Lord of Chaos

## Chapter 26

#### Connecting Lines

Thunder rolled across the low, brown grassland hills in a continuous peal, though the sky held not a cloud, only the burning sun, still with a way to climb. On a hilltop, Rand held the reins and the Dragon Scepter on the pommel of his saddle and waited. The thunder swelled. It was hard not to look over his shoulder constantly, south toward Alanna. She had bruised her heel this morning and scraped her hand, and she was in a temper. How and what for, he had no notion; he had no real notion how he could be so sure. The thunder crested.

The Saldaean horsemen appeared over the next rise, three abreast at a dead gallop in a long snake that kept coming, down the slope into the broad sweep between the hills. Nine thousand men made a very long snake. At the foot of the slope they divided, the center column coming on while the others peeled off to right and left, each column dividing again and again until they rode by hundreds, swooping past one another. Riders began standing on their saddles, sometimes on feet, sometimes on hands. Others swung impossibly low to slap the ground on first one side of their galloping mounts, then the other. Men left their saddles entirely to crawl underneath speeding horses, or dropped to the ground to run a pace beside the animal before leaping back into the saddle, then dropping on the other side to repeat the performance.

Rand lifted his reins and heeled Jeade’en. As the dapple moved, so did the Aiel surrounding him. This morning the men were Mountain Dancers, Hama N’dore, more than half wearing the headband of siswai’aman. Caldin, graying and leathery, had tried to get Rand to let him bring more than twenty, what with so many armed wetlanders about; none of the Aiel wasted any time with disparaging looks for Rand’s sword. Nandera spent more time watching the two hundred-odd women who trailed after them on horses; she seemed to find more threat in the Saldaean ladies and officers’ wives than in the soldiers, and having met some of the Saldaean women, Rand was not ready to argue. Sulin would probably have agreed. It occurred to him that he had not seen Sulin in . . . not since returning from Shadar Logoth. Eight days. He wondered if he had done something to offend her.

This was no time to worry about Sulin or ji’e’toh. He circled around the valley until he reached the hilltop over which the Saldaeans had first appeared to him. Bashere himself rode about down there examining first one group as they went through their paces, then another; almost coincidentally, he just happened to do this standing up on his saddle.

For an instant Rand seized saidin, and released it a heartbeat later. With his vision enhanced, it had not been difficult to see the two white stones lying near the foot of the slope, right where Bashere had placed them personally last night, four paces apart. With luck, no one had seen him. With luck, no one would ask too many questions about this morning. Below, some men were riding two horses now, a foot on each saddle, still at a dead gallop. Others had a man on their shoulders, sometimes in a handstand.

He looked around at the sound of a horse walking toward him. Deira ni Ghaline t’Bashere rode through the Aiel with seeming unconcern; armed only with a small knife at her silver belt, in a riding dress of gray silk embroidered in silver down the sleeves and on the high neck, she appeared to be daring them to attack her. As tall as many of the Maidens, nearly a hand taller than her husband, she was a big woman. Not stout, nor even plump; simply big. She had wings of white in her black hair, and her dark tilted eyes were fixed on Rand. He suspected she was a beautiful woman when his presence did not turn her face to granite.

“Is my husband . . . amusing you?” She never gave Rand a title, never used his name.

He looked at the other Saldaean women. They watched him like a troop of cavalry ready to charge, faces also granite, tilted eyes icy. All they awaited was Deira’s command. He could well believe the stories of Saldaean women taking up fallen husbands’ swords and leading their men back into battle. Being pleasant had gotten him exactly nowhere with Bashere’s wife; Bashere himself only shrugged and said she was a difficult woman at times, all the while grinning with what could only be pride.

“Tell Lord Bashere I am pleased,” he said. Turning Jeade’en, he started back toward Caemlyn. The Saldaean women’s eyes seemed to press against his back.

Lews Therin was giggling; that was the only word for it. Never prod at a woman unless you must. She will kill you faster than a man and for less reason, even if she weeps over it after.

Are you really there? Rand demanded. Is there more to you than a voice? Only that soft, mad laughter answered.

