Chapter 7: The Wheel Weaves
As Rand al'Thor would later have cause to reflect, and no doubt as Maitrim Cauthon would have told him for free with a sardonic smile and a shake of his head, ta'veren luck is a knife sharpened at the hilt. Regarding luck and ta'veren, for all his jokes Mat might have been the wiser of the pair, treating both with the caution of a dog that has already bitten once and might do so again.
The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills: A proverb that means different things depending upon who speaks it, on their perspective, their intellect and intuition. Proverbs are food only in the mouth of the wise.
In the Two Rivers, it was something a man might say with a shrug to explain a loss at cards, the death of a good ploughhorse (once he had unburdened himself of all the cusswords his fertile mind could think of!)
An Aes Sedai might give the same cant to a labourer toiling under an unjust lord; a statement about theology from an atheist powerbroker, expecting the man to sigh, and bow his head, and resign himself to his lot in life, were it ever so lowly.
For her part, his teacher Moraine Damodred had believed that the Wheel was neither good nor evil in nature. A nuanced argument from a great academic. His friend Perrin, a blacksmith, had rejected that notion outright from the very beginning, refusing to believe that the Wheel indiscriminately mixed pot metal with jewel steel.
As far as Rand knew, he, the Dragon Reborn, was the only person who had ever heard the spoken voice of the Creator, on the slopes of Shayol Ghul. Because of that, he now gave more credence to Perrin's argument than Moraine's. Whatever threads the Wheel wove, the Creator's hand was upon the Wheel, and the Age Lace was somehow the greater and nobler design despite the dark threads woven into it. Complex good arising from simple evil.
The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. The Creator's hand is upon it, and we say thankya, and as long as we hold true it weaves for good.
But whose good? Ta'veren luck is part of the Pattern, and a strong ta'veren with a stout heart – especially a Dragon Reborn – can bring the Greater Good, the righting of the Wheel of Time where it totters upon its axis. The Blight recedes. The desert blooms.
But even a strong ta'veren – especially a strong ta'veren – becomes susceptible to the insidious belief that the Wheel works to his good, say true, and it may be so for a time, even years, and that is ta'veren luck, too. Luck compounding luck.
Mat was wiser than Rand. For all Rand's sorrows he had not learned the truth, not then. Luck was a horse to ride like any other. What's left unsaid is there's a time to get off the horse, before you are thrown.
Here's where tragedy meets comedy. What does that greater Good look like, measured in the span of hundreds of years, an Age? Is a time of hard-won peace and relative prosperity Good, if it ushers in an era of complacency, where Pride, Envy, Greed, Lust, Gluttony and Sloth hold sway – and the cardinal virtue of Courage is forgotten?
Or is a dark thread in the Pattern – the metastasis of an evil – sometimes more desirable in the long run? For example, a terrible, senseless war – bringing with it Wrath and Cruelty – (but nurturing valour, steadfastness and self-sacrifice), followed by a future built upon Prudence, Selflessness and Justice?
What does that Good look like for the hopes and aspirations of a single good man, who finds himself at the eye of the maelstrom? The Light preserve those whom he loves, who are drawn into his life. May the Creator shelter and protect them in the hollow of His hand.
Rand had learned another thing in the confrontation with the Dark One. The Creator had chosen to allow his creations complete freedom of self-determination. Free will was a terrifying thing, for all that individuals prized it above all else. If they chose, they could wreck not just the Age Lace but the Pattern itself, and the very Wheel. It had happened in other worlds.
Despite that, the Creator was prepared to put the decision in the hands of His creations, and stand by the outcome. Only if they acted in concert, if significant numbers pulled together, were prepared to fight and lay down their lives for what they knew was good and true, would the Creator continue to guide.
He laid out a plan, from the foundations up like a man building a house, through the Prophecies and through the innate knowledge of Good and Evil He planted in every heart. And then He.. abdicated?
