A Memory of Light

Curious, she thought. Those eyes had confirmed her suspicions. That would be information she could use. No need to keep watching this sham of a funeral, then.

She walked away through the camp, and there strolled directly into an ambush.

“Saerin,” she said as the women fell in around her. “Yukiri, Lyrelle, Rubinde. What is this?”

“We would like direction,” Rubinde said.

“Direction?” Cadsuane snorted. “Ask the new Amyrlin, once you find some poor woman to put into the position.”

The other women continued to walk with her.

As it hit her, Cadsuane stopped in place.

“Oh, blood and ashes, no!” Cadsuane said, spinning on them. “No, no, no”

The women smiled in an almost predatory way.

“You always talked so wisely to the Dragon Reborn of responsibility,” Yukiri said.

“You speak of how the women of this Age need better training,” Saerin added.

“It is a new Age,” Lyrelle said. “We have many challenges ahead of us . . . and we will need a strong Amyrlin to lead us.”

Cadsuane closed her eyes, groaning.

Rand breathed a sigh of relief as he left Cadsuane behind. She did not raise an alarm, though she had continued to study him as he put distance between them. Glancing over his shoulder, he noticed her walking off with some other Aes Sedai.

She worried him; she probably suspected something he wished she did not. It was better than her raising an alarm, though.

He sighed, fishing in his pocket, where he found a pipe. Thank you, Alivia, for that, he thought, packing it with tabac from a pouch he found in the other pocket. By instinct, he reached for the One Power to light it.

He found nothing. No saidin in the void, nothing. He paused, then smiled and felt an enormous relief. He could not channel. Just to be certain, he tentatively reached for the True Power. Nothing there either.

He regarded his pipe, riding up a little incline to the side of Thakan dar, now covered in plants. No way to light the tabac. He inspected it for a moment in the darkness, then thought of the pipe being lit. And it was.

Rand smiled and turned south. He glanced over his shoulder. Al three women at the pyre had turned from it to look directly at him. He could make them out, though not much else, by the light of the burning body.

I wonder which of them will follow me, he thought, then smiled deeper. Rand al’Thor, you’ve built up quite a swel ed head, haven’t you? Assuming that one, or more, would fol ow.

Maybe none of them would. Or maybe al of them would, in their own time. He found himself chuckling.

Which would he pick? Min .. but no, to leave Aviendha? Elayne. No. He laughed. He couldn’t pick. He had three women in love with him, and didn’t know which he would like to have follow him. Any of them. All of them. Light, man. You’re hopeless. Hopelessly in love with all three, and theres no way out of it.

He heeled the horse into a canter, heading farther south. He had a purse full of coin, a good horse and a strong sword. Laman’s sword, which was a better sword than he’d have wanted.

It might draw attention. It was a true heron-marked sword with a fine blade.

Did Alivia realize how much money she’d given him? She didnt know a thing about coins.

She’d probably stolen the lot of it, so he wasnt just a horsethief. Wel , he’d told her to get him some gold, and she’d done it. He could buy an entire farm in the Two Rivers with what he carried.

South. East or west would do, but he figured he wanted to go someplace away from it al for good. South first, then maybe out west, along the coast. Maybe he could find a ship? There was so much of the world he hadnt seen. He’d experienced a few battles, he’d gotten caught up in a huge Game of Houses. Many things he hadn’t wanted anything to do with.

He’d seen his father’s farm. And palaces. He’d seen a lot of palaces.

He just had not had the leisure to have a real look at much of the world. That wil be new, he thought. Traveling without being chased, or having to rule here or there. Traveling where he could just sleep in a barn in exchange for splitting someone’s firewood. He thought about that, and found himself laughing, riding on south and smoking his impossible pipe. As he did so, a wind rose up around him, around the man who had been called lord, Dragon Reborn, king, killer, lover and friend.

The wind rose high and free, to soar in an open sky with no clouds. It passed over a broken landscape scattered with corpses not yet buried. A landscape covered, at the same time, with celebrations. It tickled the branches of trees that had final y begun to put forth buds.

The wind blew southward, through knotted forests, over shimmering plains and toward lands unexplored. This wind, it was not the ending. There are no endings, and never wil be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time.