Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time Book 11 - Knife of Dreams (custom complete)

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KNIFE OF DREAMS
By Robert Jordan
BOOK 11 OF THE WHEEL OF TIME
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The sweetness of victory and the bitterness of defeat are alike a knife of dreams.
- From Fog and Steel by Madoc Comadrin
Embers Falling on Dry Grass
Prologue
The sun, climbing toward midmorning, stretched Galad’s shadow and those of his three armored companions ahead of them as they
trotted their mounts down the road that ran straight through the forest, dense with oak and leatherleaf, pine and sourgum, most
showing the red of spring growth. He tried to keep his mind empty, still, but small things kept intruding. The day was silent save for
the thud of their horses’ hooves.
No bird sang on a branch, no squirrel chittered. Too quiet for the time of year, as though the forest held its breath. This had been a
major trade route once, long before Amadicia and Tarabon came into being, and bits of ancient paving stone sometimes studded the
hard-packed surface of yellowish clay. A single farm cart far ahead behind a plodding ox was the only sign of human life now besides
themselves. Trade had shifted far north, farms and villages in the region dwindled, and the fabled lost mines of Aelgar remained lost
in the tangled mountain ranges that began only a few miles to the south. Dark clouds massing in that direction promised rain by
afternoon if their slow advance continued. A red-winged hawk quartered back and forth along the border of the trees, hunting the
fringes. As he himself was hunting. But at the heart, not on the fringes.
The manor house that the Seanchan had given Eamon Valda came into view, and he drew rein, wishing he had a helmet strap to
tighten for excuse.
Instead he had to be content with re-buckling his sword belt, pretending that it had been sitting wrong. There had been no point to
wearing armor. If the morning went as he hoped, he would have had to remove breastplate and mail in any case, and if it went badly,
armor would have provided little more protection than his white coat.
Formerly a deep-country lodge of the King of Amadicia, the building was a huge, blue-roofed structure studded with red-painted
balconies, a wooden palace with wooden spires at the corners atop a stone foundation like a low, steep-sided hill. The outbuildings,
stables and barns, workmen’s small houses and craftsfolks’ workshops, all hugged the ground in the wide clearing that surrounded the
main house, but they were nearly as resplendent in their blue-and-red paint. A handful of men and women moved around them, tiny
figures yet at this distance, and children were playing under their elders’ eyes. An image of normality where nothing was normal. His
companions sat their saddles in their burnished helmets and breastplates, watching him without expression. Their mounts stamped
impatiently, the animals’ morning freshness not yet worn off by the short ride from the camp.
“It’s understandable if you’re having second thoughts, Damodred,” Trom said after a time. “It’s a harsh accusation, bitter as gall,
but—”
“No second thoughts for me,” Galad broke in. His intentions had been fixed since yesterday. He was grateful, though. Trom had given
him the opening he needed. They had simply appeared as he rode out, falling in with him without a word spoken. There had seemed
no place for words, then. “But what about you three? You’re taking a risk coming here with me. A risk you have no need to take.
However the day runs, there will be marks against you. This is my business, and I give you leave to go about yours.” Too stiffly said,
but he could not find words this morning, or loosen his throat.
The stocky man shook his head. “The law is the law. And I might as well make use of my new rank.” The three golden star-shaped
knots of a captain sat beneath the flaring sunburst on the breast of his white cloak. There had been more than a few dead at Jeramel,
including no fewer than three of the Lords Captain. They had been fighting the Seanchan then, not allied with them.
“I’ve done dark things in service to the Light,” gaunt-faced Byar said grimly, his deep-set eyes glittering as though at a personal insult,
“dark as moonless midnight, and likely I will again, but some things are too dark to be allowed.” He looked as if he might spit.
“That’s right,” young Bornhald muttered, scrubbing a gauntleted hand across his mouth. Galad always thought of him as young,
though the man lacked only a few years on him. Dain’s eyes were bloodshot; he had been at the brandy again last night. “If you’ve
done what’s wrong, even in service to the Light, then you have to do what’s right to balance it.”
Byar grunted sourly. Likely that was not the point he had been making.
“Very well,” Galad said, “but there’s no fault to any man who turns back. My business here is mine alone.”
Still, when he heeled his bay gelding to a canter, he was pleased to have them gallop to catch him and fall in alongside, white cloaks
billowing behind. He would have gone on alone, of course, yet their presence might keep him from being arrested and hanged out of
hand. Not that he expected to survive in any case. What had to be done, had to be done, no matter the price.
The horses’ hooves clattered loudly on the stone ramp that climbed to the manor house, so every man in the broad central courtyard
turned to watch as they rode in: fifty of the Children in gleaming plate-and-mail and conical helmets, most mounted, with cringing,
dark-coated Amadician grooms holding animals for the rest. The inner balconies were empty except for a few servants who appeared
to be watching while pretending to sweep. Six Questioners, big men with the scarlet shepherd’s crook upright behind the sunflare on
their cloaks, stood close around Rhadam Asunawa like a bodyguard, away from the others. The Hand of the Light always stood apart
from the rest of the Children, a choice the rest of the Children approved. Gray-haired Asunawa, his sorrowful face making Byar look
fully fleshed, was the only Child present not in armor, and his snowy cloak carried just the brilliant red crook, another way of standing
apart. But aside from marking who was present, Galad had eyes for only one man in the courtyard. Asunawa might have been
involved in some way—that remained unclear—yet only the Lord Captain Commander could call the High Inquisitor to account.
