The Great Hunt

30 (Rising Sun) Daes Dae’mar

In the room shared by Hurin and Loial, Rand peered through the window at the ordered lines and terraces of Cairhien, the stone buildings and slate roofs. He could not see the Illuminators’ chapter house; even if huge towers and great lords’ houses had not been in the way, the city walls would have prevented it. The Illuminators were on everyone’s tongues in the city, even now, days after the night when they had lofted only one nightflower into the sky, and that early. A dozen different versions of the scandal were being told, discounting minor variations, but none close to the truth.

Rand turned away. He hoped no one had been hurt in the fire, but the Illuminators had not so far admitted there had been a fire. They were a close-mouthed lot about what went on inside their chapter house.

“I will take the next watch,” he told Hurin, “as soon as I come back.”

“There is no need, my Lord.” Hurin bowed as deeply as any Cairhienin. “I can keep watch. Truly, my Lord need not trouble himself.”

Rand drew a deep breath and exchanged looks with Loial. The Ogier only shrugged. The sniffer was growing more formal every day they remained in Cairhien; the Ogier simply commented that humans often acted oddly.

“Hurin,” Rand said, “you used to call me Lord Rand, and you used not to bow every time I looked at you.” I want him to unbend and call me Lord Rand again, he thought with amazement. Lord Rand! Light, we have to get out of here before I start wanting him to bow. “Will you please sit down? You make me tired, looking at you.”

Hurin stood with his back stiff, yet appeared ready to leap to perform any task Rand might request. He neither sat down nor relaxed now. “It wouldn’t be proper, my Lord. We have to show these Cairhienin we know how to be every bit as proper as—”

“Will you stop saying that!” Rand shouted.

“As you wish, my Lord.”

It was an effort for Rand not to sigh again. “Hurin, I’m sorry. I should not have shouted at you.”

“It’s your right, my Lord,” Hurin said simply. “If I don’t do the way you want, it’s your right to shout.”

Rand stepped toward the sniffer with the intention of grabbing the man’s collar and shaking him.

A knock on the connecting door to Rand’s room froze them all, but Rand was pleased to see that Hurin did not wait to ask permission before picking up his sword. The heron-mark blade was at Rand’s waist; going out, he touched its hilt. He waited for Loial to seat himself on his long bed, arranging his legs and the tails of his coat to further obscure the blanket-covered chest under the bed, then yanked open the door.

The innkeeper stood there, rocking with eagerness and pushing his tray at Rand. Two sealed parchments lay on the tray. “Forgive me, my Lord,” Cuale said breathlessly. “I could not wait until you came down, and then you were not in your own room, and — and … Forgive me, but…” He jiggled the tray.

Rand snatched the invitations — there had been so many — without looking at them, took the innkeeper’s arm, and turned him toward the door to the hall. “Thank you, Master Cuale, for taking the trouble. If you’ll leave us alone, now, please…”

“But, my Lord,” Cuale protested, “these are from—”

“Thank you.” Rand pushed the man into the hall and pulled the door shut firmly. He tossed the parchments onto the table. “He hasn’t done that before. Loial, do you think he was listening at the door before he knocked?”

“You are starting to think like these Cairhienin.” The Ogier laughed, but his ears twitched thoughtfully and he added, “Still, he is Cairhienin, so he may well have been. I don’t think we said anything he should not have heard.”

Rand tried to remember. None of them had mentioned the Horn of Valere, or Trollocs, or Darkfriends. When he found himself wondering what Cuale could make of what they actually had said, he gave himself a shake. “This place is getting to you, too,” he muttered to himself.

“My Lord?” Hurin had picked up the sealed parchments and was gazing wide-eyed at the seals. “My Lord, these are from Lord Barthanes, High Seat of House Damodred, and from” — his voice dropped with awe—“the King.”

Rand waved them away. “They still go in the fire like the rest. Un-opened.”

“But, my Lord!”

“Hurin,” Rand said patiently, “you and Loial between you have explained this Great Game to me. If I go wherever it is they’ve invited me, the Cairhienin will read something into it and think I am part of somebody’s plot. If I don’t go, they’ll read something into that. If I send back an answer, they will dig for meaning in it, and the same if I don’t answer. And since half of Cairhien apparently spies on the other half, everybody knows what I do. I burned the first two, and I will burn these, just like all the others.” One day there had been twelve in the pile he tossed into the common-room fireplace, seals unbroken. “Whatever they make of it, at least it’s the same for everybody. I am not for anyone in Cairhien, and I am not against anyone.”