He stewed over Lews Therin all the way back to Caemlyn, and even after they had ridden past one of the long markets of tile roofs lining the approaches to the gates and into the New City. He worried over going mad—not just the fact of it, though that was bad enough; if he went insane, how could he do what he had to do?—but he had seen no sign of it. But then, if his mind did crack, would he know it? He had never seen a madman. All he had to go by was Lews Therin maundering in his head. Did all men go mad alike? Would he end like that, laughing and weeping over things no one else saw or knew? He knew he had a chance to live, if a seemingly impossible one. If you would live, you must die; that was one of three things he knew must be true, told to him inside a ter’angreal where the answers were always true if apparently never easy to understand. But to live like that . . . he was not sure he would not rather die.

The crowds in the New City gave way before more than forty Aiel, and a handful recognized the Dragon Reborn as well. Maybe more did, but it was a ragged handful of cheers that went up as he rode by. “The Light shine on the Dragon Reborn!” and “The glory of the Light for the Dragon Reborn!” and “The Dragon Reborn, King of Andor!”

That last one jolted him whenever he heard it, and he heard it more than once. He had to find Elayne. He could feel his teeth grinding. He could not look at the people in the street; he wanted to smash them to their knees, roar at them that Elayne was their queen. Trying not to hear, he studied the sky, the rooftops, anything but the crowd. And that was why he saw the man in a white cloak rise up on a red-tiled rooftop and lift a crossbow.

Everything happened in heartbeats. Rand seized saidin and channeled as the bolt flew toward him; it struck Air, a silvery blue mass hanging above the street, with a clang as of metal against metal. A ball of fire leaped from Rand’s hand, struck the crossbowman in the chest as the bolt was bouncing away from the shield of Air. Flames engulfed the man, and he fell shrieking from the rooftop. And someone leaped into Rand, carrying him out of the saddle.

He hit the paving stones hard with a weight atop him; breath and saidin left him together. Struggling for air, he wrestled with the weight, wrenched it off—and found himself holding Desora by the arms. She smiled at him, a beautiful smile; then her head slumped sideways. Sightless blue eyes stared at him, already glazing. The crossbow bolt standing out from her ribs pressed against his wrist. Why had she ever wanted to hide such a beautiful smile?

Hands seized him, hauled him to his feet; Maidens and Mountain Dancers pushed him to the side of the street, close against the front of a tinsmith’s shop, and formed a tight, veiled circle around him, horn bows in hand, eyes searching street and rooftops. Shouts and screams rang everywhere, but the street was already clear for better than fifty paces either way, and then it was a milling mass of people struggling to get away. The street was clear except for bodies. Desora, and six others, three of them Aiel. One more a Maiden, he thought. It was hard to be sure from a distance with someone lying crumpled like a heap of rags.

Rand moved, and the Aiel around him pressed together more tightly, a wall of flesh. “These places are rabbit warrens,” Nandera said conversationally, without letting her eyes stop their search above her veil. “If you join the dance in there, you can take a blade in the back before you know there is danger.”

Caldin nodded. “This reminds me of a time near Sedar Cut, when—We have a prisoner, at least.” Some of his Hama N’dore had appeared from a tavern across the street, pushing ahead of them a man with his arms and elbows bound behind him. He continued to struggle until they shoved him to his knees on the paving stone and laid spearpoints against his throat. “Perhaps he will tell us who commanded this.” Caldin sounded as though he did not doubt it in the least.

A moment later Maidens came out of another building with a second bound man who was limping, his face covered in blood. In short order four men knelt in the street under Aiel guard. Finally the semicircle hemming Rand loosened.

The four were hard-faced men all, though the blood-smeared fellow swayed and rolled his eyes at the Aiel. Two others wore sullen defiance, the fourth a sneer.

Rand’s hands twitched. “Are you sure they were part of it?” He could not believe how soft his voice sounded, how steady. Balefire would solve everything. Not balefire, Lews Therin panted at him. Never again. “Are you sure?”

