The Great Hunt

by Jordan, Robert

  “Old fool,” he muttered.

  “Aye, an old fool,” Zera said from the door. He gave a start; he had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he had not heard the door open. He had known Zera for years, off and on in his wanderings, and she always took full advantage of the friendship to speak her mind. “An old fool who’s playing the Game of Houses again. Unless my ears are failing, that young lord has the sound of Andor on his tongue. He’s no Cairhienin, that’s for certain sure. Daes Dae’mar is dangerous enough without letting an outland lord mix you in his schemes.”

  Thom blinked, then considered the way Rand had looked. That coat had surely been fine enough for a lord. He was growing old, letting things like that slip by him. Ruefully, he realized he was considering whether to tell Zera the truth or let her continue thinking as she did. All it takes is to think about the Great Game, and I start playing it. “The boy is a shepherd, Zera, from the Two Rivers.”

  She laughed scornfully. “And I’m the Queen of Ghealdan. I tell you, the Game has grown dangerous in Cairhien the last few years. Nothing like what you knew in Caemlyn. There are murders done, now. You’ll have your throat cut for you, if you don’t watch out.”

  “I tell you, I am not in the Great Game any longer. That’s all twenty years in the past, near enough.”

  “Aye.” She did not sound as if she believed it. “But be that as it may, and young outland lords aside, you’ve begun performing at the lords’ manors.”

  “They pay well.”

  “And they’ll pull you into their plots as soon as they see how. They see a man, and think how to use him, as naturally as breathing. This young lord of yours won’t help you; they will eat him alive.”

  He gave up on trying to convince her he was out of it. “Is that what you came up to say, Zera?”

  “Aye. Forget playing the Great Game, Thom. Marry Dena. She’ll take you, the more fool her, bony and white-haired as you are. Marry her, and forget this young lord and Daes Dae’mar.”

  “I thank you for the advice,” he said dryly. Marry her? Burden her with an old husband. She’ll never be a bard with my past hanging around her neck. “If you don’t mind, Zera, I want to be alone for a while. I perform for Lady Arilyn and her guests tonight, and I need to prepare.”

  She gave him a snort and a shake of her head and banged the door shut behind her.

  Thom drummed his fingers on the table. Coat or no coat, Rand was still only a shepherd. If he had been more, if he had been what Thom once suspected—a man who could channel—neither Moiraine nor any other Aes Sedai would ever have let him walk away ungentled. Horn or no Horn, the boy was only a shepherd.

  “He is out of it,” he said aloud, “and so am I.”

  CHAPTER 27

  The Shadow in the Night

  “I do not understand it,” Loial said. “I was winning, most of the time. And then Dena came in and joined the game, and she won it all right back. Every toss. She called it a little lesson. What did she mean by that?”

  Rand and the Ogier were making their way through the Foregate, The Bunch of Grapes behind them. The sun sat low in the west, a red ball half below the horizon, throwing long shadows behind them. The street was empty save for one of the big puppets, a goat-horned Trolloc with a sword at its belt, coming toward them with five men working the poles, but sounds of merriment drifted still from other parts of the Foregate, where the halls of entertainment and the taverns stood. Here, doors were already barred and windows shuttered.

  Rand stopped fingering the wooden flute case and slung it on his back. I suppose I couldn’t expect him to throw over everything and come with me, but at least he could talk to me. Light, I wish Ingtar would show up. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and felt Selene’s note.

  “You don’t suppose she. . . .” Loial paused uncomfortably. “You don’t suppose she cheated, do you? Everybody was grinning as if she were doing something clever.”

  Rand shrugged at his cloak. I have to take the Horn and go. If we wait for Ingtar, anything can happen. Fain will come sooner or later. I have to stay ahead of him. The men with the puppet were almost to them.

  “Rand,” Loial said suddenly, “I don’t think that’s a—”

  Abruptly the men let their poles clatter to the packed dirt street; instead of collapsing, the Trolloc leaped for Rand with outstretched hands.

  There was no time to think. Instinct brought the sword out of its sheath in a flashing arc. The Moon Rises Over the Lakes. The Trolloc staggered back with a bubbling cry, snarling even as it fell.

