Chapter 15

Strangers and Friends


Sunlight streaming across his narrow bed finally woke Rand out of a deep but restless sleep. He pulled a
pillow over his head, but it did not really shut out the light, and he did not really want to go back to
sleep. There had been more dreams after the first. He could not remember any but the 'first, but he knew
he wanted no more.
With a sigh he tossed the pillow aside and sat up, wincing as he stretched. All the, aches he thought had
soaked out in the bath were back. And his head still hurt, too. It did not surprise him. A dream like that was
enough to give anybody a head- ache. The others had already faded, but not that one.
The other beds were empty. Light poured in through the window at a steep angle; the sun stood well
above the horizon. By this hour back on the farm he would have already fixed something to eat and been well
into his chores. He scrambled out of bed, muttering angrily to himself. A city to see, and they did not even wake
him. At least someone had seen that there was water in the pitcher, and still warm, too.
He washed and dressed quickly, hesitating a moment over Tam's sword. Lan and Thom had left their
saddlebags and blanketrolls behind in the room, of course, but the Warder's sword was nowhere to be seen. Lan
had worn his sword in Emond's Field even before there was any hint of trouble. He thought he would take the
older man's lead. Telling himself it was not because he had often daydreamed about walking the streets of a real
city wearing a sword, he belted it on and tossed his cloak over his shoulder like a sack.
Taking the stairs two at a time, he hurried down to the kitchen. That was surely the quickest place to get
a bite, and on his only day in Baerlon he did not want to waste any more time than he already had. Blood and
ashes, but they could have waked me.
Master Fitch was in the kitchen, confronting a plump woman whose arms were covered in flour to her
elbows, obviously the cook. Rather, she was confronting him, shaking her finger under his nose. Serving maids
and scullions, potboys and spitboys, hurried about their tasks, elaborately ignoring what was going on in front
of them.
"…my Cirri is a good cat," the cook was saying sharply, "and I won't hear a word otherwise, do you
hear? Complaining about him doing his job too well, that's what you're doing, if you ask me."
"I have had complaints," Master Fitch managed to get in. "Complaints, mistress. Half the guests-"
"I won't hear of it. I just won't hear of it. If they want to complain about my cat, let them do the cooking.
My poor old cat, who's just doing his job, and me, we'll go somewhere where we're appreciated, see if we
don't." She untied her apron and started to lift it over her head.
"No!" Master Fitch yelped, and leaped to stop her. They danced in a circle with the cook trying to take
her apron off and the innkeeper trying to put it back on her. "No, Sara," he panted. "There's no need for this. No
need, I say! What would I do without you? Cirri's a fine cat. An excellent cat. He's the best cat in Baerlon. If
anyone else complains, I'll tell them to be thankful the cat is doing his job. Yes, thankful. You mustn't go. Sara?
Sara!"
The cook stopped their circling and managed to snatch her apron free of him. "All right, then. All right."
Clutching the apron in both hands, she still did not retie it. "But if you expect me to have anything ready for
midday, you'd best get out of here and let me get to it. This may be your inn, but it's my kitchen. Unless you
want to do the cooking?" She made as if to hand the apron to him.
Master Fitch stepped back with his hands spread wide. He opened his mouth, then stopped, looking
around for the first time. The kitchen help still studiously ignored the cook and the innkeeper, and Rand began
an intensive search of his coat pockets, though except for the coin Moiraine had given him there was nothing in
them but a few coppers and a handful of odds and ends. His pocket knife and sharpening stone. Two spare
bowstrings and a piece of string he had thought might be useful.
"I am sure, Sara," Master Pitch said carefully, "that everything will be up to your usual excellence."
With that he took one last suspicious look at the kitchen help, then left with as much dignity as he could
manage.
Sara waited until he was gone before briskly tying her apron strings again, then fastened her eye on
Rand. "I suppose you want something to eat, eh? Well, come on in." She gave him a quick grin. "I don't bite, I
don't, no matter what you may have seen as you shouldn't. Ciel, get the lad some bread and cheese and milk.
That's all there is right now. Sit yourself, lad. Your friends have all gone out, except one lad I understand wasn't
feeling well, and I expect you'll be wanting to do the same."
One of the serving maids brought a tray while Rand took a stool at the table. He began eating as the
cook went back to kneading her bread dough, but she was not finished talking.
"You mustn't take any mind of what you saw, now. Master Pitch is a good enough man, though the best
of you aren't any bargains. It's the folk complaining as has him on edge, and what do they have to complain
about? Would they rather find live rats than dead ones? Though it isn't like Cirri to leave his handiwork behind.
And over a dozen? Cirri wouldn't let so many get into the inn, he wouldn't. It's a clean place, too, and not one to
be so troubled. And all with backs broken." She shook her head at the strangeness of it all.
The bread and cheese turned to ashes in Rand's mouth. "Their backs were broken?"
The cook waved a floury hand. "Think on happier things, that's my way of looking. There's a gleeman,
you know. In the common room right this minute. But then, you came with him, didn't you? You are one of
those as came with Mistress Alys last evening, aren't you? I thought you were. I won't get much chance to see
this gleeman myself, I'm thinking, not with the inn as full as it is, and most of them riffraff down from the
mines." She gave the dough an especially heavy thump. "Not the sort we'd let in most times, only the whole
town is filled up with them. Better than some they could be, though, I suppose. Why, I haven't seen a gleeman
since before the winter, and…"
Rand ate mechanically, not tasting anything, not listening to what the cook said. 'Dead rats, with their
backs broken. He finished his breakfast hastily, stammered his thanks, and hurried out. He had to talk to
someone.
The common room of the Stag and Lion shared little except its purpose with the same room at the
Winespring Inn. It was twice as wide and three times as long, and colorful pictures of ornate buildings with
gardens of tall trees and bright flowers were painted high on the walls. Instead of one huge fireplace, a hearth
blazed on each wall, and scores of tables filled the floor, with almost every chair, bench, or stool taken.
Every man among the crowd of patrons with pipes in their teeth and mugs in their fists leaned forward
with his attention on one thing: Thom, standing atop a table in the middle of the room, his many colored cloak
tossed over a nearby chair. Even Master Fitch held a silver tankard and a polishing cloth in motionless hands.
"…prancing, silver hooves and proud, arched necks," Thom proclaimed, while somehow seeming not
only to be riding a horse, but to be one of a long procession of riders. "Silken manes flutter with tossed heads. A
thousand streaming banners whip rainbows against an endless sky. A hundred brazen-throated trumpets shiver
the air, and drums rattle like thunder. Wave on wave, cheers roll from watchers in their thousands, roll across
the rooftops and towers of Illian, crash and break unheard around the thousand ears of riders whose eyes and
hearts shine with their sacred quest. The Great Hunt of the Horn rides forth, rides to seek the Horn of Valere
that will summon the heroes of the Ages back from the grave to battle for the Light . . ."
It was what the gleeman had called Plain Chant, those nights beside the fire on the ride north. Stories, he
said, were told in three voices, High Chant, Plain Chant, and Common, which meant simply telling it the way
you might tell your neighbor about your crop. Thom told stories in Common, but he did not bother to hide his
contempt for the voice.
Rand closed the door without going in and slumped against the wall. He would get no advice from
Thom Moiraine - what would she do if she knew?
He became aware of people staring at him as they passed, and realized he was muttering under his
breath. Smoothing his coat, he straightened. He had to talk to somebody. The cook had said one of the others
had not gone out. It was an effort not to run.
When he rapped on the door of the room where the other boys had slept and poked his head in, only
Perrin was there, lying on his bed and still not dressed. He twisted his head on the pillow to look at Rand, then
closed his eyes again. Mat's bow and quiver were propped in the corner.
"I heard you weren't feeling well," Rand said. He came in and sat on the next bed. "I just wanted to talk.
I . . ." He did not know how to bring it up, he realized. “If you're sick," he said, half standing, "maybe you ought
to sleep. I can go."
“I don't know if I'll ever sleep again." Perrin sighed. "I had a bad dream, if you must know, and couldn't
get back to sleep. Mat will quick enough to tell you. He laughed this morning, when I told them why I was too
tired to go out with him, but he dreamed; too. I listened to him for most of the night, tossing and muttering, and
you can't tell me he got a good night's sleep." He threw a thick arm across his eyes. "Light, but I'm tired. Maybe
if I just stay here for an hour or two, I'll feel like getting up. Mat will never let me hear the end of it if I miss
seeing Baerlon because of a dream. "
Rand slowly lowered himself to the bed again. He licked his lips, then said quickly, "Did he kill a rat?"
Perrin lowered his arm and stared at him. "You, too?" he said finally. When Rand nodded, he said, "I
wish I was back home. He told me . . . he said . . . What are we going to do? Have you told Moiraine?"
"No. Not yet. Maybe I won't. I don't know. What about you?"
“He said . . . Blood and ashes, Rand, I don't know." Perrin raised up on his elbow abruptly. "Do you
think Mat had the same dream? He laughed, but it sounded forced, and he looked funny when I said I couldn't
sleep because of a dream."
"Maybe he did," Rand said. Guiltily, he felt relieved he was not the only one. "I was going to ask Thom
for advice. He's seen a lot of the world. You . . . you don't think we should tell Moiraine, do you?"
Perrin fell back on his pillow. "You've heard the stories about Aes Sedai. Do you think we can trust
Thom? If we can trust anybody. Rand, if we get out of this alive, if we ever get back home, and you hear me say
anything about leaving Emond's Field, even to go as far as Watch Hill, you kick me. All right?"
"That's no way to talk," Rand said. He put on a smile, as cheerful as he could make it. "Of course we'll
get home. Come on, get up. We're in a city, and we have a whole day to see it. Where are your clothes?"
"You go. I just want to lie here awhile." Perrin put his arm back across his eyes. "You go ahead. I'll
catch you up in an hour or two."
"It's your loss," Rand said as he got up. "Think of what you might miss." He stopped at the door.
"Baerlon. How many times have we talked about seeing Baerlon one day?" Perrin lay there with his eyes
covered and did not say a word. After a minute' Rand stepped out and closed the door behind him.
In the hallway he leaned against the wall, his smile fading. His head still hurt; it was worse, not better.
He could not work up much enthusiasm for Baerlon, either, not now. He could not summon enthusiasm about
anything.
A chambermaid came by, her arms full of sheets, and gave him a concerned look. Before she could
speak he moved off down the hall, shrugging into his cloak. Thom would not be finished in the common room
for hours yet. He might as well see what he could. Perhaps he could find Mat, and see if Ba’alzamon had been
in his dreams, too. He went downstairs more slowly this time, rubbing his temple.
The stairs ended near the kitchen, so he took that way out, nodding to Sara but hurrying on when she
seemed about to take up where she had left off. The stableyard was empty except for Mutch, standing in the
stable door, and one of the other ostlers carrying a sack on his shoulder into the stable.
Rand nodded to Mutch, too, but the stableman gave him a truculent look and went inside. He hoped the
rest of the city was more like Sara and less like Mutch. Ready to see what a city was like, he picked up his step.
At the open stableyard gates, he stopped and stared. People packed the street like sheep in a pen, people
swathed to the eyes in cloaks and coats, hats pulled down against the cold, weaving in and out at a quick step as
though the wind whistling over the rooftops blew them along, elbowing past one another with barely a word or
a glance. All strangers, he thought. None of them know each other.
The smells were strange, too, sharp and sour and sweet all mixed in a hodgepodge that had him rubbing
his nose. Even at the height of Festival he had never seen so many people so jammed together. Not even half so
many. And this was only one street. Master Fitch and the cook said the whole city was full. The whole city . . .
like this?
He backed slowly away from the gate, away from the street full of people. It really was not right to go
off and leave Perrin sick in bed. And what if Thom finished his storytelling while Rand was off in the city? The
gleeman might go out himself, and Rand needed to talk to someone. Much better to wait a bit. He breathed a
sigh of relief as he turned his back on the swarming street.
Going back inside the inn did not appeal to him, though, not with his headache. He sat on an upended
barrel against the back of the inn and hoped the cold air might help his head.
Mutch came to the stable door from time to time to stare at him, and even across the stableyard he could
make out the fellow's disapproving scowl. Was it country people the man did not like? Or had he been
embarrassed by Master Fitch greeting them after he had tried to chase them off for coming in the back way?
Maybe he's a Darkfriend, he thought, expecting to chuckle at the idea, but it was not a funny thought. He
rubbed his hand along the hilt of Tam's sword. There was not much left that was funny at all.
"A shepherd with a heron-mark sword," said a low, woman's voice. "That's almost enough to make me
believe anything. What trouble are you in, downcountry boy?"
Startled, Rand jumped to his feet. It was the crop-haired young woman who had been with Moiraine
when he came out of the bath chamber, still dressed in a boy's coat and breeches. She was a little older than he
was, he thought, with dark eyes even bigger than Egwene's, and oddly intent.
"You are Rand, aren't you?" she went on. "My name is Min."
"I'm not in trouble," he said. He did not know what Moiraine had told her, but he remembered Lan's
admonition not to attract any notice. "What makes you think I'm in trouble? The Two Rivers is a quiet place,
and we're all quiet people. No place for trouble, unless it has to do with crops, or sheep."
"Quiet?" Min said with a faint smile. "I've heard men talk about you Two Rivers folk. I've heard the
jokes about wooden-headed sheepherders, and then there are men who have actually been downcountry."
"Wooden-headed?" Rand said, frowning. "What jokes?"
"The ones who know," she went on as if he had not spoken, "say you walk around all smiles and
politeness, just as meek and soft as butter. On the surface, anyway. Underneath, they say, you're all as tough as
old oak roots. Prod too hard, they say, and you dig up stone. But the stone isn't buried very deep in you, or in
your friends. It's as if a storm has scoured away almost all the covering. Moiraine didn't tell me everything, but I
see what see."
Old oak roots? Stone? It hardly sounded like the sort of thing the merchants or their people would say.
That last made him jump, though.
He looked around quickly; the stableyard was empty; and the nearest windows were closed. "I don't
know anybody named - what was it again?"
"Mistress Alys, then, if you prefer," Min said with an amused look that made his cheeks color. "There's
no one close enough to hear."
"What makes you think Mistress Alys has another name?"
"Because she told me," Min said, so patiently that he blushed again. "Not that she had a choice, I
suppose. I saw she was . . . different . . . right away. When she stopped here before, on her way downcountry.
She knew about me. I've talked to . . . others like her before."
"'Saw'?" Rand said.
"Well, I don't suppose you'll go running to the Children. Not considering who your traveling
companions are. The Whitecloaks wouldn't like what I do any more than they like what she does."
"I don't understand."
"She says I see pieces of the Pattern. " Min gave a little laugh and shook her head. "Sounds too grand, to
me. I just see things when I look at people, and sometimes I know what they mean. I look at a man and a
woman who've never even talked to one another, and I know they'll marry. And they do. That sort of thing. She
wanted me to look at you. All of you together. "
Rand shivered. " And what did you see?" "When you're all in a group? Sparks swirling around you,
thousands of them, and a big shadow, darker than midnight. It's so strong, I almost wonder why everybody can't
see it. The sparks are trying to fill the shadow, and the shadow is trying to swallow the sparks." She shrugged.
"You are all tied together in something dangerous, but I can't make any more of it."
"All of us?" Rand muttered. "Egwene, too? But they - weren't after - I mean -"
Min did not seem to notice his slip. "The girl -? She's part of it. And the gleeman. All of you. You're in
love with her." He stared at her. "I can tell that even without seeing any images. She loves you, too, but she's
not for you, or you for either. Not the way you both want. "
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"When I look at her, I see the same as when I look at…Mistress Alys. Other things, things I don't
understand; too, but I know what that means. She won't refuse it."
"This is all foolishness," Rand said uncomfortably. His headache was fading to numbness; his head felt
packed with wool. He wanted to get away from this girl and the things she saw. And yet..."What do you see
when you look at…the rest of us?"
"All sorts of things," Min said, with a grin as if she knew what he really wanted to ask. "The War . . . ah
. . . Master Andra has seven ruined towers around his head, and a babe in a cradle holding a sword, and . . . "
She shook her head. "Men like him - you understand? - always have so many images they crowd one another.
The strongest images around the gleeman are a man - not him - juggling fire, and the White Tower, and that
doesn't make any sense at all for a man. The strongest things I see about the big, curly-haired fellow are a wolf,
and a broken crown, and trees flowering all around him. And the other one - a red eagle, an eye on a balance
scale, a dagger with a ruby, a horn, and a laughing face. There are other things, but you see what I mean. This
time I can't make up or down out of any of it." She waited then, still grinning, until he finally cleared his throat
and asked.
"What about me?" Her grin stopped just short of outright laughter. "The same kind of things as the rest.
A sword that isn't a sword, a golden crown of laurel leaves, a beggar's staff, you pouring water on sand, a
bloody hand and a white-hot iron, three women standing over a funeral bier with you on it, black rock wet with
blood -"
"All right," he broke in uneasily. "You don't have to list it all."
"Most of all, I see lightning around you, some striking at you, some coming out of you. I don't know
what any of it means, except for one thing. You and I will meet again." She gave him a quizzical look, as if she
did not understand that either.
"Why shouldn't we?" he said. "I'll be coming back this way on my way home."
"I suppose you will, at that." Suddenly her grin was back, wry and mysterious, and she patted his cheek.
"But if I told you everything I saw, you'd be as curly-haired as your friend with the shoulders."
He jerked back from her hand as if it were red-hot. "What do you mean? Do you see anything about
rats? Or dreams?"
"Rats! No, no rats. As for dreams, maybe it's your idea of a dream, but I never thought it was mine. "
He wondered if she was crazy, grinning like that. "I have to go," he said, edging around her. "I . . . I
have to meet my friends."
"Go, then. But you won't escape." He didn't exactly break into a run, but every step he took was quicker
than the step before.
"Run, if you want," she called after him. "You can't escape from me."
Her laughter sped him across the stableyard and out into the street, into the hubbub of people Her last
words were too close to what Ba'alzamon had said. He blundered into people as he hurried through the crowd,
earning hard looks and hard words, but he did not slow down until he was several streets away from the inn.
After a time he began to pay attention again to where he was. His head felt like a balloon, but he stared
and enjoyed anyway. He thought Baerlon was a grand city, if not exactly in the same way as cities in Thom's
stories. He wandered up broad streets, most paved with flagstone, and down narrow, twisting lanes, wherever
chance and the shifting of the crowd took him. It had rained during the night, and the streets that were unpaved
had already been churned to mud by the crowds, but muddy streets were nothing new to him. None of the
streets in Emond's Field was paved.
There certainly were no palaces, and only a few houses were very much bigger than those back home,
but every house had a roof of slate or tile as fine as the roof of the Winespring Inn. He supposed there would be
a palace or two in Caemlyn. As for inns, he counted nine, not one smaller than the Winespring and most as large
as the Stag and Lion, and there were plenty of streets he had not seen yet.
Shops dotted every street, with awnings out front sheltering tables covered with goods, everything from
cloth to books to pots to boots. It was as if a hundred peddlers' wagons had spilled out their contents. He stared
so much that more than once he had to hurry on at the suspicious look of a shopkeeper. He had not understood
the first shopkeeper's stare. When he did understand, he started to get angry until he remembered that here he
was the stranger. He could not have bought much, anyway. He gasped when he saw how many coppers were
exchanged for a dozen discolored apples or a handful of shrivelled turnips, the sort that would be fed to the
horses in the Two Rivers, but people seemed eager to pay.
There were certainly more than enough people, to his estimation. For a while the sheer number of them
almost overwhelmed him. Some wore clothes of finer cut than anyone in the Two Rivers - almost as fine as
Moiraine's - and quite a few had long, fur-lined coats that flapped around their ankles. The miners everybody at
the inn kept talking about, they had the hunched look of men who grubbed underground. But most of the people
did not look any different from those he had grown up with, not in dress or in face. He had expected they
would, somehow. In- deed, some of them had so much the look of the Two Rivers in their faces that he could
imagine they belonged to one family or another that he knew around Emond's Field. A toothless, grayhaired
fellow with ears like jug handles, sitting on a bench outside one of the inns and peering mournfully into an
empty tankard, could easily have been Bili Congar's close cousin. The lantern-jawed tailor sewing in front of his
shop might have been Jon Thane's brother, even to the same bald spot on the back of his head. A near mirror
image of Samel Crawe pushed past Rand as he turned a corner, and…
In disbelief he stared at a bony little man with long arms and a big nose, shoving hurriedly through the
crowd in clothes that looked like a bundle of rags. The man's eyes were sunken and his dirty face gaunt, as if he
had not eaten or slept in days, but Rand could swear . . . The ragged man saw him then, and froze in mid-step,
heedless of people who all but stumbled over him. The last doubt in Rand's mind vanished.
"Master Fain!" he shouted. "We all thought you were - " As quick as a blink the peddler darted away,
but Rand dodged after him, calling apologies over his shoulder to the people he bumped. Through the crowd he
just caught sight of Fain dashing into an alleyway, and he turned after.
A few steps into the alleyway the peddler had stopped in his tracks. A tall fence made it into a dead end.
As Rand skidded to a halt, Fain rounded on him, crouching warily and backing away. He flapped grimy hands
at Rand to stay back. More than one rip showed in his coat, and his cloak was worn and tattered as if it had seen
much harder use than it was meant for.
"Master Fain?" Rand said hesitantly. "What is the matter? It's me, Rand al'Thor, from Emond's Field.
We all thought the Trollocs had taken you. "
Fain gestured sharply and, still in a crouch, ran a few crabbed steps toward the open end of the alley. He
did not try to pass Rand, or even come close to him. "Don't!" he rasped. His head shifted constantly as he tried
to see everything in the street beyond Rand. "Don't mention" – his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, and he
turned his head away, watching Rand with quick, sidelong glances “them. There be Whitecloaks in the town."
"They have no reason to bother us," Rand said. "Come back to the Stag and Lion with me. I'm staying
there with friends. You know most of them. They'll be glad to see you, we all thought you were dead."
"Dead?" the peddler snapped indignantly. "Not Padan Fain. Padan Fain knows which way to jump and
where to land. " He straightened his rags as if they were feastday clothes. "Always have, and always will. I'll
live a long time. Longer than -" Abruptly his face tightened and his hands clutched hold of his coat front. "They
burned my wagon, and all my goods. Had no cause to be doing that, did they? I couldn't get to my horses. My
horses, but that fat old innkeeper had them locked up in his stable. I had to step quick not to get my throat slit,
and what did it get me? All that I've got left is what I stand up in. Now, is that fair? Is it, now?"
"Your horses are safe in Master al'Vere's stable. You can get them anytime. If you come to the inn with
me, I'm sure Moiraine will help you get back to the Two Rivers."
" Aaaaah! She's . . . she's the Aes Sedai, is she?" A guarded look came over Fain's face. "Maybe, though
. . ." He paused, licking his lips nervously. "How long will you be at this-What was it? What did you call it? -
the Stag and Lion?"
"We leave tomorrow ," Rand said. "But what does that have to do with -?"
"You just don't know," Fain whined, "standing there with a full belly and a good night's sleep in a soft
bed. I've hardly slept a wink since that night. My boots are all worn out with running, and as for what I've had to
eat . . ." His face twisted. "I don't want to be within miles of an Aes Sedai," he spat the last words, "not miles
and miles, but I may have to. I've no choice, have I? The thought of her eyes on me, of her even knowing where
I am..." He reached toward Rand as if he wanted to grab his coat, but his hands stopped short, fluttering, and he
actually took a step back. "Promise me you won't tell her. She frightens me. There's no need to be telling her, no
reason for an Aes Sedai to even be knowing I'm alive. You have to promise. You have to!"
"I promise," Rand said soothingly. "But there's no reason for you to be afraid of her. Come with me. The
least you'll get is a hot meal."
"Maybe. Maybe." Fain rubbed his chin pensively. "Tomorrow, you say? In that time...You won't forget
your promise? You won't be letting her . . .?"
"I won't let her hurt you," Rand said, wondering how be could stop an Aes Sedai, whatever she wanted
to do.
"She won't hurt me," Fain said. "No, she won't. I won't be letting her." Like a flash he hared past Rand
into the crowd.
"Master Fain!" Rand called. "Wait!" He dashed out of the alley just in time to catch sight of a ragged
coat disappearing around the next comer. Still calling, he ran after it, darted around the comer. He only had time
to see a man's back before he crashed into it and they both went down in a heap in the mud.
"Can't you watch where you're going?" came a mutter from under him, and Rand scrambled up in
surprise.
"Mat?" Mat sat up with a baleful glare and began scraping mud off his cloak with his hands. "You must
really be turning into a city man. Sleep all morning and run right over people." Climbing to his feet, he stared at
his muddy hands, then muttered and wiped them off on his cloak. "Listen, you'll never guess who I thought I
just saw. "
"Padan Fain," Rand said. "Padan Fa - How did you know?" "I was talking to him, but he ran off." "So
the Tro- " Mat stopped to look around warily, but the crowd was passing them by with never a glance. Rand
was glad he had learned a little caution. "So they didn't get him. I wonder why he left Emond's Field, without a
word like that? Probably started running then, too, and didn't stop until he got here. But why was he running just
now?"
Rand shook his head and wished he had not. It felt as though it might fall off. "I don't know, except that
he's afraid of M ... Mistress Alys. " All this watching what you said was not easy.
"He doesn't want her to know he's here. He made me promise I wouldn't tell her."
"Well, his secret is safe with me," Mat said. "I wish she didn't know where I was, either."
"Mat?" People still streamed by without paying them any heed, but Rand lowered his voice anyway, and
leaned closer. "Mat, did you have a nightmare last night? About a man who killed a rat?"
Mat stared at him without blinking. "You, too?" he said finally. "And Perrin, I suppose. I almost asked
him this morning, but. ...He must have. Blood and ashes! Now somebody's making us dream things. Rand, I
wish nobody knew where I was."
"There were dead rats all over the inn this morning." He did not feel as afraid at saying it as he would
have earlier. He did not feel much of anything. "Their backs were broken." His voice rang in his own ears. If he
was getting sick, he might have to go to Moiraine. He was surprised that even the thought of the One Power
being used on him did not bother him.
Mat took a deep breath, hitching his cloak, and looked around as if searching for somewhere to go.
"What's happening to us, Rand? What?"
"I don't know. I'm going to ask Thom for advice. About whether to tell...anyone else. "
"No! Not her. Maybe him, but not her." The sharpness of it took Rand by surprise. "Then you
believed him?" He did not need to say which "him" he meant; the grimace on Mat's face said he understood.
"No," Mat said slowly. "It's the chances, that's all. If we tell her, and he was lying, then maybe nothing
happens. Maybe. But maybe just him being in our dreams is enough for. ...I don't know." He stopped to
swallow. "If we don't tell her, maybe we'll have some more dreams. Rats or no rats, dreams are better than . . .
Remember the ferry? I say we keep quiet."
"All right." Rand remembered the ferry-and Moiraine's threat, too, but somehow it seemed a long time
ago. "All right."
"Perrin won't say anything, will he?" Mat went on, bouncing on his toes. "We have to get back to him. If
he tells her, she'll figure it out about all of us. You can bet on it. Come on." He started off briskly through the
crowd.
Rand stood there looking after him until Mat came back and grabbed him. At the touch on his arm he
blinked, then followed his friend.
"What's the matter with you?" Mat asked. "You going to sleep again?"
"I think I have a cold," Rand said: His head was as tight as a drum, and almost as empty.
"You can get some chicken soup when we get back to the inn," Mat said. He kept up a constant chatter
as they hunted through the packed streets. Rand made an effort to listen, and even to say something now and
then, but it was an effort. He was not tired; he did not want to sleep. He just felt as if he were drifting. After a
while he found himself telling Mat about Mill. "A dagger with a ruby, eh?" Mat said. "I like that. I don't know
about the eye, though. Are you sure she wasn't making it up? It seems to me she would know what it all means
if she really is a soothsayer."
"She didn't say she's a soothsayer," Rand said. "I believe she does see things. Remember, Moiraine was
talking to her when we finished our baths. And she knows who Moiraine is."
Mat frowned at him. "I thought we weren't supposed to use that name."
"No," Rand muttered. He rubbed his head with both hands. It was so hard to concentrate on anything.
"I think maybe you really are sick," Mat said, still frowning. Suddenly he pulled Rand to a stop by his
coat sleeve. "Look at them."
Three men in breastplates and conical steel caps, burnished till they shone like silver, were making their
way down the street toward Rand and Mat. Even the mail on their arms gleamed. Their long cloaks, pristine
white and embroidered on the left breast with a golden sunburst, just cleared the mud and puddles of the street.
Their hands rested on their sword hilts, and they looked around them as if looking at things that had wriggled
out from under a rotting log. Nobody looked back, though. Nobody even seemed to notice them. Just the same,
the three did not have to push through the crowd; the bustle parted to either side of the white-cloaked men as if
by happenstance, leaving them to walk in a clear space that moved with them.
"Do you suppose they're Children of the Light?" Mat asked in a loud voice. A passerby looked hard at
Mat, then quickened his pace.
Rand nodded. Children of the Light. Whitecloaks. Men who hated Aes Sedai. Men who told people how
to live, causing trouble for those who refused to obey. If burned farms and worse could be called as mild as
trouble. I should be afraid, he thought. Or curious. Something, at any rate. Instead he stared at them passively.
"They don't look like so much to me," Mat said. "Full of themselves, though, aren't they?"
"They don't matter," Rand said. "The inn. We have to talk to Perrin."
"Like Eward Congar. He always has his nose in the air, too. " Suddenly Mat grinned, a twinkle in his
eye. "Remember when he fell off the Wagon Bridge and had to tramp home dripping wet? That took him down
a peg for a month."
"What does that have to do with Perrin?"
"See that?" Mat pointed to a cart resting on its shafts in an alleyway just ahead of the Children. A single
stake held a dozen stacked barrels in place on the flat bed. "Watch." Laughing, he darted into a cutler's shop to
their left.
Rand stared after him, knowing he should do something. That look in Mat's eyes always meant one of
his tricks. But oddly, he found himself looking forward to whatever Mat was going to do. Something told him
that feeling was wrong, that it was dangerous, but he smiled in anticipation anyway.
In a minute Mat appeared above him, climbing half out of an attic window onto the tile roof of the shop.
His sling was in his bands, already beginning to whirl. Rand's eyes went back to the cart. Almost immediately
there was a sharp crack, and the stake holding the barrels broke just as the Whitecloaks came abreast of the
alley. People jumped out of the way as the barrels rolled down the cart shafts with an empty rumble and jounced
into the street, splashing mud and muddy water in every direction. The three Children jumped no less quickly
than anyone else, their superior looks replaced by surprise. Some passersby fell down, making more splashes,
but the three moved agilely, avoiding the barrels with ease. They could not avoid the flying mud that splattered
their white cloaks, though.
A bearded man in a long apron hurried out of the alley, waving his arms and shouting angrily, but one
look at the three trying vainly to shake the mud from their cloaks and he vanished back into the alley even faster
than he had come out. Rand glanced up at the shop roof; Mat was gone. It had been an easy shot for any Two
Rivers lad, but the effect was certainly all that could be hoped for. He couId not help laughing; the humor
seemed to be wrapped in wool, but it was still funny. When he turned back to the street, the three Whitecloaks
were staring straight at him.
"You find something funny, yes?" The one who spoke stood a little in front of the others. He wore an
arrogant, unblinking look, with a light in his eyes as if he knew something important, something no one else
knew.
Rand's laughter cut off short. He and the Children were alone with the mud and the barrels. The crowd
that had been all around them had found urgent business up or down the street.
"Does fear of the Light hold your tongue?" Anger made the Whitecloak's narrow face seem even more
pinched. He glanced dismissively at the sword hilt sticking out from Rand's cloak. "Perhaps you are responsible
for this, yes?" Unlike the others he had a golden knot beneath the sunburst on his cloak.
Rand moved to cover the sword, but instead swept his cloak back over his shoulder. In the back of his
head was a frantic wonder at what he was doing, but it was a distant thought. "Accidents happen," he said.
"Even to the Children of the Light."
The narrow-faced man raised an eyebrow. "You are that dangerous, youngling?" He was not much older
than Rand.
"Heron-mark, Lord Bornhald," one of the others said warningly.
The narrow-faced man glanced at Rand's sword hilt again - the bronze heron was plain – and his eyes
widened momentarily. Then his gaze rose to Rand's face, and he sniffed dismissively. "He is too young. You are
not from this place, yes?" he said coldly to Rand. "You come from where?"
"I just arrived in Baerlon. " A tingling thrill ran along Rand's arms and legs. He felt flushed, almost
warm. "You wouldn't know of a good inn, would you?"
"You avoid my questions," Bornhald snapped. "What evil is in you that you do not answer me?" His
companions moved up to either side of him, faces hard and expressionless. Despite the mudstains on their
cloaks, there was nothing funny about them now.
The tingling filled Rand; the heat had grown to a fever. He wanted to laugh, it felt so good. A small
voice in his head shouted that something was wrong, but all he could think of was how full of energy he felt,
nearly bursting with it. Smiling, he rocked on his heels and waited for what was going to happen. Vaguely,
distantly, he wondered what it would be.
The leader's face darkened. One of the others drew his sword enough for an inch of steel to show and
spoke in a voice quivering with anger. "When the Children of the Light ask questions, you gray-eyed bumpkin,
we expect answers, or - " He cut off as the narrow-faced man threw an arm across his chest. Bornald jerked his
head up the street.
The Town Watch had arrived, a dozen men in round steel caps and studded leather jerkins, carrying
quarterstaffs as if they knew how to use them. They stood watching, silently, from ten paces off.
"This town has lost the Light," growled the man who had half drawn his sword. He rinsed his voice to
shout at the Watch. "Baerlon stands in the Shadow of the Dark One!" At a gesture from Bornhald he slammed
his blade back into its scabbard. Bornald turned his attention back to Rand. The light of knowing burned in his
eyes. "Darkfriends do not escape us, youngling, even in a town that stands in the Shadow. We will meet again.
You may be sure of it!"
He spun on his heel and strode away, his two companions close behind, as if Rand bad ceased to exist.
For the moment, at least. When they reached the crowded part of the street, the same seemingly accidental
pocket as before opened around them. The Watchmen hesitated, eyeing Rand, then shouldered their
quarterstaffs and followed the white-cloaked three. They bad to push their way into the crowd, shouting, "Make
way for the Watch!" Few did make way, except grudgingly.
Rand still rocked on his heels, waiting. The tingle was so strong that be almost quivered; be felt as if he
were burning up.
Mat came out of the shop, staring at him. "You aren't sick," he said finally. "You are crazy!”
Rand drew a deep breath, and abruptly it was all gone like a pricked bubble. He staggered as it vanished,
the realization of what he had just done flooding in on him. Licking his lips, he met Mat's stare. "I think we had
better go back to the inn, now," he said unsteadily.
"Yes," Mat said. "Yes. I think we better had." The street had been to fill up again, and more than one
passerby stared at the two boys and murmured something to a companion. Rand was sure the story would
spread. A crazy man had tried to start a fight with three Children of the Light. That was something to talk about.
Maybe the dreams are driving me crazy.
The two lost their way several times in the haphazard streets, but after a while they fell in with Thom
Merrilin, making a grand procession all by himself through the throng. The gleeman said he was out to stretch
his legs and for a bit of fresh air , but whenever anyone looked twice at his colorful cloak he would announce in
a resounding voice, "I am at the Stag and Lion, tonight only."
It was Mat who began disjointedly telling Thom about the dream and their worry over whether or not to
tell Moiraine, but Rand joined in, for there were' differences in exactly how they remembered it. Or maybe each
dream was a little different, he thought. The major part of the dreams was the same, though.
They had not gone far in the telling before Thom started paying full attention. When Rand mentioned
Ba'alzamon, the gleeman grabbed them each by a shoulder with a command to hold their tongues, raised on
tiptoe to look over the heads of the crowd, then hustled them out of the press to a dead-end alley that was empty
except for a few crates and a slat-ribbed, yellow dog huddled out of the cold.
Thom stared out at the crowd, looking for anyone stopping to listen, before turning his attention to Rand
and Mat. His blue eyes bored into theirs, between flickering away to watch the mouth of the alley. "Don't ever
say that name where strangers can hear." His voice was low, but urgent. "Not even where a stranger might hear
.It is a very dangerous name, even where Children of the Light are not wandering the streets."
Mat snorted. "I could tell you about Children of the Light," he said with a wry look at Rand.
Thom ignored him. "If only one of you had had this dream..." He tugged at his mustache furiously. "Tell
me everything you remember about it. Every detail." He kept up his wary watch while he listened
". . .he named the men he said had been used," Rand said finally. He thought he had told everything else.
"Guaire Amalasan. Raolin Darksbane."
"Davian," Mat added before he could go on. " And Yurian Stonebow."
"And Logain," Rand finished.
"Dangerous names," Thom muttered. His eyes seemed to drill at them even more intently than before.
"Nearly as dangerous as that other, one way and another. All dead, now, except for Logain. Some long dead.
Raolin Darksbane nearly two thousand years. But dangerous just the same. Best you don't say them aloud even
when you're alone. Most people wouldn't recognize a one of them, but if the, wrong person overhears...
"But who were they?" Rand said.
"Men," Thom murmured. "Men who shook the pillars of heaven and rocked the world on its
foundations." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Forget about them. They are dust now."
"Did the...were they used, like he said?" Mat asked. "And killed?"
"You might say the White Tower killed them. You might say that." Thom's mouth tightened
momentarily, then he shook his head again. "But used...? No. I cannot see that. The Light knows the Amyrlin
Seat has enough plots going, but I can't see that."
Mat shivered. "He said so many things. Crazy things. All that about Lews Therin Kinslayer, and Artur
Hawkwing. And the Eye of the World. What in the Light is that supposed to be?"
"A legend," the gleeman said slowly. "Maybe. As big a legend as the Horn of Valere, at least in the
Borderlands. Up there, young men go hunting, the Eye of the World the way young men from Illian hunt the
Horn. Maybe a legend."
"What do we do, Thom?" Rand said. "Do we tell her? I don't want any more dreams like that. Maybe she
could do something."
"Maybe we wouldn't like what she did," Mat growled. Thom studied them, considering and stroking" his
mustache with a knuckle. "I say hold your peace," he said finally. "Don't tell anyone, for the time, at least. You
can always change your mind, if you have to, but once you tell, it's done, and you're tied up worse than ever
with...with her. "Suddenly he straightened, his stoop almost disappearing. "The other lad! You say he had the
same dream? Does he have sense enough to keep his mouth shut?'
"I think so," Rand said at the same time that Mat said, "We were going back to the inn to warn him."
"The Light send we're not too late!" Cloak flapping around his ankles, patches fluttering in the wind,
Thom strode out of the alley, looking back over his shoulder without stopping. "Well? Are your feet pegged to
the ground?"
Rand and Mat hurried after him, but he did not wait for them to catch up. This time he did not pause for
people who looked at his cloak, or those who hailed him as a gleeman, either. He clove through the crowded
streets as if they were empty, Rand and Mat half running to follow in his wake. In much less time than Rand
expected they were hurrying up to the Stag and Lion.
As they started in, Perrin came speeding out, trying to throw his cloak around his shoulders as he ran. He
nearly fell in his effort not to carom into them. "I was coming looking for you two'," he panted when he had
caught his balance.
Rand grabbed him by the arm. "Did you tell anyone about the dream?" -
"Say that you didn't," Mat demanded. "It's very important," Thom said.
Perrin looked at them in confusion. "No, I haven't. I didn't even get out of bed until less than an hour
ago." His shoulders slumped. "I've given myself a headache trying not to think about it, much less talk about it.
Why did you tell him?" He nodded at the gleeman. .
"We had to talk to somebody or go crazy," Rand said.
"I will explain later," Thom added with a significant look at the people passing in and out of the Stag
and Lion.
" All right," Perrin replied slowly, still looking confused. Suddenly he slapped his head. "You almost
made me forget why I was looking for you, not that I don't wish I could. Nynaeve is inside."
"Blood and ashes!" Mat yelped. "How did she get here? Moirane . . . The Ferry . . .”
Perrin snorted. "You think a little thing like a sunken ferry could stop her? She rooted Hightower out - I
don't know how he got back over the river, but she said he was hiding in his bedroom and didn't want to go near
the river - anyway, she bullied him into finding a boat big enough for her and her horse and rowing her across.
Himself. She only gave him time to find one of his haulers to work another set of oars."
"Light!" Mat breathed. "What is she doing here?" Rand wanted to know. Mat and Perrin both gave him a
scornful look.
"She came after us," Perrin said. "She's with . . . with Mistress Alys right now, and it's cold enough in
there to snow."
"Couldn't we just go somewhere else for a while?" Mat asked. "My da says, only a fool puts his hand in
a hornet nest until he absolutely has to."
Rand cut in. "She can't make us go back. Winternight should have been enough to make her see that. If
she doesn't, we will have to make her. "
Mat's eyebrows lifted higher with every word, and when Rand finished he let out a low whistle. "You
ever try to make Nynaeve see something she doesn't want to see? I have. I say we stay away till night, and sneak
in then."
"From my observation of the young woman," Thom said, "I don't think she will stop until she has had
her say. If she is not allowed to have it soon, she might keep on until she attracts attention none of us wants."
That brought them all up short. They exchanged glances, drew deep breaths, and marched inside as if to
face Trollocs.

