“We brought you some soup,” Somara said, nodding her flaxen head toward a silver tray covered with a striped cloth, sitting on the dais that held the Lion Throne. Carved and gilded, with huge lion’s paws at the ends of its legs, the throne was a massive chair at the top of four white marble stairs, with a strip of red carpet leading up to it. The Lion of Andor, picked out in moonstones on a field of rubies, would have stood above Morgase’s head whenever she occupied that seat. “Aviendha says you have not eaten yet today. It is the soup Lamelle used to make for you.”
“I suppose none of the servants have come back,” Rand sighed. “One of the cooks, maybe? A helper?” Enaila shook her head scornfully. She would serve her time as gai’shain with a good grace, if it ever came to that, but the idea of anyone spending their entire life serving someone else disgusted her.
Climbing the stairs, he squatted to twitch the cloth aside. His nose twitched, too. By the smell, whichever of them had made it was no better a cook than Lamelle had been. The sound of a man’s boots coming up the hall gave him an excuse to turn his back on the tray. With any luck, he would not have to eat it.
The man approaching up the long, red-and-white-tiled floor was certainly no Andorman, in his short gray coat and those baggy trousers stuffed into boots turned down at the knee. Slender and only a hand taller than Enaila, he had a hooked beak of a nose and dark tilted eyes. Gray streaked his black hair and a thick mustache like down-curved horns around his wide mouth. He paused to make a leg and bow slightly, handling the curved sword at his hip gracefully despite the fact that incongruously he carried two silver goblets in one hand and a sealed pottery jar in the other.
“Forgive my intrusion,” he said, “but there was no one to announce me.” His clothes might be plain and even travel-worn, but he had what appeared to be an ivory rod capped with a golden wolf’s head thrust behind his sword belt. “I am Davram Bashere, Marshal-General of Saldaea. I am here to speak with the Lord Dragon, who rumors in the city say is here in the Royal Palace. I assume that I address him?” For an instant his eyes went to the glittering Dragons twining red-and-gold around Rand’s arms.
“I am Rand al’Thor, Lord Bashere. The Dragon Reborn.” Enaila and Somara had moved between Rand and the man, each with a hand on the hilt of her long-bladed knife, poised to veil. “I am surprised to find a Saldaean lord in Caemlyn, much less wanting to speak to me.”
“In truth, I rode to Caemlyn to speak to Morgase, but I was put off by Lord Gaebril’s toadies—King Gaebril, I should say? Or does he still live?” Bashere’s tone said he doubted it, and did not care one way or the other. He did not pause. “Many in the city say Morgase is dead, as well.”
“They’re both dead,” Rand said bleakly. He sat down on the throne, his head resting against the moonstone Lion of Andor. The throne had been sized for women. “I killed Gaebril, but not before he killed Morgase.”
Bashere quirked an eyebrow. “Should I hail King Rand of Andor, then?”
Rand leaned forward angrily. “Andor has always had a queen, and it still d
oes. Elayne was Daughter-Heir. With her mother dead, she is queen. Maybe she has to be crowned first—I don’t know the law—but she is queen as far as I am concerned. I am the Dragon Reborn. That is as much as I want, and more. What is it you want of me, Lord Bashere?”
If his anger disturbed Bashere at all, the man gave no outward sign. Those tilted eyes watched Rand carefully, but not uneasily. “The White Tower allowed Mazrim Taim to escape. The false Dragon.” He paused, then went on when Rand said nothing. “Queen Tenobia did not want Saldaea troubled again, so I was sent to hunt him down once more and put an end to him. I have followed him south for many weeks. You need not fear I’ve brought a foreign army into Andor. Except for an escort of ten, the rest I left camped in Braem Wood, well north of any border Andor has claimed in two hundred years. But Taim is in Andor. I am sure of it.”
Rand leaned back again, hesitating. “You cannot have him, Lord Bashere.”
“May I ask why not, my Lord Dragon? If you wish to use Aiel to hunt him, I have no objection. My men will remain in Braem Wood until I return.”
This part of his plan he had not meant to reveal so soon. Delay could be costly, but he had intended to have a firm hold on the nations first. Yet it might as well begin now. “I am announcing an amnesty. I can channel, Lord Bashere. Why should another man be hunted down and killed or gentled because he can do what I can? I will announce that any man who can touch the True Source, any man who wants to learn, can come to me and have my protection. The Last Battle is coming, Lord Bashere. There may not be time for any of us to go mad before, and I would not waste one man for the risk anyway. When the Trollocs came out of the Blight in the Trolloc Wars, they marched with Dreadlords, men and women who wielded the Power for the Shadow. We will face that again at Tarmon Gai’don. I don’t know how many Aes Sedai will be at my side, but I won’t turn away any man who channels if he will march with me. Mazrim Taim is mine, Lord Bashere, not yours.”
“I see.” It was flatly said. “You have taken Caemlyn. I hear that Tear is yours, and Cairhien soon will be if it is not already. Do you mean to conquer the world with your Aiel and your army of men channeling the One Power?”
“If I must.” Rand said it just as levelly. “I’ll welcome any ruler as an ally who welcomes me, but so far all I’ve seen is maneuvering for power, or outright hostility. Lord Bashere, there’s anarchy in Tarabon and Arad Doman, and not far from it in Cairhien. Amadicia is eyeing Altara. The Seanchan—you may have heard rumors of them in Saldaea; the worst are likely true—the Seanchan on the other side of the world eyeing us all. Men fighting their own petty battles with Tarmon Gai’don on the horizon. We need peace. Time before the Trollocs come, before the Dark One breaks free, time to ready ourselves. If the only way I can find time and peace for the world is to impose it, I will. I don’t want to, but I will.”
