The Great Hunt twot-2

by Robert Jordan

  "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 wom
an 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.

  Chapter 31

  (Rising Sun)

  On the Scent

  Rand did not know Verin was there until the Aes Sedai took his face in her hands. For a moment he could see worry in her face, perhaps even fear, and then suddenly he felt as if he had been doused with cold water, not the wet but the tingle. He gave one abrupt shudder and stopped laughing; she left him to crouch over Hurin. The Reader watched her carefully. So did Rand. What is she doing here? As if I didn't know.

  "Where did you go?" Mat demanded hoarsely. "You all just disappeared, and now you're in Cairhien ahead of us. Loial?" The Ogier shrugged uncertainly and eyed the crowd, his ears twitching. Half the people had turned from the fire to watch the newcomers. A few edged closer trying to listen.

  Rand let Perrin give him a hand up. "How did you find the inn?" He glanced at Verin, kneeling with her hands on the sniffer's head. "Her?"

  "In a way," Perrin said. "The guards at the gate wanted our names, and a fellow coming out of the guardhouse gave a jump when he heard Ingtar's name. He said he didn't know it, but he had a smile that shouted 'lie' a mile off."

  "I think I know the man you mean," Rand said. "He smiles that way all the time."

  "Verin showed him her ring," Mat put in, "and whispered in his ear." He looked and sounded sick, his cheeks flushed and tight, but he managed a grin. Rand had never noticed his cheekbones before. "I couldn't hear what she said, but I didn't know whether his eyes were going to pop out of his head or he was going to swallow his tongue first. All of a sudden, he couldn't do enough for us. He told us you were waiting for us, and right where you were staying. Offered to guide us himself, but he really looked relieved when Verin told him no." He snorted. "Lord Rand of House al'Thor."

  "It's too long a story to explain now," Rand said. "Where are Uno and the rest? We will need them."

  "In the Foregate." Mat frowned at him, and went on slowly, "Uno said they'd rather stay there than inside the walls. From what I can see, I'd rather be with them. Rand, why will we need Uno? Have you found … them?"

  It was the moment Rand realized suddenly he had been avoiding. He took a deep breath and looked his friend in the eye. "Mat, I had the dagger, and I lost it. The Darkfriends took it back." He heard gasps from the Cairhienin listening, but he did not care. They could play their Great Game if they wanted, but Ingtar had come, and he was finished with it at last. "They can't have gone far, though."

  Ingtar had been silent, but now he stepped forward and gripped Rand's arm. "You had it? And the" — he looked around at the onlookers—"the other thing?"

  "They took that back, too," Rand said quietly. Ingtar pounded a fist into his palm and turned away; some of the Cairhienin backed off from the look on his face.

  Mat chewed his lip, then shook his head. "I didn't know it was found, so it isn't as if I had lost it again. It is just still lost." It was plain he was speaking of the dagger, not the Horn of Valere. "We'll find it again. We have two sniffers, now. Perrin is one, too. He followed the trail all the way to the Foregate, after you vanished with Hurin and Loial. I thought you might have just run off … well, you know what I mean. Where did you go? I still don't understand how you got so far ahead of us. That fellow said you have been here days."

  Rand glanced at Perrin — He's a sniffer? — and found Perrin studying him in return. He thought Perrin muttered something. Shadowkiller? I must have heard him wrong. Perrin's yellow gaze held him for a moment, seeming to hold secrets about him. Telling himself he was having fancies — I'm not mad. Not yet. — he pulled his eyes away.

  Verin was just helping a still-shaky Hurin to his feet. "I feel right as goose feathers," he was saying. "Still a little tired, but …" He let the words trail off, seeming to see her for the first time, to realize what had happened for the first time.

  "The tiredness will last a few hours," she told him. "The body must strain to heal itself quickly."

  The Cairhienin Reader rose. "Aes Sedai?" she said softly. Verin inclined her head, and the Reader made a full curtsy.

  As quiet as they had been, the words "Aes Sedai" ran through the crowd in tones ranging from awe to fear to outrage. Everyone was watching now — not even Cuale gave any attention to his own burning inn — and Rand thought a little caution might not be amiss after all.

  "Do you have rooms yet?" he asked. "We need to talk, and we can't do it here."

