The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  Rand swung down from the back of a merchant’s canvas-topped wagon as they came abreast of a garishly painted inn, all greens and yellows that caught the eye from afar among the leaden houses. The line of wagons kept moving. None of the drivers even seemed to notice that he and Mat had gone; dusk was falling, and they all had their eyes on unhitching the horses and reaching the inns. Rand stumbled in a rut, then leaped quickly to avoid a heavy-laden wagon clattering the other way. The driver shouted a curse at him as the wagon rolled by. A village woman stepped around him and hurried on without ever meeting his eye.

  “I don’t know about this place,” he said. He thought he could hear music mixed in the din, but he could not tell from where it was coming. From the inn, maybe, but it was hard to be sure. “I don’t like it. Maybe we’d better go on this time.”

  Mat gave him a scornful look, then rolled his eyes at the sky. Dark clouds thickened overhead. “And sleep under a hedge tonight? In that? I’m used to a bed again.” He cocked his head to listen, then grunted. “Maybe one of these places doesn’t have musicians. Anyway, I’ll bet they don’t have a juggler.” He slung his bow across his shoulders and started for the bright yellow door, studying everything through narrowed eyes. Rand followed doubtfully.

  There were musicians inside, their zither and drum almost drowned in coarse laughter and drunken shouting. Rand did not bother to find the landlord. The next two inns had musicians as well, and the same deafening cacophony. Roughly dressed men filled the tables and stumbled across the floor, waving mugs and trying to fondle serving maids who dodged with fixed, long-suffering smiles. The buildings shook with the racket, and the smell was sour, a stench of old wine and unwashed bodies. Of the merchants, in their silk and velvet and lace, there was no sign; private dining rooms abovestairs protected their ears and noses. He and Mat only put their heads in the doors before leaving. He was beginning to think they would have no choice but to move on.

  The fourth inn, The Dancing Cartman, stood silent.

  It was as gaudy as the other inns, yellow trimmed in bright red and bilious, eye-wrenching green, though here the paint was cracked and peeling. Rand and Mat stepped inside.

  Only half a dozen men sat at the tables that filled the common room, hunched over their mugs, each one glumly alone with his thoughts. Business was definitely not good, but it had been better once. Exactly as many serving maids as there were patrons busied themselves around the room. There was plenty for them to do—dirt crusted the floor and cobwebs filled the corners of the ceiling—but most were not doing anything really useful, only moving so they would not be seen standing still.

  A bony man with long, stringy hair to his shoulders turned to scowl at them as they came through the door. The first slow peal of thunder rumbled across Four Kings. “What do you want?” He was rubbing his hands on a greasy apron that hung to his ankles. Rand wondered if more grime was coming off on the apron or on the man’s hands. He was the first skinny innkeeper Rand had seen. “Well? Speak up, buy a drink, or get out! Do I look like a raree show?”

  Flushing, Rand launched into the spiel he had perfected at inns before this. “I play the flute, and my friend juggles, and you’ll not see two better in a year. For a good room and a good meal, we’ll fill this common room of yours.” He remembered the filled common rooms he had already seen that evening, especially the man who had vomited right in front of him at the last one. He had had to step lively to keep his boots untouched. He faltered, but caught himself and went on. “We’ll fill your inn with men who will repay the little we cost twenty times over with the food and drink they buy. Why should—”

  “I’ve got a man plays the dulcimer,” the innkeeper said sourly.

  “You have a drunk, Saml Hake,” one of the serving maids said. She was passing him with a tray and two mugs, and she paused to give Rand and Mat a plump smile. “Most times, he can’t see well enough to find the common room,” she confided in a loud whisper. “Haven’t even seen him in two days.”

