The Great Hunt

2 (Flame of Tar Valon) The Welcome

The halls of Fal Dara keep, their smooth stone walls sparsely decorated with elegantly simple tapestries and painted screens, bustled with news of the Amyrlin Seat’s imminent arrival. Servants in black-and-gold darted about their tasks, running to prepare rooms or carry orders to the kitchens, moaning that they could not have everything ready for so great a personage when they had had no warning. Dark-eyed warriors, their heads shaven except for a topknot bound with a leather cord, did not run, but haste filled their steps and their faces shone with an excitement normally reserved for battle. Some of the men spoke as Rand hurried past.

“Ah, there you are, Rand al’Thor. Peace favor your sword. On your way to clean up? You’ll want to look your best when you are presented to the Amyrlin Seat. She’ll want to see you and your two friends as well as the women, you can count on it.”

He trotted toward the broad stairs, wide enough for twenty men abreast, that led up to the men’s apartments.

“The Amyrlin herself, come with no more warning than a pack peddler. Must be because of Moiraine Sedai and you southerners, eh? What else?”

The wide, iron-bound doors of the men’s apartments stood open, and half jammed with top-knotted men buzzing with the Amyrlin’s arrival.

“Ho, southlander! The Amyrlin’s here. Come for you and your friends, I suppose. Peace, what honor for you! She seldom leaves Tar Valon, and she’s never come to the Borderlands in my memory.”

He fended them all off with a few words. He had to wash. Find a clean shirt. No time to talk. They thought they understood, and let him go. Not a one of them knew a thing except that he and his friends traveled in company with an Aes Sedai, that two of his friends were women who were going to Tar Valon to train as Aes Sedai, but their words stabbed at him as if they knew everything. She’s come for me.

He dashed through the men’s apartments, darted into the room he shared with Mat and Perrin … and froze, his jaw dropping in astonishment. The room was filled with women wearing the black-and-gold, all working purposefully. It was not a big room, and its windows, a pair of tall, narrow arrowslits looking down on one of the inner courtyards, did nothing to make it seem larger. Three beds on black-and-white tiled platforms, each with a chest at the foot, three plain chairs, a washstand by the door, and a tall, wide wardrobe crowded the room. The eight women in there seemed like fish in a basket.

The women barely glanced at him, and went right on clearing his clothes — and Mat’s and Perrin’s — out of the wardrobe and replacing them with new. Anything found in the pockets was put atop the chests, and the old clothes were bundled up carelessly, like rags.

“What are you doing?” he demanded when he caught his breath. “Those are my clothes!” One of the women sniffed and poked a finger through a tear in the sleeve of his only coat, then added it to the pile on the floor.

Another, a black-haired woman with a big ring of keys at her waist, set her eyes on him. That was Elansu, shatayan of the keep. He thought of the sharp-faced woman as a housekeeper, though the house she kept was a fortress and scores of servants did her bidding. “Moiraine Sedai said all of your clothes are worn out, and the Lady Amalisa had new made to give you. Just keep out of our way,” she added firmly, “and we will be done the quicker.” There were few men the shatayan could not bully into doing as she wished — some said even Lord Agelmar — and she plainly did not expect any trouble with one man young enough to be her son.

He swallowed what he had been going to say; there was no time for arguing. The Amyrlin Seat could be sending for him at any minute. “Honor to the Lady Amalisa for her gift,” he managed, after the Shienaran way, “and honor to you, Elansu Shatayan. Please, convey my words to the Lady Amalisa, and tell her I said, heart and soul to serve.” That ought to satisfy the Shienaran love of ceremony for both women. “But now if you’ll pardon me, I want to change.”

“That is well,” Elansu said comfortably. “Moiraine Sedai said to remove all the old. Every stitch. Smallclothes, too.” Several of the women eyed him sideways. None of them made a move toward the door.

He bit his cheek to keep from laughing hysterically. Many ways were different in Shienar from what he was used to, and there were some to which he would never become accustomed if he lived forever. He had taken to bathing in the small hours of the morning, when the big, tiled pools were empty of people, after he discovered that at any other time a woman might well climb into the water with him. It could be a scullion or the Lady Amalisa, Lord Agelmar’s sister herself — the baths were one place in Shienar where there was no rank — expecting him to scrub her back in return for the same favor, asking him why his face was so red, had he taken too much sun? They had soon learned to recognize his blushes for what they were, and not a woman in the keep but seemed fascinated by them.

