Chapter 49: The Hands That Guide the Blade
Moridin, shaken, looked down upon the inert body of his fallen foe.
War was a business of sudden strokes. Of unforeseen opportunities. The balance of a sword's edge. Or the edge of a coin, poised to fall. But what he and Lews Therin had owned a gravitas beyond chance. An interference pattern, splinters of light forced through narrow apertures, cohering into sudden meaning. Light and darkness in a deadly dance. Ta'veren against .. whatever he had been tempered into. A Thakan'dar blade.
But he could not have foreseen this eventuality. Mere chance had no place here. It was an interloper, stealing the meaning from this moment, relegating it to the tawdry inelegance of burlesque.
Get up, Lews Therin! he willed the Dragon Reborn.
But Rand al'Thor remained unmoved by his pleas.
The Wheel wove as it would.
A long second passed, before Moridin stepped forward, freed from the Aiel girl's bonds of Air. His legs were a trifle unsteady, somewhat numbed still by the forkroot he had been forced to ingest, but his head was clearing. Most of that was due to that in horribly .. personal .. invasion perpetrated by the Malkieri queen. What had she done?
I will mangle you, soul and body, he promised her, looking down at the pregnant woman where she lay on her side.
The thought felt … stilted. Mere force of habit rather than the barest expression of his rage. With a sense of dislocated numbness, Moridin realised the thought didn't match the distracted irritation he felt looking at the helpless woman .. what was her name again? Nynaeve. What had come over him?
A thrill of fear chased him. Had they stilled him? No. Moridin could still see saidin, golden bounty beckoning, elusive yet because of the residue of the brew in his bloodstream.
Judging from the swift recovery he was making, it could not be long – a minute or two, no more – before he could begin to use the Power. Not well, and not in any great quantities – not unless he wanted to chance burning the ability out of himself. Enough of the Power to wall himself within the cell with Air for his own protection – the irony of it! – whilst he recovered enough strength for a Gateway.
He looked down again at Lews Therin, feeling the familiar rage return undimmed. That was a relief. What would he be without his hate?
The Void's comforting, deathless stillness yet eluded him. A weapon as keen as saidin. Moridin eyed the sword at the Dragon's hip covetously. Without the ko'di's embrace, the blade was only half a weapon. Sometimes, you had to make do with what you had.
His graceful stoop to pluck the weapon from his fallen foe was arrested by the stout iron chain. Moridin didn't bother to test its strength. Unless saidin came to him swiftly, he would be held fast. Long enough for Aes Sedai and Aiel wilders to come and shield him again.
Sweat ran down his back.
Trying to find the Oneness was disorienting. Frustrating. Even in the moments he briefly found purchase, it was like trying to stand upright upon black ice. A dozen times, he found his footing, only to fall hard upon his face.
Moridin could hear shouts, now. The thunder of running feet, pounding, clanking. Malkieri armsmen. And he marked another footfall, as at his thirteenth essay, he finally found his feet in the Void.
With the Oneness attenuating his senses, Moridin sensed the true danger. A soft, almost silent cadence, feet gliding, hardly touching the stone flags of the floor. A blademaster, in full flight. The Leopard Courses. Moridin could feel the force ofthis man's intent, like a physical blow, presaging his onset. Focused. Determined. Dedicated.
He had seconds to free himself, or he would die where he stood.
Moridin found saidin like a man blundering in the dark falling into an icy river. Seized a handful of threads of what he hoped were Fire, and shaped a crude knife. Brought it down blind upon the shackles that chained his wrists behind his back, and released the Power before the chaotic, rampant surges of the Power scoured him away.
The cell door burst open.
Moridin swept up Justice from Rand al'Thor's hip, surging forward in Moon Rises Over Water. The steel-jacketed, bare-headed Malkieri soldier was too slow to the parry, and the Power-forged steel bit deep and true under the Borderlander's armpit.
With a choking cry, the soldier – he was dead, but didn't know it yet – fell back, and Moridin raised a bare foot, planting a hard side-kick into the centre of his breastplate, hurling him out into the corridor to carom off the far wall.
Moridin positioned himself optimally – not in the doorway, where he could be picked off by blows from either side – but a pace behind it. A place where they could only come at him one at a time, and he had the freedom to use his sword. And where the assailant would have to duck under the low door lintel to test his steel…
The next man swayed aside with the conviction of grace, avoiding the dying man-at-arms and the blinding spray of arterial blood jetting from his armpit, flowing under the low lintel of the door in a raking low attack. The River Undercuts the anticipating the opening gambit, Moridin was taken aback by the tall blademaster's fluid speed.
