Free The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan Page A

old to go riding off after a set of pretty eyes on a woman young enough to be his daughter. Maybe his granddaughter.
I am not that big a fool,
he told himself firmly. Caralin could manage things better with him not getting in the way.
    A lanky bay gelding came galloping up the oak lane that led down to the road, and the rider threw himself out of the saddle before the animal came to a full stop; the man half-stumbled but still managed to put fist to heart in a proper salute. Barim Halle, who served under him as a senior squadman years ago, was hard and wiry, with a leather egg for a head and white eyebrows that seemed to be trying to make up for the lack of other hair. “You been recalled to Caemlyn, my Captain-General?” he panted.
    “No,” Bryne said, too sharply. “What do you mean riding in here as though you had Cairhienin cavalry on your tail?” Some of the other horses were frisking, catching the bay’s mood.
    “Never rode that hard unless we was chasing them, my Lord.” Barim’s grin faded when the man saw he was not laughing. “Well, my Lord, I seen the horses, and I reckoned—” The man took another look at his face and cut off that line. “Well, actually, I got some news, too. I been over to New Braem to see my sister, and I heard plenty.”
    New Braem was older than Andor—“old” Braem had been destroyed in the Trolloc Wars, a thousand years before Artur Hawkwing—and it was a good place for news. A middling-sized border town well to the east of his estates, on the road from Caemlyn to Tar Valon. Even with Morgase’s current attitude, the merchants would keep that road busy. “Well, out with it, man. If there’s news, what is it?”
    “Uh, just trying to figure where to start, my Lord.” Barim straightened unconsciously, as though making a report. “Most important, I reckon, they say Tear has fallen. Aielmen took the Stone itself, and the Sword That Cannot Be Touched has flat been touched. Somebody drew it, they say.”
    “An Aielman drew it?” Bryne said incredulously. An Aiel would die before he touched a sword; he had seen it happen, in the Aiel War. Though it was said
Callandor
was not really a sword at all. Whatever that meant.
    “They didn’t say, my Lord. I heard names; Ren somebody or other most often. But they was talking it like fact, not rumor. Like everybody knew.”
    Bryne’s forehead creased in a frown. Worse than troubling, if true. If
Callandor
had been drawn, then the Dragon was Reborn. According to the Prophecies, that meant the Last Battle was coming, the Dark One breaking free. The Dragon Reborn would save the world, so the Prophecies said.And destroy it. This was news enough by itself to have set Halle galloping, if he had thought twice.
    But the leathery fellow was not finished. “Word come down from Tar Valon is near as big, my Lord. They say there’s a new Amyrlin Seat. Elaida, my Lord, who was the Queen’s advisor.” Blinking suddenly, Halle hurried on; Morgase was forbidden ground, and every man on the estate knew it, though Bryne had never said so. “They say the old Amyrlin, Siuan Sanche, was stilled and executed. And Logain died, too. That false Dragon they caught and gentled last year. They talked it like it was true, my Lord. Some of them claimed they was in Tar Valon when it all happened.”
    Logain was no great news, even if he had started a war in Ghealdan by claiming to be the Dragon Reborn. There had been several false Dragons the last few years. He could channel, though; that was a fact. Until the Aes Sedai gentled him. Well, he was not the first man to be caught and gentled, cut off from the Power so he could never channel again. They said men like that, whether false Dragons or just poor fools the Red Ajah took against, never lived long. It was said they gave up wanting to live.
    Siuan Sanche, though, that was news. He had met her once, nearly three years ago. A woman who demanded obedience and gave no reasons. Tough as an old boot, with a