I might be dead or worse in another hour, and they’re waiting to see me blush! He cleared his throat. “If you’ll wait outside, I will pass the rest out to you. On my honor.”

One of the women gave a soft chortle, and even Elansu’s lips twitched, but the shatayan nodded and directed the other women to gather up the bundles they had made. She was the last to leave, and she paused in the doorway to add, “The boots, too. Moiraine Sedai said everything.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His boots, at least, were certainly still good, made by Alwyn al’Van, the cobbler back in Emond’s Field, and well broken in and comfortable. But if giving up his boots would make the shatayan leave him alone so he could go, he would give her the boots, and anything else she wanted. He had no time. “Yes. Yes, of course. On my honor.” He pushed on the door, forcing her out.

Alone, he dropped onto his bed to tug off his boots — they were still good, a little worn, the leather cracked here and there, but still wearable and well broken-in to fit his feet — then hastily stripped off, piling everything atop the boots, and washed at the basin just as quickly. The water was cold; the water was always cold in the men’s apartments.

The wardrobe had three wide doors carved in the simple Shienaran manner, suggesting more than showing a series of waterfalls and rocky pools. Pulling open the center door, he stared for a moment at what had replaced the few garments he had brought with him. A dozen high-collared coats of the finest wool and as well cut as any he had ever seen on a merchant’s back or a lord’s, most embroidered like feastday clothes. A dozen! Three shirts for every coat, both linen and silk, with wide sleeves and tight cuffs. Two cloaks. Two, when he had made do with one at a time all his life. One cloak was plain, stout wool and dark green, the other deep blue with a stiff standing collar embroidered in gold with herons… and high on the left breast, where a lord would wear his sign…

His hand drifted to the cloak of its own accord. As if uncertain what they would feel, his fingers brushed the stitching of a serpent curled almost into a circle, but a serpent with four legs and a lion’s golden mane, scaled in crimson and gold, its feet each tipped with five golden claws. His hand jerked back as if burned. Light help me! Was it Amalisa had this made, or Moiraine? How many saw it? How many know what it is, what it means? Even one is too many. Burn me, she’s trying to get me killed. Bloody Moiraine won’t even talk to me, but now she’s given me bloody fine new clothes to die in!

A rap at the door sent him leaping half out of his skin.

“Are you done?” came Elansu’s voice. “Every stitch, now. Perhaps I had better…” A creak as if she were trying the knob.

With a start Rand realized he was still naked. “I’m done,” he shouted. “Peace! Don’t come in!” Hurriedly he gathered up what he had been wearing, boots and all. “I’ll bring them!” Hiding behind the door, he opened it just wide enough to shove the bundle into the arms of the shatayan. “That’s everything.”

She tried to peer through the gap. “Are you sure? Moiraine Sedai said everything. Perhaps I had better just look—”

“It’s everything,” he growled. “On my honor!” He shouldered the door shut in her face, and heard laughter from the other side.

Muttering under his breath, he dressed hurriedly. He would not put it past any of them to find some excuse to come bulling in anyway. The gray breeches were snugger than he was used to, but still comfortable, and the shirt, with its billowy sleeves, was white enough to satisfy any goodwife in Emond’s Field on laundry day. The knee-high boots fit as if he had worn them a year. He hoped it was just a good cobbler, and not more Aes Sedai work.

All of these clothes would make a pack as big as he was. Yet, he had grown used to the comfort of clean shirts again, of not wearing the same breeches day after day until sweat and dirt made them as stiff as his boots, then wearing them still. He took his saddlebags from his chest and stuffed what he could into them, then reluctantly spread the fancy cloak out on the bed and piled a few more shirts and breeches on that. Folded with the dangerous sigil inside and tied with a cord looped so it could be slung on a shoulder, it looked not much different from the packs he had seen carried by other young men on the road.

A peal of trumpets rolled through the arrowslits, trumpets calling the fanfare from outside the walls, trumpets answering from the keep towers.

“I’ll pick out the stitching when I get a chance,” he muttered. He had seen women picking out embroidery when they had made a mistake or changed their mind on the pattern, and it did not look very hard.

The rest of the clothes — most of them, in fact — he stuffed back into the wardrobe. No need to leave evidence of flight to be found by the first person to poke a head in after he went.

