Lord of Chaos

## Chapter 4

#### A Sense of Humor

The tent’s dim interior was hot enough to make Caemlyn, some eight hundred miles or so north, seem pleasantly cool, and when Rand pushed the flap open, he blinked. The sun was a hammer that made him glad of the shoufa.

A copy of the Dragon banner hung above the green-striped tent, alongside one of the crimson banners bearing the ancient Aes Sedai symbol. More tents stretched across a rolling plain where all but a few tufts of tough grass had long since been beaten to dust by hooves and boots—peak-roofed tents and flat, most white by far if often dirty white, but many in colors or stripes, tents and the colorful banners of lords. An army had gathered here on the border of Tear, on the edge of the Plains of Maredo, thousands upon thousands of soldiers from Tear and Cairhien. The Aiel had made their own camps well away from the wetlanders, five Aiel for every Tairen and Cairhienin and more arriving by the day. It was an army to make Illian shake in its boots, a host already mighty enough to smash anything in its path.

Enaila and the rest of the foreguard were already outside, veils down, with a dozen or so Aielmen. The Aiel kept a constant guard on this tent. Clothed and armed like the Maidens, they were as tall as Rand or taller, lions to the Maidens’ leopards, hard-faced sun-dark men with cold eyes of blue or green or gray. Today they were Sha’mad Conde, Thunder Walkers, led by Roidan himself, who headed the society this side of the Dragonwall. The Maidens carried the honor of the Car’a’carn, but every warrior society demanded some share of the guard duty.

One thing about some of the men’s garb differed from the Maidens’. Half wore a crimson cloth knotted around their temples, with the ancient Aes Sedai symbol a black-and-white disc above their brows. It was a new thing, first seen only a few months earlier. Wearers of the headband considered themselves siswai’aman; in the Old Tongue, the Spears of the Dragon. The Spears Owned by the Dragon might be closer. The headbands, and their meaning, made Rand uncomfortable, but there was little he could do when the men refused even to admit they were wearing them. Why no Maidens had donned the things—none he had seen at least—he had no idea. They were almost as reluctant to talk about it as the men.

“I see you, Rand al’Thor,” Roidan said gravely. There was considerably more gray than yellow in Roidan’s hair, but a blacksmith could have used the heavy-shouldered man’s face for hammer or anvil, and by the scars across his cheeks and nose it seemed possible that more than one had. Icy blue eyes made his face soft by comparison. He avoided looking at Rand’s sword. “May you find shade this day.” That had nothing to do with the molten sun or the cloudless sky—Roidan did not seem to sweat at all—it was simply a greeting among people from a land where the sun was always baking hot and a tree rare.

Equally formal, Rand replied, “I see you, Roidan. May you find shade this day. Is the High Lord Weiramon about?”

Roidan nodded toward a large pavilion with red-striped sides and a crimson roof, ringed by men with tall spears slanted precisely, shoulder-to-shoulder in the burnished breastplates and gold-and-black coats of Tairen Defenders of the Stone. Above it, the Three Crescents of Tear, white on red and gold, and the many-rayed Rising Sun of Cairhien, gold on blue, flanked Rand’s own scarlet flag, all three twitching in a breeze that might have come from an oven.

“The wetlanders are all there.” Looking Rand straight in the eyes, Roidan added, “Bruan has not been asked to that tent in three days, Rand al’Thor.” Bruan was clan chief of the Nakai Aiel, Roidan’s clan; they were both Salt Flat sept. “Nor has Han of the Tomanelle, or Dhearic of the Reyn, or any clan chief.”

“I will speak with them,” Rand said. “Will you tell Bruan and the others I am here?” Roidan nodded gravely.

Eyeing the men sideways, Enaila leaned close to Jalani, then spoke in a whisper that could have been heard clearly at ten paces. “Do you know why they are called Thunder Walkers? Because even when they are standing still, you keep looking to the sky expecting to see lightning.” The Maidens hooted with laughter.

A young Thunder Walker leaped in the air, kicking a soft knee-high boot higher than Rand’s head. He was handsome except for the puckered white scar that ran up under the strip of black cloth covering a missing eye. He wore the headband, too. “Do you know why Maidens use handtalk?” he shouted at the top of his leap, and, landing, he put on a befuddled grimace. Not directed at the Maidens, though; he spoke to his companions, ignoring the women. “Because even when they are not talking, they cannot stop talking.” The Sha’mad Conde laughed as hard as the Maidens had.

“Only Thunder Walkers would see honor in guarding an empty tent,” Enaila told Jalani sadly, shaking her head. “The next time they call for wine, if the gai’shain bring them empty cups, they will no doubt get drunker than we can on oosquai.”