Chapter 16

The Wisdom


Perrin led the way into the depths of the inn. Rand was so intent on what he intended to say to Nynaeve
that he did not see Min until she seized his arm and pulled him to one side. The others kept on a few
steps down the hall be- fore realizing he had stopped, then they halted, too, half impatient to go on, half
reluctant to do so.
"We don't have time for that, boy," Thom said gruffly.
Min gave the white-haired gleeman a sharp look. "Go juggle something," she snapped, drawing Rand
further away from the others.
"I really don't have time," Rand told her. "Certainly not for any more fool talk about escaping and the
like." He tried to get his arm loose, but every time he pulled free, she grabbed it again.
"And I don't have time for your foolishness, either. Will you be still!" She gave the others a quick look,
then moved closer, lowering her voice. " A woman arrived a little while ago – shorter than I, young, with dark
eyes and dark hair in a braid down to her waist. She's part of it, right along with the rest of you."
For a minute Rand just stared at her. Nynaeve? How can she be involved? Light, how can I be involved?
"That's . . . impossible."
“You know her?" Min whispered.
“Yes, and she, you . . .”
"The sparks, Rand. She met Mistress Alys coming in, and there were sparks, with just the two of them.
Yesterday I couldn't see sparks without at least three or four of you together, but today it's all sharper, and more
furious." She looked at Rand's friends, waiting impatiently, and shivered before turning back to him. "It's almost
a wonder the inn doesn't catch fire. You're all in more danger today than yesterday. Since she came."
Rand glanced at his friends. Thom, his brows drawn down in a bushy V, was leaning forward on the
point of taking some action to hurry him along. "She won't do anything to hurt us," he told Min. "I have to go,
now." He succeeded in getting his arm back, this time.
Ignoring her squawk, he joined the others, and they started off again down the corridor. Rand looked
back once. Min shook her fist at him and stamped her foot.
"What did she have to say?" Mat asked.
"Nynaeve is part of it," Rand said without thinking, then shot Mat a hard look that caught him with his
mouth open. Then understanding slowly spread across Mat's face.
"Part of what?" Thom said softly. "Does that girl know something?"
While Rand was still trying to gather in his head what to say, Mat spoke up. "Of course she's part of it,"
he said grumpily. "Part of the same bad luck we've been having since Winternight. Maybe having the Wisdom
show up is no great affair to you, but I'd as soon have the Whitecloaks here, myself."
"She saw Nynaeve arrive," Rand said. "Saw her talking to Mistress Alys, and thought she might have
something to do with us." Thom gave him a sidelong look and ruffled his mustaches with a snort, but the others
seemed to accept Rand's explanation. He did not like keeping secrets from his friends, but Min's secret could be
as dangerous for her as any of theirs was for them.
Perrin stopped suddenly in front of a door, and despite his size he seemed oddly hesitant. He drew a
deep breath, looked at his companions, took another breath, then slowly opened the door and went in. One by
one the rest of them followed. Rand was the last, and he closed the door behind him with the utmost reluctance.
It was the room where they had eaten the night before. A blaze crackled on the hearth, and a polished
silver tray sat in the middle of the table holding a gleaming silver pitcher and cups. Moiraine and Nynaeve sat at
opposite ends of the table, neither taking her eyes from the other. All the other chairs were empty. Moiraine's
hands rested on the table, as still as her face. Nynaeve's braid was thrown over her shoulder, the end gripped in
one fist; she kept giving it little tugs the way she did when she was being even more stubborn than usual with
the Village Council. Perrin was right. Despite the fire it seemed freezing cold, and all coming from the two
women at the table.
Lan was leaning against the mantel, staring into the flames and rubbing his hands for warmth. Egwene,
her back flat against the wall, had her cloak on with the hood pulled up. Thom, Mat, and Perrin stopped
uncertainly in front of the door.
Shrugging uncomfortably, Rand walked to the table. Sometimes you have to grab the wolf by the ears,
he reminded himself. But he remembered another old saying, too. When you have a wolf by the ears, it's as hard
to let go as to hold on. He felt Moiraine's eyes on him, and Nynaeve's, and his face became hot, but he sat down
anyway, halfway between the two.
For a minute the room was as still as a carving, then Egwene and Perrin, and finally Mat, made their
reluctant way to the table and took seats-toward the middle, with Rand. Egwene tugged her hood further
forward, enough to half hide her face, and they all avoided looking at anyone.
"Well," Thom snorted, from his place beside the door. "At least that much is done."
"Since everyone is here," Lan said, leaving the fireplace and filling one of the silver cups with wine,
"perhaps you will finally take this." He proffered the cup to Nynaeve; she looked at it suspiciously. "There is no
need to be afraid," he said patiently. "You saw the innkeeper bring the wine, and neither of us has had a chance
to put anything in it. It is quite safe."
The Wisdom's mouth tightened angrily at the word afraid, but she took the cup with a murmured,
"Thank you."
"I am interested," he said, "in how you found us."
"So am I." Moiraine leaned forward intently. "Perhaps you are willing to speak now that Egwene and the
boys have been brought to you?"
Nynaeve sipped the wine before answering the Aes Sedai. "There was nowhere for you to go except
Baerlon. To be safe, though, I followed your trail. You certainly cut back and forth enough. But then, I suppose
you would not care to risk meeting decent people."
"You...followed our trail?" Lan said, truly surprised for the first time that Rand could remember. "I must
be getting careless."
"You left very little trace, but I can track as well as any man in the Two Rivers, except perhaps Tam
al'Thor." She hesitated, then added, "Until my father died, he took me hunting with him, and taught me what he
would have taught the sons he never had. " She looked at Lan challengingly, but he only nodded with approval.
"If you can follow a trail I have tried to hide, he taught you well. Few can do that, even in the
Borderlands."
Abruptly Nynaeve buried her face in her cup. Rand's eyes widened. She was blushing. Nynaeve never
showed herself even the least bit disconcerted. Angry, yes; outraged, often; but never out of countenance. But
she was certainly red-cheeked now, and trying to hide in the wine.
"Perhaps now," Moiraine said quietly, "you will answer a few of my questions. I have answered yours
freely enough."
"With a great sackful of gleeman's tales;" Nynaeve retorted. "The only facts I can see are that four young
people have been carried off, for the Light alone knows what reason, by an Aes Sedai."
"You have been told that isn't known here," Lan said sharply. "You must learn to guard your tongue."
"Why should I?" Nynaeve demanded. "Why should I help hide you, or what you are? I've come to take
Egwene and the boys back to Emond's Field, not help you spirit them away."
Thom broke in, in a scornful voice. "If you want them to see their village again - or you, either - you had
better be more careful. There are those in Baerlon who would kill her" – he jerked his head toward Moiraine -
"for what she is. Him, too."
He indicated Lan, then abruptly moved forward to put his fists on the table. He loomed over Nynaeve,
and his long mustaches and thick eyebrows suddenly seemed threatening.
Her eyes widened, and she started to lean back, away from him; then her back stiffened defiantly. Thom
did not appear to notice; he went right on in an ominously soft voice. "They'd swarm over tins inn like
murderous ants on a rumor, a whisper. Their hate is that strong, their desire to kill or take any like these two.
And the girl? The boys? You? You are all associated with them, enough for the Whitecloaks, anyway. You
wouldn't like the way they ask questions, especially when the White Tower is involved. Whitecloak Questioners
assume you're guilty before they start, and they have only one sentence for that kind of guilt. They don't care
about finding the truth; they think they know that already. All they go after with their hot irons and pincers is a
confession. Best you remember some secrets are too dangerous for saying aloud, even when you think you
know who hears." He straightened with a muttered, "I seem to tell that to people often of late."
"Well put, gleeman," Lan said. The Warder had that weighing look in his eyes again. "I'm surprised to
find you so concerned."
Thom shrugged. "It's known I arrived with you, too. I don't care for the thought of a Questioner with a
hot iron telling me to repent my sins and walk in the Light."
"That," Nynaeve put in sharply, "is just one more reason for them to come home with me in the
morning. Or this afternoon, for that matter. The sooner we're away from you and on our way back to Emond's
Field, the better."
"We can't," Rand said, and was glad that his friends all spoke up at the same time. That way Nynaeve's
glare had to be spread around; she spared no one as it was. But he had spoken first, and they all fell silent,
looking at him. Even Moiraine sat back in her chair, watching him over steepled fingers. It was an effort for him
to meet the Wisdom's eyes. "If we go back to Emond's Field, the Trollocs will come back, too. They're...hunting
us. I don't know why, but they are. Maybe we can find out why in Tar Valon. Maybe we can find out how to
stop it. It's the only way."
Nynaeve threw up her hands. "You sound just like Tam. He had himself carried to the village meeting
and tried to convince everybody. He'd already tried with the Village Council. The Light knows how
your...Mistress Alys" - she invested the name with a wagonload of scorn - "managed to make him believe; he
has a mite of sense, usually, more than most men. In any case, the Council is a pack of fools most of the time,
but not foolish enough for that, and neither was anyone else. They agreed you had to be found. Then Tam
wanted to be the one to come after you, and him not able to stand by himself. Foolishness must run in your
family."
Mat cleared his throat, then mumbled, "What about my da? What did he say?"
"He's afraid you'll try your tricks with outlanders and get your head thumped. He seemed more afraid of
that than of... Mistress Alys, here. But then, he was never much brighter than you."
Mat seemed unsure how to take what she had said, or how to reply, or even whether to reply.
"I expect," Perrin began hesitantly. "I mean, I suppose Master Luhhan was not too pleased about my
leaving, either."
"Did you expect him to be?" Nynaeve shook her head disgustedly and looked at Egwene. "Maybe I
should not be surprised at this harebrained idiocy from you three, but I thought others had more judgment. "
Egwene sat back so she was shielded by Perrin. "I left a note," she said faintly. She tugged at the hood of
her cloak as if she was afraid her unbound hair showed. "I explained everything. " Nynaeve's face darkened.
Rand sighed. The Wisdom was on the point of one of her tongue-lashings, and it looked as if it might be
a first-rate one. If she took a position in the heat of anger-if she said she in- tended to see them back in Emond's
Field no matter what any- body said, for instance-she would be nearly impossible to budge. He opened his
mouth.
"A note!" Nynaeve began, just as Moiraine said, "You and I must still talk, Wisdom."
If Rand could have stopped himself, he would have, but the words poured out as if it were a floodgate he
had opened instead of his mouth. " All this is very well, but it doesn't change anything. We can't go back. We
have to go on." He spoke more slowly toward the end, and his voice sank, so he finished in a whisper, with the
Wisdom and the Aes Sedai both looking at him. It was the sort of look he received if he came on women talking
Women's Circle business, the sort that said he had stepped in where he did not belong. He sat back, wishing he
was somewhere else.
"Wisdom," Moiraine said, "you must believe that they are safer with me than they would be back in the
Two Rivers."
"Safer!" Nynaeve tossed her head dismissively. "You are the one who brought them here, where the
Whitecloaks are. The same Whitecloaks who, if the gleeman tells the truth, may harm them because of you. Tell
me how they are safer, Aes Sedai."
"There are many dangers from which I cannot protect them," Moiraine agreed, "any more than you can
protect them from being struck by lightning if they go home. But it is not lightning of which they must be
afraid, nor even Whitecloaks. It is the Dark One, and minions of the Dark One. From those things I can protect.
Touching the True Source, touching saidar, gives me that protection, as it does to every Aes Sedai." Nynaeve's
mouth tightened skeptically. Moiraine's grew tighter, too, with anger, but she went on, her voice hard on the
edge of patience. "Even those poor men who find themselves wielding the Power for a short time gain that
much, though sometimes touching saidin protects, and sometimes the taint makes them more vulnerable. But I,
or any Aes Sedai, can extend my protection to those close by me. No Fade can harm them as long as they are as
close to me as they are right now. No Trolloc can come within a quarter of a mile without Lan knowing it,
feeling the evil of it. Can you offer them half as much if they return to Emond's Field with you?"
"You stand up straw men," Nynaeve said. "We have a saying in the Two Rivers. “Whether the bear
beats the wolf or the wolf beats the bear, the rabbit always loses. Take your contest somewhere else and leave
Emond's Field folk out of it."
"Egwene," Moiraine said after a moment, "take the others and leave the Wisdom alone with me for a
while." Her face was impassive; Nynaeve squared herself at the table as if getting ready for an all-in wrestling
match.
Egwene bounced to her feet, her desire to be dignified obviously warring with her desire to avoid a
confrontation with the Wisdom over her unbraided hair. She had no difficulty gathering up everyone by eye,
though. Mat and Perrin scraped back their chairs hurriedly, making polite murmurs while trying not to actually
run on their way out. Even Lan started for the door at a signal from Moiraine, drawing Thom with him.
Rand followed, and the Warder shut the door behind them, then took up guard across the hallway. Under
Lan's eyes the others moved on down the hall a short distance; they were not to be allowed even the slightest
chance of eavesdropping. When they had gone far enough to suit him, Lan leaned back against the wall. Even
without his color-shifting cloak, he was so still that it would be easy not to notice him until you were right on
him.
The gleeman muttered something about better things to do with his time and left with a stern
"Remember what I said," over his shoulder to the boys. No one else seemed inclined to leave.
"What did he mean?" Egwene asked absently, her eyes on the door that hid Moiraine and Nynaeve. She
kept fiddling with her hair as if tom between continuing to hide the fact that it was no longer braided and
pushing back the hood of her cloak.
"He gave us some advice," Mat said.
Perrin gave him a sharp look. "He said not to open our mouths until we were sure what we were going to
say, "
"That sounds like good advice," Egwene said, but clearly she was not really interested.
Rand was engrossed in his own thoughts. How could Nynaeve possibly be part of it? How could any of
them be involved with Trollocs, and Fades, and Ba'alzamon appearing in their dreams? It was crazy. He
wondered if Min had told Moiraine about Nynaeve. What are they saying in there?
He had no idea how long he had been standing there when the door finally opened. Nynaeve stepped
out, and gave a start when she saw Lan. The Warder murmured something that made her toss her head angrily,
then he slipped past her through the door.
She turned toward Rand, and for the first time he realized the others had all quietly disappeared. He did
not want to face the Wisdom alone, but he could not get away now that he had met Nynaeve's eye. A
particularly searching eye, he thought, puzzled. What did they say? He drew himself up as she came closer.
She indicated Tam's sword. "That seems to fit you, now, though I would like it better if it did not.
You've grown, Rand."
"In a week?" He laughed, but it sounded forced, and she shook her head as if he did not understand.
"Did she convince you?" he asked. "It really is the only way." He paused, thinking of Min's sparks. "Are you
coming with us?"
Nynaeve's eyes opened wide. "Coming with you! Why would I do that? Mavra Mallen came up from
Deven Ride to see to things till I return, but she'll be wanting to get back as soon as she can. I still hope to make
you see sense and come home with me."
"We can't." He thought he saw something move at the still-open door, but they were alone in the
hallway.
"You told me that, and she did, too." Nynaeve frowned. "If she wasn't mixed up in it...Aes Sedai are not
to be trusted, Rand."
"You sound as if you really do believe us," he said slowly. "What happened at the village meeting?"
Nynaeve looked back at the doorway before answering; there was no movement there now. "It was a
shambles, but there is no need for her to know we can't handle our affairs any better than that. And I believe
only one thing: you are all in danger as long as you are with her."
"Something happened," he insisted. "Why do you want us to go back if you think there's even a chance
we are right? And why you, at all? As soon send the Mayor himself as the Wisdom."
"You have grown." She smiled, and for a moment her amusement had him shifting his feet. "I can think
of a time when you would not have questioned where I chose to go or what I chose to do, wherever or whatever
it was. A time just a week ago."
He cleared his throat and pressed on stubbornly. "It doesn't make sense. Why are you really here?"
She half glanced at the still-empty doorway, then took his ann. "Let's walk while we talk." He let
himself be led away, and when they were far enough from the door not to be over- heard, she began again. " As
I said, the meeting was a shambles. Everybody agreed someone had to be sent after you, but the village split
into two groups. One wanted you rescued, though there was considerable argument over how that was to be
done considering that you were with a...the likes of her. "
He was glad she was remembering to watch what she said. "The others believed Tam?" he said.
"Not exactly, but they thought you shouldn't be among strangers, either, especially not with someone
like her. Either way, though, almost every man wanted to be one of the party. Tam, and Bran al'Vere, with the
scales of office around his neck, and Haral Luhhan, till Alsbet made him sit down. Even Cenn Buie. The Light
save me from men who think with the hair on their chests. Though I don't know as there are any other kind. "
She gave a hearty sniff, and looked up at him, an accusing glance. "At any rate, I could see it would be another
day, perhaps more, before they came to any decision, and somehow...somehow I was sure we did not dare wait
that long. So I called the Women's Circle together and told them what had to be done. I cannot say they liked it,
but they saw the right of it. And that is why I am here; because the men around Emond's Field are stubborn
wool-heads. They're probably still arguing about who; to send, though I left word I would take care of it."
Nynaeve's story explained her presence, but it did nothing to reassure him. She was still determined to
bring them back with her.
"What did she say to you in there?" he asked. Moiraine would surely have covered every argument, but
if there was one she had missed, he would make it.
"More of the same," Nynaeve replied. " And she wanted to know about you boys. To see if she could
reason out why you...have attracted the kind of attention you have...she said. " She paused, watching him out of
the corner of her eye. "She tried to disguise it, but most of all she wanted to know if any of you was born
outside the Two Rivers."
His face was suddenly as taut as a drumhead. He managed a hoarse chuckle. "She does think of some
odd things. I hope you assured her we're all Emond's Field born. "
"Of course," she replied. There had only been a heartbeat's pause before she spoke, so brief he would
have missed it if he had not been watching for it.
He tried to think of something to say, but his tongue felt like a piece of leather She knows. She was the
Wisdom, after all, and the Wisdom was supposed to know everything about everyone. If she knows, it was no
fever-dream. Oh, Light help me, father!
"Are you all right?" Nynaeve asked.
"He said...said I...wasn't his son. When he was delirious...with the fever. He said he found me. I thought
it was just..." His throat began to burn, and he had to stop.
"Oh, Rand." She stopped and took his face in both hands. She had to reach up to do it. "People say
strange things in a fever. Twisted things. Things that are not true, or real. Listen to me. Tam al'Thor ran away
seeking adventure when he was a boy no older than you. I can just remember when he came back to Emond's
Field, a grown man with a red-haired, outlander wife and a babe in swaddling clothes. I remember Kari al'Thor
cradling that child in her arms with as much love given and delight taken as I have ever seen from any woman
with a babe. Her child, Rand. You. Now you straighten up and stop this foolishness."
"Of course," he said. I was born outside the Two Rivers. "Of course." Maybe Tam had been having a
fever-dream, and maybe he had found a baby after a battle. "Why didn't you tell her?"
"It is none of any outlander's business. " "Were any of the others born outside?" As soon as the question
was out, he shook his head. "No, don't answer. It's none of my business, either." But it would be nice to know if
Moiraine had some special interest in him, over and above what she had in the whole lot of them. Would it?
"No, it isn't your business," Nynaeve agreed. "It might not mean anything. She could just be searching
blindly for a reason, any reason, why those things are after you. After all of you."
Rand managed a grin. "Then you do believe they're chasing us."
Nynaeve shook her head wryly. "You've certainly learned to twist words since you met her.”
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
She studied him; he met her eyes steadily. "Today, I am going to have a bath. For the rest, we will have
to see, won't we?"

