The Gathering Storm - Robert Jordan

The shadows cast by a dying evening sun striped the field. Soon a blanket of darkness would cradle the bodies, and the survivors could pretend for a time that the grassland was a grave for their friends. And for the people their friends had killed. He rounded a small hillock, coming to a scattered pattern of fallen Seanchan elite. Most of these dead wore those insectlike helms. Bent, cracked, or dented. Dead eyes stared blankly from openings behind twisted mandibles.

The Seanchan general was alive, if just barely. His helmet was off, and there was blood on his lips. He leaned against a large, moss-covered boulder, back supported by a bundled cloak, as if he were waiting for a meal to be delivered. Of course, that image was marred by his twisted leg and the broken haft of a spear punching through the front of his stomach.

Ituralde dismounted. Like most of his men, Ituralde wore worker's clothing—simple brown trousers and coat, borrowed off of the man who had taken Ituralde's uniform as part of the trap.

It felt odd to be out of uniform. A man like this General Turan did not deserve a soldier in drab. Ituralde waved the messenger boy to stand back, out of earshot, then approached the Seanchan alone.

"You're him, then," Turan said, looking up at Ituralde, speaking with that slow Seanchan drawl. He was a stout man, far from tall, with a peaked nose. His close-cropped black hair was shaved two finger widths up each side of his head, and his helm lay beside him on the ground, bearing three white plumes. He reached up with an unsteady black-gloved hand and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.

"I am," Ituralde said.

"They call you a 'Great Captain' in Tarabon."

"They do."

"It's deserved," Turan said, coughing. "How did you do it? Our scouts. . . ." His cough consumed him.

"Raken," Ituralde said once the cough subsided. He squatted down beside his foe. The sun was still a sliver in the west, lighting the battlefield with a glimmer of golden red light. "Your scouts see from the air, and truth is easy to hide from a distance."

"The army behind us?"

"Women and youths, mostly," Ituralde said. "A fair number of farmers as well. Wearing uniforms taken from my troops here."

"And if we'd turned and attacked?"

"You wouldn't have. Your raken told you that you were outnumbered. Better to chase after the smaller force ahead of you. Better than that to head for the city your scouts say is barely defended, even if it means marching your men near to exhaustion."

Turan coughed again, nodding. "Yes. Yes, but the city was empty. How did you get troops into it?"

"Scouts in the air," Ituralde said, "can't see inside buildings."

"You ordered your troops to hide inside for that long?"

"Yes," Ituralde said. "With a rotation allowing a small number out each day to work the fields."

Turan shook his head in disbelief. "You realize what you have done," he said. There was no threat in his voice. In fact, there was a fair amount of admiration. "High Lady Suroth will never accept this failure. She will have to break you now, if only to save face."

"I know," Ituralde said, standing. "But I can't drive you back by attacking you in your fortresses. I need you to come to me."

"You don't understand the numbers we have ..." Turan said. "What you destroyed today is but a breeze compared to the storm you've raised. Enough of my people escaped today to tell of your tricks. They will not work again."

He was right. The Seanchan learned quickly. Ituralde had been forced to cut short his raids in Tarabon because of the swift Seanchan reaction.

"You know you can't beat us," Turan said softly. "I see it in your eyes, Great Captain."

Ituralde nodded.

"Why, then?" Turan asked.

"Why does a crow fly?" Ituralde asked.

Turan coughed weakly.

Ituralde did know that he could not win his war against the Seanchan. Oddly, each of his victories made him more certain of his eventual failure. The Seanchan were smart, well equipped and well disciplined. More than that, they were persistent.

Turan himself must have known from the moment those gates opened that he was doomed. But he had not surrendered; he had fought until his army broke, scattering in too many directions for Ituralde's exhausted troops to catch. Turan understood. Sometimes, surrender wasn't worth the cost. No man welcomed death, but there were far worse ends for a soldier. Abandoning one's homeland to invaders . . . well, Ituralde couldn't do that. Not even if the fight was impossible to win.

He did what needed to be done, when it needed to be done. And right now, Arad Doman needed to fight. They would lose, but their children would always know that their fathers had resisted. That resistance would be important in a hundred years, when a rebellion came. If one came.

Ituralde stood up, intending to return to his waiting soldiers.

Turan struggled, reaching for his sword. Ituralde hesitated, turning back.

"Will you do it?" Turan asked.

Ituralde nodded, unsheathing his own sword.

"It has been an honor,' Turan said, then closed his eyes. Ituralde's sword—heron-marked—took the man's head a moment later. Turan's own blade bore a heron, barely visible on the gleaming length of blade the Seanchan had managed to pull. It was a pity that the two of them hadn't been able to cross swords—though, in a way, these past few weeks had been just that, on a different scale.

Ituralde cleaned his sword, then slid it back into its sheath. In a final gesture, he slid Turan's sword out and rammed it into the ground beside the fallen general. Ituralde then remounted and, nodding farewell to the messenger, made his way back across the shadowed field of corpses.

The ravens had begun.