Eamon Valda was not a large man, yet his dark, hard face had the look of one who expected obedience as his due. As the very least he
was due.
Standing with his booted feet apart and his head high, command in every inch of him, he wore the white-and-gold tabard of the Lord
Captain Commander over his gilded breast- and backplates, a silk tabard more richly embroidered than any Pedron Niall had worn.
His white cloak, the flaring sun large on either breast in thread-of-gold, was silk as well, and his gold-embroidered white coat. The
helmet beneath his arm was gilded and worked with the flaring sun on the brow, and a heavy gold ring on his left hand, worn outside
his steel-backed gauntlet, held a large yellow sapphire carved with the sunburst. Another mark of favor received from the Seanchan.
Valda frowned slightly as Galad and his companions dismounted and offered their salutes, arm across the chest. Obsequious grooms
came running to take their reins.
“Why aren’t you on your way to Nassad, Trom?” Disapproval colored Valda’s words. “The other Lords Captain will be halfway there
by now.”
He himself always arrived late when meeting the Seanchan, perhaps to assert that some shred of independence remained to the
Children—finding him already preparing to depart was a surprise; this meeting must be very important—but he always made sure the
other high-ranking officers arrived on time even when that required setting out before dawn.
Apparently it was best not to press their new masters too far. Distrust of the Children was always strong in the Seanchan.
Trom displayed none of the uncertainty that might have been expected from a man who had held his present rank barely a month. “An
urgent matter, my Lord Captain Commander,” he said smoothly, making a very precise bow, neither a hair deeper nor higher than
protocol demanded. “A
Child of my command charges another of the Children with abusing a female relative of his, and claims the right of Trial Beneath the
Light, which by law you must grant or deny.”
“A strange request, my son,” Asunawa said, tilting his head quizzically above clasped hands, before Valda could speak. Even the High
Inquisitor’s voice was doleful; he sounded pained at Trom’s ignorance.
His eyes seemed dark hot coals in a brazier. “It was usually the accused who asked to give the judgment to swords, and I believe
usually when he knew the evidence would convict him. In any case, Trial Beneath the Light has not been invoked for nearly four
hundred years. Give me the accused’s name, and I will deal with the matter quietly.” His tone turned chill as a sunless cavern in
winter, though his eyes still burned. “We are among strangers, and we cannot allow them to know that one of the Children is capable
of such a thing.”
“The request was directed to me, Asunawa,” Valda snapped. His glare might as well have been open hatred. Perhaps it was just dislike
of the other man’s breaking in. Flipping one side of his cloak over his shoulder to bare his ring-quilloned sword, he rested his hand on
the long hilt and drew himself up. Always one for the grand gesture, Valda raised his voice so that even people inside probably heard
him, and declaimed rather than merely spoke.
“I believe many of our old ways should be revived, and that law still stands. It will always stand, as written of old. The Light grants
justice because the Light is justice. Inform your man he may issue his challenge, Trom, and face the one he accuses sword-to-sword. If
that one tries to refuse, I declare that he has acknowledged his guilt and order him hanged on the spot, his belongings and rank forfeit
to his accuser as the law states. I have spoken.” That with another scowl for the High Inquisitor. Maybe there really was hatred there.
Trom bowed formally once more. “You have informed him yourself, my Lord Captain Commander. Damodred?”
Galad felt cold. Not the cold of fear, but of emptiness. When Dain drunkenly let slip the confused rumors that had come to his ears,
when Byar reluctantly confirmed they were more than rumors, rage had filled Galad, a bone-burning fire that nearly drove him insane.
He had been sure his head would explode if his heart did not burst first. Now he was ice, drained of any emotion. He also bowed
formally. Much of what he had to say was set in the law, yet he chose the rest with care, to spare as much shame as possible to a
memory he held dear.
“Eamon Valda, Child of the Light, I call you to Trial Beneath the Light for unlawful assault on the person of Morgase Trakand, Queen
of Andor, and for her murder.” No one had been able to confirm that the woman he regarded as his mother was dead, yet it must be so.
A dozen men were certain she had vanished from the Fortress of the Light before it fell to the Seanchan, and as many testified she had
not been free to leave of her own will.
Valda displayed no shock at the charge. His smile might have been intended to show regret over Galad’s folly in making such a claim,
yet contempt was mingled in it. He opened his mouth, but Asunawa cut in once more.
“This is ridiculous,” he said in tones more of sorrow than of anger.
“Take the fool, and we’ll find out what Darkfriend plot to discredit the Children he is part of.” He motioned, and two of the hulking
Questioners took a step toward Galad, one with a cruel grin, the other blank-faced, a workman about his work.
Only one step, though. A soft rasp repeated around the courtyard as Children eased their swords in their scabbards. At least a dozen
men drew entirely, letting their blades hang by their sides. The Amadician grooms hunched in on themselves, trying to become
invisible. Likely they would have run, had they dared. Asunawa stared around him, thick eyebrows climbing up his forehead in
disbelief, knotted fists gripping his cloak. Strangely, even Valda appeared startled for an instant.
Surely he had not expected the Children to allow an arrest after his own proclamation. If he had, he recovered quickly.
“You see, Asunawa,” he said almost cheerfully, “the Children follow my orders, and the law, not a Questioner’s whims.” He held out
his helmet to one side for someone to take. “I deny your preposterous charge, young Galad, and throw your foul lie in your teeth. For
it is a lie, or at best a mad acceptance of some malignant rumor started by Darkfriends or others who wish the Children ill. Either way,
you have defamed me in the vilest manner, so I accept your challenge to Trial Beneath the Light, where I will kill you.” That barely
squeezed into the ritual, but he had denied the charge and accepted the challenge; it would suffice.