Chapter 17

Watchers and Hunters


After the Wisdom left him, Rand made his way to the common room. He needed to hear people
laughing, to forget what Nynaeve had said and the trouble she might cause alike. The room was
crowded indeed, but no one was laughing, though every chair and bench was filled and people lined
the walls. Thom was performing again, standing on a table against the far wall, his gestures grand enough to fill
the big room. It was The Great Hunt of the Horn again, but no one complained, of course. There were so many
tales to be told about each of the Hunters, and so many Hunters to tell of, that no two tellings were ever the
same. The whole of it in one telling would have taken a week or more. The only sound competing with the
gleeman's voice and harp was the crackling of the fires in the fireplaces.
“ . . . To the eight corners of the world, the Hunters ride, to the eight pillars of heaven, where the winds
of time blow and fate seizes the mighty and the small alike by the forelock. Now, the greatest of the Hunters is
Rogosh of Talmour, Rogosh Eagle-eye, famed at the court of the High King, feared on the slopes of Shayol
Ghul . . ." The Hunters were always mighty heroes, all of them.
Rand spotted his two friends and squeezed onto a place Perrin made for him on the end of their bench.
Kitchen smells drifting into the room reminded him that he was hungry, but even the people who had food in
front of them gave it little attention. The maids who should have been serving stood entranced, clutching their
aprons and looking at the gleeman, and nobody seemed to mind at all. Listening was better than eating, no
matter how good the food.
“ . . . since the day of her birth has the Dark One marked Blaes as his own, but not of this mind is she -
no Darkfriend, Blaes of Matuchin! Strong as the ash she stands, lithe as the willow branch, beautiful as the rose.
Golden-haired Blaes. Ready to die before she yields. But hark! Echoing from the towers of the city, trumpets
blare, brazen and bold. Her heralds proclaim the arrival of a hero at her court. Drums thunder and cymbals sing!
Rogosh Eagle-eye comes to do homage . . ."
"The Bargain of Rogosh Eagle-eye" wound its way to an end, but Thom paused only to wet his throat
from a mug of ale before launching into "Lian's Stand." In turn that was followed by "The Fall of Aleth-Loriel,"
and "Gaidal Cain's Sword," and "The Last Ride of Buad of Albhain." The pauses grew longer as the evening
wore on, and when Thom exchanged the harp for his flute, everyone knew it was the end of storytelling for the
night. Two men joined Thom, with a drum and a hammered dulcimer, but sitting beside the table while he
remained atop it.
The three young men from Emond's Field began clapping their hands with the first note of "The Wind
That Shakes the Willow," and they were not the only ones. It was a favorite in the Two Rivers, and in Baerlon,
too, it seemed. Here and there voices even took up the words, not so off-key as for anyone to hush them.
"My love is gone, carried away
by the wind that shakes the willow,
and all the land is beaten hard
by the wind that shakes the willow.
But I will hold her close to me
in heart and dearest memory ,
and with her strength to steel my soul,
her love to warm my heart-strings,
I will stand where we once sang,
though cold wind shakes the willow."
The second song was not so sad. In fact, "Only One Bucket of Water" seemed even more merry than
usual by comparison, which might have been the gleeman's intent. People rushed to clear tables from the floor
to make room for dancing, and began kicking up their heels until the walls shook from the stomping and
whirling. The first dance ended with laughing dancers leaving the floor holding their sides, and new people
taking their places.
Thom played the opening notes of "Wild Geese on the Wing," then paused for people to take their places
for the reel.
"I think I'll try a few steps," Rand said, getting to his feet. Perrin popped up right behind him. Mat was
the last to move, and so found himself staying behind to guard the cloaks, along with Rand's sword and Perrin's
axe.
"Remember I want a turn, too," Mat called after them. The dancers formed two long lines facing each
other, men in one, women in the other. First the drum and then the dulcimer took up the beat, and all the dancers
began bending their knees in time. The girl across from Rand, her dark hair in braids that made him think of
home, gave him a shy smile, and then a wink that was not shy at all. Thom's flute leaped into the tune, and Rand
moved forward to meet the darkhaired girl; she threw back her head and laughed as he spun her around and
passed her on to the next man in line.
Everyone in the room was laughing, he thought as he danced around his next partner, one of the serving
maids with her apron flapping wildly. The only unsmiling face he saw was on a man huddled by one of the
fireplaces, and that fellow had a scar that crossed his whole face from one temple to the opposite jaw, giving his
nose a slant and drawing the corner of his mouth down. The man met his gaze and grimaced, and Rand looked
away in embarrassment. Maybe with that scar the fellow could not smile.
He caught his next partner as she spun, and whirled her in a circle before passing her on. Three more
women danced with him as the music gained speed, then he was back with the first dark haired girl for a fast
promenade that changed the lines about completely. She was still laughing, and she gave him another wink.
The scar-faced man was scowling at him. His step faltered and his cheeks grew hot. He had not meant to
embarrass the fellow; he really did not think he had stared. He turned to meet his next partner and forgot all
about the man. The next woman to dance into his arms was Nynaeve.
He stumbled through the steps, almost tripping over his own feet, nearly stepping on hers. She danced
gracefully enough to make up for his clumsiness, smiling the while.
"I thought you were a better dancer," she laughed as they changed partners.
He had only a moment to gather himself before they changed again, and he found himself dancing with
Moiraine. If he had thought he was stumble-footed with the Wisdom, it was nothing to how he felt with the Aes
Sedai. She glided across the floor smoothly, her gown swirling about her; he almost fell twice. She gave him a
sympathetic smile, which made it worse rather than helping. It was a relief to go to his next partner in the
pattern, even if it was Egwene.
He regained some of his poise. After all, he had danced with her for years. Her hair still hung unbraided,
but she had gathered it back with a red ribbon. Probably couldn't decide whether to please Moiraine or
Nynaeve, he thought sourly. Her lips were parted, and she looked as if she wanted to say something, but she
never spoke, and he was not about to speak first. Not after the way she had cut off his earlier attempt in the
private dining room. They stared at one another soberly and danced apart without a word.
He was glad enough to return to the bench when the reel was done. The music for another dance, a jig,
began while he was sitting down. Mat hurried to join in, and Perrin slid onto the bench as he was leaving.
"Did you see her?" Perrin began before he was even seated. "Did you?"
"Which one?" Rand asked. "The Wisdom, or Mistress Alys? I danced with both of them."
"The Ae . . . Mistress Alys, too?" Perrin exclaimed. "I danced with Nynaeve. I didn't even know she
danced. She never does at any of the dances back home."
"I wonder," Rand said thoughtfully, "what the Women's Circle would say about the Wisdom dancing?
Maybe that's why."
Then the music and the clapping and the singing were too loud for any further talk. Rand and Perrin
joined in the clapping as the dancers circled the floor. Several times he became aware of the scar-faced man
staring at him. The man had a right to be touchy, with that scar, but Rand did not see anything he could do now
that would not make matters worse. He concentrated on the music and avoided looking at the fellow.
The dancing and singing went on into the night. The maids finally did remember their duties; Rand was
glad to wolf down some hot stew and bread. Everyone ate where they sat or stood. Rand joined in three more
dances, and he managed his steps better when he found himself dancing with Nynaeve again, and with
Moiraine, as well. This time they both complimented him on his dancing, which made him stammer. He danced
with Egwene again, too; she stared at him, dark-eyed and always seeming on the point of speaking, but never
saying a word. He was just as silent as she, but he was sure he did not scowl at her, no matter what Mat said
when he returned to the bench.
Toward midnight Moiraine left. Egwene, after one harried look from the Aes Sedai to Nynaeve, hurried
after her. The Wisdom watched them with an unreadable expression, then deliberately joined in another dance
before she left, too, with a look as if she had gained a point on the Aes Sedai.
Soon Thom was putting his flute into its case and arguing good-naturedly with those who wanted him to
stay longer. Lan came by to gather up Rand and the others.
"We have to make an early start," the Warder said, leaning close to be heard over the noise, "and we will
need all the rest we can get."
"There's a fellow been staring at me," Mat said. " A man with a scar across his face. You don't think he
could be a . . . one of the friends you warned us about?"
"Like this?" Rand said, drawing a finger across his nose to the corner of his mouth. "He stared at me,
too." He looked around the room. People were drifting away, and most of those still left clustered around Thom.
"He's not here, now."
"I saw the man," Lan said. " According to Master Pitch, he's a spy for the Whitecloaks. He's no worry to
us. " Maybe he was not, but Rand could see something was bothering the Warder.
Rand glanced at Mat, who had the stiff expression on his face that always meant he was hiding
something. A Whitecloak spy.
Could Bornhald want to get back at us that much? "We're leaving early?" he said. "Really early?"
Maybe they could be gone before anything came of it.
"At first light," the Warder replied. As they left the common room, Mat singing snatches of song under
his breath, and Perrin stopping now and again to try out a new step he had learned, Thom joined them in high
spirits. Lan's face was expressionless as they headed for the stairs.
"Where is Nynaeve sleeping?" Mat asked. "Master Pitch said we got the last rooms."
"She has a bed," Thom said dryly, "in with Mistress Alys and the girl."
Perrin whistled between his teeth, and Mat muttered, "Blood and ashes! I wouldn't be in Egwene's shoes
for all the gold in Caemlyn!" Not for the first time, Rand wished Mat could think seriously about something for
more than two minutes. Their own shoes were not very comfortable right then. "I'm going to get some milk," he
said. Maybe it would help him sleep. Maybe I won't dream tonight.
Lan looked at him sharply. "There's something wrong tonight. Don't wander far. And remember, we
leave whether you are awake enough to sit your saddle or have to be tied on."
The Warder started up the stairs; the others followed him, their jollity subdued. Rand stood in the hall
alone. After having so many people around, it was lonely indeed.
He hurried to the kitchen, where a scullery maid was still on duty. She poured a mug of milk from a big
stone crock for him.
As he came out of the kitchen, drinking, a shape in dull black started toward him down the length of the
hall, raising pale hands to toss back the dark cowl that had hidden the face beneath. The cloak hung motionless
as the figure moved, and the face...A man's face, but pasty white, like a slug under a rock, and eyeless. From
oily black hair to puffy cheeks was as smooth as an eggshell. Rand choked, spraying milk.
"You are one of them, boy," the Fade said, a hoarse whisper like a file softly drawn across bone.
Dropping the mug, Rand backed away. He wanted to run, but it was all he could do to make his feet take
one halting step at a time. He could not break free of that eyeless face; his gaze was held, and his stomach
curdled. He tried to shout for help. to scream; his throat was like stone. Every ragged breath hurt.
The Fade glided closer, in no hurry. Its strides had a sinuous, deadly grace, like a viper, the resemblance
emphasized by the overlapping black plates of armor down its chest. Thin, blood- less lips curved in a cruel
smile, made more mocking by the smooth, pale skin where exes should have been. The voice made Bornhald's
seem warm and soft. "Where are the others? I know they are here. Speak, boy, and I will let you live."
Rand's back struck wood; a wall or a door-he could not make himself look around to see which. Now
that his feet had stopped, he could not make them start again. He shivered, watching the Myrddraal slither
nearer. His shaking grew harder with every slow stride. "Speak, I say, or -" From above came a quick clatter of
boots, from the stairs up the ball, and the Myrddraal cut off, whirling. The cloak hung still. For an instant the
Fade's head tilted, as if that eyeless gaze could pierce the wooden wall. A sword appeared in a dead-white hand,
blade as black as the cloak. The light in the hall seemed to grow dimmer in the presence of that blade. The
pounding of boots grew louder, and the Fade spun back to Rand, an almost boneless movement. The black
blade rose; narrow lips peeled back in a rictus snarl.
Trembling, Rand knew he was going to die. Midnight steel flashed at his head...and stopped.
"You belong to the Great Lord of the Dark." The breathy grating of that voice sounded like fingernails
scratched across a slate. "You are his."
Spinning in a black blur, the Fade darted down the hall away from Rand. The shadows at the end of the
hall reached out and embraced it, and it was gone.
Lan leaped down the last stairs, landing with a crash, sword in hand.
Rand struggled to find his voice. "Fade," he gasped. "It was. ..." Abruptly he remembered his sword.
With the Myrddraal facing him he had never thought of it. He fumbled the heron-mark blade out now, not
caring if it was too late. "It ran that way!"
Lan nodded absently; he seemed to be listening to something else. "Yes. It's going; fading. No time to
pursue it, now. We're leaving sheepherder. "
More boots stumbled down the stairs; Mat and Perrin and Thom, hung about with blankets and
saddlebags. Mat was still buckling his bedroll, with his bow awkward under his arm.
"Leaving?" Rand said. Sheathing his sword, he took his things from Thom. "Now? In the night?"
"You want to wait for the Halfman to come back, sheepherder?" the Warder said impatiently. "For half a
dozen of them? It knows where we are, now."
“I will ride with you again," Thom told the Warder, "if you have no great objections. Too many people
remember that I arrived with you. I fear that before tomorrow this will be a bad place to be known as your
friend."
"You can ride with us, or ride to Shayol Ghul, gleeman." Lan's scabbard rattled from the force with
which he rammed his sword home.
A stableman came darting past them from the rear door, and then Moiraine appeared with Master Fitch,
and behind them Egwene, with her bundled shawl in her arms. And Nynaeve. Egwene looked frightened almost
to tears, but the Wisdom's face was a mask of cool anger.
"You must take this seriously," Moiraine was telling the inn keeper. "You will certainly have trouble
here by morning. Darkfriends, perhaps; perhaps worse. When it comes, quickly make it clear that we are gone.
Offer no resistance. Just let whoever it is know that vie left in the night, and they should bother you, no further.
It is us they are after."
"Never you worry about trouble," Master Pitch replied jovially. "Never a bit. If any come around my inn
trying to make trouble for my guests...well, they'll get short shrift from the lads and I. Short shrift. And they'll
hear not a word about where you've gone or when, or even if you were ever here. I've no use for that kind. Not a
word will be spoken about you by any here. Not a word!"
"But -"
"Mistress Alys, I really must see to your horses if you're going to leave in good order." He pulled loose
from her grip on his sleeve and trotted in the direction of the stables.
Moiraine sighed vexedly. "Stubborn, stubborn man. He will not listen. "
"You think Trollocs might come here hunting for us?" Mat asked.
"Trollocs!" Moiraine snapped. "Of course not! There are other things to fear, not the least of which is
how we were found." Ignoring Mat's bristle, she went right on. "The Fade cannot believe we will remain here,
now that we know it has found us, but Master Pitch takes Darkfriends too lightly. He thinks of them as wretches
hiding in the shadows, but Darkfriends can be found in the shops and streets of every city, and in the highest
councils, too. The Myrddraal may send them to see if he can learn of our plans. " She turned on her heel and
left, Lan close behind her.
As they started for the stableyard, Rand fell in beside Nynaeve. She had her saddlebags and blankets,
too. "So you're coming after all," he said. Min was right.
"Was there something down here?" she asked quietly. "She said it was -" She stopped abruptly and
looked at him.
"A Fade," he answered. He was amazed that he could say it so calmly. "It was in the hall with me, and
then Lan came."
Nynaeve shrugged her cloak against the wind as they" left the inn. "Perhaps there is something after you.
But I came to see you safely back in Emond's Field, all of you, and I will not leave till that is done. I won't leave
you alone with her sort." Lights moved in the stables where the ostlers were saddling the horses.
"Mutch!" the innkeeper shouted from the stable door where he stood with Moiraine. "Stir your bones!"
He turned back to her, appearing to attempt to soothe her rather than really listening when she spoke, though he
did it deferentially, with bows interspersed among the orders called to the stablemen.
The horses were led out, the stablemen grumbling softly about the hurry and the lateness. Rand held
Egwene's bundle, handing it up to her when she was on Bela's back. She looked back at him with wide, fearfilled
eyes. At least she doesn't think it's an adventure anymore.
He was ashamed as soon as he thought it. She was in danger because of him and the others. Even riding
back to Emond's Field alone would be safer than going on. "Egwene, I..."
The words died in his mouth. She was too stubborn to just turn back, not after saying she was going all
the way to Tar Valon. What about what Min saw? She's part of it. Light, part of what?
"Egwene," he said, "I'm sorry. I can't seem to think straight anymore. "
She leaned down to grip his hand hard. In the light from the stable he could see her face clearly. She did
not look as frightened as she had.
Once they were all mounted, Master Pitch insisted on leading them to the gates, the stablemen lighting
the way with their lamps. The round-bellied innkeeper bowed them on their way with assurances that he would
keep their secrets, and invitations to come again. Mutch watched them leave as sourly as he had watched them
arrive.
There was one, Rand thought, who would not give short shrift to anyone, or any kind of shrift. Mutch
would tell the first person who asked him when they had gone and everything else he could think of concerning
them. A little distance down the street, he looked back. One figure stood, lamp raised high, peering after them.
He did not need to see the face to know it was Mutch.
The streets of Baerlon were abandoned at that hour of the night; only a few faint glimmers here and
there escaped tightly closed shutters, and the light of the moon in its last quarter waxed and waned with the
wind-driven clouds. Now and again a dog barked as they passed an alleyway, but no other sound disturbed the
night except their horses' hooves and the wind whistling across the rooftops. The riders held an even deeper
silence, huddled in their cloaks and their own thoughts.
The Warder led the way, as usual, with Moiraine and Egwene close behind. Nynaeve kept near the girl,
and the others brought up the rear in a tight cluster. Lan kept the horses moving at a brisk walk.
Rand watched the streets around them warily, and he noticed his friends doing the same. Shifting moon
shadows recalled the shadows at the end of the hall, the way they had seemed to reach out to the Fade. An
occasional noise in the distance, like a barrel toppling, or another dog barking, jerked every head around.
Slowly, bit by bit as they made their way through the town, they all bunched their horses closer to Lan's black
stallion and Moiraine's white mare.
At the Caemlyn Gate Lan dismounted and hammered with his fist on the door of a small square stone
building squatting against the wall. A weary Watchman appeared, rubbing sleepily at his face. As Lan spoke,
his sleepiness vanished, and he stared past the Warder to the others.
"You want to leave?" he exclaimed. "Now? In the night? You must be mad!"
"Unless there is some order from the Governor that prohibits our leaving," Moiraine said. She had
dismounted as well, but she stayed back from the door, out of the light that spilled into the dark street.
"Not exactly, mistress. " The Watchman peered at her, frowning as he tried to make out her face. "But
the gates stay shut from sundown to sunup. No one to come in except in daylight. That's the order. Anyway,
there're wolves out there. Killed a dozen cows in the last week. Could kill a man just as easy."
"No one to come in, but nothing about leaving," Moiraine said as if that settled the matter. "You see?
We are not asking you to disobey the Governor. "
Lan pressed something into the Watchman's hand. "For your trouble," he murmured.
"I suppose," the Watchman said slowly. He glanced at his hand; gold glinted before he hastily stuffed it
in his pocket. "I suppose leaving wasn't mentioned at that. Just a minute." He stuck his head back inside. " Ann!
Dar! Get out here and help me open the gate. There's people want to leave. Don't argue. Just do it."
Two more of the Watch appeared from inside, stopping to stare in sleepy surprise at the party of eight
waiting to leave. Under the first Watchman's urgings they shuffled over to heave at the big wheel that raised the
thick bar across the gates, then turned their efforts to cranking the gates open. The crank-and- ratchet made a
rapid clicking sound, but the well-oiled gates swung outward silently. Before they were even a quarter open;
though, a cold voice spoke out of the darkness.
"What is this? Are these gates not ordered closed until sunrise?"
Five white-cloaked men walked into the light from the guard- house door. Their cowls were drawn up to
hide their faces, but each man rested his hand on his sword, and the golden suns on their left breasts were a
plain announcement of who they were. Mat muttered under his breath. The Watchmen stopped their cranking
and exchanged uneasy looks.
"This is none of your affair," the first Watchman said belligerently. Five white hoods turned to regard
him, and he finished in a weaker tone. "The Children hold no sway here. The Governor -"
"The Children of the light," the white-cloaked man who had first spoken said softly, "hold sway
wherever men walk in the Light. Only where the Shadow of the Dark One reigns are the Children denied, yes?"
He swung his hood from the Watchman to Lan, then suddenly gave the Warder a second, more wary, look.
The Warder had not moved; in fact, he seemed completely at ease. But not many people could look at
the Children so uncaringly. Lan's stony face could as well have been looking at a bootblack. When the
Whitecloak spoke again, he sounded suspicious.
"What kind of people want to leave town walls in the night during times like these? With wolves
stalking the darkness, and the Dark One's handiwork seen flying over the town?" He eyed the braided leather
band that crossed Lan's forehead and held his long hair back. "A northerner, yes?"
Rand hunched lower in his saddle. A Draghkar. It had to be that, unless the man just named anything he
did not understand as the Dark One's handiwork. With a Fade at the Stag and Lion, he should have expected a
Draghkar, but at the moment he was hardly thinking about it. He thought he recognized the Whitecloak's voice.
"Travelers," Lan replied calmly. "Of no interest to you or yours."
"Everyone is of interest to the Children of the Light. " Lan shook his head slightly. " Are you really after
more trouble with the Governor? He has limited your numbers in the town, even had you followed. What will
he do when he discovers you're harassing honest citizens at his gates?" He turned to the Watchmen. "Why have
you stopped?" They hesitated, put their hands back on the crank, then hesitated again when the Whitecloak
spoke.
"The Governor does not know what happens under his nose. There is evil he does not see, or smell. But
the Children of the Light see." The Watchmen looked at one another; their hands opened and closed as if
regretting the spears left inside the \guardhouse. "The Children of the Light smell the evil." The Whitecloak's
eyes turned to the people on horseback. "We smell it, and root it out. Wherever it is found. "
Rand tried to make himself even smaller, but the movement drew the man's attention.
"What have we here? Someone who does not wish to be seen? What do you -? Ah!" The man brushed
back the hood of his white cloak, and Rand was looking at the face he had known would be there. Bornhald
nodded with obvious satisfaction. "Clearly, Watchman, I have saved you from a great disaster. These are
Darkfriends you were about to help escape from the Light. You should be reported to your Governor for
discipline, or perhaps given to the Questioners to discover your true intent this night." He paused, eyeing the
Watchman's fear; it seemed to have no effect on him. "You would not wish that, no? Instead, I will take these
ruffians to our camp, that they may be questioned in the Light-instead of you, yes?"
"You will take me to your camp, Whitecloak?" Moiraine's voice came suddenly from every direction at
once. She had moved back into the night at the Children's approach, and shadows clumped around her. "You
will question me?" Darkness wreathed her as she took a step forward; it made her seem taller. "You will bar my
way?"
Another step, and Rand gasped. She was taller, her head level with his where he sat on the gray's back.
Shadows clung about her face like thunderclouds.
"Aes Sedai!" Bornhald shouted, and five swords flashed from their sheaths. "Die!" The other four
hesitated, but he slashed at her in the same motion that cleared his sword.
Rand cried out as Moiraine's staff rose to intercept the blade. That delicately carved wood could not
possibly stop hard-swung steel. Sword met staff, and sparks sprayed in a fountain, a hissing roar hurling
Bornhald back into his white-cloaked companions. All five went down in a heap. Tendrils of smoke rose from
Bornhald's sword, on the ground beside him, blade bent at a right angle where it had been melted almost in two.
"You dare attack me!" Moiraine's voice roared like a whirlwind. Shadow spun in on her, draped her like
a hooded cloak; she loomed as high as the town wall. Her eyes glared down, a giant staring at insects.
"Go!" Lan shouted. In one lightning move he snatched the reins of Moiraine's mare and leaped into his
own saddle. "Now!" he commanded. His shoulders brushed either gate as his stallion tore through the narrow
opening like a flung stone.
For a moment Rand remained frozen, staring. Moiraine's head and shoulders stood above the wall, now.
Watchmen and Children alike cowered away from her, huddling with their backs against the front of the
guardhouse. The Aes Sedai's face was lost in the night, but her eyes, as big as full moons, shone with
impatience as well as anger when they touched him. Swallowing hard, he booted Cloud in the ribs and galloped
after the others. Fifty paces from the wall, Lan drew them up, and Rand looked back. Moiraine's shadowed
shape towered high over the log palisade, head and shoulders a deeper darkness against the night sky,
surrounded by a silver nimbus from the hidden moon. As he watched, mouth hanging open, the Aes Sedai
stepped over the wall. The gates began swinging shut frantically. As soon as her feet were on the ground
outside, she was suddenly her normal size again.
"Hold the gates!" an unsteady voice shouted inside the wall. Rand thought it was Bornhald. "We must
pursue them, and take them!" But the Watchmen did not slow the pace of closing. The gates slammed shut, and
moments later the bar crashed into place, sealing them. Maybe some of those other Whitecloaks aren't as eager
to confront an Aes Sedai as Bornhald.
Moiraine hurried to Aldieb, stroking the white mare's nose once before she tucked her staff under the
girth strap. Rand did not need to look this time to know there was not even a nick in the staff.
"You were taller than a giant," Egwene said breathlessly', shifting on Bela's back. No one else spoke,
though Mat and Perrin edged their horses away from the Aes Sedai.
"Was I?" Moiraine said absently as she swung into her saddle.
"I saw you," Egwene protested.
"The mind plays tricks in the night; the eye sees what is not there."
"This is no time for games," Nynaeve began angrily, but Moiraine cut her off.
"No time for games indeed. What we gained at the Stag and Lion we may have lost here." She looked
back at the gate and shook her head. "If only I could believe the Draghkar was on the ground." With a selfdeprecatory
sniff she added, "Or if only the Myrddraal were truly blind. If I am wishing, I might as well wish
for the truly impossible. No matter. They know the way we must go, but with luck we will stay a step ahead of
them. Lan!"
The Warder moved off eastward down the Caemlyn Road, and the rest followed close behind, hooves
thudding rhythmically on the hard-packed earth.
They kept to an easy pace, a fast walk the horses could maintain for hours without any Aes Sedai help.
Before they had been even one hour on their way, though, Mat cried out, pointing back the way they had come.
"Look there!" They all drew rein and stared. Flames lit the night over Baerlon as if someone had built a
house-size bonfire, tinting the undersides of the cloud with red. Sparks whipped into the sky on the wind.
"I warned him," Moiraine said, "but he would not take it seriously. " Aldieb danced sideways, an echo of
the Aes Sedai's frustration. "He would not take it seriously."
"The inn?" Perrin said. "That's the Stag and Lion? How can you be sure?"
"How far do you want to stretch coincidence?" Thom asked. "It could be the Governor's house, but it
isn't. And it isn't a warehouse, or somebody's kitchen stove, or your grandmother's haystack."
"Perhaps the Light shines on us a little this night," Lan said, and Egwene rounded on him angrily.
"How can you. say that? Poor Master Fitch's inn is burning! People may be hurt!"
If they have attacked the inn," Moiraine said, "perhaps our exit from the town and my...display went
unnoticed."
"Unless that's what the Myrddraal wants us to think," Lan added.
Moiraine nodded in the darkness. "Perhaps. In any case, we must press on. There will be little rest for
anyone tonight."
"You say that so easily, Moiraine," Nynaeve exclaimed. "What about the people at the inn? People must
be hurt, and the innkeeper has lost his livelihood, because of you! For all your talk about walking in the Light
you're ready to go on without sparing a thought for him. His trouble is because of you!"
"Because of those three," Lan said angrily. "The fire, the injured, the going on - all because of those
three. The fact that the price must be paid is proof that it is worth paying. The Dark One wants those boys of
yours, and anything he wants this badly, he must be kept from. Or would you rather let the Fade have them?"
"Be at ease, Lan," Moiraine said. "Be at ease. Wisdom, you think I can help Master Pitch and the people
at the inn? Well, you are right." Nynaeve started to say something, but Moiraine waved it away and went on. "I
can go back by myself and give some help. Not too much, of course. That would draw attention to those I
helped, attention they would not thank me for, especially with the Children of the Light in the town. And that
would leave only Lan to protect the rest of you. He is very good, but it will take more than him if a Myrddraal
and a fist of Trollocs find you. Of course, we could all return, though I doubt I can get all of us back into
Baerlon unnoticed. And that would expose all of you to whomever set that fire, not to mention the Whitecloaks.
Which alternative would you choose, Wisdom, if you were I?"
"I would do something," Nynaeve muttered unwillingly.
"And in all probability hand the Dark One his victory," Moiraine replied. "Remember what – who - it is
that he wants. We are in a war, as surely as anyone in Ghealdan, though thousands fight there and only eight of
us here. I will have gold sent to Master Pitch, enough to rebuild the Stag and Lion, gold that cannot be traced to
Tar Valon. And help for any who were hurt, as well. Any more than that will only endanger them. It is far from
simple, you see. Lan."
The Warder turned his horse and took up the road again.
From time to time Rand looked back. Eventually all he could see was the glow on the clouds, and then
even that was lost in the darkness. He hoped Min was all right.
All was still pitch-dark when the Warder finally led them off the packed dirt of the road and dismounted.
Rand estimated there were no more than a couple of hours till dawn. They hobbled the horses, still saddled, and
made a cold camp.
"One hour," Lan warned as everyone except him was wrapping up in their blankets. He would stand
guard while they slept. "One hour, and we must be on our way." Silence settled over them. .
After a few minutes Mat spoke in a whisper that barely reached Rand. "I wonder what Dav did with that
badger." Rand shook his head silently, and Mat hesitated. Finally he said, "I thought we were safe, you know,
Rand. Not a sign of anything since we crossed the Taren, and there we were in a city, with walls around us. I
thought we were safe. And then that dream. And a Fade. Are we ever going to be safe again?"
"Not until we get to Tar Valon," Rand said. "That's what she told us."
"Will we be safe then?" Perrin asked softly, and all three of them looked to the shadowy mound that was
the Aes Sedai. Lan had melded into the darkness; he could have been anywhere.
Rand yawned suddenly. The others twitched nervously at the sound. "I think we'd better get some
sleep," he said. "Staying awake won't answer anything."
Perrin spoke quietly. "She should have done something." No one answered.
Rand squirmed onto his side to avoid a root, tried his back, then rolled off of a stone onto his belly and
another root. It was not a good campsite they had stopped at, not like the spots the Warder had chosen on the
way north from the Taren. He fell asleep wondering if the roots digging into his ribs would make him dream,
and woke at Lan's touch on his shoulder, ribs aching, and grateful that if any dreams had come he did not
remember them.
It was still the dark just before dawn, but once the blankets were rolled and strapped behind their saddles
Lan had them riding east again. As the sun rose they made a bleary-eyed breakfast on bread and cheese and
water, eating while they rode, huddled in their cloaks against the wind. All except Lan, that is. He ate, but he
was not bleary-eyed, and he did not huddle. He had changed back into his shifting cloak, and it whipped around
him, fluttering through grays and greens, and the only mind he paid it was to keep it clear of his sword-arm. His
face remained without expression, but his eyes searched constantly, as if he expected an ambush any moment.