"I've tried encouraging several of the serving men and palace guards," Leane said softly, sitting beside the bars of her cell. "But it's hard." She smiled, glancing at Egwene, who sat on a stool outside the cell. "I don't exactly feel alluring these days."

Egwene's responding smile was wry, and she seemed to understand. Leane wore the same dress that she'd been captured in, and it had not yet been laundered. Every third morning, she removed it and used the morning's bucket of water—after washing herself clean with a damp rag—to clean the dress in her basin. But there was only so much one could do without soap. She'd braided her hair to give it a semblance of neatness, but could do nothing about her ragged nails.

Leane sighed, thinking of those mornings spent standing in the corner of her cell, hidden from sight, wearing nothing while she waited for the dress and shift to dry. Just because she was Domani didn't mean she liked parading about without a scrap on. Proper seduction required skill and subtlety; nudity used neither.

Her cell wasn't bad as cells went—she had a small bed, meals, plenty of water, a chamber pot that was changed daily. But she was never allowed out, and was always guarded by two sisters who kept her shielded. The only one who visited her—save for those trying to pry information from her regarding Traveling—was Egwene.

The Amyrlin sat on her stool, expression thoughtful. And she was Amyrlin. It was impossible to think of her any other way. How could a child so young have learned so quickly? That straight back, that poised expression. Being in control wasn't so much about the power you had, but the power you implied that you had. It was much like dealing with men, actually.

"Have you . . . heard anything?" Leane asked. "About what they plan to do with me?"

Egwene shook her head. Two Yellow sisters sat chatting nearby on the bench, lit by a lamp on the table beside them. Leane hadn't answered any of the questions her captors put to her, and Tower law was very strict about the questioning of fellow sisters. They couldn't harm her, particularly not with the Power. But they could just leave her alone, to rot.

"Thank you for coming to see me these evenings," Leane said, reaching through the lattice of bars to take Egwene's hand. "I believe I owe my sanity to you."

"It is my pleasure," Egwene said, though her eyes showed a hint of the exhaustion she undoubtedly felt. Some of the sisters who visited Leane mentioned the beatings Egwene was suffering as "penances" for her insubordination. Odd, how a novice to be instructed could be beaten but a prisoner to be interrogated could not. And despite the pain, Egwene came to visit Leane in the cell virtually every night.

"I will see you free, Leane," Egwene promised, still holding her hand. "Elaida's tyranny cannot last. I'm confident it won't be long now."

Leane nodded, letting go and standing up. Egwene took hold of the bars and pulled herself to her feet, cringing ever so slightly at the motion. She nodded farewell to Leane, then hesitated, frowning.

"What is it?" Leane asked

Egwene took her hands off of the bars and looked at her palms. They seemed to be coated with a reflective, waxy substance. Frowning, Leane looked at the bars, and was shocked to see Egwene's handprints on the iron.

"What in the Light—" Leane said, poking at one of the bars. It bent beneath her finger like warm wax on the lip of a candle's bowl.

Suddenly, the stones beneath Leane's feet shifted, and she felt herself sinking. She cried out. Globs of melted wax starting to rain down from the ceiling, splattering across her face. They weren't warm, but they were somehow liquid. They had the color of stone!

She gasped, panicked, stumbling and sliding as her feet sank deeper in the too-slick floor. A hand caught hers; she looked up to where Egwene had grabbed her. The bars melted out of the way as Leane watched, the iron drooping to the sides, then liquefying.

"Help!" Egwene screamed at the Yellows outside. "Burn you! Stop staring!"

Leane scrambled for purchase, terrified, trying to pull herself along the bars toward Egwene. She grasped only wax. A lump of bar came loose in her hand, squishing between her fingers, and the floor warped around her, sucking her down.

And then threads of Air seized her, yanking her free. The room lurched as she was tossed forward into Egwene, knocking the younger woman backward. The two Yellows—white-haired Musarin and short Gelarna— had jumped to their feet, and the glow of saidar surrounded them. Musarin called for help, watching the melting cell with wide eyes.

Leane righted herself, scrambling off of Egwene, her dress and legs coated with the strange wax, and stumbled back away from the cell. The floor here in the hallway felt stable. Light, how she wished she could embrace the source herself! But she was too full of forkroot, not to mention the shield.

Egwene climbed to her feet with a hand from Leane. The room fell still, lamp flickering, all of them staring at the cell. The melting had stopped, the bars split, the top halves frozen with drips of steel on their tips, the lower halves bent inward. Many had been flattened to the stones by Leane's escape. The floor inside the room had bowed inward, like a funnel, the rocks stretching. Those stones bore gashes where Leane's scrambling had scored them.

Leane stood, her heart beating, realizing that only seconds had passed. What should they do? Scuttle away in fear? Was the rest of the hallway going to melt, too?

Egwene stepped forward, tapping her toe against one of the bars. It resisted. Leane took a step forward, and her dress crunched, bits of stone— like mortar—falling free. She reached down and brushed at her skirt, and felt rough rock coating it instead of wax.