“They were,” a Maiden said; he could not see who, behind her veil. “Those we killed all wore this.” She tugged a cloak free from behind the bloodied man’s bound arms. A worn white cloak, grimy and stained, with a golden sunburst embroidered on the chest. The other three had them too.

“These were set to watch,” a broad Mountain Dancer added, “and report if the attack went badly for the others.” He laughed, a short bark. “Whoever sent them did not know how badly it would go.”

“None of these men fired a crossbow?” Rand asked. Balefire. No, Lews Therin shrieked in the distance. The Aiel exchanged glances, shook shoufa-wrapped heads. “Hang them,” Rand said. The bloody-faced man nearly collapsed. Rand seized him in flows of Air, dragged him to his feet. It was the first he realized that he held saidin. He welcomed the struggle for survival; he even welcomed the taint, staining his bones like acid slime. It made him less aware of things he would rather not remember, emotions he would rather not have. “What is your name?”

“F-Faral, m-my Lord. D-Dimir Faral.” Eyes almost popping out of his head stared at Rand through that mask of blood. “P-Please don’t h-hang me, m-my Lord. I’ll w-walk in the Light, I s-swear!”

“You are a very lucky man, Dimir Faral.” Rand’s voice sounded as distant in his own ears as Lews Therin’s cries. “You are going to watch your friends hang.” Faral began to weep. “Then you’ll be given a horse, and you will go tell Pedron Niall that one day I will hang him too for what happened here.” When he loosed the flows of Air, Faral collapsed in a heap, moaning that he would ride to Amador without stopping. The three who were to die stared contemptuously at the sobbing man. One of them spat at him.

Rand put them out of his mind. Niall was the only one he had to remember. There was something else he had to do yet. He pushed away saidin, went through the struggle to escape it without being obliterated, the struggle to make himself release it. For what he had to do, he wanted no screen between him and his emotions.

A Maiden was straightening Desora’s body; she had raised Desora’s veil. She reached to stop him when he touched that piece of black algode then hesitated, looking at his face, and settled back on her haunches.

Lifting the veil, he memorized Desora’s face. She looked as if she were sleeping now. Desora, of the Musara sept of the Reyn Aiel. So many names. Liah, of the Cosaida Chareen, and Dailin, of the Nine Valleys Taardad, and Lamelle, of the Smoke Water Miagoma, and . . . so many. Sometimes he ran down that list name by name. There was one name in it he had not added. Ilyena Therin Moerelle. He did not know how Lews Therin had put it there, but he would not have erased it if he knew how.

It was both an effort and a relief to turn away from Desora, a pure relief to find that what he had thought was a second dead Maiden was instead a man, short for an Aielman. He hurt for the men who died for him, but with them he could remember an old saying. “Let the dead rest, and care for the living.” Not easily, but he could make himself do it. He could not even make himself summon the words when it was a woman who had died.

Skirts spread on the paving stones caught his eye. Not only Aiel had died.

She had taken a crossbow bolt squarely between the shoulder blades. Almost no blood stained the back of her dress; it had been quick, a small mercy. Kneeling, he turned her over as gently as he could; the other end of the bolt stood out from her chest. It was a square face, a woman in her middle years, a touch of gray in her hair. Her dark eyes were open wide; she looked surprised. He did not know her name, but he memorized her face. She had died for being on the same street with him.

He caught at Nandera’s arm, and she shook his hand free, not wanting the use of her bow impaired, but she did look at him. “Find this woman’s family and see they have whatever they need. Gold . . . ” It was not enough. What they needed was a wife back, a mother back; he could not give them that. “See to them,” he said. “And find out her name.”

Nandera stretched a hand toward him, then put it back to her bow. When he stood, the Maidens were watching him. Oh, they were watching everything as usual, but those veiled faces turned toward him a little more often. Sulin knew how he felt, if she did not know about the list, but he had no idea whether she had told the others. If she had, he had no idea how they felt about it.

Walking back to where he had fallen, he picked up the tasseled Dragon Scepter. Bending was an effort, and the short length of spear felt heavy. Jeade’en had not gone far once his saddle was empty; the horse was well trained. Rand climbed onto the dapple’s back. “I’ve done as much as I can here,” he said—let them think whatever they wanted—and dug in his heels.

