“I never saw or heard or smelled anything that couldn’t be talked about,” Tam said, but Fain was not finished.
“The Aes Sedai are already into it,” the peddler spoke up. “A party of them has ridden south from Tar Valon. Since he can wield the Power, none but Aes Sedai can defeat him, for all the battles they fight, or deal with him once he’s defeated. If he is defeated.”
Someone in the crowd moaned aloud, and even Tam and Bran exchanged uneasy frowns. Huddles of villagers clumped together, and some pulled their cloaks tighter around themselves, though the wind had actually lessened.
“Of course, he’ll be defeated,” someone shouted.
“They’re always beaten in the end, false Dragons.”
“He has to be defeated, doesn’t he?”
“What if he isn’t?”
Tam had finally managed to speak quietly into the Mayor’s ear, and Bran, nodding from time to time and ignoring the hubbub around them, waited until he was finished before raising his own voice.
“All of you listen. Be quiet and listen!” The shouting died to a murmur again. “This goes beyond mere news from outside. It must be discussed by the Village Council. Master Fain, if you will join us inside the inn, we have questions to ask.”
“A good mug of hot mulled wine would not go far amiss with me just now,” the peddler replied with a chuckle. He jumped down from the wagon, dusted his hands on his coat, and cheerfully righted his cloak. “Will you be looking after my horses, if you please?”
“I want to hear what he has to say!” More than one voice was raised in protest.
“You can’t take him off! My wife sent me to buy pins!” That was Wit Congar; he hunched his shoulders at the stares some of the others gave him, but he held his ground.
“We’ve a right to ask questions, too,” somebody back in the crowd shouted. “I—”
“Be silent!” the Mayor roared, producing a startled hush. “When the Council has asked its questions, Master Fain will be back to tell you all his news. And to sell you his pots and pins. Hu! Tad! Stable Master Fain’s horses.”
Tam and Bran moved in on either side of the peddler, the rest of the Council gathered behind them, and the whole cluster swept into the Winespring Inn, firmly shutting the door in the faces of those who tried to crowd inside after them. Pounding on the door brought only a single shout from the Mayor.
“Go home!”
People milled around in front of the inn muttering about what the peddler had said, and what it meant, and what questions the Council was asking, and why they should be allowed to listen and ask questions of their own. Some peered in through the front windows of the inn, and a few even questioned Hu and Tad, though it was far from clear what they were supposed to know. The two stolid stablemen just grunted in reply and went on methodically removing the team’s harness. One by one they led Fain’s horses away and, when the last was gone, did not return.
Rand ignored the crowd. He took a seat on the edge of the old stone foundation, gathered his cloak around him, and stared at the inn door. Ghealdan. Tar Valon. The very names were strange and exciting. They were places he knew only from peddlers’ news, and tales told by merchants’ guards. Aes Sedai and wars and false Dragons: those were the stuff of stories told late at night in front of the fireplace, with one candle making strange shapes on the wall and the wind howling against the shutters. On the whole, he believed he would rather have blizzards and wolves. Still, it must be different out there, beyond the Two Rivers, like living in the middle of a gleeman’s tale. An adventure. One long adventure. A whole lifetime of it.
Slowly the villagers dispersed, still muttering and shaking their heads. Wit Congar paused to stare into the now-abandoned wagon as though he might find another peddler hidden inside. Finally only a few of the younger folk were left. Mat and Perrin drifted over to where Rand sat.
“I don’t see how the gleeman could beat this,” Mat said excitedly. “I wonder if we might get to see this false Dragon?”
Perrin shook his shaggy head. “I don’t want to see him. Somewhere else, maybe, but not in the Two Rivers. Not if it means war.”
“Not if it means Aes Sedai here, either,” Rand added. “Or have you forgotten who caused the Breaking? The Dragon may have started it, but it was Aes Sedai who actually broke the world.”
“I heard a story once,” Mat said slowly, “from a wool-buyer’s guard. He said the Dragon would be reborn in mankind’s greatest hour of need, and save us all.”
