Robert Jordan - The Path of Daggers: Book Eight of The Wheel of Time (Book 8)

Praise for THE WHEEL OF TIME

Unlike some of the authors of mega-sagas, Jordan chooses his words with care, creating people and events that have earned him an enormous readership. For sheer imagination and storytelling skill... The Wheel of Time now rivals Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Jordan succeeds in carrying forward his stunning world-building in this detailed story of a struggle between good and evil. The story continues with its myriad threads and subplots, carrying the reader inexorably toward an unpredictable conclusion.

SF Site

The battle scenes have the breathless urgency of firsthand experience, and the... evil laced into the forces of good, the dangers latent in any promised salvation, the sense of the unavoidable onslaught of unpredictable events bear the marks of American national experience during the last three de cades.

The New York Times

His writing is distinguished... by the richness of its fabric, with all the charm and naivet of the Brothers Grimm and the social/moral commentary of Huxleys Brave New World. With his well-fleshed-out characters, dark imagery, comic relief, vivid landscapes, and a fascinating sense of timelessness, Jordan has created a complex literature with a language and reality all its own.

Brewster Milton Robertson, BookPage

Throughout Jordans preeminent high-fantasy saga... the characters (minor as well as major), the world, and the source of powers have remained remarkably rich and consistentno mean feat.... Amid all the Sturm und Drang, however, is a finely tuned comic strain that both leavens the story and adds to its development. A major fantasy epic.

Booklist

Truth is not only stranger, its richer than fiction, but Jordans fictional universe approaches the variety and complexity of the real.... Plotlines [are] strummed with resonating long-wave rhythms something like Beethovens Eroica.

Robert Knox, MPG Newspapers

Adventure and mystery and dark things that move in the nighta combination of Robin Hood and Stephen King that is hard to resist... Furthermore, Jordan makes the reader... put down the book regretting the wait for the next title in the series.

Milwaukee Sentinel

The Wheel of Time [is] rapidly becoming the definitive American fantasy saga. It is a fantasy tale seldom equaled and still less often surpassed in English.

Chicago Sun-Times

Cant recommend starting anywhere but at the beginning, but the volumes only get richer as they go along.

Locus

In the decades since J. R. R. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings trilogy was published, many fantasy writers have tried to capture the spirit of that seminal work. While many have been able to imitate the style, develop a similarly swift and complex plot, and create convincing characters, none had captured the spirit of small men and mighty, struggling against a force of overwhelming evil. Robert Jordan has.

Ottawa Citizen

Magic and pacing and detail and human involvement, with a certain subtlety of presentation and a grand central vision. Robert Jordan... is a lot of writer!

Piers Anthony

Jordan has a powerful vision of good and evilbut what strikes me as most pleasurable... is all the fascinating people moving through a rich and interesting world.

Orson Scott Card

Jordans characters [are] fleshed out with the strengths and weaknesses of real men and women.... Invokes the end-of-the-world milieu of Stephen Kings The Stand.

The Post and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina)

Jordan writes with the stark vision of light and darkness, and sometimes childlike sense of wonder, that permeates J. R. R. Tolkiens works. His style is undebatably his own.

The Pittsburgh Press

Jordans multivolume epic continues to live up to its high ambitions. Complex plotting, an array of strong characters, lavish detail, and a panoramic scope make this series a feast for fantasy aficionados.... Richly detailed and vividly imagined.

Library Journal

Jordans writing is clear and his vision is fascinating, as are the philosophies that run his characters. And speaking of characters, a more interesting bunch I would be hard put to name.

Science Fiction Review

The complex philosophy behind The Wheel of Time series is expounded so simply the reader often gives a start of surprise at returning to the real world. Rands adventures are not finished and neither is this thinking-persons fantasy series.

Brunswick Sentinel (Australia)

Robert Jordan can write one hell of a story.... [He] keeps the suspense acute and the surprises and invention beautifully paced. Compelling. An exhilarating experience.

Isaac Asimovs Science Fiction Magazine

THE WHEEL OF TIME

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

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 PATH OF DAGGERS

Copyright 1998 by The Bandersnatch Group, Inc.

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

All rights reserved.

Frontispiece by Julie Bell
Map 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 978-1-4299-6059-5

First Edition: October 1998
First E-book Edition: May 2010

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Harriet
My light, my life, my heart,
forever

Who would sup with the mighty must climb the path of daggers.

Anonymous notation found inked in the
margin of a manuscript history (believed
to date to the time of Artur Hawkwing)
of the last days of the Tovan Conclaves

On the heights, all paths are paved with daggers.

Old Seanchan saying

E thenielle had seen mountains lower than these misnamed Black Hills, great lopsided heaps of half-buried boulders, webbed with steep twisting passes. A number of those passes would have given a goat pause. You could travel three days through drought-withered forests and brown-grassed meadows without seeing a single sign of human habitation, then suddenly find yourself within half a day of seven or eight tiny villages, all ignorant of the world. The Black Hills were a rugged place for farmers, away from the trade routes, and harsher now than usual. A gaunt leopard that should have vanished at the sight of men watched from a steep slope, not forty paces away, as she rode past with her armored escort. Westward, vultures wheeled patient circles like an omen. Not a cloud marred the blood-red sun, yet there were clouds of a sort. When the warm wind blew, it raised walls of dust.