The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  Mat grew impatient when they found nothing but dust, or rubble, or colorless rags of wall hangings that crumbled at a touch. Once some wooden chairs stood stacked against a wall; they all fell to bits when Perrin tried to pick one up.

  The palaces, with their huge, empty chambers, some of which could have held the Winespring Inn with room to spare on every side and above as well, made Rand think too much of the people who had once filled them. He thought everybody in the Two Rivers could have stood under that round dome, and as for the place with the stone benches. . . . He could almost imagine he could see the people in the shadows, staring in disapproval at the three intruders disturbing their rest.

  Finally even Mat tired, grand as the buildings were, and remembered that he had had only an hour’s sleep the night before. Everyone began to remember that. Yawning, they sat on the steps of a tall building fronted by row on row of tall stone columns and argued about what to do next.

  “Go back,” Rand said, “and get some sleep.” He put the back of his hand against his mouth. When he could talk again, he said, “Sleep. That’s all I want.”

  “You can sleep anytime,” Mat said determinedly. “Look at where we are. A ruined city. Treasure.”

  “Treasure?” Perrin’s jaws cracked. “There isn’t any treasure here. There isn’t anything but dust.”

  Rand shaded his eyes against the sun, a red ball sitting close to the rooftops. “It’s getting late, Mat. It’ll be dark soon.”

  “There could be treasure,” Mat maintained stoutly. “Anyway, I want to climb one of the towers. Look at that one over there. It’s whole. I’ll bet you could see for miles from up there. What do you say?”

  “The towers are not safe,” said a man’s voice behind them.

  Rand leaped to his feet and spun around clutching his sword hilt, and the others were just as quick.

  A man stood in the shadows among the columns at the top of the stairs. He took half a step forward, raised his hand to shield his eyes, and stepped back again. “Forgive me,” he said smoothly. “I have been quite a long time in the dark inside. My eyes are not yet used to the light.”

  “Who are you?” Rand thought the man’s accent sounded odd, even after Baerlon; some words he pronounced strangely, so Rand could barely understand them. “What are you doing here? We thought the city was empty.”

  “I am Mordeth.” He paused as if expecting them to recognize the name. When none of them gave any sign of doing so, he muttered something under his breath and went on. “I could ask the same questions of you. There has been no one in Aridhol for a long time. A long, long time. I would not have thought to find three young men wandering its streets.”

  “We’re on our way to Caemlyn,” Rand said. “We stopped to take shelter for the night.”

  “Caemlyn,” Mordeth said slowly, rolling the name around his tongue, then shook his head. “Shelter for the night, you say? Perhaps you will join me.”

  “You still haven’t said what you’re doing here,” Perrin said.

  “Why, I am a treasure hunter, of course.”

  “Have you found any?” Mat demanded excitedly.

  Rand thought Mordeth smiled, but in the shadows he could not be sure. “I have,” the man said. “More than I expected. Much more. More than I can carry away. I never expected to find three strong, healthy young men. If you will help me move what I can take to where my horses are, you may each have a share of the rest. As much as you can carry. Whatever I leave will be gone, carried off by some other treasure hunter, before I can return for it.”

  “I told you there must be treasure in a place like this,” Mat exclaimed. He darted up the stairs. “We’ll help you carry it. Just take us to it.” He and Mordeth moved deeper into the shadows among the columns.

  Rand looked at Perrin. “We can’t leave him.” Perrin glanced at the sinking sun, and nodded.

  They went up the stairs warily, Perrin easing his axe in its belt loop. Rand’s hand tightened on his sword. But Mat and Mordeth were waiting among the columns, Mordeth with arms folded, Mat peering impatiently into the interior.

  “Come,” Mordeth said. “I will show you the treasure.” He slipped inside, and Mat followed. There was nothing for the others to do but go on.

  The hall inside was shadowy, but almost immediately Mordeth turned aside and took some narrow steps that wound around and down through deeper and deeper dark until they fumbled their way in pitch-blackness. Rand felt along the wall with one hand, unsure there would be a step below until his foot met it. Even Mat began to feel uneasy, judging by his voice when he said, “It’s awfully dark down here.”