Apparently the Thunder Walkers thought Enaila had gained the best of the exchange. The one-eyed man and several others raised their bull-hide bucklers toward her and rattled spears against them. For her part, she simply listened a moment, then nodded to herself and fell in with the others as they followed Rand.

Musing to himself about Aiel humor, Rand studied the sprawling camp. The aromas of food drifted from hundreds of scattered cookfires, bread baking in coals, meat roasting on spits, soup bubbling in kettles hung on tripods. Soldiers always ate well and often when they could; campaigning usually brought scant meals. The fires added their own sweetish smells; there was more dried ox dung to burn on the Plains of Maredo than wood.

Here and there archers or crossbowmen or pikemen moved about in leather jerkins sewn with steel discs or simply padded coats, but Tairen and Cairhienin nobles alike despised foot and lauded horse, so mounted men were most in evidence. Tairens in helmets rimmed and ridged, and breastplates over fat-sleeved coats striped in the colors of their various lords. Cairhienin in dark coats and battered breastplates and helmets like bells cut away to expose their faces. Small banners called con, on short staffs fastened to some men’s backs, marked minor Cairhienin nobility and younger sons, and sometimes merely officers, though few Cairhienin commoners rose to rank. Or Tairen, for that matter. The two nationalities did not mingle, and while the Tairens often slouched in their saddles and always directed a sneer at any Cairhienin who came near, the shorter Cairhien sat their horses stiffly, as though straining for the last inch of height, and ignored the Tairens completely. They had fought more than one war against each other before Rand made them ride together.

Roughly dressed, grizzled old men and some little more than boys went poking around the tents with stout sticks, one or another now and again scaring up a rat that he chased down and clubbed before adding it to the others dangling from his belt. A big-nosed fellow in a stained leather vest and no shirt, bow in hand and quiver at his waist, laid a long string of crows and ravens tied together by the feet on a table in front of one tent and received a purse in exchange from the bored-looking helmetless Tarien behind it. Few this far south really believed Myrddraal used rats and ravens and such for spies—Light, except for those who had actually seen them, almost no one this far south truly believed in Myrddraal, or Trollocs!—but if the Lord Dragon wanted the camp kept clear of the creatures, they were happy to oblige, especially since the Lord Dragon paid in silver for every corpse.

Cheers rose, of course; no one else would be walking about with an escort of Maidens of the Spear, and there was the Dragon Scepter. “The Light illumine the Lord Dragon!” and “Grace favor the Lord Dragon!” and the like showered from every side. Many even sounded sincere, though it was difficult to tell with men bellowing at the top of their lungs. Others only stared woodenly, or turned their horses and rode away, not too fast. After all, there was no telling when he might decide to call down lightning or make the ground split open; men who channeled did go mad, and who knew what a madman might do or when? Whether cheering or not, they eyed the Maidens warily. Few had really grown accustomed to seeing women carrying weapons like men; besides, everyone knew Aiel were every bit as unpredictable as madmen.

The noise was not enough to keep Rand from hearing what the Maidens were saying behind him.

“He has a fine sense of humor. Who is he?” That was Enaila.

“His name is Leiran,” Somara replied. “A Cosaida Chareen. You think he has humor because he thought your joke better than his. He does look to have strong hands.” Several of the Maidens chortled.

“Did you not think Enaila funny, Rand al’Thor?” Sulin was striding at his side. “You did not laugh. You never laugh. Sometimes I do not think you have a sense of humor.”

Stopping dead, Rand rounded on them so suddenly that several reached for their veils and looked about for what had startled him. He cleared his throat. “An irascible old farmer named Hu discovered one morning that his best rooster had flown into a tall tree beside his farm pond and wouldn’t come down, so he went to his neighbor, Wil, and asked for help. The men had never gotten along, but Wil finally agreed, so the two men went to the pond and began climbing the tree, Hu first. They meant to frighten the rooster out, you see, but the bird only kept flying higher, branch by branch. Then, just as Hu and the rooster reached almost the very top of the tree, with Wil right behind, there was a loud crack, the branch under Hu’s feet broke away, and down he went into the pond, splashing water and mud everywhere. Wil scrambled down as fast as he could and reached out to Hu from the bank, but Hu just lay there on his back, sinking deeper into the mud until only his nose stuck out of the water. Another farmer had seen what happened, and he came running and pulled Hu out of the pond. ‘Why didn’t you take Wil’s hand?’ he asked Hu. ‘You could have drowned.’ ‘Why should I take his hand now?’ Hu grumped. ‘I passed him just a moment ago in broad daylight, and he never spoke a word to me.’ ” He waited expectantly.

The Maidens exchanged blank looks. Finally Somara said, “What happened with the pond? Surely the water is the point of this story.”

Throwing up his hands, Rand started for the red-striped pavilion again. Behind him he heard Liah say, “I think it was supposed to be a joke.”

