The Gathering Storm - By Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson Page 0,283

brief moment of handtalk; then one loped ahead and the other tailed Rand as he marched down the hallway. Min hurried up beside him, heart thumping, her boots loud on the floorboards. He had rushed off like this to fight Forsaken before, but usually he took more time to plan. He’d maneuvered Sammael for months before striking at Illian. He’d had barely a single day to decide what do with Graendal!

Min checked her knives, making certain they were secure in her sleeves, but it was just a nervous habit. Rand reached the end of the hallway, then strode down the stairs, his face still calm, his step quick but not hurried. Yet he seemed like a thunderstorm, contained and wrapped up, somehow bound and channeled toward a single goal. How she wished he’d just explode and lose his temper, the way he used to! He’d exasperated her then, but he’d never frightened her. Not as he did now, with those icy eyes she couldn’t read, that aura of danger. Since the incident with Semirhage, he spoke of doing “whatever he had to” regardless of cost, and she knew that he must seethe at having failed to convince the Seanchan to ally with him. What would that combination of failure and determination lead him to do?

At the bottom of the wide staircase, Rand spoke to a servant. “Fetch for me Nynaeve Sedai and Lord Ramshalan. Bring them to the sitting room.”

Lord Ramshalan? The overstuffed man from Lady Chadmar’s former circle? “Rand,” Min said quietly, reaching the bottom of the stairs, “what are you planning?”

He said nothing. He strode through the white marble entryway, entering the sitting room, which was decorated in deep reds to contrast with the white floor. He did not sit, but remained standing with his arms behind his back, studying the map of Arad Doman he’d ordered placed on the wall. The aged map hung where a fine oil painting once had, and seemed completely out of place in the room.

On the map, there was a black ink mark at the edge of a small lake to the southeast. Rand had placed it there the morning after Kerb died. It marked Natrin’s Barrow.

“It was a fort, once,” Rand said absently.

“The city where Graendal is hiding?” Min said, walking up beside him.

He shook his head. “It’s not a city. I’ve sent scouts. It’s just a solitary structure, built long ago to watch the Mountains of Mist and guard against incursion through the passes by Manetheren. It hasn’t been used for military purposes since the Trolloc Wars; there’s hardly need to worry about invasion from Two Rivers people who don’t even remember the name Manetheren.”

Min nodded. “Though, Arad Doman did get invaded by a shepherd from the Two Rivers.”

Once that would have made him smile. She kept forgetting that he didn’t do that anymore.

“A few centuries back,” Rand said, eyes narrowed in thought, “the king of Arad Doman seized Natrin’s Barrow back in the name of the throne. For some time before, it had been occupied by a minor noble family from Toman Head who had been trying to set up their own new kingdom. That happens on Almoth Plain occasionally. The Domani king liked the location, and used the fortress as a palace instead.

“He spent a great deal of time there, so much, in fact, that several of his merchant enemies gained too much power in Bandar Eban. The King fell, but his successors also used the fortress, and it became a popular retreat for the Crown when the King needed relaxation. The practice dwindled during the last hundred years or so, until it was granted to a distant cousin of the King about fifty years back. Their family has used it ever since. Among the general Domani populace, Natrin’s Barrow has been largely forgotten.”

“Except by Alsalam?” Min asked.

Rand shook his head. “No. I doubt he knew of it at all. I learned this history from the royal archivist, who had to search for hours to locate the name of the family using the place. There has been no contact with them for months, though they used to visit towns on occasion. The few farmsteaders in the area say that someone new seems to be living in the palace, though nobody knows where the former owner went. They seem surprised that they’ve never thought about how odd that is.”

He eyed her. “This is exactly the sort of location Graendal would choose as her center of power. It’s a jewel—a