  For an instant everyone stood frozen. Then the men—the Darkfriends, they had to be—looked from the Trolloc lying in the street to Rand, with the sword in his hands and Loial at his side. They turned and ran.

  Rand was staring at the Trolloc, too. The void had surrounded him before his hand touched hilt; saidin shone in his mind, beckoning, sickening. With an effort, he made the void vanish, and licked his lips. Without the emptiness, fear crawled on his skin.

  “Loial, we have to get back to the inn. Hurin’s alone, and they—” He grunted as he was lifted into the air by a thick arm long enough to pin both of his to his chest. A hairy hand grabbed his throat. He caught sight of a tusked snout just over his head. A rank smell filled his nose, equal parts sour sweat and pigsty.

  As quickly as it had seized him, the hand at his throat was torn away. Stunned, Rand stared at it, at the thick Ogier fingers clutching the Trolloc’s wrist.

  “Hold on, Rand.” Loial’s voice sounded strained. The Ogier’s other hand came around and took hold of the arm still holding Rand above the ground. “Hold on.”

  Rand was shaken from side to side as Ogier and Trolloc struggled. Abruptly he fell free. Staggering, he took two steps to get clear and turned back with sword raised.

  Standing behind the boar-snouted Trolloc, Loial had it by wrist and forearm, holding its arms spread wide, breathing hard with the effort. The Trolloc snarled gutturally in the harsh Trolloc tongue, throwing its head back in efforts to catch Loial with a tusk. Their boots scuffled across the dirt of the street.

  Rand tried to find a place to put his blade in the Trolloc without hurting Loial, but Ogier and Trolloc spun in their rough dance so much that he could find no opening.

  With a grunt, the Trolloc pulled its left arm free, but before it could loose itself completely, Loial snapped his own arm around its neck, hugging the creature close. The Trolloc clawed at its sword; the scythe-like blade hung on the wrong side for left-handed use, but inch by inch the dark steel began sliding out of the scabbard. And still they thrashed about so that Rand could not strike without risking Loial.

  The Power. That could do it. How, he did not know, but he knew nothing else to try. The Trolloc had its sword half unsheathed. When the curved blade was bare, it would kill Loial.

  Reluctantly, Rand formed the void. Saidin shone at him, pulled at him. Dimly, he seemed to recall a time when it had sung to him, but now it only drew him, a flower’s perfume drawing a bee, a midden’s stench drawing a fly. He opened himself up, reached for it. There was nothing there. He could as well have been reaching for light in truth. The taint slid off onto him, soiling him, but there was no flow of light inside him. Driven by a distant desperation, he tried again and again. And again and again there was only the taint.

  With a sudden heave, Loial threw the Trolloc aside, so hard that the thing cartwheeled against the side of a building. It struck, headfirst, with a loud crack, and slid down the wall to lie with its neck twisted at an impossible angle. Loial stood staring at it, his chest heaving.

  Rand looked out of the emptiness for a moment before he realized what had happened. As soon as he did, though, he let void and tainted light go, and hurried to Loial’s side.

  “I never . . . killed before, Rand.” Loial drew a shuddering breath.

  “It would have killed you if you hadn’t,” Rand told him. Anxiously, he looked at the alleys and shuttered windows and barred doors. Where there were two Trollocs,
there had to be more. “I’m sorry you had to do it, Loial, but it would have killed both of us, or worse.”

  “I know. But I cannot like it. Even a Trolloc.” Pointing toward the setting sun, the Ogier seized Rand’s arm. “There’s another of them.”

  Against the sun, Rand could not make out details, but it appeared to be another group of men with a huge puppet, coming toward Loial and him. Except that now he knew what to look for, the “puppet” moved its legs too naturally, and the snouted head rose to sniff the air without anyone lifting a pole. He did not think the Trolloc and Darkfriends could see him among the evening shadows, or what lay in the street around him; they moved too slowly for that. Yet it was plain they were hunting, and coming closer.

  “Fain knows I am out here somewhere,” he said, hastily wiping his blade on a dead Trolloc’s coat. “He’s set them to find me. He is afraid of the Trollocs being seen, though, or he wouldn’t have them disguised. If we can reach a street where there are people, we’ll be safe. We have to get back to Hurin. If Fain finds him, alone with the Horn. . . .”