“How can we laugh when he doesn’t know what happened to the water?” Maira said.

“It was the rooster,” Enaila put in. “Wetlander humor is strange. I think it was something about the rooster.”

He tried to stop listening.

The Defenders stiffened even more rigidly at his approach, if that was possible, and the two standing before the gold-fringed entry flaps stepped aside smoothly, pulling them open. Their eyes stared past the Aiel women.

Rand had led the Defenders of the Stone once, in a desperate fight against Myrddraal and Trollocs in the halls of the Stone of Tear itself. They would have followed anyone who stepped forward to lead that night, but it had been him.

“The Stone still stands,” he said quietly. That had been their battlecry. Quick smiles flashed across some of those faces before they snapped back to wooden stillness. In Tear commoners did not smile at what a lord said unless absolutely sure the lord wanted them to smile.

Most of the Maidens squatted easily outside, spears across their knees, a posture they could hold for hours without moving a muscle, but Sulin followed Rand inside with Liah, Enaila and Jalani. If those Defenders had all been childhood friends of Rand, the Maidens would have been as cautious, but the men inside were not friends at all.

Colorful, fringed carpets floored the pavilion, Tairen mazes and elaborate scrollwork patterns, and in the middle sat a massive table, heavily carved and gilded and garishly inlaid with ivory and turquoise, that very likely needed a wagon all to itself for transport. The map-covered table separated a dozen sweaty-faced Tairens from half as many Cairhienin, who suffered even more from the heat, each man holding a golden goblet that self-effacing servants in black-and-gold livery kept filled with punch. All the nobles were in silk, but the clean-shaven Cairhienin, short, slight and pale compared to the men on the other side of the table, wore coats dark and sober except for bright horizontal slashes of their House colors across the chest, the number indicating the rank of the House, while the Tairens, most with beards oiled and trimmed to neat points, wore padded coats that were a garden of red and yellow and green and blue, satin and brocade, silver thread and thread-of-gold. The Cairhienin were solemn, even dour, most gaunt-cheeked and each with the front of his head shaved and powdered in what had once been the fashion only among soldiers in Cairhien, not lords. The Tairens smiled and sniffed scented handkerchiefs and pomanders that filled the pavilion with their heavy aromas. Beside the punch, the one thing they seemed to have in common was flat-eyed stares for the Maidens, followed hard by the pretense that the Aiel were invisible.

The High Lord Weiramon, oiled beard and hair streaked gray, bowed deeply. He was one of four High Lords there, in elaborately silver-worked boots, the others being unctuous, overly plump Sunamon; Tolmeran, whose iron-gray beard seemed a spear point on the shaft of his leanness; and potato-nosed Torean, looking more a farmer than most farmers—but Rand had given Weiramon the command. For the time being. The other eight were lesser lords, some clean-shaven though with no less gray in their hair; they were here through their oaths of fealty to one or another of the High. Lords, yet they all had some experience of fighting.

Weiramon was not short for a Tairen, though Rand stood a head taller, but he always reminded Rand of a banty rooster, all puffed out chest and strutting. “All hail the Lord Dragon,” he intoned, bowing, “soon to be Conqueror of Illian. All hail the Lord of the Morning.” The rest were no more than a breath behind, Tairens spreading arms wide, Cairhienin touching hand to heart.

Rand grimaced. Lord of the Morning had been one of Lews Therin’s titles, or so the fragmentary histories said. A great deal of knowledge had been lost in the Breaking of the World, and more went up in smoke during the Trolloc Wars and later during the War of the Hundred Years, yet surprising shards sometimes survived. He was surprised that Weiramon’s use of the title had not brought Lews Therin’s mad yammering. Come to think of it, Rand had not heard that voice since shouting at it. As far as he could recall that was the first time he had ever actually addressed the voice sharing his head. The possibilities behind that sent a chill down his back.

“My Lord Dragon?” Sunamon dry-washed fleshy hands. He seemed to be trying not to see the shoufa wrapped around Rand’s head. “Are you—?” Swallowing his words, he put on an ingratiating smile; asking a potential madman—potential at the very least—whether he was well was perhaps not what he wanted to say. “Would the Lord Dragon like some punch? A Lodanaille vintage mixed with honey-melon.” A lanky Lord of the Land sworn to Sunamon, a man named Estevan with a hard jaw and harder eyes, motioned sharply, and a servant darted for a golden goblet from a side table against the canvas wall; another hurried to fill it.

