Robert Jordan - The Dragon Reborn: Book Three of The Wheel of Time

Praise for
T HE W HEEL OF T IME

Book Three

THE DRAGON REBORN

An exciting, well-written adventure. Jordan offers distinctive heroes and themes, including an interesting look at relations between the sexes.

Milwaukee Sentinel

Jordans writing is clear and his vision is fascinating, as are the philosophies which run his characters. And speaking of characters, a more interesting bunch I would be hard put to name.... The Dragon Reborn will be one of the books to read this year.

Steven Sawicki, Science Fiction Review

Jordan has created a world where everything fits together... his characters follow their own personalities rather than types, and his settings are presented with detail that belief is easy.

Lexington Herald-Leader

Robert Jordans latest book is a fine one, filled with the cleverness, imagination, and wonderfully drawn characters expected.... Jordans skill as a writer doubles the pleasure.... The Dragon Reborn is on a far higher plane than most fantasy novels.

The Post and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina)

[The Wheel of Time] continues to exhibit a freshness that makes it a welcome addition to any... fantasy collection.

Library Journal

A complex tapestry of fascinating characters, descriptive details, and events. I highly recommend this series to anyone who loves epic fantasy.

Carol Lynn Ukockis, Galactic Dispatch

T HE W HEEL OF T IME

by Robert Jordan

The Eye of the World
The Great Hunt
The Dragon Reborn
The Shadow Rising
The Fires of Heaven
Lord of Chaos
A Crown of Swords
The Path of Daggers
Winters Heart
Crossroads of Twilight
Knife of Dreams

by Robert Jordan
and Brandon Sanderson

The Gathering Storm

ROBERT JORDAN

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE DRAGON REBORN

Copyright 1991 by The Bandersnatch Group, Inc.

The phrases The Wheel of Time and The Dragon Reborn, and the snake-wheel symbol, are trademarks of Robert Jordan.

All rights reserved.

Frontispiece by Donato Giancola
Maps by Ellisa Mitchell
Interior illustrations by Matthew C. Nielsen and Ellisa Mitchell

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-1-4299-6016-8

First Edition: November 1991
First E-book Edition: December 2009

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dedicated to
James Oliver Rigney, Sr.
(19201988)

He taught me always to follow the dream,
and when I caught it, to live it.

And his paths shall be many, and who shall know his name, for he shall be born among us many times, in many guises, as he has been and ever will be, time without end. His coming shall be like the sharp edge of the plow, turning our lives in furrows from out of the places where we lie in our silence. The breaker of bonds; the forger of chains. The maker of futures; the unshaper of destiny.

from Commentaries on the Prophecies of the Dragon,

by Jurith Dorine, Right Hand to the

Queen of Almoren, 742 AB, the Third Age

P edron Nialls aged gaze wandered about his private audience chamber, but dark eyes hazed with thought saw nothing. Tattered wall hangings, once battle banners of the enemies of his youth, faded into dark wood paneling laid over stone walls, thick even here in the heart of the Fortress of the Light. The single chair in the roomheavy, high-backed, and almost a thronewas as invisible to him as the few scattered tables that completed the furnishings. Even the white-cloaked man kneeling with barely restrained eagerness on the great sunburst set in the wide planks of the floor had vanished from Nialls mind for the moment, though few would have dismissed him so lightly.

Jaret Byar had been given time to wash before being brought to Niall, but both his helmet and his breastplate were dulled from travel and battered from use. Dark, deep-set eyes shone with a feverish, urgent light in a face that seemed to have had every spare scrap of flesh boiled away. He wore no swordnone was allowed in Nialls presencebut he seemed poised on the edge of violence, like a hound awaiting the loosing of the leash.

Twin fires on long hearths at either end of the room held off the late winter cold. It was a plain, soldiers room, really, everything well made but nothing extravagantexcept for the sunburst. Furnishings came to the audience chamber of the Lord Captain Commander of the Children of the Light with the man who rose to the office; the flaring sun of coin gold had been worn smooth by generations of petitioners, replaced and worn smooth again. Gold enough to buy any estate in Amadicia, and the patent of nobility to go with it. For ten years Niall had walked across that gold and never thought of it twice, any more than he thought of the sunburst embroidered across the chest of his white tunic. Gold held little interest for Pedron Niall.

Eventually his eyes went back to the table next to him, covered with maps and scattered letters and reports. Three loosely rolled drawings lay among the jumble. He took one up reluctantly. It did not matter which; all depicted the same scene, though by different hands.

Nialls skin was as thin as scraped parchment, drawn tight by age over a body that seemed all bone and sinew, but there was nothing of frailty about him. No man held Nialls office before his hair was white, nor did any man softer than the stones of the Dome of Truth. Still, he was suddenly aware of the tendon-ridged back of the hand holding the drawing, aware of the need for haste. Time was growing short. His time was growing short. It had to be enough. He had to make it enough.

He made himself unroll the thick parchment halfway, just enough to see the face that interested him. The chalks were a little smudged from travel in saddlebags, but the face was clear. A gray-eyed youth with reddish hair. He looked tall, but it was hard to say for certain. Aside from the hair and the eyes, he could have been set down in any town without exciting comment.

This... this boy has proclaimed himself the Dragon Reborn? Niall muttered.

The Dragon. The name made him feel the chills of winter and age. The name borne by Lews Therin Telamon when he doomed every man who could channel the One Power, then or ever after, to insanity and death, himself among them. It was more than three thousand years since Aes Sedai pride and the War of the Shadow had brought an end to the Age of Legends. Three thousand years, but prophecy and legend helped men rememberthe heart of it, at least, if the details were gone. Lews Therin Kinslayer. The man who had begun the Breaking of the World, when madmen who could tap the power that drove the universe leveled mountains and sank ancient lands beneath the seas, when the whole face of the earth had been changed and all who survived fled like beasts before a wildfire. It had not ended until the last male Aes Sedai lay dead, and a scattered human race could begin trying to rebuild from the rubblewhere even rubble remained. It was burned into memory by the stories mothers told children. And prophecy said the Dragon would be born again.