Egwene went straight to Bela, and Nynaeve to her long-legged mare.
Mat brought his dun-colored horse over by Rand. “Perrin’s making me nervous,” he muttered. Rand looked at him sharply. “Well, he’s acting strange. Don’t you see it, too? I swear it’s not my imagination, or . . . or. . . .”
Rand nodded. Not the dagger taking hold of him again, thank the Light. “He is, Mat, but just be easy. Moiraine knows about . . . Whatever it is. Perrin’s fine.” He wished he could believe it, but it seemed to satisfy Mat, a little at least.
“Of course,” Mat said hastily, still watching Perrin out of the corner of his eye. “I never said he wasn’t.”
Master Gill conferred with the head groom. That leathery-skinned man, with a face like one of the horses, knuckled his forehead and hurried to the back of the stable. The innkeeper turned to Moiraine with a satisfied smile on his round face. “Ramey says the way is clear, Aes Sedai.”
The rear wall of the stable appeared solid and stout, lined with heavy racks of tools. Ramey and another stableman cleared away the hayforks, rakes, and shovels, then reached behind the racks to manipulate hidden latches. Abruptly a section of the wall swung inward on hinges so well concealed that Rand was not sure he could find them even with the disguised door standing open. Light from the stable illuminated a brick wall only a few feet away.
“It’s only a narrow run between buildings,” the innkeeper said, “but nobody outside this stable knows there’s a way into it from here. Whitecloaks or white cockades, there’ll not be any watchers to see where you come out.”
The Aes Sedai nodded. “Remember, good innkeeper, if you fear any trouble from this, write to Sheriam Sedai, of the Blue Ajah, in Tar Valon, and she will help. I fear my sisters and I have a good deal to put right already for those who have helped me.”
Master Gill laughed; not the laugh of a worried man. “Why, Aes Sedai, you’ve already given me the only inn in all of Caemlyn without any rats. What more could I ask for? I can double my custom on that alone.” His grin faded into seriousness. “Whatever you’re up to, the Queen holds with Tar Valon, and I hold with the Queen, so I wish you well. The Light illumine you, Aes Sedai. The Light illumine you all.”
“The Light illumine you, also, Master Gill,” Moiraine replied with a bow of her head. “But if the Light is to shine on any of us, we must be quick.” Briskly she turned to Loial. “Are you ready?”
With a wary look at its teeth, the Ogier took the reins of the big horse. Trying to keep that mouth the length of the reins from his hand, he led the animal to the opening at the back of the stable. Ramey hopped from one foot to the other, impatient to close it again. For a moment Loial paused with his head cocked as if feeling a breeze on his cheek. “This way,” he said, and turned down the narrow alley.
Moiraine followed right behind Loial’s horse, then Rand, and Mat. Rand had the first turn leading the pack horse. Nynaeve and Egwene made the middle of the column, with Perrin behind them, and Lan bringing up the rear. The hidden door swung hastily shut as soon as Mandarb stepped into the dirt alleyway. The snick-snick of latches locking, shutting them off, sounded unnaturally loud to Rand.
The run, as Master Gill had called it, was very narrow indeed, and even darker than the stableyard, if that was possible. Tall, blank walls of brick or wood lined both sides, with only a narrow strip of black sky overhead. The big, woven baskets slung on the pack horse scraped the buildings on both sides. The panniers bulged with supplies for the journey, most of it clay jars filled with oil. A bundle of poles was lashed lengthwise down the horse’s back, and each had a lantern swinging at the end of it. In the Ways, Loial said, it was darker than the darkest night.
The partially-filled lanterns sloshed with the motion of the horse, and clinked against each other with a tinny sound. It was not a very loud noise, but in the hour before dawn Caemlyn was quiet. Silent. The dull metallic clinks sounded as if they could be heard a mile away.
When the run let out into a street, Loial chose his direction without a pause. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, now, as if the route he needed to follow was becoming clearer. Rand did not understand how the Ogier could find the Waygate, and Loial had not been able to explain very well. He just knew, he said; he could feel it. Loial claimed it was like trying to explain how to breathe.
