Winter's Heart (92 page)

“This will never work,” Nynaeve grumbled, for perhaps the tenth time since leaving the Heights. “We should strike hard from the start!”

“We should have moved faster,” Min muttered darkly. “I can feel him changing. If he was a stone before, he’s iron, now! Light, what are they doing to him?” Along only because she was a link to the boy, she had been
unceasing with her reports, each bleaker than the last. Cadsuane had not told her what the cells were like, not when the girl had broken down just telling her what the sisters who kidnapped the boy had done to him.

Cadsuane sighed. A ragtag army she had assembled, but even a makeshift army needed discipline. Especially with the battle just ahead. It would have been worse had she not forced the Sea Folk women to remain behind. “I can do this without either of you, if need be,” she said firmly. “No; don’t say anything, Nynaeve. Merise or Corele can wear that belt as well as you. So if you children do not stop whining, I will have Alivia take you back to the Heights and give you something to whine about.” That was the only reason she had brought the strange wilder. Alivia had a tendency to become very mild-mannered around those she could not stare down, but she stared very fiercely at those two chattering magpies.

Their heads swiveled toward the golden-haired woman as one, and the magpies fell blessedly silent. Silent, yet hardly accepting. Min could grind her teeth all she wanted, but Nynaeve’s sullen glower irritated Cadsuane. The girl had good material in her, but her training had been cut far too short. Her ability with Healing was little short of miraculous, her ability with almost anything else dismal. And she had not been put through the lessons that what must be endured, could be endured. In truth, Cadsuane sympathized with her. Somewhat. It was a lesson not everyone could learn in the Tower. She herself, full of pride in her new shawl and her own strength, had been taught by a near toothless wilder at a farm in the heart of the Black Hills. Oh, it was a very ragtag little army she had gathered to try standing Far Madding on its head.

Clerks and messengers half-filled the columned anteroom to the Counsels’ Chamber, but they were, after all, only clerks and messengers. The clerks hesitated in officious puzzlement, each waiting for another to speak first, but the red-coated messengers, who knew it was not their place to say anything, backed across the blue floortiles to the sides of the room, and the clerks parted in front of her, none quite daring to be the first to open his mouth. Even so, she heard a collective gasp when she opened one of the tall doors carved with the Hand and Sword.

The Counsels’ Chamber was not large. Four mirrored stand-lamps sufficed to light it, and a large Tairen carpet in red and blue and gold almost covered the floor tiles. A wide marble fireplace on one side of the room made a fair job of warming the air, though the glassed doors leading to the colonnade outside rattled in the night wind, loud enough to drown the ticking of the tall, gilded Illianer clock on the mantel. Thirteen carved and
gilded chairs, very nearly thrones, made an arc facing the door, all occupied by worried-looking women.

Aleis, at the head of the arc, frowned when she saw Cadsuane lead her little parade into the chamber. “This session is closed, Aes Sedai,” she said, at once formal and cold. “We may ask you to speak to us later, but—”

“You know who you have in the cells,” Cadsuane cut in.

It was not a question, but Aleis tried to bluff her way past. “A number of men, I believe. Public drunkards, various foreigners arrested for fighting or stealing, a man from the Borderlands taken just today who may have murdered three men. I do not keep a personal record of arrests, Cadsuane Sedai.” Nynaeve drew a deep breath at mention of a man taken for murder, and her eyes glittered dangerously, but at the least the child had sense enough to keep her mouth shut.

“So you will try to conceal that you hold the Dragon Reborn,” Cadsuane said quietly. She had hoped—hoped fervently!—that Verin’s spadework would make them back away from this. Perhaps it could still be done simply, though. “I can take him off your hands. I have faced more than twenty men who could channel, over the years. He holds no fears for me.”

“We do thank you for the offer,” Aleis replied smoothly, “but we prefer to communicate with Tar Valon, first.” To negotiate his price, she meant. Well, what had to be, had to be. “Do you mind telling us how you learned—”

Cadsuane broke in again. “Perhaps I should have mentioned earlier, these men behind me are Asha’man.”

The three stepped forward then, as they had been instructed, and she had to admit they gave a dangerous appearance. Grizzled Damer looked a graying bear with sore teeth, pretty Jahar seemed a dark, sleek leopard, and Eben’s unblinking gaze was particularly ominous coming from that youthful face. They certainly had their effect on the Counsels. Some simply shifted in their chairs as if to draw back, but Cyprien let her mouth fall open, unfortunate with her protruding teeth. Sybaine, her hair as gray as Cadsuane’s, sagged back in her chair and began fanning herself with a slender hand, while Cumere’s mouth twisted as if she might vomit.

Aleis was made of sterner stuff, though she pressed both hands tight against her midriff. “I told you once that Asha’man were free to visit so long as they obeyed the law. We have no fear of Asha’man, Cadsuane, though I must say I am surprised to see you in their company. Particularly in view of the offer you have just made.”

So, she was plain Cadsuane now, was she? Still, she regretted the necessity to break Aleis. She led Far Madding well, but she might never recover
from tonight. “Are you forgetting what else happened today, Aleis? Someone channeled inside the city.” Again Counsels shifted, and worried frowns creased more than one forehead.

“An aberration.” The coolness was gone from Aleis’ voice, replaced by anger, and maybe a touch of fear. Her eyes shone darkly. “Perhaps the guardians were in error. No one who was questioned saw anything to suggest—”

“Even what we think is perfect can have flaws, Aleis.” Cadsuane drew on her own Well, taking in
saidar
in a measured amount. She had practice; the little golden hummingbird could not hold near so much as Nynaeve’s belt. “Flaws can pass unnoticed for centuries before they are found.” The flow of Air she wove was just enough to lift the gem-encrusted coronet from Aleis’ head and set it on the carpet in front of the woman’s feet. “Once they are found, however, it seems that anyone who looks can find them.”

