Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time #6)

Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time #6) Page 146

“But you do not even remember Mafal Dadaranell, or Ancohima, or Londaren Cor, or . . . ?”

Covril put a hand on Haman’s shoulder, but the pity in her eyes was directed at Rand. “He does not remember,” she said softly. “Their memories are gone.” She made it sound the greatest loss imaginable. Erith, hands clasped to her mouth, appeared ready to cry.

Sulin returned, quite deliberately not running, followed by a fat cluster of gai’shain, their arms filled to overflowing with rolled maps of all sizes, some long enough to drag on the courtyard paving stones. One white-robed man carried an ivory-inlaid writing box. “I have set gai’shain looking for more,” she said stiffly, “and some of the wetlanders.”

“Thank you,” he told her. A little of the tautness went from her face.

Squatting down, he began spreading maps right there on the paving stones, sorting them. A number were of the city, and many of parts of Andor. He quickly found one showing the whole stretch of the Borderlands, and the Light knew what that was doing in Caemlyn. Some were old and tattered, showing borders that no longer applied, naming countries that had faded away hundreds of years before.

Borders and names were enough to rank the maps by age. On the oldest, Hardan bordered Cairhien to the north; then Hardan was gone and Cairhien’s borders swept halfway to Shienar before creeping back as it became clear the Sun Throne simply could not hold on to that much land. Maredo stood between Tear and Illian, then Maredo was gone, and Tear and Illian’s borders met on the Plains of Maredo, slowly falling back for the same reasons as Cairhien’s. Caralain vanished, and Almoth, Mosara and Irenvelle, and others, sometimes absorbed by other nations, most often eventually becoming unclaimed land and wilderness. Those maps told a story of fading since Hawkwing’s empire crumbled, of humanity in slow retreat. A second Borderland map showed only Saldaea and part of Arafel, but it showed the Blightborder fifty miles farther north too. Humanity retreated, and the Shadow advanced.

A bald, skinny man in ill-fitting Palace livery scurried into the courtyard with another armload, and Rand sighed and went on selecting and discarding.

Haman gravely examined the writing box that was held out to him by the gai’shain, then produced one almost as large, though quite plain, from a capacious coat pocket. The pen he took from it was polished wood, rather fatter than Rand’s thumb and long enough to look slender. It fit the Ogier’s sausage-thick fingers perfectly. He got down on hands and knees, crawling among the maps as Rand sorted, occasionally dipping his pen in the gai’shain’s inkpot, annotating in a handwriting that seemed too large until you realized that for him it was very small. Covril followed, peering over his shoulder even after he asked the second time whether she really thought he would make a mistake.

It was an education for Rand, beginning with seven stedding scattered through the Borderlands. But then, Trollocs feared to enter a stedding, and even Myrddraal needed some great purpose to drive them into one. The Spine of the World, the Dragonwall, held thirteen, including one in Kinslayer’s Dagger, from Stedding Shangtai in the south to Stedding Qichen and Stedding Sanshen in the north, only a few miles apart.

“The land truly changed in the Breaking of the World,” Haman explained when Rand commented. He continued marking briskly, though; briskly for an Ogier. “Dry land became sea and sea dry land, but the land folded as well. Sometimes what was far apart became close together, and what was close, far. Though of course, no one can say whether Qichen and Sanshen were far apart at all.”

“You forgot Cantoine,” Covril announced, making another liveried servant drop his fresh armload of maps with a start.

Haman gave her a look and lettered in the name just above the River Iralell, not far north of Haddon Mirk. In the strip west of the Dragonwall from the southern border of Shienar to the Sea of Storms, there were only four, all newfound as the Ogier considered it, meaning the youngest, Tsofu, had had Ogier back for six hundred years and none of the others for more than a thousand. Some of the locations were as big a surprise as the Borderlands, such as the Mountains of Mist, which had six, and the Shadow Coast. The Black Hills were included, and the forests above the River Ivo, and the mountains above the River Dhagon, just north of Arad Doman.

Sadder was the list of stedding abandoned, given up because the numbers there had grown too few. The Spine of the World and the Mountains of Mist and the Shadow Coast were in that list too, and so was a stedding deep on Almoth Plain, near the great forest called the Paerish Swar, and one in the low mountains along the north of Toman Head, facing the Aryth Ocean. Perhaps saddest was the one marked on the very edge of the Blight in Arafel; Myrddraal might be reluctant to enter a stedding, but as the Blight marched south year by year, it swept over everything.

Pausing, Haman said sadly, “Sherandu was swallowed by the Great Blight one thousand eight hundred forty-three years ago, and Chandar nine hundred sixty-eight.”

“May their memories flourish and flower in the Light,” Covril and Erith murmured together.

“I know of one you didn’t mark,” Rand said. Perrin had told him of sheltering in it once. He pulled out a map of Andor east of the River Arinelle and touched a spot well above the road from Caemlyn to White-bridge. It was close enough.

Haman grimaced, almost a snarl. “Where Hawkwing’s city was to be. That was never reclaimed. Several stedding were found and never reclaimed. We try to stay away from the lands of men as much as possible.” All of the marks were in rugged mountains, in places men found hard to enter, or in a few cases just far from any human habitation. Stedding Tsofu lay far closer than any other to where humans dwelled, and even then Rand knew it was a full day to the nearest village.

“This would be a fine discussion another time,” Covril said, directing her words to Rand yet plainly meaning them for Haman, as her sidelong looks indicated, “but I want to make as far west as I can before nightfall.” Haman sighed heavily.

“Surely you’ll stay here awhile,” Rand protested. “You must be exhausted, walking all the way from Cairhien.”

“Women do not become exhausted,” Haman said, “they only exhaust others. That is a very old saying among us.” Covril and Erith sniffed in harmony. Muttering to himself, Haman went on with his listing, but now it was cities that the Ogier had built, cities where the groves had been, each grove holding its Waygate to carry Ogier back and forth to the stedding without passing through the so-of