The Great Hunt

3 (Ruby-Hilted Dagger) Friends and Enemies

Rand did not run far, only as far as the sally gate around the corner from the stable. He slowed to a walk before he got there, trying to appear casual and unhurried.

The arched gate was closed tight. It was barely big enough for two men to ride through abreast, but like all the gates in the outer wall, it was covered with broad strips of black iron, and locked shut with a thick bar. Two guards stood before the gate in plain conical helmets and plate-and-mail armor, with long swords on their backs. Their golden surcoats bore the Black Hawk on the chest. He knew one of them slightly, Ragan. The scar from a Trolloc arrow made a white triangle against Ragan’s dark cheek behind the bars of his face-guard. The puckered skin dimpled with a grin when he saw Rand. “Peace favor you, Rand al’Thor.” Ragan almost shouted to be heard over the bells. “Do you intend to go hit rabbits over the head, or do you still insist that club is a bow?” The other guard shifted to stand more in front of the gate.

“Peace favor you, Ragan,” Rand said, stopping in front of them. It was an effort to keep his voice calm. “You know it’s a bow. You’ve seen me shoot it.”

“No good from a horse,” the other guard said sourly. Rand recognized him, now, with his deep-set, almost-black eyes that never seemed to blink. They peered from his helmet like twin caves inside another cave. He supposed there could be worse luck for him than Masema guarding the gate, but he was not sure how, short of a Red Aes Sedai. “It’s too long,” Masema added. “I can shoot three arrows with a horsebow while you loose one with that monster.”

Rand forced a grin, as if he thought it was a joke. Masema had never made a joke in his hearing, nor laughed at one. Most of the men at Fal Dara accepted Rand; he trained with Lan, and Lord Agelmar had him at table, and most important of all, he had arrived at Fal Dara in company with Moiraine, an Aes Sedai. Some seemed unable to forget his being an outlander, though, barely saying two words to him, and then only if they had to. Masema was the worst of those.

“It’s good enough for me,” Rand said. “Speaking of rabbits, Ragan, how about letting me out? All this noise and bustle is too much for me. Better to be out hunting rabbits, even if I never see one.”

Ragan half turned to look at his companion, and Rand’s hopes began to lift. Ragan was an easygoing man, his manner belying his grim scar, and he seemed to like Rand. But Masema was already shaking his head. Ragan sighed. “It cannot be, Rand al’Thor.” He gave a tiny nod toward Masema as if to explain. If it were up to him alone … “No one is to leave without a written pass. Too bad you did not ask a few minutes ago. The command just came down to bar the gates.”

“But why would Lord Agelmar want to keep me in?” Masema was eyeing the bundles on Rand’s back, and his saddlebags. Rand tried to ignore him. “I’m his guest,” he went on to Ragan. “By my honor, I could have left anytime these past weeks. Why would he mean this order for me? It is Lord Agelmar’s order, isn’t it?” Masema blinked at that, and his perpetual frown deepened; he almost appeared to forget Rand’s packs.

Ragan laughed. “Who else could give such an order, Rand al’Thor? Of course, it was Uno who passed it to me, but whose order could it have been?”

Masema’s eyes, fixed on Rand’s face, did not blink. “I just want to go out by myself, that’s all,” Rand said. “I’ll try one of the gardens, then. No rabbits, but at least there won’t be a crowd. The Light illumine you, and peace favor you.”

He walked away without waiting for an answering blessing, resolving not to go near any of the gardens on any account. Burn me, once the ceremonies are done there could be Aes Sedai in any of them. Aware of Masema’s eyes on his back — he was sure it was Masema — he kept his pace normal.

Suddenly the bells stopped ringing, and he skipped a step. Minutes were passing. A great many of them. Time for the Amyrlin Seat to be shown to her chambers. Time for her to send for him, to start a search when he was not found. As soon as he was out of sight of the salley gate, he began to run again.

Near the barracks’ kitchens, the Carters’ Gate, where all the foodstuffs for the keep were brought in, stood closed and barred, behind a pair of soldiers. He hurried past, across the kitchen yard, as if he had never meant to stop.

The Dog Gate, at the back of the keep, just high enough and wide enough for one man on foot, had its guards, too. He turned around before they saw him. There were not many gates, even as big as the keep was, but if the Dog Gate was guarded, they all would be.

Perhaps he could find a length of rope … He climbed one of the stairs to the top of the outer wall, to the wide parapet with its crenellated walls. It was not comfortable for him, being so high and exposed if that wind came again, but from there he could see across the tall chimneys and sharp roofs of the town all the way to the city wall. Even after nearly a month, the houses still looked odd to his Two Rivers eyes, eaves reaching almost to the ground as if the houses were all wood-shingled roof, and chimneys angled to let heavy snow slide past. A broad, paved square surrounded the keep, but only a hundred paces from the wall lay streets full of people going about their daily business, aproned shopkeepers out under the awnings in front of their shops, rough-clothed farmers in town to buy and sell, hawkers and tradesmen and townspeople gathered in knots, no doubt to talk about the surprise visit from the Amyrlin Seat. He could see carts and people flowing through one of the gates in the town wall. Apparently the guards there had no orders about stopping anyone.

