CHAPTER 24
A Strengthening Storm
Midafternoon sunlight should have been slanting through the windows ofRand’s bedchamber, but a hard rain was falling outside, and all the lamps were lit to hold off a twilight darkness. Thunder rattled the glass-filled casements in the windows. It was a fierce storm that had rolled down out of the Dragonwall faster than a running horse and brought a deeper cold, almost deep enough for snow. The raindrops pelting the house were half-frozen slush, and despite blazing logs on the hearthstone, a chill clung to the room.
Lying on his bed with his booted feet propped one atop the other on the coverlet, he stared up at the canopy and tried to put his thoughts in order. He could disregard the thunderstorm out?side, but Min, snuggling under his arm, was another matter. She did not try to distract him; she just did it without trying. What was he to do about her? About Elayne, and Aviendha. Those two were only vague presences in his head, at this distance from Caemlyn. At least, he assumed they were still in Caemlyn. Assuming was dangerous when it came to those two. All he had of them at the moment was a general sense of direction and the knowledge they were alive. Min’s body was pressed tight against his side,though, and the bond made her as vibrant inside his head as she was in the flesh. Was it too late to keep Min safe, to keep Elayne and Aviendha safe?
What makes you think you can keep anyone safe?Lews Therin whis?pered in his head. The dead madman was an old friend, now.We are allgoing to die. Just hope that you aren’t the one who kills them. Not a welcome friend, just one he could not rid himself of. He no longer feared killing Min or Elayne or Aviendha any more than he feared going mad. Madder than he already was, at least, with a dead man in his head, and sometimes a foggy face he could almost recognize. Did he dare ask Cadsuane about either one?
Trust no one,Lew Therin murmured, then gave a wry laugh.Including me.
Without warning, Min punched him in the ribs hard enough to make him grunt. “You’re getting melancholy, sheepherder,” she growled. “If you’re worrying about me again, I swear, I’ll. . . .” She had so many different ways of growling, Min did, each matched to very different sensations through the bond. There was the light irritation he felt from her now, this time touched with worry, and sometimes there was a sharp edge as if she were refraining from snapping his head off. There was a growl that almost made him laugh from the amusement in her head, or as close to laughing as he had come in what seemed a very long time, and a throaty growl that would have heated his blood even without the bond.
“None of that, now,” she said warningly, before he could move the hand resting on her back, and rolled off the bed to her feet, tugging her embroidered coat straight with a reproving look. Since bonding him, she was even better at reading his mind, and she had been good enough before. “What are you going to do about them, Rand? What is Cadsuane going to do?” Lightning flashed in the windows, almost bright enough to wash out the lamps, and thun?der boomed against the window glass.
“I haven’t yet been able to see what she was going to do ahead of time, Min. Why should today be different?”
The thick feather mattress sagged beneath him as he swung his legs over the side and sat up facing her. He almost pressed a hand to the old wounds in his side without thinking, then caught him?self and changed the movement to buttoning up his coat. Half-healed and never healing, those two overlapping wounds hurt since Shadar Logoth. Or maybe he was just more aware of how they throbbed, the heat of them a furnace of fever trapped in an area smaller than the palm of his hand. One, at least, he hoped, would begin to heal with Shadar Logoth gone. Maybe there had just not been enough time yet for him to feel any difference. It was not the same side that Min had fisted - she was always gentle with that, if not always with the rest of him - but he thought he had kept the pain hidden from her. No point in giving her something more to worry over. The concern in her eyes, and in her head, must be about Cadsuane. Or the others.
