The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time 4)

Back and forth they struggled, tripping over scattered and broken ter’angreal, falling, neither daring to let go of the figure with even one finger for fear the other would pull it away. Yet as they rolled over and over, banging now against a redstone doorframe that somehow still stood, now against a fallen crystal statue lying on its side unbroken, a nude woman clasping a child to her breast, as they fought for possession of the ter’angreal, the battle was fought on another level, too.

Hammers of Power large enough to level mountains struck at Rand, and blades that could have pierced the earth’s heart; unseen pincers tried to tear his mind from his body, ripped at his very soul. Every scrap of Power he could draw went to hurl those attacks away. Any one could destroy him as if he had never been; he was sure of it. Where they went he could not be sure. The ground bounded beneath them, shaking them as they struggled, flinging them about in a writhing tangle of straining muscle. Dimly he was aware of vast rumbles, of a thousand whining hums like some strange music. The glass columns, quivering, vibrating. He could not worry about them.

All those nights without sleep were catching up to him, the running he had done on top of it. He was tired, and if he could even know it inside the Void, then he was near exhaustion. Tossed by the quaking earth, he realized he was no longer trying to pull the ter’angreal from Asmodean, only to hold on. Soon his strength would go. Even if he managed to retain his grip on the stone figure, he would have to let go of saidin or be swept away by the rush of it, destroyed as surely as Asmodean would do it. He could not pull another thread through the ter’angreal; he and Asmodean were equally balanced, each with half of what the great sa’angreal in Cairhien could draw. Asmodean panted in his face, snarling; sweat dripped from the Forsaken’s forehead, ran down his cheeks. The man was tired, too. But as tired as he?

The flailing earth heaved Rand on top for an instant, and just as quickly spun Asmodean up, but in that brief moment Rand felt something pressed between them. The carving of the fat little man with the sword, still tucked into his waistband. An insignificant thing next to the immense Power they drew upon. A cup of water compared to a vast river, to an ocean. He did not even know if he could use it while linked to the great sa’angreal. And if he could? Asmodean’s teeth bared. Not a grimace, but a weary rictus of a smile; the man thought he was winning. Perhaps he was. Rand’s fingers trembled, weakening around the ter’angreal; it was all he could do to hold on to saidin, even linked as he was to the huge sa’angreal.

He had not seen those strange things like black steel wires around Asmodean since leaving the dark place, but he could visualize them even in the Void, place them in his mind around the Forsaken. Tam had taught him the Void as an aid to archery, to be one with the bow, the arrow, the target. He made himself one with those imagined black wires. He barely saw Asmodean frown. The man must be wondering why his face had grown calm; there was always calm in the moment before the arrow was loosed. He reached through the small angreal in his waistband, and more of the Power flowed into him. He did not waste time on exulting; it was such a small flow beside what he already contained, and this was his final blow. This would use his final strength. He formed it like a sword of Power, a sword of Light, and struck; one with the sword, one with the imagined wires.

Asmodean’s eyes went wide, and he screamed, a howl from the depths of horror; like a struck gong the Forsaken quivered. For an instant there seemed to be two of him, shivering away from each other; then they slid back together. He fell over on his back, arms flung out in his now dirty, tattered red coat, chest heaving; staring up at nothing, his dark eyes looked lost.

As he collapsed, Rand lost his hold on saidin, and the Power left him. He had barely enough strength to clutch the ter’angreal to his chest and roll away from Asmodean. Pushing himself to his knees felt like climbing a mountain; he huddled around the figure of the man with his crystal sphere.

The earth had stopped moving. The glass columns still stood—he was grateful for that; destroying them would have been like obliterating the history of the Aiel—but Avendesora, that had lived three thousand years in legend and truth, Avendesora blazed like a torch, and as for the rest of Rhuidean … .

The plaza looked as if everything had been picked up and flung about by a mad giant. Half the great palaces and towers were only heaps of rubble, some spilling into the square; huge toppled columns marred others, and fallen walls, and empty gaps where huge windows of colored glass had been. A rift ran the whole way across the city, a split in the earth fifty feet wide. The destruction did not end there. The dome of fog that had hidden Rhuidean for so many centuries was dissipating; the underside no longer glowed, and harsh sunlight poured through great new gaps. Beyond, Chaendaer’s peak looked different, lower, and on the other side of the valley some of the mountains were definitely lower. Where one mountain had stood, a fan of stone and dirt stretched across the north end of the valley.

I destroy. Always I destroy! Light, will it ever end?

Asmodean rolled onto his belly, pushed to hands and knees. His eyes found Rand, and the ter’angreal, and he made as if to crawl toward them.

Rand could not have channeled a spark, but he had learned how to fight before his first nightmare of channeling. He lifted a fist. “Don’t even think about it.” The Forsaken stopped, swaying wearily. His face sagged, yet despair and desire warred across it; hate and fear glittered in his eyes.

“I do like to see men fight, but you two cannot even stand.” Lanfear moved into Rand’s view, surveying the devastation. “You have made a thorough job of it. Can you feel the traces? This place was shielded in some way. You did not leave enough for me to say how.” Dark eyes suddenly bright, she knelt in front of Rand, peering at what he held. “So that is what he was after. I thought they were all destroyed. Only half remains of the single one I have seen; a fine tra

p for some unwary Aes Sedai.” She put out a hand, and he clutched the ter’angreal tighter. Her smile did not touch her eyes. “Keep it, certainly. To me it is no more than a figurine.” Rising, she dusted her white skirts though they did not need it. When she realized he was watching her, she stopped searching the rubble-strewn plaza with her eyes, made her smile brighter. “What you used was one of the two sa’angreal I told you of. Did you feel the immensity of it? I have wondered what it must be like.” She seemed unaware of the hunger in her voice. “With those, together, we can displace the Great Lord of the Dark himself. We can, Lews Therin! Together.”

