The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time #4)

The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time #4) Page 154

“You cannot escape me,” she murmured. Those dark eyes seemed far deeper than the pond. “I will make you enjoy this so you never forget, asleep or awake.”

Asleep or... ? Everything shifted, blurred. She wrapped herself around him tighter, and the blur went away. Everything was as it had been. Rushes filled one end of the pond; leatherleaf and pine grew almost to the water's edge at the other.

“I know you,” he said slowly. He thought he must, or why would he be letting her do this? “But I don't... This is not right.” He tried to pull her loose, but as fast as he pried an arm away, she had it back again.

“I ought to mark you.” There was a fierce edge in her voice. “First that milkhearted Ilyena and now... How many women do you hold in your thoughts?” Suddenly her small white teeth burrowed at his neck.

Bellowing, he hurled her away and slapped a hand to his neck. She had broken the skin; he was bleeding.

“Is this how you amuse yourself when I wonder where you have gone?” a man's voice said contemptuously. “Why should I hold to anything when you risk our plan this way?”

Abruptly the woman was on the bank, clothed in white, narrow waist belted in wide woven silver, silver stars and crescents in her midnight hair. The land rose slightly behind her to an ash grove on a mound. He did not remember seeing ash before. She was facing — a blur. A thick, gray, mansized fuzzing of the air. This was all... wrong, somehow.

“Risk,” she sneered. “You fear risk as much as Moghedien, don't you? You would creep about like the Spider herself. Had I not hauled you out of your hole, you'd still be hiding, and waiting to snatch a few scraps.”

“If you cannot control your... appetites,” the blur said in the man's voice, “why should I associate with you at all? If I must take risks, I want a greater reward than pulling strings on a puppet.”

“What do you mean?” she said dangerously.

The blur shimmered; somehow Rand knew it for hesitation, uncertainty over having said too much. And then suddenly the blur was gone. The woman looked at him, still neckdeep in the pond; her mouth tightened with irritation, and she vanished.

He started awake and lay still, peering up into blackness. A dream. But an ordinary dream, or something else? Fumbling a hand from under the blankets, he felt the side of his neck, felt the tooth marks and the thin trickle of blood. Whatever kind of dream, she had been in it. Lanfear. He had not dreamed her. And that other; a man. A cold smile crept onto his face. Traps all around. Traps for unwary feet. Have to watch where I step, now. So many traps. Everybody was laying them.

Laughing softly, he twisted around to go back to sleep — and froze, holding his breath. He was not alone in the room. Lanfear.

Frantically he reached for the True Source. For an instant he feared fear itself might defeat him. Then he floated in the cold calm of the Void, filled with a raging river of the Power. He sprang to his feet, lashing out. The lamps burst alight.

Aviendha sat crosslegged by the door, mouth hanging open and green eyes bulging by turns at the lamps and the bonds, invisible to her, that wrapped her completely. Not even her head could move; he had expected someone standing, and the weave extended well above her. He released the flows of Air immediately.

She scrambled to her feet, nearly losing her shawl in her haste. “I... I do not believe I will ever become used to....” She gestured at the lamps. “From a man.”

“You have seen me wield the Power before.” Anger oozed across the surface of the Void surrounding him. Sneaking into his room in the dark. Frightening him half to death. She was lucky he had not hurt her, killed her by accident. “You had best grow used to it. I am He Who Comes With the Dawn whether you want to admit it or not.”

“That is not part —”

“Why are you here?” he demanded coldly.

“The Wise Ones are taking turns watching over you from outside. They meant to continue watching from...” She trailed off, her face reddening.

“From where?” She only stared at him, her face growing more and more crimson. “Aviendha, from wh —?” Dreamwalkers. Why had it never occurred to him? “From inside my dreams,” he said harshly. “How long have they been spying inside my head?”

She let out a long, heavy breath. “I was not supposed to let you know. If Bair finds out — Seana said it was too dangerous tonight. I do not understand it: I cannot enter the dream without one of them to help me. Something dangerous tonight is all I know. That is why they are taking turns at the door to this roof. They are all worried.”

“You still haven't answered my question.”

“I do not know why I am here,” she muttered. “If you need protection...” She glanced at her short belt knife, touched the hilt. The ivory bracelet seemed to irritate her; she folded her arms so it was tucked into her armpit. “I could not protect you very well with a knife this small, and Bair says if I pick up a spear again without someone actually attacking me, she will have my hide for a waterskin. I do not know why I should give up sleep to protect you at all. Because of you, I was beating rugs until less than a hour ago. By moonlight!”

“That wasn't the question. How long —?” He cut off suddenly. There was a feel in the air, a sense of wrongness. Of evil. It could be imagination, residue from his dream. It could be.

Aviendha gasped as the flamered sword appeared in his hands, its slightly curved blade marked with the heron. Lanfear had accused him of using only the tenth part of what he was capable of, yet most of that tenth came by guess and fumbling. He did not know even the tenth part of what he could do. But he knew the sword.

“Stay behind me.” He was just aware of her unsheathing her belt knife as he padded from the room in his stocking feet, soundless on the carpets. Oddly, the air was no cooler than when he had lain down. Perhaps those stone walls held what heat there was, for the farther out he went, the colder it grew.