“Well, he was a fool if he believed that,” Perrin said firmly. “And you were a fool to listen.” He did not sound angry; he was slow to anger. But he sometimes got exasperated with Mat’s quicksilver fancies, and there was a touch of that in his voice. “I suppose he claimed we’d all live in a new Age of Legends afterwards, too.”
“I didn’t say I believed it,” Mat protested. “I just heard it. Nynaeve did, too, and I thought she was going to skin me and the guard both. He said—the guard did—that a lot of people do believe, only they’re afraid to say so, afraid of the Aes Sedai or the Children of the Light. He wouldn’t say any more after Nynaeve lit into us. She told the merchant, and he said it was the guard’s last trip with him.”
“A good thing, too,” Perrin said. “The Dragon going to save us? Sounds like Coplin talk to me.”
“What kind of need would be great enough that we’d want the Dragon to save us from it?” Rand mused. “As well ask for help from the Dark One.”
“He didn’t say,” Mat replied uncomfortably. “And he didn’t mention any new Age of Legends. He said the world would be torn apart by the Dragon’s coming.”
“That would surely save us,” Perrin said dryly. “Another Breaking.”
“Burn me!” Mat growled. “I’m only telling you what the guard said.”
Perrin shook his head. “I just hope the Aes Sedai and this Dragon, false or not, stay where they are. Maybe that way the Two Rivers will be spared.”
“You think they’re really Darkfriends?” Mat was frowning thoughtfully.
“Who?” Rand asked.
“Aes Sedai.”
Rand glanced at Perrin, who shrugged. “The stories,” he began slowly, but Mat cut him off.
“Not all the stories say they serve the Dark One, Rand.”
“Light, Mat,” Rand said, “they caused the Breaking. What more do you want?”
“I suppose.” Mat sighed, but the next moment he was grinning again. “Old Bili Congar says they don’t exist. Aes Sedai. Darkfriends. Says they’re just stories. He says he doesn’t believe in the Dark One, either.”
Perrin snorted. “Coplin talk from a Congar. What else can you expect?”
“Old Bili named the Dark One. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”
“Light!” Rand breathed.
Mat’s grin broadened. “It was last spring, just before the cutworm got into his fields and nobody else’s. Right before everybody in his house came down with yelloweye fever. I heard him do it. He still says he doesn’t believe, but whenever I ask him to name the Dark One now, he throws something at me.”
“You are just stupid enough to do that, aren’t you, Matrim Cauthon?” Nynaeve al’Meara stepped into their huddle, the dark braid pulled over her shoulder almost bristling with anger. Rand scrambled to his feet. Slender and barely taller than Mat’s shoulder, at the moment the Wisdom seemed taller than any of them, and it did not matter that she was young and pretty. “I suspected something of the sort about Bili Congar at the time, but I thought you at least had more sense than to try taunting him into such a thing. You may be old enough to be married, Matrim Cauthon, but in truth you shouldn’t be off your mother’s apron strings. The next thing, you’ll be naming the Dark One yourself.”
“No, Wisdom,” Mat protested, looking as if he would rather be anywhere else than there. “It was old Bil—I mean, Master Congar, not me! Blood and ashes, I—”
“Watch your tongue, Matrim!”
Rand stood up straighter,
though her glare was not directed at him. Perrin looked equally abashed. Later one or another of them would almost certainly complain about being scolded by a woman not all that much older than themselves—someone always did after one of Nynaeve’s scoldings, if never in her hearing—but the gap in ages always seemed more than wide enough when face-to-face with her. Especially if she was angry. The stick in her hand was thick at one end and a slender switch at the other, and she was liable to give a flail to anybody she thought was acting the fool—head or hands or legs—no matter their age or position.
The Wisdom so held his attention that at first Rand failed to see she was not alone. When he realized his mistake, he began to think about leaving no matter what Nynaeve would say or do later.
Egwene stood a few paces behind the Wisdom, watching intently. Of a height with Nynaeve, and with the same dark coloring, she could at that moment have been a reflection of Nynaeve’s mood, arms crossed beneath her breasts, mouth tight with disapproval. The hood of her soft gray cloak shaded her face, and her big brown eyes held no laughter now.
