"I didn't expect you to reveal yourself yet," he said quietly, the Power still filled him; he rode the buffeting torrents, holding on with a desperation he kept out of his voice. It was not necessary to pull in more, only to let it come till it seemed his bones would crisp to ash. He did not know if she could shield him while saidin actually roared through him, but he let it fill him against the possibility. "I know you are not alone. Where is he?"
Lanfear's beautiful mouth tightened. "I knew he would give himself away, coming into your dream. I could have managed matters if his panic —"
"I knew from the start," he broke in. "I expected it from the day I left the Stone of Tear. Out here, where anyone could see I was fixed on Rhuidean and the Aiel. Do you think I did not expect some of you to come after me? But the trap is mine, Lanfear, not yours. Where is he?" The last came as a cold shout. Emotion skittered uncontrollably around the Void that surrounded him inside, the emptiness that was not empty, the emptiness filled with the Power.
"If you knew," she snapped back, "why did you chase him away with your talk of fulfilling your destiny, of doing what has to be done?" Scorn weighted the words like stones. "I brought Asmodean to teach you, but he was always one to leap to another plan if the first proved difficult. Now he thinks he has found something better for himself in Rhuidean. And he is off to take it while you stand here. Couladin, the Draghkar, all to hold your attention while he made sure. All my plans for nothing because you must be stubborn! Do you have any idea what effort it will take to convince him again? It must be him. Demandred or Rahvin or Sammael would kill you before teaching you to lift a hand unless they have you bound like a dog at heel!"
Rhuidean. Yes. Of course. Rhuidean. How many weeks to the south? Yet he had done something once. If he could remember how... "And you let him go? After all your talk of aiding me?"
"Not openly, I said! What could he find in Rhuidean worth my coming into the open? When you agree to stand with me will be time enough. Remember what I told you, Lews Therin." Her voice took on a seductive note; those full lips curved, those dark eyes tried to swallow him like bottomless pools. "Two great sa'angreal. With those, together, we can. challenge —" This time she stopped on her own. He had remembered.
With the Power he folded reality, bent a small patch of what was. A door opened beneath the dome in front of him. That was the only way to describe it. An opening into darkness, into somewhere else.
"You do remember a few things, it seems." She eyed the doorway, shifted that suddenly suspicious gaze to him. "Why are you so anxious? What is in Rhuidean?"
"Asmodean," he said grimly. For a moment he hesitated. He could not see beyond the rain-drenched dome. What was happening out there? And Lanfear. If only he could remember how he had shielded Egwene and Elayne. If only I could make myself kill a woman who's only frowning at me. She is one of the Forsaken! It was no more possible now than it had been in the Stone.
Stepping through the door, he left her on the ledge and closed it behind him. No doubt she knew how to make one of her own, but the making of it would slow her down.
Chapter 58
(Serpent and Wheel)
The Traps of Rhuidean
Darkness surrounded him once the door vanished, blackness stretching in all directions, yet he could see. There was no sensation of heat or cold, even wet as he was; no sensation at all. Only existence. Plain gray stone steps rose in front of him, each step hanging unsupported, arching out until they dwindled from sight. He had seen these before, or their like; somehow he knew they would take him where he had to go. He ran up the impossible stairs, and as his boot left each one behind with its damp footprint, it faded away, vanished. Only steps ahead waited, only those taking him where he had to go. That was as it had been before, too.
Did I make these with the Power, or do they exist some other way?
With the thought, the gray stone under his foot began to fade, and all the others ahead shimmered. Desperately he concentrated on them, gray stone and real. Real! The shimmering stopped. They were not so plain now, but polished, the edges carved in a fancy border he thought he recalled seeing somewhere before.
Not caring where – not sure he dared think too long on it – he ran as hard as he could, taking the steps three at a time through the endless dark. They would take him where he wanted to go, but how long would it take? How much head start did Asmodean have? Did the Forsaken know a faster way to travel? That was the trouble. The Forsaken had all the knowledge; all he had was desperation.
Looking ahead, he winced. The steps had accommodated themselves to his long stride, with wide spaces between requiring those leaps now, across black as deep as... as what? A fall here might never end. He forced himself to ignore the gaps, to keep running. The old, half-healed wound in his side began to throb, a vague awareness. But if he was aware of it at all, wrapped inside saidin, the wound was close to breaking open. Ignore it. The thought floated across the Void inside him. He did not dare lose this race, not if it killed him. Would these steps never stop climbing? How far had he come?
Suddenly he saw a figure in the distance ahead and off to his left, a man it seemed, in a red coat and red boots, standing on a glistening silvery platform that slid through the darkness. Rand needed no closer look to be sure it was Asmodean. The Forsaken was not running like a half-spent country boy; he was riding that whatever-it-was.
Rand stopped dead on one of the stone steps. He had no idea what that platform was, shining like polished metal, but... The steps ahead of him vanished. The piece of stone beneath his boots began to glide forward, faster and faster. There was no wind in his face to tell him he was moving, nothing in that vast black to mark motion at all – except that he was beginning to catch up to Asmodean. He did not know if he was doing this with the Power; it just seemed to happen. The step wobbled and he made himself stop wondering. I don't know enough yet.
The dark-haired man stood at his ease, one hand on a hip, pensively fingering his chin. A spill of white lace dripped from his neck; more half-hid his hands. His high-collared red coat seemed shinier than silk satin, and was oddly cut, with tails hanging almost to his knees. What seemed to be black threads, like fine steel wires, ran off from the man, disappearing into the surrounding dark. Those Rand had surely seen before.
Asmodean turned his head, and Rand gaped. The Forsaken could change their faces – or at least make you see a different face; he had seen Lanfear do it – but these were the features of Jasin Natael, the gleeman. He had been sure it would be Kadere, with his predatory eyes that never changed.
Asmodean saw him at the same moment and gave a start. The Forsaken's silver perch darted forward – and suddenly a huge sheet of fire, like a thin slice from a monstrous flame, swept back toward Rand, a mile high and a mile wide.
He channeled at it desperately; just as it was about to strike him, it suddenly burst into shards, hurtling away from him, winking out. Yet even as the fiery curtain vanished it revealed another rushing at him. He shattered that, exposing another, splintered the third to reveal a fourth. Asmodean was getting away, Rand was sure of it. He could not see the Forsaken at all for the flames. Anger slid across the surface of the Void, and he channeled.
A wave of fire enveloped the crimson curtain sweeping toward him and rolled on, carrying it away, not a thin slice, but wild, billowing gouts as if whipped by stormwinds. He quivered with the Power roaring through him; anger at Asmodean clawed at the surface of the Void.