Realizing that he still held the helmet in an outstretched hand, Valda frowned at one of the dismounted Children, a lean Saldaean
named Kashgar, until the man stepped forward to relieve him of it. Kashgar was only an under-lieutenant, almost boyish despite a
great hooked nose and thick mustaches like inverted horns, yet he moved with open reluctance, and Valda’s voice was darker and
acrid as he went on, unbuckling his sword belt and handing that over, too.
“Take a care with that, Kashgar. It’s a heron-mark blade.” Unpinning his silk cloak, he let it fall to the paving stones, followed by his
tabard, and his hands moved to the buckles of his armor. It seemed that he was unwilling to see if others would be reluctant to help
him. His face was calm enough, except that angry eyes promised retribution to more than Galad. “Your sister wants to become Aes
Sedai, I understand, Damodred.
Perhaps I understand precisely where this originated. There was a time I would have regretted your death, but not today. I may send
your head to the White Tower so the witches can see the fruit of their scheme.”
Worry creasing his face, Dain took Galad’s cloak and sword belt, and stood shifting his feet as though uncertain he was doing the right
thing. Well, he had been given his chance, and it was too late to change his mind, now. Byar put a gauntleted hand on Galad’s
shoulder and leaned close.
“He likes to strike at the arms and legs,” he said in a low voice, casting glances over his shoulder at Valda. From the way he glared,
some matter stood between them. Of course, that scowl differed little from his normal expression. “He likes to bleed an opponent until
the man can’t take a step or raise his sword before he moves for the kill. He’s quicker than a viper, too, but he’ll strike at your left
most often and expect it from you.”
Galad nodded. Many right-handed men found it easier to strike so, but it seemed an odd weakness in a blademaster. Gareth Bryne and
Henre Haslin had made him practice alternating which hand was uppermost on the hilt so he would not fall into that. Strange that
Valda wanted to prolong a fight, too. He himself had been taught to end matters as quickly and cleanly as possible.
“My thanks,” he said, and the hollow-cheeked man made a dour grimace.
Byar was far from likable, and he himself seemed to like no one save young Bornhald. Of the three, his presence was the biggest
surprise, but he was there, and that counted in his favor.
Standing in the middle of the courtyard in his gold-worked white coat with his fists on his hips, Valda turned in a tight circle.
“Everyone move back against the walls,” he commanded loudly. Horseshoes rang on the paving stones as the Children and the grooms
obeyed. Asunawa and his Questioners snatched their animals’ reins, the High Inquisitor wearing a face of cold fury. “Keep the middle
clear. Young Damodred and I will meet here—”
“Forgive me, my Lord Captain Commander,” Trom said with a slight bow, “but since you are a participant in the Trial, you cannot be
Arbiter.
Aside from the High Inquisitor, who by law may not take part, I hold the highest rank here after you, so with your permission…?”
Valda glared at him, then stalked over to stand beside Kashgar, arms folded across his chest. Ostentatiously he tapped his foot,
impatient for matters to proceed.
Galad sighed. If the day went against him, as seemed all but certain, his friend would have the most powerful man in the Children as
his enemy. Likely Trom would have had in any event, but more so now. “Keep an eye on them,” he told Bornhald, nodding toward the
Questioners clustered on their horses near the gate. Asunawa’s underlings still ringed him like bodyguards, every man with a hand on
his sword hilt.
“Why? Even Asunawa can’t interfere now. That would be against the law.”
It was very hard not to sigh again. Young Dain had been a Child far longer than he, and his father had served his entire life, but the
man seemed to know less of the Children than he himself had learned. To Questioners, the law was what they said it was. “Just watch
them.”
Trom stood in the center of the courtyard with his bared sword raised overhead, blade parallel to the ground, and unlike Valda, he
spoke the words exactly as they were written. “Under the Light, we are gathered to witness Trial Beneath the Light, a sacred right of
any Child of the Light. The Light shines on truth, and here the Light shall illuminate justice. Let no man speak save he who has legal
right, and let any who seek to intervene be cut down summarily. Here, justice will be found under the Light by a man who pledges his
life beneath the Light, by the force of his arm and the will of the Light. The combatants will meet unarmed where I now stand,” he
continued, lowering the sword to his side, “and speak privately, for their own ears alone. May the Light help them find words to end
this short of bloodshed, for if they do not, one of the Children must die this day, his name stricken from our rolls and anathema
declared on his memory. Under the Light, it will be so.”
As Trom strode to the side of the courtyard, Valda moved toward the center in the walking stance called Cat Crosses the Courtyard, an
arrogant saunter. He knew there were no words to stop blood being shed.
To him, the fight had already begun. Galad merely walked out to meet him. He was nearly a head taller than Valda, but the other man
held himself as though he were the larger, and confident of victory.
His smile was all contempt, this time. “Nothing to say, boy? Small wonder considering that a blademaster is going to cut your head off
in about one minute. I want one thing straight in your mind before I kill you, though. The wench was hale the last I saw her, and if
she’s dead now, I’ll regret it.” That smile deepened, both in humor and disdain.
“She was the best ride I ever had, and I hope to ride her again one day.”
Red-hot, searing fury fountained inside Galad, but with an effort he managed to turn his back on Valda and walk away, already
feeding his rage into an imagined flame as his two teachers had taught him. A man who fought in a rage, died in a rage. By the time he
reached young Bornhald, he had achieved what Gareth and Henre had called the oneness.