Still frowning, he knelt beside his bed. The tiled platforms on which the beds rested were stoves, where a small fire damped down to burn all night could keep the bed warm through the worst night in a Shienaran winter. The nights were still cooler than he was used to this time of year, but blankets were enough for warmth now. Pulling open the firebox door, he took out a bundle he could not leave behind. He was glad Elansu had not thought anyone would keep clothes in there.

Setting the bundle atop the blankets, he untied one end and partially unfolded it. A gleeman’s cloak, turned inside out to hide the hundreds of patches that covered it, patches in every size and color imaginable. The cloak itself was sound enough; the patches were a gleeman’s badge. Had been a gleeman’s badge.

Inside nestled two hard leather cases. The larger held a harp, which he never touched. The harp was never meant for a farmer’s clumsy fingers, boy. The other, long and slim, contained the gold-and-silver chased flute he had used to earn his supper and bed more than once since leaving home. Thom Merrilin had taught him to play that flute, before the gleeman died. Rand could never touch it without remembering Thom, with his sharp blue eyes and his long white mustaches, shoving the bundled cloak into his hands and shouting for him to run. And then Thom had run himself, knives appearing magically in his hands as if he were performing, to face the Myrddraal that was coming to kill them.

With a shiver, he redid the bundle. “That’s all over with.” Thinking of the wind on the tower top, he added, “Strange things happen this close to the Blight.” He was not sure he believed it, not the way Lan had apparently meant it. In any case, even without the Amyrlin Seat, it was past time for him to be gone from Fal Dara.

Shrugging into the coat he had kept out — it was a deep, dark green, and made him think of the forests at home, Tam’s Westwood farm where he had grown up, and the Waterwood where he had learned to swim — he buckled the heron-mark sword to his waist and hung his quiver, bristling with arrows, on the other side. His unstrung bow stood propped in the corner with Mat’s and Perrin’s, the stave two hands taller than he was. He had made it himself since coming to Fal Dara, and besides him, only Lan and Perrin could draw it. Stuffing his blanketroll and his new cloak through the loops on his bundles, he slung the pair from his left shoulder, tossed his saddlebags atop the cords, and grabbed the bow. Leave the sword-arm free, he thought. Make them think I’m dangerous. Maybe somebody will.

Cracking the door revealed the hall all but empty; one liveried servant dashed by, but he never so much as glanced at Rand. As soon as the man’s rapid footfalls faded, Rand slipped out into the corridor.

He tried to walk naturally, casually, but with saddlebags on his shoulder and bundles on his back, he knew he looked like what he was, a man setting out on a journey and not meaning to come back. The trumpets called again, sounding fainter here inside the keep.

He had a horse, a tall bay stallion, in the north stable, called the Lord’s Stable, close by the salley gate that Lord Agelmar used when he went riding. Neither the Lord of Fal Dara nor any of his family would be riding today, though, and the stable might be empty except for the stableboys. There were two ways to reach the Lord’s Stable from Rand’s room. One would take him all the way around the keep, behind Lord Agelmar’s private garden, then down the far side and through the farrier’s smithy, likewise certainly empty now, to the stableyard. Time enough that way for orders to be given, for a search to start, before he reached his horse. The other was far shorter; first across the outer courtyard, where even now the Amyrlin Seat was arriving with another dozen or more Aes Sedai.

His skin prickled at the thought; he had had more than enough of Aes Sedai for any sane lifetime. One was too many. All the stories said it, and he knew it for fact. But he was not surprised when his feet took him toward the outer courtyard. He would never see legendary Tar Valon — he could not afford that risk, now or ever — but he might catch a glimpse of the Amyrlin Seat before he left. That would be as much as seeing a queen. There can’t he anything dangerous in just looking, from a distance. I’ll keep moving and be gone before she ever knows I was there.

He opened a heavy, iron-strapped door onto the outer courtyard and stepped out into silence. People forested the guardwalk atop every wall, top-knotted soldiers, and liveried servants, and menials still in their muck, all pressed together cheek by jowl, with children sitting on shoulders to look over their elders’ heads or squeezing in to peer around waists and knees. Every archers’ balcony was packed like a barrel of apples, and faces even showed in the narrow arrowslits in the walls. A thick mass of people bordered the courtyard like another wall. And all of them watched and waited in silence.