  He pulled Loial along to the next corner and turned toward the nearest sounds of laughter and music, but long before they reached it, another group of men appeared ahead of them in the otherwise empty street with a puppet that was no puppet. Rand and Loial took the next turning. It led east.

  Every time Rand tried to reach the music and laughter, there was a Trolloc in the way, often sniffing the air for a scent. Some Trollocs hunted by scent. Sometimes, here where there were no eyes to see, a Trolloc stalked alone. More than once he was sure it was one he had seen before. They were closing in, and making sure he and Loial did not leave the deserted streets with their shuttered windows. Slowly the two of them were forced east, away from the city and Hurin, away from other people, along narrow, slowly darkening streets that ran in all directions, uphill and down. Rand eyed the houses they passed, the tall buildings closed up tight for the night, with more than a little regret. Even if he pounded on a door until someone opened it, even if they took Loial and him in, none of the doors he saw would stop a Trolloc. All that would do would be to offer up more victims with Loial and himself.

  “Rand,” Loial said finally, “there is nowhere else to go.”

  They had reached the eastern edge of the Foregate; the tall buildings to either side of them were the last. Lights in windows on the upper stories mocked him, but the lower floors were all shut tight. Ahead lay the hills, cloaked in first twilight and bare of so much as a farmhouse. Not entirely empty, though. He could just make out pale walls surrounding one of the larger hills, perhaps a mile away, and buildings inside.

  “Once they push us out there,” Loial said, “they won’t have to worry who sees them.”

  Rand gestured to the walls around the hill. “Those should stop a Trolloc. It must be a lord’s manner. Maybe they’ll let us in. An Ogier, and an outland lord? This coat has to be good for something sooner or later.” He looked back down the street. No Trollocs in sight yet, but he drew Loial around the side of the building anyway.

  “I think that is the Illuminators’ chapter house, Rand. Illuminators guard their secrets tightly. I don’t think they would let Galldrian himself inside there.”

  “What trouble have you gotten yourself into now?” said a familiar woman’s voice. There was suddenly a spicy perfume in the air.

  Rand stared: Selene stepped around the corner they had just rounded, her white dress bright in the dimness. “How did you get here? What are you doing here? You have to leave immediately. Run! There are Trollocs after us.”

  “So I saw.” Her voice was dry, yet cool and composed. “I came to find you, and I find you allowing Trollocs to herd you like sheep. Can the man who possesses the Horn of Valere let himself be treated so?”

  “I don’t have it with me,” he snapped, “and I don’t know how it could help if I did. The dead heroes are not supposed to come back to save me from Trollocs. Selene, you have to get away. Now!” He peered around the corner.

  Not more than a hundred paces away, a Trolloc was sticking its horned head cautiously into the street, smelling the night. A large shadow by its side had to be another Trolloc, and there were smaller shadows, too. Darkfriends.

  “Too late,” Rand muttered. He shifted the flute case to pull off his cloak and wrap it around her. It was long enough to hide her white dress entirely, and trail on the ground besides. “You’ll have to hold that up to run,” he told her. “Loial, if they won’t let us in, we will have to find a way to sneak in.”

  “But, Rand—”

  “Would you rather wait for the Trollocs?” He gave Loial a push to start him, and took Selene’s hand to follow at a trot. “Find us a path that won’t break our necks, Loial.”

  “You’re letting yourself become flustered,” Selene said. She seemed to have less trouble following Loial in the failing light than Rand did. “Seek the Oneness, and be calm. One who would be great must always be calm.”

  “The Trollocs might hear you,” he told her. “I don’t want greatness.” He thought he heard an irritated grunt from her.

  Stones sometimes turned underfoot, but the way across the hills was not hard despite the twilight shadows. Trees, and even brush, had long since been cleared from the hills for firewood. Nothing grew except knee-high grass that rustled softly around their legs. A night breeze came up softly. Rand worried that it might carry their scent to the Trollocs.