“No,” Rand said, then more strongly, “No.” He waved the servant away without really seeing him. Had Lews Therin actually heard? Somehow that made the whole thing worse. He did not want to think about the possibility now; he did not want to think of it at all. “As soon as Hearne and Simaan get here, almost everything will be in place.” Those two High Lords should be arriving soon; they led the last large parties of Tairen soldiers to have left Cairhien, over a month ago. Of course, there were smaller groups on the way south, and more Cairhienin. More Aiel, too; the stream of Aiel would draw things out. “I want to see—”

Abruptly he realized the pavilion had gone very quiet, very still, except for Torean suddenly tipping back his head to gulp down the rest of his punch. He scrubbed a hand across his mouth and held out the goblet for more, but the servants seemed to be trying to fade into the red-striped walls. Sulin and the other three Maidens were suddenly up on their toes, ready to veil.

“What is it?” he asked quietly.

Weiramon hesitated. “Simaan and Hearne have . . . gone to Haddon Mirk. They are not coming.” Torean snatched a worked-gold pitcher from one of the servants and filled his own goblet, slopping punch onto the carpets.

“And why have they gone there instead of coming here?” Rand did not raise his voice. He was sure he knew the answer. Those two—and five more High Lords besides—had been sent to Cairhien mainly to occupy minds set to plot against him.

Malicious smiles flickered among the Cairhienin, most half-hidden in quickly raised goblets. Semaradrid, the highest-ranking, slashes of color on his coat to below the waist, wore his sneer openly. A long-faced man with white streaks at his temples and dark eyes that could chip stone, he moved stiffly from wounds suffered in his land’s civil war, but his limp came from fighting Tear. His main reason for cooperating with the Tairens was that they were not Aiel. But then, the Tairens’ main reason for cooperating was that the Cairhienin were not.

It was one of Semaradrid’s countrymen who answered, a young lord named Meneril who had half Semaradrid’s stripes on his coat, and on his face a scar from the civil war that pulled up the left corner of his mouth in a permanent sardonic smile. “Treason, my Lord Dragon. Treason and rebellion.”

Weiramon might have been hesitant about saying those words to Rand’s face, yet he was not about to let an outlander speak for him. “Yes, rebellion,” he said hurriedly, glaring at Meneril, but his usual pomposity quickly returned. “And not only them, my Lord Dragon. The High Lords Darlin and Tedosian and the High Lady Estanda are in it, too. Burn my soul, but they all put their names to a letter of defiance! It seems some twenty or thirty minor nobles are involved as well, some little more than jumped-up farmers. Light-blasted fools!”

Rand almost admired Darlin. The man had opposed him openly from the start, fleeing the Stone when it fell and trying to rouse resistance among the country nobles. Tedosian and Estanda were different. Like Hearne and Simaan they had bowed and smiled, called him Lord Dragon and plotted behind his back. Now his forbearance was repaid. No wonder Torean was spilling punch over his white-streaked beard as he drank; he had been involved deeply with Tedosian, and with Hearne and Simaan for that matter.

“They wrote more than defiance,” Tolmeran said in a cold voice. “They wrote that you are a false Dragon, that the fall of the Stone and your drawing of The Sword That Is Not a Sword were some Aes Sedai trick.” There was a hint of question in his tone; he had not been in the Stone of Tear the night it fell to Rand.

“What do you believe, Tolmeran?” It was a seductive claim in a land where channeling had been outlawed before Rand changed the law, and Aes Sedai were at best tolerated, where the Stone of Tear had stood invincible for close to three thousand years before Rand took it. And a familiar claim. Rand wondered whether he would find Whitecloaks when these rebels were laid by the heels. He thought Pedron Niall might be too smart to allow that.

“I think you drew Callandor.” The lean man said after a moment. “I think you are the Dragon Reborn.” Both times there was a slight emphasis on “think.” Tolmeran had courage. Estevan nodded; slowly, but he did it. Another brave man.

Even they did not ask the obvious question, though, whether Rand wanted the rebels rooted out. Rand was not surprised. For one thing, Haddon Mirk was no easy place to root anyone out of, a huge tangled forest lacking villages, roads or even paths. In the choppy mountainous terrain along its northernmost edge a man would be lucky to cover a handful of miles in a long day, and armies could maneuver until their food ran out without finding one another. Perhaps more importantly, whoever asked that question could be suspected of volunteering to lead the expedition, and a volunteer could be suspected of wanting to join Darlin, not lay him by the heels. Tairens might not play Daes Dae’mar, the Game of Houses, the way Cairhienin did—that lot read volumes in a glance and heard more in a sentence than you ever meant to put there—but they still schemed and watched one another, suspicious of schemes, and they believed everyone else did the same.

Still, it suited Rand to leave the rebels where they were for now. All of his attention had to be on Illian; it had to be seen to be there. But he could not be seen as soft, either. These men would not turn on him, but Last Battle or no Last Battle, only two things kept the Tairens and Cairhienin from each other’s throats. They preferred each other to Aielmen, if barely, and they feared the wrath of the Dragon Reborn. If they lost that fear, they would be trying to kill one another, and the Aiel, before you could say Jak o’ the Mists.

