Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time 6)

Alanna looked at her as if she were mad. Small wonder. Siuan had to have been deposed by the Hall of the Tower, according to Tower law. Even a suggestion of going against Tower law was unthinkable. But then, the Tower broken was unthinkable.

“If you have no answer now, think on it. And think on this. Siuan Sanche was part of finding young al’Thor in the first place.” Alanna opened her mouth — doubtless to ask how Verin knew, and whether she had been part of it, too — but Verin gave her no chance. “Only a simpleton would believe that role played no part in bringing her down. Coincidences that large do not exist. So think what Elaida’s view of Rand must be. She was Red, remember. While you are thinking, answer me this. What were you at, bonding him like that?”

The question should not have caught Alanna by surprise, yet it did. She hesitated, then drew out a chair and sat, arranging her skirts before she answered. “It was the logical thing to do, with him right there in front of us. It should have been done long ago. You could not — or would not.” Like most Greens, she was somewhat amused by other Ajahs’ insistence that each sister have only one Warder. What Greens thought of the Reds having none was better left unsaid. “They all should have been bonded at the first chance. They are too important to run loose, him most of all.” Color blossomed suddenly in her cheeks; it would be a good while yet before she had full control of her emotions again.

Verin knew what caused the blushes; Alanna had let her tongue run away with her. They had had Perrin under their eyes for long weeks while testing young women in the Two Rivers, but Alanna had quickly gone silent on the subject of bonding him. The reason was as simple as a heated promise from Faile — delivered well out of Perrin’s hearing — that if Alanna did any such thing, she would not leave the Two Rivers alive. Had Faile known more of the bond between Aes Sedai and Gaidin, that threat would not have worked, yet her ignorance if nothing else had stayed Alanna’s hand. Very likely it had been frustration over that, plus the frayed state of her nerves, that had led to what she did with Rand. Not only bonding him, but doing so without his permission. That had not been done in hundreds of years.

Well, Verin thought dryly, I have broken a few customs in my time. “Logical?” she said, smiling to take the sting from her words. “You sound like a White. Well. Now that you have him, what are you going to do with him? Considering the lessons he taught us. I am minded of a fireside tale when I was a girl, about a woman who put saddle and bridle on a lion. She found it a fine and wonderful ride, but then discovered she could never dismount and never sleep.”

Shivering, Alanna rubbed her arms. “I still cannot believe he is so strong. If only we had linked sooner. And I tried . . . I failed . . . He is so strong!”

Verin barely kept from shivering herself. They could not have linked sooner, not unless Alanna was suggesting they should have linked before she bonded him. Verin was not sure what the result of that would have been. In any case, it had been a series of extremely bad moments, from discovering that they could not cut him off from the True Source to the contemptuous ease with which he had shielded them, snapping their connections to saidar like thread. Both of them at once. Remarkable. How many would it take to shield and hold him? The full thirteen? That was only tradition, but it might be necessary with him. At any rate, that was speculation for another day. “And then there is the matter of his amnesty.”

Alanna’s eyes widened. “Surely you don’t believe that! With every false Dragon there have been tales that he was gathering men who could channel, all as false as the men. They wanted power for themselves, not to share it with other men.”

“He is not a false Dragon,” Verin said quietly, “and that may change everything. If one rumor is true, so can another be, and the amnesty has been on every tongue since Whitebridge.”

“Even if it is, perhaps no one has come. No decent man wants to channel. If more than a handful wanted it, we would have had false Dragons every week.”

“He is ta’veren, Alanna. He draws what he needs to him.”

Alanna’s mouth worked, her hands now white-knuckled fists on the table. Every shred of Aes Sedai tranquility gone, she trembled visibly. “We can’t allow . . . Men channeling, loosed on the world? If it is true, we must stop it. We must!” She was on the point of springing up again, eyes flashing.

“Before we can decide what to do about them,” Verin said calmly, “we need to know where he is keeping them. The Royal Palace seems likely, but finding out may be difficult with the Inner City denied to us. This is what I propose . . .” Alanna leaned forward intently.

There was a good deal to be worked out, though most would come later. A good many questions to be answered, later. Was Moiraine dead, and if so, how had she died? Were there rebels, and what should her and Alanna’s stance be concerning them? Should they try to deliver Rand to Elaida, or to these rebels? Where were they? That knowledge would be valuable whichever way the other questions were answered. How were they to make use of the so very fragile leash Alanna had pl

aced on Rand? Should one or both try to take Moiraine’s place? For the first time since Alanna had begun to let her emotions over Owein creep to the surface, Verin was glad she had held them in long enough to become so volatile. In her raveled condition, Alanna was bound to be more amenable to guidance, and Verin knew exactly how some of those questions had to be answered. She did not think Alanna would like some of those answers. Best not to let her learn them until it was too late to change them.