“I have tried to tell you,” Loial said, “I don’t think it works that way. Whatever you do, Cairhienin will see some sort of plot in it. At least, that is what Elder Haman always said.”

Hurin held the sealed invitations out to Rand as if offering gold. “My Lord, this one bears the personal seal of Galldrian. His personal seal, my Lord. And this one the personal seal of Lord Barthanes, who is next to the King himself in power. My Lord, burn these, and you make enemies as powerful as you can find. Burning them’s worked so far because the other Houses are all waiting to see what you’re up to, and thinking you must have powerful allies to risk insulting them. But Lord Barthanes — and the King! Insult them, and they’ll act for sure.”

Rand scrubbed his hands through his hair. “What if I refuse them both?”

“It won’t work, my Lord. Every last House has sent you an invitation, now. If you decline these — well, for sure at least one of the other Houses will figure, if you’re not allied with the King or Lord Barthanes, then they can answer your insult of burning their invitation. My Lord, I hear the Houses in Cairhien use killers, now. A knife in the street. An arrow from a rooftop. Poison slipped in your wine.”

“You could accept them both,” Loial suggested. “I know you don’t want to, Rand, but it might even be fun. An evening at a lord’s manor, or even at the Royal Palace. Rand, the Shienarans believed in you.”

Rand grimaced. He knew it had been chance that the Shienarans thought he was a lord; a chance likeness of names, a rumor among the servants, and Moiraine and the Amyrlin stirring it all. But Selene had believed it, too. Maybe she’ll be at one of these.

Hurin was shaking his head violently, though. “Builder, you don’t know Daes Dae’mar as well as you think you do. Not the way they play it in Cairhien, not now. With most Houses, it wouldn’t matter. Even when they’re plotting against each other to the knife, they act like they aren’t, out where everybody can see. But not these two. House Damodred held the throne until Laman lost it, and they want it back. The King would crush them, if they weren’t nearly as powerful as he is. You can’t find bitterer rivals than House Riatin and House Damodred. If my Lord accepts both, both Houses will know it as soon as he sends his answers, and they’ll both think he’s part of some plot by the other against them. They’ll use the knife and the poison as quick as look at you.”

“And I suppose,” Rand growled, “if I only accept one, the other will think I’m allied with that House.” Hurin nodded. “And they will probably try to kill me to stop whatever I’m involved in.” Hurin nodded again. “Then do you have any suggestion as to how I avoid any of them wanting to see me dead?” Hurin shook his head. “I wish I’d never burned those first two.”

“Yes, my Lord. But it wouldn’t have made much difference, I’m guessing. Whoever you accepted or rejected, these Cairhienin would see something in it.”

Rand held out his hand, and Hurin laid the two folded parchments in it. The one was sealed, not with the Tree and Crown of House Damodred, but with Barthanes’s Charging Boar. The other bore Galldrian’s Stag. Personal seals. Apparently he had managed to rouse interest in the highest quarters by doing nothing at all.

“These people are crazy,” he said, trying to think of a way out of this.

“Yes, my Lord.”

“I will let them see me in the common room with these,” he said slowly. Whatever was seen in the common room at midday was known in ten Houses before nightfall, and in all of them by daybreak next. “I won’t break the seals. That way, they will know I have not answered either one yet. As long as they are waiting to see which way I jump, maybe I can earn a few more days. Ingtar has to come soon. He has to.”

“Now that is thinking like a Cairhienin, my Lord,” Hurin said, grinning.

Rand gave him a sour look, then stuffed the parchments into his pocket on top of Selene’s letters. “Let’s go, Loial. Maybe Ingtar has arrived.”

When he and Loial reached the common room, no man and woman in it looked at Rand. Cuale was polishing a silver tray as if his life depended on its gleam. The serving girls hurried between the tables as if Rand and the Ogier did not exist. Every last person at the tables stared into his or her mug as if the secrets of power lay in wine or ale. Not one of them said a word.

After a moment, he pulled the two invitations from his pocket and studied the seals, then stuck them back. Cuale gave a little jump as Rand started for the door. Before it closed behind him, he heard conversation spring up again.