“Help me!” Asmodean crawled toward her unsteadily, his upraised face painted in dread. “You don’t know what he has done. You must help me. I would not have come here if not for you.”

“What has he done?” she sniffed. “Beaten you like a dog, and not half so well as you deserve. You were never meant for greatness, Asmodean, only to follow those who are great.”

Somehow Rand managed to stand, still holding the stone-and-crystal figure to his chest. He would not continue on his knees in her presence. “You Chosen”—he knew taunting her was dangerous, but he could not stop himself—“gave your souls to the Dark One. You let him attach himself to you.” How many times had he replayed his battle with Ba’alzamon? How many times before he began to suspect what those black wires were? “I cut him off from the Dark One, Lanfear. I cut him off!”

Her eyes widened in shock, staring from him to Asmodean. The man had begun to weep. “I did not think that was possible. Why? Do you think to bring him to the Light? You’ve changed nothing about him.”

“He is still the same man who gave himself to the Shadow in the first place,” Rand agreed. “You told me how little you Chosen trust one another. How long could he keep it secret? How many of you would believe he didn’t do it himself somehow? I am glad you thought it impossible; maybe the rest of you will as well. You gave me the whole idea, Lanfear. A man to teach me how to control the Power. But I won’t be taught by a man linked to the Dark One. Now I don’t have to be. He may be the same man, but he doesn’t have much choice, does he? He can stay and teach me, hope I win, help me win, or he can hope the rest of you don’t take the excuse to turn on him. Which do you think he’ll choose?”

Asmodean stared wild-eyed at Rand from his crouch, then thrust out a pleading hand toward Lanfear. “They will believe you! You can tell them! I would not be here except for you! You must tell them! I am faithful to the Great Lord of the Dark!”

Lanfear stared at Rand, too. For the first time ever that he had seen, she looked uncertain. “How much do you remember, Lews Therin? How much is you, and how much the shepherd? This is the sort of plan you might have devised when we—” Drawing a deep breath, she turned her head to Asmodean. “Yes, they will believe me. When I tell them you went over to Lews Therin. Everyone knows you will leap wherever you think your best chance lies. There.” She nodded to herself in satisfaction. “Another little present for you, Lews Therin. That shield will allow a trickle through, enough for him to teach. It will dissipate with time, but he’ll not be able to challenge you for months, and by that time he will have no choice but to remain with you. He was never very good at breaking through a shield; you must be willing to accept pain, and he never could.”

“NOOOOOO!” Asmodean crawled toward her. “You cannot do this to me! Please, Mierin! Please!”

“My name is Lanfear!” Rage twisted her face to ugliness, and the man lifted into the air, spread-eagled; his clothes pressed to him and the flesh of his face distorted, spread out like butter under a rock.

Rand could not let her kill the man, but he was too tired to touch the True Source unaided; he could barely sense it, a dim glow just out of sight. For an instant his hands tightened on the stone man with the crystal sphere. If he reached through to the huge sa’angreal in Cairhien again now, that much of the Power might destroy him. Instead, he reached through the carving in his waistband; with the angreal, it was a feeble flow, a hair-thin trickle compared to the other, but he was too weary to pull more. He hurled it all between the two Forsaken, hoping to distract her if nothing else.

A bar of white-hot fire ten feet tall streaked between the pair in a blur surrounded by arcing blue lightning, searing a pace-deep groove across the square, a smooth-sided gash glowing with melted earth and stone; the fiery shaft struck a green-streaked palace wall and exploded, the roar buried in the rumble of collapsing marble. On one side of the melted slash Asmodean dropped to the pavement in a shuddering heap, blood trickling from nose and ears; on the other, Lanfear staggered back as if struck, then rounded on Rand. He swayed with the effort of what he had done, and lost saidin once more.

For a moment rage engorged her face as deeply as it had for Asmodean. For a moment Rand stood on the brink of death. Then fury vanished with startling abruptness, buried behind a seductive smile. “No, I mustn’t kill him. Not after we have gone to so much effort.” Moving closer, she reached up to stroke the side of his neck, where her bite from the dream was just healing; he had not let Moiraine know of it. “You still bear my mark. Shall I make it permanent?”

“Did you harm anyone at Alcair Dal, or in the camps?”

Her face never stopped smiling, but her caress changed, fingers suddenly poised as if to rip out his throat. “Such as who? I thought you had realized you did not love that little farmgirl. Or is it the Aiel jade?” A viper. A deadly viper who loved him—The Light help me!—and he did not know how to stop her if she decided to bite, whether him or someone else.

“I don’t want anyone hurt. I need them yet. I can use them.” It was painful saying that, painful for the amount of truth in it. But keeping Lanfear’s fangs out of Egwene and Moiraine, away from Aviendha and anyone else close to him, that was worth a little pain.

Throwing back her beautiful head, she laughed like chiming bells. “I can remember when you were too softhearted to use anyone. Devious in battle, hard as stone and arrogant as the mountains, but open and softhearted as a girl! No, I did not harm any of your precious Aes Sedai, or your precious Aiel. I do not kill without cause, Lews Therin. I do not even hurt without cause.” He was careful not to look at Asmodean; white-faced, drawing jagged breaths, the man had pushed up on one hand, using the other to wipe blood from his mouth and chin.