  “Yes, yes,” Mordeth replied. The man seemed to be having no trouble at all with the dark. “There are lights below. Come.”

  Indeed the winding stairs abruptly gave way to a corridor dimly lit by scattered, smoky torches set in iron sconces on the walls. The flickering flames and shadows gave Rand his first good look at Mordeth, who hurried on without pausing, motioning them to follow.

  There was something odd about him, Rand thought, but he could not pick out what it was, exactly. Mordeth was a sleek, somewhat overfed man, with drooping eyelids that made him seem to be hiding behind something and staring. Short, and completely bald, he walked as if he were taller than any of them. His clothes were certainly like nothing Rand had ever seen before, either. Tight black breeches and soft red boots with the tops turned down at his ankles. A long, red vest thickly embroidered in gold, and a snowy white shirt with wide sleeves, the points of his cuffs hanging almost to his knees. Certainly not the kind of clothes in which to hunt through a ruined city in search of treasure. But it was not that which made him seem strange, either.

  Then the corridor ended in a tile-walled room, and he forgot about any oddities Mordeth might have. His gasp was an echo of his friends’. Here, too, light came from a few torches staining the ceiling with their smoke and giving everyone more than one shadow, but that light was reflected a thousand times by the gems and gold piled on the floor, mounds of coins and jewelry, goblets and plates and platters, gilded, gem-encrusted swords and daggers, all heaped together carelessly in waist-high mounds.

  With a cry Mat ran forward and fell to his knees in front of one of the piles. “Sacks,” he said breathlessly, pawing through the gold. “We’ll need sacks to carry all of this.”

  “We can’t carry it all,” Rand said. He looked around helplessly; all the gold the merchants brought to Emond’s Field in a year would not have made the thousandth part of just one of those mounds. “Not now. It’s almost dark.”

  Perrin pulled an axe free, carelessly tossing back the gold chains that had been tangled around it. Jewels glittered along its shiny black handle, and delicate gold scrollwork covered the twin blades. “Tomorrow, then,” he said, hefting the axe with a grin. “Moiraine and Lan will understand when we show them this.”

  “You are not alone?” Mordeth said. He had let them rush past him into the treasure room, but now he followed. “Who else is with you?”

  Mat, wrist deep in the riches before him, answered absently. “Moiraine and Lan. And then there’s Nynaeve, and Egwene, and Thom. He’s a gleeman. We’re going to Tar Valon.”

  Rand caught his breath. Then the silence from Mordeth made him look at the man.

  Rage twisted Mordeth’s face, and fear, too. His lips pulled back from his teeth. “Tar Valon!” He shook clenched fists at them. “Tar Valon! You said you were going to this . . . this . . . Caemlyn! You lied to me!”

  “If you still want,” Perrin said to Mordeth, “we’ll come back tomorrow and help you.” Carefully he set the axe back on the heap of gem-encrusted chalices and jewelry. “If you want.”

  “No. That is. . . .” Panting, Mordeth shook his head as if he could not decide. “Take what you want. Except. . . . Except. . . .”

  Suddenly Rand realized what had been nagging at him about the man. The scattered torches in the hallway had given each of them a ring of shadows, just as the torches in the
treasure room did. Only. . . . He was so shocked he said it out loud. “You don’t have a shadow.”

  A goblet fell from Mat’s hand with a crash.

  Mordeth nodded, and for the first time his fleshy eyelids opened all the way. His sleek face suddenly appeared pinched and hungry. “So.” He stood straighter, seeming taller. “It is decided.” Abruptly there was no seeming to it. Like a balloon Mordeth swelled, distorted, head pressed against the ceiling, shoulders butting the walls, filling the end of the room, cutting off escape. Hollow-cheeked, teeth bared in a rictus snarl, he reached out with hands big enough to engulf a man’s head.

  With a yell Rand leaped back. His feet tangled in a gold chain, and he crashed to the floor, the wind knocked out of him. Struggling for breath, he struggled at the same time for his sword, fighting his cloak, which had become wrapped around the hilt. The yells of his friends filled the room, and the clash of gold platters and goblets clattering across the floor. Suddenly an agonized scream shivered in Rand’s ears.