  Without taking his eyes off Rand and Mat, Hake casually backhanded her across the face. She gave a surprised grunt and fell heavily to the unwashed floor; one of the mugs broke, and the spilled wine washed rivulets in the dirt. “You’re docked for the wine and breakage. Get ’em fresh drinks. And hurry. Men don’t pay to wait while you laze around.” His tone was as offhand as the blow. None of the patrons looked up from their wine, and the other serving maids kept their eyes averted.

  The plump woman rubbed her cheek and stared pure murder at Hake, but she gathered the empty mug and the broken pieces on her tray and went off without a word.

  Hake sucked his teeth thoughtfully, eyeing Rand and Mat. His gaze clung to the heron-mark sword before he pulled it away. “Tell you what,” he said finally. “You can have a couple of pallets in an empty storeroom in the back. Rooms are too expensive to give away. You eat when everybody’s gone. There ought to be something left.”

  Rand wished there was an inn in Four Kings they had not yet tried. Since leaving Whitebridge he had met coolness, indifference, and outright hostility, but nothing that gave him the sense of unease that this man and this village did. He told himself it was just the dirt and squalor and noise, but the misgivings did not go away. Mat was watching Hake as if he suspected some trap, but he gave no sign of wanting to give up The Dancing Cartman for a bed under a hedge. Thunder rattled the windows. Rand sighed.

  “The pallets will do if they’re clean, and if there are enough clean blankets. But we eat two hours after full dark, no later, and the best you have. Here. We’ll show you what we can do.” He reached for the flute case, but Hake shook his head.

  “Don’t matter. This lot’ll be satisfied with any kind of screeching so long as it sounds something like music.” His eyes touched Rand’s sword again; his thin smile touched nothing but his lips. “Eat when you want, but if you don’t bring the crowd in, out you go in the street.” He nodded over his shoulder at two hard-faced men sitting against the wall. They were not drinking, and their arms were thick enough for legs. When Hake nodded at them, their eyes shifted to Rand and Mat, flat and expressionless.

  Rand put one hand on his sword hilt, hoping the twisting in his stomach did not show on his face. “As long as we get what’s agreed on,” he said in a level tone.

  Hake blinked, and for a moment he seemed uneasy himself. Abruptly he nodded. “What I said, isn’t it? Well, get started. You won’t bring anybody in just standing there.” He stalked off, scowling and shouting at the serving maids as if there were fifty customers they were neglecting.

  There was a small, raised platform at the far end of the room, near the door to the back. Rand lifted a bench up on it, and settled his cloak, blanketroll, and Thom’s bundled cloak behind the bench with the sword lying atop them.

  He wondered if he had been wise to keep wearing the sword openly. Swords were common enough, but the heron-mark attracted attention and speculation. Not from everybody, but any notice at all made him uncomfortable. He could be leaving a clear trail for the Myrddraal—if Fades needed that kind of trail. They did not seem to. In any case, he was reluctant to stop wearing it. Tam had given it to him. His father. As long as he wore the sword, there was still some connection between Tam and him, a thread that gave him the right to still call Tam father. Too late now, he thought. He was not sure what he meant, but he was sure it was true. Too late.

  At the first note of “Cock o’ the North” the half-dozen patrons in the common room lifted their heads out of their wine. Even the two bouncers sat forward a little. They all applauded when he finished, including the two toughs, and once more when Mat sent a shower of colored balls spinning through his hands. Outside, the sky muttered again. The rain was holding off, but the pressure of it was palpable; the longer it waited, the harder it would fall.

  Word spread, and by the time it was dark outside the inn was packed full with men laughing and talking so loud that Rand could barely hear what he was playing. Only the thunder overpowered the no
ise in the common room. Lightning flashed in the windows, and in the momentary lulls he could faintly hear rain drumming on the roof. Men who came in now dripped trails across the floor.