Their blades bound. The man was old. Old like winter. Grim and grey. And he had a wrist of iron. He drove Moridin's blade aside in a shower of sparks, like a sword against the grindstone, trying to pinion the Forsaken's steel against the stone of the doorframe. Would have succeeded, but Moridin let his wrist flow like water, disengaging, forced to give a grudging measure.
The bare-chested man negotiated the bottleneck of the doorway in a sidelong stride to accommodate his broad-shouldered frame, taking the fight to the Betrayer of Hope.
Moridin was outmatched. He knew it from the impetuous onset. Death would find him at the blade of this stern old man. It might have been different, so very different, had his head not been clouded with forkroot, sapping his speed and leaving his body logy, unresponsive. Worse, the toxin restricted his knowledge of the Oneness to a casual handshake rather than lover's embrace.
It was what it was, Moridin told himself. He bared his teeth. Seeing the silvery marks of wounds honourably given on his adversary's robust, lean frame, he resolved to add one of his own. He could do that much. If he fought hard.
Moridin kept his blade low, inviting an attack in the high line. The cold-eyed Malkieri ghosted in, blade seeking his heart. Eschewing a parry, the Forsaken uncoiled like a striking blacklance from underfoot. The Silverpike Leaps. The blademaster – for the first time in the duel – was forced into a parry. The Courtier Taps His Fan.
The Betrayer of Hope rolled his wrist. The Grapevine Twines opening a shallow cut upon the other man's cheek. He felt a brief, savage elation. First blood.
Nary a flicker of doubt showed in the other man's eyes. He took the wound – serene as ever, disengaged, ceded half a yard. Poised, despite the controlled fury of his assault. Such cold eyes.
This man was familiar, Moridin realised. He had something of the look of a man who had, for a time, been his tool. Luc. An ingraft of the Dark One's from two different trees. This man was somewhat alike, if nobler in bearing. A likeness carved enduring in granite.
Moridin raised his sword in brief salute to the King of Malkier, an enigmatic smile chasing his lips. They had taken each other's measure. The end was written, now.
Lan's eyes weighed Moridin, and the sword he carried. "Justice has been long from you, Betrayer of Hope" he spoke, his deep voice a death-knell. "Yet it has found you in the end."
And here, at the end of hope, Moridin saw something he could use, as the King's eyes left his for the barest instant, falling in agony upon Nynaeve's still form where she lay. Of course, Moridin realised. Take her hostage. She is your way out of here…
No.
He didn't have to molest her. He was free of the consuming need to kill. He could choose. Life, or Death. Not simply Death deferred, an addiction held at bay by the force of his will.
The clarity of the thought stilled his mind. A perfect moment of contemplation. Saidin came in all its might, responding to his need. Moridin glanced meaningfully towards the helpless woman, showing Lan the subtle tells of his readiness to spring. In the same moment, he spun his web, not knowing what he wove, letting instinct guide him.
Death or Life?
Lan leapt, springing to interpose himself between the Forsaken and his wife.
And Moridin sprung his snare. Not Balefire or Lightning, or Fire. He could even, in that frozen instant, have cut out Lan's heart with his sword, as the King's desperate intervention left him momentarily vulnerable. He did not do that either. Nor did he subjugate his adversary with Compulsion.
Instead, Moridin wove Air, snapping the flows into being like a man cracking a whip, respecting the celerity and clarity of thought of his erstwhile opponent.
Caught in invisible bonds, the face of the Malkieri king face showed fear for the first time. Fear mastered, and fear for another, not himself, but fear nonetheless. Another time, Moridin might have gloried in it. To bring such strength low. A high tower, crashing down.
Lan met his eyes, resolute rather than defiant with Nynaeve's life in the balance. "We are pledged against the Shadow," he spoke, a whisper that carried like a bannerman's cry. "From first cry to final breath. Every man, woman and child, and the very stones of Malkier itself. We cannot yield. So do what you must."
Moridin only nodded. Spoke the words that scraped his soul raw with their truth. "I hate both Dark and Light," he told the Man Alone. "I will never again serve the Shadow."
For the first time, Lan's eyes evinced surprise. "Hile, enemy," he replied, after grave contemplation.
There was no forgiveness in his gaze. There could not be. Not after this day, and all the days that had gone before. But there was a trace of acknowledgement. "Then may the Mother welcome you home. Soon. Your days have been too long upon the earth."
Moridin looked down, and saw something he had overlooked. Spilt from Rand's grasp, it lay on the floor. Inconsequential. Monumental. A dark promise. A thing he had thought lost, long coveted. The Ring of Tamyrlin.
He stooped. Picked it up. Felt the world – all the worlds – shudder. He closed his fist upon it.
This is mine. Another truth.
He looked back at the Dragon Reborn. One day, he promised, we will have an accounting. For all our debts, old and new. But not today. Not like this.