Chapter 18

The Caemlyn Road


The Caemlyn Road was not very different from the North Road through the Two Rivers. It was
considerably wider, of course, and showed the wear of much more use, but it was still hard-packed dirt,
lined on either side by trees that would not have been at all out of place in the Two Rivers, especially
since only the evergreens carried a leaf.
The land itself was different, though, for by midday the road entered low hills. For two days the road ran
through the hills - cut right through them, sometimes, if they were wide enough to: have made the road go much
out of its way and not so big as to have made digging through too difficult. As the angle of the sun shifted each
day it became apparent that the road, for all it appeared straight to the eye, curved slowly southward as it ran
east. Rand had daydreamed over Master al'Vere's old map - half the boys in Emond's Field had daydreamed
over it - and as he remembered, the road curved around something called the Hills of Absher until it reached
Whitebridge.
From time to time Lan had them dismount atop one of the hills, where he could get a good view of the
road both ahead and behind, and the surrounding countryside as well. The Warder would study the view while
the others stretched their legs, or sat under the trees and ate. "I used to like cheese," Egwene said on the third
day after leaving Baerlon. She sat with her back to the bole of a tree, grimacing over a dinner that was once
again the same as breakfast, as supper would be. "Not a chance of tea. Nice hot tea." She pulled her cloak
tighter and shifted around the tree in a vain effort to avoid the swirling wind.
"Flatwort tea and andilay root," Nynaeve was saying to Moiraine, "are best for fatigue. They clear the
head and dint the burn in tired muscles."
"I am sure they do," the Aes Sedai murmured, giving Nynaeve a sidelong glance.
Nynaeve's jaw tightened, but she continued in the same tone. "Now, if you must go without sleep..."
"No tea!" Lan said sharply to Egwene. "No fire! We can't see them yet, but they are back there,
somewhere, a Fade or two and their Trollocs, and they know we are taking this road. No need to tell them
exactly where we are."
"I wasn't asking," Egwene muttered into her cloak. "Just regretting. "
"If they know we're on the road," Perrin asked, "why don't we go straight across to Whitebridge?"
"Even Lan cannot travel as fast cross-country as by road," Moiraine said, interrupting Nynaeve,
"especially not through the Hills of Absher. " The Wisdom gave an exasperated sigh. Rand wondered what she
was up to; after ignoring the Aes Sedai completely for the first day, Nynaeve had spent the last two trying to
talk to her about herbs. Moiraine moved away from the Wisdom as she went on. "Why do you think the road
curves to avoid them? And we would have to come back to this road eventually. We might find them ahead of
us instead of following."
Rand looked doubtful, and Mat muttered something about "the long way round."
"Have you seen a farm this morning?" Lan asked. "Or even the smoke from a chimney? You haven't,
because it's all wilderness from Baerlon to Whitebridge, and Whitebridge is where we must cross the Arinelle.
That is the only bridge spanning the Arinelle south of Maradon, in Saldaea."
Thom snorted and blew out his mustaches. "What is to stop them from having someone, something, at
Whitebridge already?"
From the west came the keening wail of a horn. Lan's head whipped around to stare back down the road
behind them.
Rand felt a chill. A part of him remained calm enough to think, ten miles, no more.
"Nothing stops them, gleeman," the Warder said. "We trust to the Light and luck. But now we know for
certain there are Trollocs behind us."
Moiraine dusted her hands. "It is time for us to move on." The Aes Sedai mounted her white mare.
That set off a scramble for the horses, speeded by a second winding of the horn. This time others
answered, the thin sounds floating out of the west like a dirge. Rand made ready to put Cloud to a gallop right
away, and everyone else settled their reins with the same urgency. Everyone except Lan and Moiraine. The
Warder and the Aes Sedai exchanged a long look.
"Keep them moving, Moiraine Sedai," Lan said finally. "I will return as soon as I am able. You will
know if I fail." Putting a hand on Mandarb's saddle, he vaulted to the back of the black stallion and galloped
down the hill. Heading west. The horns sounded again.
"The Light go with you, last Lord of the Seven Towers…" Moiraine said almost too softly for Rand to
hear Drawing a deep breath, she turned Aldieb to the east. "We must go on," she said, and started off at a slow,
steady trot. The others followed her in a tight file.
Rand twisted once in his saddle to look for Lan, but the Warder was already lost to sight among the low
hills and leafless trees. Last Lord of the Seven Towers, she had called him. He wondered what that meant. He
had not thought anyone besides himself had heard, but Thom was chewing the ends of his mustaches, and he
had a speculative frown on his face. The gleeman seemed to know a great many things.
The horns called and answered once more behind them. Rand shifted in his saddle. They were closer this
time; he was sure of it. Eight miles. Maybe seven. Mat and Egwene looked over their shoulders, and Perrin
hunched as if he expected something to hit him in the back. Nynaeve rode up to speak to Moiraine.
"Can't we go any faster?" she asked. "Those horns are getting closer."
The Aes Sedai shook her head. " And why do they let us know they are there? Perhaps so we will hurry
on without thinking of what might be ahead."
They kept on at the same steady pace. At intervals the horns gave cry behind them, and each time the
sound was closer. Rand tried to stop thinking of how close, but the thought came unbidden at every brazen wail.
Five miles, he was thinking anxiously, when Lan suddenly burst around the hill behind them at a gallop.
He came abreast of Moiraine, reining in the stallion. " At least three fists of Trollocs, each led by a
Halfman. Maybe five."
"If you were close enough to see them," Egwene said worriedly, "they could have seen you. They could
be right on your heels."
"He was not seen." Nynaeve drew herself up as everyone looked at her. "I have followed his trail,
remember."
"Hush," Moiraine commanded. "Lan is telling us there are I perhaps five hundred Trollocs behind us." A
stunned silence followed, then Lan spoke again.
"And they are closing the gap. They will be on us in an hour or less."
Half to herself, the Aes Sedai said, "If they had that many before, why were they not used at Emond's
Field? If they did not, how did they come here, since?"
"They are spread out to drive us before them," Lan said, "with scouts quartering ahead of the main
parties.”
"Driving us toward what?" Moiraine mused. As if to answer her a horn sounded in the distance to the
west, a long moan that was answered this time by others, all ahead of them. Moiraine stopped Aldieb; the others
followed her lead, Thom and the Emond's Field folk looking around fearfully. Horns cried out before them, and
behind. Rand thought they held a note of triumph.
"What do we do now?" Nynaeve demanded angrily. "Where do we go?"
"All that is left is north or south," Moiraine said, more thinking aloud than answering the Wisdom. "To
the south are the Hills of Absher, barren and dead, and the Taren, with no way to cross, and no traffic by boat.
To the north, we can reach the Arinelle before nightfall, and there will be a chance of a trader's boat. If the ice
has broken at Maradon."
"There is a place the Trollocs will not go," Lan said, but Moiraine's head whipped around sharply.
"No!" She motioned to the Warder, and he put his head close to hers so their talk could not be
overheard.
The horns winded, and Rand's horse danced nervously.
"They're trying to frighten us," Thom growled, attempting to steady his mount. He sounded half angry
and half as if the Trollocs were succeeding. "They're trying to scare us until we panic and run. They'll have us,
then."
Egwene's head swung with every blast of a horn, staring first ahead of them, then behind, as if looking
for the first Trollocs. Rand wanted to do the same thing, but he tried to hide it. He moved Cloud closer to her.
"We go north," Moiraine announced.
The horns keened shrilly as they left the road and trotted into the surrounding hills.
The hills were low, but the way was all up and down, with never a flat stretch, beneath barebranched
trees and through dead undergrowth. The horses climbed laboriously up one slope only to canter down the
other. Lan set a hard pace, faster than they had used on the road.
Branches lashed Rand across the face and chest. Old creepers and vines caught his arms, and sometimes
snagged his foot right out of the stirrup. The keening horns came ever closer, and ever more frequently.
As hard as Lan pushed them, they were not getting farther on very quickly. They traveled two feet up or
down for every one forward, and every foot was a scrambling effort. And the horns were coming nearer. Two
miles, he thought. Maybe less. After a time Lan began peering first one way then another, the hard planes of his
face as close to worry as Rand had seen them. Once the Warder stood in his stirrups to stare back the way they
had come. All Rand could see were trees. Lan settled back into his saddle and unconsciously pushed back his
cloak to clear his sword as he resumed searching the forest.
Rand met Mat's eye questioningly, but Mat only grimaced at the Warder's back and shrugged helplessly.
Lan spoke, then, over his shoulder. "There are Trollocs nearby." They topped a hill and started down the
other side. "Some of the scouts, sent ahead of the rest. Probably. If we come on them, stay with me at all costs,
and do as I do. We must keep on the way we are going. "
"Blood and ashes!" Thom muttered. Nynaeve motioned to Egwene to keep close.
Scattered stands of evergreens provided the only real cover, but Rand tried to peer in every direction at
once, his imagination turning gray tree trunks caught out of the comer of his eye into Trollocs. The horns were
closer, too. And directly behind them. He was sure of it. Behind and coming closer.
They topped another hill. Below them, just starting up the slope, marched Trollocs carrying poles tipped
with great loops of rope or long hooks. Many Trollocs. The line stretched far to either side, the ends out of
sight, but at its center, directly in front of Lan, a Fade rode.
The Myrddraal seemed to hesitate as the humans appeared atop the hill, but in the next instant it
produced a sword with the black blade Rand remembered so queasily, and waved it over its head. The line of
Trollocs scrambled forward.
Even before the Myrddraal moved, Lan's sword was in his hand. "Stay with me!" he cried, and Mandarb
plunged down the slope toward the Trollocs. "For the Seven Towers!" he shouted.
Rand gulped and booted the gray forward; the whole group of them streamed after the Warder. He was
surprised to find Tam's sword in his fist. Caught up by Lan's cry, he found his own. "Manetheren! Manetheren!"
Perrin took it up. "Manetheren! Manetheren!" But Mat shouted, "Carai an Caldazar! Carai an
Ellisande! Al Ellisande!"
The Fade's head turned from the Trollocs to the riders charging toward him. The black sword froze over
its head, and the opening of its cowl swiveled, searching among the oncoming horsemen.
Then Lan was on the Myrddraal, as the human folk fell on the Trolloc line. Warder's blade met black
steel from the forges at Thakan'dar with a clang like a great bell, the toll echoing in the hollow, a flash of blue
light fining the air like sheet lightning.
Beast-muzzled almost-men swarmed around each of the humans, catchpoles and hooks flailing. Only
Lan and the Myrddraal did they avoid; those two fought in a clear circle, black horses matching step for step,
swords matching stroke for stroke. The air flashed and pealed.
Cloud rolled his eyes and screamed, rearing and lashing out with his hooves at the snarling, sharptoothed
faces surrounding him. Heavy bodies crowded shoulder-to-shoulder around him. Digging his heels in
ruthlessly, Rand forced the gray on regardless, swinging his sword with little of the skill Lan had tried to impart,
hacking as if hewing wood. Egwene! Desperately he searched for her as he kicked the gray onward, slashing a
path through the hairy bodies as thoughchopping undergrowth.
Moiraine's white mare dashed and cut at the slightest touch of the Aes Sedai's hand on the reins. Her
face was as hard as Lan's as her staff lashed out. Flame enveloped Trollocs, then burst with a roar that left
misshapen forms unmoving on the ground. Nynaeve and Egwene rode close to the Aes Sedai with frantic
urgency: teeth bared almost as fiercely as the Trollocs', belt knives in hand. Those short blades would be no use
at all if a Trolloc came close. Rand tried to turn Cloud toward them, but the gray had the bit in his teeth.
Screaming and kicking, Cloud struggled forward however hard Rand tugged at the reins.
Around the three women a space opened as Trollocs tried to flee from Moiraine's staff, but as they
attempted to avoid her, she sought them out. Fires roared, and the Trollocs howled in rage and fury. Above roar
and howl crashed the tolling of the Warder's sword against the Myrddraal's; the air flared blue around them,
flared again. Again.
A noose on the end of a pole swept at Rand's head. With an awkward slash, he cut the catchpole in two,
then hacked the goat-faced Trolloc that held it. A hook caught his shoulder from behind and tangled in his
cloak, jerking him backwards. Frantically, almost losing his sword, he clutched the pommel of his saddle to
keep his seat. Cloud twisted, shrieking. Rand hung onto saddle and reins desperately; he could feel himself
slipping, inch by inch, falling to the hook. Cloud swung around; for an instant Rand saw Perrin, half out of his
saddle, struggling to wrest his axe away from three Trollocs. They had him by one arm and both legs. Cloud
plunged, and only Trollocs filled Rand's eyes.
A Trolloc dashed in and seized Rand's leg, forcing his foot free of the stirrup. Panting, he let go of the
saddle to stab it. Instantly the hook pulled him out of the saddle, to Cloud's hindquarters; his death-grip on the
reins was all that kept him from the ground. Cloud reared and shrieked. And in that same moment the pulling
vanished. The Trolloc at his leg threw up its hands and screamed. All of the Trollocs screamed, a howl like all
the dogs in the world gone mad.
Around the humans Trollocs fell writhing to the ground, tearing at their hair, clawing their own faces.
All of the Trollocs. Biting at the ground, snapping at nothing, howling, howling, howling.
Then Rand saw the Myrddraal. Still upright in the saddle of its madly dancing horse, black sword still
flailing, it had no head.
"It won't die until nightfall," Thom had to shout, between heavy breaths, over the unrelenting screams.
"Not completely. That is what I've heard, anyway."
"Ride!" Lan shouted angrily. The Warder had already gathered Moiraine and the other two women and
had them halfway up the next hill. "This is not all of them!" Indeed, the horns dirged again, above the shrieks of
the Trollocs on the ground, to east and west and south.
For a wonder, Mat was the only one who had been unhorsed. Rand trotted toward him, but Mat tossed a
noose away from him with a shudder, gathered his bow, and scrambled into his saddle unaided, though rubbing
at his throat.
The horns bayed like hounds with the scent of a deer. Hounds closing in. If Lan had set a hard pace
before, he doubled it now, till the horses scrabbled uphill faster than they had gone down before, then nearly
threw themselves at the other side. But still the horns came ever nearer, until the guttural shouts of pursuit were
heard whenever the horns paused, until eventually the humans reached a hilltop just as Trollocs appeared on the
next hill behind them. The hilltop blackened with Trollocs, snouted, distorted faces howling, and three
Myrddraal overawed them all. Only a hundred spans separated the two parties.
Rand's heart shriveled like an old grape. Three!
The Myrddraal's black swords rose as one; Trollocs boiled down the slope, thick, triumphant cries
rising, catchpoles bobbing above as they ran.
Moiraine climbed down from Aldieb's back. Calmly she removed something from her pouch,
unwrapped it. Rand glimpsed dark ivory. The angreal. With angreal in one hand And staff in the other, the Aes
Sedai set her feet, facing the onrushing Trollocs and the Fades' black swords, raised her staff high, and stabbed
it down into the earth.
The ground rang like an iron kettle struck by a mallet. The hollow clang dwindled, faded away. For an
instant "then, it was silent. Everything was silent. The wind died. The Trolloc cries stilled; even their charge
forward slowed and stopped. For a heartbeat, everything waited. Slowly the dull ringing returned, changing to a
low rumble, growing until the earth moaned.
The ground trembled beneath Cloud's hooves. This was Aes Sedai work like the stories told about; Rand
wished he were a hundred miles away. The tremble became a shaking that set the trees around them quivering.
The gray stumbled and nearly fell. Even Mandarb and riderless Aldieb staggered as if drunk, and those who
rode had to cling to reins and manes, to anything, to keep their seats.
The Aes Sedai still stood as she had begun, holding the angreal and her upright staff thrust into the
hilltop, and neither she nor the staff moved an inch, for all that the ground shook and shivered around her. Now
the ground rippled, springing out from in front of her staff, lapping toward the Trollocs like ripples on a pond,
ripples that grew as they ran, toppling old bushes, flinging dead leaves into the air, growing, becoming waves of
earth, rolling toward the Trollocs. Trees in the hollow lashed like switches in the hands of smal1 boys. On the
far slope Trollocs fell in heaps, tumbled over and over by the raging earth.
Yet as if the ground were not rearing all around them, the Myrddraal moved forward in a line, their
dead-black horses never missing a step, every hoof in unison. Trollocs rolled on the ground all about the black
steeds, howling and grabbing at the hillside that heaved them up, but the Myrddraal came slowly on.
Moiraine lifted her staff, and the earth stilled, but she was not done. She pointed to the hollow between
the hills, and flame gouted from the ground, a fountain twenty feet high. She flung her arms wide, and the fire
raced to left and right as far as the eye could see, spreading into a wall separating humans and Trollocs. The
heat made Rand put his hands in front of his face, even on the hilltop. The Myrddraal's black mounts, whatever
strange powers they had, screamed at the fire, reared and fought their riders as the Myrddraal beat at them,
trying to force them through the flames.
"Blood and ashes," Mat said faintly. Rand nodded numbly. Abruptly Moiraine wavered and would have
fallen had Lan not leaped from his horse to catch her. "Go on," he told the others. The harshness of his voice
was at odds with the gentle way he lifted the Aes Sedai to her saddle. "That fire won't burn forever. Hurry!
Every minute counts!"
The wall of flame roared as if it would indeed burn forever, but Rand did not argue. They galloped
northward as fast as they could make their horses go. The horns in the distance shrilled out disappointment, as if
they already knew what had happened, then fell silent.
Lan and Moiraine soon caught up with the others, though Lan led Aldieb by the reins while the Aes
Sedai swayed and held the pommel of her saddle with both hands. "I will be all right soon," she said to their
worried looks. She sounded tired yet confident, and her gaze was as compelling as ever. "I am not at my
strongest when working with Earth and Fire. A small thing."
The two of them moved into the lead again at a fast walk. Rand did not think Moiraine could stay in the
saddle at any faster pace. Nynaeve rode forward beside the Aes Sedai, steadying her with a hand. For a time as
the party went on across the hills the two women whispered, then the Wisdom delved into her cloak and handed
a small packet to Moiraine. Moiraine unfolded it and swallowed the contents. Nynaeve said something more,
then fell back with the others, ignoring their questioning looks. Despite their circumstances, Rand thought she
had a slight look of satisfaction. He did not really care what the Wisdom was up to. He rubbed the hilt of his
sword continually, and whenever he realized what he was doing, he stared down at it in wonder. So that's what
a battle is like. He could not remember much of it, not any particular part. Everything ran together in his head, a
melted mass of hairy faces and fear. Fear and heat. It had seemed as hot as a midsummer noon while it was
going on. He could not understand that. The icy wind was trying to freeze beads of perspiration all over his face
and body.
He glanced at his two friends. Mat was scrubbing sweat off his face with the edge of his cloak. Perrin,
staring at something in the distance and not liking what he was seeing, appeared unaware of the beads glistening
on his forehead.
The hills grew smaller, and the land began to level out, but instead of pressing on, Lan stopped. Nynaeve
moved as if to rejoin Moiraine, but the Warder's look kept her away. He and the Aes Sedai rode ahead and put
their heads together, and from Moiraine's gestures it became apparent they were arguing. Nynaeve and Thom
stared at them, the Wisdom frowning worriedly, the gleeman muttering under his breath and pausing to stare
back the way they had come, but everyone else avoided looking at them altogether. Who knew what might
come out of an argument between an Aes Sedai and a Warder?
After a few minutes Egwene spoke to Rand quietly, casting an uneasy eye at the still-arguing pair.
"Those things you were shouting at the Trollocs." She stopped as if unsure how to proceed.
"What about them?" Rand asked. He felt a little awkward - warcries were all right for Warders; Two
Rivers folk did not do things like that, whatever Moiraine said - but if she made fun of him over it. ..."Mat must
have repeated that story ten times. "
"And badly," Thom put in. Mat grunted in protest.
"However he told it," Rand said, "we've all heard it any number of times. Besides, we had to shout
something. I mean, that's what you do at a time like that. You heard Lan."
"And we have a right, " Perrin added thoughtfully. "Moiraine says we're all descended from those
Manetheren people. They fought the Dark One, and we're fighting the Dark One. That gives us a right."
Egwene sniffed as if to show what she thought of that. “I wasn't talking about that. What...what were
shouting, Mat?"
Mat shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't remember." He stared at them defensively. "Well, I don't. It's all
foggy. I don't know what it was, or where it came from, or what it means." He gave a self-deprecating laugh. "I
don't suppose it means anything."
"I . . . I think it does," Egwene said slowly. "When you shouted, I thought - just for a minute - I thought I
understood you. But it's all gone, now." She sighed and shook her head. "Perhaps you're right. Strange what you
can imagine at a time like that, isn't it?"
"Carai an Caldazar," Moiraine said. They all twisted to stare at her. "Carai an Ellisande. Al Ellisande.
For the honor of the Red Eagle. For the honor of the Rose of the Sun. The Rose of the Sun. The ancient warcry
of Manetheren, and the warcry of its last king. Eldrene was called the Rose of the Sun." Moiraine's smile took in
Egwene and Mat both, though her gaze may have rested a moment longer on him than on her. "The blood of
Arad's line is still strong in the Two Rivers. The old blood still sings."
Mat and Egwene looked at each other, while everyone else looked at them both. Egwene's eyes were
wide, and her mouth kept quirking into a smile that she bit back every time it began, as if she was not sure just
how to take this talk of the old blood. Mat was sure, from the scowling frown on his face.
Rand thought he knew what Mat was thinking. The same thing he was thinking. If Mat was a descendant
of the ancient kings of Manetheren, maybe the Trollocs were really after him and not all three of them. The
thought made him ashamed. His cheeks colored, and when he caught a guilty grimace on Perrin's face, he knew
Perrin had been having the same thought.
"I can't say that I have ever heard the like of this," Thom said after a minute. He shook himself and
became brusque. " Another time I might even make a story out of it, but right now. ...Do you intend to remain
here for the rest of the day, Aes Sedai?"
"No," Moiraine replied, gathering her reins.
A Trolloc horn keened from the south as if to emphasize her word. More horns answered, east and west.
The horses whickered and sidled about nervously.
"They have passed the fire," Lao said calmly. He turned to Moiraine. "You are not strong enough for
what you intend, not yet, not without rest. And neither Myrddraal nor Trolloc will enter that place."
Moiraine raised a hand as if to cut him off, then sighed and let it fall instead. "Very well," she said
irritably. "You are right, I suppose, but I would rather there was any other choice." She pulled her staff from
under the girth strap of her saddle. "Gather in around me, all of you. As close as you can. Closer."
Rand urged Cloud nearer the Aes Sedai's mare. At Moiraine's insistence they kept on crowding closer in
a circle around her until every horse had its head stretched over the croup or withers of another. Only then was
the Aes Sedai satisfied. Then, without speaking, she stood in the stirrups and swung her staff over their heads,
stretching to make certain it covered everyone.
Rand flinched each time the staff passed over him. A tingle ran through him with every pass. He could
have followed the staff without seeing it, just by following the shivers as it moved over people. It was no
surprise to him that Lan was the only one not affected.
Abruptly Moiraine thrust the staff out to the west. Dead leaves whirled into the air and branches
whipped as if a dustdevil ran along the line she pointed to. As the invisible whirlwind vanished from sight she
settled back into her saddle with a sigh.
"To the Trollocs," she said, "our scents and our tracks will seem to follow that. The Myrddraal will see
through it in time, but by then. ..."
"By then," Lan said, "we will have lost ourselves." "Your staff is very powerful," Egwene said, earning a
sniff from Nynaeve.
Moiraine made a clicking sound: "1 have told you, child, things do not have power. The One Power
comes from the True Source, and only a living mind can wield it. This is not even an angreal, merely an aid to
concentration. " Wearily she slid the staff back under her girth strap. "Lan?"
"Follow me," the Warder said, "and keep quiet. It will ruin everything if the Trollocs hear us."
He led the way north again, not at the crashing pace they had been making, but rather in the quick walk
with which they had traveled the Caemlyn Road. The land continued to flatten, though the forest remained as
thick.
Their path was no longer straight, as it had been before, for r-an chose out a route that meandered over
hard ground and rocky outcrops, and he no longer let them force their way through tangles of bush, instead
taking the time to make their way around. Now and again he dropped to the rear, intently studying the trail they
made. If anyone so much as coughed, it drew a sharp grunt from him.
Nynaeve rode beside the Aes Sedai, concern battling dislike on her face. And there was a hint of
something more, Rand thought, almost as if the Wisdom saw some goal in sight. Moiraine's shoulders were
slumped, and she held her reins and the saddle with both hands, swaying with every step Aldieb took. It was
plain that laying the false trail, small as that might have seemed beside producing an earthquake and a wall of
flame, had taken a great deal out of her, strength she no longer had to lose.
Rand almost wished the horns would start again. At least they were a way of telling how far back the
Trollocs were. And the Fades.
He kept looking behind them, and so was not the first to see what lay ahead. When he did, he stared,
perplexed. A great, irregular mass stretched off to either side out of sight, in most places as high as the trees that
grew right up to it, with even taller spires here and there. Leafless vines and creepers covered it all in thick
layers. A cliff! The vines will make climbing easy, but we'll never get the horses up.
Suddenly, as they rode a little closer, he saw a tower. It was clearly a tower, not some kind of rock
formation, with an odd, pointed dome on the top. " A city!" he said. And a city wall, and the spires were guard
towers on the wall. His jaw dropped. It had to be ten times as big as Baerlon. Fifty times as big.
Mat nodded. "A city," he agreed. "But what's a city doing in the middle of a forest like this?"
"And without any people," Perrin said. When they looked at him, he pointed to the wall. "Would people
let vines grow over everything like that? You know how creepers can tear down a wall. Look how it's fallen."
What Rand saw adjusted itself in his mind again. It was as Perrin said. Under almost every low place in
the wall was a brush-covered hill, rubble from the collapsed wall above. No two of the guard towers were the
same height.
"I wonder what city it was," Egwene mused. "I wonder what happened to it. I don't remember anything
from papa's map."
"It was called Aridhol," Moiraine said. "In the days of the Trolloc Wars, it was an ally of Manetheren."
Staring at the massive walls, she seemed almost unaware of the others, even of Nynaeve, who supported her in
the saddle with a hand on her arm. "Later Aridhol died, and this place was called by another name."
"What name?" Mat asked. "Here," Lan said. He stopped Mandarb in front of what had once been a gate
wide enough for fifty men to march through abreast. Only the broken, vine-encrusted watchtowers remained; of
the gates there was no sign. "We enter here." Trolloc horns shrieked in the distance. Lan peered in the direction
of the sound, then looked at the sun, halfway down toward the treetops in the west. "They have discovered it's a
false trail. Come, we must find shelter before dark."
"What name?" Mat asked again.
Moiraine answered as they rode into the city. "Shadar Logoth," she said. "It is called Shadar Logoth."

Chapter 19

Shadow’s Waiting


Broken paving stones crunched under the horses' hooves as Lan led the way into the City. The entire
City was broken, what Rand could see of it, and as abandoned as Perrin had said. Not so much as a
pigeon moved, and weeds, mainly old and dead, sprouted from cracks in walls as well as pavement.
More buildings had roofs fallen in than had them whole. Tumbled walls spilled fans of brick and stone into the
streets. Towers stopped, abrupt and jagged, like broken sticks. Uneven rubble hills with a few stunted trees
growing on their slopes could have been the remains of palaces or of entire blocks of the city.
Yet what was left standing was enough to take Rand's breath. The largest building in Baerlon would
have vanished in the shadows of almost anything here. Pale marble palaces topped with huge domes met him
wherever he looked. Every building appeared to have at least one dome; some had four or five, and each one
shaped differently. Long walks lined by columns ran hundreds of paces to towers that seemed to reach the sky.
At every intersection stood a bronze fountain, or the alabaster spire of a monument, or a statue on a pedestal. If
the fountains were dry, most of the spires toppled, and many of the statues broken, what remained was so great
that he could only marvel.
And I thought Baerlon was a city! Burn me, but Thom must have been laughing up his sleeve. Moiraine
and Lan, too.
He was so caught up in staring that he was taken by surprise when Lan suddenly stopped in front of a
white stone building that had once been twice as big as the Stag and Lion in Baerlon. There was nothing to say
what it had been when the city lived and was great, perhaps even an inn. Only a hollow shell remained of the
upper floors-the afternoon sky was visible through empty window frames, glass and wood alike long since
gone-but the ground floor seemed sound enough.
Moiraine, hands still on the pommel, studied the building intently before nodding. "This will do."
Lan leaped from his saddle and lifted the Aes Sedai down in his arms. "Bring the horses inside," he
commanded. "Find a room in the back to use for a stable. Move, farmboys. This isn't the village green." He
vanished inside carrying the Aes Sedai.
Nynaeve scrambled down and hurried after him, clutching her bag of herbs and ointments. Egwene was
right behind her. They left their mounts standing.
"'Bring the horses inside,"' Thom muttered wryly, and puffed out his mustaches. He climbed down, stiff
and slow, knuckled his back, and gave a long sigh, then took Aldieb's reins. "Well?" he said, lifting an, eyebrow
at Rand and his friends.
They hurried to dismount, and gathered up the rest of the horses. The doorway, without anything to say
there had ever been a door in it, was more than big enough to get the animals through, even two abreast.
Inside was a huge room, as wide as the building, with a dirty tile floor and a few ragged wall hangings,
faded to a dull brown that looked as if they would fall apart at a touch. Nothing else. Lan had made a place in
the nearest corner for Moiraine with his cloak and hers. Nynaeve, muttering about the dust, knelt beside the Aes
Sedai, digging in her bag, which Egwene held open.
"I may not like her, it is true," Nynaeve was saying to the Warder as Rand, leading Bela and Cloud,
came in behind Thom, "but I help anyone who needs my help, whether I like them or not."
"I made no accusation, Wisdom. I only said, have a care with your herbs. "
She gave him a look from the corner of her eye. "The fact is, she needs my herbs, and so do you." Her
voice was acerbic to start, and grew more tart as she spoke. "The fact is, she can only do so much, even with her
One Power, and she has done about as much as she can without collapsing. The fact is, your sword cannot help
her now, Lord of the Seven Towers, but my herbs can."
Moiraine laid a hand on Lan's arm. "Be at ease, Lan. She means no harm. She simply does not know."
The Warder snorted derisively.
Nynaeve stopped digging in her bag and looked at him, frowning, but it was to Moiraine she spoke.
"There are many things I don't know. What thing is this?"
"For one," Moiraine replied, "all I truly need is a little rest. For another, I agree with you. Your skills
and knowledge will be more useful than I thought. Now, if you have something that will help me sleep for an
hour and not leave me groggy -?"
"A weak tea of foxtail, marisin, and -"
Rand missed the last of it as he followed Thom into a room behind the first, a chamber just as big and
even emptier. Here was only the dust, thick and undisturbed until they came. Not even the tracks of birds or
small animals marked the floor.
Rand began to unsaddle Bela and Cloud, and Thom, Aldieb and his gelding, and Perrin, his horse and
Mandarb. All but Mat. He dropped his reins in the middle of the room. There were two doorways from the room
besides the one by which they had entered.
"Alley," Mat announced, drawing his head back in from the first. They could all see that much from
where they were. The second doorway was only a black rectangle in the rear wall. Mat went through slowly,
and came out much faster, vigorously brushing old cobwebs out of his hair. "Nothing in there," he said, giving
the alleyway another look.
"You going to take care of your horse?" Perrin said. He had already finished his own and was lifting the
saddle from Mandarb. Strangely, the fierce-eyed stallion gave him no trouble at all, though he did watch Perrin.
"Nobody is going to do it for you."
Mat gave the alley one last look and went to his horse with a sigh.
As Rand laid Bela's saddle on the floor, he noticed that Mat had taken on a glum stare. His eyes seemed
a thousand miles away, and he was moving by rote.
"Are you all right, Mat?" Rand said. Mat lifted the saddle from his horse, and stood holding it. "Mat?
Mat!"
Mat gave a start and almost dropped the saddle. "What? Oh. I...I was just thinking."
"Thinking?" Perrin hooted from where he was replacing Mandarb's bridle with a hackamore. "You were
asleep."
Mat scowled. "1 was thinking about...about what happened back there. About those words I . . ."
Everybody turned to look at him then, not just Rand, and he shifted uneasily. "Well, you heard what Moiraine
said. It's as if some dead man was speaking with my mouth. I don't like it." His scowl grew deeper when Perrin
chuckled.
"Aemon's warcry, she said - right? Maybe you're Aemon come back again. The way you go on about
how dull Emond's Field is, I'd think you would like that - being a king and hero reborn."
"Don't say that!" Thom drew a deep breath; everybody stared at him now. "That is dangerous talk, stupid
talk. The dead can be reborn, or take a living body, and it is not something to speak of lightly." He took another
breath to calm himself before going on. "The old blood, she said. The blood, not a dead man. I've heard that it
can happen, sometimes. Heard, though I never really thought . . . It was your roots, boy. A line running from
you to your father to your grandfather, right on back to Manetheren, and maybe beyond. Well, now you know
your family is old. You ought to let it go at that and be glad. Most people don't know much more than that they
had a father."
Some of us can't even be sure of that, Rand thought bitterly. Maybe the Wisdom was right. Light, I hope
she was.
Mat nodded at what the gleeman said. "I suppose I should. Only . . . do you think it has anything to do
with what's happened to us? The Trollocs and all? I mean . . . oh, I don't know what I mean."
"I think you ought to forget about it, and concentrate on getting out of here safely." Thom produced his
long-stemmed pipe from inside his cloak. " And I think I am going to have a smoke." With a waggle of the pipe
in their direction, he disappeared into the front room.
"We are all in this together, not just one of us," Rand told Mat.
Mat gave himself a shake, and laughed, a short bark. "Right. Well, speaking of being in things together,
now that we're done with the horses, why don't we go see a little more of this city. A real city, and no crowds to
jostle your elbow and poke you in the ribs. Nobody looking down their long noses at us. There's still an hour;
maybe two, of daylight left."
“Aren't you forgetting the Trollocs?" Perrin said.
Mat shook his head scornfully. "Lan said they wouldn't come in here, remember? You need to listen to
what people say."
"I remember," Perrin said. "And I do listen. This city - Aridhol? - was an ally of Manetheren. See? I
listen."
“Aridhol must have been the greatest city in the Trolloc Wars," Rand said, "for the Trollocs to still be
afraid of it. They weren't afraid to come into the Two Rivers, and Moiraine said Manetheren was - how did she
put it? - a thorn to the Dark One's foot."
Perrin raised his hands. “Don't mention the Shepherd of the Night. Please?"
"What do you say?" Mat laughed. "Let's go."
"We should ask Moiraine," Perrin said, and Mat threw up his hands.
"Ask Moiraine? You think she'll let us out of her sight? And what about Nynaeve? Blood and ashes,
Perrin, why not ask Mistress Luhhan while you're about it?"
Perrin nodded reluctant agreement, and Mat turned to Rand with a grin. “What about you? A real city?
With palaces!" He gave a sly laugh. "And no Whitecloaks to stare at us."
Rand gave him a dirty look, but he hesitated only a minute. Those palaces were like a gleeman's tale.
"All right."
Stepping softly so as not to be heard in the front room, they left by the alley, following it away from the
front of the building to a street on the other side. They walked quickly, and when they were a block away from
the white stone building Mat suddenly broke into a capering dance.
"Free." He laughed. “Free!” He slowed until he was turning a circle, staring at everything and still
laughing. The afternoon shadows stretched long and jagged, and the sinking sun made the ruined city golden.
"Did you ever even dream of a place like this? Did you?"
Perrin laughed, too, but Rand shrugged uncomfortably. This was nothing like the city in his first dream,
but just the same..."If we're going to see anything," he said, "we had better get on with it. There isn't much
daylight left."
Mat wanted to see everything, it seemed, and he pulled the others along with his enthusiasm. They
climbed over dusty fountains with basins wide enough to hold everybody in Emond's Field and wandered in and
out of structures chosen at random, but always the biggest they could find. Some they understood, and some
not. A palace was plainly a palace, but what was a huge building that was one round, white dome as big as a hill
outside and one monstrous room inside? And a walled place, open to the sky and big enough to have held all of
Emond's Field, surrounded by row on row on row of stone benches?
Mat grew impatient when they found nothing but dust, or rubble, or colorless rags of wall hangings that
crumbled at a touch. Once some wooden chairs stood stacked against a wall; they all fell to bits when Perrin
tried to pick one up.
The palaces, with their huge, empty chambers, some of which could have held the Winespring Inn with
room to spare on every side and above as well, made Rand think too much of the people who had once filled
them. He thought everybody in the Two Rivers could have stood under that round dome, and as for the place
with the stone benches. ...He could almost imagine he could see the people in the shadows, staring in
disapproval at the three intruders disturbing their rest.
Finally even Mat tired, grand as the buildings were, and remembered that he had had only an hour's
sleep the night before. Everyone began to remember that. Yawning, they sat on the steps of a tall building
fronted by row on row of tall stone columns and argued about what to do next. "Go back," Rand said, "and get
some sleep." He put the back of his hand against his mouth. When he could talk again, he said, "Sleep. That's all
I want."
"You can sleep anytime," Mat said determinedly. "Look at where we are. A ruined city. Treasure."
"Treasure?" Perrin's jaws cracked. "There isn't any treasure here. There isn't anything but dust."
Rand shaded his eyes against the sun, a red ball sitting close to the rooftops. "It's getting late, Mat. It'll
be dark soon."
"There could be treasure," Mat maintained stoutly. " Anyway, I want to climb one of the towers. Look at
that one over there. It's whole. I'll bet you could see for miles from up there. What do you say?"
"The towers are not safe," said a man's voice behind them. Rand leaped to his feet and spun around
clutching his sword hilt, and the others were just as quick. A man stood in the shadows among the columns at
the top of the stairs. He took half a step forward, raised his hand to shield .his eyes, and stepped back again.
"Forgive me," he said smoothly. "I have been quite a long time in the dark inside. My eyes are not yet used to
the light."
"Who are you?" Rand thought the man's accent sounded odd, even after Baerlon; some words he
pronounced strangely, so Rand could barely understand them. "What are you doing here? We thought the city
was empty."
"I am Mordeth." He paused as if expecting them to recognize the name. When none of them gave any
sign of doing so, he muttered something under his breath and went on. "I could ask the same questions of you.
There has been no one in Aridhol for a long time. A long, long time. I would not have thought to find three
young men wandering its streets."
"We're on our way to Caemlyn," Rand said. "We stopped to take shelter for the night."
"Caemlyn," Mordeth said slowly, rolling the name around his tongue, then shook his head. "Shelter for
the night, you say? Perhaps you will join me."
"You still haven't said what you're doing here," Perrin said.
"Why, I am a treasure hunter, of course. "
"Have you found any?" Mat demanded excitedly.
Rand thought Mordeth smiled, but in the shadows he could not be sure. "I have," the man said. "More
than I expected. Much more. More than I can carry away. I never expected to find three strong, healthy young
men. If you will help me move what I can take to where my horses are, you may each have a share of the rest.
As much as you can carry. Whatever I leave will be gone, carried off by some other treasure hunter, before I can
return for it. "
"I told you there must be treasure in a place like this," Mat exclaimed. He darted up the stairs. "We'll
help you carry it. Just take us to it." He and Mordeth moved deeper into the shadows among the columns.
Rand looked at Perrin. "We can't leave him." Perrin glanced at the sinking sun, and nodded. They went
up the stairs warily, Perrin easing his axe in its belt loop. Rand's hand tightened on his sword. But Mat and
Mordeth were waiting among the columns, Mordeth with arms folded, Mat peering impatiently into the interior.
"Come," Mordeth said. "I will show you the treasure." He slipped inside, and Mat followed. There was
nothing for the others to do but go on.
The hall inside was shadowy, but almost immediately Mordeth turned aside and took some narrow steps
that wound around and down through deeper and deeper dark until they fumbled their way in pitch-blackness.
Rand felt along the wall with one hand, unsure there would be a step below until his foot met it. Even Mat
began to feel uneasy, judging by his voice when he said, "It's awfully dark down here."
"Yes, yes," Mordeth replied. The man seemed to be having no trouble at all with the dark. "There are
lights below. Come."
Indeed the winding stairs abruptly gave way to a corridor dimly lit by scattered, smoky torches set in
iron sconces on the walls. The flickering flames and shadows gave Rand his first good look at Mordeth, who
hurried on without pausing, motioning them to follow.
There was something odd about him, Rand thought, but he could not pick out what it was, exactly.
Mordeth was a sleek, somewhat overfed man, with drooping eyelids that made him seem to be hiding behind
something and staring. Short, and completely bald, he walked as if he were taller than any of them. His clothes
were certainly like nothing Rand had ever seen before, either. Tight black breeches and soft red boots with the
tops turned down at his ankles. A long, red vest thickly embroidered in gold, and a snowy white shirt with wide
sleeves, the points of his cuffs hanging almost to his knees. Certainly not the kind of clothes in which to run
through a ruined city in search of treasure. But it was not that which made him seem strange, either.
Then the corridor ended in a tile-walled room, and he forgot about any oddities Mordeth might have. His
gasp was an echo of his friends. Here, too, light came from a few torches staining the ceiling with their smoke
and giving everyone more than one shadow, but that light was reflected a thousand times by the gems and gold
piled on the floor, mounds of coins and jewelry, goblets and plates and platters, gilded, gem-encrusted swords
and daggers, all heaped together carelessly in waist-high mounds.
With a cry Mat ran forward and fell to his knees in front of one of the piles. "Sacks," he said
breathlessly, pawing through the gold. "We'll need sacks to carry all of this."
"We can't carry it all," Rand said. He looked around helplessly; all the gold the merchants brought to
Emond's Field in a year would not have made the thousandth part of just one of those mounds. "Not now. It's
almost dark."
Perrin pulled an axe free, carelessly tossing back the gold chains that had been tangled around it. Jewels
glittered along its shiny black handle, and delicate gold scrollwork covered the twin blades. "Tomorrow, then,"
he said, hefting the axe with a grin. "Moiraine and Lan will understand when we show them this."
"You are not alone?" Mordeth said. He had let them rush past him into the treasure room, but now he
followed. "Who else is with you?"
Mat, wrist deep in the riches before him, answered absently. "Moiraine and Lan. And then there's
Nynaeve, and Egwene, and Thom. He's a gleeman. We're going to Tar Valon. "
Rand caught his breath. Then the silence from Mordeth made him look at the man.
Rage twisted Mordeth's face, and fear, too. His lips pulled back from his teeth. "Tar Valon!"
He shook clenched fists at them. "Tar Valon! You said you were going to this . . . this . . . Caemlyn! You lied to
me!"
"If you still want," Perrin said to Mordeth, "we'll come back tomorrow and help you." Carefully he set
the axe back on the heap of gem-encrusted chalices and jewelry. "If you want."
"No. That is . . ." Panting, Mordeth shook his head as if he could not decide. "Take what you want.
Except . . . Except . . .Suddenly Rand realized what had been nagging at him about the man. The scattered
torches in the hallway had given each of them a ring of shadows, just as the torches in the treasure room did.
Only . . . He was so shocked he said it out loud. "You don't have a shadow."
A goblet fell from Mat's hand with a crash. Mordeth nodded, and for the first time his fleshy eyelids
opened all the way. His sleek face suddenly appeared pinched and hungry. "So." He stood straighter, seeming
taller. "It is decided." Abruptly there was no seeming to it. Like a balloon Mordeth swelled, distorted, head
pressed against the ceiling, shoulders butting the walls, filling the end of the room, cutting off escape. Hollowcheeked,
teeth bared in a rictus snarl, he reached out with hands big enough to engulf a man's head.
With a yell Rand leaped back. His feet tangled in a gold chain, and he crashed to the floor, the wind
knocked out of him. Struggling for breath, he struggled at the same time for his sword, fighting his cloak, which
had become wrapped around the hilt. The yells of his friends filled the room, and the clash of gold platters and
goblets clattering across the floor. Suddenly an. Agonized scream shivered in Rand's ears.
Almost sobbing, he managed to inhale at last, just as he got the sword out of its sheath. Cautiously, he
got to his feet, wondering which of his friends had given that scream. Perrin looked back at him wide-eyed from
across the room, crouched and holding his axe back as if about to chop down a tree. Mat peered around the side
of a treasure pile, clutching a dagger snatched from the trove.
Something moved in the deepest part of the shadows left by the torches, and they all jumped. It was
Mordeth, clutching his knees to his chest and huddled as deep into the furthest comer as he could get.
"He tricked us," Mat panted. "It was some kind of trick." Mordeth threw back his head and wailed; dust
sifted down as the walls trembled. "You are all dead!" he cried. "All dead!" And he leaped up, diving across the
room.
Rand's jaw dropped, and he almost dropped the sword as well. As Mordeth dove through the air, he
stretched out and thinned, like a tendril of smoke. As thin as a finger he struck a crack in the wall tiles and
vanished into it. A last cry hung in the room as he vanished, fading slowly away after he was gone.
"You are all dead!"
"Let's get out of here," Perrin said faintly, firming his grip on his axe while he tried to face every
direction at once. Gold ornaments and gems scattered unnoticed under his feet.
"But the treasure," Mat protested. "We can’t just leave it now."
"I don't want anything of his," Perrin said, still turning one way after another. He raised his voice and
shouted at the walls. "It's your treasure, you hear? We are not taking any of it!"
Rand stared angrily at Mat. "Do you want him coming after us? Or are you going to wait here stuffing
your pockets until he comes back with ten more like him?"
Mat just gestured to all the gold and jewels. Before he could say anything, though, Rand seized one of
his arms and Perrin grabbed the other. They hustled him out of the room, Mat struggling and shouting about the
treasure.
Before they had gone ten steps down the hall, the already dim light behind them began to fail. The
torches in the treasure room were going out. Mat stopped shouting. They hastened their steps. The first torch
outside the room winked out, then the next. By the time they reached the winding stairs there was no need to
drag Mat any longer. They were all running, with the dark closing in behind them. Even the pitch-black of the
stairs only made them hesitate an instant, then they sped upwards, shouting at the top of their lungs. Shouting to
scare anything that might be waiting; shouting to remind themselves they were still alive.
They burst out into the hall above, sliding and falling on the dusty marble, scrambling out through the
columns, to tumble down the stairs and land in a bruised heap in the street.
Rand untangled himself and picked Tam's sword up from the pavement, looking around uneasily. Less
than half of the sun still showed above the rooftops. Shadows reached out like dark hands, made blacker by the
remaining light, nearly filling the street. He shivered. The shadows looked like Mordeth, reaching.
"At least we're out of it. " Mat got up from the bottom of the pile, dusting himself off in a shaky
imitation of his usual manner. "And at least I -"
"Are we?" Perrin said. Rand knew it was not his imagination this time. The back of his neck prickled.
Something was watching them from the darkness in the columns. He spun around, staring at the buildings
across the way. He could feel eyes on him from there, too. His grip tightened on his sword hut, though he
wondered what good it would be. Watching eyes seemed to be everywhere. The others looked around warily; he
knew they could feel it, too.
"We stay in the middle of the street," he said hoarsely. They met his eyes; they looked as frightened as
he felt. He swallowed hard. "We stay in the middle of the street, keep out of shadows as much as we can, and
walk fast. "
"Walk very fast," Mat agreed fervently. The watchers followed them. Or else there were lots of
watchers, lots of eyes staring out of almost every building. Rand could not see anything move, hard as he tried,
but he could feel the eyes, eager, hungry. He did not know which would be worse. Thousands of eyes, or just a
few, following them.
In the stretches where the sun still reached them, they slowed, just a little, squinting nervously into the
darkness that always seemed to lay ahead. None of them was eager to enter the shadows; no one was really sure
something might not be waiting. The watchers' anticipation was a palpable thing whenever shadows stretched
across the street, barring their way. They ran through those dark places shouting. Rand thought he could hear
dry, rustling laughter. .
At last, with twilight falling, they came in sight of the white stone building they had left what seemed
like days ago. Suddenly the watching eyes departed. Between one step and the next, they vanished in a blink.
Without a word Rand broke into a trot, followed by his friends, then a full run that only ended when they hared
through the doorway and collapsed, panting.
A small fire burned in the middle of the tile floor, the smoke vanishing through a hole in the ceiling in a
way that reminded Rand unpleasantly of Mordeth. Everyone except Lan was there, gathered around the flames,
and their reactions varied considerably. Egwene, warming her hands at the fire, gave a start as the three burst
into the room, clutching her hands to her throat; when she saw who it was, a relieved sigh spoiled her attempt at
a withering look. Thom merely muttered something around his pipestem, but Rand caught the word "fools"
before the gleeman went back to poking the flames with a stick.
"You wool-headed witlings!" the Wisdom snapped. She bristled from head to foot; her eyes glittered,
and bright spots of red burned on her cheeks. "Why under the Light did you run off like that? Are you all right?
Have you no sense at all? Lan is out looking for you now, and you'll be luckier than you deserve if he does not
pound some sense into the lot of you when he gets back."
The Aes Sedai's face betrayed no agitation at all, but her hands had loosed a white-knuckled grip on her
dress at the sight of them. Whatever Nynaeve had given her must have helped, for she was on her feet. "You
should not have done what you did," she said in a voice as clear and serene as a Waterwood pond. "We will
speak of it later. Something happened out there, or you would not be falling all over one another like this. Tell
me."
"You said it was safe," Mat complained, scrambling to his feet. "You said Aridhol was an ally of
Manetheren, and Trollocs wouldn't come into the city, and-"
Moiraine stepped forward so suddenly that Mat cut off with his mouth open, and Rand and Perrin
paused in getting up, halfway crouched or on their knees. "Trollocs? Did you see Trollocs inside the walls?"
Rand swallowed. "Not Trollocs," he said, and all three began talking excitedly, all at the same time.
Everyone began in a different place. Mat started with finding the treasure, sounding almost as if he had
done it alone, while Perrin began explaining why they had gone off in the first place without telling anyone.
Rand jumped right to what he thought was important, meeting the stranger among the columns. But they were
all so excited that nobody told anything in the order it happened; whenever one of them thought of something,
he blurted it out with no regard for what came before or after, or for who was saying what. The watchers. They
all babbled about the watchers.
It made the whole tale close to incoherent, but their fear came through. Egwene began casting uneasy
glances at the empty windows fronting the street. Out there the last remnants of twilight were fading; the fire
seemed very small and dim. Thom took his pipe from between his teeth and listened with his head cocked,
frowning. Moiraine's eyes showed concern, but not an undue amount. Until . . .
Suddenly the Aes Sedai hissed, and grabbed Rand's elbow in a tight grip. "Mordeth! Are you sure of that
name? Be very sure, all of you. Mordeth?"
They murmured a chorused "Yes," taken aback by the Aes Sedai's intensity.
"Did he touch you?" she asked them all. "Did he give you anything, or did you do anything for him? I
must know."
"No," Rand said. "None of us. None of those things." Perrin nodded agreement, and added, "All he did
was try to kill us. Isn't that enough? He swelled up until he filled half the room, shouted that we were all dead
men, then vanished. " He moved his hand to demonstrate. "Like smoke." Egwene gave a squeak.
Mat twisted away petulantly. "Safe, you said. All that talk about Trollocs not coming here. What were
we supposed to think?"
"Apparently you did not think at all," she said, coolly composed once more. “Anyone who thinks would
be wary of a place that Trollocs are afraid to enter."
"Mat's doing," Nynaeve said, certainty in her voice. "He's always talking some mischief or other, and the
others lose the little wits they were born with when they're around him."
Moiraine nodded briefly, but her eyes remained on Rand and his two friends. "Late in the Trolloc Wars,
an army camped within these ruins - Trollocs, Darkfriends, Myrddraal, Dreadlords, thousands in all. When they
did not come out, scouts were sent inside the walls. The scouts found weapons, bits of armor, and blood
splattered everywhere. And messages scratched on walls in the Trolloc tongue, calling on the Dark One to aid
them in their last hour. Men who came later found no trace of the blood or the messages. They had been scoured
away. Halfmen and Trollocs remember still. That is what keeps them outside this place."
"And this is where you picked for us to hide?" Rand said in disbelief. "We'd be safer out there trying to
outrun them."
"If you had not gone running off," Moiraine said patiently, "you would know that I set wards around this
building. A Myrddraal would not even know these wards were there, for it is a different kind of evil they are
meant to stop, but what resides in Shadar Logoth will not cross them, or eyen come too near. In the morning it
will be safe for us to go; these things cannot stand the light of the sun. They will be hiding deep in the earth."
"Shadar Logoth?" Egwene said uncertainly. "I thought you said this city was called Aridhol."
"Once it was called Aridhol," Moiraine replied, "and was one of the Ten Nations, the lands that made
the Second Covenant, the lands that stood against the Dark One from the first days after the Breaking of the
World. In the days when Thorin al Toren al Ban was King of Manetheren, the King of Aridhol was Balwen
Mayel, Balwen Ironhand. In a twilight of despair during the Trolloc Wars, when it seemed the Father of Lies
must surely conquer, the man called Mordeth came to Balwen's court."
"The same man?" Rand exclaimed, and Mat said, "It couldn't be!" A glance from Moiraine silenced
them. Stillness filled the room except for the Aes Sedai's voice.
"Before Mordeth had been long in the city he had Balwen's ear, and soon he was second only to the
King. Mordeth whispered poison in Balwen's ear, and Aridhol began to change. Aridhol drew in on itself,
hardened. It was said that some would rather see Trollocs come than the men of Aridhol. The victory of the
Light is all. That was the battlecry Mordeth gave them, and the men of Aridhol shouted it while their deeds
abandoned the Light.
"The story is too long to tell in full, and too grim, and only fragments are known, even in Tar Valon.
How Thorin's son, Caar, came to win Aridhol back to the Second Covenant, and Balwen sat his throne, a
withered shell with the light of mad- ness in his eyes, laughing while Mordeth smiled at his side and ordered,
the deaths of Caar and the embassy as Friends of the Dark. How Prince Caar came to be called Caar One-Hand.
How he escaped the dungeons of Aridhol and fled alone to the Borderlands with Mordeth's unnatural assassins
at his heels. How there he met Rhea, who did not know who he was, and married her, and set the skein in the
Pattern that led to his death at her hands, and hers by her own hand before his tomb, and the fall of Aleth-loriel.
How the armies of Manetheren came to avenge Caar and found the gates of Aridhol torn down, no living thing
inside the walls, but something worse than death. No enemy had come to Aridhol but Aridhol. Suspicion and
hate had given birth to something that fed on that which created it, something locked in the bedrock on which
the city stood. Mashadar waits still, hungering. Men spoke of Aridhol no more. They named it Shadar Logoth,
the Place Where the Shadow Waits, or more simply, Shadow's Waiting.
"Mordeth alone was not consumed by Mashadar, but he was snared by it, and he, too, has waited within
these walls through the long centuries. Others have seen him. Some he has influenced through gifts that twist
the mind and taint the spirit, the taint waxing and waning until it rules...or kills. If ever he convinces someone to
accompany him to the walls, to the boundary of Mashadar's power, he will be able to consume the soul of that
person. Mordeth will leave, wearing the body of the one he worse than killed, to wreak his evil on the world
again."
"The treasure," Perrin mumbled when she stopped. "He wanted us to help carry the treasure to his
horses." His face was haggard. "I'll bet they were supposed to be outside the city somewhere." Rand shivered.
"But we are safe, now, aren't we?" Mat asked. "He didn't give us anything, and he didn't touch us, we're
safe, aren't we, with the wards you set?"
"We are safe," Moiraine agreed. "He cannot cross the ward line, nor can any other denizen of this place.
And they must hide from the sunlight, so we can leave safely once it is day. Now, try to sleep. The wards will
protect us until Lan returns."
"He has been gone a long time." Nynaeve looked worriedly at the night outside. Full dark had fallen, as
black as pitch.
"Lan will be well," Moiraine said soothingly, and spread her blankets beside the fire while she spoke.
"He, was pledged to fight the Dark One before he left the cradle, a sword placed in his infant hands. Besides, I
would know the minute of his death and the way of it, just as he would know mine. Rest, Nynaeve. All will be
well." But as she was rolling herself into her blankets, she paused, staring at the street as if she, too, would have
liked to know what kept the Warder.
Rand's arms and legs felt like lead and his eyes wanted to slide shut on their own, yet sleep did not come
quickly, and once it did, he dreamed, muttering and kicking off his blankets. When he woke, it was suddenly,
and he looked around for a moment before he remembered where he was.
The moon was up, the last thin sliver before the new moon, its faint light defeated by the night.
Everyone else was still asleep, though not all soundly. Egwene and his two friends twisted and murmured
inaudibly. Thom's snores, soft for once, were broken from time to time by halfformed words. There was still no
sign of Lan.
Suddenly he felt as if the wards were no protection at all. Anything at all could be out there in the dark.
Telling himself he was being foolish, he added wood to the last coals of the fire. The blaze was too small to give
much warmth, but it gave more light.
He had no idea what had awakened, him from his unpleasant dream. He had been a little boy again,
carrying Tam's sword and with a cradle strapped to his back, running through empty streets, pursued by
Mordeth, who shouted that he only wanted his hand. And there had been an old man who watched them and
cackled with mad laughter the whole time.
He gathered his blankets and lay back, staring at the ceiling. He wanted very much to sleep, even if he
had more dreams like the last one, but he could not make his eyes close.
Suddenly the Warder trotted silently out of the darkness into the room. Moiraine came awake and sat up
as if he had rung a bell. Lan opened his hand; three small objects fell to the tiles in front of her with the clink of
iron. Three blood-red badges in the shape of homed skulls.
"There are Trollocs inside the walls," Lan said. "They will be here in little more than an hour. And the
Dha'vol are the worst of them." He began waking the others.
Moiraine smoothly began folding her blankets. "How many? Do they know we are here?" She sounded
as if there were no urgency at all.
"I don't think they do," Lan replied. "There are well over a hundred, frightened enough to kill anything
that moves, including one another. The Halfmen are having to drive them - four just to handle one fist - and
even the Myrddraal seem to want nothing more than to pass through the city and out as quickly as possible.
They are not going out of their way to search, and they're so slipshod that if they were not heading nearly
straight for us I would say we had nothing to worry about." He hesitated.
"There is something else?" "Only this," Lan said slowly. "The Myrddraal forced the Trollocs into the
city. What forced the Myrddraal?"
Everyone had been listening in silence. Now Thom cursed under his breath, and Egwene breathed a
question. "The Dark One?"
"Don't be a fool, girl," Nynaeve snapped. "The Dark One is bound in Shayol Ghul by the Creator."
"For the time being, at least," Moiraine agreed. "No, the Father of Lies is not out there, but we must
leave in any case."
Nynaeve eyed her narrowly. "Leave the protection of the wards, and cross Shadar Logoth in the night."
"Or stay here and face the Trollocs," Moiraine said. "To hold them off here would require the One
Power. It would destroy the wards and attract the very thing the wards are meant to protect against. Besides, as
well build a signal fire atop one of those towers for every Halfman within twenty miles. To leave is not what I
would choose to do, but we are the hare, and it is the hounds who dictate the chase."
"What if there are more outside the walls?" Mat asked. "What are we going to do?"
"We will use my original plan," Moiraine said. Lan looked at her. She held up a hand and added,
"Which I was too tired to carry out before. But I am rested, now, thanks to the Wisdom. We will make for the
river. There, with our backs guarded by the water, I can raise a smaller ward that will hold the Trollocs and
Halfmen back until we can make rafts and cross over. Or better yet, we may even be able to hail a trader's boat
coming down from Saldaea."
The faces of the Emond's Fielders looked blank, Lan noticed.
"Trollocs and Myrddraal loathe deep water, Trollocs are terrified of it. Neither can swim. A Halfman
will not wade anything more than waist deep, especially if it's moving. Trollocs won't do even that if they can
find any way to avoid it."
"So once we get across the river we're safe," Rand said, and the Warder nodded.
"The Myrddraal will find it almost as hard to make the Trollocs build rafts as it was to drive them into
Shadar Logoth, and if they try to make them cross the Arinelle that way, half will run away and the rest
probably drown."
"Get to your horses," Moiraine said. "We are not across the river yet."