Rand strode down the street so fast that Loial did not have to shorten his stride to stay beside him. “We have to find a way out of the city, Loial. This trick with the invitations can’t work more than two or three days. If Ingtar doesn’t come by then, we must leave anyway.”

“Agreed,” Loial said.

“But how?”

Loial began ticking off points on his thick fingers. “Fain is out there, or there would not have been Trollocs in the Foregate. If we ride out, they will be on us as soon as we are out of sight of the city. If we travel with a merchant train, they’ll certainly attack it.” No merchant would have more than five or six guards, and they would probably run as soon as they saw a Trolloc. “If only we knew how many Trollocs Fain has, and how many Darkfriends. You have cut his numbers down.” He did not mention the Trolloc he had killed, but from his frown, his long eyebrows hanging down onto his cheeks, he was thinking of it.

“It doesn’t matter how many he has,” Rand said. “Ten are as bad as a hundred. If ten Trollocs attack us, I don’t think we’ll get away again.” He avoided thinking of the way he might, just might, deal with ten Trollocs. It had not worked when he tried to help Loial, after all.

“I do not think we could, either. I don’t think we have money to take passage very far, but even so, if we tried to reach the Foregate docks — well, Fain must have Darkfriends watching. If he thought we were taking ship, I don’t believe he would care who saw the Trollocs. Even if we fought free of them somehow, we would have to explain ourselves to the city guards, and they would certainly not believe we cannot open the chest, so—”

“We are not letting any Cairhienin see that chest, Loial.”

The Ogier nodded. “And the city docks are no good, either.” The city docks were reserved for the grain barges and the pleasure craft of the lords and ladies. No one came to them without permission. One could look down on them from the wall, but it was a drop that would break even Loial’s neck. Loial wiggled his thumb as if trying to think of a point for that, too. “I suppose it is too bad we cannot reach Stedding Tsofu. Trollocs would never come into a stedding. But I don’t suppose they would let us get that far without attacking.”

Rand did not answer. They had reached the big guardhouse just inside the gate by which they had first entered Cairhien. Outside, the Foregate teemed and milled, and a pair of guards kept watch on them. Rand thought a man, dressed in what had once been good Shienaran clothes, ducked back into the crowd at the sight of him, but he could not be sure. There were too many people in clothes from too many lands, all of them hurrying. He went up the steps into the guardhouse, past breastplated guards on either side of the door.

The large anteroom had hard wooden benches for people with business there, mainly folk waiting with a humble patience, wearing the plain, dark garments that marked the poorer commoners. There were a few Foregaters among them, picked out by shabbiness and bright colors, no doubt hoping for permission to seek work inside the walls.

Rand went straight to the long table in the back of the room. There was only one man seated behind it, not a soldier, with one green bar across his coat. A plump fellow whose skin looked too tight, he adjusted documents on the table and shifted the position of his inkwell twice before looking up at Rand and Loial with a false smile.

“How may I help you, my Lord?”

“The same way I hoped you could help me yesterday,” Rand said with more patience than he felt, “and the day before, and the day before that. Has Lord Ingtar come?”

“Lord Ingtar, my Lord?”

Rand took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Lord Ingtar of House Shinowa, from Shienar. The same man I have asked after every day I’ve come here.”

“No one of that name has entered the city, my Lord.”

“Are you certain? Don’t you need to look at your lists, at least?”

“My Lord, the lists of foreigners who have come to Cairhien are exchanged among the guardhouses at sunrise and at sunset, and I examine them as soon as they come before me. No Shienaran lord has entered Cairhien in some time.”

“And the Lady Selene? Before you ask again, I do not know her House. But I’ve given you her name, and I have described her to you three times. Isn’t that enough?”

The man spread his hands. “I am sorry, my Lord. Not knowing her House makes it very difficult.” He had a bland look on his face. Rand wondered whether he would tell even if he knew.

A movement at one of the doors behind the desk caught Rand’s eye — a man starting to step into the anteroom, then turning away hurriedly. “Perhaps Captain Caldevwin can help me,” Rand told the clerk.

“Captain Caldevwin, my Lord?”

“I just saw him behind you.”

“I am sorry, my Lord. If there was a Captain Caldevwin in the guardhouse, I would know.”

Rand stared at him until Loial touched his shoulder. “Rand, I think we might as well go.”

“Thank you for your help,” Rand said in a tight voice. “I will return tomorrow.”