  Almost sobbing, he managed to inhale at last, just as he got the sword out of its sheath. Cautiously, he got to his feet, wondering which of his friends had given that scream. Perrin looked back at him wide-eyed from across the room, crouched and holding his axe back as if about to chop down a tree. Mat peered around the side of a treasure pile, clutching a dagger snatched from the trove.

  Something moved in the deepest part of the shadows left by the torches, and they all jumped. It was Mordeth, clutching his knees to his chest and huddled as deep into the furthest corner as he could get.

  “He tricked us,” Mat panted. “It was some kind of trick.”

  Mordeth threw back his head and wailed; dust sifted down as the walls trembled. “You are all dead!” he cried. “All dead!” And he leaped up, diving across the room.

  Rand’s jaw dropped, and he almost dropped the sword as well. As Mordeth dove through the air, he stretched out and thinned, like a tendril of smoke. As thin as a finger he struck a crack in the wall tiles and vanished into it. A last cry hung in the room as he vanished, fading slowly away after he was gone.

  “You are all dead!”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Perrin said faintly, firming his grip on his axe while he tried to face every direction at once. Gold ornaments and gems scattered unnoticed under his feet.

  “But the treasure,” Mat protested. “We can’t just leave it now.”

  “I don’t want anything of his,” Perrin said, still turning one way after another. He raised his voice and shouted at the walls. “It’s your treasure, you hear? We are not taking any of it!”

  Rand stared angrily at Mat. “Do you want him coming after us? Or are you going to wait here stuffing your pockets until he comes back with ten more like him?”

  Mat just gestured to all the gold and jewels. Before he could say anything, though, Rand seized one of his arms and Perrin grabbed the other. They hustled him out of the room, Mat struggling and shouting about the treasure.

  Before they had gone ten steps down the hall, the already dim light behind them began to fail. The torches in the treasure room were going out. Mat stopped shouting. They hastened their steps. The first torch outside the room winked out, then the next. By the time they reached the winding stairs there was no need to drag Mat any longer. They were all running, with the dark closing in behind them. Even the pitch-black of the stairs only made them hesitate an instant, then they sped upwards, shouting at the top of their lungs. Shouting to scare anything that might be waiting; shouting to remind themselves they were still alive.

  They burst out into the hall above, sliding and falling on the dusty marble, scrambling out through the columns, to tumble down the stairs and land in a bruised heap in the street.

  Rand untangled himself and picked Tam’s sword up from the pavement, looking around uneasily. Less than half of the sun still showed above the rooftops. Shadows reached out like dark hands, made blacker by the remaining light, nearly filling the street. He shivered. The shadows looked like Mordeth, reaching.

  “At least we’re out of it.” Mat got up from the bottom of the pile, dusting himself off in a shaky imitation of his usual manner. “And at least I—”

  “Are we?” Perrin said.

  Rand knew it was not his imagination this time. The back of his neck prickled. Something was watching them from the darkness in the columns. He spun around, staring at the buildings across the way. He could feel eyes on him from there, too. His grip tightened on his sword hilt, though he wondered what good it would be. Watching eyes seemed to be everywhere. The others looked around warily; he knew they could feel it, too.

  “We stay in the middle of the street,” he said hoarsely. They met his eyes; they looked as frightened as he felt. He swallowed hard. “We stay in the middle of the street, keep out of shadows as much as we can, and walk fast.”

  “Walk very fast,” Mat agreed fervently.

  The watchers followed them. Or else there were lots of watchers, lots of eyes staring out of almost every building. Rand could not see anything move, hard as he tried, but he could feel the eyes, eager, hungry. He did not know which would be worse. Thousands of eyes, or just a few, following them.

  In the stretches where the sun still reached them, they slowed, just a little, squinting nervously into the darkness that always seemed to lay ahead. None of them was eager to enter the shadows; no one was really sure something might not be waiting. The watchers’ anticipation was a palpable thing whenever shadows stretched across the street, barring their way. They ran through those dark places shouting. Rand thought he could hear dry, rustling laughter.

  At last, with twilight falling, they came in sight of the white stone building they had left what seemed like days ago. Suddenly the watching eyes departed. Between one step and the next, they vanished in a blink. Without a word Rand broke into a trot, followed by his friends, then a full run that only ended when they hared through the doorway and collapsed, panting.