He pushed his way along the wall, in front of the smithies and fletchers’ stalls that lined the court — Fal Dara was a fortress, not a palace, despite its size and grim grandeur, and everything about it served that end — apologizing quietly to the people he jostled. Some looked around with a frown, and a few gave a second stare to his saddlebags and bundles, but none broke the silence. Most did not even bother to look at who had bumped past them.

He could easily see over the heads of most of them, enough to make out clearly what was going on in the courtyard. Just inside the main gate, a line of men stood beside their horses, sixteen of them. No two wore the same kind of armor or carried the same sort of sword, and none looked like Lan, but Rand did not doubt they were Warders. Round faces, square faces, long faces, narrow faces, they all had the look, as if they saw things other men did not see, heard things other men did not hear. Standing at their ease, they looked as deadly as a pack of wolves. Only one other thing about them was alike. One and all they wore the color-shifting cloak he had first seen on Lan, the cloak that often seemed to fade into whatever was behind it. It did not make for easy watching or a still stomach, so many men in those cloaks.

A dozen paces in front of the Warders, a row of women stood by their horses’ heads, the cowls of their cloaks thrown back. He could count them, now. Fourteen. Fourteen Aes Sedai. They must be. Tall and short, slender and plump, dark and fair, hair cut short or long, hanging loose down their backs or braided, their clothes were as different as the Warders’ were, in as many cuts and colors as there were women. Yet they, too, had a sameness, one that was only obvious when they stood together like this. To a woman, they seemed ageless. From this distance he would have called them all young, but closer he knew they would be like Moiraine. Young-seeming yet not, smooth-skinned but with faces too mature for youth, eyes too knowing.

Closer? Fool! I’m too close already! Burn me, I should have gone the long way. He pressed on toward his goal, another iron-bound door at the far end of the court, but he could not stop looking.

Calmly the Aes Sedai ignored the onlookers and kept their attention on the curtained palanquin, now in the center of the courtyard. The horses bearing it held as still as if ostlers stood at their harness, but there was only one tall woman beside the palanquin, her face an Aes Sedai’s face, and she paid no mind to the horses. The staff she held upright before her with both hands was as tall as she, the gilded flame capping it standing above her eyes.

Lord Agelmar faced the palanquin from the far end of the court, bluff and square and face unreadable. His high-collared coat of dark blue bore the three running red foxes of the House Jagad as well as the stooping black hawk of Shienar. Beside him stood Ronan, age-withered but still tall; three foxes carved from red avatine topped the tall staff the shambayan bore. Ronan was Elansu’s equal in ordering the keep, shambayan and shatayan, but Elansu left little for him except ceremonies and acting as Lord Agelmar’s secretary. Both men’s topknots were snow-white.

All of them — the Warders, the Aes Sedai, the Lord of Fal Dara, and his shambayan — stood as still as stone. The watching crowd seemed to hold its breath. Despite himself, Rand slowed.

Suddenly Ronan rapped his staff loudly three times on the broad paving stones, calling into the silence, “Who comes here? Who comes here? Who comes here?”

The woman beside the palanquin tapped her staff three times in reply. “The Watcher of the Seals. The Flame of Tar Valon. The Amyrlin Seat.”

“Why should we watch?” Ronan demanded.

“For the hope of humankind,” the tall woman replied. “Against what do we guard?”

“The shadow at noon.”

“How long shall we guard?”

“From rising sun to rising sun, so long as the Wheel of Time turns.”

Agelmar bowed, his white topknot stirring in the breeze. “Fal Dara offers bread and salt and welcome. Well come is the Amyrlin Seat to Fal Dara, for here is the watch kept, here is the Pact maintained. Welcome.”

The tall woman drew back the curtain of the palanquin, and the Amyrlin Seat stepped out. Dark-haired, ageless as all Aes Sedai were ageless, she ran her eyes over the assembled watchers as she straightened. Rand flinched when her gaze crossed him; he felt as if he had been touched. But her eyes passed on and came to rest on Lord Agelmar. A liveried servant knelt at her side with folded towels, steam still rising, on a silver tray. Formally, she wiped her hands and patted her face with a damp cloth. “I offer thanks for your welcome, my son. May the Light illumine House Jagad. May the Light illumine Fal Dara and all her people.”