If there was any fairness, he thought that being two years older than her should give him some advantage, but that was not the way of it. At the best of times he was never very nimble with his tongue when talking to any of the village girls, not like Perrin, but whenever Egwene gave him that intent look, with her eyes as wide as they would go, as if every last ounce of her attention was on him, he just could not seem to make the words go where he wanted. Perhaps he could get away as soon as Nynaeve finished. But he knew he would not, even if he did not understand why.
“If you are done staring like a moonstruck lamb, Rand al’Thor,” Nynaeve said, “perhaps you can tell me why you were talking about something even you three great bullcalves ought to have sense enough to keep out of your mouths.”
Rand gave a start and pulled his eyes away from Egwene; she had grown a disconcerting smile when the Wisdom began speaking. Nynaeve’s voice was tart, but she had the beginnings of a knowing smile on her face, too—until Mat laughed aloud. The Wisdom’s smile vanished, and the look she gave Mat cut his laughter off in a strangled croak.
“Well, Rand?” Nynaeve said.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Egwene still smiling. What does she think is so funny? “It was natural enough to talk of it, Wisdom,” he said hurriedly. “The peddler—Padan Fain . . . ah . . . Master Fain—brought news of a false Dragon in Ghealdan, and a war, and Aes Sedai. The Council thought it was important enough to talk to him. What else would we be talking about?”
Nynaeve shook her head. “So that’s why the peddler’s wagon stands abandoned. I heard people rushing to meet it, but I couldn’t leave Mistress Ayellin till her fever broke. The Council is questioning the peddler about what’s happening in Ghealdan, are they? If I know them, they’re asking all the wrong questions and none of the right ones. It will take the Women’s Circle to find out anything useful.” Settling her cloak firmly on her shoulders she disappeared into the inn.
Egwene did not follow the Wisdom. As the inn door closed behind Nynaeve, the younger woman came to stand in front of Rand. The frowns were gone from her face, but her unblinking stare made him uneasy. He looked to his friends, but they moved away, grinning broadly as they abandoned him.
“You shouldn’t let Mat get you mixed up in his foolishness, Rand,” Egwene said, as solemn as a Wisdom herself, then abruptly she giggled. “I haven’t seen you look like that since Cenn Buie caught you and Mat up in his apple trees when you were ten.”
He shifted his feet and glanced at his friends. They stood not far away, Mat gesturing excitedly as he talked.
“Will you dance with me tomorrow?” That was not what he had meant to say. He did want to dance with her, but at the same time he wanted nothing so little as the uncomfortable way he was sure to feel while he was with her. The way he felt right then.
The corners of her mouth quirked up in a small smile. “In the afternoon,” she said. “I will be busy in the morning.”
From the others came Perrin’s exclamation. “A gleeman!”
Egwene turned toward them, but Rand put a hand on her arm. “Busy? How?”
Despite the chill she pushed back the hood of her cloak and with apparent casualness pulled her hair forward over her shoulder. The last time he had seen her, her hair had hung in dark waves below her shoulders, with only a red ribbon keeping it back from her face; now it was worked into a long braid.
He stared at that braid as if it were a viper, then stole a glance at the Spring Pole, standing alone on the Green now, ready for tomorrow. In the morning unmarried women of marriageable age would dance the Pole. He swallowed hard. Somehow, it had never occurred to him that she would reach marriageable age at the same time that he did.
“Just because someone is old enough to marry,” he muttered, “doesn’t mean they should. Not right away.”
“Of course not. Or ever, for that matter.”
Rand blinked. “Ever?”
“A Wisdom almost never marries. Nynaeve has been teaching me, you know. She says I have a talent, that I can learn to listen to the wind. Nynaeve says not all Wisdoms can, even if they say they do.”
“Wisdom!” he hooted. He failed to notice the dangerous glint in her eye. “Nynaeve will be Wisdom here for another fifty years at least. Probably more. Are you going to spend the rest of your life as her apprentice?”
“There are other villages,” she replied heatedly. “Nynaeve says the villages north of the Taren always choose a Wisdom from away. They think it stops her from having favorites among the village folk.”