He looked up at the nearest guardtower; one of the soldiers raised a gauntleted hand to him. With a bitter laugh, he waved back. Not a foot of the wall but was under the eyes of guards. Leaning through an embrasure, he peered down past the slots in the stone for setting hoardings, down the sheer expanse of stone to the drymoat far below. Twenty paces wide and ten deep, faced with stone polished slippery smooth. A low wall, slanted to give no hiding place, surrounded it to keep anyone from falling in by accident, and its bottom was a forest of razor-sharp spikes. Even with a rope to climb down and no guards watching, he could not cross that. What served to keep Trollocs out in the last extreme served just as well to keep him in.

Suddenly he felt weary to the bone, drained. The Amyrlin Seat was there, and there was no way out. No way out, and the Amyrlin Seat there. If she knew he was there, if she had sent the wind that had seized him, then she was already hunting him, hunting with an Aes Sedai’s powers. Rabbits had more chance against his bow. He refused to give up, though. There were those who said Two Rivers folk could teach stones and give lessons to mules. When there was nothing else left, Two Rivers people hung on to their stubbornness.

Leaving the wall, he wandered through the keep. He paid no mind to where he went, so long as it was nowhere he would be expected. Not anywhere near his room, nor any of the stables, nor any gate — Masema might risk Uno’s tongue to report him trying to leave — nor garden. All he could think of was keeping away from any Aes Sedai. Even Moiraine. She knew about him. Despite that, she had done nothing against him. So far. So far as you know. What if she’s changed her mind? Maybe she sent for the Amyrlin Seat.

For a moment, feeling lost, he leaned against the corridor wall, the stone hard under his shoulder. Eyes blank, he stared at a distant nothing and saw things he did not want to see. Gentled. Would it be so bad, to have it all over? Really over? He closed his eyes, but he could still see himself, huddling like a rabbit with nowhere left to run, and Aes Sedai closing round him like ravens. They almost always die soon after, men who’ve been gentled. They stop wanting to live. He remembered Thom Merrilin’s words too well to face that. With a brisk shake, he hurried on down the hall. No need to stay in one place until he was found. How long till they find you anyway? You’re like a sheep in a pen. How long? He touched the sword hilt at his side. No, not a sheep. Not for Aes Sedai or anybody else. He felt a little foolish, but determined.

People were returning to their tasks. A din of voices and clattering pots filled the kitchen that lay nearest the Great Hall, where the Amyrlin Seat and her party would feast that night. Cooks and scullions and potboys all but ran at their work; the spit dogs trotted in their wicker wheels to turn the spitted meats. He made his way quickly through the heat and steam, through the smells of spices and cooking. No one spared him a second glance; they were all too busy.

The back halls, where the servants lived in small apartments; were stirring like a kicked antheap as men and women scurried to don their best livery. Children did their playing in corners, out of the way. Boys waved wooden swords, and girls played with carved dolls, some announcing that hers was the Amyrlin Seat. Most of the doors stood open, doorways blocked only by beaded curtains. Normally, that meant whoever lived there was open to visitors, but today it simply meant the residents were in a hurry. Even those who bowed to him did so with hardly a pause.

Would any of them hear, when they went to serve, that he was being sought, and speak of seeing him? Speak to an Aes Sedai and tell her where to find him? The eyes that he passed suddenly appeared to be studying him slyly, and to be weighing and considering behind his back. Even the children took on sharper looks in his mind’s eye. He knew it was just his imagination — he was sure it was; it had to be — but when the servants’ apartments were behind him, he felt as if he had escaped before a trap could spring shut.

Some places in the keep were empty of people, the folk who normally worked there released for the sudden holiday. The armorer’s forge, with all the fires banked, the anvils silent. Silent. Cold. Lifeless. Yet somehow not empty. His skin prickled, and he spun on his heel. No one there. Just the big square tool chests and the quenching barrels full of oil. The hair on the back of his neck stirred, and he whipped round again. The hammers and tongs hung in their places on the wall. Angrily he stared around the big room. There’s nobody there. It’s just my imagination. That wind, and the Amyrlin; that’s enough to make me imagine things.

Outside in the armorer’s yard, the wind swirled up around him momentarily. Despite himself he jumped, thinking it meant to catch him. For a moment he smelled the faint odor of decay again, and heard someone behind him laughing slyly. Just for a moment. Frightened, he edged in a circle, peering warily. The yard, paved with rough stone, was empty except for him. Just your bloody imagination! He ran anyway, and behind him he thought he heard the laughter again, this time without the wind.

In the woodyard, the presence returned, the sense of someone there. The feel of eyes peering at him around tall piles of split firewood under the long sheds, darting glances over the stacks of seasoned planks and timbers waiting on the other side of the yard for the carpenter’s shop, now closed up tight. He refused to look around, refused to think of how one set of eyes could move from place to place so fast, could cross the open yard from the firewood shed to the lumbershed without even a flicker of movement that he could see. He was sure it was one set of eyes. Imagination. Or maybe I’m going crazy already. He shivered. Not yet. Light, please not yet. Stiff-backed, he stalked across the woodyard, and the unseen watcher followed.

