Chapter 10

The Light Descends

The mountain peaks disappeared into the clouds above as I navigated the high valleys. Melted snow ran down the slopes and gathered into streams that burbled their way west. We'd left Baerlon a few hours ago and most of that time had been spent getting far enough away so I could transform.

Crossing the Mountains of Mist themselves, usually a dangerous journey that could take as much as two weeks if the weather didn't cooperate, only took an hour by wing. Rounding another peak I saw the sun reflecting off a glittering lake.

"Blood and ashes, it's cold. Aren't you cold?"

I glanced down and back at Gemiad huddled in my cupped hands. "Not in particular. Don't worry, we're about to descend."

"R-right." Paying closer attention, I could actually feel her shiver in my grasp.

I set in my descent as quickly as I could. Only to almost crash when my eyes caught the hint of smoke on the northern shore of the lake. A small settlement was there that I didn't remember being on any map.

I turned south, Gemiad squawking as I gave her no warning of the sudden change in direction. "What's going on?"

"People are living down there. I can see boats." There had been a road on the map, joining Katar and the lake. But I'd thought it a remnant from an earlier century when these lands were more densely populated.

"There are? Have they seen us?"

I studied the wooden craft that appeared to be as small as an ant from this far up. "Hard to say from this distance. Nobody's going anywhere in a hurry. But that doesn't say much."

Gemiad shifted around in my hands. "Are we going to try and approach the village from the east or the south?"

"We're bypassing it altogether. They're too isolated to have heard much more than Baerlon. I'll turn east again once we reach the southern end of the lake. I don't intend to land until we've passed over Paerish Swar." That vast forest ran along the entire eastern shore of the lake and according to the map I'd studied it would take perhaps three hours of straight flying to cross it.

No large cities near it, but after that surprise hamlet I had to consider other such settlements might be dotted around Paerish Swar. I didn't have that much intelligence on these lands, from either the people in this world or the books I'd read.

"But we'll do it closer to the ground, right?"

I laughed. "Already tired of the view?"

"No. But I've gotten my belly full of bone-freezing cold this winter."

"Don't worry. I can already feel the rising heat from the ground. I think you'll be pining for a cold breeze in a month or so."

"You think that will be our only worry?"

I remained silent for a moment. "No. I think we'll forget all about the weather soon enough. I think something else will concern us."

VVVV

Paerish Swar was days behind us now as we traveled over Almoth Plain. It wasn't just a flat expanse of grass as far as the eye could see, whatever the name suggested. No vast forest, but there were scattered clumps of trees as well as low hills and shallow canyons left by ancient rivers.

It hid us, but it also meant that a group of horsemen could surprise us easily. It had almost happened yesterday. Luckily we were still breaking up camp, hidden in one of those copses when they came by.

One moment everything had been quiet, just a few birds warbling as the sun warmed the land. Then thundering hooves as over a hundred armed men crested one ridge, crossed the dip about a kilometer north of us, and continued to the west. We both froze, but they didn't spot us.

In what might not be our best idea we'd decided to follow them. Neither Gemiad nor I were expert trackers, but the earth was soft and several hundred horses churned the soil enough that even I could spot it.

"I think I can see smoke up ahead," Gemaid said.

I glanced at the sun and shifted my pack a little. "Don't think they've set up camp already, it's barely past midday."

"A village then." Her walking stick thumbed the earth as a soft breeze rustled the long grass. "They might have stopped there. But what do we do if we do catch up to those riders?"

I gave her a faint smile. "Don't worry, I'm not planning on simply walking up to them and asking if they'll sit down for an interview. We'll observe from a distance first." Though what if we caught them committing some atrocity? I couldn't just sit back and watch.

But Gemiad shook her head. "If they have someone on look-out, they'll spot us first. What do we do then? I mean, you can fly away, I suppose."

I stopped, my shoulders sagged as I let out a sigh. Gemiad came to a halt besides me and I met her gaze. "If it comes to it, I can keep us safe. But I'd have to kill every single one of them." Gemiad reared back and I looked away. "I'll have no choice," I told myself. "I can't have word of me get out. Not yet."

Right now, my biggest advantage was that nobody truly knew what I was or what I could do. If Ba'alzamon spied on Rand's dreams he might learn a few things, but not much. And I thought I recalled he'd shown ignorance of matters Rand knew in the books so how much spying did he really do?

"Ron, what would you have done if I hadn't agreed to keep your secrets?"

"Hmm? I … don't know. Come up with a way to remove the memories, maybe. Or kept you at the Shadowed Mansion until it all came out."

Gemiad's hand slid down her walking stick as she shook her head. "You could do that? Remove a memory?"

"Maybe," I stressed. "I should be able to create a potion that would have such an effect." Through Artifice I could create any low magical item, such as the Translation Glasses. Potions were the easiest and a forget potion shouldn't be a problem, especially if it just had to blank out a day or two. "But trying to do that for a hundred people or more may be beyond me." It would take a lot of Dominion, probably more than I had.