His amusement melted as fast as it had come. “Outside the Two Rivers? I’d never see you again.”
“And you wouldn’t like that? You have not given any sign lately that you’d care one way or another.”
“No one ever leaves the Two Rivers,” he went on. “Maybe somebody from Taren Ferry, but they’re all strange anyway. Hardly like Two Rivers folk at all.”
Egwene gave an exasperated sigh. “Well, maybe I’m strange, too. Maybe I want to see some of the places I hear about in the stories. Have you ever thought of that?”
“Of course I have. I daydream sometimes, but I know the difference between daydreams and what’s real.”
“And I do not?” she said furiously, and promptly turned her back on him.
“That wasn’t what I meant. I was talking about me. Egwene?”
She jerked her cloak around her, a wall to shut him off, and stiffly walked a few paces away. He rubbed his head in frustration. How to explain? This was not the first time she had squeezed meanings from his words that he never knew were in them. In her present mood, a misstep would only make matters worse, and he was fairly sure that nearly anything he said would be a misstep.
Mat and Perrin came back then. Egwene ignored their coming. They looked at her hesitantly, then crowded close to Rand.
“Moiraine gave Perrin a coin, too,” Mat said. “Just like ours.” He paused before adding, “And he saw the rider.”
“Where?” Rand demanded. “When? Did anybody else see him? Did you tell anyone?”
Perrin raised broad hands in a slowing gesture. “One question at a time. I saw him on the edge of the village, watching the smithy, just at twilight yesterday. Gave me the shivers, he did. I told Master Luhhan, only nobody was there when he looked. He said I was seeing shadows. But he carried his biggest hammer around with him while we were banking the forge-fire and putting the tools up. He’s never done that before.”
“So he believed you,” Rand said, but Perrin shrugged.
“I don’t know. I asked him why he was carrying the hammer if all I saw was shadows, and he said something about wolves getting bold enough to come into the village. Maybe he thought that’s what I saw, but he ought to know I can tell the difference between a wolf and a man on horseback, even at dusk. I know what I saw, and nobody is going to make me believe different.”
“I believe you,” Rand said. “Reme
mber, I saw him, too.” Perrin gave a satisfied grunt, as if he had not been sure of that.
“What are you talking about?” Egwene demanded suddenly.
Rand suddenly wished he had spoken more quietly. He would have if he had realized she was listening. Mat and Perrin, grinning like fools, fell all over themselves telling her of their encounters with the black-cloaked rider, but Rand kept silent. He was sure he knew what she would say when they were done.
“Nynaeve was right,” Egwene announced to the sky when the two youths fell silent. “None of you is ready to be off leading strings. People do ride horses, you know. That doesn’t make them monsters out of a gleeman’s tale.” Rand nodded to himself; it was just as he had thought. She rounded on him. “And you’ve been spreading these tales. Sometimes you have no sense, Rand al’Thor. The winter has been frightening enough without you going about scaring the children.”
Rand gave a sour grimace. “I haven’t spread anything, Egwene. But I saw what I saw, and it was no farmer out looking for a strayed cow.”
Egwene drew a deep breath and opened her mouth, but whatever she had been going to say vanished as the door of the inn opened and a man with shaggy white hair came hurrying out as if pursued.
CHAPTER
4
The Gleeman
The door of the inn banged shut behind the white-haired man, and he spun around to glare at it. Lean, he would have been tall if not for a stoop to his shoulders, but he moved in a spry fashion that belied his apparent age. His cloak seemed a mass of patches, in odd shapes and sizes, fluttering with every breath of air, patches in a hundred colors. It was really quite thick, Rand saw, despite what Master al’Vere had said, with the patches merely sewn on like decorations.
“The gleeman!” Egwene whispered excitedly.
The white-haired man whirled, cloak flaring. His long coat had odd, baggy sleeves and big pockets. Thick mustaches, as snowy as the hair on his head, quivered around his mouth, and his face was gnarled like a tree that had seen hard times. He gestured imperiously at Rand and the others with a long-stemmed pipe, ornately carved, that trailed a wisp of smoke. Blue eyes peered out from under bushy white brows, drilling into whatever he looked at.
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