Down deep corridors lit only by a few rush torches, in storerooms filled with sacks of dried peas or beans, crowded with slatted racks heaped with wrinkled turnips and beets, or stacked with barrels of wine and casks of salted beef and kegs of ale, the eyes were always there, sometimes following him, sometimes waiting when he entered. He never heard a footstep but his own, never heard a door creak except when he opened and closed it, but the eyes were there. Light, I am going crazy.

Then he opened another storeroom door, and human voices, human laughter, drifted out to fill him with relief. There would be no unseen eye here. He went in.

Half the room was stacked to the ceiling with sacks of grain. In the other half a thick semicircle of men knelt in front of one of the bare walls. They all seemed to wear the leather jerkins and bowl-cut hair of menials. No warriors’ topknots, no livery. No one who might betray him accidentally. What about on purpose? The rattle of dice came through their soft murmurs, and somebody let out a raucous laugh at the throw.

Loial was watching them dice, rubbing his chin thoughtfully with a finger thicker than a big man’s thumb, his head almost reaching the rafters nearly two spans up. None of the dicers gave him a glance. Ogier were not exactly common in the Borderlands, or anywhere else, but they were known and accepted here, and Loial had been in Fal Dara long enough to excite little comment. The Ogier’s dark, stiff-collared tunic was buttoned up to his neck and flared below the waist over his high boots, and one of the big pockets bulged and sagged with the weight of something. Books, if Rand knew him. Even watching men gamble, Loial would not be far from a book.

In spite of everything, Rand found himself grinning. Loial often had that effect on him. The Ogier knew so much about some things, so little about others, and he seemed to want to know everything. Yet Rand could remember the first time he ever saw Loial, with his tufted ears and his eyebrows that dangled like long mustaches and his nose almost as wide as his face — saw him and thought he was facing a Trolloc. It still shamed him. Ogier and Trollocs. Myrddraal, and things from the dark corners of midnight tales. Things out of stories and legends: That was how he had thought of them before he left Emond’s Field. But since leaving home he had seen too many stories walking in the flesh ever to be so sure again. Aes Sedai, and unseen watchers, and a wind that caught and held. His smile faded.

“All the stories are real,” he said softly.

Loial’s ears twitched, and his head turned toward Rand. When he saw who it was, the Ogier’s face split in a grin, and he came over. “Ah, there you are.” His voice was a deep bumblebee rumble. “I did not see you at the Welcome. That was something I had not seen before. Two things. The Shienaran Welcome, and the Amyrlin Seat. She looks tired, don’t you think? It cannot be easy, being Amyrlin. Worse than being an Elder, I suppose.” He paused, with a thoughtful look, but only for a breath. “Tell me, Rand, do you play at dice, too? They play a simpler game here, with only three dice. We use four in the stedding. They won’t let me play, you know. They just say, ‘Glory to the Builders,’ and will not bet against me. I don’t think that’s fair, do you? The dice they use are rather small” — he frowned at one of his hands, big enough to cover a human head “but I still think—”

Rand grabbed his arm and cut him off. The Builders! “Loial, Ogier built Fal Dara, didn’t they? Do you know any way out except by the gates? A crawl hole. A drain pipe. Anything at all, if it’s big enough for a man to wiggle through. Out of the wind would be good, too.”

Loial gave a pained grimace, the ends of his eyebrows almost brushing his cheeks. “Rand, Ogier built Mafal Dadaranel, but that city was destroyed in the Trolloc Wars. This” — he touched the stone wall lightly with broad fingertips —“was built by men. I can sketch a plan of Mafal Dadaranel — I saw the maps, once, in an old book in Stedding Shangtai — but of Fal Dara, I know no more than you. It is well built, though, isn’t it? Stark, but well made.”

Rand slumped against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut. “I need a way out,” he whispered. “The gates are barred, and they won’t let anyone pass, but I need a way out.”

“But why, Rand?” Loial said slowly. “No one here will hurt you. Are you all right? Rand?” Suddenly his voice rose. “Mat! Perrin! I think Rand is sick.”

Rand opened his eyes to see his friends straightening up out of the knot of dicers. Mat Cauthon, long-limbed as a stork, wearing a half smile as if he saw something funny that no one else saw. Shaggy-haired Perrin Aybara, with heavy shoulders and thick arms from his work as a blacksmith’s apprentice. They both still wore their Two Rivers garb, plain and sturdy, but travel-worn.

Mat tossed the dice back into the semicircle as he stepped out, and one of the men called, “Here, southlander, you can’t quit while you’re winning.”