If he could not outdistance memory, he outdistanced the Aiel. For a time at least. He had handed Jeade’en over to a stableman and was inside the Palace before Nandera and Caldin caught up to him, with about two-thirds the number of Maidens and Mountain Dancers they had had. Some had been left to care for the dead. Caldin looked sourly irritated. From the heat in Nandera’s eyes, Rand thought he should be glad she was not veiled.

Before she could speak, Mistress Harfor approached Rand and curtsied deeply. “My Lord Dragon,” she said in a deep, strong voice, “there is a petition for audience with you from the Wavemistress of Clan Catelar, of the Atha’an Miere.”

If the fine cut of Reene’s red-and-white dress was not enough to say that “first maid” was a misnomer, her manner certainly was. A slightly plump woman with graying hair and a long chin, she looked Rand right in the eye, tilting her head back to manage it, and somehow combined a proper degree of deference, an utter lack of obsequiousness, and an aloofness most noblewomen could not attain. Like Halwin Norry, she had stayed when most others fled, though Rand half-suspected that her motive had been to defend and preserve the Palace from invaders. He would not have been surprised to learn that she periodically searched his chambers for hidden Palace valuables. He would not have been surprised to learn she tried to search the Aiel.

“Sea Folk?” he said. “What do they want?”

She gave him a patient look, trying to make allowances. Very plainly trying. “The petition does not say, my Lord Dragon.”

If Moiraine had known anything about the Sea Folk, she had not made it part of his education, but from Reene’s attitude, this woman was important. A Wavemistress certainly sounded important. That would mean the Grand Hall. He had not been there since returning from Cairhien. Not that he had any reason to avoid the throne room; there just had been no need to go there. “This afternoon,” he said slowly. “Tell her I will see her in the mid-afternoon. You’ve given her good apartments? And her retinue?” He doubted anyone with so grand a title traveled alone.

“She refused them; they have taken rooms at The Ball and Hoop.” Her mouth flattened slightly; apparently, however lofty a Wavemistress, that was not proper in Reene Harfor’s eyes. “They were very dusty and travel-sore, hardly able to stand. They came by horse, not coach, and I do not believe they are used to horses.” She blinked as if surprised to have unbent that much, and regained her reserve like donning a cloak. “Someone else wishes to see you, my Lord Dragon.” Her tone picked up the faintest hint of distaste. “The Lady Elenia.”

Rand almost grimaced himself. No doubt Elenia had another lecture prepared on her claims to the Lion Throne; so far he had managed not to hear more than one word in three. She would be easy enough to turn down. Still, he really should know something of Andor’s history, and no one handy knew more of it than Elenia Sarand. “Send her to me in my rooms, please.”

“Do you really mean the Daughter-Heir to have the throne?” Reene’s tone was not harsh, but all deference was gone. Her face had not changed, yet Rand was sure that with a wrong answer she would shout “For Elayne and the White Lion!” and try to bash his brains in, Aiel or no Aiel.

“I do,” he sighed. “The Lion Throne is Elayne’s. By the Light and my hope of rebirth and salvation, it is.”

Reene studied him a moment, then spread her skirts in another deep curtsy. “I will send her to you, my Lord Dragon.” Her back was stiff as she glided away, but it always was; there were no telling whether she believed a word.

“A crafty enemy,” Caldin said heatedly before Reene had gone five paces, “will set a weak ambush you are meant to break through. Confident because you have dealt with the threat, your guard relaxed, you walk into the second, stronger ambush.”

Right on top of Caldin, Nandera said in a cold voice, “Young men can be impetuous, young men can be rash, young men can be fools, but the Car’a’carn cannot let himself be a young man.”

Rand glanced over his shoulder before starting off, just long enough to say, “We’re back inside the Palace now. Choose your two.” It was little surprise that Nandera and Caldin chose themselves, and none at all that they strode after him wrapped in a hard silence.