  "A good idea," Verin said. "I have stayed here before at The Great Tree. We will go there."

  Loial went to fetch the horses — the inn roof had now fallen in completely, but the stables had not been touched — and soon they were making their way through the streets, all riding except for Loial, who claimed he had grown used to walking again. Perrin held the lead line to one of the packhorses they had brought south.

  "Hurin," Rand said, "how soon can you be ready to follow their trail again? Can you follow it? The men who hit you and started the fire left a trail, didn't they?"

  "I can follow it now, my Lord. And I could smell them in the street. It won't last long, though. There weren't any Trollocs, and they didn't kill anybody. Just men, my Lord. Darkfriends, I suppose, but you can't always be sure of that by smell. A day, maybe, before it fades."

  "I don't think they can open the chest either, Rand," Loial said, "or they would just have taken the Horn. It would be much easier to take that if they could, rather than the whole chest."

  Rand nodded. "They must have put it in a cart, or on a horse. Once they get it beyond the Foregate, they'll join the Trollocs again, for sure. You will be able to follow that trail, Hurin."

  "I will, my Lord."

  "Then you rest until you're fit," Rand told him. The sniffer looked steadier, but he rode slumped, and his face was weary. "At best, they will only be a few hours ahead of us. If we ride hard …" Suddenly he noticed that the others were looking at him, Verin and Ingtar, Mat and Perrin. He realized what he had been doing, and his face colored. "I am sorry, Ingtar. It's just that I've become used to being in charge, I suppose. I'm not trying to take your place."

  Ingtar nodded slowly. "Moiraine chose well when she made Lord Agelmar name you my second. Perhaps it would have been better if the Amyrlin Seat had given you the charge." The Shienaran barked a laugh. "At least you have actually managed to touch the Horn."

  After that they rode in silence.

  The Great Tree could have been twin to The Defender of the Dragonwall, a tall stone cube of a building with a common room paneled in dark wood and decorated with silver, a large, polished clock on the mantel over the fireplace. The innkeeper could have been Cuale's sister. Mistress Tiedra had the same slightly plump look and the same unctuous manner — and the same sharp eyes, the same air of listening to what was behind the words you spoke. But Tiedra knew Verin, and her welcoming smile for the Aes Sedai was warm; she never mentioned Aes Sedai aloud, but Rand was sure she knew.

  Tiedra and a swarm of servants saw to their horses and settled them in their rooms. Rand's room was as fine as the one that had burned, but he was more interested in the big copper bathtub two serving men wres
tled through the door, and the steaming buckets of water scullery maids brought up from the kitchen. One look in the mirror above the washstand showed him a face that looked as if he had rubbed it with charcoal, and his coat had black smears across the red wool.

  He stripped off and climbed into the tub, but he thought as much as washed. Verin was there. One of three Aes Sedai that he could trust not to try to gentle him themselves, or turn him over to those who would. Or so it seemed, at least. One of three who wanted him to believe he was the Dragon Reborn, to use him as a false Dragon. She's Moiraine's eyes watching me, Moiraine's hand trying to pull my strings. But I have cut the strings.

  His saddlebags had been brought up, and a bundle from the packhorse containing fresh clothes. He toweled off and opened the bundle — and sighed. He had forgotten that both the other coats he had were as ornate as the one he had tossed on the back of a chair for a maid to clean. After a moment, he chose the black coat, to suit his mood. Silver herons stood on the high collar, and silver rapids ran down his sleeves, water battered to froth against jagged rocks.

  Transferring things from his old coat to his new, he found the parchments. Absently, he stuffed the invitations in his pocket as he studied Selene's two letters. He wondered how he could have been such a fool. She was the beautiful young daughter of a noble House. He was a shepherd whom Aes Sedai were trying to use, a man doomed to go mad if he did not die first. Yet he could still feel the pull of her just looking at her writing, could almost smell the perfume of her.

  "I am a shepherd," he told the letters, "not a great man, and if I could marry anyone, it would be Egwene, but she wants to be Aes Sedai, and how can I marry any woman, love any woman, when I'll go mad and maybe kill her?"

  Words could not lessen his memory of Selene's beauty, though, or the way she made his blood go warm just by looking at him. It almost seemed to him that she was in the room with him, that he could smell her perfume, so much so that he looked around, and laughed to find himself alone.