The Great Hunt

25 (Rising Sun) Cairhien

The city of Cairhien lay across hills against the River Alguenya, and Rand’s first sight of it came from the hills to the north, by the light of the midday sun. Elricain Tavolin and the fifty Cairhienin soldiers still seemed like guards to him — the more since crossing the bridge at the Gaelin; they became more stiff the further south they rode — but Loial and Hurin did not appear to mind, so he tried not to. He studied the city, as large as any he had seen. Fat ships and broad barges filled the river, and tall granaries sprawled along the far bank, but Cairhien seemed to be laid out in a precise grid behind its high, gray walls. Those walls themselves made a perfect square, with one side hard along the river. In just as exact a pattern, towers rose within the walls, soaring as much as twenty times the height of the wall, yet even from the hills Rand could see that each one ended in a jagged top.

Outside the city walls, surrounding them from riverbank to riverbank, lay a warren of streets, crisscrossing at all angles and teeming with people. Foregate, Rand knew it was called, from Hurin; once there had been a market village for every city gate, but over the years they had all grown into one, a hodgepodge of streets and alleys growing up every which way.

As Rand and the others rode into those dirt streets, Tavolin put some of his soldiers to clearing a path through the throng, shouting and urging their horses forward as if to trample any who did not get out of the way quickly. People moved aside with no more than a glance, as if it were an everyday occurrence. Rand found himself smiling, though.

The Foregate people’s clothes were shabby more often than not, yet much of it was colorful, and there was a raucous bustle of life to the place. Hawkers cried their wares, and shopkeepers called for people to examine the goods displayed on tables before their shops. Barbers, fruit-peddlers, knife-sharpeners, men and women offering a dozen services and a hundred things for sale, wandered through the crowds. Music drifted through the babble from more than one structure; at first Rand thought they were inns, but the signs out front all showed men playing flutes or harps, tumbling or juggling, and large as they were, they had no windows. Most of the buildings in Foregate seemed to be wood, however big they were, and a good many looked new, if poorly made. Rand gaped at several that stood seven stories or more; they swayed slightly, though the people hurrying in and out did not seem to notice.

“Peasants,” Tavolin muttered, staring straight ahead in disgust. “Look at them, corrupted by outland ways. They should not be here.”

“Where should they be?” Rand asked. The Cairhienin officer glared at him and spurred his horse forward, flogging at the crowd with his quirt.

Hurin touched Rand’s arm. “It was the Aiel War, Lord Rand.” He looked to make sure none of the soldiers were close enough to hear. “Many of the farmers were afraid to go back to their lands near the Spine of the World, and they all came here, near enough. That’s why Galldrian has the river full of grain barges up from Andor and Tear. There’s no crops coming from farms in the east because there aren’t any farms anymore. Best not to mention it to a Cairhienin though, my Lord. They like to pretend the war never happened, or at least that they won it.”

Despite Tavolin’s quirt, they were forced to halt while a strange procession crossed their path. Half a dozen men, beating tambours and dancing, led the way for a string of huge puppets, each half again as tall as the men who worked them with long poles. Giant crowned figures of men and women in long, ornate robes bowed to the crowd amid the shapes of fanciful beasts. A lion with wings. A goat, walking on its hind legs, with two heads, both of which were apparently meant to be breathing fire, from the crimson streamers hanging from the two mouths. Something that seemed to be half cat and half eagle, and another with a bear’s head on a man’s body, which Rand took to be a Trolloc. The crowd cheered and laughed as they pranced by.

“Man who made that never saw a Trolloc,” Hurin grumbled. “Head’s too big, and it’s too skinny. Likely didn’t believe in them, either, my Lord, any more than in those other things. The only monsters these Foregate folk believe in are Aiel.”

“Are they having a festival?” Rand asked. He did not see any sign of it other than the procession, but he thought that there must be a reason for that. Tavolin ordered his soldiers forward again.

“No more than every day, Rand,” Loial said. Walking alongside his horse, the blanket-wrapped chest still strapped to his saddle, the Ogier drew as many looks as the puppets had. Some even laughed and clapped as they had for the puppets. “I fear Galldrian keeps his people quiet by entertaining them. He gives gleemen and musicians the King’s Gift, a bounty in silver, to perform here in the Foregate, and he sponsors horse races down by the river every day. There are fireworks many nights, too.” He sounded disgusted. “Elder Haman says Galldrian is a disgrace.” He blinked, realizing what he had said, and looked around hurriedly to see if any of the soldiers had heard. None seemed to have.