No. Never that. He was like a good small-town mayor, who would only oversee whilst He was elected. Whilst He had the mandate. He was the King Rand had instinctively tried – and failed – to be while he stitched together his coalition to face the Dark One.
In the end, Rand had learned that you could only govern by consent. That it was better for the whole world to fall and fail and Shai'tan to prevail than to win using the tools of the Enemy.
The Aiel knew this, better than anyone. They were his people, and he loved them, but he saw them clearly. They could be cruel, particularly to outsiders. They lived in a near-continual state of warfare between the clans. He understood, better than most, what a broken, tortured compromise of identity ji'e'toh was to those who had been the Da'shain Aiel. How so many of them had cast aside their spears because of it.
Rand wept for them. The truth he had brought had stripped a comforting, noble lie from them, leaving many bereft of everything, every shred of aspiration beyond mere animal survival. He hoped beyond hope they could find their way to some better place than the desolation he'd made for them. They were his mashaira, too.
Those who had remained were neither stronger, nor weaker, just those more capable of compromise, of adaptation. From them, he had learned that ji'e'toh was noble because it aspired to something greater. Justice. Integrity. Provision for widows and orphans who were not even of their race. They did not lie. They did not steal. Even the Aiel way of battle placed the highest honour upon touching an armed opponent without harming them. It strove towards the Light, even towards peace.
When the Last Battle had come, he had seen the Aiel refuse to abandon the least strictures of ji'e'toh. Gai'shain who had not served their allotted time in white would not fight. It was anathema to wetlanders, insanity!
Rand smiled. In the end, he had even accomplished what Aviendha had suggested, half in jest – to take the Dark One gai'shain. When he'd tried to tell her the Last Battle was not the place for such scruples, for considering what brought the most honour, the shade of his heart had flared up in anger. "A warrior must always consider ji'e'toh," she had rebuked with heat. "Have I taught you nothing?" How beautiful she was when roused, all seriousness, truth, purity of intent.
Ji'e'toh was not the Way of the Leaf. He had come to see that in many ways it was superior. The Way of the Leaf was purely pacifistic, but in some ways it was a selfish belief too. A man should hate to kill, should only be prepared to do so as a last resort, but he should be prepared to do so to protect an innocent life. To choose to die instead was unconscionable. Dishonourable. It was putting your own 'spiritual' good above somebody else's welfare.
A soul got bent, broken, battered, tarnished. It was a tool, like a bill-hook. Something that could be used for peace and war alike. A man did some honest labour with it, and then tried to fettle it when life gave him a moment. Let the Creator judge him afterward.
Another truth, one never acknowledged. Rand al'Thor, bore no love for his Creator. Awe, yes, fear of Him always – the beginning of wisdom. For his plan, for his provision, gratitude. But not love. He would try to stand in the Light, because it was right to do so, it was proper. For him, righteousness and protecting the people he claimed were one and the same thing, and somehow, throughout all the wrack of battle, the two things had never been placed in direct opposition.
It was a distinction that the Dragon Reborn, for all his intelligence was blind to, and for whatever reason, all the wiles of the Dark One and the Forsaken had never been able to put him in a place where he was faced with the stark dilemma: Serve the Dark One, or see this loved one die, right here, right now, in front of you. Maybe the Forsaken, the Dark One were simply unable to comprehend the magnitude of love's claim, didn't understand what a powerful motivation it was, even for the Dragon Reborn.
It had begun to rain precipitously. The downpour deadened sound but enhanced the other senses. The air was redolent with the musky scent of pine sap, and his steps brushed over a carpet of pine needles, displaced the bracken gently, his soft deerskin boots pacing carefully.
Any Two Rivers man worth his salt knew the rudiments of woodcraft and tracking. Rand al'Thor had been better than most, retained enough of those skills within the dark husk that was Moridin's body to leave little trace, only a spoor that the rain would wash indelible. He left little trace upon the terrain, in contrast with the mark it left upon him, his clothes picking up moisture from the flora he travelled through, until his garb was soaked.
