Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time #11)

Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time #11) Page 134

Erith pushed in beside him at the window and gasped. “So many! Are we going to die, Loial?” She did not sound afraid. She sounded . . . excited!

“Not if I can warn Rand and the others.” He was already starting for the door. Only Aes Sedai and Asha’man could save them now.

“Here, my boy, I think we may need these.”

He turned just in time to catch the long-handled axe that Elder Haman tossed him. The other man’s ears were back all the way, laid flat against his skull. Loial realized his own were, too.

“Here, Erith,” his mother said calmly, lifting down one of the pruning knives. “If they get inside, we will try to hold them at the stairs.”

“You are my hero, Husband,” Erith said as she took the knife’s shaft in hand, “but if you get yourself killed, I will be very angry with you.” She sounded as if she meant it. And then he and Elder Haman were running down the corridor together. pounding down the stairs, bellowing at the tops of their lungs a warning, and a battle cry that had not been heard in over two thousand years. “Trollocs coming! Up axes and clear the field! Trollocs coming!”

“. . . so I will take care of Tear, Logain, while you—” Abruptly Rand wrinkled his nose. It was not that he actually smelled a rotting midden heap suddenly, but he felt as if he did, and the feeling was getting stronger.

“Shadowspawn,” Cadsuane said quietly, putting down her embroidery and rising. His skin tingled as she embraced the Source. Or maybe it was Alivia, walking briskly toward the windows after the Green sister. Min stood, drawing a pair of throwing knives from her coatsleeves.

At the same instant, through the thick walls, he faintly heard Ogier shouting. There was no mistaking those deep, drumlike voices. “Trollocs coming! Up axes and clear the field!”

With an oath, he leaped to his feet and ran to a window. Trollocs in the thousands came running through the light rain across the newly planted fields, Trollocs as tall as Ogier and taller. Trollocs with rams’ horns and goats’ horns, wolves’ snouts, boars’ snouts, Trollocs with eagles’ beaks and crests of feathers, muddy earth splashing beneath boots and hooves and paws. Silent as death they ran. Black-clad Myrddraal galloped behind them, cloaks hanging as if they were standing still. He could see thirty or forty. How many more on other sides of the house?

Others had heard the Ogier’s cries, or maybe just looked out a window. Lightning began to fall among the charging Trollocs, silvery bolts that struck with a roar and hurled huge bodies in every direction. In other places, the ground erupted in flames, fountaining dirt and parts of Trollocs, heads, arms, legs wheeling through the air. Balls of fire struck them and exploded, each killing dozens. But on they ran, as fast as horses if not faster. Rand could not see the weaves that drew some of those lightning bolts. Now that they were discovered, the Trollocs began to shout, a wordless roar of rage. In the thatch-roofed outbuildings, large sturdy barns and stables, some of Bashere’s Saldaeans stuck their heads out and quickly pulled them back again, drawing the doors shut behind them.

“You told your Aes Sedai they could channel to defend themselves?” he said calmly.

“Do I look fool enough not to?” Logain snarled. At another window, he already held saidin, nearly as much as Rand could draw. He was weaving as fast as he could. “Do you intend to help or just watch, my Lord Dragon?” There was entirely too much sarcasm in that, but now was not the time to bring it up.

Drawing a deep breath, Rand gripped the casement on either side of the window against the dizziness that would come—the Dragons’ golden-maned heads on the backs of his hands seemed to writhe—and reached out to seize the Power. His head spun as saidin flooded into him, icy flames and crumbling mountains, a chaos trying to pull him under. But blessedly clean. He still felt the wonder of that. His head spun and his stomach wanted to empty itself, the odd illness that should have gone with the taint, yet that was not why he clung to the casement even harder. The One Power filled him—but in that moment of dizziness, Lews Therin had seized it away from him. Numb with horror, he stared at the Trollocs and Myrddraal racing toward the outbuildings. With the Power in him, he could make out the pins fastened to massive mailed shoulders. The silver whirlwind of the Ahf’frait band and the blood-red trident of the Ko’bal. The forked lightning of the Ghraem’lan and the hooked axe of the Al’ghol. The iron fist of the Dhai’mon and the red, bloodstained fist of the Kno’mon. And there were skulls. The horned skull of the Dha’vol and the piled human skulls of the Ghar’ghael and the skull cloven by a scythe-curved sword of the Dhjin’nen and the dagger-pierced skull of the Bhan’sheen. Trollocs liked skulls, if they could be said to like anything. It seemed the twelve principal bands might all be involved, and some of the lesser. He saw pins he did not recognize. What seemed a staring eye, a dagger-pierced hand, a man-shape wrapped in flames. They neared the outbuildings, where swords were beginning to thrust through the thatch as the Saldaeans tried to cut ways onto the roofs. Thatch was tough. They would need to work desperately hard. Odd, the thoughts that came when a madman who wanted to die might well kill you in the next heartbeat.

Flows of Air pushed the casement in front of him out in a shower of shattered glass and fragmented wood. My hands, Lews Therin panted. Why can’t I move my hands? I need to raise my hands! Earth, Air and Fire went into a weave Rand did not know, six of them at once. Except that as soon as he saw the spinning, he did know. Blossom of Fire. Six vertical red shafts appeared among the Trollocs, ten feet tall and thinner than Rand’s forearm. The nearest Trollocs would be hearing their shrill whine, but unless memories had been passed down from the War of the Shadow, they would not realize they were hearing death. Lews Therin spun the last thread of Air, and fire blossomed. With a roar that shook the manor house, each red shaft expanded in a heartbeat to a disc of flame thirty feet across. Horned heads and snouted heads flew into the air, and pinwheeling arms, booted legs and legs that ended in paws or hooves. Trollocs a hundred paces and more away from the explosions went down, and only some got up again. Even as he was spinning those webs. Lews Therin spun six others, Spirit touched with Fire, the weave for a gateway, but then he added touches of Earth, so, and so. The familiar silvery-blue vertical streaks appeared, spaced out not far from the manor house, ground Rand knew well, rotating into—not openings, but the misty back of a gateway, four paces by four. Rather than remaining open, they rotated shut again, opening and shutting continuously. And rather than remaining fixed, they sped toward the Trollocs. Gateways and yet not. Deathgates. As soon as the Deathgates began to move, Lews Therin knotted the webs, a loose knotting that would hold only for minutes before allowing the whole weave to dissipate, and began spinning again. More Deathgates, more Blossoms of Fire, rattling the walls of the house, blowing Trollocs apart, flinging them down. The first of the speeding Deathgates struck the Trollocs and carved through them. It was not just the slicing edge of the constantly opening and closing gateways. Where a Deathgate passed, there simply were no Trollocs remaining. My hands! th