Turning slowly, Lanfear surveyed the great square. “You have destroyed this city as well as any army could have.” But it was not the ruined palaces she stared at, though she pretended; it was the broken square with its jumbled litter of ter’angreal and who knew what else. The corners of her mouth were tight when she turned back to Rand; her dark eyes held a spark of suppressed anger. “Use his teachings well, Lews Therin. The others are still out there, Sammael with his envy of you, Demandred with his hate, Rahvin with his thirst for power. They will be more eager to bring you down, not less, if—when—they discover you hold that.”
Her gaze flickered to the foot-tall figure in his hands, and for an instant he thought she was considering taking it from him. Not to keep the others from his back, but because with it he might be too powerful for her to handle. Right then he was not certain he could stop her if she used nothing but her hands. One instant she was weighing whether to leave the ter’angreal in his possession, the next measuring his tiredness. However much she talked of loving him, she would want to be far from him when he regained enough strength to use the thing. Briefly she scanned the plaza again, lips pursed; then abruptly a door opened beside her, not a door to blackness, but into what seemed a palace chamber, all carved white marble and white silk hangings.
“Which one were you?” he said as she stepped toward it, and she paused, looking over a shoulder at him with an almost coy smile.
“Do you think I could stand to be fat, ugly Keille?” She ran hands down her rounded slimness for emphasis. “Isendre, now. Slim, beautiful Isendre. I thought if you suspected, you would suspect her. My pride is strong enough to support a little fat, when it must.” The smile became a baring of teeth. “Isendre thought she was dealing with simple Friends of the Dark. I would not be surprised if right now she is frantically trying to explain to some angry Aiel women why a large quantity of their gold necklaces and bracelets are in the bottom of her chest. She actually did steal some of them herself.”
“I thought you said you didn’t harm anyone!”
“Now your soft heart shows. I can show a tender, woman’s heart when I choose. You’ll not be able to save her being welted, I think—she deserves that for the least of the looks she gave me—but if you return quickly, you can prevent them sending her off with one waterskin to walk out of this blighted land. They are quite hard on thieves, it seems, these Aiel.” She gave an amused laugh, shaking her head in wonder. “So different from what they were. You could slap a Da’shain’s face, and all he did was ask what he had done. Slap again, and he asked if he had offended. He would not change if you continued all day.” Giving Asmodean a contemptuous sidelong look, she added, “Learn well and quickly, Lews Therin. I mean us to rule together, not to watch Sammael kill you or Graendal add you to her collection of handsome young men. Learn well and quickly.” She stepped into the chamber of white marble and silk, and the doorway seemed to turn sideways, narrowed, vanished.
Rand drew the first deep breath he had taken since her appearance. Mierin. A name remembered from the glass columns. The woman who had found the Dark One’s prison in the Age of Legends, who had bored into it. Had she known what it was? How had she escaped that fiery doom he had seen? Had she given herself to the Dark One even then?
Asmodean was struggling to his feet, unsteady and nearly falling again. He no longer bled, but blood still traced thin lines from his ears down the sides of his neck, made a smear across his mouth and chin. His filthy red coat was torn, his white lace ripped and snagged. “It was my link to the Great Lord that allowed me to touch saidin without going mad,” he said hoarsely. “All you have done is make me as vulnerable as you. You might as well let me go. I am not a very good teacher. She only chose me because—” His lips writhed, trying to pull the words back.
“Because there isn’t anyone else,” Rand finished for him and turned away.
On tottering legs Rand crossed the broad square, picking his way t
hrough the litter. He and Asmodean had been flung halfway around the forest of glass columns from Avendesora. Crystal plinths lay against fallen statues of men and women, some broken in chunks, some not even chipped. A great flat ring of silvery metal had been flipped up on chairs of metal and stone, strange shapes in metal and crystal and glass, all mixed in a heap with shattered bits, a black metal shaft like a spear standing upright, improbably balanced on the pile. The entire plaza was like that.
Out from the great tree, a little searching among the jumble found what he sought. Kicking aside pieces of what seemed to be spiraled glass tubes, he shoved a plain-carved chair of red crystal aside and picked up a foot-tall figurine, a robed woman with a serene face, worked in white stone, holding up a clear sphere in one hand. Unbroken. As useless to him, or to any man, as its male twin was to Lanfear. He considered breaking it. One swing of his arm could shatter that crystal globe on the paving stones, surely.