Moridin wove a Gateway, behind him, and stepped backwards through it with infinite care, at the same moment loosing Lan from his bonds. He kept his sword out in readiness, the blade as much a part of him as the hand that held it, anticipating another attack from the Malkieri swordsman, as he allowed the portal to snap shut.
The Gateway refused to fully close, the empty air in front of him punctured by the tip of Lan's sword. With dogged determination, the King of Malkier sought to pry the doorway open, the Power-wrought steel refusing to be cut by the sharp edge of the Gateway. Trying to come after him, to hew him down, whether he held the Power or no.
Brave. But unwise.
Once upon a time, Moridin would have mocked the man's risible effort. Let him come, if he would, and slay him cruelly beyond the threshold with the One Power.
Instead, Elan Morin deliberately cut his palm upon the point of Lan's sword, before gently pushing the blade back through the aperture with a pressure of Air, allowing his Gateway to close. An acknowledgement.
Nynaeve groaned, and the world swam. Where am I? was her first thought, as she blinked fitfully, eyes crossing at the brightness of candle-light.
She found herself in Lan's arms. A good start. Bonds of steel that held her as gently as if she were Sea Folk porcelain. Then she remembered. Oh Light! My child…. Her hands went to her swollen belly, as her heart palpitated in sudden alarm.
Never had she been so relieved to feel her daughter kick. Strong, and healthy. It assuaged her fears, or at least held them in abeyance awhile. She would still not be able to be free of the anxiety that clenched her heart until she was Delved. And not by this talented firebrand of an Aiel child, but by a real Aes Sedai…..
Nynaeve, get a grip! she chided herself. That must be the first time, ever, that she had been reduced to deferring to Aes Sedai expertise, in preference to turning to Wisdom-trained Healers like Egwene….!
Oh, Egwene. A grief that never lost its power to surprise her. Time did not heal all. Old scars that Healing would not wash away. Nor would she wish it any different.
My little one, Nynaeve spoke to the daughter she bore. I think I will name you Egwene. Would you like that? She was answered by a boisterous kick. I guess that settles it. I'll just have to tell Lan.
It was good to be alive. She and Lan and little Egwene. She felt grateful. That was the best she could possibly have expected after being at Moridin's mercy. And Rand and young Shaiel, of course. What a cracking apprentice Wisdom that young lass would make! With the proper guidance, of course. A firm hand to settle her down…
Funnily enough, Nynaeve also felt the accustomed warm glow that spreads deep inside at the completion of an important task. Could she hope that her … Healing … had against all probability, worked?
Somehow, she cared, as deeply and desperately as she ever had that her Healing had taken on that rotten, blighted, bloody awful Forsaken as much as for the most innocent of her charges. It must be my daughter, Nynaeve told herself, trying to dismiss the feeling as a megrim brought on by pregnancy. But the rightness of the emotion remained. Stubborn as a Two Rivers briar.
Somehow the daunting thunderhead of dark might arrayed against them was streaked with grey, still turbulent and violent, but lessened. Changed. …
Lan frowned, brushing her hair back from her brow with a quizzical expression. "A penny for your thoughts, mashaira."
"I'm afraid they aren't worth a ha'pennyworth, carneira…. Oh. You seem to have cut yourself shaving, again. You have a perfectly decent straight-razor. Why you feel the need to use a Forsaken's sword is quite beyond me, I am sure. Good job I like my man rugged….."
"Wife, dearest.." Lan laughed gruffly, "I'm afraid you're babbling!"
Her eyes bulged in indignation. "I never…"
She was interrupted by a harrumph that was rather insistent. Not to mention a trifle embarrassed to boot. "Good to see you two are alive and well," Rand interjected impatiently. "But Moridin is gone, and he has taken the sa'angreal with him. We – I – need to get after him, before the trail runs cold…."
"Rand," Nynaeve stopped him with an upraised palm. "Let him go. I have a feeling. Almost a Foretelling, telling me not to seek him out, or seek to reclaim the Ring. It is gone. You should be glad. Relieved. It was never meant for your hand."
To Rand's open-mouthed shock, Lan concurred. "I deem that man to be double-minded and dangerous. But he forswore the Shadow, here, when he had us at his mercy. And he spared our lives. Even you, whom he hates above all else.
I feel that other hands than ours guide the blade. One who oft chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise." Lan favoured Rand with a grim chuckle. "Just as unlikely, in its fashion, as a hay-haired Two Rivers farmboy becoming the man to seal the Dark One in his tomb.
Do not seek this man Elan Morin out." He paused for emphasis, before fixing Rand with the same direct, uncompromising look he had given him so often when they were master and pupil, all levity banished. "But, if he chooses to find you instead, kill him."