“It is my pleasure to do what I may,” the man said with his false smile.

Rand stalked out of the guardhouse so fast that Loial had to hurry to catch him up in the street. “He was lying, you know, Loial.” He did not slow down, but rather hurried along as if he could burn away some of his frustration through physical exertion. “Caldevwin was there. He could be lying about all of it. Ingtar could already be here, looking for us. I’ll bet he knows who Selene is, too.”

“Perhaps, Rand. Daes Dae’mar —”

“Light, I’m tired of hearing about the Great Game. I don’t want to play it. I do not want to be any part of it.” Loial walked beside him, saying nothing. “I know,” Rand said at last. “They think I’m a lord, and in Cairhien, even outland lords are part of the Game. I wish I’d never put on this coat.” Moiraine, he thought bitterly. She’s still causing me trouble. Almost immediately, though, if reluctantly, he admitted that she could hardly be blamed for this. There had always been some reason to pretend to be what he was not. First keeping Hurin’s spirits up, and then trying to impress Selene. After Selene, there had not seemed to be any way out of it. His steps slowed until he came to a halt. “When Moiraine let me go, I thought things would be simple again. Even chasing after the Horn, even with — with everything, I thought it would be simple.” Even with saidin inside your head? “Light, what I wouldn’t give to have everything be simple again.”

“Ta’veren,” Loial began.

“I do not want to hear about that, either.” Rand started off again as fast as before. “All I want is to give the dagger to Mat, and the Horn to Ingtar.” Then what? Go mad? Die? If I die before I go mad, at least I won’t hurt anybody else. But I don’t want to die, either. Lan can talk about Sheathing the Sword, but I’m a shepherd, not a Warder. “If I can just not touch it,” he muttered, “maybe I can … Owyn almost made it.”

“What, Rand? I didn’t hear that.”

“It was nothing,” Rand said wearily. “I wish Ingtar would get here. And Mat, and Perrin.”

They walked along in silence for a time, with Rand lost in thought. Thom’s nephew had lasted almost three years by channeling only when he thought he had to. If Owyn had managed to limit how often he channeled, it must be possible to not channel at all, no matter how seductive saidin was.

“Rand,” Loial said, “there’s a fire up ahead.”

Rand got rid of his unwelcome thoughts and looked off into the city, frowning. A thick column of black smoke billowed up above the rooftops. He could not see what lay at the base of it, but it was too close to the inn.

“Darkfriends,” he said, staring at the smoke. “Trollocs can’t come inside the walls without being seen, but Darkfriends … Hurin!” He broke into a run, Loial easily keeping pace beside him.

The closer they came, the more certain it was, until they rounded the last stone-terraced corner and there was The Defender of the Dragonwall, smoke pouring out of its upper windows and flames breaking through the roof. A crowd had gathered in front of the inn. Cuale, shouting and jumping about, was directing men carrying furnishings out into the street. A double line of men passed inside buckets filled with water from a well down the street and empty buckets back out. Most of the people only stood and watched; a new gout of flame burst through the slate roof, and they gave a loud aaaah.

Rand pushed through the crowd to the innkeeper. “Where is Hurin?”

“Careful with that table!” Cuale shouted. “Do not scrape it!” He looked at Rand and blinked. His face was smudged with smoke. “My Lord? Who? Your manservant? I do not remember seeing him, my Lord. No doubt he went out. Do not drop those candlesticks, fool! They are silver!” Cuale danced off to harangue the men lugging his belongings out of the inn.

“Hurin wouldn’t have gone out,” Loial said. “He would not have left the …” He looked around and left it unsaid; some of the onlookers seemed to find an Ogier as interesting as the fire.

“I know,” Rand said, and plunged into the inn.

The common room hardly seemed as if the building were on fire. The double line of men stretched up the stairs, passing their buckets, and others scrambled to carry out what furniture was left, but there was no more smoke down here than if something had been burning the kitchen. As Rand pressed upstairs, it began to thicken. Coughing, he ran up the steps.

The lines stopped short of the second landing, men halfway up the stairs hurling their water up into a smoke-filled hallway. Flames licking up the walls flickered red through the black smoke.

One of the men grabbed Rand’s arm. “You cannot go up there, my Lord. It is all lost above here. Ogier, speak to him.”

It was the first Rand realized that Loial had followed him. “Go back, Loial. I’ll bring him out.”