Floating in emptiness, he drew his sword from the scabbard Bornhald proffered, and the slightly curved blade became a part of him.
“What did he say?” Dain asked. “For a moment there, your face was murderous.”
Byar gripped Dain’s arm. “Don’t distract him,” he muttered.
Galad was not distracted. Every creak of saddle leather was clear and distinct, every ringing stamp of hoof on paving stone. He could
hear flies buzzing ten feet away as though they were at his ear. He almost thought he could see the movements of their wings. He was
one with the flies, with the courtyard, with the two men. They were all part of him, and he could not be distracted by himself.
Valda waited until he turned before drawing his own weapon on the other side of the courtyard, a flashy move, the sword blurring as it
spun in his left hand, leaping to his right hand to make another blurred wheel in the air before settling, upright and rock-steady before
him, in both hands. He started forward, once more in Cat Crosses the Courtyard.
Raising his own sword, Galad moved to meet him, without thought assuming a walking stance perhaps influenced by his state of
mind. Emptiness, it was called, and only a trained eye would know that he was not simply walking. Only a trained eye would see that
he was in perfect balance every heartbeat. Valda had not gained that heron-mark sword by favoritism. Five blademasters had sat in
judgment of his skills and voted unanimously to grant him the title. The vote always had to be unanimous. The only other way was to
kill the bearer of a heron-mark blade in fair combat, one on one. Valda had been younger then than Galad was now. It did not matter.
He was not focused on Valda’s death. He focused on nothing. But he intended Valda’s death if he had to Sheathe the Sword, willingly
welcoming that heron-mark blade in his flesh, to achieve it. He accepted that it might come to that.
Valda wasted no time with maneuvering. The instant he was within range, Plucking the Low-hanging Apple flashed toward Galad’s
neck like lightning, as though the man truly did intend to have his head in the first minute. There were several possible responses, all
made instinct by hard training, but Byar’s warnings floated in the dim recesses of his mind, and also the fact that Valda had warned
him of this very thing.
Warned him twice. Without conscious thought, he chose another way, stepping sideways and forward just as Plucking the Low-
hanging Apple became the Leopard’s Caress. Valda’s eyes widened in surprise as his stroke missed Galad’s left thigh by inches,
widened more as Parting the Silk laid a gash down his right forearm, but he immediately launched into the Dove Takes Flight, so fast
that Galad had to dance back before his blade could bite deeply, barely fending off the attack with Kingfisher Circles the Pond.
Back and forth they danced the forms, gliding this way then that across the stone paving. Lizard in the Thorn-bush met Lightning of
Three Prongs. Leaf on the Breeze countered Eel Among the Lily Pads, and Two Hares Leaping met the Hummingbird Kisses the
Honeyrose. Back and forth as smoothly as a demonstration of the forms. Galad tried attack after attack, but Valda was as fast as a
viper. The Wood Grouse Dances cost him a shallow gash on his left shoulder, and the Red Hawk Takes a Dove another on the left
arm, slightly deeper. River of Light might have taken the arm completely had he not met the draw-cut with a desperately quick Rain in
High Wind. Back and forth, blades flashing continuously, filling the air with the clash of steel on steel.
How long they fought, he could not have said. There was no time, only the moment. It seemed that he and Valda moved like men
under water, their motions slowed by the drag of the sea. Sweat appeared on Valda’s face, but he smiled with self-assurance,
seemingly untroubled by the slash on his forearm, still the only injury he had taken. Galad could feel the sweat rolling down his own
face, too, stinging his eyes. And the blood trickling down his arm. Those wounds would slow him eventually, perhaps already had, but
he had taken two on his left thigh, and both were more serious. His foot was wet in his boot from those, and he could not avoid a slight
limp that would grow worse with time. If Valda was to die, it must be soon.
Deliberately, he drew a deep breath, then another, through his mouth, another. Let Valda think him becoming winded. His blade
lanced out in Threading the Needle, aimed at Valda’s left shoulder and not quite as fast it could have been. The other man countered
easily with the Swallow Takes Flight, sliding immediately into the Lion Springs. That took a third bite in his thigh; he dared not be
faster in defense than in attack.
Again he launched Threading the Needle at Valda’s shoulder, and again, again, all the while gulping air through his mouth. Only luck
kept him from taking more wounds in those exchanges. Or perhaps the Light really did shine on this fight.
Valda’s smile widened; the man believed him on the edge of his strength, exhausted and fixated. As Galad began Threading the
Needle, too slowly, for the fifth time, the other man’s sword started the Swallow Takes Flight in an almost perfunctory manner.
Summoning all the quickness that remained to him, Galad altered his stroke, and Reaping the Barley sliced across Valda just beneath
his rib cage.
For a moment it seemed that the man was unaware he had been hit. He took a step, began what might have been Stones Falling from
the Cliff. Then his eyes widened, and he staggered, the sword falling from his grip to clatter on the paving stones as he sank to his
knees. His hands went to the huge gash across his body as though trying to hold his insides within him, and his mouth opened, glassy
eyes fixed on Galad’s face.
Whatever he intended to say, it was blood that poured out over his chin.
He toppled onto his face and lay still.
Automatically, Galad gave his blade a rapid twist to shake off the blood staining its last inch, then bent slowly to wipe the last drops
onto Valda’s white coat. The pain he had ignored now flared. His left shoulder and arm burned; his thigh seemed to be on fire.