“Fireworks,” Hurin said, nodding. “The Illuminators have built a chapter house here, I’ve heard, the same as in Tanchico. I didn’t half mind seeing the fireworks, when I was here before.”

Rand shook his head. He had never seen fireworks elaborate enough to require even one Illuminator. He had heard they only left Tanchico to put on displays for rulers. It was a strange place he was coming to.

At the tall, square archway of the city gate, Tavolin ordered a halt and dismounted by a squat stone building just inside the walls. It had arrowslits instead of windows, and a heavy, iron-bound door.

“A moment, my Lord Rand,” the officer said. Tossing his reins to one of the soldiers, he disappeared inside.

With a wary look at the soldiers — they sat their horses rigidly in two long files; Rand wondered what they would do if he and Loial and Hurin tried to leave — he took the opportunity to study the city that lay before him.

Cairhien proper was a sharp contrast to the chaotic bustle of the Foregate. Broad, paved streets, wide enough to make the people in them seem fewer than they were, crossed each other at right angles. Just as in Tremonsien, the hills had been carved and terraced to straight lines. Closed sedan chairs, some with small pennants bearing the sigil of a House, moved with deliberateness, and carriages rolled down the streets slowly. People went silently in dark clothes, with no bright colors except here and there slashes across the breast of coat or dress. The more slashes, the more proudly the wearer moved, but no one laughed, or even smiled. The buildings on their terraces were all of stone, and the ornamentation was straight-lined and sharp-angled. There were no hawkers or peddlers in the streets, and even the shops seemed subdued, with only small signs and no wares displayed outside.

He could see the great towers more clearly, now. Scaffolds of lashed poles surrounded them, and workmen swarmed on the scaffolding, laying new stones to push the towers higher still.

“The Topless Towers of Cairhien,” Loial murmured sadly. “Well, they were tall enough to warrant the name, once. When the Aiel took Cairhien, about the time you were born, the towers burned, and cracked, and fell. I don’t see any Ogier among the stonemasons. No Ogier could like working here — the Cairhienin want what they want, without embellishment — but there were Ogier when I was here before.”

Tavolin came out, trailing another officer and two clerks, one carrying a large, wood-bound ledger and the other a tray with writing implements. The front of the officer’s head was shaven like Tavolin’s, though advancing baldness seemed to have taken more hair than the razor. Both officers looked from the Rand to the chest hidden by Loial’s striped blanket and back again. Neither asked what was under the blanket. Tavolin had looked at it often on the way from Tremonsien, but he had never asked, either. The balding man looked at Rand’s sword, too, and pursed his lips for an instant.

Tavolin gave the other officer’s name as Asan Sandair, and announced loudly, “Lord Rand of House al’Thor, in Andor, and his man, called Hurin, with Loial, an Ogier of Stedding Shangtai.” The clerk with the ledger opened it across his two arms, and Sandair wrote the names in a round hand.

“You must return to this guardhouse by this same hour tomorrow, my Lord,” Sandair said, leaving the sanding to the second clerk, “and give the name of the inn where you are staying.”

Rand looked at the staid streets of Cairhien, then back at the liveliness of the Foregate. “Can you tell me the name of a good inn out there?” He nodded to the Foregate.

Hurin made a frantic hsst and leaned close. “It would not be proper, Lord Rand,” he whispered. “If you stay in the Foregate, being a lord and all, they’ll be sure you are up to something.”

Rand could see the sniffer was right. Sandair’s mouth had dropped open and Tavolin’s brows had risen at his question, and they were both still watching him intently. He wanted to tell them he was not playing their Great Game, but instead he said, “We will take rooms in the city. We can go now?”

“Of course, my Lord Rand.” Sandair made a bow. “But … the inn?”

“I will let you know when we find one.” Rand turned Red, then paused. Selene’s note crackled in his pocket. “I need to find a young woman from Cairhien. The Lady Selene. She is my age, and beautiful. I don’t know her House.”

Sandair and Tavolin exchanged looks, then Sandair said, “I will make inquiries, my Lord. Perhaps I will be able to tell you something when you come tomorrow.”

Rand nodded and led Loial and Hurin into the city. They attracted little notice, though there were few riders. Even Loial attracted almost none. The people seemed nearly ostentatious about minding their own business.