Rand raced back to the Palace at a gallop, slowly outdistancing even the running Aiel, ignoring their shouts as he ignored the shaken fists of people forced to leap out of Jeade’en’s way, and the jumble of overturned sedan chairs and coaches locked wheel-to-wheel with market carts in his wake. Bashere and the Saldaeans barely kept up on their smaller horses. He was not sure why he was in such a hurry — the news he carried was not that urgent — but as the shakiness faded from his arms and legs, he realized more and more that he was aware of Alanna still. He could feel her. It was as if she had crawled inside his head and taken up residence. If he could feel her, could she feel him the same way? What else could she do? What else? He had to get away from her.

Pride, Lews Therin cackled, and for once Rand did not try to silence the voice.

He had a different destination than the palace in mind, but Traveling required you to know the place you left from even better than the place you were going. At the South Stable he tossed the stallion’s reins to a leather-vested groom and ran, his long legs carrying him ahead of the Saldaeans down corridors where servants gaped at him, arresting bows and curtsies as he sped past. In the Great Hall he grasped saidin, opened the hole in air and darted through into the clearing near the farm, letting the Source go.

Releasing a long breath, he sank to his knees in the dead leaves. The heat beneath the bare branches hammered him; he had lost the necessary concentration a long while back. He could still feel her, but it was fainter here — if a certainty that she was in that direction could be said to be faint. He could have pointed it out with his eyes closed.

For a moment he took hold of saidin again, that rage of fire and ice and sour slime. He held a sword in his hands, a sword made of fire, of Fire, a heron dark on the slightly curved red blade, though he did not recall thinking of it. Fire, but the long hilt felt cool and firm against his palms. The Void made no difference, the Power made no difference. Alanna was still there, curled up in a corner of his brain, watching him.

With a bitter laugh he released the Power again and knelt there. He had been so sure. Only two Aes Sedai. Of course he could handle them; he had handled Egwene and Elayne together. What could they possibly do to him? He realized he was still laughing. He did not seem able to stop. Well, it was funny. His fool pride. Overconfidence. It had gotten him in trouble before, and more than him. He had been so sure that he and the Hundred Companions could seal the Bore safely . . .

Leaves crackled as he forced himself to his feet. “That was not me!” he said hoarsely. “That was not me! Get out of my head! All of you get out of my head!” Lews Therin’s voice murmured indistinctly, distantly. Alanna waited silently, patiently, in the back of his head. The voice seemed afraid of her.

Deliberately Rand brushed off the knees of his breeches. He would not surrender to this. Trust no Aes Sedai; he would remember that from now on. A man without trust might as well be dead, Lews Therin giggled. He would not surrender.

Nothing had changed about the farm. Nothing and everything. The farmhouse and the barn were the same, the chickens and goats and cows. Sora Grady watched his arrival from a window, blank-faced and cold. She was the only woman now; all the other wives and sweethearts had gone with the men who failed Taim’s testing. Taim had the students in a clear area of hard red clay and fitful weeds beyond the barn. All seven of them. Aside from Sora’s husband, Jur, only Damer Flinn, Eben Hopwil and Fedwin Morr remained from that first testing. The others were new, all looking almost as young as Fedwin and Eben.

Except for white-haired Damer, the students sat in a line facing away from Rand. Damer stood in front of them, frowning as he stared at a head-sized stone thirty paces away.

“Now,” Taim said, and Rand felt Damer seize saidin, saw him inexpertly weave Fire and Earth.

The stone exploded, and Damer and the other students threw themselves flat to escape flying shards. Not Taim; stone splinters bounced off the shield of Air that he had thrown up at the last instant. Lifting his head warily, Damer wiped blood from a shallow gouge below his left eye. Rand’s mouth tightened; it was only luck that none of those flying pieces had struck him. He glanced back at the farmhouse; Sora was still there, unhurt apparently. And still staring at him. The chickens had hardly paused in their scratching; they seemed to be used to this.

“Perhaps you will remember what I say next time,” Taim said calmly, letting his weave vanish. “Shield as you strike, or you may kill yourself.” He glanced at Rand as if he had been aware he was there all the time. “Continue,” he told the students, and walked toward Rand. His hawk-nosed face seemed to have a cruel cast today.

As Damer sat down in the line, blotchy-faced Eben stood up, nervously tugging a big ear as he used Air to lift another stone from a pile off to one side. His flows wobbled, and he dropped it once before setting it in place.

“Is it safe to leave them alone like that?” Rand asked as Taim reached him.