“You cannot carry Hurin and the chest both, Rand.” The Ogier shrugged. “Besides, I won’t leave my books to burn.”

“Then keep low. Under the smoke.” Rand dropped to his hands and knees on the stairs, and scrambled up the rest of the way. There was cleaner air down near the floor; still smoky enough to make him cough, but he could breathe it. Yet even the air seemed blistering hot. He could not get enough of it through his nose. He breathed through his mouth, and felt his tongue drying.

Some of the water the men threw landed on him, soaking him to the skin. The coolness was only a momentary relief; the heat came right back. He crawled on determinedly, aware of Loial behind him only from the Ogier’s coughing.

One wall of the hallway was almost solid flame, and the floor near it had already begun to add thin tendrils to the cloud that hung over his head. He was glad he could not see what lay above the smoke. Ominous crackling told enough.

The door to Hurin’s room had not caught yet, but it was hot enough that he had to try twice before he could manage to push it open. The first thing to meet his eye was Hurin, sprawled on the floor. Rand crawled to the sniffer and lifted him up. There was a lump on the side of his head the size of a plum.

Hurin opened unfocused eyes. “Lord Rand?” he murmured faintly. “… knock at the door … thought it was more invi …” His eyes rolled back in his head. Rand felt for a heartbeat, and sagged with relief when he found it.

“Rand …” Loial coughed. He was beside his bed, with the covers thrown up to reveal the bare boards underneath. The chest was gone.

Above the smoke, the ceiling creaked, and flaming pieces of wood fell to the floor.

Rand said, “Get your books. I will take Hurin. Hurry.” He started to drape the limp sniffer over his shoulders, but Loial took Hurin from him.

“The books will have to burn, Rand. You can’t carry him and crawl, and if you stand up, you will never reach the stairs.” The Ogier pulled Hurin up onto his broad back, arms and legs hanging to either side. The ceiling gave a loud crack. “We must hurry, Rand.”

“Go, Loial. Go, and I’ll follow.”

The Ogier crawled into the hall with his burden, and Rand started after him. Then he stopped, staring back at the connecting door to his room. The banner was still in there. The banner of the Dragon. Let it burn, he thought, and an answering thought came as if he had heard Moiraine say it. Your life may depend on it. She’s still trying to use me. Your life may depend on it. Aes Sedai never lie.

With a groan, he rolled across the floor and kicked open the door to his room.

The other room was a mass of flame. The bed was a bonfire, red runners already crossed the floor. There would be no crawling across that. Getting to his feet, he ran crouching into the room, flinching from the heat, coughing, choking. Steam rose from his damp coat. One side of the wardrobe was already burning. He snatched open the door. His saddlebags lay inside, still protected from the fire, one side bulging with the banner of Lews Therin Telamon, the wooden flute case beside them. For an instant, he hesitated. I could still let it burn.

The ceiling above him groaned. He grabbed saddlebags and flute case and threw himself back through the door, landing on his knees as burning timbers crashed where he had stood. Dragging his burden, he crawled into the hall. The floor shook with more falling beams.

The men with the buckets were gone when he reached the stairs. He all but slid down the steps to the next landing, scrambled to his feet and ran through the now-empty building into the street. The onlookers stared at him, with his face blackened and his coat covered with smut, but he staggered to where Loial had propped Hurin against the wall of a house across the street. A woman from the crowd was wiping Hurin’s face with a cloth, but his eyes were still closed, and his breath came in heaves.

“Is there a Wisdom nearby?” Rand demanded. “He needs help.” The woman looked at him blankly, and he tried to remember the other names he had heard people call the women who would be Wisdoms in the Two Rivers. “A Wise Woman? A woman you call Mother somebody? A woman who knows herbs and healing?”

“I am a Reader, if that is what you mean,” the woman said, “but all I know to do for this one is to make him comfortable. Something is broken inside his head, I fear.”

“Rand! It is you!”

Rand stared. It was Mat, leading his horse through the crowd, with his bow strung across his back. A Mat whose face was pale and drawn, but still Mat, and grinning, if weakly. And behind him came Perrin, his yellow eyes shining in the fire and earning as many looks as the blaze. And Ingtar, dismounting in a high-collared coat instead of armor, but still with his sword hilt sticking up over his shoulder.

Rand felt a shiver run through him. “It’s too late,” he told them. “You came too late.” And he sat down in the street and began to laugh.