"And if the people we're following truly would kill a couple of harmless travelers," I continued, "I'm not sure they're the kind of people I should let go on their merry way." Boldly said, but could I kill people who weren't a threat to me or mine? Who were a theoretical threat to people I neither knew nor had heard of?

"I suppose not," Gemiad said before resuming our journey.

As we walked, the plume of smoke grew bigger. I got a bad feeling about that and it persisted through the hours it took us to reach the final ridge. By then, we could smell it as well.

Clambering up the slope on all fours we stuck just enough of our heads up to peer over the lip of the small hill. The grass here had been eaten short by something, sheep if I had my guess. I could see a flock of them to our left bleating mournfully around the bodies of several of their members.

If only it was just slaughtered sheep that I saw. Some of them had made it a distance before they'd been cut down, but most of the bodies lay near the houses. Some of them were quite small.

"By the Light," Gemiad said in a hushed voice. "By the Light."

Not every house was burning, just the biggest one and those near it. But I saw nobody trying to put it out, no movement at all. Nothing but sheep and the wind. The horsemen, the raiders, they'd come in, slaughtered and burned, then moved on.

I frowned. Something was off here. "I'm going to see if anybody survived." I got up and jumped more than ran down the hill and towards the tiny village. There were a few vegetable gardens on this side of the village, most of the fields lay on the other side of the village stretching to the northwest.

Besides the big building there were about twelve houses, maybe a few more if the smaller ones weren't all sheds or barns. Say each house had on average six people in it. Husband and wive, a couple of kids, a grandparent or two, maybe an unmarried sibling of one of the adults or another couple that couldn't yet afford a house. Six minimum for a household. Then there should have been 80 people or more living here.

I concentrated on that math as I passed the first bodies and made my way to the nearest house. The door moved in the wind with a soft creak, the hinges had been kept oiled. I could smell them before I saw them, blood and other fluids leaking from the dead.

I stood there on the threshold, just staring at them. One of them stared back at me. She was so young. So terrified in her final moments.

Gemiad gasped behind me and I whirled around. "I thought I told you to stay back?"

"You told me you were going to investigate on your own. Didn't say anything about me," she said, her eyes didn't stray from the wall next to me. But there was a green tint to her cheeks. "And if you think I'll stay up there alone where I can get jumped by the people that did this, you can think again." Her gaze wavered, before she focused it back on the unmarked wall. "What are you looking for?"

"I'm not sure." I took another look inside, forcing myself not to stare at the bodies again. They'd been people not so long ago. But I couldn't dwell on that. Not here, not now. There were signs of struggle, some loose items like bowls and cups were strewn across the floor. But nothing more.

I headed over to the next house, that one had its door in pieces. Someone had tried to keep it shut and so the attackers had hacked their way in. But inside was much the same story as the first house. "I think I know what I was looking for. It looks like they came in, killed everybody, set fire to some of the buildings, then left. I can't see any sign they looked for valuables."

When Gemaid didn't respond I looked for her and found she'd wandered off about ten meters and was staring at the big building still burning merrily. "Gemiad?" I went over to her and found she wasn't actually looking at the fire, but at something planted in the village green.

A banner of green and blue stripes with an armored fist holding a sword on it and this was tied to a spear driven into the earth. Gemiad shook her head. "I heard you. You don't think bandits did this. But that's the flag of Arad Doman. You think Domani soldiers did this?"

"I don't know." It didn't sit right. The fighting on Almoth Plain was supposed to start after Rand became known as the Dragon Reborn. Before that, it was the Seanchan coming up Toman Head. Was I forgetting something? "Arad Doman doesn't have an army, not like Andor. The nobles and guilds have levies, but they fight under their own banner. And we're on the southern end of the plain, those people we followed didn't come from the north."

Another thought occurred to me. If this was about territory, why kill everybody? Arad Doman and Tarabon had been fighting over this area for centuries, but that was about control. The land was valuable because there were people there to work it and pay taxes. A dead village did nobody any good.

"But who else would do this and then put that banner up?"

"They're certainly putting the blame on Arad Doman." And this far south, Tarabon was bound to find out about it. We weren't all that far from the recognized borders of that country. This whole situation, I was forgetting something. I was sure of it.

"Then we need to find out who did this and make sure everybody finds out," Gemiad said as she looked around the dead and burning village. "They won't get away with this."

I nodded. "Let's make sure of that."

Despite our fine words, however, we couldn't pick up their trail again. No dust cloud on the horizon and there were several hard-packed dirt roads that lead out of the village. They could have taken any one of them, no way to tell.

But we knew this couldn't be an isolated incident. The rumors had been spreading for longer than that and I now knew they couldn't all have been garbled news about the Seanchan. So we left the village behind us and headed northwest, deeper into Almoth Plain.