The Path of Daggers
Read The Path of Daggers Online
Authors: Robert Jordan
Praise for T
HE
W
HEEL OF
T
IME
®
“Unlike some of the authors of mega-sagas, Jordan chooses his words with care, creating people and events that have earned him an enormous readership. For sheer imagination and storytelling skill . . . The Wheel of Time now rivals Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings
.”
—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“Jordan succeeds in carrying forward his stunning world-building in this detailed story of a struggle between good and evil. The story continues with its myriad threads and subplots, carrying the reader inexorably toward an unpredictable conclusion.”
—SF Site
“The battle scenes have the breathless urgency of firsthand experience, and the . . . evil laced into the forces of good, the dangers latent in any promised salvation, the sense of the unavoidable onslaught of unpredictable events bear the marks of American national experience during the last three decades.”
—The New York Times
“His writing is distinguished . . . by the richness of its fabric, with all the charm and naiveté of the Brothers Grimm and the social/moral commentary of Huxley’s
Brave New World
. With his well-fleshed-out characters, dark imagery, comic relief, vivid landscapes, and a fascinating sense of timelessness, Jordan has created a complex literature with a language and reality all its own.”
—Brewster Milton Robertson,
BookPage
“Throughout Jordan’s preeminent high-fantasy saga . . . the characters (minor as well as major), the world, and the source of powers have remained remarkably rich and consistent—no mean feat. . . . Amid all the Sturm und Drang, however, is a finely tuned comic strain that both leavens the story and adds to its development. A major fantasy epic.”
—Booklist
“Truth is not only stranger, it’s richer than fiction, but Jordan’s fictional universe approaches the variety and complexity of the real. . . . Plotlines [are] strummed with resonating long-wave rhythms something like Beethoven’s
Eroica
.”
—Robert Knox, MPG Newspapers
“Adventure and mystery and dark things that move in the night—a combination of Robin Hood and Stephen King that is hard to resist . . . Furthermore, Jordan makes the reader . . . put down the book regretting the wait for the next title in the series.”
—Milwaukee Sentinel
“The Wheel of Time [is] rapidly becoming the definitive American fantasy saga. It is a fantasy tale seldom equaled and still less often surpassed in English.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Can’t recommend starting anywhere but at the beginning, but the volumes only get richer as they go along.”
—Locus
“In the decades since J. R. R. Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings
trilogy was published, many fantasy writers have tried to capture the spirit of that seminal work. While many have been able to imitate the style, develop a similarly swift and complex plot, and create convincing characters, none had captured the spirit of small men and mighty, struggling against a force of overwhelming evil. Robert Jordan has.”
—Ottawa Citizen
“Magic and pacing and detail and human involvement, with a certain subtlety of presentation and a grand central vision. Robert Jordan . . . is a lot of writer!”
—Piers Anthony
“Jordan has a powerful vision of good and evil—but what strikes me as most pleasurable . . . is all the fascinating people moving through a rich and interesting world.”
—Orson Scott Card
“Jordan’s characters [are] fleshed out with the strengths and weaknesses of real men and women. . . . Invokes the end-of-the-world milieu of Stephen King’s
The Stand
.”
—The Post and Courier
(Charleston, South Carolina)
“Jordan writes with the stark vision of light and darkness, and sometimes childlike sense of wonder, that permeates J. R. R. Tolkien’s works. His style is undebatably his own.”
—The Pittsburgh Press
“Jordan’s multivolume epic continues to live up to its high ambitions. Complex plotting, an array of strong characters, lavish detail, and a panoramic scope make this series a feast for fantasy aficionados. . . . Richly detailed and vividly imagined.”
—Library Journal
“Jordan’s writing is clear and his vision is fascinating, as are the philosophies that run his characters. And speaking of characters, a more interesting bunch I would be hard put to name.”
—Science Fiction Review
“The complex philosophy behind The Wheel of Time series is expounded so simply the reader often gives a start of surprise at returning to the real world. Rand’s adventures are not finished and neither is this thinking-person’s fantasy series.”
—
Brunswick Sentinel
(Australia)
“Robert Jordan can write one hell of a story. . . . [He] keeps the suspense acute and the surprises and invention beautifully paced. Compelling. An exhilarating experience.”
—Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
HE
P
ATH
OF
D
AGGERS
ROBERT JORDAN
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For Harriet
My light, my life, my heart,
forever
PROLOGUE: Deceptive Appearances
23 Fog of War, Storm of Battle
Who would sup with the mighty must climb the path of daggers.
—Anonymous notation found inked in the
margin of a manuscript history (believed
to date to the time of Artur Hawkwing)
of the last days of the Tovan Conclaves
On the heights, all paths are paved with daggers.
—Old Seanchan saying
Ethenielle had seen mountains lower than these misnamed Black Hills, great lopsided heaps of half-buried boulders, webbed with steep twisting passes. A number of those passes would have given a goat pause. You could travel three days through drought-withered forests and brown-grassed meadows without seeing a single sign of human habitation, then suddenly find yourself within half a day of seven or eight tiny villages, all ignorant of the world. The Black Hills were a rugged place for farmers, away from the trade routes, and harsher now than usual. A gaunt leopard that should have vanished at the sight of men watched from a steep slope, not forty paces away, as she rode past with her armored escort. Westward, vultures wheeled patient circles like an omen. Not a cloud marred the blood-red sun, yet there were clouds of a sort. When the warm wind blew, it raised walls of dust.
With fifty of her best men at her heels, Ethenielle rode unconcernedly, and unhurriedly. Unlike her near-legendary ancestor Surasa, she had no illusion that the weather would heed her wishes just because she held the Throne of the Clouds, while as for haste. . . . Their carefully coded, closely guarded letters had agreed on the order of march, and that had been determined by each person’s need to travel without attracting notice. Not an easy task. Some had thought it impossible.
Frowning, she considered the luck that had let her come this far without having to kill anyone, avoiding those flyspeck villages even when it meant days added to the journey. The few Ogier
stedding
presented no problem—Ogier paid little heed to what happened among humans, most times, and less than usual of late, it seemed—but the villages. . . . They were too small to hold eyes-and-ears for the White Tower, or for this fellow who claimed to be the Dragon Reborn—perhaps he was; she could not decide which way would be worse—too small, yet peddlers did pass through, eventually. Peddlers carried as much gossip as trade goods, and they spoke to people who spoke to other people, rumor flowing like an ever-branching river, through the Black Hills and into the world outside. With a few words, a single shepherd who had escaped notice could light a signal fire seen five hundred leagues off. The sort of signal fire that set woods and grasslands aflame. And cities, maybe. Nations.
“Did I make the right choice, Serailla?” Vexed at herself, Ethenielle grimaced. She might not be a girl any longer, but her few gray hairs hardly counted her old enough to let her mindless tongue flap in the breeze. The decision was made. It had been on her mind, though. Light’s truth, she was not so unconcerned as she wanted to be.