Agelmar bowed again. “You honor us, Mother.” It did not sound odd, her calling him son or him calling her Mother, though comparing her smooth cheeks to his craggy face made him seem more like her father, or even grandfather. She had a presence that more than matched his. “House Jagad is yours. Fal Dara is yours.”

Cheers rose on every side, crashing against the walls of the keep like breaking waves.

Shivering, Rand hurried toward the door to safety, careless of whom he bumped into now. Just your bloody imagination. She doesn’t even know who you are. Not yet. Blood and ashes, if she did … He did not want to think of what would have happened if she knew who he was, what he was. What would happen when she finally found out. He wondered if she had had anything to do with the wind atop the tower; Aes Sedai could do things like that. When he pushed through that door and slammed it shut behind him, muting the roar of welcome that still shook the courtyard, he heaved a relieved sigh.

The halls here were as empty as the others had been, and he all but ran. Out across a smaller courtyard, with a fountain splashing in the center, down yet another corridor and out into the flagstoned stableyard. The Lord’s Stable itself, built into the wall of the keep, stood tall and long, with big windows here inside the walls, and horses kept on two floors. The smithy across the courtyard stood silent, the farrier and his helpers gone to see the Welcome.

Tema, the leathery-faced head groom, met him at the wide doors with a deep bow, touching his forehead and then his heart. “Spirit and heart to serve, my Lord. How may Tema serve, my Lord?” No warrior’s topknot here; Tema’s hair sat on his head like an inverted gray bowl.

Rand sighed. “For the hundredth time, Tema, I am not a lord.”

“As my Lord wishes.” The groom’s bow was even lower this time.

It was his name that caused the problem, and a similarity. Rand al’Thor. Al’Lan Mandragoran. For Lan, according to the custom of Malkier, the royal “al” named him King, though he never used it himself. For Rand, “al” was just a part of his name, though he had heard that once, long ago, before the Two Rivers was called the Two Rivers, it had meant “son of.” Some of the servants in Fal Dara keep, though, had taken it to mean he was a king, too, or at least a prince. All of his argument to the contrary had only managed to demote him to lord. At least, he thought it had; he had never seen quite so much bowing and scraping, even with Lord Agelmar.

“I need Red saddled, Tema.” He knew better than to offer to do it himself; Tema would not let Rand soil his hands. “I thought I’d spend a few days seeing the country around the town.” Once he was on the big bay stallion’s back, a few days would see him at the River Erinin, or across the border into Arafel. They’ll never find me then.

The groom bent himself almost double, and stayed bent. “Forgive, my Lord,” he whispered hoarsely. “Forgive, but Tema cannot obey.”

Flushing with embarrassment, Rand took an anxious look around — there was no one else in sight — then grabbed the man’s shoulder and pulled him upright. He might not be able to stop Tema and a few others from acting like this, but he could try to stop anyone else from seeing it. “Why not, Tema? Tema, look at me, please. Why not?”

“It is commanded, my Lord,” Tema said, still whispering. He kept dropping his eyes, not afraid, but ashamed that he could not do what Rand asked. Shienarans took shame the way other people took being branded a thief. “No horse may leave this stable until the order is changed. Nor any stable in the keep, my Lord.”

Rand had his mouth open to tell the man it was all right, but instead he licked his lips. “No horse from any stable?”

“Yes, my Lord. The order came down only a short time ago. Only moments.” Tema’s voice picked up strength. “All the gates are closed as well, my Lord. None may enter or leave without permission. Not even the city patrol, so Tema has been told.”

Rand swallowed hard, but it did not lessen the feeling of fingers clutching his windpipe. “The order, Tema. It came from Lord Agelmar?”

“Of course, my Lord. Who else? Lord Agelmar did not speak the command to Tema, of course, nor even to the man who did speak to Tema, but, my Lord, who else could give such a command in Fal Dara?”

Who else? Rand jumped as the biggest bell in the keep bell tower let out a sonorous peal. The other bells joined in, then bells from the town.

“If Tema may be bold,” the groom called above the reverberations, “my Lord must be very happy.”

Rand had to shout back to be heard. “Happy? Why?”

“The Welcome is finished, my Lord.” Tema’s gesture took in the bell tower. “The Amyrlin Seat will be sending for my Lord, and my Lord’s friends, to come to her, now.”

Rand broke into a run. He just had time to see the surprise on Tema’s face, and then he was gone. He did not care what Tema thought. She will be sending for me now.