The manor house and all of its outlying buildings were crowded, now. It had seemed inevitable that sooner or later some?one would try using the Warders left in Cairhien; their Aes Sedai had not blared that they were going off to find the Dragon Reborn, but neither had they been particularly secretive. Even so, he had never anticipated those who arrived with them. Davram Bashere with a hundred of his Saldaean light horse, dismounting in a wind-driven soaking rain and muttering about ruined saddles. Over half a dozen black-coated Asha’man who for some reason had not shielded themselves from the downpour. They rode with Bashere, but it had been like two parties arriving, a little distance between them always, a strong whiff of watchful wariness. And one of the Asha’man was Logain Ablar. Logain! An Asha’man, wearing the Sword and Dragon on his collar! Bashere and Logain both wanted to talk to him, but not in front of anyone, especially each other it seemed. Unexpected or not, though, they were hardly the most surprising of the visitors. He had thought the eight Aes Sedai must be more friends of Cadsuane, yet he would swear she had been as surprised as he to see most of them. Odder, all but one seemed to be with the Asha’man! Not prisoners, and certainly not guards, but Logain had been reluctant to explain with Bashere present, and Bashere reluctant to leave Logain the first chance to talk toRandalone. Now they were all drying off and settling into their rooms, leaving him to try to put his thoughts in order. To the extent that he could, with Min close by. Whatwould Cadsuane do? Well, he had tried to ask her advice. Events had outrun both of them, though. The decision had been made, whatever Cadsuane thought Lightning flashed again in the windows. Lightning seemed to suit Cadsuane. You could never tell where it would strike.
Alivia would finish her,Lews Therin muttered.She’s going to help us die; she’d remove Cadsuane for us, if you tell her to.
I don’t want to kill her.Randthought at the dead man.Ican’t afford for her to die. Lews Therin knew that as well as he, but the man grumbled under his breath anyway. Since Shadar Logoth, he seemed a touch less mad, sometimes. Or maybeRandwas a touch more. After all, he took talking to a dead man in his head as a mat?ter of every day, and that was hardly sane.
“You have to dosomething” Min muttered, folding her arms beneath her breasts. “Logain’s aura still speaks of glory, stronger than ever. Maybe he still thinks he’s the real Dragon Reborn. And there’s something . . . dark . . . in the images I saw around Lord Davram. If he turns against you, or dies. . . . I heard one of the sol?diers say Lord Dobraine might die. Losing even one of them would be a blow. Lose all three, and it might take you a year to recover.”
“If you’ve seen it, then it’s going to happen. I have to do what I can, Min, not worry over what I can’t.” She gave him one of those looks women had in great store, as if he were trying to start an argument.
A scratching at the door brought his head around and made Min shift her stance. He suspected she had slipped a throwing knife out of her sleeve and was hiding it behind her wrist. The woman carried more knives tucked about her than Thorn Merrilin had. Or Mat. Colors whirled in his head, almost resolving into . . . what? A man on a wagon seat? Not the face that sometimes appeared in his thoughts, anyway, and the scene was gone in an instant, without any of the dizziness that accompanied the face.
“Come,” he called, standing up.
Elza spread her dark green skirts in an elegant curtsy when she entered, her eyes bright on his face. A pleasant-appearing woman, and coolly complacent as a cat, she hardly seemed to see Min. Of all the sisters who had sworn to him, Elza was the most eager. The only eager one, really. The others had their reasons for swearing, their explanations, and of course Verin and the sisters who came to find him at Dumai’s Wells had no real choice facing ata’veren, but for all Elza’s outer coolness, she seemed to burn inside with a passion to see he reached Tarmon Gai’don. “You said to let you know when the Ogier came,” she said, never taking her eyes from his face.
“Loial!” Min shouted gleefully, tucking the knife back up her sleeve as she rushed past Elza, who blinked at the sight of the blade. “I could have killedRandfor letting you get off to your room before I saw you!” The bond said she did not mean it. Not exactly.
“Thank you,”Randtold Elza, listening to the sounds of merri?ment from the sitting room, Min’s light laughter and Loial’s quake of Ogier mirth, like the earth laughing. Thunder rolled across the sky.
Perhaps the Aes Sedai’s passion extended to wanting to know what he said to Loial, because her lips thinned, and she hesitated before making another curtsy and sweeping out of the bedchamber. A brief pause in the sounds of pleasure announced her passage across the sitting room, and their resumption her departure. Only then did he seize the Power. He tried never to let anyone see him do that.
Fire flooded into him, hotter than the sun, and cold to make the worst blizzard seem spring, all a swirling rage that dwarfed the storm outside, threatening to scour him away for a moment’s inat?tention. Seizingsaidin was a war for survival. But the green of the cornices was suddenly greener, the black of his coat blacker, the gold of its embroidery more golden. He could see the grain of the vine-carved bedposts, see faint marks left by the craftsman’s sand?ing all those years ago.Saidin made him feel as if he had been half-blind and numb without it. That w