  A small fire burned in the middle of the tile floor, the smoke vanishing through a hole in the ceiling in a way that reminded Rand unpleasantly of Mordeth. Everyone except Lan was there, gathered around the flames, and their reactions varied considerably. Egwene, warming her hands at the fire, gave a start as the three burst into the room, clutching her hands to her throat; when she saw who it was, a relieved sigh spoiled her attempt at a withering look. Thom merely muttered something around his pipestem, but Rand caught the word “fools” before the gleeman went back to poking the flames with a stick.

  “You wool-headed witlings!” the Wisdom snapped. She bristled from head to foot; her eyes glittered, and bright spots of red burned on her cheeks. “Why under the Light did you run off like that? Are you all right? Have you no sense at all? Lan is out looking for you now, and you’ll be luckier than you deserve if he does not pound some sense into the lot of you when he gets back.”

  The Aes Sedai’s face betrayed no agitation at all, but her hands had loosed a white-knuckled grip on her dress at the sight of them. Whatever Nynaeve had given her must have helped, for she was on her feet. “You should not have done what you did,” she said in a voice as clear and serene as a Waterwood pond. “We will speak of it later. Something happened out there, or you would not be falling all over one another like this. Tell me.”

  “You said it was safe,” Mat complained, scrambling to his feet. “You said Aridhol was an ally of Manetheren, and Trollocs wouldn’t come into the city, and—”

  Moiraine stepped forward so suddenly that Mat cut off with his mouth open, and Rand and Perrin paused in getting up, halfway crouched or on their knees. “Trollocs? Did you see Trollocs inside the walls?”

  Rand swallowed. “Not Trollocs,” he said, and all three began talking excitedly, all at the same time.

  Everyone began in a different place. Mat started with finding the treasure, sounding almost as if he had done it alone, while Perrin began explaining why they had gone off in the first place without telling anyone. Rand
jumped right to what he thought was important, meeting the stranger among the columns. But they were all so excited that nobody told anything in the order it happened; whenever one of them thought of something, he blurted it out with no regard for what came before or after, or for who was saying what. The watchers. They all babbled about the watchers.

  It made the whole tale close to incoherent, but their fear came through. Egwene began casting uneasy glances at the empty windows fronting the street. Out there the last remnants of twilight were fading; the fire seemed very small and dim. Thom took his pipe from between his teeth and listened with his head cocked, frowning. Moiraine’s eyes showed concern, but not an undue amount. Until. . . .

  Suddenly the Aes Sedai hissed, and grabbed Rand’s elbow in a tight grip. “Mordeth! Are you sure of that name? Be very sure, all of you. Mordeth?”

  They murmured a chorused “Yes,” taken aback by the Aes Sedai’s intensity.

  “Did he touch you?” she asked them all. “Did he give you anything, or did you do anything for him? I must know.”

  “No,” Rand said. “None of us. None of those things.”

  Perrin nodded agreement, and added, “All he did was try to kill us. Isn’t that enough? He swelled up until he filled half the room, shouted that we were all dead men, then vanished.” He moved his hand to demonstrate. “Like smoke.” Egwene gave a squeak.

  Mat twisted away petulantly. “Safe, you said! All that talk about Trollocs not coming here. What were we supposed to think?”

  “Apparently you did not think at all,” she said, coolly composed once more. “Anyone who thinks would be wary of a place that Trollocs are afraid to enter.”

  “Mat’s doing,” Nynaeve said, certainty in her voice. “He’s always talking some mischief or other, and the others lose the little wits they were born with when they’re around him.”

  Moiraine nodded briefly, but her eyes remained on Rand and his two friends. “Late in the Trolloc Wars, an army camped within these ruins—Trollocs, Darkfriends, Myrddraal, Dreadlords, thousands in all. When they did not come out, scouts were sent inside the walls. The scouts found weapons, bits of armor, and blood splattered everywhere. And messages scratched on walls in the Trolloc tongue, calling on the Dark One to aid them in their last hour. Men who came later found no trace of the blood or the messages. They had been scoured away. Halfmen and Trollocs remember still. That is what keeps them outside this place.”