Robert Jordan - The Fires of Heaven

He glanced over his shoulder, but Asmodean was staring straight ahead, ignoring the wagons altogether. He claimed to have had no contact with Kadere since Rand captured him, and Rand thought it might be true. Certainly, the merchant never left his wagons, and was never out of sight of Aiel guards except when inside his own wagon.

Opposite the wagons, Rand half drew rein without thinking. Surely Moiraine would want to accompany him into Cairhien; she might have crammed his head full, but it always seemed there was another piece she wanted to fit in, and this once in particular he could do with her presence and advice. But she merely looked at him for a long moment, then turned back to the wagon.

Frowning, he heeled the dapple on. As well to remember she had other sheep to shear than he knew about. He had become too trusting. Best to be as wary of her as of Asmodean.

Trust no one , he thought bleakly. For an instant he did not know whether it was his thought or Lews Therin's, but in the end he decided it did not matter. Everybody had their own goals, their own desires. Much the best to trust no one completely except himself. Yet he wondered, with another man oozing through the back of his mind, how far could he trust himself?

Vultures filled the sky around Cairhien in spiraling layers of black wings. On the ground they flapped about among clouds of buzzing flies, squawking hoarsely at glossy ravens that tried to usurp their rights to the dead. Where Aiel went across the treeless hills, recovering the bodies of their slain, the birds lumbered aloft fatly, screeching protests, then settled again as soon as the living humans were a few paces gone. Vultures and ravens and flies together could not really have made the sunlight dimmer, yet it seemed so.

Stomach twisting, trying not to see, Rand heeled Jeade'en faster, until Aviendha clung to his back once more and the Maidens were running. No one protested, and he did not believe it was only because Aiel could maintain that speed for hours. Even Asmodean looked pale around the eyes. Pevin's face never changed, though the bright banner whipping above him appeared a mockery in that place.

What lay ahead was little better. Rand remembered the Foregate as a raucous beehive, a tangled warren of streets full of noise and color. Now it was a still, thick band of ashes surrounding the square gray walls of Cairhien on three sides. Charred timbers lay crazily atop stone foundations, and here and there a soot-black chimney yet stood, sometimes tilting precariously. In places, a chair lying somehow untouched in the dirt street, a hasty bundle dropped by someone fleeing, a rag doll, emphasized the desolation.

Breezes stirred some of the banners on the city's towers and along the walls, a Dragon standing out red-and-gold on white at one place, the Crescents of Tear white on red-and-gold at another. The middle set of the Jangai Gates stood open, three tall square arches in the gray stone guarded by Tairen soldiers in rimmed helmets. Some were mounted but most afoot, and the variously colored stripes on their wide sleeves showed they were retainers of several lords.

Whatever was known in the city about the battle being won, and Aiel allies coming to the rescue, the approach of half a thousand Far Dareis Mai created some little stir. Hands went uncertainly to sword hilts, or spears and long shields, or lances. Some of the soldiers half moved as if to close the gates even while looking to their officer, with three white plumes on his helmet, who hesitated, standing in his stirrups and shading his eyes against the sun to study the crimson banner. And more particularly, Rand.

Abruptly the officer sat down, saying something that sent two of the mounted Tairens galloping back through the gates. Almost immediately, he was waving the other men aside, calling, "Make way for the Lord Dragon Rand al'Thor! The Light illumine the Lord Dragon! All glory to the Dragon Reborn!"

The soldiers still appeared uneasy about the Maidens, but they formed into lines to either side of the gates, bowing deeply as Rand rode through. Aviendha sniffed loudly at his back, and again when he laughed. She did not understand, and he had no intention of explaining. What amused him was that however hard Tairens or Cairhienin or anyone else tried to puff up his head, he could rely on her and the Maidens, at least, to take the swelling down. And Egwene. And Moiraine. And Elayne and Nynaeve, for that matter, if he ever saw either again. Come to think of it, the lot of them seemed to make that a large part of their life's work.

The city beyond the gates stilled his laughter.

Here the streets were paved, some broad enough for a dozen or more large wagons abreast, all straight as knife cuts and crossing at right angles. The hills that rolled outside the walls were here carved and terraced, faced with stone; they looked as much made by men as the stone buildings with their severe straight lines and sharp angles, or the great towers with their unfinished tops surrounded by scaffolding. People crowded the streets and the alleys, dull-eyed and hollow-cheeked, huddling beneath makeshift lean-tos or ragged blankets rigged as tents, or simply jammed together in the open, in the dark clothes favored by Cairhienin city dwellers and the bright colors of Foregaters and the rough garb of farmers and villagers. Even the scaffolds were filled, on every level to the very top, where folk looked tiny for the height. Only the middle of the streets remained clear as Rand and the Maidens made their way along, and that only for as long as it took the people to surge out around them.

It was the people who stilled his mirth. Worn and ragged as they were, jammed together like sheep in a too-small pen, they cheered. He had no idea how they knew who he was, unless perhaps the officer's shouts at the gates had been heard, but a roar sprang ahead of him as he circled through the streets, the Maidens forcing a way through the throng. The thunder of it overwhelmed any words except for the occasional "Lord Dragon" when enough shouted it together, but the meaning was clear in men and women holding up children to see him pass, in scarves and scraps of cloth waved from every window, in people who tried to push past the Maidens with outstretched hands.

They certainly seemed to have no fear of Aiel, not at the chance to lay a finger on Rand's boots, and their numbers were such, the pressure of hundreds shoving them forward, that some managed to wriggle through. Actually, a good many touched Asmodean's instead — he certainly looked a lord; in all his dripping lace, and perhaps they thought the Lord Dragon must be an older man than the youth in a red coat — but it made no difference. Whoever managed to put hand to anyone's boot or stirrup, even Pevin's, wore joy on their faces and mouthed "Lord Dragon" into the din even as Maidens forced them back with their bucklers.

Between the clamor of acclaim and the riders sent by the officer at the gate it was no surprise when Meilan appeared, a dozen lesser Tairen lords for retinue and fifty Defenders of the Stone to clear his way, laying about them with the butts of their lances. Gray-haired, hard and lean in his fine silk coat with stripes and cuffs of green satin, the High Lord sat his saddle with the stiff-backed ease of one who had been put on a horse and taught to command it almost as soon as he could walk. He ignored the sweat on his face, and equally the possibility that his escort might trample someone. Both were minor annoyances and the sweat likely the greater. Edorion, the pink-cheeked lordling who had come to Eianrod, was among the others, not quite so plump as he had been, so his red-striped coat hung on him. The only other Rand recognized was a broad-shouldered fellow in shades of green; Reimon had liked to play at cards with Mat back in the Stone, as he recalled. The others were older men for the most part. None displayed any more consideration of the crowd they plowed through than Meilan. There was not one Cairhienin in the lot.