Chapter 20

Dust on the Wind


As they left the white stone building on their nervously shifting horses, the icy wind came in gusts,
moaning across the rooftops, whipping cloaks like banners, driving thin clouds across the thin sliver of
the moon. With a quiet command to stay close, Lan led off down the street. The horses danced and
tugged at the reins, eager to be away.
Rand looked up warily at the buildings they passed, looming now in the night with their empty windows
like eye sockets. Shadows seemed to move. Occasionally there was a clatterrubble toppled by the wind. At least
the eyes are gone. His relief was momentary. Why are they gone?
Thom and the Emond's Fielders made a cluster with him, all keeping close enough to touch one another.
Egwene's shoulders were hunched, as if she were trying to ease Bela's hooves to the pavement. Rand did not
even want to breathe. Sound might attract attention.
Abruptly he realized that a distance had opened ahead of them, separating them from the Warder and the
Aes Sedai. The two were indistinct shapes a good thirty paces ahead.
"We're falling behind," he murmured, and booted Cloud to a quick step. A thin tendril of silver-gray fog
drifted low across the street ahead him.
"Stop!" It was a strangled shout from Moiraine, sharp and urgent, pitched not to carry far.
Uncertain, he pulled up short. The splinter of fog lay completely across the street now, slowly fattening
as if more were oozing out of the buildings on either side of the street. It was as thick as a man's arm now.
Cloud whickered and tried to back further away as Egwene and Thom and the others came up on him. Their
horses, too, tossed their heads and bridled against coming too near the fog.
Lan and Moiraine rode slowly toward the fog, grown to as big around as a leg, stopping on the other
side, well back. The Aes Sedai studied the branch of mist that separated them. Rand shrugged at a sudden itch
of fear between his shoulder blades. A faint light accompanied the fog, growing as the foggy tentacle became
fatter, but still only a little more than the moon- light. The horses shifted uneasily, even Aldieb and Mandarb.
"What is it?" Nynaeve asked.
"The evil of Shadar Logoth," Moiraine replied. "Mashadar. Unseeing, unthinking, moving through the
city as aimlessly as a worm burrows through the earth. If it touches you, you will die." Rand and the others let
their horses dance a few quick steps back, but not too far. As much as Rand would have given to be free of the
Aes Sedai, she was as safe as home compared to what lay around them. "Then how do we join you?" Egwene said. "Can you kill it...clear a way?"
Moiraine's laugh was bitter and short. "Mashadar is vast, girl, as vast as Shadar Logoth itself. The whole
White Tower could not kill it. If I damaged it enough to let you pass, drawing that much of the One Power
would pull the Halfmen like a trumpet call. And Mashadar would rush in to heal whatever harm I did, rush in
and perhaps catch us in its net. "
Rand exchanged looks with Egwene, then asked her question again. Moiraine sighed before answering.
"I do not like it, but what must be done, must be done. This thing will not be above ground everywhere.
Other streets will be clear. See that star?" She twisted in her saddle to point to a red star low in the eastern sky.
"Keep on toward that star, and it will bring you to the river. Whatever happens, keep moving toward the river.
Go as quickly as you can, but above all make no noise. There are still the Trollocs, remember. And four
Halfmen."
"But how will we find you again?" Egwene protested.
"I will find you," Moiraine said. "Be assured, I can find you. Now be off. This thing is utterly mindless,
but it can sense food."
Indeed, ropes of silver-gray had lifted from the larger body. They drifted, wavering, like the tentacles of
a hundred arms on the bottom of a Waterwood pond.
When Rand looked up from the thick trunk of opaque mist, the Warder and the Aes Sedai were gone. He
licked his lips and met his companions' eyes. They were as nervous as he was. And something worse: they all
seemed to be waiting for someone else to move first. Night and ruins surrounded them. The Fades were out
there, somewhere, and the Trollocs, maybe around the next corner. The tentacles of fog drifted nearer, halfway
to them now, and no longer wavering. They had chosen their intended prey. Suddenly he missed Moiraine very
much.
Everyone was still staring, wondering which way to go. He turned Cloud, and the gray broke into a half
trot, tugging against the reins to go faster. As if moving first had made him the leader, everyone followed.
With Moiraine gone, there was no one to protect them should Mordeth appear. And the Trollocs. And . .
. Rand forced himself to stop thinking. He would follow the red star. He could hold onto that thought.
Three times they had to backtrack from a street blocked from side to side by a hill of stone and brick the
horses could never have crossed. Rand could hear the others breathing, short and sharp, just shy of panic. He
gritted his teeth to stop his own panting. You have to at least make them think you're not afraid. You're doing a
good job, wool-head! You'll get everybody out safely.
They rounded the next corner. A wall of fog bathed the broken pavement with a light as bright as a full
moon. Streamers as thick as their horses broke off toward them. Nobody waited. Wheeling, they galloped away
in a tight knot with no heed for the clatter of hooves they raised.
Two Trollocs stepped into the street before them, not ten spans away.
For an instant the humans and the Trollocs just stared at one another, each more surprised than the other.
Another pair of Trollocs appeared, and another, and another, colliding with the ones in front, folding into a
shocked mass at the sight of the humans. Only for an instant did they remain frozen, though. Guttural howls
echoed from the buildings, and the Trollocs bounded forward. The humans scattered like quail.
Rand's gray reached full gallop in three strides. "This way!" he shouted, but he heard the same cry from
five throats. A hasty glance over his shoulder showed him his companions disappearing in as many directions,
Trollocs pursuing them all.
Three Trollocs ran at his own heels, catchpoles waving in the air. His skin crawled as he realized they
were matching Cloud stride for stride. He dropped low on Cloud's neck and urged the gray on, chased by thick
cries.
The street narrowed ahead, broken-topped buildings leaning out drunkenly. Slowly the empty windows
filled with a silvery glow, a dense mist bulging outward. Mashadar.
Rand risked a glance over his shoulder. The Trollocs still ran less than fifty paces back; the light from
the fog was enough to see them clearly. A Fade rode behind them now, and they seemed to flee the Halfman as
much as to pursue Rand. Ahead of Rand, half a dozen gray tendrils wavered from the windows, a dozen, feeling
the air. Cloud tossed his head and screamed, but Rand dug his heels in brutally, and the horse lunged forward
wildly.
The tendrils stiffened as Rand galloped between them, but he crouched low on Cloud's back and refused
to look at them. The way beyond was clear. If one of them touches me…Light! He booted Cloud harder, and the
horse leaped forward into the welcome shadows. With Cloud still running, he looked back as soon as the glow
of Mashadar began to lessen.
The waving gray tentacles of Mashadar blocked half the street, and the Trollocs were balking, but the
Fade snatched a whip from its saddlebow, cracking it over the heads of the Trollocs with a sound like a
lightning bolt, popping sparks in the air. Crouching, the Trollocs lurched after Rand. The Halfman hesitated,
black cowl studying Mashadar's reaching arms, before it, too, spurred forward.
The thickening tentacles of fog swung uncertainly for a moment, then struck like vipers. At least two
latched to each Trolloc, bathing them in R gray light; muzzled heads went back to scream, but fog rolled over
open mouths, and in, eating the howls. Four leg-thick tentacles whipped around the Fade, and the Halfman and
its black horse twitched as if dancing, till the cowl fell back, baring that pale, eyeless face. The Fade shrieked.
There was no sound from that cry, any more than from the Trollocs, but something came through, a
piercing whine just beyond hearing, like all the p hornets in the world, digging into Rand's ears with all the fear
that could exist. Cloud convulsed, as if he, too, heard, and ran harder than ever. Rand hung on, panting, his
throat as dry as sand.
After a time he realized he could no longer hear the silent shriek of the Fade dying, and suddenly the
clatter of his gallop seemed as loud as shouts. He reined Cloud hard, stopping beside a jagged wall, right where
two streets met. A nameless monument reared in the darkness before him.
Slumped in the saddle, he listened, but there was nothing to hear except the blood pounding in his ears.
Cold sweat beaded on his face, and he shivered as the wind flailed his cloak.
Finally he straightened. Stars spangled the sky where the clouds did not hide them, but the red star low
in the east was easy to mark. Is anybody else alive to see it? Were they free, or in the Trollocs' hands? Egwene,
Light blind me, why didn't you follow me? If they were alive and free, they would be following that star. If
not… The ruins were vast; he could search for days without finding anyone, if he could keep away from the
Trollocs. And the Fades, and Mordeth, and Mashadar. Reluctantly he decided to make for
He gathered the reins. On the crossing street, one stone fell against another with a sharp click. He froze,
not even breathing. He was hidden in the shadows, one step from the corner. Frantically he thought of backing
up. What was behind him? What would make a noise and give him away? He could not remember, and he was
afraid to take his eyes from the corner of the building.
Darkness bulked at that corner, with the longer darkness of a shaft sticking out of it. Catchpole! Even as
the thought flashed into Rand's head, he dug his heels into Cloud's ribs and his sword flew from the scabbard; a
wordless shout accompanied his charge, and he swung the sword with all of his might. Only a desperate effort
stopped the blade short. With a yelp Mat tumbled back, half falling off his horse and nearly dropping his bow.
Rand drew a deep breath and lowered his sword. His arm shook. "Have you seen anybody else?" he
managed.
Mat swallowed hard before pulling himself awkwardly back into his saddle. "I . . . I . . . Just Trollocs."
He put a hand to his throat, and licked his lips. "Just Trollocs. You?"
Rand shook his head. "They must be trying to reach the river. We better do the same." Mat nodded
silently, still feeling his throat, and they started toward the red star.
Before they had covered a hundred spans the keening cry of a Trolloc horn rose behind them in the
depths of the city. Another answered, from outside the walls.
Rand shivered, but he kept to his slow pace, watching the darkest places and avoiding them when he
could. After one jerk at his reins as if he might gallop off, Mat did the same. Neither horn sounded again, and it
was in silence that they came to an opening in the vine-shrouded wall where a gate had once been. Only the
towers remained, standing broken-topped against the black sky.
Mat hesitated at the gateway, but Rand said softly, "Is it any safer in here than out there?" He did not
slow the gray, and after a moment Mat followed him out of Shadar Logoth, trying to look every way at once.
Rand let out a slow breath; his mouth was dry. We're going to make it. Light, we're going to make it!
The walls vanished behind, swallowed by the night and the forest. Listening for the slightest sound,
Rand kept the red star dead ahead.
Suddenly Thom galloped by from behind, slowing only long enough to shout, "Ride, you fools!" A
moment later hunting cries and crashes in the brush behind him announced the presence of Trollocs on his trail.
Rand dug in his heels, and Cloud sprang after the gleeman's gelding. What happens when we get to the
river without Moiraine? Light, Egwene!
Perrin sat his horse in the shadows, watching the open gateway, some little distance off yet, and absently
ran his thumb along the blade of his axe. It seemed to be a clear way out of the ruined city, but he had sac there
for five minutes studying it. The wind tossed his shaggy curls and tried to carry his cloak away, but he pulled
the cloak back around him without really noticing what he was doing.
He knew that Mat, and almost everyone else in Emond's Field, considered him slow of thought. It was
partly because he was big and usually moved carefully - he had always been afraid he might accidentally break
something or hurt somebody, since he was so much bigger than the boys he grew up with - but he really did
prefer to think things all the way through if he could. Quick thinking, careless thinking, had put Mat into hot
water one time after another, and Mat's quick thinking usually managed to get Rand, or him, or both, in the
cookpot alongside Mat, too.
His throat tightened. Light, don't think about being in a cookpot. He tried to order his thoughts again.
Careful thought was the way.
There had been some sort of square in front of the gate once, with a huge fountain in its middle. Part of
the fountain was still there, a cluster of broken statues standing in a big, round basin, and so was the open space
around it. To reach the gate he would have to ride nearly a hundred spans - with only the night to shield him
from searching eyes. That was not a pleasant thought, either. He remembered those unseen watchers too well.
He considered the horns he had heard in the city a little while earlier. He had almost turned back,
thinking some of the others might have been taken, before realizing that he could not do anything alone if they
had been captured. Not against - what did Lan say - a hundred Trollocs and four Fades. Moiraine Sedai said get
to the river.
He went back to consideration of the gate. Careful thought had not given him much, but he had made his
decision. He rode out of the deeper shadow into the lesser darkness.
As he did, another horse appeared from the far side of the square and stopped. He stopped, too, and felt
for his axe; it gave him no great sense of comfort. If that dark shape was a Fade . . .
"Rand?" came a soft, hesitant call.
He let out a long, relieved breach. "It's Perrin, Egwene," he called back, just as softly. It still sounded too
loud in the darkness.
The horses came together near the fountain.
"Have you seen anybody else?" they both asked at the same time, and both answered by shaking their
heads.
"They'll be all right," Egwene muttered, patting Bela's neck. "Won't they?”
"Moiraine Sedai and Lan will look after them," Perrin replied. "They will look after all of us once we get
to the river." He hoped it was so.
He felt a great relief once they were beyond the gate, even if there were Trollocs in the forest Or Fades.
He stopped that line of thought. The bare branches were not enough to keep him from guiding on the red star,
and they were beyond Mordeth's reach now. That one had frightened him worse than the Trollocs ever had.
Soon they would reach the river and meet Moiraine, and she would put them beyond the Trollocs' reach
as well. He believed it because he needed to believe. The wind scraped branches together and rustled the leaves
and needles on the evergreens. A nighthawk's lonely cry drifted in the dark, and he and Egwene moved their
horses closer together as though they were huddling for warmth. They were very much alone.
A Trolloc horn sounded somewhere behind them, quick, wailing blasts, urging the hunters to hurry,
hurry. Then thick, half-human howls rose on their trail, spurred on by the horn. Howls that grew sharper as they
caught the human scent.
Perrin put his horse to a gallop, shouting, “Come on!" Egwene came, both of them booting their horses,
heedless of noise, heedless of the branches that slapped at them.
As they raced through the trees, guided as much by instinct as by the dim moonlight, Bela fell behind.
Perrin looked back. Egwene kicked the mare and flailed her with the reins, but it was doing no good. By their
sounds, the Trollocs were coming closer. He drew in enough not to leave her behind.
"Hurry!" he shouted. He could make out the Trollocs now, huge dark shapes bounding through the trees,
bellowing and snarling to chill the blood. He gripped the haft of his axe, hanging at his belt, until his knuckles
hurt. "Hurry, Egwene! Hurry!"
Suddenly his horse screamed, and he was falling, tumbling out of the saddle as the horse dropped away
beneath him. He flung out his hands to brace himself and splashed headfirst into icy water. He had ridden right
off the edge of a sheer bluff into the Arinelle.
The shock of freezing water ripped a gasp from him, and he swallowed more than a little before he
managed to fight his way to the surface. He felt more than heard another splash, and thought that Egwene must
have come right after him. Panting and blowing, he treaded water. It was not easy to keep afloat; his coat and
cloak were already sodden, and his boots had filled. He looked around for Egwene, but saw only the glint of
moonlight on the black water, ruffled by the wind.
"Egwene? Egwene!"
A spear flashed right in front of his eyes and threw water in his face. Others splashed into the river
around him, too. Guttural voices raised in argument on the riverbank, and the Trolloc spears stopped coming,
but he gave up on calling for the time being.
The current washed him downriver, but the thick shouts and snarls followed along the bank, keeping
pace. Undoing his cloak, he let the river take it. A little less weight to drag him down. Doggedly, he set out
swimming for the far bank. There were no Trollocs there. He hoped.
He swam the way they did back home, in the ponds in the Waterwood, stroking with both hands, kicking
with both feet, keeping his head out of the water. At least, he tried to keep his head out of the water; it was not
easy. Even without the cloak, his coat and boots each seemed to weigh as much as he did. And the axe dragged
at his waist, threatening to roll him over if it did not pull him under. He thought about letting the river have that,
too; he thought about it more than once. It would be easy, much easier than struggling out of his boots, for
instance. But every time he thought of it, he thought of crawling out on the far bank to find Trollocs waiting.
The axe would not do him much good against half a dozen Trollocs even against one, maybe-but it was better
than his bare hands.
After a while he was not even certain he would be able to lift the axe if Trollocs were there. His arms
and legs became leaden; it was an effort to move them, and his face no longer came as far out of the river with
each stroke. He coughed from water that went up his nose. A day at the forge has no odds on thin, he thought
wearily, and just then his kicking foot struck something. It was not until he kicked it again that he realized what
it was. The bottom. He was in the shallows. He was across the river.
Sucking air through his mouth, he got to his feet, splashing about as his legs almost gave way. He
fumbled his axe out of its loop as he floundered ashore, shivering in the wind. He did not see any Trollocs. He
did not see Egwene, either. Just a few scattered trees along the riverbank, and a moonlight ribbon on the water.
When he had his breath again, he called their names again and again. Faint shouts from the far side
answered him; even at that distance he could make out the harsh voices of Trollocs. His friends did not answer,
though.
The wind surged, its moan drowning out the Trollocs, and he shivered. It was not cold enough to freeze
the water soaking his clothes, but it felt as if it was; it sliced to the bone with an icy blade. Hugging himself was
only a gesture that did not stop the shivering. Alone, he climbed tiredly up the riverbank to find shelter against
the wind.
Rand patted Cloud's neck, soothing the gray with whispers. The horse tossed his head and danced on
quick feet. The Trollocs had been left behind - or so it seemed - but Cloud had the smell of them thick in his
nostrils. Mat rode with an arrow nocked, watching for surprises out of the night, while Rand and Thom peered
through the branches, searching for the red scar that was their guide. Keeping it in view had been easy enough,
even with all the branches overhead, so long as they were riding straight toward it. But then more Trollocs had
appeared, ahead, and they went galloping off to the side with both packs howling after them. The Trollocs could
keep up with a horse, but only for a hundred paces or so, and finally they left the pursuit and the howls behind.
But with all the twists and turns, they had lost the guiding star.
"I still say it's over there," Mat said, gesturing off to his right. "We were going north at the end, and that
means east is that way."
"There it is," Thom said abruptly. He pointed through the tangled branches to their left, straight at the
red star. Mat mumbled something under his breath.
Out of the corner of his eye Rand caught the movement as a Trolloc leaped out from behind a tree
without a sound, swinging its catchpole. Rand dug his heels in, and the gray bounded forward just as two more
plunged from the shadows after the first. A noose brushed the back of Rand's neck, sending a shiver down his
spine.
An arrow took one of the bestial faces in the eye, then Mat swung in beside him as their horses pounded
through the trees. They were running toward the river, he realized, but he was not sure it was going to do any
good. The Trollocs sped after them, almost close enough to reach out and grab the streaming tails of their
horses. Half a step gained, and the catchpoles could drag them both out of their saddles.
He leaned low on the gray's neck to put that much more distance between his own neck and the nooses.
Mat's face was nearly buried in his horse's mane. But Rand wondered where Thom was. Had the gleeman
decided he was better off on his own, since all three Trollocs had fastened on the boys?
Suddenly Thom's gelding galloped out of the night, hard behind the Trollocs. The Trollocs had only
time enough to look back in surprise before the gleeman's hands whipped back and then forward. Moonlight
flashed off steel. One Trolloc tumbled forward, rolling over and over before landing in a heap, while a second
dropped to its knees with a scream, clawing at its back with both hands. The third snarled, baring a muzzleful of
sharp teeth, but as its companions toppled it whirled away into the darkness. Thom's hand made the whip-like
motion again, and the Trolloc shrieked, but the shrieks faded into the distance as it ran.
Rand and Mat pulled up and stared at the gleeman.
"My best knives," Thom muttered, but he made no effort to get down and retrieve them. "That one will
bring others. I hope the river isn't too far. I hope . . ." Instead of saying what else he hoped, he shook his head
and set off at a quick canter. Rand and Mat fell in behind him.
Soon they reached a low bank where trees grew right to the edge of the night-black water, its moonstreaked
surface riffled by the wind. Rand could not see the far side at all. He did not like the idea of crossing
on a raft in the dark, but he liked the idea of staying on this side even less. I'll swim if I have to.
Somewhere away from the river a Trolloc horn brayed, sharp, quick, and urgent in the darkness. It was
the first sound from the horns since they had left the ruins. Rand wondered if it meant some of the others had
been captured.
"No use staying here all night," Thom said. "Pick a direction. Upriver, or down?"
"But Moiraine and the others could be anywhere," Mat protested. "Any way we choose could just take
us further away."
"So it could." Clucking to his gelding, Thom turned downriver, heading along the bank. "So it could."
Rand looked at Mat, who shrugged, and for a time nothing changed. The bank was higher in some places, lower
others, the trees grew thicker, or thinned out in small clearings, but the night and the river and the wind were all
the same, cold and black. And no Trollocs. That was one change Rand was glad to forgo.
Then he saw a light ahead, just a single point. As they drew closer he could d see that the light was well
above the river, as if it were in a tree. Thom quickened the pace and began to hum under his breath.
Finally they could make out the source of the light, a lantern hoisted one of the masts of a large trader's
boat, tied up for the night beside a clearing in the trees. The boat, a good eighty feet long, shifted slightly with
the current, tugging against the mooring ropes tied to trees. The rigging hummed and creaked in the wind. The
lantern doubled the moonlight on the deck, but no one was in sight.
"Now that," Thom said as he dismounted, "is better than an Aes Sedai's fit, isn't it?" He stood with his
hands on his hips, and even in the dark his smugness was apparent. "It doesn't look as if this vessel is made to
carry horses, but considering the danger he's in, which we are going to warn him of, the captain may be
reasonable. Just let me do all the talking. And bring your blankets and saddlebags, just in case."
Rand climbed down and began untying the things behind his saddle. You don't mean to leave without
the others, do you?"
Thom had no chance to say what he meant to do. Into the clearing burst two Trollocs, howling and
waving their catchpoles, with four more right behind. The horses reared and whinnied. Shouts in the distance
said more Trollocs were on the way.
"Onto the boat!" Thom shouted. "Quick! Leave all that! Run!" Suiting his own words, he ran for the
boat, patches flapping and instrument cases on his back banging together. "You on the boat!" he shouted.
"Wake up, you fools! Trollocs!"
Rand jerked his blanketroll and saddlebags free of the last thong and was right on the gleeman's heels.
Tossing his burdens over the rail, he vaulted after them. He just had time to see a man curled up on the deck,
beginning to sit up as if he had only that moment awakened, when his feet came down right on top of the
fellow. The man grunted loudly, Rand stumbled, and a hooked catchpole slammed into the railing just where he
had come over. Shouts rose all over the boat, and feet pounded along the deck.
Hairy hands caught the railing beside the catchpole, and a goat-horned head lifted above it. Off balance,
stumbling, Rand still managed to draw his sword and swing. With a scream the Trolloc dropped away.
Men ran everywhere on the boat, shouting, hacking mooring lines with axes. The boat lurched and
swung as if eager to be off. Up in the bow three men struggled with a Trolloc. Someone thrust over the side
with a spear, though Rand could not see what he was stabbing at. A bowstring snapped, and snapped again. The
man Rand had stepped on scrabbled away from him on hands and knees, then flung up his hands when he saw
Rand looking at him.
"Spare me!" he cried. "Take whatever you want, take the boat, take everything, but spare me!"
Suddenly something slammed across Rand's back, smashing him to the deck. His sword skittered away
from his outstretched hand. Openmouthed, gasping for a breath that would not come, he tried to reach the
sword. His muscles responded with agonized slowness; he writhed like a slug. The fellow who wanted to be
spared gave one frightened, covetous look at the sword, then vanished into the shadows.
Painfully Rand managed to look over his shoulder, and knew his luck had run out. A wolf-muzzled
Trolloc stood balanced on the railing, staring down at him and holding the splintered end of the catchpole that
had knocked the wind out of him. Rand struggled to reach the sword, to move, to get away, but his arms and
legs moved jerkily, and only half as he wanted. They wobbled and went in odd directions. His chest felt as if it
were strapped with iron bands; silver spots swam in his eyes. Frantically he hunted for some way to escape.
Time seemed to slow as the Trolloc raised the jagged pole as if to spear him with it. To Rand the creature
appeared to be moving as if in a dream. He watched the thick arm go back; he could already feel the broken haft
ripping through his spine, feel the pain of it tearing him open. He thought his lungs would burst. I'm going to
die! Light help me, I'm going to . . . ! The Trolloc's arm started forward, driving the splintered shaft, and Rand
found the breath for one yell. "No!"
Suddenly the ship lurched, and a boom swung out of the shadows to catch the Trolloc across the chest
with a crunch of breaking bones, sweeping it over the side.
For a moment Rand lay panting and staring up at the boom swinging back and forth above him. That has
to have used up my luck, he thought. There can't be any more after that.
Shakily he got to his feet and picked up his sword, for once holding it in both hands the way Lan had
taught him, but there was nothing left on which to use it. The gap of black water between the boat and the bank
was widening quickly; the cries of the Trollocs were fading behind in the night.
As he sheathed his sword and slumped against the railing, a stocky man in a coat that hung to his knees
strode up the deck to glare at him. Long hair that fell to his thick shoulders and a beard that left his upper lip
bare framed a round face. Round but not soft. The boom swung out again, and the bearded man spared part of
his glare for that as he caught it; it made a crisp splat against his broad palm.
"Gelb!" he bellowed. "Fortune! Where do you be, Gelb?" He spoke so fast, with all the words running
together, that Rand could barely understand him. "You can no hide from me on my own ship! Get Floran Gelb
out here!"
A crewman appeared with a bull's-eye lantern, and two more pushed a narrow-faced man into the circle
of light it cast. Rand recognized the fellow who had offered him the boat. The man's eyes shifted from side to
side, never meeting those of the stocky man. The captain, Rand thought.
A bruise was coming up on Gelb's forehead where one of Rand's boots had caught him.
"Were you no supposed to secure this boom, Gelb?" the captain asked with surprising calm, though just
as fast as before.
Gelb looked truly surprised. "But I did. Tied it down tight. I admit I'm a little slow about things now and
then, Captain Domon, but I get them done."
"So you be slow, do you? No so slow at sleeping. Sleeping when you should be standing watch. We
could be murdered to a man, for all of you."
"No, Captain, no. It was him." Gelb pointed straight at Rand. "I was on guard, just like I was supposed
to be, when he sneaked up and hit me with a club." He touched the bruise on his head, winced, and glared at
Rand. "I fought him, but then the Trollocs came. He's in league with them, Captain. A Darkfriend. In league
with the Trollocs."
"In league with my aged grandmother!" Captain Domon roared. "Did I no warn you the last time, Gelb?
At Whitebridge, off you do go! Get out of my sight before I put you off now." Gelb darted out of the lantern
light, and Domon stood opening and closing his hands while he stared at nothing. "These Trollocs do be
following me. Why will they no leave me be? Why?"
Rand looked over the rail and was shocked to find the riverbank no longer in sight. Two men manned
the long steering oar that stuck out over the stern, and there were six sweeps working to a side now, pulling the
ship like a waterbug further out into the river.
"Captain," Rand said, "we have friends back there. If you go back and pick them up, I am sure they'll
reward you."
The captain's round face swung toward Rand, and when Thom and Mat appeared he included them in
his expressionless stare as well.
"Captain," Thom began with a bow, "allow me to -"
"You come below," Captain Domon said, "where I can see what manner of thing be hauled up on my
deck. Come. Fortune desert me, somebody secure this horn-cursed boom!" As crewmen rushed to take the
boom, he stumped off toward the stern of the boat. Rand and his two companions followed.
Captain Domon had a tidy cabin in the stern, reached by climbing down a short ladder, where everything
gave the impression of being in its proper place, right down to the coats and cloaks hanging from pegs on the
back of the door. The cabin stretched the width of the ship, with a broad bed built against one side and a heavy
table built out from the other. There was only one chair, with a high back and sturdy arms, and the captain took
that himself, motioning the others to find places on various chests and benches that were the only other
furnishings. A loud harrumph stopped Mat from sitting on the bed.
"Now," said the captain when they were all seated. "My name be Bayle Domon, captain and owner of
the Spray, which be this ship. Now who be you, and where be you going out here in the middle of nowhere, and
why should I no throw you over the side for the trouble you've brought me?"
Rand still had as much trouble as before in following Domon's rapid speech. When he worked out the
last part of what the captain had said he blinked in surprise. Throw us over the side?
Mat hurriedly said, "We didn't mean to cause you any trouble. We're on our way to Caemlyn, and then
to -"
"And then where the wind takes us," Thom interrupted smoothly. "That's how gleemen travel, like dust
on the wind. I am a gleeman, you understand, Thom Merrilin by name." He shifted his cloak so the multihued
patches stirred, as if the captain could have missed them. "These two country louts want to become my
apprentices, though I am not yet sure I want them." Rand looked at Mat, who grinned.
"That be all very well, man," Captain Domon said placidly, "but it tells me nothing. Less. Fortune prick
me, that place be on no road to Caemlyn from anywhere I ever heard tell of."
"Now that is a story," Thom said, and he straightaway began to unfold it.
According to Thom, he had been trapped by the winter snows in a mining town in the Mountains of Mist
beyond Baerlon. While there he heard legends of a treasure dating from the Trolloc Wars, in the lost ruin of a
city called Aridhol. Now it just so happened that he had earlier learned the location of Aridhol from a map
given him many years ago by a dying friend in Illian whose life he had once saved, a man who expired
breathing that the map would make Thom rich, which Thom never believed until he heard the legends. When
the snows melted enough, he set out with a few companions, including his two would-be apprentices, and after
a journey of many hardships they actually found the ruined city. But it turned out the treasure had belonged to
one of the Dreadlords themselves, and Trollocs had been sent to fetch it back to Shayol Ghul. Almost every
danger they really had faced - Trollocs, Myrddraal, Draghkar, Mordeth, Mashadar- assailed them at one point or
another of the story, though the way Thom told it they all seemed to be aimed at him personally, and to have
been handled by him with the greatest adroitness. With much derring-do, mostly by Thom, they escaped,
pursued by Trollocs, though they became separated in the night, until finally Thom and his two companions
sought refuge on the last place left to them, Captain Domon's most welcome ship.
As the gleeman finished up, Rand realized his mouth had been hanging open for some time and shut it
with a click. When he looked at Mat, his friend was staring wide-eyed at the gleeman. Captain Domon
drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. "That be a tale many folk would no believe. Of course, I did see
the Trollocs, did I no.”
Every word true," Thom said blandly, "from one who lived it."
"Happen you have some of this treasure with you?"
Thom spread his hands regretfully. "Alas, what little we managed to carry away was with our horses,
which bolted when those last Trollocs appeared. All I have left are my flute and my harp, a few coppers, and the
clothes on my back. But believe me, you want no part of that treasure. It has the taint of the Dark One. Best to
leave it to the ruins and the Trollocs.”
"So you've no money to pay your passage. I'd no let my own brother sail with me if he could no pay his
passage, especially if he brought Trollocs behind him to hack up my railings and cut up my rigging. Why
should I no let you swim back where you came from, and be rid of you?"
"You wouldn't just put us ashore?" Mat said. "Not with Trollocs there?"
"Who said anything about shore?" Domon replied dryly. He studied them a moment, then spread his
hands flat on the table. "Bayle Domon be a reasonable man. I'd no toss you over the side if there be a way out of
it. Now, I see one of your apprentices has a sword. I need a good sword, and fine fellow that I be, I'll let you
have passage far as Whitebridge for it."
Thom opened his mouth, and Rand spoke up quickly, "No!" Tam had not given it to him to trade away.
He ran his hand down the hilt, feeling the bronze heron. As long as he had it, it was as if Tam were with him.
Domon shook his head. "Well, if it be no, it be no. But Bayle Domon no give free passage, not to his
own mother."
Reluctantly Rand emptied his pocket. There was not much, a few coppers and the silver coin Moiraine
had given him. He held it out to the captain. After a second, Mat sighed and did the same. Thom glared, but a
smile replaced it so quickly that Rand was not sure it had been there at all.
Captain Domon deftly plucked the two fat silver coins out of the boys' hands and produced a small set of
scales and a clinking bag from a brassbound chest behind his chair. After careful weighing, he dropped the
coins in the bag and returned them each some smaller silver and copper. Mostly copper. "As far as
Whitebridge," he said, making a neat entry in a leatherbound ledger.
"That's a dear passage just to Whitebridge," Thom grumbled.
"Plus damages to my vessel," the captain answered placidly. He put the scales and the bag back in the
chest and closed it in a satisfied way. "Plus a bit for bringing Trollocs down on me so I must run downriver in
the night when there be shallows aplenty to pile me up."
"What about the others?" Rand asked. "Will you take them, too? They should have reached the river by
now, or they soon will, and they'll see that lantern on your mast."
Captain Domon's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Happen you think we be standing still, man? Fortune prick
me, we be three, four miles downriver from where you came aboard. Trollocs make those fellows put their
backs into the oars - they know Trollocs better than they like – and the current helps, too. But it makes no
nevermind. I'd no put in again tonight if my old grandmother was on the riverbank. I may no put in again at all
until I reach Whitebridge. I've had my fill of Trollocs dogging my heels long before tonight, and I'll have no
more can I help it."
Thom leaned forward interestedly. "You have had encounters with Trollocs before? Lately?" Domon
hesitated, eyeing Thom narrowly, but when he spoke he merely sounded disgusted. "I wintered in Saldaea, man.
Not my choice, but the river froze early and the ice broke up late. They say you can see the Blight from the
highest towers in Maradon, but I've no mind for that. I've been there before, and there always be talk of Trollocs
attacking a farm or the like. This winter past, though, there be farms burning every night. Aye, and whole
villages, too, betimes. They even came right up to the city walls. And if that no be bad enough, the people be all
saying it meant the Dark One be stirring, that the Last Days be come." He gave a shiver, and scratched at his
head as if the thought made his scalp itch. "I can no wait to get back where people think Trollocs be just tales,
the stories I tell be traveler's lies."
Rand stopped listening. He stared at the opposite wall and thought about Egwene and the others. It
hardly seemed right for him to be safe on the Spray while they were still back there in the night somewhere. The
captain's cabin did not seem so comfortable as before.
He was surprised when Thom pulled him to his feet. The gleeman pushed Mat and him toward the
ladder with apologies over his shoulder to Captain Domon for the country louts. Rand climbed up without a
word.
Once they were on deck Thom looked around quickly to make sure he would not be overheard, then
growled, "I could have gotten us passage for a few songs and stories if you two hadn't been so quick to show
silver."
"I'm not so sure," Mat said. "He sounded serious about throwing us in the river to me."
Rand walked slowly to the rail and leaned against it, staring back up the night-shrouded river. He could
not see anything but black, not even the riverbank. After a minute Thom put a hand on his shoulder, but he did
not move.
"There isn't anything you can do, lad. Besides, they're likely safe with the . . . with Moiraine and Lan by
this time. Can you think of any better than those two for getting the lot of them clear?"
"I tried to talk her out of coming," Rand said.
"You did what you could, lad. No one could ask more."
"I told her I'd take care of her. I should have tried harder." The creak of the sweeps and the hum of the
rigging in the wind made a mournful tune. "I should have tried harder," he whispered.