Even the gai'shain must have sought their pallets by now. The halls and chambers stood silent and empty, most dimly illuminated by the scattered lamps still burning. Here where extinguished lamps meant pitch dark at noon, some lamps were always left lit. The feeling was still vague, but it would not go away. Evil.

He stopped suddenly, in the wide archway leading to the browntiled entry chamber. One silver lamp at each end of the room gave a pale light. In the middle of the floor a tall man stood with his head bowed over the woman wrapped in his blackcloaked arms, her head flung back and her white cowl fallen while he nuzzled at her throat. Chion's eyes were nearly closed, and she wore an ecstatic smile. A flush of embarrassment slid across the surface of the Void. Then the man raised his head.

Black eyes regarded Rand, too big in a pale, gauntcheeked face; a puckered, redlipped mouth opened in a parody of a smile, showing sharp teeth. Chion crumpled to the floor as the cloak unfolded, spread into wide, batlike wings. The Draghkar stepped over her, white, white hands reaching for Rand, the long, slender fingers tipped with claws. Claws and teeth were not the danger, though. It was the Draghkar's kiss that killed, and worse.

Its crooning, hypnotic song clung tight around the Void. Those dark, leathery wings moved to enfold him as he stepped forward. One moment of startlement flashed in the huge black eyes before the Powermade sword clove the Draghkar's skull to the bridge of its nose.

A steel blade would have bound, but the blade woven of fire pulled free easily as the creature fell. For a moment, deep in the heart of the Void, Rand examined the thing at his feet. That song. Had he not been shielded from emotion by emptiness, kept dispassionate and distant, that song would have snared his mind. The Draghkar surely believed it had when he came to it so willingly.

Aviendha ran past him to halfkneel beside Chion and feel the gai'shain's throat. “Dead,” she said, thumbing the woman's eyelids the rest of the way shut. “Perhaps better for it. Draghkar eat the soul before they consume life. A Draghkar! Here!” She glared at him from her crouch. “Trollocs at Imre Stand, and now a Draghkar here. You bring ill times to the Threefold —” With a cry, she threw herself flat across Chion as he leveled the sword.

A bar of solid fire shot over her from his blade to strike the chest of the Draghkar just filling the outer doorway. Bursting into flame, the Shadowspawn staggered back screaming, stumbling across the path, beating wings that dripped fire.

“Rouse everyone,” Rand said calmly. Had Chion fought? How far had her honor held her? It would have made no difference. Draghkar died more easily than Myrddraal, but they were more dangerous in their own way. “If you know how to sound the alarm, do it.”

“The gong by the door —”

“I will do it. Wake them. There may be more than two.”

Nodding, she dashed back the way they had come, shouting, “Up spears! Wake and up spears!”

Rand stepped outside warily, sword ready, the Power filling him, thrilling him. Sickening him. He wanted to laugh, to vomit. The night was freezing, but he was barely aware of the cold.

The burning Draghkar was sprawled in the terrace garden, stinking of burning meat, adding the light of its low fire to the moon. A little way down the path Seana lay, long graying hair spread in a fan, staring at the sky with wide, unblinking eyes. Her belt knife lay beside her, but she had had no chance against a Draghkar.

Even as Rand snatched the leatherpadded mallet hanging beside the square bronze gong, pandemonium erupted from the canyon mouth, human shouts and Trolloc howls, the clash of steel, screams. He sounded the gong hard, a sonorous toll that echoed down the canyon; almost immediately another gong sounded, then more, and from dozens of mouths the cry, “Up spears!”

Confused yells rose around the peddlers' wagons below. Rectangles of light appeared, doors flung open on the two boxlike wagons, gleaming white in the moonlight. Someone was shouting angrily down there — a woman; he could not tell who.

Wings beat in the air above him. Snarling, Rand raised the fiery sword; the One Power burned in him, and fire roared from the blade. The stooping Draghkar exploded in a rain of burning chunks that fell into the darkness below.

“Here,” Rhuarc said. The clan chief's eyes were hard above his black veil; fully dressed, he carried buckler and spears. Mat stood behind him, coatless and bareheaded, shirt half tucked in, blinking uncertainly and gripping his blackhafted spear with both hands.

Rand took the shoufa from Rhuarc, then let it drop. A batwinged shape wheeled across the moon, then swooped low on the far side of the canyon, vanishing in the shadows. “They hunt for me. Let them see my face.” The Power surged in him; the sword in his hand flared till it seemed a small sun illumined him. “They can't find me if they do not know where I am.” Laughing, because they could not see the joke, he ran down toward the sound of battle.

Pulling his spear free of a boarsnouted Trolloc's chest, Mat crouched, eyes searching the moonlit darkness near the canyon mouth for another. Burn Rand! None of the shapes he saw moving were big enough to be a Trolloc. Always dumping me into these bloody things! Low moans came from the wounded. A shadowy form he thought was Moiraine knelt beside a downed Aiel. Those balls of fire she tossed about were impressive, almost as much as that sword of Rand's, spurting bars of flame. The thing still shone so a circle of light surrounded the man. I should have stayed in my blankets is what I should have done. It's bloody cold, and this is nothing to do with me! More Aiel were beginning to appear, women in skirts come to help with the injured. Some of those women carried spears; they might not do the fighting normally, but once the battle had reached into the hold they had