“Will they take it the wrong way,” Rand asked Hurin, “my asking after Selene?”

“Who can say with Cairhienin, Lord Rand? They seem to think everything has to do with Daes Dae’mar.”

Rand shrugged. He felt as if people were looking at him. He could not wait to get a good, plain coat again, and stop pretending to be what he was not.

Hurin knew several inns in the city, though his time in Cairhien had been spent mainly in the Foregate. The sniffer led them to one called The Defender of the Dragonwall, the sign bearing a crowned man with his foot on another man’s chest and his sword at the man’s throat. The fellow on his back had red hair.

A hostler came to take their horses, darting quick looks at Rand and at Loial when he thought he was not observed. Rand told himself to stop having fancies; not everyone in the city could be playing this Game of theirs. And if they were, he was no part of it.

The common room was neat, with the tables laid out as strictly as the city, and only a few people at them. They glanced up at the newcomers, then back to their wine immediately; Rand had the feeling they were still watching, though, and listening. A small fire burned in the big fireplace, though the day was warming.

The innkeeper was a plump, unctuous man with a single stripe of green across his dark gray coat. He gave a start at his first sight of them, and Rand was not surprised. Loial, with the chest in his arms under its striped blanket, had to duck his head to make it in through the door, Hurin was burdened with all their saddlebags and bundles, and his own red coat was a sharp contrast to the somber colors the people at the tables wore.

The innkeeper took in Rand’s coat and his sword, and his oily smile came back. He bowed, washing his smooth hands. “Forgive me, my Lord. It was just that for a moment I took you for — Forgive me. My brain is not what it was. You wish rooms, my Lord?” He added another, lesser bow for Loial. “I am called Cuale, my Lord.”

He thought I was Aiel, Rand thought sourly. He wanted to be gone from Cairhien. But it was the one place Ingtar might find them. And Selene had said she would wait for him in Cairhien.

It took a little time for their rooms to be readied, Cuale explaining with too many smiles and bows that it was necessary to move a bed for Loial. Rand wanted them all to share a room again, but between the innkeeper’s scandalized looks and Hurin’s insistence—“We have to show these Cairhienin we know what’s right as well as they do, Lord Rand” — they ended with two, one for him alone, with a connecting door.

The rooms were much the same except that theirs had two beds, one sized for an Ogier, while his had only one bed, and that almost as big as the other two, with massive square posts that nearly reached the ceiling. His tall-backed, padded chair and the washstand were square and massive, too, and the wardrobe standing against his wall was carved in a heavy, rigid style that made the thing look ready enough to fall over on him. A pair of windows siding his bed looked out on the street, two floors below.

As soon as the innkeeper left, Rand opened the door and admitted Loial and Hurin into his room. “This place gnaws at me,” he told them. “Everybody looks at you as if they think you’re doing something. I’m going back to the Foregate, for an hour anyway. At least the people laugh, there. Which of you is willing to take the first watch on the Horn?”

“I will stay,” Loial said quickly. “I’d like a chance to do a little reading. Just because I didn’t see any Ogier does not mean there are no stonemasons down from Stedding Tsofu. It is not far from the city.”

“I’d think you would want to meet them.”

“Ah … no, Rand. They asked enough questions the last time about why I was outside alone as it was. If they’ve had word from Stedding Shangtai … Well, I will just rest here and read, I think.”

Rand shook his head. He often forgot that Loial had run away from home, in effect, to see the world. “What about you, Hurin? There’s music in the Foregate, and people laughing. I’ll wager no one is playing Daes Dae’mar there.”

“I would not be so certain of that myself, Lord Rand. In any case, I thank you for the invitation, but I think not. There’s so many fights — and killings, too — in Foregate, that it stinks, if you know what I mean. Not that they’re likely to bother a lord, of course; the soldiers would be down on them if they did. But if it pleases you, I would like to have a drink in the common room.”

“Hurin, you don’t need my permission for anything. You know that.”

“As you say, my Lord.” The sniffer gave a suggestion of a bow.

Rand took a deep breath. If they did not leave Cairhien soon, Hurin would be bowing and scraping left and right. And if Mat and Perrin saw that, they would never let him forget it. “I hope nothing delays Ingtar. If he doesn’t come quickly, we’ll have to take the Horn back to Fal Dara ourselves.” He touched Selene’s note through his coat. “We will have to. Loial, I’ll come back so you can see some of the city.”