“Does anyone speak in their defense?” he asked. “Does anyone know any mitigation?” If any did, they held their tongues; counting the servants, nearly two dozen pairs of eyes watched him, waiting. Perhaps the servants most intently of all. Sulin and the Maidens watched everything except him. “Their titles are forfeited, their lands and estates confiscated. Arrest warrants are to be signed for every man whose name is known. And every woman.” That could present a problem; the penalty in Tear for rebellion was death. He had changed some laws, but not that one, and it was too late now. “Publish it that whoever kills one of them will be absolved of murder, and whoever aids them will be charged with treason. Any who surrender will be spared their lives,” which might solve the difficulty of Estanda—he would not order a woman executed—if he could work how to manage it, “but those who persist will hang.”

The nobles shifted uneasily and exchanged glances, whether Tairen or Cairhienin. Blood drained from more than one face. They had certainly expected the death sentences—there could be no less for rebellion, and with war in the offing—but the stripping of titles plainly shocked them. Despite all the laws Rand had changed in both lands, despite lords hauled before magistrates and hanged for murder or fined for assault, they still thought there was some difference bred in the bone, some natural order that made them lions by right and commoners sheep. A High Lord who went to the gibbet died a High Lord, but Darlin and the others would die peasants in these men’s eyes, a much worse fate than the dying itself. The servants remained poised with their pitchers, waiting to refill any goblet that had to be tilted very far in drinking. Features as expressionless as ever, there seemed to be a cheerfulness in some of those eyes not there before.

“Now that that’s settled,” Rand said, dragging off the shoufa as he went to the table, “let’s see the maps. Sammael is more important than a handful of fools rotting in Haddon Mirk.” He hoped they did rot. Burn them!

Weiramon’s mouth tightened, and Tolmeran quickly smoothed out a frown. Sunamon’s face was so smooth it might have been a mask. The other Tairens looked as doubtful, and the Cairhienin as well, though Semaradrid hid it well. Some had seen Myrddraal and Trollocs during that attack on the Stone, and some had seen his duel with Sammael at Cairhien, yet they thought his claim the Forsaken were loose a symptom of insanity. He had heard whispers that he had wrought all the destruction at Cairhien himself, striking out maniacally at friend and foe alike. Going by Liah’s stony face, one of them was going to get a Maiden’s spear through him if they did not guard those looks.

They gathered around the table, though, as he tossed down the shoufa and rummaged through the maps scattered in layers. Bashere was right; men would follow madmen who won. So long as they won. Just as he found the map he wanted, a detailed drawing of the eastern end of Illian, the Aiel chiefs arrived.

Bruan of the Nakai Aiel was first to enter, followed closely by Jheran of the Shaarad, Dhearic of the Reyn, Han of the Tomanelle, and Erim of the Chareen, each acknowledging the nods of Sulin and the three Maidens. Bruan, a massive man with sad gray eyes, really was the leader of the five clans Rand had sent south so far. None of the others objected; Bruan’s oddly placid manner belied his battle skills. Clothed in the cadin’sor, shoufa hanging loose about their necks, they were unarmed except for their heavy belt knives, but then, an Aiel was hardly unarmed even when he had only his hands and feet.

The Cairhienin simply pretended they were not there, but the Tairens made a point of sneering and sniffing ostentatiously at their pomanders and scented handkerchiefs. Tear had lost only the Stone to the Aiel, and that with the aid of the Dragon Reborn, as they believed—or of Aes Sedai—but Cairhien had twice been ravaged by them, twice defeated and humiliated.

Except for Han, the Aiel ignored them all. Han, white-haired and with a face like creased leather, glared murderously. He was a prickly man at best, and it might not have helped that some of the Tairens were as tall as he. Han was short for an Aiel—which meant well above average for a wetlander—and as touchy about it as Enaila. And of course, Aiel despised “treekillers,” one of their names for Cairhienin, beyond any other wetlanders. Their other name for them was “oathbreakers.”

’The Illianers,” Rand said firmly, smoothing the map out. He used the Dragon Scepter to hold down one end and a gold-mounted inkpot and matching sand-bowl for the other. He did not need these men to start killing each other. He did not think they would—while he was there, at least. In stories allies eventually came to trust and like one another; he doubted these men ever would.

The rolling Plains of Maredo extended a little distance into Illian, giving way to forested hills well short of the Manetherendrelle, and the River Shal branching off from it. Five inked crosses about ten miles apart marked the eastern edge of those hills. The Doirlon Hills.

Rand put his finger on the middle cross. “Are you sure Sammael has not added any new camps?” A slight grimace on Weiramon’s face made him snap irritably, “Lord Brend, if you prefer, then, or the Council of Nine, or Mattin Stepaneos den Balgar, if you want the king himself. Are they still like this?”

