The Golden Fury

Chapter 51

“I can't say that I have ever heard the like of this,” Thom said after a minute. He shook himself and became brusque. “Another time I might even make a story out of it, but right now ... Do you intend to remain here for the rest of the day, Aes Sedai?”

“No,” Moiraine replied, gathering her reins.

A Trolloc horn keened from the south as if to emphasize her word. More horns answered, east and west. The horses whickered and sidled about nervously.

“They have passed the fire,” Lan said calmly. He turned to Moiraine. “You are not strong enough for what you intend, not yet, not without rest. And neither Myrddraal nor Trolloc will enter that place.”

Moiraine raised a hand as if to cut him off, then sighed and let it fall instead. “Very well,” she said irritably. “You are right, I suppose, but I would rather there was any other choice.” She pulled her staff from under the girth strap of her saddle. “Gather in around me, all of you. As close as you can. Closer.”

Aldira urged Cloud nearer the Aes Sedai's mare. At Moiraine's insistence they kept on crowding closer in a circle around her until every horse had its head stretched over the croup or withers of another. Only then was the Aes Sedai satisfied. Then, without speaking, she stood in the stirrups and swung her staff over their heads, stretching to make certain it covered everyone.

Aldira flinched each time the staff passed over him. A tingle ran through him with every pass. He could have followed the staff without seeing it, just by following the shivers as it moved over people. It was no surprise to him that Lan was the only one not affected.

Abruptly Moiraine thrust the staff out to the west. Dead leaves whirled into the air and branches whipped as if a dustdevil ran along the line she pointed to. As the invisible whirlwind vanished from sight she settled back into her saddle with a sigh.

“To the Trollocs,” she said, “our scents and our tracks will seem to follow that. The Myrddraal will see through it in time, but by then ...”

“By then,” Lan said, “we will have lost ourselves.”

“Your staff is very powerful,” Bria said, earning a sniff from Nynaeve.

Moiraine made a clicking sound: “I have told you, child, things do not have power. The One Power comes from the True Source, and only a living mind can wield it. This is not even an angreal, merely an aid to concentration.” Wearily she slid the staff back under her girth strap. “Lan?”

“Follow me,” the Warder said, “and keep quiet. It will ruin everything if the Trollocs hear us.”

He led the way north again, not at the crashing pace they had been making, but rather in the quick walk with which they had traveled the Caemlyn Road. The land continued to flatten, though the forest remained as thick.

Their path was no longer straight, as it had been before, for Lan chose out a route that meandered over hard ground and rocky outcrops, and he no longer let them force their way through tangles of bush, instead taking the time to make their way around. Now and again he dropped to the rear, intently studying the trail they made. If anyone so much as coughed, it drew a sharp grunt from him.

Nynaeve rode beside the Aes Sedai, concern battling dislike on her face. And there was a hint of something more, Aldira thought, almost as if the Wisdom saw some goal in sight. Moiraine's shoulders were slumped, and she held her reins and the saddle with both hands, swaying with every step Aldieb took. It was plain that laying the false trail, small as that might have seemed beside producing an earthquake and a wall of flame, had taken a great deal out of her, strength she no longer had to lose.

Aldira almost wished the horns would start again. At least they were a way of telling how far back the Trollocs were. And the Fades.

He kept looking behind them, and so was not the first to see what lay ahead. When he did, he stared, perplexed. A great, irregular mass stretched off to either side out of sight, in most places as high as the trees that grew right up to it, with even taller spires here and there. Leafless vines and creepers covered it all in thick layers. A cliff! The vines will make climbing easy, but we'll never get the horses up.

Suddenly, as they rode a little closer, he saw a tower. It was clearly a tower, not some kind of rock formation, with an odd, pointed dome on the top. “A city!” he said. And a city wall, and the spires were guard towers on the wall. His jaw dropped. It had to be ten times as big as Baerlon. Fifty times as big.

Mat nodded. “A city,” he agreed. “But what's a city doing in the middle of a forest like this?”

“And without any people,” Perrin said. When they looked at him, he pointed to the wall. “Would people let vines grow over everything like that? You know how creepers can tear down a wall. Look how it's fallen.”

What Aldira saw adjusted itself in his mind again. It was as Perrin said. Under almost every low place in the wall was a brushcovered hill, rubble from the collapsed wall above. No two of the guard towers were the Briae height.

“I wonder what city it was,” Bria mused. “I wonder what happened to it. I don't remember anything from papa's map.”

“It was called Aridhol,” Moiraine said. “In the days of the Trolloc Wars, it was an ally of Manetheren.” Staring at the massive walls, she seemed almost unaware of the others, even of Nynaeve, who supported her in the saddle with a hand on her arm. “Later Aridhol died, and this place was called by another name.”

“What name?” Mat asked.

“Here,” Lan said. He stopped Mandarb in front of what had once been a gate wide enough for fifty men to march through abreast. Only the broken, vineencrusted watchtowers remained; of the gates there was no sign. “We enter here.” Trolloc horns shrieked in the distance. Lan peered in the direction of the sound, then looked at the sun, halfway down toward the treetops in the west. “They have discovered it's a false trail. Come, we must find shelter before dark.”

“What name?” Mat asked again.

Moiraine answered as they rode into the city. “Shadar Logoth,” she said. “It is called Shadar Logoth.”