At the door to his apartments, he told them to send Elenia in when she came and left them in the corridor. There was plum punch in a silver-chased pitcher waiting, but he did not touch it. Instead he stood staring at it, trying to plan out what he was going to say, until he realized what he was doing and grunted in surprise. What was there to plan?

A tap at the door announced honey-haired Elenia, who swept a curtsy in a dress worked with golden roses. On any other woman, Rand would have thought they were just roses; on Elenia, they had to stand for the Rose Crown. “My Lord Dragon is most gracious to receive me.”

“I want to ask you some things about Andor’s history,” Rand said. “Will you take plum punch?”

Elenia’s eyes widened in delight before she could stop them. Undoubtedly she had planned how to work Rand around to this in order to lead into her claims, and here it was handed to her. A smile bloomed on her foxlike face. “May I have the honor of pouring for my Lord Dragon?” she said, not waiting for him to wave his assent. She was so pleased with the turn of events that he almost expected her to press him into a chair and urge him to put his feet up. “Upon what point of history may I shed light?”

“A general sort of . . . ” Rand frowned; that would give the excuse to be listing her ancestry in detail inside of two sentences “ . . . that is, how Souran Maravaile came to bring his wife here. Was he from Caemlyn?”

“Ishara brought Souran, my Lord Dragon.” Elenia’s smile turned briefly indulgent. “Ishara’s mother was Endara Casalain, who was Artur Hawkwing’s governor here then—the province was called Andor—and also the daughter of Joal Ramedar, the last King of Aldeshar. Souran was only . . . only a general”—she had been going to say a commoner; he would have wagered on it—“though Hawkwing’s finest, of course. Endara resigned her warrant and knelt to Ishara as Queen.” Somehow, Rand did not believe it had happened quite that way, or so smoothly. “They were the worst of times, of course, quite as bad as the Trolloc Wars, I am sure. With Hawkwing dead, every noble thought to become High King. Or High Queen. Ishara knew that no one would be able to take it all, though; there were too many factions, and alliances broke as soon as made. She convinced Souran to raise the siege of Tar Valon, and brought him and as much of his army as he could hold together here.”

“Souran Maravaile was the one besieging Tar Valon?” Rand said, startled. Artur Hawkwing had laid a twenty-year siege against Tar Valon, and put a price on the head of every Aes Sedai.

“The final year of it,” she said, a touch impatiently, “as nearly as the histories record.” It was plain she had little real interest in Souran except as Ishara’s husband. “Ishara was wise. She promised the Aes Sedai that her eldest daughter would be sent to study in the White Tower, thus gaining the Tower’s backing and an Aes Sedai advisor named Ballair, the first ruler to do so. Others did follow, of course, but they still wanted Hawkwing’s throne.” She had the bit in her teeth now, face animated, goblet forgotten, gesturing with her free hand. Words bubbled out. “A full generation passed before that idea died, although Narasim Bhuran did try as late as the last ten years of the War of the Hundred Years—a dismal failure that ended with his head on a pike after a year—and Esmara Getares’s effort some thirty years earlier gained considerable ground before she tried to conquer Andor and spent the last twelve years of her life as the guest of Queen Telaisien. Esmara was assassinated in the end, though there is no record of why anyone would want her dead once Telaisien broke her power. You see, the Queens who came after Ishara, from Alesinde to Lyndelle, followed what she had begun, and not only in sending a daughter to the Tower. Ishara had Souran secure the land around Caemlyn first, only a few villages in the beginning, then slowly expanded her control. Why, it took five years for her sway to reach the River Erinin. But the land that Andor’s Queens held was solidly theirs when most others who called themselves kings or queens were still more interested in gaining new lands than in solidifying what they already had.”

She paused for breath, and Rand leaped in quickly. Elenia spoke of these people as if she knew them personally, but his head was spinning with names he had never heard before. “Why is there no House Maravaile?”