“Better than when I’m losing,” Mat said with a laugh. Unconsciously he touched his coat at the waist, and Rand winced. Mat had a dagger with a ruby in its hilt under there, a dagger he was never without, a dagger he could not be without. It was a tainted blade, from the dead city of Shadar Logoth, tainted and twisted by an evil almost as bad as the Dark One, the evil that had killed Shadar Logoth two thousand years before, yet still lived among the abandoned ruins. That taint would kill Mat if he kept the dagger; it would kill him even faster if he put it aside. “You’ll have another chance to win it back.” Wry snorts from the kneeling men indicated they did not think there was much chance of that.

Perrin kept his eyes down as he followed Mat across to Rand. Perrin always kept his eyes down these days, and his shoulders sagged as if he carried a weight too heavy even for their width.

“What’s the matter, Rand?” Mat asked. “You’re as white as your shirt. Hey! Where did you get those clothes? You turning Shienaran? Maybe I’ll buy myself a coat like that, and a fine shirt.” He shook his coat pocket, producing a clink of coins. “I seem to have luck with the dice. I can hardly touch them without winning.”

“You don’t have to buy anything,” Rand said tiredly. “Moiraine had all our clothes replaced. They’re burned already for all I know, all but what you two are wearing. Elansu will probably be around to collect those, too, so I’d change fast if I were you, before she takes them off your back.” Perrin still did not look up, but his cheeks turned red; Mat’s grin deepened, though it looked forced. They too had had encounters in the baths, and only Mat tried to pretend it did not matter. “And I’m not sick. I just need to get out of here. The Amyrlin Seat is here. Lan said … he said with her here, it would have been better for me if I were gone a week. I need to leave, and all the gates are barred.”

“He said that?” Mat frowned. “I don’t understand. He’d never say anything against an Aes Sedai. Why now? Look, Rand, I don’t like Aes Sedai any more than you do, but they aren’t going to do anything to us.” He lowered his voice to say that, and looked over his shoulder to see if any of the gamblers was listening. Feared the Aes Sedai might be, but in the Borderlands, they were far from being hated, and a disrespectful comment about them could land you in a fight, or worse. “Look at Moiraine. She isn’t so bad, even if she is Aes Sedai. You’re thinking like old Cenn Buie telling his tall tales back home, in the Winespring Inn. I mean, she hasn’t hurt us, and they won’t. Why would they?”

Perrin’s eyes lifted. Yellow eyes, gleaming in the dim light like burnished gold. Moiraine hasn’t hurt us? Rand thought. Perrin’s eyes had been as deep a brown as Mat’s when they left the Two Rivers. Rand had no idea how the change had come about — Perrin did not want to talk about it, or about very much of anything since it happened — but it had come at the same time as the slump in his shoulders, and a distance in his manner as if he felt alone even with friends around him. Perrin’s eyes and Mat’s dagger. Neither would have happened if they had not left Emond’s Field, and it was Moiraine who had taken them away. He knew that was not fair. They would probably all be dead at Trollocs’ hands, and a good part of Emond’s Field as well, if she had not come to their village. But that did not make Perrin laugh the way he used to, or take the dagger from Mat’s belt. And me? If I was home and still alive, would I still be what I am now? At least I wouldn’t be worrying about what the Aes Sedai are going to do to me.

Mat was still looking at him quizzically, and Perrin had raised his head enough to stare from under his eyebrows. Loial waited patiently. Rand could not tell them why he had to stay away from the Amyrlin Seat. They did not know what he was. Lan knew, and Moiraine. And Egwene, and Nynaeve. He wished none of them knew, and most of all he wished Egwene did not, but at least Mat and Perrin — and Loial, too — believed he was still the same. He thought he would rather die than let them know, than see the hesitation and worry he sometimes caught in Egwene’s eyes, and Nynaeve’s, even when they were trying their best.

“Somebody’s … watching me,” he said finally. “Following me. Only… Only, there’s nobody there.”

Perrin’s head jerked up, and Mat licked his lips and whispered, “A Fade?”

“Of course not,” Loial snorted. “How could one of the Eyeless enter Fal Dara, town or keep? By law, no one may hide his face inside the town walls, and the lamplighters are charged with keeping the streets lit at night so there isn’t a shadow for a Myrddraal to hide in. It could not happen.”

“Walls don’t stop a Fade,” Mat muttered. “Not when it wants to come in. I don’t know as laws and lamps will do any better.” He did not sound like someone who had half thought Fades were only gleemen’s tales less than half a year before. He had seen too much, too.

“And there was the wind,” Rand added. His voice hardly shook as he told what had happened on the tower top. Perrin’s fists tightened until his knuckles cracked. “I just want to leave here,” Rand finished. “I want to go south. Somewhere away. Just somewhere away.”

“But if the gates are barred,” Mat said, “how do we get out?”

Rand stared at him. “We?” He had to go alone. It would be dangerous for anyone near him, eventually. He would be dangerous, and even Moiraine could not tell him how long he had. “Mat, you know you have to go to Tar Valon with Moiraine. She said that’s the only place you can be separated from that bloody dagger without dying. And you know what will happen if you keep it.”