Straightening took effort. Perhaps he was nearer exhaustion than he had thought. How long had they fought? He had thought he would
feel satisfaction that his mother had been avenged, but all he felt was emptiness. Valda’s death was not enough. Nothing except
Morgase Trakand alive again could be enough.
Suddenly he became aware of a rhythmic clapping and looked up to see the Children, each man slapping his own armored shoulder in
approval. Every man. Except Asunawa and the Questioners. They were nowhere to be seen.
Byar hurried up carrying a small leather sack and carefully parted the slashes in Galad’s coatsleeve. “Those will need sewing,” he
muttered, “but they can wait.” Kneeling beside Galad, he took rolled bandages from the sack and began winding them around the
gashes in his thigh. “These need sewing, too, but this will keep you from bleeding to death before you can get it.” Others began
gathering around, offering congratulations, men afoot in front, those still mounted behind. None gave the corpse a glance except for
Kashgar, who cleaned Valda’s sword on that already bloodstained coat before sheathing it.
“Where did Asunawa go?” Galad asked.
“He left as soon as you cut Valda the last time,” Dain replied uneasily.
“He’ll be heading for the camp to bring back Questioners.”
“He rode the other way, toward the border,” someone put in. Nassad lay just over the border.
“The Lords Captain,” Galad said, and Trom nodded.
“No Child would let the Questioners arrest you for what happened here, Damodred. Unless his Captain ordered it. Some of them
would order it, I think.” Angry muttering began, men denying they would stand for such a thing, but Trom quieted them, somewhat,
with raised hands. “You know it’s true,” he said loudly. “Anything else would be mutiny.” That brought dead silence. There had never
been a mutiny in the Children. It was possible that nothing before had come as close as their own earlier display. “I’ll write out your
release from the Children, Galad. Someone may still order your arrest, but they’ll have to find you, and you’ll have a good start. It will
take half the day for Asunawa to catch the other Lords Captain, and whoever falls in with him can’t be back before nightfall.”
Galad shook his head angrily. Trom was right, but it was all wrong. Too much was wrong. “Will you write releases for these other
men? You know Asunawa will find a way to accuse them, too. Will you write releases for the Children who don’t want to help the
Seanchan take our lands in the name of a man dead more than a thousand years?” Several Taraboners exchanged glances and nodded,
and so did other men, not all of them Amadician. “What about the men who defended the Fortress of the Light?
Will any release get their chains struck off or make the Seanchan stop working them like animals?” More angry growls; those
prisoners were a sore point to all of the Children.
Arms folded across his chest, Trom studied him as though seeing him for the first time. “What would you do, then?”
“Have the Children find someone, anyone, who is fighting the Seanchan and ally with them. Make sure that the Children of the Light
ride in the Last Battle instead of helping the Seanchan hunt Aiel and steal our nations.”
“Anyone?” a Cairhienin named Doirellin said in a high-pitched voice. No one ever made fun of Doirellin’s voice. Though short, he
was nearly as wide as he was tall, there was barely an ounce of fat on him, and he could put walnuts between all of his fingers and
crack them by clenching his fists. “That could mean Aes Sedai.”
“If you intend to be at Tarmon Gai’don, then you will have to fight alongside Aes Sedai,” Galad said quietly. Young Bornhald
grimaced in strong distaste, and he was not the only one. Byar half-straightened before bending back to his task. But no one voiced
dissent. Doirellin nodded slowly, as if he had never before considered the matter.
“I don’t hold with the witches any more than any other man,” Byar said finally, without raising his head from his work. Blood was
seeping through the bandages even as he wrapped. “But the Precepts say, to fight the raven, you may make alliance with the serpent
until the battle is done.” A ripple of nods ran through the men. The raven meant the Shadow, but everyone knew it was also the
Seanchan Imperial sigil.
“I’ll fight beside the witches,” a lanky Taraboner said, “or even these Asha’man we keep hearing about, if they fight the Seanchan. Or
at the Last Battle. And I’ll fight any man who says I’m wrong.” He glared as though ready to begin then and there.
“It seems matters will play out as you wish, my Lord Captain Commander,”
Trom said, making a much deeper bow than he had for Valda. “To a degree, at least. Who can say what the next hour will bring, much
less tomorrow?”
Galad surprised himself by laughing. Since yesterday, he had been sure he would never laugh again. “That’s a poor joke, Trom.”
“It is how the law is written. And Valda did make his proclamation.
Besides, you had the courage to say what many have thought while holding their tongues, myself among them. Yours is a better plan
for the Children than any I’ve heard since Pedron Niall died.”
“It’s still a poor joke.” Whatever the law said, that part had been ignored since the end of the War of the Hundred Years.
“We’ll see what the Children have to say on the matter,” Trom replied, grinning widely, “when you ask them to follow us to Tarmon
Gai’don to fight alongside the witches.”
Men began slapping their shoulders again, harder than they had for his victory. At first it was only a few, then more joined in, until
every man including Trom was signaling approval. Every man but Kashgar, that was. Making a deep bow, the Saldaean held out the
scabbarded heron-mark blade with both hands.
“This is yours, now, my Lord Captain Commander.”
Galad sighed. He hoped this nonsense would fade away before they reached the camp. Returning there was foolish enough without
adding in a claim of that sort. Most likely they would be pulled down and thrown in chains if not beaten to death even without it. But
he had to go. It was the right thing to do.