“I’d rather not risk it,” Loial said.

Hurin accompanied Rand downstairs. As soon as they reached the common room, Cuale was bowing in front of Rand, pushing a tray at him. Three folded and sealed parchments lay on the tray. Rand took them, since that was what the innkeeper seemed to intend. They were a fine grade of parchment, soft and smooth to his touch. Expensive.

“What are these?” he asked.

Cuale bowed again. “Invitations, of course, my Lord. From three of the noble Houses.” He bowed himself away.

“Who would send me invitations?” Rand turned them over in his hand. None of the men at the tables looked up, but he had the feeling they were watching just the same. He did not recognize the seals. None was the crescent moon and stars Selene had used. “Who would know I was here?”

“Everyone by now, Lord Rand,” Hurin said quietly. He seemed to feel eyes watching, too. “The guards at the gate would not keep their mouths closed about an outland lord coming to Cairhien. The hostler, the innkeeper … everybody tells what they know where they think it will do them the most good, my Lord.”

With a grimace, Rand took two steps and hurled the invitations into the fire. They caught immediately. “I am not playing Daes Dae’mar,” he said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. Not even Cuale looked at him. “I’ve nothing to do with your Great Game. I am just here to wait for some friends.”

Hurin caught his arm. “Please, Lord Rand.” His voice was an urgent whisper. “Please don’t do that again.”

“Again? You really think I’ll receive more?”

“I’m certain. Light, but you mind me of the time Teva got so mad at a hornet buzzing round his ears, he kicked the nest. You’ve likely just convinced everyone in the room you are in some deep part of the Game. It must be deep, as they’ll see it, if you deny playing at all. Every lord and lady in Cairhien plays it.” The sniffer glanced at the invitations, curling blackly in the fire, and winced. “And you have surely made enemies of three Houses. Not great Houses, or they’d not have moved so quickly, but still noble. You must answer any more invitations you receive, my Lord. Decline if you will — though they’ll read things into whose invitations you do decline. And into whose you accept. Of course, if you decline them all, or accept them all—”

“I’ll have no part of it,” Rand said quietly. “We are leaving Cairhien as soon as we can.” He thrust his fists into his coat pockets, and felt Selene’s note crumple. Pulling it out, he smoothed it on his coat front. “As soon as we can,” he muttered, putting it back in his pocket again. “Have your drink, Hurin.”

He stalked out angrily, not sure whether he was angry with himself, or with Cairhien and its Great Game, or Selene for vanishing, or Moiraine. She had started it all, stealing his coats and giving him a lord’s clothes instead. Even now that he called himself free of them, an Aes Sedai still managed to interfere in his life, and without even being there.

He went back through the same gate by which he had entered the city, since that was the way he knew. A man standing in front of the guardhouse took note of him — his bright coat marked him out, as well as his height among the Cairhienin — and hurried inside, but Rand did not notice. The laughter and music of the Foregate were pulling him on.

If his gold-embroidered red coat made him stand out inside the walls, it fit right into the Foregate. Many of the men milling through the crowded streets were dressed just as darkly as those in the city, but just as many wore coats of red, or blue, or green, or gold — some bright enough to be a Tinker’s clothes — and even more of the women had embroidered dresses and colored scarves or shawls. Most of the finery was tattered and ill-fitting, as if made for someone else originally, but if some of those who wore it eyed his fine coat, none seemed to take it amiss.

Once he had to stop for another procession of giant puppets. While the drummers beat their tambours and capered, a pig-faced Trolloc with tusks fought a man in a crown. After a few desultory blows, the Trolloc collapsed to laughter and cheers from the onlookers.

Rand grunted. They don’t die so easily as that.

He glanced into one of the large, windowless buildings, stopping to look through the door. To his surprise, it seemed to be one huge room, open to the sky in the middle and lined with balconies, with a large dais at one end. He had never seen or heard of anything like it. People jammed the balconies and the floor watching people perform on the dais. He peeked into others as he passed them, and saw jugglers, and musicians, any number of tumblers, and even a gleeman, with his cloak of patches, declaiming a story from The Great Hunt of the Horn in sonorous-voice High Chant.

That made him think of Thom Merrilin, and he hurried on. Memories of Thom were always sad. Thom had been a friend. A friend who had died for him. While I ran away and let him die.

