Robert Jordan - A Memory of Light

Let go.

Wind blew through across the field, carrying with it the scents of a dying land. Moss, mold, rot.

Moss lived. Mold was a living thing. For a tree to rot, life had to progress.

A man with one hand was still a man, and if that hand held a sword, he was still dangerous.

Tam fell into Hawk Spots the Hare, a very aggressive form. He charged Rand, swinging. Rand saw the next few moments before they happened. He saw himself raising his sword in the proper form to block—a form that required him to expose his sword to bad balance, now that he had no second hand. He saw Tam slicing down on the sword to twist it in Rand’s grip. He saw the next attack coming back and taking Rand at the neck.

Tam would freeze before hitting. Rand would lose the spar.

Let go.

Rand shifted his grip on the sword. He didn’t think about why; he did what felt right. When Tam came near, Rand flung his left arm up to stabilize his hand while pivoting his sword to the side. Tam connected, weapon sliding off Rand’s sword, but not unhanding it.

Tam’s backswing came as expected, but hit Rand’s elbow, the elbow of the useless arm. Not so useless after all. It blocked the sword effectively, though the crack of it hitting sent a shiver of pain down Rand’s arm.

Tam froze, eyes widening—first in surprise that he’d been blocked, then in apparent worry over connecting with a solid blow on Rand’s arm. He had probably fractured the bone.

“Rand,” Tam said, “I . . .”

Rand stepped back, folded his wounded arm behind his back, and lifted his sword. He breathed in the deep scents of a world wounded, but not dead.

He attacked. Kingfisher Strikes in the Nettles. Rand didn’t choose it; it happened. Perhaps it was his posture, sword out, other arm folded behind his back. That led him easily into the offensive form.

Tam blocked, wary, stepping to the side in the brown grass. Rand swung to the side, flowing into his next form. He stopped trying to turn off his instincts, and his body adapted to the challenge. Safe within the void, he didn’t need to wonder how.

The contest continued in earnest, now. Swords clacking with sharp blows, Rand keeping his hand behind his back and feeling what his next strike should be. He did not fight as well as he once had. He could not; some forms were impossible for him, and he could not strike with as much force as he once could.

He did match Tam. To an extent. Any swordsman could tell who was the better as they fought. Or, at least, they could tell who had the advantage. Tam had it here. Rand was younger and stronger, but Tam was just so solid. He had practiced fighting with one hand. Rand was certain of it.

He did not care. This focus . . . he had missed this focus. With so much to worry about, so much to carry, he had not been able to dedicate himself to something as simple as a duel. He found it now, and poured himself into it.

For a time, he wasn’t the Dragon Reborn. He wasn’t even a son with his father. He was a student with his master.

In this, he remembered that no matter how good he had become, no matter how much he now remembered, there was still much he could learn.

They continued to spar. Rand did not count who had won which exchange; he just fought and enjoyed the peace of it. Eventually, he found himself exhausted in the good way—not in the worn-down way he had begun to feel lately. It was the exhaustion of good work done.

Sweating, Rand raised his practice sword to Tam, indicating that he was through. Tam stepped back, raising his own sword. The older man wore a grin.

Nearby, standing near the lanterns, a handful of Warders began clapping. Not a large audience—only six men—but Rand had not noticed them. The Maidens lifted their spears in salute.

“It has been quite a weight, hasn’t it?” Tam asked.

“What weight?” Rand replied.

“That lost hand you’ve been carrying.”

Rand looked down at his stump. “Yes. I believe it has been at that.”

Tylin’s secret passage led to the gardens, opening up in a very narrow hole not far from where Mat had begun his climb. He crawled out, brushing the dust off of his shoulders and knees, then craned his neck back and looked up to the balcony far above. He had ascended to the building’s heights, then crawled out through its bowels. Maybe there was a lesson in that somewhere. Maybe it was that Matrim Cauthon should look for secret passages before deciding to scale a bloody four-story building.

He stepped softly into the gardens. The plants were not doing well. These ferns should have far more fronds, and the trees were as bare as a Maiden in the sweat tent. Not surprising. The entire land wilted faster than a boy at Bel Tine with no dancing partners. Mat was pretty sure Rand was to blame. Rand or the Dark One. Mat could trace every bloody problem in his life to one or the other. Those flaming colors. . .

Moss still lived. Mat had not ever heard of moss being used in a garden, but he could have sworn that here it had been made to grow on rocks in patterns. Perhaps, when everything died off, the gardeners used what they could find.

It took him some searching, poking through dried shrubs and past dead flower beds, to find Tuon. He had expected to find her sitting peacefully in thought, but he should have known better.

Mat crouched beside a fern, unseen by the dozen or so Deathwatch Guards who stood in a ring around Tuon as she went through a series of fighting stances. She was lit by a pair of lanterns that gave off a strange, steady blue glow. Something burned within them, but it was not a regular flame.

The light shone on her soft, smooth skin, which was the shade of good earth. She wore a pale a’solma , a gown that was split at the sides, showing blue leggings underneath. Tuon had a slight frame; he had once made the mistake of assuming that meant she was frail. Not so.

She had shaved her head again properly, now that she was no longer hiding. Baldness looked good on her, strange though it was. She moved in the blue glow, running through a sequence of hand combat forms, her eyes closed. She seemed to be sparring with her own shadow.

Mat preferred a good knife—or, better, his ashandarei —to fighting with his hands. The more space he had between himself and a fellow trying to kill him, the better. Tuon did not seem to need either. Watching her, he realized how fortunate he had been the night he had taken her. Unarmed, she was deadly.

She slowed, waving her hands in front of her in a gentle pattern, then thrusting them quickly to the side. She breathed in and brought her arms to the other side, her entire body twisting.

Did he love her?

The question made Mat uncomfortable. It had been scratching at the edges of his mind for weeks now, like a rat trying to have at the grain. It was not the sort of question Matrim Cauthon was supposed to have to ask. Matrim Cauthon worried only about the girl on his knee and the next toss of the dice. Questions about matters like love were best left to Ogier who had time to sit and watch trees grow.

He had married her. That was an accident, was it not? The bloody foxes had told him he would. She had married him back. He still did not know why. Something to do with those omens she talked about? Their courtship had been more of a game than a romance. Mat liked games, and he always played to win. Tuon’s hand had been the prize. Now that he had it, what did he do with it?

She continued her forms, moving like a reed in the wind. A tilt this way, then a wave of motion that way. The Aiel called fighting a dance. What would they think of this? Tuon moved as gracefully as any Aiel. If battle were a dance, most of it was done to the music of a rowdy barroom. This was done to the swaying melody of a master singer.