Daylight began to grow on this cool spring morning, though the sun had yet to show even a sliver above the horizon, and Rodel
Ituralde raised his gold-banded looking glass to study the village below the hill where he sat his roan gelding, deep in the heart of
Tarabon. He did hate waiting for enough light to see. Careful of a glint off the lens, he held the end of the long tube on his thumb and
shaded it with a cupped hand. At this hour, sentries were at their least watchful, relieved that the darkness where an enemy might
sneak close was departing, yet since crossing from Almoth Plain he had heard tales of Aiel raids inside Tarabon. Were he a sentry
with Aiel perhaps about, he would grow extra eyes. Peculiar that the country was not milling like a kicked antheap over those Aiel.
Peculiar, and perhaps ominous. There were plenty of armed men to be found, Seanchan and Taraboners sworn to them, and hordes of
Seanchan building farms and even villages, but reaching this far had been almost too easy. Today, the easiness ended.
Behind him among the trees, horses stamped impatiently. The hundred Domani with him were quiet, except for an occasional creak of
saddle leather as a man shifted his seat, but he could feel their tension. He wished he had twice as many. Five times. In the beginning,
it had seemed a gesture of good faith that he himself would ride with a force mainly composed of Taraboners. He was no longer
certain that had been the right decision. It was too late for recriminations, in any event.
Halfway between Elmora and the Amadician border, Serana sat in a flat grassy valley among forested hills, with at least a mile to the
trees in any direction save his, and a small, reed-fringed lake fed by two wide streams lay between him and the village. Not a place
that could be surprised by daylight. It had been sizable before the Seanchan came, a stopping point for the merchant trains heading
east, with over a dozen inns and nearly as many streets. Village folk were already getting about their day’s tasks, women balancing
baskets on their heads as they glided down the village streets and others starting the fires under laundry kettles behind their houses,
men striding along toward their work-places, sometimes pausing to exchange a few words. A normal morning, with children already
running and playing, rolling hoops and tossing beanbags among the throng. The clang of a smithy rose, dim with the distance. The
smoke from breakfast fires was fading at the chimneys.
As far as he could see, no one in Serana gave a second glance to the three pairs of sentries with bright stripes painted across their
breastplates, walking their horses back and forth perhaps a quarter of a mile out. The lake, considerably wider than the village,
shielded the fourth side effectively. It seemed the sentries were an accepted matter of every day, and so was the Seanchan camp that
had swollen Serana to more than twice its former size.
Ituralde shook his head slightly. He would not have placed the camp cheek-by-jowl with the village that way. The rooftops of Serana
were all tile, red or green or blue, but the buildings themselves were wooden; a fire in the town could spread all too easily into the
camp, where canvas store-tents the size of large houses far outnumbered the smaller tents where men slept, and great stacks of barrels
and casks and crates covered twice as much ground as all the tents combined. Keeping lightfingered villagers out would be all but
impossible. Every town had a few tickbirds who picked up anything they thought they could get away with, and even somewhat more
honest men might be tempted by the proximity. The location did mean a shorter distance to haul water from the lake, and a shorter
distance for soldiers to walk to reach the ale and wine in the village when off-duty, but it suggested a commander who kept slack
discipline.
Slack discipline or not, there was activity in the camp, too. Soldiers’ hours made farmers’ hours seem restful. Men were checking the
animals on the long horselines, bannermen checking soldiers standing in ranks, hundreds of laborers loading or unloading wagons,
grooms harnessing teams. Every day, trains of wagons came down the road into this camp from east and west, and others departed. He
admired the Seanchan efficiency at making sure their soldiers had what they needed when and where it was needed. Dragonsworn
here in Tarabon, most sour-faced men who believed their dream snuffed out by the Seanchan, had been willing to tell what they knew
if not to ride with him. That camp contained everything from boots to swords, arrows to horseshoes to water-flasks, enough to outfit
thousands of men from the ground up. They would feel its loss.
He lowered the looking glass to brush a buzzing green fly away from his face. Two replaced it almost at once. Tarabon teemed with
flies. Did they always come so early here? They would just have begun hatching at home by the time he reached Arad Doman again. If
he did. No; no ill thoughts. When he did. Tamsin would be displeased, otherwise, and it was seldom wise to displease her too far.
Most of the men down there were hired workmen, not soldiers, and only a hundred or so of those Seanchan. Still, a company of three
hundred Taraboners in stripe-painted armor had ridden in at noon the day before, more than doubling their numbers and requiring him
to change his plans.
Another party of Taraboners, as large, had entered the camp at sunset, just in time to eat and bed down wherever they could lay their
blankets.
Candles and lamp oil were luxuries for soldiers. There was one of those leashed women, a damane, in the camp, too. He wished he
could have waited until she left—they must have been taking her elsewhere; what use for a damane at a supply camp?—but today was
the appointed day, and he could not afford to give the Taraboners reason to claim he was holding back. Some would snatch at any
reason to go their own way. He knew they would not follow him much longer, yet he needed to hold as many as he could for a few
days more.
Shifting his gaze to the west, he did not bother with the looking glass.
“Now,” he whispered, and as though at his command, two hundred men with mail veils across their faces galloped out of the trees.
And immediately halted, cavorting and jockeying for place, brandishing steel-tipped lances while their leader raced up and down
before them gesturing wildly in an obvious effort to establish some semblance of order.
At this distance, Ituralde could not have made out faces even with the glass, but he could imagine the fury on Tornay Lanasiet’s
features at playing out this charade. The stocky Dragonsworn burned to close with Seanchan. Any Seanchan. It had been difficult to
dissuade him from striking the day they crossed the border. Yesterday he had been visibly overjoyed finally to scrape the hated stripes
indicating loyalty to the Seanchan from his breastplate. No matter; so far he was obeying his orders to the letter.