Upon leaving the copse, he struck out for the high road. Under the open sky, the rain lashed down in sheets, wicking from the scant protection of the slouching hat he wore. He moved quickly now. A traveller upon the road would be less remarkable than a man crossing the open fields for any that cared to look.
The high road was a fine causeway now, Seanchan work – stone flags laid firmly upon a bed of gravel for drainage, a canted highway wide enough for two wagons to pass abreast. There was no traffic upon it as dawn broke chill, grey bleeding into black under the unremitting cloud. His feet marked time until he reached the watching walls of white stone. There was a raven banner hanging from a crosstrees above the open Moldaine Gate, rain and breeze twisting it into a sodden wrap of featureless cloth beneath the bird's staring head.
Responding to the incipient threat it represented, he unconsciously found his Warder-trained body falling into Cat Crosses the Courtyard, a walking form that radiated a deadly, relaxed grace, and forced himself to slouch instead, to shield his body from the rain. Just another weary traveller seeking respite from the rain and breakfast.
A bleary-eyed guard in a tabard marked with a white chevron wearily waved him through, the man clearly wanting nothing more than to return to the glowing brazier filled with sea coal to warm his hands. A local recruit, the chevron indicating an irregular of dubious quality compared to the battle-tested Seanchan troops of the line, which Rand knew were redoubtable. There would be keener eyes and sterner tests ahead.
Within the walled city, the buildings rose up, three or four stories high. The Ebou Dari had grown prosperous under the Seanchan, their city a nexus for trade between the Westland nations, and Seandar across the Aryth Ocean.
A whole city block adjacent to the Tarasin Palace and abutting the Mol Hara central plaza had been cleared altogether, razed, to make way for a Travelling Ground, where secured Gateways connected Ebou Dar instantaneously with the principal cities of the Raven Empire across the ocean. Seandar, Kirendad and Noren M'Shar. And of course to Imfaral, dominated by the prison-fortress of the Towers of Midnight, lances of jet-black Power-wrought stone scraping the sky.
With careful practicality, the Seanchan husbanded the knowledge of their heartlands that Luthair Paendrag Mondwin had claimed. It was forbidden for non-citizens to use the Gateways to Seanchan, so no unleashed marath'damane, still less the abhorred Tsorov'ande Doon that he'd once been – Dark-Souled Tempests. Men who could channel – could ever find their way there across the ocean.
The Last Battle had radically changed the ways of war. Gateways could instantaneously connect any two places, allowing armies, channellers and the materiel of war to arrive where it was least expected. The only caveat was that the channeller making the Gateway needed to know their destination, and even then, it took them time to 'learn' a place by being there. Now that knowledge was power, jealously guarded.
An intended consequence arising from this – a sweetener for their continued loyalty to the Raven Empire – was that it allowed the Ebou Dari to effectively monopolise the trade of a continent, enabling them to undercut even the Sea Folk, which made them fabulously wealthy, almost incorruptible. That was the reason why Ebou Dar was the Eastern capital of the Empire, the joint seat with Seandar of the Crystal Throne.
Ebou Dar wore her concubine's opulence brashly. There were many new buildings, some of traditional white limestone but carved in the heavily-handsome, stylized Seanchan way. Others were fronted with white marble, or boasted thick-waisted columns of green jet or ebony – unattainably expensive here, but evidently more commonplace in Seanchan.
An early-rising Ebou Dari girl sashayed past Rand, the traditional marriage-knife worn around her neck at odds with the swooping silks that adorned her, clinging to her bountiful curves. A style that hinted at the dress of a lady of the Blood, without overtly imitating it. The Seanchan were very exacting about such matters.
She flashed the handsome dark-haired stranger a frankly-appraising smile, together with a suggestion of an alluring sway in her hips, that somehow reminded him of Min. Min, who could have achieved the same effect in her breeches. She was here too, surely. A thought that had not occurred to Rand until that point.