“Our scouts say so,” Jheran said calmly. Slender as a blade is slender, his light brown hair heavily streaked with gray, he was always calm now that the Shaarad’s four-hundred-year blood feud with the Goshien Aiel had ended with Rand’s coming. “Sovin Nai and Duadhe Mahdi’in keep a close watch.” He nodded slightly in satisfaction, and so did Dhearic. Jheran had been Sovin Nai, a Knife Hand, before becoming chief, and Dhearic Duadhe Mahdi’in, a Water Seeker. “We know any changes in five days by runners.”

“My scouts believe they are,” Weiramon said as if Jheran had not spoken. “I send a new troop every week. It takes a full month for them to come and go, but I assure you, I am as up-to-date as the distance allows.”

The Aiel’s faces might have been carved from stone.

Rand ignored the interplay. He had tried before to hammer shut the gaps between Tairen, Cairhienin and Aiel, and they always sprang apart as soon as his back turned. It was useless effort.

As for the camps . . . he knew there were still only five; he had visited them, in a manner of speaking. There was a . . . place . . . that he knew how to enter, a strange, unpeopled reflection of the real world, and he had walked the wooden walls of those massive hill-forts there. He knew the answers to almost every question he intended to ask, but he was juggling plans within plans like a gleeman juggling fire. “And Sammael is still bringing more men up?” This time he emphasized the name. The Aiel’s expressions did not change—if the Forsaken were loose, the Forsaken were loose; the world had to be faced as it was, not as you wished it to be—but the others darted those quick, worried glances at him. They had to get used to it sooner or later. They had to believe sooner or later.

“Every man in Illian who can hold a spear without tripping over it, or so it seems,” Tolmeran said with a glum expression. He was as eager to fight the Illianers as any Tairen—the two nations had hated each other since they were wrested from the wreckage of Artur Hawkwing’s empire; their history was one of wars fought on the slightest excuse—but he seemed a little less likely than the other High Lords to think every battle could be won by one good charge. “Every scout that makes it back reports the camps larger, with more formidable defenses.”

“We should move now, my Lord Dragon,” Weiramon said forcefully. “The Light burn my soul, I can catch the Illianers with their breeches around their ankles. They’ve tied themselves down. Why, they hardly have any horse at all! I’ll crush them in detail, and the way will be open to the city.” In Illian, as in Tear and Cairhien, “the city” was the city that had given the nation its name. “Burn my eyes, I will put your banner over Illian in a month, my Lord Dragon. Two at most.” Glancing at the Cairhienin, he added as if the words were being pulled from him, “Semaradrid and I will.” Semaradrid bowed slightly. Very slightly.

“No,” Rand said curtly. Weiramon’s was a plan for disaster. A good two hundred and fifty miles lay between the camp and Sammael’s great hill-forts across a plain of grass where a fifty-foot rise was considered a tall hill and a thicket of two hides a forest. Sammael had scouts, too; any rat or raven could be one of Sammael’s scouts. Two hundred and fifty miles. Twelve or thirteen days for the Tairens and Cairhienin, with luck. The Aiel could make it in perhaps five, if they pushed—a lone scout or two moved faster than an army, even among Aiel—but they were no part of Weiramon’s design. Long before Weiramon reached the Doirlon Hills, Sammael would be ready to crush the Tairen, not the other way around. A fool plan. Even more foolish than the one Rand had given them. “I’ve given your orders. You hold here until Mat arrives to take command, and even then, no one moves a foot until I think I have enough numbers here. There are more men on their way, Tairens, Cairhienin, Aiel. I mean to smash Sammael, Weiramon. Smash him forever, and bring Illian under the Dragon Banner.” That much was true. “I only wish I could be with you, but Andor requires my attention yet.”

Weiramon’s face became sour stone, Semaradrid’s grimace should have turned the wine in his punch to vinegar, and Tolmeran wore such a lack of expression that his disapproval was plain as a fist in the nose. In Semaradrid’s case, it was the delay that worried. He had pointed out more than once that if every day brought more men to the camp here, it also brought more to the forts in Illian. No doubt Weiramon’s plan was the result of his urgings, though he would have made a better. Tolmeran’s doubts centered on Mat. Despite what he had heard from Cairhienin of Mat’s skill in battle, Tolmeran thought it flattery from fools for a country man who happened to be a friend of the Dragon Reborn. They were honest objections, and Semaradrid’s even had validity—if the plan they had been given had been more than another screen. It was unlikely Sammael depended entirely on rats and ravens for his spying. Rand expected there were human spies in the camp for other Forsaken as well, and probably for the Aes Sedai.