Mat touched his coat over the dagger, not seeming to realize what he was doing. “‘An Aes Sedai’s gift is bait for a fish,’” he quoted. “Well, maybe I don’t want to put the hook in my mouth. Maybe whatever she wants to do in Tar Valon is worse than if I don’t go at all. Maybe she’s lying. ‘The truth an Aes Sedai tells is never the truth you think it is.’”

“You have any more old sayings you want to rid yourself of?” Rand asked. “‘A south wind brings a warm guest, a north wind an empty house’? ‘A pig painted gold is still a pig’? What about, ‘talk shears no sheep’? ‘A fool’s words are dust’?”

“Easy, Rand,” Perrin said softly. “There is no need to be so rough.”

“Isn’t there? Maybe I don’t want you two going with me, always hanging around, falling into trouble and expecting me to pull you out. You ever think of that? Burn me, did it ever occur to you I might be tired of always having you there whenever I turn around? Always there, and I’m tired of it.” The hurt on Perrin’s face cut him like a knife, but he pushed on relentlessly. “There are some here think I’m a lord. A lord. Maybe I like that. But look at you, dicing with stablehands. When I go, I go by myself. You two can go to Tar Valon or go hang yourselves, but I leave here alone.”

Mat’s face had gone stiff, and he clutched the dagger through his coat till his knuckles were white. “If that is how you want it,” he said coldly. “I thought we were … However you want it, al’Thor. But if I decide to leave at the same time you do, I’ll go, and you can stand clear of me.”

“Nobody is going anywhere,” Perrin said, “if the gates are barred.” He was staring at the floor again. Laughter rolled from the gamblers against the wall as someone lost.

“Go or stay,” Loial said, “together or apart, it doesn’t matter. You are all three ta’veren. Even I can see it, and I don’t have that Talent, just by what happens around you. And Moiraine Sedai says it, too.”

Mat threw up his hands. “No more, Loial. I don’t want to hear about that anymore.”

Loial shook his head. “Whether you hear it or not, it is still true. The Wheel of Time weaves the Pattern of the Age, using the lives of men for thread. And you three are ta’veren, centerpoints of the weaving.”

“No more, Loial.”

“For a time, the Wheel will bend the Pattern around you three, whatever you do. And whatever you do is more likely to be chosen by the Wheel than by you. Ta’veren pull history along behind them and shape the Pattern just by being, but the Wheel weaves ta’veren on a tighter line than other men. Wherever you go and whatever you do, until the Wheel chooses otherwise you will—”

“No more!” Mat shouted. The men dicing looked around, and he glared at them until they bent back to their game.

“I am sorry, Mat,” Loial rumbled. “I know I talk too much, but I did not mean —”

“I am not staying here,” Mat told the rafters, “with a bigmouthed Ogier and a fool whose head is too big for a hat. You coming, Perrin?” Perrin sighed, and glanced at Rand, then nodded.

Rand watched them go with a stick caught in his threat. I must go alone. Light help me, I have to.

Loial was staring after them, too, eyebrows drooping worriedly. “Rand, I really didn’t mean to—”

Rand made his voice harsh. “What are you waiting for? Go on with them! I don’t see why you’re still here. You are no use to me if you don’t know a way out. Go on! Go find your trees, and your precious groves, if they haven’t all been cut down, and good riddance to them if they have.”

Loial’s eyes, as big as cups, looked surprised and hurt, at first, but slowly they tightened into what almost might be anger. Rand did not think it could be. Some of the old stories claimed Ogier were fierce, though they never said how, exactly, but Rand had never met anyone as gentle as Loial.

“If you wish it so, Rand al’Thor,” Loial said stiffly. He gave a rigid bow and stalked away after Mat and Perrin.

Rand slumped against the stacked sacks of grain. Well, a voice in his head taunted, you did it, didn’t you. I had to, he told it. I will be dangerous just to be around. Blood and ashes, I’m going to go mad, and … No! No, I won’t! I will not use the Power, and then I won’t go mad, and … But I can’t risk it. I can’t, don’t you see? But the voice only laughed at him.

The gamblers were looking at him, he realized. All of them, still kneeling against the wall, had turned to stare at him. Shienarans of any class were almost always polite and correct, even to blood enemies, and Ogier were never any enemies of Shienar. Shock filled the gamblers’ eyes. Their faces were blank, but their eyes said what he had done was wrong. Part of him thought they were right, and that drove their silent accusation deep. They only looked at him, but he stumbled out of the storeroom as if they were chasing him.

Numbly he went on through the storerooms, hunting a place to secrete himself until some traffic was allowed through the gates again. Then he could hide in the bottom of a victualer’s cart, maybe. If they did not search the carts on the way out. If they did not search the storerooms, search the whole keep for him. Stubbornly he refused to think about that, stubbornly concentrated on finding a safe place. But every place he found — a hollow in a stack of grain sacks, a narrow alley along the wall behind some wine barrels, an abandoned storeroom half filled with empty crates and shadows — he could imagine searchers finding him there. He could imagine that unseen watcher, whoever it was — or whatever — finding him there, too. So he hunted on, thirsty and dusty and with cobwebs in his hair.