Chapter 21

Listen to the Wind


Sunrise creeping across the River Arinelle found its way into the hollow not far from the river-bank where
Nynaeve sat with her backagainst the trunk of a young oak, breathing the deep breath of sleep.
Her horse slept, too, head down and legs spraddled in the manner of horses. The reins were wrapped
around her wrist. As sunlight fell on the horse's eyelids, the animal opened its eyes and raised its head, jerking
the reins. Nynaeve came awake with a start.
For a moment she stared, wondering where she was, then stared around even more wildly when she
remembered. But there were only the trees, and her horse, and a carpet of old, dry leaves across the bottom of
the hollow. In the deepest dimness, some of last year's shadowshand mushrooms made rings on a fallen log.
"The Light preserve you, woman," she murmured, sagging back, "if you can't stay awake one night."
She untied the reins and massaged her wrist as she stood. "You could have awakened in a Trolloc cookpot."
The dead leaves rustled as she climbed to the lip of the hollow and peeped over. No more than a handful
of ash trees stood between her and the river. Their fissured bark and bare branches made them seem dead.
Beyond, the wide blue-green water flowed by. Empty. Empty of anything. Scattered clumps of evergreens,
willows and firs, dotted the far bank, and there seemed to be fewer trees altogether than on her side. If Moiraine
or any of the younglings were over there, they were well hidden. Of course, there was no reason they had to
have crossed, or tried to cross, in sight of where she was. They could be anywhere ten miles upriver or down. If
they're alive at all, after last night.
Angry with herself for thinking of the possibility, she slid back down into the hollow. Not even
Winternight, or the battle before Shadar Logoth, had prepared her for last night, for that thing, Mashadar. All
that frantic galloping, wondering if anyone else was still alive, wondering when she was going to come face-toface
with a Fade, or Trollocs. She had heard Trollocs growling and shouting in the distance, and the quivering
shrieks of Trolloc horns had chilled her deeper than the wind ever could, but aside from that first encounter in
the ruins she saw Trollocs only once, and that once she was outside. Ten or so of them seemed to spring out of
the ground not thirty spans in front of her, bounding toward her on the instant, howling and shouting,
brandishing hooked catchpoles. Yet as she pulled her horse around, they fell silent, lifting muzzles to sniff at the
air. She watched, too astonished to run, as they turned their backs and vanished into the night. And that had
been the most frightening of all.
"They know the smell of who they want," she told her horse, standing in the hollow, "and it is not me.
The Aes Sedai is right, it seems, the Shepherd of the Night swallow her up."
Reaching a decision, she set out downriver, leading her horse. She moved slowly, keeping a wary watch
on the forest around her; just because the Trollocs had not wanted her last night did not mean they would let her
go if she stumbled on them again. As much attention as she gave the woods, she gave even more to the ground
in front of her. If the others had crossed below her during the night, she should see some signs of them, signs
she might miss from horseback. She might even come on them all still on this side. If she found neither, the
river would take her to Whitebridge eventually, and there was a road from Whitebridge to Caemlyn, and all the
way to Tar Valon if need be.
The prospect was almost enough to daunt her. Before this she had been no further from Emond's Field
than had the boys. Taren Ferry had seemed strange to her; Baerlon would have had her staring in wonder if she
had not been so set on finding Egwene and the others. But she allowed none of that to weaken her resolve.
Sooner or later she would find Egwene and the boys. Or find a way to make the Aes Sedai answer for whatever
had happened to them. One or the other, she vowed.
At intervals she found tracks, plenty of them, but usually her best efforts could not say whether those
who made them had been searching or chasing or pursued. Some had been made by boots that could have
belonged to humans or Trollocs either one. Others were hoofprints, like goats or oxen; those were Trollocs for
sure. But never a clear sign that she could definitely say came from any of those she sought.
She had covered perhaps four miles when the wind brought her a whiff of woodsmoke. It came from
further downriver, and not too far, she thought. She hesitated only a moment before tying her horse to a fir tree,
well back from the river in a small, thick stand of evergreens that should keep the animal hidden. The smoke
could mean Trollocs, but the only way to find out was to look. She tried not to think about the use Trollocs
might be making of a fire.
Crouching, she slipped from tree to tree, mentally cursing the skirts she had to hold up out of the way.
Dresses were not made for stalking. The sound of a horse slowed her, and when she finally peered cautiously
around the trunk of an ash, the Warder was dismounting from his black warhorse in a small clearing on the
bank. The Aes Sedai sat on a log beside a small fire where a kettle of water was just coming to a boil. Her white
mare browsed behind her among sparse weeds. Nynaeve remained where she was.
"They are all gone," Lan announced grimly. "Four Halfmen started south about two hours before dawn,
as near as I can tell - they don't leave much trace behind - but the Trollocs have vanished. Even the corpses, and
Trollocs are not known for carrying off their dead. Unless they're hungry."
Moiraine tossed a handful of something into the boiling water and moved the kettle from the fire. "One
could always hope they had gone back into Shadar Logoth and been consumed by it, but that would be too
much to wish for."
The delicious odor of tea drifted to Nynaeve. Light, don't let my stomach grumble.
"There was no clear sign of the boys, or any of the others. The tracks are too muddled to tell anything."
In her concealment, Nynaeve smiled; the Warder's failure was a slight vindication of her own. "But this other is
important, Moiraine," Lan went on, frowning. He waved away the Aes Sedai's offer of tea and began marching
up and down in front of the fire, one hand on his sword hilt and his cloak changing colors as he turned. "I could
accept Trollocs in the Two Rivers, even a hundred Trollocs. But this? There must have been almost a thousand
in the hunt for us yesterday. "
"We were very lucky that not all stayed to search Shadar Logoth. The Myrddraal must have doubted we
would hide there, but they also feared to return to Shayol Ghul leaving even the slightest chance uncovered. The
Dark One was never a lenient master."
"Don't try to evade it. You know what I am saying. If those thousand were here to be sent into the Two
Rivers, why were they not? There is only one answer. They were sent only after we crossed the Taren, when it
was known that one Myrddraal and a hundred Trollocs were no longer enough. How? How were they sent? If a
thousand Trollocs can be brought so far south from the Blight, so quickly, unseen - not to mention being taken
off the same way - can ten thousand be sent into the heart of Saldaea, or Arafel, or Shienar? The Borderlands
could be overrun in a year."
"The whole world will be overrun in five if we do not find those boys," Moiraine said simply. "The
question worries me, also, but I have no answers. The Ways are closed, and there has not been an Aes Sedai
powerful enough to Travel since the Time of Madness. Unless one of the Forsaken is loose-the Light send it is
not so, yet or ever - there is still no one who can. In any case, I do not think all the Forsaken together could
move a thousand Trollocs. Let us deal with the problems that face us here and now; everything else must wait."
"The boys." It was not a question.
"I have not been idle while you were away. One is across the river, and alive. As for the others, there
was a faint trace downriver, but it faded away as I found it. The bond had been broken for hours before I began
my search. "
Crouched behind her tree, Nynaeve frowned in puzzlement.
Lan stopped his pacing. "You think the Halfmen heading south have them?"
"Perhaps." Moiraine poured herself a cup of tea before going on. "But I will not admit the possibility of
them being dead. I cannot. I dare not. You know how much is at stake. I must have those young men. That
Shayol Ghul will hunt them, I expect. Opposition from within the White Tower, even from the Amyrlin Seat, I
accept. There are always Aes Sedai who will accept only one solution. But . . . " Suddenly she put her cup down
and sat up straight, grimacing. "If you watch the wolf too hard," she muttered, "a mouse will bite you on the
ankle." And she looked right at the tree behind which Nynaeve was hiding. "Mistress al'Meara, you may come
out now, if you wish."
Nynaeve scrambled to her feet, hastily dusting dead leaves from her dress. Lan had spun to face the tree
as soon as Moiraine's eyes moved; his sword was in his hand before she finished speaking Nynaeve's name.
Now he sheathed it again with more force than was strictly necessary. His face was almost as expressionless as
ever, but Nynaeve thought there was a touch of chagrin about the set of his mouth. She felt a stab of
satisfaction; the Warder had not known she was there, at least.
Satisfaction lasted only a moment, though. She fastened her eyes on Moiraine and walked toward her
purposefully. She wanted to remain cold and calm, but her voice quivered with anger. "What have you meshed
Egwene and the boys in? What filthy Aes Sedai plots are you planning to use them in?"
The Aes Sedai picked up her cup and calmly sipped her tea. When Nynaeve was close, though, Lan put
out an arm to bar her way. She tried to brush the obstruction aside, and was surprised when the Warder's arm
moved no more than an oak branch would have. She was not frail, but his muscles were like iron.
"Tea?" Moiraine offered.
"No, I don't want any tea. I would not drink your tea if I was dying of thirst. You won't use any Emond's
Field folk in your dirty Aes Sedai schemes."
"You have very little room to talk, Wisdom." Moiraine showed more interest in her hot tea than in
anything she was saying. "You can wield the One Power yourself, after a fashion. "
Nynaeve pushed at Lan's arm again; it still did not move, and she decided to ignore it. "Why don't you
try claiming I am a Trolloc?"
Moiraine's smile was so knowing that Nynaeve wanted to hit her. "Do you think I can stand face-to-face
with a woman who can touch the True Source and channel the One Power, even if only now and then, without
knowing what she is? Just as you sensed the potential in Egwene. How do you think I knew you were behind
that tree? If I had not been distracted, I would have known the moment you came close. You certainly are not a
Trolloc, for me to feel the evil of the Dark One. So what did I sense, Nynaeve al’Meara, Wisdom of Emond's
Field and unknowing wielder of the One Power?"
Lan was looking down at Nynaeve in a way she did not like; surprised and speculative, it seemed to her,
though nothing had changed about his face but his eyes. Egwene war special; she had always known that.
Egwene would make a fine Wisdom. They're working together, she thought, trying to put me off balance. "I
won't listen to any more of this. You - "
"You must listen," Moiraine said firmly. "I had my suspicions in Emond's Field even before I met you.
People told me how upset the Wisdom was that she had not predicted the hard winter and the lateness of spring.
They told me how good she was at foretelling weather, at telling the crops. They told me how wonderful her
cures were, how she sometimes healed injuries that should have been crippling, so well there was barely a scar,
and not a limp or a twinge. The only ill word I heard about you was from a few who thought you too young for
the responsibility, and that only strengthened my suspicions. So much skill so young."
"Mistress Barran taught me well." She tried looking at Lan, but his eyes still made her uncomfortable, so
she settled for staring over the Aes Sedai's head at the river. How dare the village gossip in front of an
outlander! "Who said I was too young?" she demanded.
Moiraine smiled, refusing to be diverted. "Unlike most women who claim to listen to the wind, you
actually can, sometimes. Oh, it has nothing to do with the wind, of course. It is of Air and Water. It is not
something you needed to be taught; it was born into you, just as it was born into Egwene. But you have learned
to handle it, which she still has to learn. Two minutes after I came face-to-face with you, I knew. Do you
remember how I suddenly asked you if you were the Wisdom? Why, do you think? There was nothing to
distinguish you from any other pretty young woman getting ready for Festival. Even looking for a young
Wisdom I expected someone half again your age."
Nynaeve remembered that meeting all too well; this woman, more self-possessed than anyone in the
Women's Circle, in a dress more beautiful than any she had ever seen, addressing her as a child. Then Moiraine
had suddenly blinked as if surprised and out of a clear sky asked . .
.
She licked lips gone abruptly dry. They were both looking at her, the Warder's face as unreadable as a
stone, the Aes Sedai's sympathetic yet intent. Nynaeve shook her head. "No! No, it's impossible. I would know.
You are just trying to trick me, and it will not work."
"Of course you do not know," Moiraine said soothingly. "Why should you even suspect? All of your life
you have heard about listening to the wind. In any case, you would as soon announce to all of Emond's Field
that you were a Darkfriend as admit to yourself, even in the deepest recesses of your mind, that you have
anything to do with the One Power, or the dreaded Aes Sedai." Amusement flitted across Moiraine's face. "But I
can tell you how it began."
"I don't want to hear any more of your lies," she said, but the Aes Sedai went right on.
"Perhaps as much as eight or ten years ago - the age varies, but always comes young – there was
something you wanted more than anything else in the world, something you needed. And you got it. A branch
suddenly falling where you could pull yourself out of a pond instead of drowning. A friend, or a pet, getting
well when everyone thought they would die.
"You felt nothing special at the time, but a week or ten days later you had your first reaction to touching
the True Source. Perhaps fever and chills that came on suddenly and put you to bed, then disappeared after only
a few hours. None of the reactions, and they vary, lasts more than a few hours. Headaches and numbness and
exhilaration all mixed together, and you taking foolish chances or acting giddy. A spell of dizziness, when you
tripped and stumbled whenever you tried to move, when you could not say a sentence without your tongue
mangling half the words. There are others. Do you remember?"
Nynaeve sat down hard on the ground; her legs would not hold her up. She remembered, but she shook
her head anyway. It had to be coincidence. Or else Moiraine had asked more questions in Emond's Field than
she had thought. The Aes Sedai had asked a great many questions. It had to be that. Lan offered a hand, but she
did not even see it.
"I will go further," Moiraine said when Nynaeve kept silent. "You used the Power to Heal either Perrin
or Egwene at some time. An affinity develops. You can sense the presence of someone you have Healed. In
Baerlon you came straight to the Stag and Lion, though it was not the nearest inn to any gate by which you
could have entered. Of the people from Emond's Field, only Perrin and Egwene were at the inn when you
arrived. Was it Perrin, or Egwene? Or both?"
"Egwene," Nynaeve mumbled. She had always taken it for granted that she could sometimes tell who
was approaching her even when she could not see them; not until now had she realized that it was always
someone on whom her cures had worked almost miraculously well. And she had always known when the
medicine would work beyond expectations, always felt the certainty when she said the crops would be
especially good, or that the rains would come early or late. That was the way she thought it was supposed to be.
Not all Wisdoms could listen to the wind, but the best could. That was what Mistress Barran always said, just as
she said Nynaeve would be one of the best.
"She had breakbone fever." She kept her head down and spoke to the ground. "I was still apprentice to
Mistress Barran, and she set me to watch Egwene. I was young, and I didn't know the Wisdom had everything
well in hand. It's terrible to watch, breakbone fever. The child was soaked with sweat, groaning and twisting
until I could not understand why I didn't hear her bones snapping. Mistress Barran had told me the fever would
break in another day, two at the most, but I thought she was doing me a kindness. I thought Egwene was dying.
I used to look after her sometimes when she was a toddler - when her mother was busy - and I started crying
because I was going to have to watch her die. When Mistress Barran came back an hour later, the fever had
broken. She was surprised, but she made over me more than Egwene. I always thought she believed I had given
the child something and was too frightened to admit it. I always thought she was trying to comfort me, to make
sure I knew I hadn't hurt Egwene. A week later I fell on the floor in her sitting room, shaking and burning up by
turns. She bundled me into bed, but by suppertime it was gone."
She dropped her head in her hands as she finished speaking. The Aes Sedai chose a good example, she
thought, Light burn her! Using the Power like an Aes Sedai. A filthy, Darkfriend Aes Sedai!
"You were very lucky," Moiraine said, and Nynaeve sat erect. Lan stepped back as if what they talked
about was none of his business, and busied himself with Mandarb's saddle, not even glancing at them.
"Lucky!"
"You have managed a crude control over the Power, even if touching the True Source still comes at
random. If you had not, it would have killed you eventually. As it will, in all probability, kill Egwene if you
manage to stop her from going to Tar Valon. "
"If I learned to control it . . ." Nynaeve swallowed hard. It was like admitting all over again that she
could do what the Aes Sedai said. "If I learned to control it, so can she. There is no need for her to go to Tar
Valon, and get mixed up in your intrigues."
Moiraine shook her head slowly. "Aes Sedai search for girls who can touch the True Source unguided
just as assiduously as we search for men who can do so. It is not a desire to increase our numbers - or at least,
not only that - nor is it a fear that those women will misuse the Power. The rough control of the Power they may
gain, if the Light shines on them, is rarely enough to do any great damage, especially since the actual touching
of the Source is beyond their control without a teacher, and comes only randomly. And, of course, they do not
suffer the madness that drives men to evil or twisted things. We want to save their lives. The lives of those who
never do manage any control at all."
"The fever and chills I had couldn't kill anyone," Nynaeve insisted. "Not in three or four hours. I had the
other things, too, and they couldn't kill anybody, either. And they stopped after a few months. What about that?"
"Those were only reactions," Moiraine said patiently. "Each time, the reaction comes closer to the actual
touching of the Source, until the two happen almost together. After that there are no more reactions that can be
seen, but it is as if a clock has begun ticking. A year. Two years. I know one woman who lasted five years. Of
four who have the inborn ability that you and Egwene have, three die if we do not find them and train them. It is
not as horrible a death as the men die, but neither is it pretty, if any death can be called so. Convulsions.
Screaming. It takes days, and once it begins there is nothing that can be done to stop it, not by all the Aes Sedai
in Tar Valon together."
"You're lying. All those questions you asked in Emond's Field. You found out about Egwene's fever
breaking, about my fever and chills, all of it. You made all of this up."
"You know I did not," Moiraine said gently.
Reluctantly, more reluctantly than she had ever done anything in her life, Nynaeve nodded. It had been a
last stubborn effort to deny what was plain, and there was never any good in that, however unpleasant it might
be. Mistress Barran's first apprentice had died the way the Aes Sedai said when Nynaeve was still playing with
dolls, and there had been a young woman in Deven Ride only a few years ago. She had been a Wisdom's
apprentice, too, one who could listen to the wind.
"You have great potential, I think," Moiraine continued. "With training you might become even more
powerful than Egwene, and I believe she can become one of the most powerful Aes Sedai we have seen in
centuries."
Nynaeve pushed herself back from the Aes Sedai as she would have from a viper. "No! I'll have nothing
to do with -" With what? Myself? She slumped, and her voice became hesitant. "I would ask you not to tell
anyone about this. Please?" The word nearly stuck in her throat. She would rather Trollocs had appeared than
she had been forced to say please to this woman. But Moiraine only nodded assent, and some of her spirit
returned.
"None of this explains what you want with Rand, and Mat, and Perrin."
"The Dark One wants them," Moiraine replied. "If the Dark One wants a thing, I oppose it. Can there be
a simpler reason, or a better?" She finished her tea, watching Nynaeve over the rim of her cup. "Lan, we must
be going. South, I think. I fear the Wisdom will not be accompanying us."
Nynaeve's mouth tightened at the way the Aes Sedai said "Wisdom"; it seemed to suggest she was
turning her back on great things in favor of something petty. She doesn't want me along. She's trying to put my
back up so I'll go back home and leave them alone with her. "Oh, yes, I will be going with you. You cannot
keep me from it."
"No one will try to keep you from it," Lan said as he rejoined them. He emptied the tea kettle over the
fire and stirred the ashes with a stick. "A part of the Pattern?" he said to Moiraine.
"Perhaps so," she replied thoughtfully. "I should have spoken to Min again."
"You see, Nynaeve, you are welcome to come." There was a hesitation in the way Lan said her name, a
hint of an unspoken "Sedai" after it.
Nynaeve bristled, taking it for mockery, and bristled, too, at the way they spoke of things in front of her
- things she knew nothing about without the courtesy of an explanation, but she would not give them the
satisfaction of asking.
The Warder went on preparing for departure, his economical motions so sure and swift that he was
quickly done, saddlebags, blankets, and all fastened behind the saddles of Mandarb and Aldieb.
"I will fetch your horse," he told Nynaeve as he finished with the last saddle tie.
He started up the riverbank, and she allowed herself a small smile. After the way she had watched him
undiscovered, he was going to try to find her horse unaided. He would learn that she left little in the way of
tracks when she was stalking. It would be a pleasure when he came back empty-handed.
"Why south?" she asked Moiraine. "I heard you say one of the boys is across the river. And how do you
know?"
"I gave each of the boys a token. It created a bond of sorts between them and me. So long as they are
alive and have those coins in their possession, I will be able to find them." Nynaeve's eyes turned in the
direction the Warder had gone, and Moiraine shook her head. "Not like that. It only allows me to discover if
they still live, and find them should we become separated. Prudent, do you not think, under the circumstances?"
"I don't like anything that connects you with anyone from Emond's Field," Nynaeve said stubbornly.
"But if it will help us find them . . ."
"It will. I would gather the young man across the river first, if I could." For a moment frustration tinged
the Aes Sedai's voice. "He is only a few miles from us. But I cannot afford to take the time. He should make his
way down to Whitebridge safely now that the Trollocs have gone. The two who went downriver may need me
more. They have lost their coins, and Myrddraal are either pursuing them or else trying to intercept us all at
Whitebridge." She sighed. "I must take care of the greatest need first."
"The Myrddraal could have . . . could have killed them," Nynaeve said.
Moiraine shook her head slightly, denying the suggestion as if it were too trivial to be considered.
Nynaeve's mouth tightened. "Where is Egwene, then? You haven't even mentioned her."
"I do not know," Moiraine admitted, "but I hope that she is safe."
"You don't know? You hope? All that talk about saving her life by taking her to Tar Valon, and she
could be dead for all you know!"
"I could look for her and allow the Myrddraal more time before I arrive to help the two young men who
went south. It is them the Dark One wants, not her. They would not bother with Egwene, so long as their true
quarry remains uncaught."
Nynaeve remembered her own encounter, but she refused to admit the sense of what Moiraine said. "So
the best you have to offer is that she may be alive, if she was lucky. Alive, maybe alone, frightened, even hurt,
days from the nearest village or help except for us. And you intend to leave her. "
"She may just as easily be safe with the boy across the river. Or on her way to Whitebridge with the
other two. In any case, there are no longer Trollocs here to threaten her, and she is strong, intelligent, and quite
capable of finding her way to Whitebridge alone, if need be. Would you rather stay on the chance that she may
need help, or do you want to try to help those we know are in need? Would you have me search for her and let
the boys - and the Myrddraal who are surely pursuing them - go? As much as I hope for Egwene's safety,
Nynaeve, I fight against the Dark One, and for now that sets my path."
Moiraine's calm never slipped while she laid out the horrible alternatives; Nynaeve wanted to scream at
her. Blinking back tears, she turned her face so the Aes Sedai could not see. Light, a Wisdom it supposed to look
after all of her people. Why do 1 have to choose like this?
"Here is Lan," Moiraine said, rising and settling her cloak about her shoulders.
To Nynaeve it was only a tiny blow as the Warder led her horse out of the trees. Still, her lips thinned
when he handed her the reins. It would have been a small boost to her spirits if there had been even a trace of
gloating on his face instead of that insufferable stony calm. His eyes widened when he saw her face, and she
turned her back on him to wipe tears from her cheeks. How dare he mock my crying!
"Are you coming, Wisdom?" Moiraine asked coolly.
She took one last, slow look at the forest, wondering if Egwene was out there, before sadly mounting her
horse. Lan and Moiraine were already in their saddles, turning their horses south. She followed, stiff-backed,
refusing to let herself look back; instead she kept her eyes on Moiraine. The Aes Sedai was so confident in her
power and her plans, she thought, but if they did not find Egwene and the boys, all of them, alive and unharmed,
not all of her power would protect her. Not all her Power. I can use it, woman! You told me so yourself. I can
use it against you!

