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

The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time #5) Page 45

Rand stopped Adelin with a hand on her bare arm; others who noticed stopped as well, so he spoke to them all. “If you will not go when I tell you to, what will you do if I have to use you in battle?” He did not intend to if he could help it; he knew they were fierce warriors, but he had been raised to believe it was a man's place to die if necessary before a woman had to. Logic might say it was foolish, especially with women like this, but that was how he felt. He knew better than to tell them that, however. “Will you think it a joke, or decide to go in your own good time?”

They looked at him with the consternation of those listening to someone who had revealed his ignorance of the simplest facts. “In the dance of spears,” Adelin told him, “we will go as you direct, but this is not the dance. Besides, you did not tell us to go.”

“Even the Car'a'carn is not a wetlander king,” a grayhaired Maiden added. Sinewy and hard despite her age, she wore only a short shift and her shoufa. He was getting tired of that phrase.

The Maidens resumed their joking as they left him alone with Moiraine and Lan. The Warder had finally put up his sword, and looked as at ease as he ever did. Which was to say as still and calm as his face, all stony planes and angles in the moonlight, and with an air of being on the brink of sudden movement that made the Aiel appear placid in comparison. A braided leather cord held Lan's hair, graying at the temples, back from his face. His gaze could have come from a blueeyed hawk.

“I must speak with you about —” Moiraine began.

“We can talk tomorrow,” Rand said, cutting her off. Lan's face hardened further, if such was possible; Warders were far more protective of their Aes Sedai, of their position as well as their persons, than they were of themselves. Rand ignored Lan. His side still wanted to hunch him over, but he managed to keep erect; he was not about to show her any weakness. “If you think I'll help you get that foxhead away from Mat, you can think again.” Somehow that medallion had stopped her channeling. Or at least it had stopped her channeling from affecting Mat while he touched it. “He paid a hard price for it, Moiraine, and it is his.” Thinking of how she had thumped his shoulders with the Power, he added dryly, “Maybe I'll ask if I can borrow it from him.” He turned away from her. There was still one he had to check on, though one way or another the urgency was gone; the Darkhounds would have done what they intended by now.

“Please, Rand,” Moiraine said, and the open pleading in her voice halted him in his tracks. He had never heard anything like that from her before.

The tone seemed to offend Lan. “I thought you had become a man,” the Warder said harshly. “Is this how a man behaves? You act like an arrogant boy.” Lan practiced the sword with him — and liked him, Rand thought — but if Moiraine said the right word, the Warder would do his best to kill him.

“I will not be with you forever,” Moiraine said urgently. Her hands gripped her skirts so hard that they trembled. “I might die in the next attack. I could fall from my horse and break my neck, or take a Darkfriend's arrow through my heart, and death cannot be Healed. I have given my entire life to the search for you, to find you and help you. You still do not know your own strength; you cannot know half of what you do. I — apologize — most humbly for any offense I have given you.” Those words — words he had never thought to hear from her — came out as if dragged, but they came; and she could not lie. “Let me help you as much as I can, while I can. Please.”

“It's hard to trust you, Moiraine.” He disregarded Lan, shifting in the moonlight; his attention was all on her. “You have handled me like a puppet, made me dance the way you wanted, from the day we met. The only times I've been free of you were either when you were far away or when I ignored you. And you make even that hard.”

Her laugh was as silvery as the moon above, but bitterness tinged it. “It has been more like wrestling with a bear than pulling strings on a puppet. Do you want an oath not to try manipulating you? I give it.” Her voice hardened to crystal. “I even swear to obey you like one of the Maidens — like one of the gai'shain, if you require — but you must —” Taking a deep breath, she began again, more softly. “I ask you, humbly, to allow me to help you.”

Lan was staring at her, and Rand thought his own eyes must be popping out of his head. “I will accept your help,” he said slowly. “And I apologize, too. For all the rudeness I've shown.” He had the feeling he was still being manipulated — he had had good cause to be rude, when he was — but she could not lie.

Tension drained from her visibly. She stepped closer to look up at him. “What you used to kill the Darkhounds is called balefire. I can still sense the residue of it here.” He could, too, like the fading smell remaining after a pie was carried out of the room, or the memory of something just snatched out of sight. “Since before the Breaking of the World, the use of balefire has been forbidden. The White Tower forbids us even to learn it. In the War of Power, the Forsaken and the Shadowsworn themselves used it only reluctantly.”

“Forbidden?” Rand said, frowning. “I saw you use it once.” He could not be sure in the pale light of the moon, but he thought color flamed in her cheeks. For this once, perhaps she was the one off balance.

“Sometimes it is necessary to do that which is forbidden.” If she was flustered, it did not show in her voice. “When anything is destroyed with balefire, it ceases to exist before the moment of its destruction, like a thread that burns away from where the flame touched it. The greater the power of the balefire, the further back in time it ceases to exist. The strongest I can manage will remove only a few seconds from the Pattern. You are much stronger. Very much so.”

“But if it doesn't exist before you destroy it...” Rand raked fingers through his hair in confusion.

“You begin to see the problems, the dangers? Mat remembers seeing one of the Darkhounds chew through the door, but there is no opening, now. If it had slavered on him as much as he remembers, he would have been dead before I could reach him. For as far back as you destroyed the creature, whatever it did during that time no longer happened. Only the memories remain, for those who saw or experienced it. Only what it did before is real, now. A few tooth holes in the door, and one drop of saliv