Chapter 19

Shadow's Waiting

Broken paving stones crunched under the horses' hooves as Lan led the way into the city. The entire city was broken, what Aldira could see of it, and as abandoned as Perrin had said. Not so much as a pigeon moved, and weeds, mainly old and dead, sprouted from cracks in walls as well as pavement. More buildings had roofs fallen in than had them whole. Tumbled walls spilled fans of brick and stone into the streets. Towers stopped, abrupt and jagged, like broken sticks. Uneven rubble hills with a few stunted trees growing on their slopes could have been the remains of palaces or of entire blocks of the city.

Yet what was left standing was enough to take Aldira's breath. The largest building in Baerlon would have vanished in the shadows of almost anything here. Pale marble palaces topped with huge domes met him wherever he looked. Every building appeared to have at least one dome; some had four or five, and each one shaped differently. Long walks lined by columns ran hundreds of paces to towers that seemed to reach the sky. At every intersection stood a bronze fountain, or the alabaster spire of a monument, or a statue on a pedestal. If the fountains were dry, most of the spires toppled, and many of the statues broken, what remained was so greatAnd I thought Baerlon was a city! Burn me, but Thom must have been laughing up his sleeve. Moiraine and Lan, too.

He was so caught up in staring that he was taken by surprise when Lan suddenly stopped in front of a white stone building that had once been twice as big as the Stag and Lion in Baerlon. There was nothing to say what it had been when the city lived and was great, perhaps even an inn. Only a hollow shell remained of the upper floors — the afternoon sky was visible through empty window frames, glass and wood alike long since gone — but the ground floor seemed sound enough.

ee

Moiraine, hands still on the pommel, studied the building intently before nodding. “This will do.”

Lan leaped from his saddle and lifted the Aes Sedai down in his arms. “Bring the horses inside,” he commanded. “Find a room in the back to use for a stable. Move, farmboys. This isn't the village green.” He vanished inside carrying the Aes Sedai.

Nynaeve scrambled down and hurried after him, clutching her bag of herbs and ointments. Bria was right behind her. They left their mounts standing.

“'Bring the horses inside,”' Thom muttered wryly, and puffed out his mustaches. He climbed down, stiff and slow, knuckled his back, and gave a long sigh, then took Aldieb's reins. “Well?” he said, lifting an eyebrow at Aldira and his friends.

-- ee --

They hurried to dismount, and gathered up the rest of the horses. The doorway, without anything to say there had ever been a door in it, was more than big enough to get the animals through, even two abreast.

Inside was a huge room, as wide as the building, with a dirty tile floor and a few ragged wall hangings, faded to a dull brown, that looked as if they would fall apart at a touch. Nothing else. Lan had made a place in the nearest corner for Moiraine with his cloak and hers. Nynaeve, muttering about the dust, knelt beside the Aes Sedai, digging in her bag, which Bria held open.

“I may not like her, it is true,” Nynaeve was saying to the Warder as Aldira, leading Bela and Cloud, came in behind Thom, “but I help anyone who needs my help, whether I like them or not.”

“I made no accusation, Wisdom. I only said, have a care with your herbs. ”

She gave him a look from the corner of her eye. “The fact is, she needs my herbs, and so do you.” Her voice was acerbic to start, and grew more tart as she spoke. “The fact is, she can only do so much, even with her One Power, and she has done about as much as she can without collapsing. The fact is, your sword cannot help her now, Lord of the Seven Towers, but my herbs can.”

Moiraine laid a hand on Lan's arm. “Be at ease, Lan. She means no harm. She simply does not know.” The Warder snorted derisively.

Nynaeve stopped digging in her bag and looked at him, frowning, but it was to Moiraine she spoke. “There are many things I don't know. What thing is this?”

“For one,” Moiraine replied, “all I truly need is a little rest. For another, I agree with you. Your skills and knowledge will be more useful than I thought. Now, if you have something that will help me sleep for an hour and not leave me groggy —?”

“A weak tea of foxtail, marisin, and —”

Aldira missed the last of it as he followed Thom into a room behind the first, a chamber just as big and even emptier. Here was only the dust, thick and undisturbed until they came. Not even the tracks of birds or small animals marked the floor.

Aldira began to unsaddle Bela and Cloud, and Thom, Aldieb and his gelding, and Perrin, his horse and Mandarb. All but Mat. He dropped his reins in the middle of the room. There were two doorways from the room besides the one by which they had entered.

“Alley,” Mat announced, drawing his head back in from the first. They could all see that much from where they were. The second doorway was only a black rectangle in the rear wall. Mat went through slowly, and came out much faster, vigorously brushing old cobwebs out of his hair. “Nothing in there,” he said, giving the alleyway another look.

“You going to take care of your horse?” Perrin said. He had already finished his own and was lifting the saddle from Mandarb. Strangely, the fierceeyed stallion gave him no trouble at all, though he did watch Perrin. “Nobody is going to do it for you.”

Mat gave the alley one last look and went to his horse with a sigh.

As Aldira laid Bela's saddle on the floor, he noticed that Mat had taken on glum stare. His eyes seemed a thousand miles away, and he was moving by rote.

“Are you all right, Mat?” Aldira said. Mat lifted the saddle from his horse, and stood holding it. “Mat? Mat!”

Mat gave a start and almost dropped the saddle. “What? Oh. I ... I was just thinking.”

“Thinking?” Perrin hooted from where he was replacing Mandarb's bridle with a hackamore. “You were asleep.”