in the saddle as if to pull the beast up by main force, ran on until at last they stumbled into the air, wingtips barely clearing the tops of the olive trees at the end of the field. Only as they gained height and turned toward the sun, soared toward the clouds, did the raken regain dignified grandeur. Fliers who landed did not bother to dismount. While a groundling held a basket up for the raken to gulp whole shriveled fruits by the double-handful at a time, one of the fliers would hand down their scouting report to a still more senior groundling, and the other bent on the other side to receive new orders from a flier too senior to handle reins personally very often. Almost that quickly after coming to a halt, the creature was reined around to waddle over to where four or five others waited their turn to make that long, ungainly run to the sky.

At a dead run, dodging between moving formations of cavalry and infantry, messengers carried the scouting reports to the huge red-bannered command tent. There were haughty Taraboner lancers and stolid Amadician pikemen in well-ordered squares, breastplates striped horizontally in the colors of the regiments they were attached to. Altaran light horse in disordered bunches made their mounts prance, vain of the red slashes crisscrossing their chests, so different from the markings anyone else wore. The Altarans did not know those indicated irregulars of doubtful reliability. Among the Seanchan soldiers, named regiments with proud honors were represented, from every corner of the Empire, pale-eyed men from Alqam, honey-brown men from N’Kon, men black as coal from Khoweal and Dalenshar. There were morat’torm on their sinuous bronze-scaled mounts that made horses whicker and dance in fright, and even a few morat’grolm with their squat, beak-mouthed charges, but one thing that always accompanied a Seanchan army was conspicuous by it absence. The sul’dam and damane were still in their tents. Captain-General Kennar Miraj thought of sul’dam and damane a great deal.

From his seat on the dais he could see the map table clearly, where helmetless under-lieutenants checked the reports and placed markers to represent the forces in the field. A small paper banner stood above each marker, inked symbols giving the size and composition of the force. Finding decent maps in these lands was next to impossible, but the map copied atop the large table was sufficient. And worrying, in what it told him. Black discs for outposts overrun or dispersed. Far too many of those, dotting the whole eastern half of the Venir range. Red wedges, for commands on the move, marked the western end as thickly, all pointed back toward Ebou Dar. And scattered among the black discs, seventeen stark white. As he watched, a young officer in the brown-and-black of a morat’torm carefully placed an eighteenth. Enemy forces. A few might be the same group seen twice, but for the most part they were much too far apart, the timing of the sightings wrong.

Along the walls of the tent, clerks in plain brown coats, marked only with insignia of rank among clerks on the wide collars, waited at their writing tables, pens in hand, for Miraj to issue orders that they would copy out for distribution. He had already given what orders he could. There were as many as ninety thousand enemy soldiers in the mountains, nearly twice what he could muster here even with the native levies. Too many for belief, except that scouts did not lie; liars had their throats slit by their fellows. Too many, springing out of the ground like trap-worms in the Sen T’jore. At least they had a hundred miles of mountain yet to cover if they intended to threaten Ebou Dar. Almost two hundred, for the white discs furthest east. And hill country after that for another hundred miles. Surely the enemy general could not mean to let his dispersed forces be confronted one by one. Gathering them together would take more time. Time alone was on his side, right then.

The entry flaps of the tent swept open, and the High Lady Suroth glided in, black hair a proud crest spilling down her back, pleated snow-white gown and richly embroidered over-robe somehow untouched by the mud outside. He had thought her still in Ebou Dar; she must have flown out by to’raken. She was accompanied by a small entourage, for her. A pair of Deathwatch Guards with black tassels on their sword hilts held the tentflaps, and more were visible outside, stone-faced men in red-and-green. The embodiment of the Empress, might she live forever. Even the Blood took note of them. Suroth sailed past as if they were as much servants as the lushly bodied da’covale in slippers and a nearly transparent white robe, her honey-yellow hair in a multitude of thin braids, who carried the High Lady’s gilded writing desk a meek two paces behind. Suroth’s Voice of the Blood, Alwhin, a glowering woman in green robes with the left side of her head shaved and the remainder of her pale brown hair in a severe braid, followed close on her mistress’s heels. As Miraj stepped down from the dais, he realized with shock that the second da’covale behind Suroth, short and dark-haired and slim in her diaphanous robe, was damane! A damane garbed as property was unheard of, but odder still, it was Alwhin who led her by the a’dam!