Thirteen sets of shocked eyes stared at the coronet. One and all, the Counsels seemed frozen, barely breathing.

“Not so much a flaw as a barn door, seems to me,” Damer announced. “I think it’s prettier on your head.”

The glow of the Power suddenly shone around Nynaeve, and the coronet flew toward Aleis, slowing at the last instant so that it settled above her bloodless face rather than cracking her head. The light of
saidar
did not vanish from the girl, though. Well, let her drain her Well.

“Will . . . ?” Aleis swallowed, but when she went on, her voice still cracked. “Will it be sufficient if we release him to you?” Whether she meant Cadsuane or the Asha’man was unclear, perhaps even to her.

“I think that it will,” Cadsuane said calmly, and Aleis sagged like a stringless puppet. Shocked as they were by the display of channeling, questioning looks passed between the other Counsels. Eyes darted toward Aleis, faces firmed, nods were exchanged. Cadsuane drew a deep breath. She had promised the boy that whatever she did would be for his good, not the good of the Tower or anyone else’s, and now she had broken a good woman for his good. “I am very sorry, Aleis,” she said.
You are building up a large account already, boy,
she thought.

Rand rode across the wide stone bridge leading north from the Caemlyn Gate without looking back. The sun was a pale golden ball just risen above the horizon in a cloudless sky, but the air was cold enough to mist his breath, and the lake winds made his cloak fly about. He did not feel the chill, though, except as something distant and not really connected to him. He was colder than any winter could be. The guards who had come to take him out of the cell the night before had been surprised to find him wearing a small smile. He wore it still, a slight curve of his mouth. Nynaeve had Healed his bruises using the last of the
saidar
in her belt, yet the helmeted officer who came into the road at the foot of the bridge, a stocky man with blunt features, gave a start at the sight of him, as though his face was still swollen and purple.

Cadsuane leaned from her saddle to speak a few quiet words and hand the officer a folded paper. He frowned at her and began to read, then jerked his head up to stare in amazement at the men and women waiting patiently on their horses behind her. Starting again at the top of the page, he read moving his lips silently, as if he wanted to be sure of every word, and small wonder. Signed and sealed by all thirteen Counsels, the order said that there was to be no checking of peace-bonds, no search of the packhorses. This party’s names were to be blotted out completely in the record
books, and the order itself burned. They had never come to Far Madding. No Aes Sedai, no Atha’an Miere, none of them.

“It’s over, Rand,” Min said gently, moving her sturdy brown mare nearer to his gray gelding, though she already stayed as close to him as Nynaeve did to Lan. Lan’s bruises, and a broken arm, had been Healed before she had attended to Rand. Min’s face reflected the worry flowing through the bond. Letting her cloak go on the wind, she patted his arm. “You don’t have to think about it anymore.”

“I’m grateful to Far Madding, Min.” His voice was emotionless, distant, as it had been when he seized
saidin
in the early days. He would have warmed it for her, but that seemed beyond him. “I really did find what I needed here.” If a sword had memory, it might be grateful to the forge fire, but never fond of it. When they were waved through, he cantered the gray up the hard-packed dirt road and into the hills, and he did not so much as glance back until trees hid any sight of the city.

The road climbed and wound through forested winter hills, where only pine and leatherleaf showed green and most branches were stark and gray, and suddenly the Source was there again, seemingly just beyond the corner of his eye. It pulsed and beckoned and filled him with hunger like starvation. Without thought he reached out and filled the emptiness in himself with
saidin,
an avalanche of fire, a storm of ice, all larded with the filthy taint that made the larger wound in his side pulse. He swayed in the saddle as his head spun and his stomach clenched even as he fought to ride the avalanche that tried to sear his mind, to soar on the storm that tried to scour his soul. There was no forgiveness or pity in the male half of the Power. A man fought it, or died. He could feel the three Asha’man behind him filling themselves too, drinking at
saidin
like men just out of the Waste who had found water. In his head, Lews Therin sighed with relief.

Min reined her mount so close to him that their legs touched. “Are you all right?” she said worriedly. “You look ill.”

“I’m as well as rainwater,” he told her, and the lie was not just about his belly. He was steel, and to his surprise, still not hard enough. He had intended sending her to Caemlyn, with Alivia to protect her. If the golden-haired woman was going to help him die, he had to be able to trust her. He had planned his words, but looking into Min’s dark eyes, he was not hard enough to make his tongue form them. Turning the gray in among the bare-branched trees, he spoke to Cadsuane over his shoulder. “This is the place.”

She followed him, of course. They all did. Harine had barely let him
out of her sight long enough to sleep a few hours last night. He would have left her behind, but on that subject, Cadsuane had given him her first advice.
You made a bargain with them, boy, the same as signing a treaty. Or giving your word. Keep it, or tell them it’s broken. Otherwise, you are just a thief.
Blunt, to the point, and in tones that left no doubt as to her opinion of thieves. He had never promised to follow her counsel, but she was too reluctant about being his advisor at all for him to risk driving her away this soon, so the Wavemistress and the other two Sea Folk rode with Alivia, ahead of Verin and the other five Aes Sedai who had sworn to him, and the four who were Cadsuane’s companions. She would as soon leave him as them, he was certain, maybe sooner.