The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time #5)

The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time #5) Page 260

Except for Bael and Sulin — and Aviendha, of course — the Aiel left a little space around him and Mat, Asmodean and Pevin. “Stay away from the edge,” Rand said. The Aiel nearest him moved back all of a foot. He could not see over the forest of shoufashrouded heads. “Is it full?” he called. The thing might hold half those who wanted to go, but not many more. “Is it full?”

“Yes,” a woman's voice called back finally, reluctantly — he thought it sounded like Lamelle — but there was still a milling in the gateway, Aiel sure there must be room for one more.

“Enough!” Rand shouted. “No more! Clear the gateway! Everyone stand well clear!” He did not want what had happened to the Seanchan spear to happen here to living flesh.

A pause, and then, “It is clear.” It was Lamelle. He would have bet his last copper that Enaila and Somara were back there somewhere, too.

The gateway seemed to turn sideways, thinning until it vanished with one final flash of light.

“Blood and ashes!” Mat muttered, leaning disgustedly on his spear. “This is worse than the flaming Ways!” Which earned him a startled look from Asmodean, and a considering one from Bael. Mat did not notice; he was too busy glaring at the blackness.

There was no sense of motion, no breeze to stir the banner Pevin held. They could have been standing still. But Rand knew better; he could almost feel the place they were approaching draw nearer.

“If you come out too close to him, he will sense it.” Asmodean licked his lips and avoided looking at anyone. “At least, that is what I have heard.”

“I know where I am going,” Rand said. Not too close. But not too far. He remembered the spot well.

No movement. Endless black, and them hanging in it. Motionless. Half an hour passed perhaps.

A slight stir ran through the Aiel.

“What is it?” Rand asked.

Murmurs came across the platform. “Someone fell,” a bulky man near him said at last. Rand recognized him. Meciar. He was Cor Darei, a Night Spear. He wore the red headband.

“Not one of the...” Rand began, then caught Sulin looking at him, flateyed.

He turned to stare out into the darkness, anger a stain clinging to the emotionless Void. So it was not supposed to matter more to him if one of the Maidens had fallen, was it? It did. Falling forever through endless black. Would sanity crack before death came, from starvation or thirst or fear? In that fall, even an Aiel must eventually find fear strong enough to stop a heart. He almost hoped so; it must be more merciful than the other.

Burn me, what happened to all that hardness I was so proud of? A Maiden or a Stone Dog, a spear is a spear. Only, thinking it could not make it so. I will be hard. He would let the Maidens dance the spears where they wished. He would. And he knew he would search out the name of every one who died, that every name would be another knifecut on his soul. I will be hard. The Light help me, I will. The Light help me.

Seemingly motionless, hanging in blackness.

The platform stopped. It was hard to say how he knew, when he could tell it was moving before, but he did.

He channeled, and a gateway opened in the same way it had in the courtyard in Cairhien. The angle of the sun had hardly changed, but here earlymorning light shone on a paved street, and a rising slope patched brown with droughtkilled grass and wildflowers, a slope topped by a stone wall two spans high or more, the stones worked rough so it seemed something natural. Above that wall he could see the golden domes of the Royal Palace of Andor, a few of the pale spires topped with banners rippling the White Lion on a breeze. On the other side of that wall was the garden where he had first met Elayne.

Blue eyes floated accusingly outside the Void, the darting memory of kisses stolen in Tear, the memory of a letter laying her heart and soul at his feet, of messages borne by Egwene professing love. What would she say if she ever learned about Aviendha, about that night together in the snow hut? Memory of another letter, icily spurning him, a queen condemning a swineherd to outer darkness. It did not matter. Lan was right. But he wanted... What? Who? Blue eyes, and green, and dark brown. Elayne, who maybe loved him and maybe could not make up her mind? Aviendha, who taunted him with what she would not let him touch? Min, who laughed at him, thought him a woolheaded fool? All that flashed along the boundaries of the Void. He tried to ignore it, to ignore anguished memories of another blueeyed woman, lying dead in a palace corridor, so long ago.

He had to stand there, while Aiel dashed out behind Bael, veiling themselves, spreading left and right. It was his presence that maintained the platform; it would vanish as soon as he stepped through the gateway. Aviendha waited almost as calmly as Pevin, though she did occasionally put her head out to frown faintly in one direction or the other down the street. Asmodean fingered his sword and breathed too quickly; Rand wondered whether the man knew how to use the thing. Not that he would have to. Mat stared up the wall as though at a bad remembrance. He had entered the palace this way once, too.

The last veiled Aiel went by, and Rand motioned the others out, then followed. The gateway winked out of existence, leaving him in the middle of a long circle of wary Maidens. Aiel were running down the curving street — it followed the line of the hill; all the streets of the Inner City flowed with the land — vanishing around winding corners as they hurried to find and secure anyone who might give alarm. More were climbing the slope, and some had even begun to scale the wall, using tiny knobs and ridges for finger- and toeholds.

Suddenly Rand stared. To his left the street bowed downward and rounded out of sight, the decline giving a view past tilecovered towers, sparkling in the morning sun with a hundred changing colors, across tile roofs all the way to one of the Inner City's many parks, its white walks and monuments forming a lion's head when seen from this angle. To his right the street rose a little before curving away, more towers topped by spires or domes of various shapes glittering above the rooftops. Aiel filled the street, fanning out quickly into side streets that spiraled away from the palace. Aiel, and not a soul else. The sun was high enough for people to be out and about their business, even this close to the palace.

Like a nightmare the wall above toppled outward in half a dozen places, Aiel and stones smashing down on those still climbing. Before those bouncing, sliding chunks of masonry reached the streets, Trollocs appeared in the openings, dropping the treethick battering rams they had used and drawing scythecurved swords — more, with spiked axes and barbed spears, huge manshapes in black mail with spikes at shoulders and elbows, huge manfaces distorted by snouts and muzzles, beaks and horns and feathers, plunging down the slope with eyeless Myrddraal like midnight serpents in their midst. All along the street howling Trollocs and silent Myrddraal poured from doorways, leaped from windows. Lightning stabb