Robert Jordan - The Fires of Heaven

Seemingly motionless, hanging in blackness.

The platform stopped. It was hard to say how he knew, when he could tell it was moving before, but he did.

He channeled, and a gateway opened in the same way it had in the courtyard in Cairhien. The angle of the sun had hardly changed, but here early-morning light shone on a paved street, and a rising slope patched brown with drought-killed grass and wildflowers, a slope topped by a stone wall two spans high or more, the stones worked rough so it seemed something natural. Above that wall he could see the golden domes of the Royal Palace of Andor, a few of the pale spires topped with banners rippling the White Lion on a breeze. On the other side of that wall was the garden where he had first met Elayne.

Blue eyes floated accusingly outside the Void, the darting memory of kisses stolen in Tear, the memory of a letter laying her heart and soul at his feet, of messages borne by Egwene professing love. What would she say if she ever learned about Aviendha, about that night together in the snow hut? Memory of another letter, icily spurning him, a queen condemning a swineherd to outer darkness. It did not matter. Lan was right. But he wanted… What? Who? Blue eyes, and green, and dark brown. Elayne, who maybe loved him and maybe could not make up her mind? Aviendha, who taunted him with what she would not let him touch? Min, who laughed at him, thought him a wool-headed fool? All that flashed along the boundaries of the Void. He tried to ignore it, to ignore anguished memories of another blue-eyed woman, lying dead in a palace corridor, so long ago.

He had to stand there, while Aiel dashed out behind Bael, veiling themselves, spreading left and right. It was his presence that maintained the platform; it would vanish as soon as he stepped through the gateway. Aviendha waited almost as calmly as Pevin, though she did occasionally put her head out to frown faintly in one direction or the other down the street. Asmodean fingered his sword and breathed too quickly; Rand wondered whether the man knew how to use the thing. Not that he would have to. Mat stared up the wall as though at a bad remembrance. He had entered the palace this way once, too.

The last veiled Aiel went by, and Rand motioned the others out, then followed. The gateway winked out of existence, leaving him in the middle of a long circle of wary Maidens. Aiel were running down the curving street — it followed the line of the hill; all the streets of the Inner City flowed with the land — vanishing around winding corners as they hurried to find and secure anyone who might give alarm. More were climbing the slope, and some had even begun to scale the wall, using tiny knobs and ridges for finger— and toe-holds.

Suddenly Rand stared. To his left the street bowed downward and rounded out of sight, the decline giving a view past tile-covered towers, sparkling in the morning sun with a hundred changing colors, across tile roofs all the way to one of the Inner City's many parks, its white walks and monuments forming a lion's head when seen from this angle. To his right the street rose a little before curving away, more towers topped by spires or domes of various shapes glittering above the rooftops. Aiel filled the street, fanning out quickly into side streets that spiraled away from the palace. Aiel, and not a soul else. The sun was high enough for people to be out and about their business, even this close to the palace.

Like a nightmare the wall above toppled outward in half a dozen places, Aiel and stones smashing down on those still climbing. Before those bouncing, sliding chunks of masonry reached the streets, Trollocs appeared in the openings, dropping the tree-thick battering rams they had used and drawing scythe-curved swords — more, with spiked axes and barbed spears, huge man-shapes in black mail with spikes at shoulders and elbows, huge man-faces distorted by snouts and muzzles, beaks and horns and feathers, plunging down the slope with eyeless Myrddraal like midnight serpents in their midst. All along the street howling Trollocs and silent Myrddraal poured from doorways, leaped from windows. Lightning stabbed from the cloudless sky.

Rand wove Fire and Air to meet Fire and Air, a slow-spreading shield racing lightnings' fall. Too slow. One bolt struck the shield directly above his head, shattering in a blinding glare, but others grounded themselves, and his hair lifted as the air itself seemed to hammer him down. Almost he lost the weave, almost the Void itself, but he wove what he could not see through eyes still filled with coruscating light, spread the shield against bolts from the heavens that he could at least feel hammering at it. Hammering to reach him, but that could change. Drawing saidin through the angreal in his pocket, he wove the shield until he was sure it must cover half of the Inner City, then tied it off. As he pushed himself to his feet, sight began to return, watery and painful at first. He had to move fast. Rahvin knew he was here. He had to…

Surprisingly little time had passed, seemingly. Rahvin had not cared how many of his own he took. Stunned Trollocs and Myrddraal on the slope were falling to spears in the hands of Maidens, many of whom moved unsteadily themselves. Some Maidens, those nearest Rand, were only now pulling themselves up from where they had been flung, and Pevin stood spraddle-legged, holding himself upright with the red banner's staff, his scarred face still blank as slate. More Trollocs boiled through the gaps in the wall above, and the din of battle filled the streets in all directions, but it might as well have been in another country so far as Rand was concerned.

There had been more than one bolt in that first volley, but not all had been aimed at him. Mat's smoking boots lay a dozen paces from where Mat himself sprawled on his back. Tendrils of smoke rose from the black haft of his spear, too, from his coat, even from the silver foxhead, hanging out of his shirt, that had not saved him from a man's channeling. Asmodean was a twisted shape of char, recognizable only from the blackened harpcase still strapped to his back. And Aviendha… Unmarked, she could have laid down to rest — if she could have rested staring unblinking at the sun.

Rand bent to touch her cheek. Cooling already. It felt… Not like flesh.

"RAAAAHVIIIIN!"

It startled him a little, that sound coming from his throat: He seemed to be sitting somewhere deep in the back of his own head, the Void around him vaster, emptier, than it had ever been before. Saidin raged through him. He did not care if it scoured him away. The taint seeped through everything, tarnished everything. He did not care.

Three Trollocs broke past the Maidens, great spiked, axes and oddly hooked spears in hairy hands, all-too human eyes fixing on him, standing there apparently unarmed. The one with a boar's tusked snout went down with Enaila's spear through its spine. Eagle's beak and bear's muzzle raced on toward him, one on booted feet, the other on paws.

Rand felt himself smile.

Fire burst from the two Trollocs, a flame at every pore, bursting through black mail. Even as their mouths opened to scream, a gateway opened right where they stood. Bloody halves of burning, cleanly sliced Trolloc fell, but Rand was staring through the opening. Not into blackness, but a great columned hall with lion-carved stone panels, where a large man with wings of white in his dark hair started up in surprise from a gilded throne. A dozen men, some dressed as lords, some in breastplates, turned to see what their master was looking at.

Rand barely noticed them. "Rahvin," he said. Or someone did. He was not sure who.

Sending fire and lightning ahead of him, he stepped through and let the gateway close behind him. He was death.

Nynaeve was having no trouble maintaining the temper that allowed her to channel a flow of Spirit to the amber sleeping woman in her pouch. Even the feel of unseen eyes could not touch her through her anger this morning. Siuan stood in front of her on a Salidar street in Tel'aran'rhiod , a street empty save for them, a few flies, and one fox that paused to look at them curiously before trotting on.