“She was looking for that.” He had not realized Asmodean had followed him. Wavering, the man scrubbed at his bloody mouth. “She will rip your heart out to put her hands on it.”
“Or yours, for keeping it secret from her. She loves me.” Light help me. Like being loved by a rabid wolf! After a moment he put the female statue in the crook of his arm with the male. There might be a use for it. And I don’t want to destroy anything else.
Yet as he looked around, he saw something besides destruction. The fog was almost gone from the ruined city; only a few wispy sheets remained to drift among the buildings still standing beneath the sinking sun. The valley floor tilted sharply to the south now, and water spilled out of the great rent across the city, the gash that went all the way down to where that deep hidden ocean of water lay. Already the lower end of the valley was filling. A lake. It might reach nearly to the city eventually, a lake maybe three miles long in a land where a pool ten feet across drew people. People would come to this valley to live. He could almost see the surrounding mountains already terraced with crops growing green. They would tend Avendesora, the last chora tree. Perhaps they would even rebuild Rhuidean. The Waste would have a city. Perhaps he would even live to see it.
With the angreal, the round little man with his sword, he was able to open a doorway to blackness. Asmodean stepped through with him reluctantly, sneering faintly when a single carved stone step appeared, just wide enough for the two of them. Still the same man who had given himself to the Dark One. His calculating, sideways glances were reminder enough of that, if Rand needed any.
They only spoke twice as the step soared through the darkness.
Once Rand said, “I cannot call you Asmodean.”
The man shivered. “My name was Joar Addam Nesossin,” he said at last. He sounded as if he had stripped himself bare, or lost something.
“I can’t use that either. Who knows what scrap holds that name somewhere? The idea is to keep someone from killing you for a Forsaken.” And to keep anyone from knowing he had a Forsaken for teacher. “You will have to go on being Jasin Natael, I think. Gleeman to the Dragon Reborn. Excuse enough for keeping you close.” Natael grimaced, but said nothing.
A little later, Rand said, “The first thing you’ll show me is how to guard my dreams.” The man only nodded, sullenly. He would cause problems, but they could not be as large as the problems of ignorance.
The step slowed, stopped, and Rand folded again. The doorway opened on the ledge in Alcair Dal.
The rain had stopped, though the evening-shadowed floor of the canyon was still sodden, churned to mud by Aiel feet. Fewer Aiel than before, perhaps as many as a fourth fewer. But not fighting. Staring at the ledge, where Moiraine and Egwene, Aviendha and the Wise Ones had joined the clan chiefs, who stood talking with Lan. Mat was squatting a little distance from them, hat brim pulled down and black-hafted spear propped on his shoulder, Adelin and her Maidens standing around him. They gaped as Rand stepped out of the doorway, stared more when Natael followed in his tattered shiny red coat and white lace. Mat jumped to his feet with a grin, and Aviendha half-raised a hand toward him. The Aiel in the canyon watched silently.
Before anyone could speak, Rand said, “Adelin, would you send someone out to the fair and tell them to stop beating Isendre? She is not as big a thief as they think.” The yellow-haired woman looked startled, but immediately spoke to one of the Maidens, who dashed off.
“How did you know about that?” Egwene exclaimed, at the same time Moiraine demanded, “Where have you been? How?” Her wide dark eyes darted from him to Natael, her Aes Sedai calm nowhere in evidence. And the Wise Ones … ? Sun-haired Melaine looked ready to drag answers out of him with her bare hands. Bair scowled as though she meant to switch them out. Amys shifted her shawl and ran fingers through her pale hair, unable to decide whether she was worried or relieved.
Adelin handed him his coat, still damp. He wrapped it around the two stone figures. Moiraine was considering those, too. He did not know if she even suspected what they were, but he intended to hide them as best he could from anyone. If he could not trust himself with Callandor’s power, how much less with the great sa’angreal? Not until he had learned more of how to control it, and himself.
“What happened here?” he asked, and the Aes Sedai’s mouth tightened at being ignored. Egwene did not look much more pleased.
“The Shaido have gone, behind Sevanna and Couladin,” Rhuarc said. “All who remain acknowledge you as Car’a’carn.”
“The Shaido were not the only ones who fled.” Han’s leathery face twisted sourly. “Some of my Tomanelle went as well. And Goshien, and Shaarad, and Chareen.” Jheran and Erim nodded almost as dourly as Han.
“Not with the Shaido,” tall Bael rumbled, “but they went. They will spread what happened here, what you revealed. That was ill done. I saw men throw away their spears and run!”