Chapter 22

A Path Chosen


In a small copse of trees, beneath a pile of cedar branches roughly cut in the dark, Perrin slept long after
sunrise. It was the cedar needles, pricking him through his still-damp clothes, that finally pricked through
his exhaustion as well. Deep in a dream of Emond's Field, of working at Master Luhhan's forge, he opened
his eyes and stared, uncomprehending, at the sweet-smelling branches interwoven over his face, sunlight
trickling through.
Most of the branches fell away as he sat up in surprise, but some hung haphazardly from his shoulders,
and even his head, making him appear something like a tree himself. Emond's Field faded as memory rushed
back, so vivid that for a moment the night before seemed more real than anything around him now.
Panting, frantic, he scrabbled his axe out of the pile. He clutched it in both hands and peered around
cautiously, holding his breath. Nothing Moved. The morning was cold and still. If there were Trollocs on the
east bank of the Arinelle, they were not moving, at least not close to him. Taking a deep, calming breath, he
lowered the axe to his knees, and waited a moment for his heart to stop pounding.
The small stand of evergreens surrounding him was the first shelter he had found last night. It was
sparse enough to give little protection against watching eyes if he stood up. Plucking branches from his head
and shoulders, he pushed aside the rest of his prickly blanket, then crawled on hands and knees to the edge of
the copse. There he lay studying the riverbank and scratching where the needles had stabbed him.
The cutting wind of the night before had faded to a silent breeze that barely rippled the surface of the
water. The river ran by, calm and empty. And wide. Surely too wide and too deep for Fades to cross. The far
bank appeared a solid mass of trees as far as he could see upriver and down. Certainly nothing moved in his
view over there.
He was not sure how he felt about that. Fades and Trollocs he could do without quite easily, even on the
other side of the river, but a whole list of worries would have vanished with the appearance of the Aes Sedai, or
the Warder, or, even better, any of his friends. If wishes were wings, sheep would fly. That was what Mistress
Luhhan always said.
He had not seen a sign of his horse since riding over the bluff - he hoped it had swum out of the river
safely - but he was more used to walking than riding anyway, and his boots were stout and well soled. He had
nothing to eat, but his sling was still wrapped around his waist, and that or the snarelines in his pocket ought to
yield a rabbit in a little time. Everything for making a fire was gone with his saddlebags, but the cedar trees
would yield tinder and a firebow with a bit of work.
He shivered as the breeze gusted into his hiding place. His cloak was somewhere in the river, and his
coat and everything else he wore were still clammy cold from the soaking in the river. He had been too tired for
the cold and damp to bother him last night, but now he was wide awake to every chill. Just the same, he decided
against hanging his clothes on the branches to dry. If the day was not precisely cold, it was not even close to
warm.
Time was the problem, he thought with a sigh. Dry clothes, with a little time. A rabbit to roast and a fire
to roast it over, with a little time. His stomach rumbled, and he tried to forget about eating altogether. There
were more important uses for that time. One thing at a time, and the most important first. That was his way.
His eyes followed the strong flow of the Arinelle downriver. He was a stronger swimmer than Egwene.
If she had made it across. . .No, not if. The place where she had made it across would be downriver. He
drummed on the ground with his fingers, weighing, considering.
His decision made, he wasted no time in picking up his axe and setting off down the river.
This side of the Arinelle lacked the thick forest of the west bank. Clumps of trees spotted across what
would be grassland if spring ever came. Some were big enough to be called thickets, with swathes of evergreens
among the barren ash and alder and hardgum. Down by the river the stands were smaller and not so tight. They
gave poor cover, but they were all the cover there was.
He dashed from growth to growth in a crouch, throwing himself down when he was among the trees to
study the riverbanks, the far side as well as his. The Warder said the river would be a barrier to Fades and
Trollocs, but would it? Seeing him might be enough to overcome their reluctance to cross deep water. So he
watched carefully from behind the trees and ran from one hiding place to the next, fast and low.
He covered several miles that way, in spurts, until suddenly, halfway to the beckoning shelter of a
growth of willows, he grunted and stopped dead, staring at the ground. Patches of bare earth spotted the matted
brown of last year's grass, and in the middle of one of those patches, right under his nose, was a clear hoofprint.
A slow smile spread across his face. Some Trollocs had hooves, but he doubted if any wore horseshoes,
especially horseshoes with the double crossbar Master Luhhan added for strength.
Forgetting possible eyes on the other side of the river, he cast about for more tracks. The plaited carpet
of dead grass did not take impressions well, but his sharp eyes found them anyway. The scanty trail led him
straight away from the river to a dense stand of trees, thick with leatherleaf and cedar that made a wall against
wind or prying eyes. The spreading branches of a lone hemlock towered in the middle of it all.
Still grinning, he pushed his way through the interwoven branches, not caring how much noise he made.
Abruptly he stepped into a little clearing under the hemlock - and stopped. Behind a small fire, Egwene
crouched, her face grim, with a thick branch held like a club and her back against Bela's flank.
"I guess I should have called out," he said with an abashed shrug.
Tossing her club down, she ran to throw her arms around him. "I thought you had drowned. You're still
wet. Here, sit by the fire and warm yourself. You lost your horse, didn't you?"
He let her push him to a place by the fire and rubbed his hands over the flames, grateful for the warmth.
She produced an oiled paper packet from her saddlebags and gave him some bread and cheese. The package had
been so tightly wrapped that even after its dunking the food was dry. Here you were worrying about her, and
she's done better than you did.
"Bela got me across," Egwene said, patting the shaggy mare. "She headed away from the Trollocs and
just towed me along." She paused. "I haven't seen anybody else, Perrin."
He heard the unspoken question. Regretfully eyeing the packet that she was rewrapping, he licked the
last crumbs from his fingers before speaking. "I've seen no one but you since last night. No Fades or Trollocs,
either; there's that."
"Rand has to be all right," Egwene said, quickly adding, "they all do. They have to. They're probably
looking for us right now. They might find us anytime now. Moiraine is an Aes Sedai, after all."
"I keep being reminded of that," he said. "Burn me, I wish I could forget."
"I did not hear you complaining when she stopped the Trollocs from catching us," Egwene said tartly.
"I just wish we could do without her." He shrugged uncomfortably under her steady gaze. "I suppose we
can't, though. I've been thinking." Her eyebrows rose, but he was used to surprise whenever he claimed an idea.
Even when his ideas were as good as theirs, they always remembered how deliberate he was in thinking of
them. "We can wait for Lan and Moiraine to find us."
"Of course," she cut in. "Moiraine Sedai said she would find us if we were separated."
He let her finish, then went on. "Or the Trollocs could find us, first. Moiraine could be dead, too. All of
them could be. No; Egwene. I'm sorry, but they could be. I hope they are all safe. I hope they'll walk up to this
fire any minute. But hope is like a piece of string when you're drowning; it just isn't enough to get you out by
itself."
Egwene closed her mouth and stared at him with her jaw set. Finally, she said, "You want to go
downriver to Whitebridge? If Moiraine Sedai doesn't find us here, that's where she will look next. "
"I suppose," he said slowly, "that Whitebridge is where we should go. But the Fades probably know that,
too. That's where they'll be looking, and this time we don't have an Aes Sedai or a Warder to protect us."
"I suppose you're going to suggest running off somewhere, the way Mat wanted to? Hiding somewhere
the Fades and Trollocs won't find us? Or Moiraine Sedai, either?"
"Don't think I haven't considered it," he said quietly. "But every time we think we are free, Fades and
Trollocs find us again. I don't know if there is anyplace we could hide from them. I don't like it much, but we
need Moiraine."
"I don't understand then, Perrin. Where do we go?"
He blinked in surprise. She was waiting for his answer. Waiting for him to tell her what to do. It had
never occurred to him that she would look to him to take the lead. Egwene never liked doing what someone else
had planned out, and she never let anybody tell her what to do. Except maybe the Wisdom, and he thought
sometimes she balked at that. He smoothed the dirt in front of him with his hand and cleared his throat roughly.
"If this is where we are now, and that is Whitebridge," he stabbed the ground twice with his finger, "then
Caemlyn should be somewhere around here." He made a third mark, off to the side.
He paused, looking at the three dots in the dirt. His entire plan was based on what he remembered of her
father's old map. Master al'Vere said it was not too accurate, and, anyway, he had never mooned over it as much
as Rand and Mat. But Egwene said nothing. When he looked up, she was still watching him with her hands in
her lap.
"Caemlyn?" She sounded stunned.
"Caemlyn." He drew a line in the dirt between two of the dots. "Away from the river, and straight
across. Nobody would expect that. We'll wait for them in Caemlyn." He dusted his hands and waited. He
thought it was a good plan, but surely she would have objections now. He expected she would take charge-she
was always bullying him into something-and that was all right with him.
To his surprise, she nodded. "There must be villages. We can ask directions."
"What worries me," Perrin said, "is what we do if the Aes Sedai doesn't find us there. Light, who'd ever
have thought I'd worry about something like that? What if she doesn't come to Caemlyn? Maybe she thinks
we're dead. Maybe she'll take Rand and Mat straight to Tar Valon."
"Moiraine Sedai said she could find us," Egwene said firmly. "If she can find us here, she can find us in
Caemlyn, and she will."
Perrin nodded slowly. "If you say so, but if she doesn't appear in Caemlyn in a few days, we go on to
Tar Valon and put our case before the Amyrlin Seat." He took a deep breath. Two weeks ago you'd never even
seen an Aes Sedai, and now you're talking about the Amyrlin Seat. Light! "According to Lan, there's a good
road from Caemlyn." He looked at the oiled paper packet beside Egwene and cleared his throat. "What chance
of a little more bread and cheese?"
"This might have to last a long time," she said, "unless you have better luck with snares than I did last
night. At least the fire was easy." She laughed softly as if she had made a joke, tucking the packet back into her
saddlebags.
Apparently there were limits to how much leadership she was willing to accept. His stomach rumbled.
"In that case," he said, standing, "we might as well start now."
"But you're still wet," she protested.
"I'll walk myself dry," he said firmly, and began kicking dirt over the fire. If he was the leader, it was
time to start leading. The wind from the river was picking up.

Chapter 23

Wolf brother


From the start Perrin knew the journey to Caemlyn was going to be far from comfortable, beginning with
Egwene's insistence that they take turns riding Bela. They did not know how far it was, she said, but it
was too far for her to be the only one who rode. Her jaw firmed, and her eyes stared at him unblinking.
"I'm too big to ride Bela," he said. "I'm used to walking, and I'd rather."
"And I am not used to walking?" Egwene said sharply.
"That isn't what I –“
"I'm the only one who's supposed to get saddlesore, is that it? And when you walk till your feet are
ready to fall off, you'll expect me to look after you."
"Let it be," he breathed when she looked like going on. "Anyway, you'll take the first turn." Her face
turned even more stubborn, but he refused to let her get a word in edgewise. "If you won't get in the saddle by
yourself, I'll put you there."
She gave him a startled look, and a small smile curved her lips. "In that case. . ." She sounded as if she
were about to laugh, but she climbed up.
He grumbled to himself as he turned away from the river. Leaders in stories never had to put up with
this sort of thing.
Egwene did insist on him taking his turns, and whenever he tried to avoid it, she bullied him into the
saddle. Blacksmithing did not lend itself to a slender build, and Bela was not very large as horses went. Every
time he put his foot in the stirrup the shaggy mare looked at him with what he was sure was reproach. Small
things, perhaps, but they irritated. Soon he flinched whenever Egwene announced, "It's your turn, Perrin."
In stories leaders seldom flinched, and they were never bullied. But, he reflected, they never had to deal
with Egwene, either.
There were only short rations of bread and cheese to begin with, and what there was gave out by the end
of the first day. Perrin set snares along likely rabbit runs - they looked old, but it was worth a chance - while
Egwene began laying a fire. When he was done, he decided to try his hand with his sling before the light failed
altogether. They had not seen a sign of anything at all alive, but . . . To his surprise, he jumped a scrawny rabbit
almost at once. He was so surprised when it burst from under a bush right beneath his feet that it almost got
away, but he fetched it at forty paces, just as it was darting around a tree.
When he came back to the camp with the rabbit, Egwene had broken limbs all laid for the fire, but she
was kneeling beside the pile with her eyes closed. "What are you doing? You can't wish a fire."
Egwene gave a jump at his first words, and twisted around to stare at him with a hand to her throat.
"You . . . you startled me."
"I was lucky," he said, holding up the rabbit. "Get your flint and steel. We eat well tonight, at least."
"I don't have a flint," she said slowly. "It was in my pocket, and I lost it in the river."
"Then how . . . ?"
"It was so easy back there on the riverbank, Perrin. Just the way Moiraine Sedai showed me. I just
reached out, and . . ." She gestured as if grasping for something, then let her hand fall with a sigh. "I can't find
it, now."
Perrin licked his lips uneasily. "The . . . the Power?" She nodded, and he stared at her. "Are you crazy? I
mean . . . the One Power! You can't just play around with something like that."
"It was so easy, Perrin. I can do it. I can channel the Power."
He took a deep breath. "I'll make a firebow, Egwene. Promise you won't try this . . . this . . . thing
again."
"I will not." Her jaw firmed in a way that made him sigh. "Would you give up that axe of yours, Perrin
Aybara? Would you walk around with one hand tied behind your back? I won't do it!"
"I'll make the firebow," he said wearily. "At least, don't try it again tonight? Please?"
She acquiesced grudgingly, and even after the rabbit was roasting on a spit over the flames, he had the
feeling she felt she could have done it better. She would not give up trying, either, every night, though the best
she ever did was a trickle of smoke that vanished almost immediately. Her eyes dared him to say a word, and he
wisely kept his mouth shut.
After that one hot meal, they subsisted on coarse wild tubers and a few young shoots. With still no sign
of spring, none of it was plentiful, and none of it tasty, either. Neither complained, but not a meal passed
without one or the other sighing regretfully, and they both knew it was for the tang of a bit of cheese, or even
the smell of bread. A find of mushrooms Queen's Crowns, the best - one afternoon in a shady part of the forest
was enough to seem a great treat. They gobbled them down, laughing and telling stories from back in Emond's
Field, stories that began, "Do you remember when -" but the mushrooms did not last long, and neither did the
laughter. There was little mirth in hunger.
Whichever was walking carried a sling, ready to let fly at the sight of a rabbit or squirrel, but the only
time either hurled a stone was in frustration. The snares they set so carefully each evening yielded nothing at
dawn, and they did not dare stay a day in one place to leave the snares out. Neither of them knew how far it was
to Caemlyn, and neither would feel safe until they got there, if then. Perrin began to wonder if his stomach
could shrink enough to make a hole all the way through his middle.
They made good time, as he saw it, but as they got farther and farther from the Arinelle without seeing a
village, or even a farmhouse where they could ask directions, his doubts about his own plan grew. Egwene
continued to appear outwardly as confident as when they set out, but he was sure that sooner or later she would
say it would have been better to risk the Trollocs than to wander around lost for the rest of their lives. She never
did, but he kept expecting it.
Two days from the river the land changed to thickly forested hills, as gripped by the tail end of winter as
everywhere else, and a day after that the hills flattened out again, the dense forest broken by glades, often a mile
or more across. Snow still lay in hidden hollows, and the air was brisk of a morning, and the wind cold always.
Nowhere did they see a road, or a plowed field, or chimney smoke in the distance, or any other sign of human
habitation-at least, none where men still dwelt.
Once the remains of tall stone ramparts encircled a hilltop. Parts of roofless stone houses stood inside
the fallen circle. The forest had long swallowed it; trees grew right through everything, and spiderwebs of old
creeper enveloped the big stone blocks. Another time they came on a stone tower, broken-topped and brown
with old moss, leaning on the huge oak whose thick roots were slowly toppling it. But they found no place
where men had breathed in living remembrance. Memories of Shadar Logoth kept them away from the ruins
and hurried their footsteps until they were once more deep in places that seemed never to have known a human
footstep.
Dreams plagued Perrin's sleep, fearful dreams. Ba'alzamon was in them, chasing him through mazes,
hunting him, but Perrin never met him face-to-face, so far as he remembered. And their journey had been
enough to bring a few bad dreams. Egwene complained of nightmares about Shadar Logoth, especially the two
nights after they found the ruined fort and the abandoned tower. Perrin kept his own counsel even when he
woke sweating and shaking in the dark. She was looking to him to lead them safely to Caemlyn, not share
worries about which they could do nothing.
He was walking at Bela's head, wondering if they would find anything to eat this evening, when he first
caught the smell. The mare flared her nostrils and swung her head in the next moment. He seized her bridle
before she could whicker.
"That's smoke," Egwene said excitedly. She leaned forward in the saddle, drew a deep breath. "A
cookfire. Somebody is roasting dinner. Rabbit. "
"Maybe," Perrin said cautiously, and her eager smile faded. He exchanged his sling for the wicked halfmoon
of the axe. His hands opened and closed uncertainly on the thick haft. It was a weapon, but neither his
hidden practice behind the forge nor Lan's teachings had really prepared him to use it as one. Even the battle
before Shadar Logoth was too vague in his mind to give him any confidence. He could never quite manage that
void that Rand and the Warder talked about, either.
Sunlight slanted through the trees behind them, and the forest was a still mass of dappled shadows. The
faint smell of woodsmoke drifted around them, tinged with the aroma of cooking meat. It could be rabbit, he
thought, and his stomach grumbled. And it could be something else, he reminded himself. He looked at
Egwene; she was watching him. There were responsibilities to being leader.
"Wait here," he said softly. She frowned, but he cut her off as she opened her mouth. "And be quiet! We
don't know who it is, yet." She nodded. Reluctantly, but she did it. Perrin wondered why that did not work when
he was trying to make her take his turn riding. Drawing a deep breath, he started for the source of the smoke.
He had not spent as much time in the forests around Emond's Field as Rand or Mat, but still he had done
his share of hunting rabbits. He crept from tree to tree without so much as snapping a twig. It was not long
before he was peering around the bole of a tall oak with spreading, serpentine limbs that bent to touch the
ground then rose again. Beyond lay a campfire, and a lean, sun-browned man was leaning against one of the
limbs not far from the flames.
At least he was not a Trolloc, but he was the strangest fellow Perrin had ever seen. For one thing, his
clothes all seemed to be made from animal skins, with the fur still on, even his boots and the odd, flat-topped
round cap on his head. His cloak was a crazy quilt of rabbit and squirrel; his trousers appeared to be made from
the long-haired hide of a brown and white goat. Gathered at the back of his neck with a cord, his graying brown
hair hung to his waist. A thick beard fanned across half his chest. A long knife hung at his belt, almost a sword,
and a bow and quiver stood propped against a limb close to hand.
The man leaned back with his eyes closed, apparently asleep, but Perrin did not stir from his
concealment. Six sticks slanted over the fellow's fire, and on each stick a rabbit was skewered, roasted brown
and now and then dripping juice that hissed in the flames. The smell of them, so close, made his mouth water.
"You done drooling?" The man opened one eye and cocked it at Perrin's hiding place. "You and your friend
might as well sit and have a bite. I haven't seen you eat much the last couple of days."
Perrin hesitated, then stood slowly, still gripping his axe tightly. "You've been watching me for two
days?"
The man chuckled deep in his throat. "Yes, I been watching you. And that pretty girl. Pushes you around
like a bantam rooster, doesn't she? Heard you, mostly. The horse is the only one of you doesn't trample around
loud enough to be heard five miles off. You going to ask her in, or are you intending to eat all the rabbit
yourself?"
Perrin bristled; he knew he did not make much noise. You could not get close enough to a rabbit in the
Waterwood to fetch it with a sling if you made noise. But the smell of rabbit made him remember that Egwene
was hungry, too, not to mention waiting to discover if it was a Trolloc fire they had smelled.
He slipped the haft of his axe through the belt loop and raised his voice. "Egwene! It's all right! It is
rabbit!" Offering his hand, he added in a more normal tone, "My name is Perrin. Perrin Aybara."
The man considered his hand before taking it awkwardly, as if unused to shaking hands. "I'm called
Elyas," he said, looking up. "Elyas Machera."
Perrin gasped, and nearly dropped Elyas's hand. The man's eyes were yellow, like bright, polished gold.
Some memory tickled at the back of Perrin's mind, then fled. All he could think of right then was that all of the
Trollocs' eyes he had seen had been almost black.
Egwene appeared, cautiously leading Bela. She tied the mare's reins to one of the smaller branches of
the oak, and made polite sounds when Perrin introduced her to Elyas, but her eyes kept drifting to the rabbits.
She did not seem to notice the man's eyes. When Elyas motioned them to the food, she fell to with a will. Perrin
hesitated only a minute longer before joining her.
Elyas waited silently while they ate. Perrin was so hungry he tore off pieces of meat so hot he had to
juggle them from hand to hand before he could hold them in his mouth. Even Egwene showed little of her usual
neatness; greasy juice ran down her chin. Day faded into twilight before they began to slow down, moonless
darkness closing in around the fire, and then Elyas spoke.
"What are you doing out here? There isn't a house inside fifty miles in any direction."
"We're going to Caemlyn," Egwene said. "Perhaps you could -" Her eyebrows lifted coolly as Elyas
threw back his head and roared with laughter. Perrin stared at him, a rabbit leg half raised to his mouth.
"Caemlyn?" Elyas wheezed when he could talk again. "The path you're following, the line you've taken
the last two days, you'll pass a hundred miles or more north of Caemlyn."
"We were going to ask directions," Egwene said defensively. "We just haven't found any villages or
farms, yet."
"And none you will," Elyas said, chuckling. "The way you're going, you can travel all the way to the
Spine of the World without seeing another human. Of course, if you managed to climb the Spine-it can be done,
some places-you could find people in the Aiel Waste, but you wouldn't like it there. You'd broil by day, and
freeze by night, and die of thirst anytime. It takes an Aielman to find water in the Waste, and they don't like
strangers much. No, not much, I'd say." He set off into another, more furious, burst of laughter, this time
actually rolling on the ground. "Not much at all," he managed.
Perrin shifted uneasily. Are we eating with a madman?
Egwene frowned, but she waited until Elyas's mirth faded a little, then said, "Perhaps you could show us
the way. You seem to know a good deal more about where places are than we do."
Elyas stopped laughing. Raising his head, he replaced his round fur cap, which had fallen off while he
was rolling about, and stared at her from under lowered brows. "I don't much like people," he said in a flat
voice. "Cities are full of people. I don't go near villages, or even farms, very often. Villagers, farmers, they don't
like my friends. I wouldn't even have helped you if you hadn't been stumbling around as helpless and innocent
as newborn cubs."
"But at least you can tell us which way to go," she insisted. "If you direct us to the nearest village, even
if it's fifty miles away, surely they'll give us directions to Caemlyn."
"Be still," Elyas said. "My friends are coming."
Bela suddenly whinnied in fear, and began jerking to pull her reins free. Perrin half rose as shapes
appeared all around them in the darkening forest. Bela reared and twisted, screaming.
"Quiet the mare," Elyas said. "They won't hurt her. Or you, if you're still."
Four wolves stepped into the firelight, shaggy, waist-high forms with jaws that could break a man's leg.
As if the people were not there they walked up to the fire and lay down between the humans. In the darkness
among the trees firelight reflected off the eyes of more wolves, on all sides.
Yellow eyes, Perrin thought. Like Elyas's eyes. That was what he had been trying to remember. Carefully
watching the wolves among them, he reached for his axe.
"I would not do that," Elyas said. "If they think you mean harm, they'll stop being friendly."
They were staring at him, those four wolves, Perrin saw. He had the feeling that all the wolves, those in
the trees, as well, were staring at him. It made his skin itch. Cautiously he moved his hands away from the axe.
He imagined he could feel the tension ease among the wolves. Slowly he sat back down; his hands shook until
he gripped his knees to stop them. Egwene was so stiff she almost quivered. One wolf, close to black with a
lighter gray patch on his face, lay nearly touching her.
Bela had ceased her screaming and rearing. Instead she stood trembling and shifting in an attempt to
keep all of the wolves in view, kicking occasionally to show the wolves that she could, intending to sell her life
dearly. The wolves seemed to ignore her and everyone else. Tongues lolling out of their mouths, they waited at
their ease.
"There," Elyas said. "That's better."
"Are they tame?" Egwene asked faintly, and hopefully, too. "They're . . . pets?"
Elyas snorted. "Wolves don't tame, girl, not even as well as men. They're my friends. We keep each
other company, hunt together, converse, after a fashion. Just like any friends. Isn't that right, Dapple?" A wolf
with fur that faded through a dozen shades of gray, dark and light, turned her head to look at him.
"You talk to them?" Perrin marveled.
"It isn't exactly talking," Elyas replied slowly. "The words don't matter, and they aren't exactly right,
either. Her name isn't Dapple. It's something that means the way shadows play on a forest pool at a midwinter
dawn, with the breeze rippling the surface, and the tang of ice when the water touches the tongue, and a hint of
snow before nightfall in the air. But that isn't quite it, either. You can't say it in words. It's more of a feeling.
That's the way wolves talk. The others are Burn, Hopper, and Wind." Burn had an old scar on his shoulder that
might explain his name, but there was nothing about the other two wolves to give any indication of what their
names might mean.
For all the man's gruffness, Perrin thought Elyas was pleased to have the chance to talk to another
human. He seemed eager enough to do it, at least. Perrin eyed the wolves' teeth glistening in the firelight and
thought it might be a good idea to keep him talking. "How . . . how did you learn to talk to wolves, Elyas?"
"They found out," Elyas replied, "I didn't. Not at first. That's always the way of it, I understand. The
wolves find you, not you them. Some people thought me touched by the Dark One, because wolves started
appearing wherever I went. I suppose I thought so, too, sometimes. Most decent folk began to avoid me, and the
ones who sought me out weren't the kind I wanted to know, one way or another. Then I noticed there were times
when the wolves seemed to know what I was thinking, to respond to what was in my head. That was the real
beginning. They were curious about me. Wolves can sense people, usually, but not like this. They were glad to
find me. They say it's been a long time since they hunted with men, and when they say a long time, the feeling I
get is like a cold wind howling all the way down from the First Day."
"I never heard of men hunting with wolves," Egwene said. Her voice was not entirely steady, but the fact
that the wolves were just lying there seemed to give her heart.
If Elyas heard her, he gave no sign. "Wolves remember things differently from the way people do," he
said. His strange eyes took on a faraway look, as if he were drifting off on the flow of memory himself. "Every
wolf remembers the history of all wolves, or at least the shape of it. Like I said, it can't be put into words very
well. They remember running down prey side-by-side with men, but it was so long ago that it's more like the
shadow of a shadow than a memory."
"That's very interesting," Egwene said, and Elyas looked at her sharply. "No, I mean it. It is." She wet
her lips. "Could . . . ah . . . could you teach us to talk to them?"
Elyas snorted again. "It can't be taught. Some can do it, some can't. They say he can." He pointed at
Perrin.
Perrin looked at Elyas's finger as if it were a knife. He really is a madman. The wolves were staring at
him again. He shifted uncomfortably.
"You say you're going to Caemlyn," Elyas said, "but that still doesn't explain what you're doing out here,
days from anywhere." He tossed back his fur-patch cloak and lay down on his side, propped on one elbow and
waiting expectantly.
Perrin glanced at Egwene. Early on they had concocted a story for when they found people, to explain
where they were going without bringing them any trouble. Without letting anyone know where they were really
from, or where they were really going, eventually. Who knew what careless word might reach a Fade's ear?
They had worked on it every day, patching it together, honing out flaws. And they had decided Egwene was the
one to tell it. She was better with words than he was, and she claimed she could always tell when he was lying
by his face.
Egwene began at once, smoothly. They were from the north, from Saldaea, from farms outside a tiny
village. Neither of them had been more than twenty miles from home in their whole lives before this. But they
had heard gleemen's stories, and merchants' tales, and they wanted to see some of the world. Caemlyn, and
Illian. The Sea of Storms, and maybe even the fabled islands of the Sea Folk.
Perrin listened with satisfaction. Not even Thom Merrilin could have made a better tale from the little
they knew of the world outside the Two Rivers, or one better suited to their needs.
"From Saldaea, eh?" Elyas said when she was done.
Perrin nodded. "That's right. We thought about seeing Maradon first. I'd surely like to see the King. But
the capital city would be the first place our fathers would look. "
That was his part of it, to make it plain they had never been to Maradon. That way no one would expect
them to know anything about the city, just in case they ran into someone who really had been there. It was all a
long way from Emond's Field and the events of Winternight. Nobody hearing the tale would have any reason to
think of Tar Valon, or Aes Sedai.
"Quite a story." Elyas nodded. "Yes, quite a story. There's a few things wrong with it, but the main thing
is Dapple says it's all a lump of lies. Every last word."
"Lies!" Egwene exclaimed. "Why would we lie?"
The four wolves had not moved, but they no longer seemed to be just lying there around the fire; they
crouched, instead, and their yellow eyes watched the Emond's Fielders without blinking.
Perrin did not say anything, but his hand strayed to the axe at his waist. The four wolves rose to their
feet in one quick movement, and his hand froze. They made no sound, but the thick hackles on their necks stood
erect. One of the wolves back under the trees raised a growling howl into the night. Others answered, five, ten,
twenty, till the darkness rippled with them. Abruptly they, too, were still. Cold sweat trickled down Perrin's
face. "If you think . . ." Egwene stopped to swallow. Despite the chill in the air there was sweat on her face, too.
"If you think we are lying, then you'll probably prefer that we make our own camp for the night, away from
yours. "
"Ordinarily I would, girl. But right now I want to know about the Trollocs. And the Halfmen." Perrin
struggled to keep his face impassive, and hoped he was doing better at it than Egwene. Elyas went on in a
conversational tone. "Dapple says she smelled Halfmen and Trollocs in your minds while you were telling that
fool story. They all did. You're mixed up with Trollocs, somehow, and the Eyeless. Wolves hate Trollocs and
Halfmen worse than wildfire, worse than anything, and so do I.
"Burn wants to be done with you. It was Trollocs gave him that mark when he was a yearling. He says
game is scarce, and you're fatter than any deer he's seen in months, and we should be done with you. But Burn
is always impatient. Why don't you tell me about it? I hope you're not Darkfriends. I don't like killing people
after I've fed them. Just remember, they'll know if you lie, and even Dapple is already near as upset as Burn."
His eyes, as yellow as the wolves' eyes, blinked no more than theirs did. They are a wolf's eyes, Perrin thought.
Egwene was looking at him, he realized, waiting for him to decide what they should do. Light, suddenly
I'm the leader again. They had decided from the first that they could not risk telling the real story to anyone, but
he saw no chance for them to get away even if he managed to get his axe out before . . .
Dapple growled deep in her throat, and the sound was taken up by the other three around the fire, then
by the wolves in the darkness. The menacing rumble filled the night.
"All right," Perrin said quickly. "All right!" The growling cut off, sharp and sudden. Egwene unclenched
her hands and nodded. "It all started a few days before Winternight," Perrin began, "when our friend Mat saw a
man in a black cloak . . .
Elyas never changed his expression or the way he lay on his side, but there was something about the tilt
of his head that spoke of ears pricking up. The four wolves sat down as Perrin went on; he had the impression
they were listening, too. The story was a long one, and he told almost all of it. The dream he and the others had
had in Baerlon, though, he kept to himself. He waited for the wolves to make some sign they had caught the
omission, but they only watched. Dapple seemed friendly, Burn angry. He was hoarse by the time he finished.
". . . and if she doesn't find us in Caemlyn, we'll go on to Tar Valon. We don't have any choice except to
get help from the Aes Sedai."
"Trollocs and Halfmen this far south," Elyas mused. "Now that's something to consider." He rooted
behind him and tossed Perrin a hide waterbag, not really looking at him. He appeared to be thinking. He waited
until Perrin had drunk and replaced the plug before he spoke again. "I don't hold with Aes Sedai. The Red Ajah,
those that like hunting for men who mess with the One Power, they wanted to gentle me, once. I told them to
their faces they were Black Ajah; served the Dark One, I said, and they didn't like that at all. They couldn't
catch me, though, once I got into the forest, but they did try. Yes, they did. Come to that, I doubt any Aes Sedai
would take kindly to me, after that. I had to kill a couple of Warders. Bad business, that, killing Warders. Don't
like it."
"This talking to wolves," Perrin said uneasily. "It . . . it has to do with the Power?"
"Of course not," Elyas growled. "Wouldn't have worked on me, gentling, but it made me mad, them
wanting to try. This is an old thing, boy. Older than Aes Sedai. Older than anybody using the One Power. Old as
humankind. Old as wolves. They don't like that either, Aes Sedai. Old things coming again. I'm not the only
one. There are other things, other folk. Makes Aes Sedai nervous, makes them mutter about ancient barriers
weakening. Things are breaking apart, they say. They're afraid the Dark One will get loose, is what. You'd think
I was to blame, the way some of them looked at me. Red Ajah, anyway, but some others, too. The Amyrlin Seat
.... Aaaah! I keep clear of them, mostly, and clear of friends of Aes Sedai, as well. You will, too, if you're
smart."
"I'd like nothing better than to stay away from Aes Sedai," Perrin said.
Egwene gave him a sharp look. He hoped she would not burst out that she wanted to be an Aes Sedai.
But she said nothing, though her mouth tightened, and Perrin went on.
"It isn't as if we have a choice. We've had Trollocs chasing us, and Fades, and Draghkar. Everything but
Darkfriends. We can't hide, and we can't fight back alone. So who is going to help us? Who else is strong
enough, except Aes Sedai?"
Elyas was silent for a time, looking at the wolves, most often at Dapple or Burn. Perrin shifted nervously
and tried not to watch. When he watched he had the feeling that he could almost hear what Elyas and the wolves
were saying to one another. Even if it had nothing to do with the Power, he wanted no part of it. He had to be
making some crazy joke. 1 can't talk to wolves. One of the wolves - Hopper, he thought - looked at him and
seemed to grin. He wondered how he had put a name to him.
"You could stay with me," Elyas said finally. "With us." Egwene's eyebrows shot up, and Perrin's mouth
dropped open. "Well, what could be safer?" Elyas challenged. "Trollocs will take any chance they get to kill a
wolf by itself, but they'll go miles out of their way to avoid a pack. And you won't have to worry about Aes
Sedai, either. They don't often come into these woods."
"I don't know." Perrin avoided looking at the wolves to either side of him. One was Dapple, and he
could feel her eyes on him. "For one thing, it isn't just the Trollocs."
Elyas chuckled coldly. "I've seen a pack pull down one of the Eyeless, too. Lost half the pack, but they
wouldn't give up once they had its scent. Trollocs, Myrddraal, it's all one to the wolves. It's you they really
want, boy. They've heard of other men who can talk to wolves, but you're the first they've ever met besides me.
They'll accept your friend, too, though, and you'll all be safer here than in any city. There's Darkfriends in
cities."
"Listen," Perrin said urgently, "I wish you'd stop saying that. I can't do that . . . what you do, what you're
saying."
"As you wish, boy. Play the goat, if you've a mind to. Don't you want to be safe?"
"I'm not deceiving myself. There's nothing to deceive myself about. All we want -"
"We are going to Caemlyn," Egwene spoke up firmly. "And then to Tar Valon. "
Closing his mouth, Perrin met her angry look with one of his own. He knew that she followed his lead
when she wanted to and not when she did not, but she could at least let him answer for himself. "What about
you, Perrin?" he said, and answered himself. "Me? Well, let me think. Yes. Yes, I think I'll go on." He turned a
mild smile on her. "Well, Egwene, that makes both of us. I guess I'm going with you, at that. Good to talk these
things out before making a decision, isn't it?" She blushed, but the set of her jaw never lessened.
Elyas grunted. "Dapple said that's what you'd decide. She said the girl's planted firmly in the human
world, while you" - he nodded at Perrin - "stand halfway between. Under the circumstances, I suppose we'd
better go south with you. Otherwise, you'll probably starve to death, or get lost, or -”
Abruptly Burn stood up, and Elyas turned his head to regard the big wolf. After a moment Dapple rose,
too. She moved closer to Elyas, so that he also was meeting Burn's stare. The tableau was frozen for long
minutes, then Burn whirled and vanished into the night. Dapple shook herself, then resumed her place, flopping
down as if nothing had happened.
Elyas met Perrin's questioning eyes. "Dapple runs this pack," he explained. "Some of the males could
best her if they challenged, but she's smarter than any of them, and they all know it. She's saved the pack more
than once. But Burn thinks the pack is wasting time with you three. Hating Trollocs is about all there is to him,
and if there are Trollocs this far south he wants to be off killing them."
"We quite understand," Egwene said, sounding relieved. "We really can find our own way . . . with some
directions, of course, if you'll give them. "
Elyas waved a hand. "I said Dapple leads this pack, didn't I? In the morning, I'll start south with you, and
so will they." Egwene looked as if that was not the best news she could have heard.
Perrin sat wrapped in his own silence. He could feel Burn leaving. And the scarred male was not the
only one; a dozen others, all young males, loped after him. He wanted to believe it was all Elyas playing on his
imagination, but he could not. Just before the departing wolves faded from his mind, he felt a thought he knew
came from Burn, as sharp and clear as if it were his own thought. Hatred. Hatred and the taste of blood.

