The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time 5) - Page 175

“She is gone. I cannot feel her presence.” The words sounded ripped out of Lan’s chest. He turned and began walking down the line of wagons without a backward glance.

Following the Warder with his eyes, Rand saw Aviendha on her knees, holding Egwene. Releasing saidin, he began to run down the quay. Physical pain that had been distant crashed home, but he ran, however awkwardly. Asmodean was there, too, looking around as if he expected Lanfear to leap out from behind a wagon or a toppled grain cart. And Mat, squatting with his spear propped across his shoulder, fanning Egwene with his hat.

Rand skidded to a halt. “Is she . . . ?”

“I don’t know,” Mat said miserably.

“She still breathes.” Aviendha sounded uncertain how long that would continue, but Egwene’s eyes fluttered open as Amys and Bair pushed roughly past Rand with Melaine and Sorilea. The Wise Ones knelt clustered around the younger women, murmuring to themselves and each other as they examined Egwene.

“I feel . . .” Egwene began weakly, and stopped to swallow. Her face was bloodless pale. “I . . . hurt.” A tear leaked from one eye.

“Of course you do,” Sorilea said briskly. “That is what happens when you let yourself be caught in a man’s schemes.”

“She cannot go with you, Rand al’Thor.” Melaine’s sun-haired beauty was openly angry, but she was not looking at him; it could have been anger at him or anger at what had happened.

“I . . . will be right as wellwater . . . with a little rest,” Egwene whispered.

Bair dampened a cloth from a waterskin and laid it across Egwene’s forehead. “You will be right with a great deal of rest. I fear you will not be meeting Nynaeve and Elayne tonight. You will not go near Tel’aran’rhiod for some days, until you are stronger again. Do not give me that stubborn look, girl. We will watch your dreams to make sure, if need be, and give your care to Sorilea if you so much as think of disobeying.”

“You will not disobey me more than once, Aes Sedai or not,” Sorilea said, but with a touch of sympathy at odds with her leathery-faced grimness. Frustration was plain in Egwene’s face.

“I, at least, am well enough to do what must be done,” Aviendha said. In truth, she looked not much less haggard than Egwene, but she managed a defiant stare at Rand, plainly expecting argument. Her defiance faded somewhat when she realized the four Wise Ones were looking at her. “I am,” she muttered.

“Of course,” Rand said hollowly.

“I am,” she insisted. To him; she carefully avoided meeting the Wise Ones’ gaze. “Lanfear had me a moment less than she did Egwene. That was enough to make the difference between us. I have toh to you, Rand al’Thor. I do not think we would have survived many moments more. She was very strong.” Her eyes darted down to the burning wagon. Fierce flames had already reduced it to a shapeless charred pile inside the glassy chimney; the redstone ter’angreal was no longer visible at all. “I did not see all that happened.”

“They are . . .” Rand cleared his throat. “They are both gone. Lanfear is dead. And so is Moiraine.” Egwene began to cry, sobs shaking her in Aviendha’s clasp. Aviendha put her head down on the other woman’s shoulder as if she, too, might weep.

“You are a fool, Rand al’Thor,” Amys said, standing. That surprisingly youthful face beneath her headscarf and white hair was stone hard. “About this and many other things, you are a fool.”

He turned away from the accusation in her eyes. Moiraine was dead. Dead because he could not bring himself to kill one of the Forsaken. He did not know whether he wanted to cry or laugh wildly; if he did either, he did not think he would be able to stop.

The dockside that had been emptying when he made the dome was filled again, though few came nearer than where that misty gray wall had stood. Wise Ones moved about aiding the burned, comforting the dying, assisted by white-robed gai’shain and men in the cadin’sor. Moans and cries stabbed at him. He had not been quick enough. Moiraine dead; no Healing for even the worst injured. Because he . . . I could not. The Light help me, I could not!

More Aielmen stood watching him, some only now unveiling; he still did not see one Maiden. Not only Aiel were there. Dobraine, bareheaded on a black gelding, did not take his eyes from Rand, and not far off Talmanes and Nalesean and Daerid sat their hor

ses watching Mat almost as closely as they did Rand. People lined the top of the great city wall, outlined and cast in shadow by the rising sun, and more along the curtain walls. Two of those shadowed shapes turned away when he looked up, saw each other only twenty paces apart, and seemed to recoil. He would have wagered they were Meilan and Maringil.

Lan was back with the horses at the last wagon in the line, stroking Aldieb’s white nose. Moiraine’s mare.

Rand went to him. “I’m sorry, Lan. If I’d been faster, if I’d . . .” He exhaled heavily. I couldn’t kill one, so I killed the other. The Light burn me blind! If it had, at that moment, he would not have cared.

“The Wheel weaves.” Lan went to Mandarb, busied himself checking the black stallion’s saddlegirth. “She was a soldier, a warrior in her way as much as I. This could have happened two hundred times these past twenty years. She knew it, and so did I. It was a good day to die.” His voice was as hard as it had ever been, but those cold blue eyes were red-rimmed.

“Still, I am sorry. I should have . . .” The man would not be comforted by should-haves, and they dug at Rand’s soul. “I hope you can still be my friend, Lan, after. . . . I value your counsel—and your sword-training—and I’ll need both in the days to come.”

“I am your friend, Rand. But I cannot stay.” Lan swung up into his saddle. “Moiraine did something to me that has not been done in hundreds of years, not since the time when Aes Sedai still sometimes bonded a Warder whether he wanted it or not. She altered my bond so it passed to another when she died. Now I must find that other, become one of her Warders. I am one, already. I can feel her faintly, somewhere far to the west, and she can feel me. I must go, Rand. It is part of what Moiraine did. She said she would not allow me time to die avenging her.” He gripped the reins as if holding Mandarb back, as if holding himself back from digging his spurs in. “If you ever see Nynaeve again, tell her . . .” For an instant that stone face crumpled in anguish; an instant, then it was granite again. He muttered under his breath, but Rand heard. “A clean wound heals quickest and pains shortest.” Aloud, he said, “Tell her I’ve found someone else. Green sisters are sometimes as close to their Warders as other women are to husbands. In every way. Tell her I’ve gone to be a Green sister’s lover, as well as her sword. These things happen. It has been a long time since I’ve seen her.”

“I will tell her whatever you say, Lan, but I don’t know that she’ll believe me.”

Lan bent from the saddle to catch Rand’s shoulder in a hard grip. Rand remembered calling the man a half-tame wolf, but those eyes made a wolf seem a lapdog. “We are alike in many ways, you and I. There is a darkness in us. Darkness, pain, death. They radiate from us. If ever you love a woman, Rand, leave her and let her find another. It will be the best gift you can give her.” Straightening, he raised one hand. “Peace favor your sword. Tai’shar Manetheren.” The ancient salute. True blood of Manetheren.

Rand lifted his hand. “Tai’shar Malkier.”

Lan heeled Mandarb’s flanks, and the stallion leaped forward, scattering Aiel and everyone else from his path, as if to carry the last of the Malkieri wherever he was headed at a gallop the entire way.

“The last embrace of the mother welcome you home, Lan,” Rand murmured, then shivered. That was part of the funeral service in Shienar, and elsewhere in the Borderlands.

Tags: Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time Fantasy
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