“It shall be as you say, my Lord Dragon,” Weiramon said heavily. The man was brave enough when it came to battle, but a pure blind idiot unable to think beyond the glory of the charge, his hatred of Illianers, his contempt for Cairhienin and Aiel “savages.” Rand was sure Weiramon was exactly the man he needed. Tolmeran and Semaradrid would not move too soon so long as Weiramon held the command.

For a long while further they talked and Rand listened, asking occasional questions. There was no more opposition, no more suggestions that the attack be made now, no discussion of the attack at all. What Rand questioned Weiramon and the others about was wagons, wagons and what was in them. The Plains of Maredo had few villages and far between, no city except Far Madding in the north, and barely enough farmland to feed the people already there, A huge army would need a constant stream of wagons out of Tear bringing everything from flour for bread to nails for horseshoes. Except for Tolmeran, the High Lords were of the opinion that the army could carry what it needed to cross the plain and then could live off Illian; there seemed to be a certain relish in the thought of stripping their ancient enemy’s lands to the ground like a swarm of locusts. The Cairhienin had a different opinion, especially Semaradrid and Meneril. Not only commoners had gone hungry during Cairhien’s civil war and the Shaido’s siege of their capital; their hollow cheeks spoke eloquently of that. Illian was a fat land, and even the Doirlon Hills held farms and vineyards, but Semaradrid and Meneril did not want to trust their soldiers’ bellies to uncertain forage if there was another way. As for Rand, he did not want Illian ravaged any more than could not be avoided.

He did not really press anyone. Sunamon assured him the wagons were being assembled, and he had long since learned his lesson about telling Rand one thing and doing another. Supplies were being gathered all across Tear, despite Weiramon’s grimaces of impatience with the whole notion and Torean’s sweaty mutters about the expense. The important thing, though, was that the plan he had given them was going forward—and would be seen to be going forward.

Leavetaking involved more grandiose prattle and elaborate bows while he rewound the shoufa around his head and took up the Dragon Scepter again, with halfhearted invitations to stay for a banquet and equally insincere offers to attend him to his departure if he could not remain to eat the feast they would have prepared. Tairen or Cairhienin, they avoided the company of the Dragon Reborn as much as they safely could without losing his favor, while pretending that they did no such thing. Most especially they wanted to be elsewhere when he channeled. They did escort him to the entrance and a few steps outside, of course, but Sunamon sighed audibly when he left them, and Rand heard Torean actually giggling in relief.

The Aiel chiefs went with Rand silently, and the Maidens outside joined Sulin and the other three in making a ring around the six men as they started toward the green-striped tent. This time there were only a few cheers, and the chiefs said nothing. They had said almost as little back in the pavilion. When Rand commented on it, Dhearic said, “These wetlanders do not want to hear us.” He was a husky man, within a finger width of Rand’s height, with a big nose and paler streaks prominent in his golden hair. His blue eyes were filled with contempt. “They hear only the wind.”

“Did they tell you of those who rebel against you?” Erim asked. Taller than Dhearic, he had a pugnacious jaw and almost as much white as red in his hair.

“They did,” Rand said, and Han frowned at him.

“If you are sending these Tairens after their own kind, it is a mistake. Even if they could be trusted, I do not think they could do it. Send the spears. One clan would be enough and more.”

Rand shook his head. “Darlin and his rebels can wait. Sammael is what’s important.”

“Then let us go to Illian now,” Jheran said. “Forget these wetlanders, Rand al’Thor. Already there are nearly two hundred thousand spears gathered here. We can destroy the Illianers before Weiramon Saniago and Semaradrid Maravin can be halfway there.”

For a moment Rand squeezed his eyes shut. Was everyone going to argue with him? These were not men who would give way at a frown from the Dragon Reborn. The Dragon Reborn was only a wetlander prophecy; they followed He Who Comes With the Dawn, the Car’a’carn, and as he had long since grown tired of hearing, even the Car’a’carn was not a king. “I want your word to stay here until Mat tells you to move. A promise from each of you.”

“We will stay, Rand al’Thor.” Bruan’s deceptively mild voice had a tight edge. The others’ agreements came in harder voices, but they came.

“But it is wasting time,” Han added, twisting his mouth. “May I never know shade if it is not.” Jheran and Erim nodded.

Rand had not expected them to give in so quickly. “Now and then you have to waste time to save it,” he said, and Han snorted.

Back at the green-striped tent the Thunder Walkers had lifted up the sides on poles, letting the breeze blow through the shaded interior. Hot and dry as it was, the Aiel seemed to find it refreshing. Rand did not think he sweated a drop less than he had in the sun. He pulled off the shoufa as he settled to the layered rugs with Bruan and the other chiefs facing him. The Maidens added their number to the Thunder Walkers around the tent; every so often banter between them drifted in, and laughter at it. This time Leiran seemed to be getting the better of it; at least, the Maidens rattled spears against bucklers at him twice. Rand understood almost none of it.