  Whenever he paused, voices shouted the names of tunes through the din. A good many names he did not recognize, though when he got someone to hum a bit of it, he often found he did know the song. It had been that way other places, before. “Jolly Jaim” was “Rhea’s Fling” here, and had been “Colors of the Sun” at an earlier stop. Some names stayed the same; others changed with ten miles’ distance, and he had learned new songs, too. “The Drunken Peddler” was a new one, though sometimes it was called “Tinker in the Kitchen.” “Two Kings Came Hunting” was “Two Horses Running” and several other names besides. He played the ones he knew, and men pounded the tables for more.

  Others called for Mat to juggle again. Sometimes fights broke out between those wanting music and those who fancied juggling. Once a knife flashed, and a woman screamed, and a man reeled back from a table with blood streaming down his face, but Jak and Strom, the two bouncers, closed in swiftly and with complete impartiality threw everyone involved into the street with lumps on their heads. That was their tactic with any trouble. The talk and the laughing went on as if nothing had occurred. Nobody even looked around except those the bouncers jostled on their way to the door.

  The patrons were free with their hands, too, when one of the serving maids let herself grow unwary. More than once Jak or Strom had to rescue one of the women, though they were none too quick about it. The way Hake carried on, screaming and shaking the woman involved, he always considered it her fault, and the teary eyes and stammered apologies said she was willing to accept his opinion. The women jumped whenever Hake frowned, even if he was looking somewhere else. Rand wondered why any of them put up with it.

  Hake smiled when he looked at Rand and Mat. After a while Rand realized Hake was not smiling at them; the smiles came when his eyes slid behind them, to where the heron-mark sword lay. Once, when Rand set the gold-and-silver-chased flute down beside his stool, the flute got a smile, too.

  The next time he changed places with Mat at the front of the dais, he leaned over to speak in Mat’s ear. Even that close he had to speak loudly, but with all the noise he doubted if anyone else could hear. “Hake’s going to try to rob us.”

  Mat nodded as if it was nothing he had not expected. “We’ll have to bar our door tonight.”

  “Bar our door? Jak and Strom could break down a door with their fists. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait till after we eat, at least. I’m hungry. They can’t do anything here,” Mat added. The packed common room shouted impatiently for them to get on with it. Hake was glaring at them. “Anyway, you want to sleep outside tonight?” An especially strong crack of lightning drowned out everything else, and for an instant the light through the windows was stronger than the lamps.

  “I just want to get out without my head being broken,” Rand said, but Mat was already slouching back to take his rest on the stool. Rand sighed and launched into “The Road to Dun Aren.” A lot of them seemed to like that one; he had already played it four times, and they still shouted for it.

  The trouble was that Mat was right, as far as he went. He was hungry, too. And he could not see how Hake could give them any trouble while the common room was full, and getting fuller. For every man who left or was thrown out by Jak and Strom, two came in from the street. They shouted for the juggling or for a particular tune, but mostly they were interested in drinking and fondling the serving maids. One man was different, though.

  He stood out in every way among the crowd in The Dancing Cartman. Merchants apparently had no use for the run-down inn; there were not even any private dining rooms for them, as far as he could make out. The patrons were all rough-dressed, with the tough skin of men who labored in the sun and wind. This man was sleekly fleshy, with a soft look to his hands, and a velvet coat, and a dark green velvet cloak lined with blue silk was slung around his shoulders. All of his clothes had an expensive cut to them. His shoes—soft velvet slippers, not boots—were not made for the rutted streets of Four Kings, or for any streets at all, for that matter.

  He came in well after dark, shaking the rain off his cloak as he looked around, a twist of distaste on his mouth. He scanned the room once, already turning to go, then suddenly gave a start at nothing Rand could see and sat down at a table Jak and Strom had just emptied. A serving maid stopped at his table, then brought him a mug of wine which he pushed to one side and never touched again. She seemed in a hurry to leave his table both times, though he did not try to touch her or even look at her. Whatever it was about him that made her uneasy, others who came close to him noticed it, too. For all of his soft look, whenever some callus-handed wagon driver decided to share his table, one glance was all it took to send the man looking elsewhere. He sat as if there were no one else in the room but him—and Rand and Mat. Them he watched over steepled hands that glittered with a ring on each finger. He watched them with a smile of satisfied recognition.