As the sentries nearest Lanasiet turned their mounts to speed toward the village and the Seanchan camp, Ituralde swung his attention
there and raised his looking glass once more. The sentries would find their warning superfluous. Motion had ceased. Some men were
pointing toward the horsemen on the other side of the village, while the rest seemed to be staring, soldiers and workmen alike. The last
thing they expected was raiders. Aiel raids or no Aiel raids, the Seanchan considered Tarabon theirs, and safely so. A quick glance at
the village showed people standing in the streets staring toward the strange riders. They had not expected raiders, either. He thought
the Seanchan were right, an opinion he would not share with any Taraboner in the foreseeable future.
With well-trained men shock could last only so long, however. In the camp, soldiers began racing toward their horses, many still
unsaddled, though grooms had started working as fast as they could. Eighty-odd Seanchan footmen, archers, formed into ranks and set
off running through Serana. At that evidence that there truly was a threat, people began snatching up the smaller children and herding
the older toward the hoped-for safety of the houses. In moments, the streets were empty save for the hurrying archers in their
lacquered armor and peculiar helmets.
Ituralde turned the glass toward Lanasiet and found the man galloping his line of horsemen forward. “Wait for it,” he growled. “Wait
for it.”
Again it seemed the Taraboner heard his command, finally raising a hand to halt his men. At least they were still a half-mile or more
from the village. The hotheaded fool was supposed to be near a mile away, on the edge of the trees and still in seeming disorder and
easily swept away, but half would have to suffice. He suppressed the urge to finger the ruby in his left ear. The battle had begun, now,
and in battle you had to make those following you believe that you were utterly cool, completely unaffected. Not wanting to knock
down a putative ally.
Emotion seemed to leak from a commander into his men, and angry men behaved stupidly, getting themselves killed and losing
battles.
Touching the half-moon-shaped beauty patch on his cheek—a man should look his best on a day like today—he took slow measured
breaths until certain that he was as cool inside as his outward display, then returned his attention to the camp. Most of the Taraboners
there were mounted, now, but they waited for twenty or so Seanchan led by a tall fellow with a single thin plume on his curious
helmet to gallop into the village before falling in behind, yesterday’s late-comers trailing at the rear.
Ituralde studied the figure leading the column, viewing him through the gaps between houses. A single plume would mark a lieutenant
or maybe an under-lieutenant. Which might mean a beardless boy on his first command or a grizzled veteran who could take your
head if you made one mistake.
Strangely, the damane, marked by the shining silvery leash that connected her to a woman on a another horse, galloped her animal as
hard as anyone. Everything he had heard said damane were prisoners, yet she appeared as eager as the other woman, the sul’dam.
Perhaps—
Abruptly his breath caught in his throat and all thought of damane fled.
There were people still in the street, seven or eight men and women, walking in a cluster and right ahead of the racing column that
they seemed not to hear thundering up behind them. There was no time for the Seanchan to stop if they wanted to, and good reason not
to try with an enemy ahead, but it looked as though the tall fellow’s hand never twitched on his reins as he and the rest rode the people
down. A veteran, then. Murmuring a prayer for the dead, Ituralde lowered the glass. What came next was best seen without it.
Two hundred paces beyond the village, the officer started forming his command where the archers had already stopped and were
waiting with nocked arrows. Waving directions to the Taraboners behind, he turned to peer at Lanasiet through a looking glass.
Sunlight glinted off the tube’s banding. The sun was rising, now. The Taraboners began dividing smoothly, lance heads glittering and
all slanted at the same angle, disciplined men falling into ordered ranks to either side of the archers.
The officer leaned over to converse with the sul’dam. If he turned her and the damane loose now, this could still turn into a disaster.
Of course, it could if he did not, too. The last of the Taraboners, those who had arrived late, began stretching out in a line fifty paces
behind the others, driving their lances point-down into the ground and pulling their horse-bows from the cases fastened behind their
saddles. Lanasiet, curse the man, was galloping his men forward.
Turning his head for a moment, Ituralde spoke loudly enough for the men behind him to hear. “Be ready.” Saddle leather creaked as
men gathered their reins. Then he murmured another prayer for the dead and whispered, “Now.”
As one man the three hundred Taraboners in the long line, his Taraboners, raised their bows and loosed. He did not need the looking
glass to see the sul’dam and damane and the officer suddenly sprout arrows. They were all but swept from their saddles by near a
dozen striking each of them at once. Ordering that had given him a pang, but the women were the most dangerous people on that field.
The rest of that volley cut down most of the archers and cleared saddles, and even as men struck the ground, a second volley lanced
out, knocking down the last archers and emptying more saddles.
Caught by surprise, the Seanchan-loyal Taraboners tried to fight. Among those still mounted, some wheeled about and lowered lances
to charge their attackers. Others, perhaps seized by the irrationality that could take men in battle, dropped their lances and tried to
uncase their own horse-bows. But a third volley lashed them, pile-headed arrows driving through breastplates at that range, and
suddenly the survivors seemed to realize that they were survivors. Most of their fellows lay still on the ground or struggled to stand
though pierced by two or three shafts.
Those still mounted were now outnumbered by their opponents. A few men reined their horses around, and in a flash the lot of them
were running south pursued by one final rain of bowshot that toppled more.
“Hold,” Ituralde murmured. “Hold where you are.”