In another of the big structures, a woman in voluminous white robes appeared to make things vanish from one basket and appear in another, then disappear from her hands in great puffs of smoke. The crowd watching her oohed and aahed loudly.

“Two coppers, my good Lord,” a ratty little man in the doorway said. “Two coppers to see the Aes Sedai.”

“I don’t think so.” Rand glanced back at the woman. A white dove had appeared in her hands. Aes Sedai? “No.” He gave the ratty man a small bow and left.

He was making his way through the throng, wondering what to see next, when a deep voice, accompanied by the plucking of a harp, drifted out from a doorway with the sign of a juggler over it.

“… cold blows the wind down Shara Pass; cold lies the grave unmarked. Yet every year at Sunday, upon those piled stones appears a single rose, one crystal teardrop like dew upon the petals, laid by the fair hand of Dunsinin, for she keeps fast to the bargain made by Rogosh Eagle-eye.”

The voice drew Rand like a rope. He pushed through the doorway as applause rose within.

“Two coppers, my good Lord,” said a rat-faced man who could have been twin to the other. “Two coppers to see —”

Rand dug out some coins and thrust them at the man. He walked on in a daze, staring at the man bowing on the dais to the clapping of his listeners, cradling his harp in one arm and with the other spreading his patch-covered cloak as if to trap all the sound they made. He was a tall man, lanky and not young, with long mustaches as white as the hair on his head. And when he straightened and saw Rand, the eyes that widened were sharp and blue.

“Thom.” Rand’s whisper was lost in the noise of the crowd.

Holding Rand’s eye, Thom Merrilin nodded slightly toward a small door beside the dais. Then he was bowing again, smiling and basking in the applause.

Rand made his way to the door and through it. It was only a small hallway, with three steps leading up to the dais. In the other direction from the dais Rand could see a juggler practicing with colored balls, and six tumblers limbering themselves.

Thom appeared on the steps, limping as though his right leg did not bend as well as it had. He eyed the juggler and the tumblers, blew out his mustaches disdainfully, and turned to Rand. “All they want to hear is The Great Hunt of the Horn. You would think, with the news from Haddon Mirk and Saldaea, one of them would ask for The Karaethon Cycle. Well, maybe not that, but I’d pay myself to tell something else.” He looked Rand up and down. “You look as if you’re doing well, boy.” He fingered Rand’s collar and pursed his lips. “Very well.”

Rand could not help laughing. “I left Whitebridge sure you were dead. Moiraine said you were still alive, but I … Light, Thom, it’s good to see you again! I should have gone back to help you.”

“Bigger fool if you had, boy. That Fade” — he looked around; there was no one close enough to hear, but he lowered his voice anyway—“had no interest in me. It left me a little present of a stiff leg and ran off after you and Mat. All you could have done was die.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “Moiraine said I was still alive, did she? Is she with you, then?”

Rand shook his head. To his surprise, Thom seemed disappointed.

“Too bad, in a way. She’s a fine woman, even if she is …” He left it unsaid. “So it was Mat or Perrin she was after. I won’t ask which. They were good boys, and I don’t want to know.” Rand shifted uneasily, and gave a start when Thom fixed him with a bony finger. “What I do want to know is, do you still have my harp and flute? I want them back, boy. What I have now are not fit for a pig to play.”

“I have them, Thom. I’ll bring them to you, I promise. I can’t believe you are alive. And I can’t believe you aren’t in Illian. The Great Hunt setting out. The prize for the best telling of The Great Hunt of the Horn. You were dying to go.”

Thom snorted. “After Whitebridge? Likely I’d die if I did go. Even if I could have reached the boat before it sailed, Domon and his whole crew would be spreading the tale all over Illian about how I was being chased by Trollocs. If they saw the Fade, or heard of it, before Domon cut his lines … Most Illianers think Trollocs and Fades are fables, but enough others might want to know why a man was pursued by them to make Illian somewhat more than uncomfortable.”

“Thom, I have so much to tell you.”

The gleeman cut him off. “Later, boy.” He was exchanging glares down the length of the hall with the narrow-faced man from the door. “If I don’t go back and tell another, he will no doubt send the juggler out, and that lot will tear the hall down around our heads. You come to The Bunch of Grapes, just beyond the Jangai Gate. I have a room there. Anyone can tell you where to find it. I’ll be there in another hour or so. One more tale will have to satisfy them.” He started back up the steps, flinging over his shoulder, “And bring my harp and my flute!”