As they hurried up the street Rand looked back toward the corner where The Queen’s Blessing lay. According to Lamgwin, there were still half a dozen Whitecloaks not far down from that corner. Their interest was all on the inn, but a noise would surely bring them. No one was out at this hour for a reputable reason. The horse shoes seemed to ring on the paving stones like bells; the lanterns clattered as if the pack horse were shaking them deliberately. Not until they had rounded another corner did he stop looking over his shoulder. He heard relieved sighs from the other Emond’s Fielders as they came round it, too.
Loial appeared to be following the most direct path to the Waygate, wherever it took them. Sometimes they trotted down broad avenues, empty save for an occasional dog skulking in the dark. Sometimes they hurried along alleys as narrow as the stable run, where things squished under an unwary step. Nynaeve complained softly about the resulting smells, but no one slowed down.
The darkness began to lessen, fading toward a dark gray. Faint glimmers of dawn pearled the sky above the eastern rooftops. A few people appeared on the streets, bundled up against the early cold, heads down while they yet dreamed of their beds. Most paid no mind to anyone else. Only a handful even glanced at the line of people and horses with Loial at its head, and only one of those truly saw them.
That one man flicked his eyes at them, just like the others, already sinking back into his own thoughts when suddenly he stumbled and almost fell, turning himself back around to stare. There was only light enough to see shapes, but that was too much. Seen at a distance by himself, the Ogier could have passed for a tall man leading an ordinary horse, or for an ordinary man leading an under-sized horse. With the others in a line behind him to give perspective, Loial looked exactly as big as he was, half again as tall as any man should be. The man took one look and, with a strangled cry, set off running, his cloak flapping behind him.
There would be more people in the streets soon—very soon. Rand eyed a woman hurrying past on the other side of the street, seeing nothing but the pavement in front of her feet. More people to notice soon. The eastern sky grew lighter.
“There,” Loial announced at last. “It is under there.” It was a shop he pointed to, still closed for the night. The tables out front were bare, the awnings over them rolled up tight, the door stoutly shuttered. The windows above, where the shopkeeper lived, were still dark.
“Under?” Mat exclaimed incredulously. “How in the Light can we—?”
Moiraine raised a hand that cut him off, and motioned for them to follow her into the alley beside the shop. Horses and people together, they crowded the opening between the two buildings. Shaded by the walls, it was darker there than on the street, near to full night again.
“There must be a cellar door,” Moiraine muttered. “Ah, yes.”
Abruptly light blossomed. A coolly glowing ball the size of a man’s fist hung suspended over the Aes Sedai’s palm, moving as she moved her hand. Rand thought that it was a measure of what they had been through that everyone seemed to take it as a matter of course. She put it close to the doors she had found, slanted almost flat to the ground, with a hasp held by thick bolts and an iron lock bigger than Rand’s hand and thick with old rust.
Loial gave the lock a tug. “I can pull it off, hasp and all, but it will make enough noise to wake the whole neighborhood.”
“Let us not damage the goodman’s property if we can avoid it.” Moiraine studied the lock intently for a moment. Suddenly she gave the rusty iron a tap with her staff, and the lock fell open neatly.
Hastily Loial undid the lock and swung the doors up, propping them back. Moiraine went down the ramp thus reveal
ed, lighting her way with the glowing ball. Aldieb stepped delicately behind her.
“Light the lanterns and come down,” she called softly. “There is plenty of room. Hurry. It will be light out soon.”
Rand hurriedly untied the poled lanterns off the pack horse, but even before the first was lit he realized he could see Mat’s features. People would be filling the streets in minutes, and the shopkeeper would be coming down to open up for business, all wondering why the alleyway was crammed full of horses. Mat muttered something nervously about taking horses indoors, but Rand was glad to lead his down the ramp. Mat followed, grumbling but no less quickly.
Rand’s lantern swung on the end of its pole, bumping the ceiling if he was not careful, and neither Red nor the pack horse liked the ramp. Then he was down and getting out of Mat’s way. Moiraine let her floating light die, but as the rest joined them, the added lanterns lit the open space.