His distraction was such that Rand wasn't aware of the man sheltering under the carved wood of a porch across the street, tapping out his pipe against the rail to knock the ashes out into the road as he surveyed the street and the downpour, even the fetching girl with a world-weary air before retreating inside with a sigh. A whip-lean old man, all sinew and gristle.
If he had, Rand might have noticed the gaffer's gaze linger upon him just a fraction too long, a fraction less disinterested than he appeared. Seen the man cover an involuntary start, cheeks blanching. But lost deep in reverie, he did not even notice the man was there at all.
The man Jephath was one of those known informally amongst themselves as Mat's Magpies. Many of their number were former members of the Band, since the Band was a polyglot group of men from the Westland nations. Most of them were either former Redarms, or scouts with Shen en Calhar – law-enforcers or law-breakers by inclination. Astute men, in either case.
Officially, these men had been honourably pensioned-off to enjoy a tidy retirement in Ebou Dar. Unofficially, they were the eyes-and-ears of Mat Cauthon, now Prince of the Ravens, husband of the Empress.
The Empire had its own secret police already, the Truthseekers, and a dangerous crowd, but Mat Cauthon just plain felt safer having a few of his ex-soldiers watching his back and why not? He was a trusting lad, too trusting for his own good – or so he'd been once, and so he'd have you believe he was yet. And the Seanchan played at assassination as if it were a sport. He'd made it plain as a pikestaff that it wasn't a game he wanted to play, but even his friends amongst the Seanchan would try it on – and jest about it afterwards if he'd had a close call!
Strictly speaking, it was a capital crime for a Prince of the Ravens to have his own private army. Happily, the Seanchan couldn't move for tangling themselves up in layer upon layer of bureaucracy and functionaries. The Magpies didn't exist on paper, they did not advertise their presence. They did not commit assassinations or other overt acts, so they didn't exist, left no trace. They merely watched and reported – mouth to ear. They were drawn from a cadre of men whose loyalty had been proved beyond question over twenty years, and they were canny men – ex-poachers, horse thieves, black-market racketeers who'd survived a decade of war in the Band. Men who could get things done. Men who missed nothing. If the Empress knew of it, she turned a blind eye.
Oh, and the Magpies had another duty, seldom talked about. There was a list of faces that they were required to memorise, that had been sketched by the Son of Battles himself, drawing upon his Age of Legends memories, and the eyewitness accounts of people who had met them.
It was this task that had set Japheth's face to the pallor of chalk and caused his hands to shake. The faces they were required to memorise comprised the thirteen Forsaken, as they had originally looked, plus any new faces they were known to have worn when reincarnated. Though it was widely believed that none of the Forsaken had survived the Last Battle, Mat had been sceptical. "They are like bloody cockroaches. Show me a body. In fact, burn me, unless they've been killed by Balefire, I won't believe they'll sodding well stay dead! Even if they are, another Forsaken might wear that face. I won't take chances!"
There was a call-box in the main room – a relic of the Age of Legends, a ter'angreal that did not require channelling. Japheth cursed as his unsteady hand fumbled, almost dropping the porcelain receiver as he activated the standing flows by the press of a button, and placed his mouth to the speaking-tube. A call he had hoped he'd never have to make.
He swallowed, trying to work moisture into his throat as the call-box chimed and Vanin's nonchalant, drawling voice greeted him, indolent with good living. "Well? What is it, Japheth?"
"You need to get Lord Mat to activate a damane group!" Japheth managed, gasping as though he'd run a mile. "He's here. Just passed my burning house. Headed into town, in the direction of the Palace and the Travelling Grounds. Protocol Chosen."
There was an alertness in Vanin's voice now. Stern but calm, as if calming a shaken raw recruit. Mother's milk in a cup, but Japheth was grateful for the reassurance! "I need a name before I can authorise. Give me a name, Japheth."
"Him. Ishamael. He's wearing Moridin's face. For the love of the Light, send everybody. Everybody you have."
"Burn me" Vanin swore softly. Fear thickened his voice. "Burn me black and crispy."