And then he came out into a dimly torch-lit corridor, and Egwene was creeping along it, pausing to peer into the storerooms she passed. Her dark hair, hanging to her waist, was caught back with a red ribbon, and she wore a goose-gray dress in the Shienaran fashion, trimmed in red. At the sight of her, sadness and loss rolled over him, worse than when he had chased Mat and Perrin and Loial away. He had grown up thinking he would marry Egwene one day; they both had. But now…

She jumped when he popped out right in front of her, and her breath caught loudly, but what she said was, “So there you are. Mat and Perrin told me what you did. And Loial. I know what you’re trying to do, Rand, and it is plain foolish.” She crossed her arms under her breasts, and her big, dark eyes fixed him sternly. He always wondered how she managed to seem to be looking down at him — she did it at will — although she was only as tall as his chest, and two years younger besides.

“Good,” he said. Her hair suddenly made him angry. He had never seen a grown woman with her hair unbraided until he left the Two Rivers. There, every girl waited eagerly for the Women’s Circle of her village to say she was old enough to braid her hair. Egwene certainly had. And here she was with her hair loose except for a ribbon. I want to go home and can’t, and she can’t wait to forget Emond’s Field. “You go away and leave me alone, too. You don’t want to keep company with a shepherd anymore. There are plenty of Aes Sedai here for you to moon around, now. And don’t tell any of them you saw me. They’re after me, and I don’t need you helping them.”

Bright spots of color bloomed in her cheeks. “Do you think I would—”

He turned to walk away, and with a cry she threw herself at him, flung her arms around his legs. They both tumbled to the stone floor, his saddlebags and bundles flying. He grunted when he hit, sword hilt digging into his side, and again when she scrabbled up and plopped herself down on his back as if he were a chair. “My mother,” she said firmly, “always told me the best way to learn to deal with a man was to learn to ride a mule. She said they have about equal brains most of the time. Sometimes the mule is smarter.”

He raised his head to look over his shoulder at her. “Get off me, Egwene. Get off! Egwene, if you don’t get off” — he lowered his voice ominously—“I’ll do something to you. You know what I am.” He added a glare for good measure.

Egwene sniffed. “You wouldn’t, if you could. You would not hurt anybody. But you can’t, anyway. I know you cannot channel the One Power whenever you want; it just happens, and you cannot control it. So you are not going to do anything to me or anybody else. I, on the other hand, have been taking lessons with Moiraine, so if you don’t listen to some sense, Rand al’Thor, I might just set your breeches on fire. I can manage that much. You keep on as you are and see if I cannot.” Suddenly, for just a moment, the torch nearest them on the wall flared up with a roar. She gave a squeak and stared at it, startled.

Twisting around, he grabbed her arm, pulled her off his back, and sat her against the wall. When he sat up himself, she was sitting there across from him, rubbing her arm furiously. “You really would have, wouldn’t you?” he said angrily. “You’re fooling with things you don’t understand. You could have burned both of us to charcoal!”

“Men! When you cannot win an argument, you either run away or resort to force.”

“Hold on there! Who tripped who? Who sat on who? And you threatened — tried! — to—” He raised both hands. “No, you don’t. You do this to me all the time. Whenever you realize the argument isn’t going the way you want, suddenly we are arguing about something else completely. Not this time.”

“I am not arguing,” she said calmly, “and I am not changing the subject, either. What is hiding except running away? And after you hide, you’ll run away for true. And what about hurting Mat, and Perrin, and Loial? And me? I know why. You’re afraid you will hurt somebody even worse if you let them stay near you. If you don’t do what you shouldn’t, then you do not have to worry about hurting anybody. All this running around and striking out, and you don’t even know if there’s a reason. Why should the Amyrlin, or any Aes Sedai but Moiraine, even know you exist?”

For a moment he stared at her. The longer she spent with Moiraine and Nynaeve, the more she took on their manner, at least when she wanted to. They were much alike at times, the Aes Sedai and the Wisdom, distant and knowing. It was disconcerting coming from Egwene. Finally he told her what Lan had said. “What else could he mean?”

Her hand froze on her arm, and she frowned with concentration. “Moiraine knows about you, and she hasn’t done anything, so why should she now? But if Lan…” Still frowning, she met his eyes. “The storerooms are the first place they will look. If they do look. Until we find out if they are looking, we need to put you somewhere they would never think of searching. I know. The dungeon.”

He scrambled to his feet. “The dungeon!”

“Not in a cell, silly. I go there some evenings to visit Padan Fain. Nynaeve does, too. No one will think it odd if I go early today. In truth, with everybody looking to the Amyrlin, no one will even notice us.”

“But, Moiraine …”

“She doesn’t go the dungeons to question Master Fain. She has him brought to her. And she has not done that very much for weeks. Believe me, you will be safe there.”

Still, he hesitated. Padan Fain. “Why do you visit the peddler, anyway? He’s a Darkfriend, admitted out of his own mouth, and a bad one. Burn me, Egwene, he brought the Trollocs to Emond’s Field! The Dark One’s hound, he called himself, and he has been sniffing on my trail since Winternight.”