The cellar was as long and as wide as the building above, much of the space taken up by brick columns, flaring up from narrow bases to five times as big at the ceiling. The place seemed made up from a series of arches. There was plenty of room, but Rand still felt crowded. Loial’s head brushed the ceiling. As the rusted lock had foretold, the cellar had not been used in a long time. The floor was bare except for a few broken barrels filled with odds and ends, and a thick layer of dust. Motes, stirred up by so many feet, sparkled in the lantern light.
Lan was last in, and as soon as he had Mandarb down the ramp he climbed back to pull the doors shut.
“Blood and ashes,” Mat growled, “why would they build one of these gates in a place like this?”
“It was not always like this,” Loial said. His rumbling voice echoed in the cavernous space. “Not always. No!” The Ogier was angry, Rand realized with a shock. “Once trees stood here. Every kind of tree that would grow in this place, every kind of tree that Ogier could coax to grow here. The Great Trees, a hundred spans high. Shade of branch, and cool breezes to catch the smell of leaf and flower and hold the memory of the peace of the stedding. All that, murdered for this!” His fist thumped a column.
The column seemed to shake under that blow. Rand was certain he heard bricks crack. Waterfalls of dry mortar slid down the column.
“What is already woven cannot be undone,” Moiraine said gently. “It will not make the trees grow again for you to bring the building down on our heads.” Loial’s drooping eyebrows made him look more abashed than a human face could have managed. “With your help, Loial, perhaps we can keep the groves that still stand from falling under the Shadow. You have brought us to what we seek.”
As she moved to one of the walls, Rand realized that that wall was different from the others. They were ordinary brick; this was intricately worked stone, fanciful swirls of leaves and vines, pale even under its coat of dust. The brick and mortar were old, but something about the stone said it had stood there long, long before the brick was fired. Later builders, themselves centuries gone, had incorporated what already stood, and still later men had made it part of a cellar.
One part of the carved stone wall, right in the center, was more elaborate than the rest. As well done as the rest was, it appeared a crude copy in comparison. Worked in hard stone, those leaves seemed soft, caught in one frozen moment as a gentle summer breeze stirred them. For all of that, they had the feel of age, as much greater than the rest of the stone as the rest was older than the brick. That old and more. Loial looked at them as if he would rather be anywhere else but there, even out in the streets with another mob.
“Avendesora,” Moiraine murmured, resting her hand on a trefoil leaf in the stonework. Rand scanned the carving; that was the only leaf of its kind he could find. “The leaf of the Tree of Life is the key,” the Aes Sedai said, and the leaf came away in her hand.
Rand blinked; from behind him he heard gasps. That leaf had seemed no less a part of the wall than any other. Just as simply, the Aes Sedai set it against the pattern a handspan lower. The three-pointed leaf fit there as if the space had been intended for it, and once more it was a part of the whole. As soon as it was in place the entire nature of the central stonework changed.
He was sure now that he could see the leaves ruffled by some unfelt breeze; he almost thought they were verdant under the dust, a tapestry of thick spring greenery there in the lantern-lit cellar. Almost imperceptibly at first, a split opened up in the middle of the ancient carving, widening as the two halves slowly swung into the cellar until they stood straight out. The backs of the gates were worked as the fronts, the same profusion of vines and leaves, almost alive. Behind, where should have been dirt or the cellar of the next building, a dull, reflective shimmering faintly caught their images.
“I have heard,” Loial said, half mourning, half fearful, “that once the Waygates shone like mirrors. Once, who entered the Ways walked through the sun and the sky. Once.”
“We have no time for waiting,” Moiraine said.
Lan went past her, leading Mandarb, poled lantern in hand. His shadowy reflection approached him, leading a shadowy horse. Man and reflection seemed to step into each other at the shimmering surface, and both were gone. For a moment the black stallion balked, an apparently continuous rein connecting him to the dim shape of his own image. The rein tightened, and the warhorse, too, vanished.
For a minute everyone in the cellar stood staring at the Waygate.
“Hurry,” Moiraine urged. “I must be the last through. We cannot leave this open for anyone to find by chance. Hurry.”