  Loial stopped when they reached the wall; it stood twice as high as the Ogier, the stones covered with a whitish plaster. Rand peered back toward the Foregate. Bands of lighted windows reached out like spokes of a wheel from the city walls.

  “Loial,” he said softly, “can you see them? Are they following us?”

  The Ogier looked in the direction of the Foregate, and nodded unhappily. “I only see some of the Trollocs, but they are coming this way. Running. Rand, I really don’t think—”

  Selene cut him off. “If he wants to go in, alantin, he needs a door. Such as that one.” She pointed to a dark patch a little down the wall. Even with her telling him, Rand was not certain it was a door, but when she strode to it and pulled, it opened.

  “Rand,” Loial began.

  Rand pushed him to the door. “Later, Loial. And softly. We’re hiding, remember?” He got them inside and closed the door behind them. There were brackets for a bar, but no bar to be seen. It would not stop anyone, but maybe the Trollocs would hesitate to come inside the walls.

  They were in an alleyway leading up the hill between two long, low windowless buildings. At first he thought they were stone, too, but then he realized the white plaster had been laid over wood. It was dark enough now for the moon reflecting from the walls to give a semblance of light.

  “Better to be arrested by the Illuminators than taken by Trollocs,” he murmured, starting up the hill.

  “But that is what I was trying to tell you,” Loial protested. “I’ve heard the Illuminators kill intruders. They keep their secrets hard and fast, Rand.”

  Rand stopped dead and stared back at the door. The Trollocs were still out there. At the worst, humans had to be better to deal with than Trollocs. He might be able to talk the Illuminators into letting them go; Trollocs did not listen before they killed. “I’m sorry I got you into this, Selene.”

  “Danger adds a certain something,” she said softly. “And so far, you handle it well. Shall we see what we find?” She brushed past him up the alleyway. Rand followed, the spicy smell of her filling his nostrils.

  Atop the hill, the alleyway opened onto a wide expanse of smoothly flattened clay, almost as pale as the plaster and nearly surrounded by more white, windowless buildings with the shadows of narrow alleys between, but to Rand’s right stood one building with windows, light falling onto the pale clay. He pulled back into the shadows of the alley as a man and a woman appeared, walking slowly across the open space.

  Their clothes were certainly not Cairhienin. The man wore breeches as baggy
as his shirt sleeves, both in a soft yellow, with embroidery on the legs of his breeches and across the chest of his shirt. The woman’s dress, worked elaborately across the breast, seemed a pale green, and her hair was done in a multitude of short braids.

  “All is in readiness, you say?” the woman demanded. “You are certain, Tammuz? All?”

  The man spread his hands. “Always you check behind me, Aludra. All is in readiness. The display, it could be given this very moment.”

  “The gates and doors, they are all barred? All of the . . . ?” Her voice faded as they moved on to the far end of the lighted building.

  Rand studied the open area, recognizing almost nothing. In the middle of it, several dozen upright tubes, each nearly as tall as he and a foot or more across, sat on large wooden bases. From each tube, a dark, twisted cord ran across the ground and behind a low wall, perhaps three paces long, on the far side. All around the open space stood a welter of wooden racks with troughs and tubes and forked sticks and a score of other things.

  All the fireworks he had ever seen could be held in one hand, and that was as much as he knew, except that they burst with a great roar, or whizzed along the ground in spirals of sparks, or sometimes shot into the air. They always came with warnings from the Illuminators that opening one could cause it to go off. In any case, fireworks were too expensive for the Village Council to have allowed anybody unskilled to open one. He could well remember the time when Mat had tried to do just that; it was nearly a week before anyone but Mat’s own mother would speak to him. The only thing that Rand found familiar at all was the cords—the fuses. That, he knew, was where you set the fire.

  With a glance back at the unbarred door, he motioned the others to follow and started around the tubes. If they were going to find a place to hide, he wanted to be as far from that door as he could.

  It meant making their way between the racks, and Rand held his breath every time he brushed against one. The things in them shifted with the slightest touch, rattling. All of them seemed to be made of wood, without a piece of metal. He could imagine the racket if one were knocked over. He eyed the tall tubes warily, remembering the bang made by one the size of his finger. If those were fireworks, he did not want to be this close to them.