“Well, he is safe behind iron bars now, Rand.” It was her turn to hesitate, and she looked at him almost pleading. “Rand, he has brought his wagon into the Two Rivers every spring since before I was born. He knows all the people I know, all the places. It’s strange, but the longer he has been locked up, the easier in himself he has become. It’s almost as if he is breaking free of the Dark One. He laughs again, and tells funny stories, about Emond’s Field folk, and sometimes about places I never heard of before. Sometimes he is almost like his old self. I just like to talk to somebody about home.”

Since I’ve been avoiding you, he thought, and since Perrin’s been avoiding everybody, and Mat’s been spending all his time gambling and carousing. “I shouldn’t have kept to myself so much,” he muttered, then sighed. “Well, if Moiraine thinks it’s safe enough for you, I suppose it is safe enough for me. But there’s no need for you to be mixed in it.”

Egwene got to her feet and concentrated on brushing off her dress, avoiding his eye.

“Moiraine has said it’s safe? Egwene?”

“Moiraine Sedai has never told me I could not visit Master Fain,” she said carefully.

He stared at her, then burst out, “You never asked her. She doesn’t know. Egwene, that’s stupid. Padan Fain’s a Darkfriend, and as bad as ever a Darkfriend was.”

“He is locked in a cage,” she said stiffly, “and I do not have to ask Moiraine’s permission for everything I do. It is a little late for you to start worrying about doing what an Aes Sedai thinks, isn’t it? Now, are you coming?”

“I can find the dungeon without you. They are looking for me, or will be, and it won’t do you any good to be found with me.”

“Without me,” she said dryly, “you’ll likely trip over your own feet and fall in the Amyrlin Seat’s lap, then confess everything while trying to talk your way out of it.”

“Blood and ashes, you ought to be in the Women’s Circle back home. If men were all as fumble-footed and helpless as you seem to think, we’d never—”

“Are you going to stand here talking until they do find you? Pick up your things, Rand, and come with me.” Not waiting for an answer, she spun around and started off down the hall. Muttering under his breath, he reluctantly obeyed.

There were few people — servants, mainly — in the back ways they took, but Rand had the feeling that they all took special notice of him. Not notice of a man burdened for a journey, but of him, Rand al’Thor in particular. He knew it was his imagination — he hoped it was — but even so, he felt no relief when they stopped in a passageway deep beneath the keep, before a tall door with a small iron grill set in it, as thickly strapped with iron as any in the outer wall. A clapper hung below the grill.

Through the grill Rand could see bare walls, and two top-knotted soldiers sitting bareheaded at a table with a lamp on it. One of the men was sharpening a dagger with long, slow strokes of a stone. His strokes never faltered when Egwene rapped with the clapper, a sharp clang of iron on iron. The other man, his face flat and sullen, looked at the door as if considering before he finally rose and came over. He was squat and stocky, barely tall enough to look through the cross-hatched bars.

“What do you want? Oh, it’s you again, girl. Come to see your Darkfriend? Who’s that?” He made no move to open the door.

“He’s a friend of mine, Changu. He wants to see Master Fain, too.”

The man studied Rand, his upper lip quivering back to bare teeth. Rand did not think it was supposed to be a smile. “Well,” Changu said finally. “Well. Tall, aren’t you? Tall. And fancy dressed for your kind. Somebody catch you young in the Eastern Marches and tame you?” He slammed back the bolts and yanked open the door. “Well, come in if you’re coming.” He took on a mocking tone. “Take care not to bump your head, my Lord.”

There was no danger of that; the door was tall enough for Loial. Rand followed Egwene in, frowning and wondering if this Changu meant to make some sort of trouble. He was the first rude Shienaran Rand had met; even Masema was only cold, not really rude. But the fellow just banged the door shut and rammed the heavy bolts home, then went to some shelves beyond the end of the table and took one of the lamps there. The other man never ceased stropping his knife, never even looked up from it. The room was bare except for the table and benches and shelves, with straw on the floor and another iron-bound door leading deeper in.

“You’ll want some light, won’t you,” Changu said, “in there in the dark with your Darkfriend friend.” He laughed, coarse and humorless, and lit the lamp. “He’s waiting for you.” He thrust the lamp at Egwene, and undid the inner door almost eagerly. “Waiting for you. In there, in the dark.”

Rand paused uneasily at the blackness beyond, and Changu grinning behind, but Egwene caught his sleeve and pulled him in. The door slammed, almost catching his heel; the latch bars clanged shut. There was only the light of the lamp, a small pool around them in the darkness.

“Are you sure he’ll let us out?” he asked. The man had never even looked at his sword or bow, he realized, never asked what was in his bundles. “They aren’t very good guards. We could be here to break Fain free for all he knows.”

“They know me better than that,” she said, but she sounded troubled, and she added, “They seem worse every time I come. All the guards do. Meaner, and more sullen. Changu told jokes the first time I came, and Nidao never even speaks anymore. But I suppose working in a place like this can’t give a man a light heart. Maybe it is just me. This place does not do my heart any good, either.” Despite her words, she drew him confidently into the black. He kept his free hand on his sword.