He let none of his amazement show as he went to one knee, murmuring, “The Light be upon the High Lady Suroth. All honor to the High Lady Suroth.” Everyone else prostrated themselves on the canvas groundcloth, eyes down. Miraj was of the Blood, if too low to shave the sides of his scalp like Suroth. Only the nails of his little fingers were lacquered. Much too low to register surprise if a High Lady allowed her Voice to continue acting as sul’dam after being raised to the so’jhin. Strange times in a strange land, where the Dragon Reborn walked and marath’damane ran wild to kill and enslave where they would.

Suroth barely glanced at him before turning to study the map table, and if her black eyes tightened at what she saw, she had cause. Under her, the Hailene had done far more than had been dreamed, reclaiming great stretches of the stolen lands. All they had been sent for was to scout the way, and after Falme, some had thought even that impossible. She drummed fingers on the table irritably, the long blue-lacquered fingernails on the first two clicking. Continued success, and she might be able to shave her head entirely and paint a third nail on each hand. Adoption into the Imperial family was not unheard of for achievements so great. And if she stepped too far, overstepped, she might find her fingernails clipped and herself stuffed into a filmy robe to serve one of the Blood, if not sold to a farmer to help till his fields, or sweat in a warehouse. At worst, Miraj would only have to open his own veins.

He continued to watch Suroth in patient silence, but he had been a scout lieutenant, morat’raken, before being raised to the Blood, and he could not help being aware of everything around him. A scout lived or died by what he saw or did not, and so did others. The men lying on their faces around the tent; some hardly seemed to breathe. Suroth should have taken him aside and let them continue with their work. A messenger was being turned back by the soldiers at the entrance. How dire was the message that the wo

man tried to push past Deathwatch Guards?

The da’covale with the writing desk in her arms caught his eye. Scowls flashed across her pretty doll’s face, never pushed down for more than moments. Property showing anger? And there was something else. His gaze flickered to the damane, who stood with her head down but still looked around with curiosity. Brown-eyed da’covale and pale-eyed damane looked about as different as two women could, yet there was something about them. Something in their faces. Strange. He could not have said how old either was.

Quick as his glance was, Alwhin noticed. With a twitch of the a’dam’s silvery leash she put the damane facedown on the groundcloth. Snapping her fingers, she pointed to the canvas with the hand not encumbered by the a’dam’s bracelet, then grimaced when the honey-haired da’covale did not move. “Down, Liandrin!” she hissed almost under her breath. With a glare for Alwhin — a glare! — the da’covale sank to her knees, features painted with sulkiness.

Most strange. But hardly important. Face impassive, and otherwise bursting with impatience, he waited. Impatience and no little discomfort. He had been raised to the Blood after riding fifty miles in a single night with three arrows in him to bring word of a rebel army marching on Seandar itself, and his back still pained him.

Finally, Suroth turned from the map table. She did not give him leave to rise, much less embrace him as one of the Blood. Not that he had expected that. He was far beneath her. “You are ready to march?” she demanded curtly. At least she did not speak to him through her Voice. Before so many of his officers, the shame would have put his eyes on the ground for months if not years.

“I will be, Suroth,” he replied calmly, meeting her gaze. He was of the Blood, however low. “They cannot combine in fewer than ten days, with at least another ten before they can exit the mountains. Well before then, I — ”

“They could be here tomorrow,” she snapped. “Today! If they come, Miraj, they will come by the ancient art of Traveling, and it seems very possible that they will come.”

He heard men shifting on their bellies before they could restrain themselves. Suroth lost control of her emotions and babbled of legends? “Are you certain?” The words popped out of his mouth before he could stop them.