“I have read The Karaethon Cycle,” Bashere said. Putting the goblets under his arm for a moment, he broke the wax seal on the jar and filled them with wine. “More importantly, Queen Tenobia has read the Prophecies, too. I cannot speak for Kandor, or Arafel, or Shienar. I believe they will come to you—not a child in the Borderlands but knows the Shadow waits in the Blight to descend on us—but I cannot speak for them.” Enaila eyed the goblet he handed her suspiciously, but she climbed the stairs to hand it to Rand. “In truth,” Bashere continued, “I cannot even speak for Saldaea. Tenobia rules; I am only her general. But I think once I send a fast rider to her with a message, the return will be that Saldaea marches with the Dragon Reborn. In the meanwhile, I offer you my services, and those of nine thousand Saldaean horse.”
Rand swirled the goblet, staring down into the dark red wine. Sammael in Illian, and other Forsaken the Light alone knew where. Seanchan waiting across the Aryth Ocean, and men here ready to leap for their own advantage and profit whatever it cost the world. “Peace is far off yet,” he said softly. “It will be blood and death for some time to come.”
“It always is,” Bashere replied quietly, and Rand did not know which statement he was speaking to. Perhaps both.
Tucking his harp under his arm, Asmodean drifted away from Mat and Aviendha. He enjoyed playing, but not for a pair who did not listen, much less appreciate. He was not sure what had happened that morning, and not sure he wanted to be sure. Too many Aiel had expressed surprise at seeing him, had claimed they had seen him dead; he did not want details. There was a long gash down the wall in front of him. He knew what made that sharp edge, that surface as slick as ice, smoother than any hand could have polished in a hundred years.
Idly—but with a shiver, too—he wondered whether being reborn in this fashion made him a new man. He did not think so. Immortality was gone. That was a gift of the Great Lord; he used that name in his head, whatever al’Thor demanded on his tongue. That was proof enough that he was himself. Immortality gone—he knew it must be imagination, yet sometimes he thought he could feel time dragging at him, pulling him toward a grave he had never thought to meet—and drawing the little of saidin he could was like drinking sewage. He was hardly sorry Lanfear was dead. Rahvin either, but Lanfear especially, for what she had done to him. He would laugh when each of the others died, too, and most for the last. It was not that he had been reborn as a new man at all, but he would cling to that tuft of grass on the cliff’s brink as long as he could. The roots would give way eventually, the long fall would come, but until then he was still alive.
He pulled open a small door, intending to find his way to the pantry. There should be some decent wine. One step, and he stopped, the blood draining from his face. “You? No!” The word still hung in the air when death took him.
Morgase blotted sweat from her face, then tucked the handkerchief back up her sleeve and readjusted her somewhat ragged straw hat. At least she had managed to acquire a decent riding dress, though even fine gray wool was still uncomfortable in this heat. Actually, Tallanvor had acquired it. Letting her horse walk, she eyed the tall young man, riding up ahead through the trees. Basel Gill’s roundness emphasized how tall and fit Tallanvor was. He had handed the dress to her saying it suited her better than the itchy thing she had fled the Palace in, looking down at her, never blinking, never speaking a word of respect. Of course, she herself had decided it was not safe for anyone to know who she was, especially after discovering Gareth Bryne gone from Kore Springs; why did the man have to be off chasing barnburners when she needed him? No matter; she would do as well without him. But there was something disturbing in Tallanvor’s eyes when he called her simply Morgase.
Sighing, she glanced back over her shoulder. Hulking Lamgwin rode watching the forest, Breane at his side watching him as much as anything else. Her army had not grown a whit since Caemlyn. Too many had heard of nobles exiled for no cause and unjust laws in the capital to do more than scoff at the most casual mention of stirring a hand in support of their rightful ruler. She doubted that even knowing who spoke to them would have made a difference. So here she rode through Altara, keeping to forest as much as possible because there seemed to be parties of armed men everywhere, rode through the forest with a scar-faced street tough, a besotted refugee Cairhienin noblewoman, a stout innkeeper who could hardly keep from kneeling whenever she glanced at him, and a young soldier who sometimes looked at her as though she had on one of those dresses she had worn for Gaebril. And Lini, of course. There was no forgetting Lini.
As if thinking of her had been a summons, the old nurse heeled her horse closer. “Better to keep your eyes ahead,” she said quietly. “ ‘A young lion charges quickest, and when you least expect it.’ ”
“You think Tallanvor is dangerous?” Morgase said sharply, and Lini gave her a sidelong, considering look.
“Only the way any man can be dangerous. A fine figure of man, don’t you think? More than tall enough. Strong hands, I should think. ‘There’s no point letting honey age too long before you eat it.’ ”
“Lini,” Morgase said warningly. The old woman had been going on this way too often of late. Tallanvor was a handsome man, his hands did look strong, and he had a well-turned calf, but he was young, and she was his queen. The last thing she needed was to start looking at him as a man instead of her subject and soldier. She was about to tell Lini that—and that the woman had lost her wits if she thought she was going to take up with any man ten years her junior; he had to be that—but Tallanvor and Gill were turning back. “You hold your tongue, Lini. If you put foolish ideas into that young man’s head, I will leave you somewhere.” Lini’s snort would have earned the highest noble in Andor time in a cell to meditate. If she still had her throne, it would.
“Are you sure you want to do this, girl? ‘It’s too late to change your mind after you’ve jumped off the cliff.’ ”