The pale lamplight showed a wide hall with flat iron grills to either side, fronting stone-walled cells. Only two of the cells they passed held prisoners. The occupants sat up on their narrow cots as the light struck them, shielding their eyes with their hands, glaring between their fingers. Even with their faces hidden, Rand was sure they were glaring. Their eyes glittered in the lamplight.

“That one likes to drink and fight,” Egwene murmured, indicating a burly fellow with sunken knuckles. “This time he wrecked the common room of an inn in the town single-handed, and hurt some men badly.” The other prisoner wore a gold-embroidered coat with wide sleeves, and low, gleaming boots. “He tried to leave the city without settling his inn bill” — she sniffed loudly at that; her father was an innkeeper as well as Mayor of Emond’s Field —“nor paying half a dozen shopkeepers and merchants what he owed.”

The men snarled at them, guttural curses as bad as any Rand had heard from merchants’ guards.

“They grow worse every day, too,” she said in a tight voice, and quickened her step.

She was enough ahead of him when they reached Padan Fain’s cell, at the very end, that Rand was out of the light entirely. He stopped there, in the shadows behind her lamp.

Fain was sitting on his cot, leaning forward expectantly as if waiting, just as Changu had said. He was a bony, sharp-eyed man, with long arms and a big nose, even more gaunt now than Rand remembered. Not gaunt from the dungeon — the food here was the same as the servants ate, and not even the worst prisoner was shorted — but from what he had done before coming to Fal Dara.

The sight of him brought back memories Rand would just as soon have done without. Fain on the seat of his big peddler’s wagon wheeling across the Wagon Bridge, arriving in Emond’s Field the day of Winternight. And on Winternight the Trollocs came, killing and burning, hunting. Hunting three young men, Moiraine had said. Hunting me, if they only knew it, and using Fain for their trail hound.

Fain stood at Egwene’s approach, not shielding his eyes or even blinking at the light. He smiled at her, a smile that touched only his lips, then raised his eyes above her head. Looking straight at Rand, hidden in the blackness behind the light, he pointed a long finger at him. “I feel you there, hiding, Rand al’Thor,” he said, almost crooning. “You can’t hide, not from me, and not from them. You thought it was over, did you not? But the battle’s never done, al’Thor. They are coming for me, and they’re coming for you, and the war goes on. Whether you live or die, it’s never over for you. Never.” Suddenly he began to chant.

He let his arm fall, and his eyes rose to stare intently at an angle up into the darkness. A crooked grin twisting his mouth, he chuckled deep in his throat as if whatever he saw was amusing. “Mordeth knows more than all of you. Mordeth knows.”

Egwene backed away from the cell until she reached Rand, and only the edge of the light touched the bars of Fain’s cell. Darkness hid the peddler, but they could still hear his chuckles. Even unable to see him, Rand was sure Fain was still peering off at nothing.

With a shiver, he pried his fingers off his sword hilt. “Light!” he said hoarsely. “This is what you call being like he used to be?”

“Sometimes he’s better, and sometimes worse.” Egwene’s voice was unsteady. “This is worse — much worse than usual.”

“What is he seeing, I wonder. He’s mad, staring at a stone ceiling in the dark.” If the stone weren’t there, he’d be looking straight at the women’s apartments. Where Moiraine is, and the Amyrlin Seat. He shivered again. “He’s mad.”

“This was not a good idea, Rand.” Looking over her shoulder at the cell, she drew him away from it and lowered her voice as if afraid Fain might overhear. Fain’s chuckles followed them. “Even if they don’t look here, I cannot stay here with him like this, and I do not think you should, either. There is something about him today that …” She drew a shaky breath. “There is one place even safer from search than here. I did not mention it before because it was easier to get you in here, but they will never look in the women’s apartments. Never.”

“The women’s …! Egwene, Fain may be mad, but you’re madder. You can’t hide from hornets in a hornets’ nest.”

“What better place? What is the one part of the keep no man will enter without a woman’s invitation, not even Lord Agelmar? What is the one place no one would ever think to look for a man?”

“What is the one place in the keep sure to be full of Aes Sedai? It is crazy, Egwene.”

Poking at his bundles, she spoke as if it were all decided. “You must wrap your sword and bow in your cloak, and then it will look as if you are carrying things for me. It should not be too hard to find you a jerkin and a shirt that isn’t so pretty. You will have to stoop, though.”

“I told you, I won’t do it.”

“Since you’re acting stubborn as a mule, you should take right to playing my beast of burden. Unless you would really rather stay down here with him.” Fain’s laughing whisper came through the black shadows. “The battle’s never done, al’Thor. Mordeth knows.”

“I’d have a better chance jumping off the wall,” Rand muttered. But he unslung his bundles and set about wrapping sword and bow and quiver as she had suggested.

In the darkness, Fain laughed. “It’s never over, al’Thor. Never.”