  Rand murmured to Mat as they were changing places again, and Mat nodded. “I saw him,” he muttered. “Who is he? I keep thinking I know him.”

  The same thought had occurred to Rand, tickling the back of his memory, but he could not bring it forward. Yet he was sure that face was one he had never seen before.

  When they had been performing for two hours, as near as Rand could estimate, he slipped the flute into its case and he and Mat gathered up their belongings. As they were stepping down from the low platform, Hake came bustling up, anger twisting his narrow face.

  “It’s time to eat,” Rand said to forestall him, “and we don’t want our things stolen. You want to tell the cook?” Hake hesitated, still angry, trying unsuccessfully to keep his eyes off what Rand held in his arms. Casually Rand shifted his bundles so he could rest one hand on the sword. “Or you can try throwing us out.” He made the emphasis deliberately, then added, “There’s a lot of night left for us to play, yet. We have to keep our strength up if we’re going to perform well enough to keep this crowd spending money. How long do you think this room will stay full if we fall over from hunger?”

  Hake’s eyes twitched over the room full of men putting money in his pocket, then he turned and stuck his head through the door to the rear of the inn. “Feed ’em!” he shouted. Rounding on Rand and Mat, he snarled, “Don’t be all night about it. I expect you up there till the last man’s gone.”

  Some of the patrons were shouting for the musician and the juggler, and Hake turned to soothe them. The man in the velvet cloak was one of the anxious ones. Rand motioned Mat to follow him.

  A stout door separated the kitchen from the front of the inn, and, except when it opened to let a serving maid through, the rain pounding the roof was louder in the kitchen than the shouts from the common room. It was a big room, hot and steamy from stoves and ovens, with a huge table covered with half-prepared food and dishes ready to be served. Some of the serving maids sat clustered on a bench near the rear door, rubbing their feet and chattering away all at once with the fat cook, who talked back at the same time and waved a big spoon to emphasize her points. They all glanced up as Rand and Mat came in, but it did not slow their conversation or stop their foot rubbing.

  “We ought to get out of here while we have the chance,” Rand said softly, but Mat shook his head, his eyes fixed on the two plates the cook was filling with beef and potatoes and peas. She hardly looked at the two of them, keeping up her talk with the other women while she pushed things aside on the table with her elbows and set the plates down, adding forks.

  “After we eat is time enough.” Mat slid onto a bench and began using his fork as if it were a shovel.

  Rand sighed, but he was right behind Mat. He had had only a butt-end of bread to eat since the night before. His belly felt as empty as a beggar’s purse, and the cooking smells that filled the kitchen did not help. He quickly had his mouth full, though Mat wa
s getting his plate refilled by the cook before he had finished half of his.

  He did not mean to eavesdrop on the women’s talk, but some of the words reached out and grabbed him.

  “Sounds crazy to me.”

  “Crazy or not, it’s what I hear. He went to half the inns in town before he came here. Just walked in, looked around, and walked out without saying one word, even at the Royal Inn. Like it wasn’t raining at all.”

  “Maybe he thought here was the most comfortable.” That brought gales of laughter.

  “What I hear is he didn’t even get to Four Kings till after nightfall, and his horses blowing like they’d been pushed hard.”

  “Where’d he come from, to get caught out after dark? Nobody but a fool or a madman travels anywhere and plans it that badly.”

  “Well, maybe he’s a fool, but he’s a rich one. I hear he even has another carriage for his servants and baggage. There’s money there, mark my words. Did you see that cloak of his? I wouldn’t mind having that my ownself.”

  “He’s a little plump for my taste, but I always say a man can’t be too fat if enough gold comes with it.” They all doubled over giggling, and the cook threw back her head and roared with laughter.