“None of Ishara’s sons lived past twenty.” Elenia shrugged and sipped her punch; the subject did not interest her. But it did give her a new topic. “Nine queens reigned over the course of the War of the Hundred Years, and none had a son live beyond twenty-three. The battles were constant, and Andor was pressed from every side. Why, in Maragaine’s reign, four kings brought armies against her—there is a town named for the battle, on the site. The kings were—”

“But all the queens have been descendants of Souran and Ishara?” Rand put in quickly. The woman would give him a day-by-day account if he let her. Sitting, he motioned her to take a chair.

“Yes,” she said reluctantly. Probably reluctant to include Souran. But she brightened immediately. “You see, it is a matter of how much of Ishara’s blood one has. How many lines connect you to her, and in what degree. In my case—”

“It isn’t easy for me to understand. For example, take Tigraine and Morgase. Morgase had the best claim to succeed Tigraine. I suppose that means Morgase and Tigraine were closely related?”

“They were cousins.” Elenia made an effort to hide her irritation over being interrupted so often, especially now that she was so close to the heart of what she wanted to say, but her mouth still narrowed. She looked like a fox that wanted to bite, but the chicken kept slipping just out of reach.

“I see.” Cousins. Rand drank deeply, half-emptying his goblet.

“We are all cousins. All the Houses.” His silence seemed to invigorate her. Her smile returned. “With marriages over a thousand years, there is not a House without some drop of Ishara’s blood. But the degree is what is important, that and the number of connecting lines. In my case—”

Rand blinked. “You’re all cousins? All of you? That doesn’t seem poss—” He leaned forward intently. “Elenia, if Morgase and Tigraine had been . . . merchants, or farmers . . . how closely would they have been related?”

“Farmers?” she exclaimed, staring at him. “My Lord Dragon, what a peculiar—” The blood drained slowly from her face; he had been a farmer, after all. She wet her lips, a nervous flicker of the tongue. “I suppose . . . I should have to think. Farmers. I suppose that means imagining all the Houses as farmers.” A nervous titter broke from her before she drowned it in her punch. “Had they been farmers, I don’t think anyone would consider them related at all. All the connections are too far back. But they were not, my Lord Dragon . . . ”

He stopped listening with more than half an ear and sank back in his chair. Not related.

“ . . . have thirty-one lines to Ishara, while Dyelin has only thirty, and . . . ”

Why did he feel so relaxed suddenly? Knots had vanished from his muscles that he had not even known were there until they went.

“ . . . if I may say so, my Lord Dragon.”

“What? Forgive me. My mind wandered for a moment—the problems of . . . I missed the last thing you said.” There had been something in it that had tugged at his ear, though.

Elenia wore the obsequious, flattering smile that looked so strange on her face. “Why, I was just saying that you yourself bear some resemblance to Tigraine, my Lord Dragon. You might even have some touch of Ishara’s blood your—” She cut off with a squeak, and he realized he was on his feet.

“I . . . feel a little tired.” He tried to make his voice normal, but it sounded as distant as if he were deep in the Void. “If you would leave me, please.”

He did not know how his face looked, but Elenia bounced out of her chair, hurried to set her goblet on the table. She was trembling, and if her face had been bloodless before, now it looked like snow. Dropping a curtsy deep enough for a scullery maid caught stealing, she hurried toward the door, each step faster than the last, all the while watching him over her shoulder, until she tore the door open and the sound of running slippers receded down the hall. Nandera put her head in, checking on him, before pulling the door shut.

For a long time Rand stood staring at nothing. No wonder those ancient queens had been staring at him; they knew what he was thinking when he did not himself. That sudden worm of worry that had gnawed at him unseen since he discovered his mother’s real name. But Tigraine had not been related to Morgase. His mother had not been related to Elayne’s mother. He was not related to . . .

“You’re worse than a lecher,” he said aloud, bitterly. “You’re a fool and a . . . ” He wished Lews Therin would speak, so he could say to himself, That is a madman; I am sane. Was it those dead rulers of Andor he felt staring at him, or was it Alanna? Striding to the door, he jerked it open. Nandera and Caldin were sitting on their heels beneath a tapestry of brightly colored birds. “Assemble your people,” he told them. “I’m going to Cairhien. Please don’t tell Aviendha.”