Chapter 24

Flight Down the Arinelle


Water dripped in the distance, hollow splashes echoing and reechoing, losing their source forever.
There were stone bridges and tailless ramps everywhere, all sprouting off from broad, flat-topped
stone spires, all polished and smooth and streaked with red and gold. Level on level, the maze
stretched up and down through the murk, without any apparent beginning or end. Every bridge led to a spire,
every ramp to another spire, other bridges. Whatever direction Rand looked, as far as his eye could make out in
the dimness it was the same, above as well as below. There was not enough light to see clearly, and he was
almost glad of it. Some of those ramps led to platforms that had to be directly above the ones below. He could
not see the base of any of them. He pressed, seeking freedom, knowing it was an illusion. Everything was
illusion.
He knew the illusion; he had followed it too many times not to know. However far he went, up or down
or in any direction, there was only the shiny stone. Stone, but the dankness of deep, fresh-turned earth
permeated the air, and the sickly sweetness of decay. The smell of a grave opened out of its time. He tried not to
breathe, but the smell filled his nostrils. It clung to his skin like oil.
A flicker of motion caught his eye, and he froze where he was, half crouched against the polished
guardwall around one of the spire tops. It was no hiding place. From a thousand places a watcher could have
seen him. Shadow filled the air, but there were no deeper shadows in which to hide. The light did not come
from lamps, or lanterns, or torches; it was simply there, such as it was, as if it seeped out of the air. Enough by
which to see, after a fashion; enough by which to be seen. But stillness gave a little protection.
The movement came again, and now it was clear. A man striding up a distant ramp, careless of the lack
of railings and the drop to nothing below. The man's cloak rippled with his stately haste, and his head turned,
searching, searching. The distance was too far for Rand to see more than the shape in the murk, but he did not
need to be closer to know the cloak was the red of fresh blood, that the searching eyes blazed like two furnaces.
He tried tracing the maze with his eyes, to see how many connections Ba'alzamon needed before
reaching him, then gave it up as useless. Distances were deceiving here, another lesson he had learned. What
seemed far away might be reached by turning a corner; what appeared close could be out of reach altogether.
The only thing to do, as it had been from the beginning, was to keep moving. Keep moving, and not think.
Thinking was dangerous, he knew.
Yet, as he turned away from Ba'alzamon's distant form, he could not help wondering about Mat. Was
Mat somewhere in this maze? Or are there two mazes, two Ba’alzamons? His mind skittered away from that; it
was too dreadful to dwell on. Is this like Baerlon? Then why can't he find me? That was a little better. A small
comfort. Comfort? Blood and ashes, where's the comfort in it?
There had been two or three close brushes, though he could not remember them clearly, but for a long,
long time - how long? - he had run while Ba'alzamon vainly pursued. Was this like Baerlon, or was it only a
nightmare, only a dream like other men's dreams?
For an instant, then - just for the length of time it took to take a breath - he knew why it was dangerous
to think, what it was dangerous to think about. As it had before, every time he allowed himself to think of what
surrounded him as a dream, the air shimmered, clouding his eyes. It turned to jell, holding him. Just for an
instant.
The gritty heat prickled his skin, and his throat had long since gone dry as he trotted down the thornhedge
maze. How long had it been now? His sweat evaporated before it had a chance to bead, and his eyes
burned. Overhead-and not too far overhead, at that-boiled furious, steely clouds streaked with black, but not a
breath of air stirred in the maze. For a moment he thought it had been different, but the thought evaporated in
the heat. He had been here a long time. It was dangerous to think, he knew that.
Smooth stones, pale and rounded, made a sketchy pavement, half buried in the bone-dry dust that rose in
puffs at even his lightest step. It tickled his nose, threatening a sneeze that might give him away; when he tried
to breathe through his mouth, dust clogged his throat until he choked.
This was a dangerous place; he knew that, too. Ahead of him he could see three openings in the high
wall of thorns, then the way curved out of sight. Ba'alzamon could be approaching any one of those corners at
that very moment. There had been two or three encounters already, though he could not remember much
beyond that they had happened and he had escaped . . . somehow. Dangerous to think too much.
Panting in the heat, he stopped to examine the maze wall. Thickly woven thorn bushes, brown and deadlooking,
with cruel black thorns like inch-long hooks. Too tall to see over, too dense to see through. Gingerly he
touched the wall, and gasped. Despite all his care, a thorn pierced his finger, burning like a hot needle. He
stumbled back, his heels catching on the stones, shaking his hand and scattering thick drops of blood. The burn
began to subside, but his whole hand throbbed.
Abruptly he forgot the pain. His heel had overturned one of the smooth stones, kicked it out of the dry
ground. He stared at it, and empty eye sockets stared back. A skull. A human skull. He looked along the
pathway at all the smooth, pale stones, all exactly alike. He shifted his feet hastily, but he could not move
without walking on them, and he could not stay still without standing on them. A stray thought took vague
shape, that things might not be what they seemed, but he pushed it down ruthlessly. Thinking was dangerous
here.
He took a shaky hold on himself. Staying in one place was dangerous, too. That was one of the things he
knew dimly but with certainty. The flow of blood from his finger had dwindled to a slow drip, and the throb
was almost gone. Sucking his fingertip, he started down the path in the direction he happened to be facing. One
way was as good as another in here.
Now he remembered hearing once that you could get out of a maze by always turning in the same
direction. At the first opening in the wall of thorns he turned right, then right again at the next. And found
himself face-to-face with Ba'alzamon.
Surprise flitted across Ba'alzamon's face, and his blood-red cloak settled as he stopped short. Flames
soared in his eyes, but in the heat of the maze Rand barely felt them.
"How long do you think you can evade me, boy? How long do you think you can evade your fate? You
are mine!"
Stumbling back, Rand wondered why he was fumbling at his belt, as if for a sword. "Light help me," he
muttered. "Light help me." He could not remember what it meant.
"The Light will not help you, boy, and the Eye of the World will not serve you. You are my hound, and
if you will not course at my command, I will strangle you with the corpse of the Great Serpent!"
Ba'alzamon stretched out his hand, and suddenly Rand knew a way to escape, a misty, half-formed
memory that screamed danger, but nothing to the danger of being touched by the Dark One.
"A dream!" Rand shouted. "This is a dream!"
Ba'alzamon's eyes began to widen, in surprise or anger or both, then the air shimmered, and his features
blurred, and faded.
Rand turned about in one spot, staring. Staring at his own image thrown back at him a thousandfold. Ten
thousandfold. Above was blackness, and blackness below, but all around him stood mirrors, mirrors set at every
angle, mirrors as far as he could see, all showing him, crouched and turning, staring wide-eyed and frightened.
A red blur drifted across the mirrors. He spun, trying to catch it, but in every mirror it drifted behind his
own image and vanished. Then it was back again, but not as a blur. Ba'alzamon strode across the mirrors, ten
thousand Ba'alzamons, searching, crossing and re-crossing the silvery mirrors.
He found himself staring at the reflection of his own face, pale and shivering in the knife-edge cold.
Ba'alzamon's image grew behind his, staring at him; not seeing, but staring still. In every mirror, the flames of
Ba'alzamon's face raged behind him, enveloping, consuming, merging. He wanted to scream, but his throat was
frozen. There was only one face in those endless mirrors. His own face. Ba'alzamon's face. One face.
Rand jerked, and opened his eyes. Darkness, lessened only slightly by a pale light. Barely breathing, he
moved nothing except his eyes. A rough wool blanket covered him to his shoulders, and his head was cradled
on his arms. He could feel smooth wooden planks under his hands. Deck planks. Rigging creaked in the night.
He let out a long breath. He was on the Spray. It was over . . . for another night, at least.
Without thinking he put his finger in his mouth. At the taste of blood, he stopped breathing. Slowly he
put his hand close to his face, to where he could see in the dim moonlight, to where he could watch the bead of
blood form on his fingertip. Blood from the prick of a thorn.
The Spray made haste slowly down the Arinelle. The wind came strong, but from directions that made
the sails useless. With all Captain Domon's demand for speed, the vessel crept along. By night a man in the
bows cast a tallowed lead by lantern light, calling back the depth to the steersman, while the current carried her
downriver against the wind with the sweeps pulled in. There were no rocks to fear in the Arinelle, but shallows
and shoals there were aplenty, where a boat could go hard aground to remain, bows and more dug into the mud,
until help came. If it was help that came first. By day the sweeps worked from sunrise to sunset, but the wind
fought them as if it wanted to push the boat back upriver.
They did not put in to shore, neither by day nor by night. Bayle Domon drove boat and crew alike hard,
railing at the contrary winds, cursing the slow pace. He blistered the crew for sluggards at the oars and flayed
them with his tongue for every mishandled line, his low, hard voice painting Trollocs ten feet tall among them
on the deck, ripping out their throats. For two days that was enough to send every man leaping. Then the shock
of the Trolloc attack began to fade, and men began to mutter about an hour to stretch their legs ashore, and
about the dangers of running downriver in the dark.
The crew kept their grumbles quiet, watching out of the corners of their eyes to make sure Captain
Domon was not close enough to hear, but he seemed to hear everything said on his boat. Each time the
grumblings began, he silently brought out the long, scythe-like sword and cruelly hooked axe that had been
found on the deck after the attack. He would hang them on the mast for an hour, and those who had been
wounded would finger their bandages, and the mutterings quieted . . . for a day or so, at least, until one or
another of the crew began thinking once more that surely they had left the Trollocs far behind by now, and the
cycle began yet again.
Rand noticed that Thom Merrilin stayed clear of the crew when they began whispering together and
frowning, though usually he was slapping backs and telling jokes and exchanging banter in a way that put a grin
on even the hardest-working man. Thom watched those secretive mutters with a wary eye while appearing to be
absorbed in lighting his long-stemmed pipe, or tuning his harp, or almost anything except paying any mind at all
to the crew. Rand did not understand why. It was not the three who had come aboard chased by Trollocs whom
the crew seemed to blame, but rather Floran Gelb.
For the first day or two Gelb's wiry figure could almost always be found addressing any crewman he
could corner, telling his version of the night Rand and the others came on board. Gelb's manner slid from
bluster to whines and back again, and his lip always curled when he pointed to Thom or Mat, or especially
Rand, trying to lay the blame on them.
"They're strangers," Gelb pleaded, quietly and with an eye out for the captain. "What do we know of
them? The Trollocs came with them, that's what we know. They're in league."
"Fortune, Gelb, stow it," growled a man with his hair in a pigtail and a small blue star tattooed on his
cheek. He did not look at Gelb as he coiled a line on deck, working it in with his bare toes. All the sailors went
barefoot despite the cold; boots could slip on a wet deck. "You'd call your mother Darkfriend if it'd let you
slack. Get away from me!" He spat on Gelb's foot and went back to the line.
All the crew remembered the watch Gelb had not kept, and-the pigtailed man's was the politest response
he got. No one even wanted to work with him. Gelb found himself relegated to solitary tasks, all of them filthy,
such as scrubbing the galley's greasy pots, or crawling into the bilges on his belly to search for leaks among
years of slime. Soon he stopped talking to anyone. His shoulders took on a defensive hunch, and injured silence
became his stance-the more people watching, the more injured, though it earned him no more than a grunt.
When Gelb's eyes fell on Rand, however, or on Mat or Thom, murder flashed across his long-nosed face.
When Rand mentioned to Mat that Gelb would cause them trouble sooner or later, Mat looked around
the boat, saying, "Can we trust any of them? Any at all?" Then he went off to find a place where he could be
alone, or as alone as he could get on a boat less than thirty paces from its raised bow to the sternpost where the
steering oars were mounted. Mat had spent too much time alone since the night at Shadar Logoth; brooding, as
Rand saw it.
Thom said, "Trouble won't come from Gelb, boy, if it comes. Not yet, at least. None of the crew will
back him, and he hasn't the nerve to try anything alone. But the others, now . . . ? Domon almost seems to think
the Trollocs are chasing him, personally, but the rest are beginning to think the danger is past. They might just
decide they have had enough. They're on the edge of it, as it is." He hitched his patch-covered cloak, and Rand
had the feeling he was checking his hidden knives - his second-best set. "If they mutiny, boy, they won't leave
passengers behind to tell the tale. The Queen's Writ might not have much force this far from Caemlyn, but even
a village mayor will do something about that." That was when Rand, too, began trying not to be noticed when
he watched the crewmen.
Thom did his part in diverting the crew from thoughts of mutiny. He told stories, with all the flourishes,
every morning and every night, and in between he played any song they requested. To support the notion that
Rand and Mat wanted to be apprentice gleemen, he set aside a time each day for lessons, and that was an
entertainment for the crew, as well. He would not let either of them touch his harp, of course, and their sessions
with the flute produced pained winces, in the beginning, at least, and laughter from the crew even while they
were covering their ears.
He taught the boys some of the easier stories, a little simple tumbling, and, of course, juggling. Mat
complained about what Thom demanded of them, but Thom blew out his mustaches and glared right back.
"I don't know how to play at teaching, boy. I either teach a thing, or I don't. Now! Even a country
bumpkin ought to be able to do a simple handstand. Up you go."
Crewmen who were not working always gathered, squatting in a circle around the three. Some even tried
their hand at the lessons Thom taught, laughing at their own fumblings. Gelb stood alone and watched it all
darkly, hating them all.
A good part of each day Rand spent leaning on the railing, staring at the shore. It was not that he really
expected to see Egwene or any of the others suddenly appear on the riverbank, but the boat traveled so slowly
that he sometimes hoped for it. They could catch up without riding too hard. If they had escaped. If they were
still alive.
The river rolled on without any sign of life, nor any boat to be seen except the Spray. But that was not to
say there was nothing to see, and wonder at. In the middle of the first day, the Arinelle ran between high bluffs
that stretched for half a mile on either side. For that whole length the stone had been cut into figures, men and
women a hundred feet tall, with crowns proclaiming them kings and queens. No two were alike in that royal
procession, and long years separated the first from the last. Wind and rain had worn those at the north end
smooth and almost featureless, with faces and details becoming more distinct as they went south. The river
lapped around the statues' feet, feet washed to smooth nubs, those that were not gone completely. How long
have they stood there, Rand wondered. How long for the river to wear away so much stone? None of the crew
so much as looked up from their work, they had seen the ancient carvings so many times before.
Another time, when the eastward shore had become flat grassland again, broken only occasionally by
thickets, the sun glinted off something in the distance. "What can that be?" Rand wondered aloud. "It looks like
metal."
Captain Domon was walking by, and he paused, squinting toward the glint. "It do be metal," he said. His
words still ran together, but Rand had come to understand without having to puzzle it out. "A tower of metal. I
have seen it close up, and I know. River traders use it as a marker. We be ten days from Whitebridge at the rate
we go."
"A metal tower?" Rand said, and Mat, sitting cross-legged with his back against a barrel, roused from
his brooding to listen.
The captain nodded. "Aye. Shining steel, by the look and feel of it, but no a spot of rust. Two hundred
feet high, it be, as big around as a house, with no a mark on it and never an opening to be found."
"I'll bet there's treasure inside," Mat said. He stood up and stared toward the far tower as the river carried
the Spray beyond it. "A thing like that must have been made to protect something valuable."
"Mayhap, lad," the captain rumbled. "There be stranger things in the world than this, though. On
Tremalking, one of the Sea Folk's isles, there be a stone hand fifty feet high sticking out of a hill, clutching a
crystal sphere as big as this vessel. There be treasure under that hill if -there be treasure anywhere, but the island
people want no part of digging there, and the Sea Folk care for naught but sailing their ships and searching for
the Coramoor, their Chosen One."
"I'd dig," Mat said. "How far is this . . . Tremalking?" A clump of trees slid in front of the shining tower,
but he stared as if he could see it yet.
Captain Domon shook his head. "No, lad, it no be the treasure that makes for seeing the world. If you
find yourself a fistful of gold, or some dead king's jewels, all well and good, but it be the strangeness you see
that pulls you to the next horizon. In Tanchico - that be a port on the Aryth Ocean - part of the Panarch's Palace
were built in the Age of Legends, so it be said. There be a wall there with a frieze showing animals no man
living has ever seen."
"Any child can draw an animal nobody's ever seen," Rand said, and the captain chuckled.
"Aye, lad, so they can. But can a child make the bones of those animals? In Tanchico they have them, all
fastened together like the animal was. They stand in a part of the Panarch's Palace where any can enter and see.
The Breaking left a thousand wonders behind, and there been half a dozen empires or more since, some rivaling
Artur Hawkwing's, every one leaving things to see and find. Lightsticks and razorlace and heartstone. A crystal
lattice covering an island, and it hums when the moon is up. A mountain hollowed into a bowl, and in its center,
a silver spike a hundred spans high, and any who comes within a mile of it, dies. Rusted ruins, and broken bits,
and things found on the bottom of the sea, things not even the oldest books know the meaning of. I've gathered
a few, myself. Things you never dreamed of, in more places than you can see in ten lifetimes. That be the
strangeness that will draw you on."
"We used to dig up bones in the Sand Hills," Rand said slowly. "Strange bones. There was part of a fish
- I think it was a fish - as big as this boat, once. Some said it was bad luck, digging in the hills."
The captain eyed him shrewdly. "You thinking about home already, lad, and you just set out in the
world? The world will put a hook in your mouth. You'll set off chasing the sunset, you wait and see . . . and if
you ever go back, your village'll no be big enough to hold you."
"No!" He gave a start. How long had it been since he had thought of home, of Emond's Field? And what
of Tam? It had to be days. It felt like months. "I will go home, one day, when I can. I'll raise sheep, like . . . like
my father, and if I never leave again it will be too soon. Isn't that right, Mat? As soon as we can we're going
home and forget all this even exists. "
With a visible effort Mat pulled away from staring upriver after the vanished tower. "What? Oh. Yes, of
course. We'll go home. Of course." As he turned to go, Rand heard him muttering under his breath. "I'll bet he
just doesn't want anybody else going after the treasure." He did not seem to realize he had spoken aloud.
Four days into their trip downriver found Rand atop the mast, sitting on the blunt end with his legs
wrapped in the stays. The Spray rolled gently on the river, but fifty feet above the water that easy roll made the
top of the mast sway back and forth through wide arcs. He threw back his head and laughed into the wind that
blew in his face.
The oars were out, and from here the boat looked like some twelve-legged spider creeping down the
Arinelle. He had been as high as this before, in trees back in the Two Rivers, but this time there were no
branches to block his view. Everything on deck, the sailors at the sweeps, men on their knees scrubbing the
deck with smoothstones, men doing things with lines and hatchcovers, looked so odd when seen from right
overhead, all squat and foreshortened, that he had spent an hour just staring at them and chuckling.
He still chuckled whenever he looked down at them, but now he was staring at the riverbanks flowing
by. That was the way it seemed, as if he were still-except for the swaying back and forth, of course - and the
banks slid slowly by, trees and hills marching along to either side. He was still, and the whole world moved past
him.
On sudden impulse he unwrapped his legs from the stays bracing the mast and held his arms and legs
out to either side, balancing against the sway. For three complete arcs he kept his balance like that, then
suddenly it was gone. Arms and legs windmilling, he toppled forward and grabbed the forestay. Legs splayed to
either side of the mast, nothing holding him to his precarious perch but his two hands on the stay, he laughed.
Gulping huge breaths of the fresh, cold wind, he laughed with the exhilaration of it.
"Lad," came Thom's hoarse voice. "Lad, if you're trying to break your fool neck, don't do it by falling on
me."
Rand looked down. Thom clung to the ratlines just below him, staring up the last few feet grimly. Like
Rand, the gleeman had left his cloak below. "Thom," he said delightedly. "Thom, when did you come here?"
"When you wouldn't pay any attention to people shouting at you. Burn me, boy, you've got everybody
thinking you've gone mad."
He looked down and was surprised to see all the faces staring up at him. Only Mat, sitting cross-legged
up in the bows with his back to the mast, was not looking at him. Even the men at the oars had their eyes raised,
letting their stroke go ragged. And no one was berating them for it. Rand twisted his head around to look under
his arm at the stern. Captain Domon stood by the steering oar, ham-like fists on his hips, glaring at him atop the
mast. He turned back to grin at Thom. "You want me to come down, then?"
Thom nodded vigorously. "I would appreciate it greatly."
"All right." Shifting his grip on the forestay, he sprang forward off the mast top. He heard Thom bite off
an oath as his fall was cut short and he dangled from the forestay by his hands. The gleeman scowled at him,
one hand half stretched out to catch him. He grinned at Thom again. "I'm going down now."
Swinging his legs up, he hooked one knee over the thick line that ran from the mast to the bow, then
caught it in the crook of his elbow and let go with his hands. Slowly, then with increasing speed, he slid down.
Just short of the bow he dropped to his feet on the deck right in front of Mat, took one step to catch his balance,
and turned to face the boat with arms spread wide, the way Thom did after a tumbling trick.
Scattered clapping rose from the crew, but he was looking down at Mat in surprise, and at what Mat
held, hidden from everyone else by his body. A curved dagger with a gold scabbard worked in strange symbols.
Fine gold wire wrapped the hilt, which was capped by a ruby as big as Rand's thumbnail, and the quillons were
golden-scaled serpents baring their fangs.
Mat continued to slide the dagger in and out of its sheath for a moment. Still playing with the dagger he
raised his head slowly; his eyes had a faraway look. Suddenly they focused on Rand, and he gave a start and
stuffed the dagger under his coat.
Rand squatted on his heels, with his arms crossed on his knees. "Where did you get that?" Mat said
nothing, looking quickly to see if anyone else was close by. They were alone, for a wonder. "You didn't take it
from Shadar Logoth, did you?"
Mat stared at him. "It's your fault. Yours and Perrin's. The two of you pulled me away from the treasure,
and I had it in my hand. Mordeth didn't give it to me. I took it, so Moiraine's warnings about his gifts don't
count. You won't tell anybody, Rand. They might try to steal it."
"I won't tell anybody," Rand said. "I think Captain Domon is honest, but I wouldn't put anything past the
rest of them, especially Gelb."
"Not anybody," Mat insisted. "Not Domon, not Thom, not anybody. We're the only two left from
Emond's Field, Rand. We can't afford to trust anybody else. "
"They're alive, Mat. Egwene, and Perrin. I know they're alive." Mat looked ashamed. "I'll keep your
secret, though. Just the two of us. At least we don't have to worry about money now. We can sell it for enough
to travel to Tar Valon like kings."
"Of course," Mat said after a minute. "If we have to. Just don't tell anybody until I say so."
"I said I wouldn't. Listen, have you had any more dreams since we came on the boat? Like in Baerlon?
This is the first chance I've had to ask without six people listening."
Mat turned his head away, giving him a sidelong look. "Maybe."
"What do you mean, maybe? Either you have or you haven't."
"All right, all right, I have. I don't want to talk about it. I don't even want to think about it. It doesn't do
any good."
Before either of them could say more Thom came striding up the deck, his cloak over his arm. The wind
whipped his white hair about, and his long mustaches seemed to bristle. "I managed to convince the captain you
aren't crazy," he announced, "that it was part of your training." He caught hold of the forestay and shook it.
"That fool stunt of yours, sliding down the rope, helped, but you are lucky you didn't break your fool neck."
Rand's eyes went to the forestay and followed it up to the top of the mast, and as they did his mouth
dropped open. He had slid down that. And he had been sitting on top of . . .
Suddenly he could see himself up there, arms and legs spread wide. He sat down hard, and barely caught
himself short of ending up flat on his back. Thom was looking at him thoughtfully.
"I didn't know you had such a good head for heights, lad. We might be able to play in Illian, or Ebou
Dar, or even Tear. People in the big cities in the south like tightrope walkers and slackwire artists."
"We're going to -" At the last minute Rand remembered to look around for anyone close enough to
overhear. Several of the crew were watching them, including Gelb, glaring as usual, but none could hear what
he was saying. "To Tar Valon," he finished. Mat shrugged as if it were all the same to him where they went.
"At the moment, lad," Thom said, settling down beside them, "but tomorrow . . . who knows? That's the
way with a gleeman's life." He took a handful of colored balls from one of his wide sleeves. "Since I have you
down out of the air, we'll work on the triple crossover."
Rand's gaze drifted to the top of the mast, and he shivered. What’s happening to me? Light, what? He
had to find out. He had to get to Tar Valon before he really did go mad.