He had only thought she had lost control before. Her eyes blazed. She gripped the edges of her flower-worked robe, white-knuckled, and her hands shook. “Do you question me?” she snarled incredulously. “Suffice it that I have my sources of information.” And was furious with them as much as with him, he realized. “If they come, there will be perhaps as many as fifty of these grandly named Asha’man, but no more than five or six thousand soldiers. It seems there have been no more since the beginning, whatever the fliers say.”

Miraj nodded slowly. Five thousand men, moved about in some way with the One Power, would explain a great deal. What were her sources, that she knew numbers so precisely? He was not fool enough to ask. She certainly had Listeners and Seekers in her service. Watching her, too. Fifty Asha’man. The very idea of a man channeling made him want to spit in disgust. Rumor claimed they were being gathered from every nation by the Dragon Reborn, this Rand al’Thor, but he had never expected there could be so many. The Dragon Reborn could channel, it was said. That might be true, but he was the Dragon Reborn.

The Prophecies of the Dragon had been known in Seanchan even before Luthair Paendrag began the Consolidation. In corrupted form, it was said, much different from the pure version Luthair Paendrag brought. Miraj had seen several volumes of The Karaethon Cycle printed in these lands, and they were corrupted too — not one mentioned him serving the Crystal Throne! — but the Prophecies held men’s minds and hearts still. More than a few hoped the Return came soon, that these lands could be reclaimed before Tarmon Gai’don so the Dragon Reborn could win the Last Battle for the glory of the Empress, might she live forever. The Empress surely would want al’Thor sent to her, so she could see what sort of man served her. There would be no difficulty with al’Thor once he had knelt to her. Few easily shook off the awe they felt, kneeling before the Crystal Throne, with the thirst to obey drying their tongues. But it seemed obvious that bundling the fellow onto a ship would be easier if disposing of the Asha’man — they had to be disposed of, certainly — waited until al’Thor was well on his way across the Aryth Ocean to Seandar.

Which brought him back to the problem he had been trying to avoid, he realized with an inward start. He was not a man to shy from difficulties, much less ignore them blindly, but this was different from any he had faced before. He had fought in two dozen battles with damane used on both sides; he knew the way of them. It was not only a matter of striking out with the Power. Experienced sul’dam could somehow see what damane or marath’damane did and damane would tell the others, so they could defend as well. Could sul’dam see what a man did, too? Worse . . .

“You will release the sul’dam and damane to me?” he said. Taking a deep breath in spite of himself, he added, “If they’re still sick, it will be a short fight and bloody. On our side.”

Which produced another stir among the men waiting on their faces. Every second rumor in the camp was about what illness had confined the sul’dam and damane to their tents. Alwhin reacted quite openly, most improper in a so’jhin, with a furious glare. The damane flinched again, and began to shiver where she lay. Oddly, the honey-haired da’covale flinched, as well.

Smiling, Suroth glided to where the da’covale knelt. Why would she smile at a poorly trained serving girl? She began stroking the kneeling woman’s thin braids, and a sullen pout appeared on that rosebud mouth. A former noblewoman of these lands? Suroth’s first words supported that, though obviously meant for him. “Small failures bring small costs; great failures bring painfully great costs. You will have the damane you require, Miraj. And you will teach these Asha’man they should have remained in the north. You will wipe them from the face of the earth, the Asha’man, the soldiers, all of them. To the man. Miraj. I have spoken.”

“It will be as you say, Suroth,” he replied. “They will be destroyed. To the man.” There was nothing else he could say, now. He wished, though, that she had given him an answer about whether the sul’dam and damane were still sick.

Rand reined Tai’daishar around near the crest of the bare, stony hill to watch most of his small army spilling out of other holes in the air. He held hard to the True Source, so hard it seemed to tremble in his grasp. With the Power in him, the sharp points of the Crown of Swords pricking his temples felt at once keener than ever and utterly removed, the midmorning chill both colder and beneath notice. The never-healing wounds in his side were a dull and distant ache. Lews Therin seemed to be panting in uncertainty. Or perhaps fear. Maybe after coming so close to death the day before, he did not want so much to die anymore. But then, he did not always want to die. The only constant in the man was the desire to kill. Which just happened to include killing himself, often enough.