A handful of the mounted archers fired again, but the rest wisely refrained. They could kill a few more before the enemy was beyond
range, but this group was beaten, and before long they would be counting every arrow. Best of all, none of them went racing in
pursuit.
The same could not be said of Lanasiet. Cloaks streaming, he and his two hundred raced after the fleeing men. Ituralde imagined he
could hear them yelping, hunters on the trail of running prey.
“I think we’ve seen the last of Lanasiet, my Lord,” Jaalam said, reining his gray up beside Ituralde, who shrugged slightly.
“Perhaps, my young friend. He may come to his senses. In any case, I never thought the Taraboners would return to Arad Doman with
us. Did you?”
“No, my Lord,” the taller man replied, “but I thought his honor would hold through the first fight.”
Ituralde lifted his glass to look at Lanasiet, still galloping hard. The man was gone, and unlikely to come to senses he did not possess.
A third of his force gone as surely as if that damane had killed them. He had counted on a few more days. He would need to change
plans again, perhaps change his next target.
Dismissing Lanasiet from his thoughts, he swung the glass to glance at where those people had been ridden down, and grunted in
surprise. There were no trampled bodies. Friends and neighbors must have come out to carry them away, though with a battle on the
edge of the village that seemed about as likely as them getting up and walking away after the horses passed.
“It’s time to go burn all those lovely Seanchan stores,” he said.
Shoving the looking glass into the leather case tied to his saddle, he donned his helmet and heeled Steady down the hill, followed by
Jaalam and the others in a column of twos. Ruts from farm wagons and broken-down banks indicated a ford in the eastern stream.
“And, Jaalam, tell a few men to warn the villagers to start moving what they want to save. Tell them to begin with the houses nearest
the camp.” Where fire could spread one way, it could the other, too, and likely would.
In truth, he had already set the important blaze. Breathed on the first embers, at least. If the Light shone on him, if no one had been
overcome by eagerness or given in to despair at the hold the Seanchan had on Tarabon, if no one had fallen afoul of the mishaps that
could ruin the best-laid plan, then all across Tarabon, above twenty thousand men had struck blows like this, or would before the day
was out. And tomorrow they would do it again. Now all he had to do was raid his way back across better than four hundred miles of
Tarabon, shedding Taraboner Dragonsworn and gathering in his own men, then re-cross Almoth Plain. If the Light shone on him, that
blaze would singe the Seanchan enough to bring them chasing after him full of fury. A great deal of fury, he hoped. That way, they
would run headlong into the trap he had laid before they ever knew it was there. If they failed to follow, then at least he had rid his
homeland of the Taraboners and bound the Domani Dragonsworn to fight for the King instead of against him. And if they saw the
trap….
Riding down the hillside, Ituralde smiled. If they saw the trap, then he had another plan already laid, and another behind that. He
always looked ahead, and always planned for every eventuality he could imagine, short of the Dragon Reborn himself suddenly
appearing in front of him. He thought the plans he had would suffice for the moment.
The High Lady Suroth Sabelle Meldarath lay awake on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. The moon was down, and the triple-arched
windows that overlooked a palace garden were dark, but her eyes had adjusted so that she could make out at least the outlines of the
ornate, painted plasterwork. Dawn was no more than an hour or two off, yet she had not slept. She had lain awake most nights since
Tuon vanished, sleeping only when exhaustion closed her eyes however hard she tried to keep them open. Sleep brought nightmares
she wished she could forget. Ebou Dar was never truly cold, but the night held a little coolness, enough to help keep her awake, lying
beneath only a thin silk sheet. The question that tainted her dreams was simple and stark. Was Tuon alive, or dead?
The escape of the Atha’an Miere damane and Queen Tylin’s murder spoke in favor of her death. Three events of that magnitude
happening on one night by chance was pressing coincidence too far, and the first two were horrifying enough in themselves to indicate
the worst for Tuon. Someone was trying to sow fear among the Rhyagelle, Those Who Come Home, perhaps to disrupt the entire
Return. How better to achieve that than to assassinate Tuon? Worse, it had to be one of their own. Because she had landed under the
veil, no local knew who Tuon was. Tylin had surely been killed with the One Power, by a sul’dam and her damane. Suroth had leaped
at the suggestion that Aes Sedai were to blame, yet eventually someone who mattered would question how one of those women could
enter a palace full of damane in a city full of damane and escape detection. At least one sul’dam had been necessary to uncollar the
Sea Folk damane.
And two of her own sul’dam had disappeared at almost the same time.
In any case, they had been noticed as missing two days later, and no one had seen them since the night Tuon vanished. She did not
believe they were involved, though they had been in the kennels. For one thing, she could not imagine Renna or Seta uncollaring a
damane. They certainly had reasons enough to sneak away and seek employment far off, with someone ignorant of their filthy secret,
someone like this Egeanin Tamarath who had stolen a pair of a damane. Strange that, for one newly raised to the Blood. Strange, but
unimportant; she could see no way to tie it to the rest. Likely the woman had found the stresses and complexities of nobility too much
for a simple sailor. Well, she would be found and arrested eventually.
摘要：

KNIFEOFDREAMSByRobertJordanBOOK11OFTHEWHEELOFTIMEv1.0pagenumbersremovedjoinedremainderofbrokenlinessomeocrerrorsfixedremovedtitleandchapterheaders/footersv0.9joinedsomebrokenlinesThesweetnessofvictoryandthebitternessofdefeatarealikeaknifeofdreams.-FromFogandSteelbyMadocComadrinEmbersFallingonDryGras...

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