With a heavy sigh Loial strode into the shimmer. Tossing its head, his big horse tried to hold back from the surface and was hauled through. They were gone as completely as the Warder and Mandarb.
Hesitantly, Rand poked his lantern at the Waygate. The lantern sank into its reflection, the two merging until both were gone. He made himself keep on walking forward, watching the pole disappear into itself inch by inch, and then he was stepping into himself, entering the gate. His mouth fell open. Something icy slid along his skin, as if he were passing through a wall of cold water. Time stretched out; the cold enveloped one hair at a time, shivered over his clothes thread by thread.
Abruptly the chill burst like a bubble, and he paused to catch his breath. He was inside the Ways. Just ahead Lan and Loial waited patiently by their horses. All around them was blackness that seemed to stretch on forever. Their lanterns made a small pool of light around them, too small, as if something pressed back the light, or ate it.
Of a sudden anxious, he jerked at his reins. Red and the pack horse came leaping through, nearly knocking him down. Stumbling, he caught himself and hurried to the Warder and the Ogier, pulling the nervous horses behind him. The animals whickered softly. Even Mandarb appeared to take some comfort from the presence of other horses.
“Go easy when you pass through a Waygate, Rand,” Loial cautioned. “Things are . . . different inside the Ways than out. Look.”
He looked back the way the Ogier pointed, thinking to see the same dull shimmer. Instead he could see into the cellar, as if through a large piece of smoked glass set in the blackness. Disturbingly the darkness around the window into the cellar gave a sense of depth, as though the opening stood alone with nothing around or behind it but the dark. He said as much with a shaky laugh, but Loial took him seriously.
“You could walk all the way around it, and you would not see a thing from the other side. I would not advise it, though. The books aren’t very clear about what lies behind the Waygates. I think you could become lost there, and never find your way out.”
Rand shook his head and tried to concentrate on the Waygate itself rather than what lay behind it, but that was just as disturbing in its own fashion. If there had been anything to look at in the darkness besides the Waygate, he would have looked at it. In the cellar, through the smoky dimness, Moiraine and the others were plain enough, but they moved as if in a dream. Every blink of an eye seemed a deliberate, exaggerated gesture. Mat was making his way
to the Waygate as though walking through clear jelly, his legs seeming to swim forward.
“The Wheel turns faster in the Ways,” Loial explained. He looked at the darkness surrounding them, and his head sunk in between his shoulders. “None alive know more than fragments. I fear what I don’t know about the Ways, Rand.”
“The Dark One,” Lan said, “cannot be defeated without chancing risks. But we are alive at this moment, and before us is the hope of remaining alive. Do not surrender before you are beaten, Ogier.”
“You would not speak so confidently if you had ever been in the Ways.” The normal distant thunder of Loial’s voice was muted. He stared at the blackness as if he saw things there. “I never have before, either, but I’ve seen Ogier who have been through a Waygate and come out again. You would not speak so if you had.”
Mat stepped through the gate and regained normal speed. For an instant he stared at the seemingly endless darkness, then came running to join them, his lantern bobbing on its pole, his horse leaping behind him, almost sending him sprawling. One by one the others passed through, Perrin and Egwene and Nynaeve, each pausing in shocked silence before hurrying to join the rest. Each lantern enlarged the pool of light, but not as much as it should have. It was as if the dark became denser the more light there was, thickening as it fought against being diminished.
That was not a line of reasoning Rand wanted to follow. It was bad enough just being there without giving the darkness a will of its own. Everyone seemed to feel the oppressiveness, though. There were no wry comments from Mat here, and Egwene looked as if she wished she could rethink her decision to come. They all silently watched the Waygate, that last window into the world they knew.
Finally only Moiraine was left in the cellar, dimly lit by the lantern she had taken. The Aes Sedai still moved in that dreamlike way. Her hand crept as it found the leaf of Avendesora. It was located lower in the stonework on this side, Rand saw, just where she had placed it on the other. Plucking it free, she put it back in the original position. He wondered suddenly if the leaf on the other side had moved back, too.
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