Thumbing his short-stemmed pipe full of tabac, he passed the goatskin pouch around for the chiefs to fill their pipes—he had found a small cask of good Two Rivers leaf in Caemlyn—then channeled his alight while they sent a Thunder Walker for a burning twig from one of the cookfires. When all the pipes were lit they settled down to talk, puffing contentedly.

The conversation lasted fully as long as his discussion with the lords, not because there was that much to talk about but because Rand had talked alone with the wetlanders. Aiel were touchy about honor; their lives were governed by ji’e’toh, honor and obligation, with rules as complex and odd as their humor. They talked of the Aiel still on their way down from Cairhien, of when Mat would arrive and of what if anything should be done about the Shaido. They talked about hunting and women and whether brandy was as good as oosquai, and about humor. Even patient Bruan finally spread his hands in surrender and gave up trying to explain Aiel jokes. What under the Light was funny about a woman stabbing her husband by accident, whatever the circumstances, or a man ending up married to the sister of the woman he wanted to marry? Han grumped and snorted and refused to believe Rand did not understand; he laughed so hard at the one about the stabbing that he nearly fell over. The one thing they did not talk about was the coming war against Illian.

When they left, Rand stood squinting at the sun, halfway down toward the horizon. Han was repeating the story about the stabbing, and the departing chiefs chuckled over it again. Tapping his pipe out on the heel of his palm, Rand ground the dottle underfoot in the dust. There was still time to return to Caemlyn and meet Bashere, but he went back inside the tent and sat watching the sun sink. As it touched the horizon, turning red as blood, Enaila and Somara brought him a plate of mutton stew heaped high enough for two men, a round loaf of bread and a pitcher of mint tea that had been set in a bucket of water to cool.

“You do not eat enough,” Somara said, trying to smooth his hair before he moved his head away.

Enaila eyed him. “If you did not avoid Aviendha so, she would see that you ate.”

“He attracts her interest, then runs from her,” Somara muttered. “You must attract her again. Why do you not offer to wash her hair?”

“He should not be that forward,” Enaila said firmly. “Asking to brush her hair will be more than enough. He does not want her to think him forward.”

Somara sniffed. “She will not think he is forward when he runs from her. You can be too modest, Rand al’Thor.”

“You do realize that neither of you is my mother, don’t you?”

The two cadin’sor-clad women looked at each other in confusion. “Do you think this is another wetlander joke?” Enaila asked, and Somara shrugged.

“I do not know. He does not look amused.” She patted Rand on the back. “I am sure it was a good joke, but you must explain it to us.”

Rand suffered in silence, grinding his teeth, while they watched him eat. They literally watched every spoonful. Matters became no better when they left with his plate and Sulin joined him. Sulin had some blunt, and most improper, advice on how he could reattract Aviendha’s notice; among the Aiel, it was the sort of thing a first-sister might do for a first-brother.

“You must be decently modest in her eyes,” the white-haired Maiden told him, “but not so modest she thinks you boring. Ask her to scrape your back in the sweat tent, but shyly, with your eyes downcast. When you undress for bed, let yourself dance as if life pleases you, then apologize when you suddenly realize she is there and put yourself straight into your blankets. Can you blush?”

A great deal of suffering in silence. The Maidens knew too much, and not enough.

When they returned to Caemlyn, well after the sun had gone down, Rand crept into his apartment with his boots in his hands, fumbling his way through the anteroom into his bedchamber in the dark. Even if he had not known Aviendha would be there, already on her pallet on the floor by the wall, he would have felt her presence. In the stillness of the night, he could hear her breathing. For once it seemed he had managed to wait long enough for her to fall asleep. He had tried to stop this, but Aviendha paid him no mind and the Maidens laughed at his ‘shyness’ and ‘modesty.’ Good things in a man when alone, they agreed, so long as not carried too far.

He climbed into his bed with a sense of relief that Aviendha was already asleep—and some disgruntlement that he dared not light a lamp to wash—and she turned over on her pallet. Very likely she had been awake all along.

“Sleep well and wake,” was all she said.

Thinking what idiocy it was to feel this sudden contentment because a woman he wanted to avoid told him good night, he stuffed a goose-down pillow beneath his head. Aviendha probably thought this the most marvelous joke; taunting was almost an art among Aiel, and the nearer it came to bringing blood, the better. Sleep began to come, and his last conscious thought was that he had a huge joke of his own, though only he and Mat and Bashere knew it yet. Sammael had no sense of humor at all, but that great hammer of an army waiting in Tear was the biggest joke the world had ever seen. With any luck, Sammael would be dead before he knew he should laugh.