The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  Aielman.

  With a start he realized he was standing right in front of the Palace gates, right where Elaida could find him easily once she finished with the Queen. Pulling his cloak close, he broke into a trot, across the plaza and into the streets of the Inner City. He looked back frequently to see if anyone was following him, but the sweeping curves kept him from seeing very far. He could remember Elaida’s eyes all too well, though, and imagined them watching. By the time he reached the gates to the New City, he was running.

  CHAPTER

  41

  Old Friends and New Threats

  Back at The Queen’s Blessing, Rand threw himself against the front doorframe, panting. He had run all the way, not caring if anyone saw that he wore the red, or even if they took his running as an excuse to chase him. He did not think even a Fade could have caught him.

  Lamgwin was sitting on a bench by the door, a brindle cat in his arms, when he came running up. The man stood to look for trouble the way Rand had come, still calmly scratching behind the cat’s ears. Seeing nothing, he sat back down again, careful not to disturb the animal. “Fools tried to steal some of the cats a while back,” he said. He examined his knuckles before going back to his scratching. “Good money in cats these days.”

  The two men showing the white were still across the way, Rand saw, one with a black eye and a swollen jaw. That one wore a sour scowl and rubbed his sword hilt with a sullen eagerness as he watched the inn.

  “Where’s Master Gill?” Rand asked.

  “Library,” Lamgwin replied. The cat began purring, and he grinned. “Nothing bothers a cat for long, not even somebody trying to stick him in a sack.”

  Rand hurried inside, through the common room, now with its usual complement of men wearing the red and talking over their ale. About the false Dragon, and whether the Whitecloaks would make trouble when he was taken north. No one cared what happened to Logain, but they all knew the Daughter-Heir and Lord Gawyn would be traveling in the party, and no man there would countenance any risk to them.

  He found Master Gill in the library, playing stones with Loial. A plump tabby sat on the table, feet tucked under her, watching their hands move over the cross-hatched board.

  The Ogier placed another stone with a touch oddly delicate for his thick fingers. Shaking his head, Master Gill took the excuse of Rand’s appearance to turn from the table. Loial almost always won at stones. “I was beginning to worry where you were, lad. Thought you might have had trouble with some of those white-flashing traitors, or run into that beggar or something.”

  For a minute Rand stood there with his mouth open. He had forgotten all about that bundle-of-rags of a man. “I saw him,” he said finally, “but that’s nothing. I saw the Queen, too, and Elaida; that’s where the trouble is.”

  Master Gill snorted a laugh. “The Queen, eh? You don’t say. We had Gareth Bryne out in the common room an hour or so ago, arm-wrestling the Lord Captain-Commander of the Children, but the Queen, now . . . that’s something.”

  “Blood and ashes,” Rand growled, “everybody thinks I’m lying today.” He tossed his cloak across the back of a chair and threw himself onto another. He was too wound up to sit back. He perched on the front edge, mopping his face with a handkerchief. “I saw the beggar, and he saw me, and I thought. . . . That’s not important. I climbed up on a wall around a garden, where I could see the plaza in front of the Palace, where they took Logain in. And I fell off, on the inside.”

  “I almost believe you aren’t making fun,” the innkeeper said slowly.

  “Ta’veren,” Loial murmured.

  “Oh, it happened,” Rand said. “Light help me, it did.”

  Master Gill’s skepticism melted slowly as he went on, turning to quiet alarm. The innkeeper leaned more and more forward until he was perched on the edge of his chair the same as Rand was. Loial listened impassively, except that every so often he rubbed his broad nose and the tufts on his ears gave a little twitch.

  Rand told everything that had happened, everything except what Elaida had whispered to him. And what Gawyn had said at the Palace gate. One he did not want to think about; the other had nothing to do with anything. I’m Tam al’Thor’s son, even if I wasn’t born in the Two Rivers. I am! I’m Two Rivers blood, and Tam is my father.

  Abruptly he realized he had stopped talking, caught up in his thoughts, and they were looking at him. For one panicky moment he wondered if he had said too much.

  “Well,” Master Gill said, “there’s no more waiting for your friends for you. You will have to leave the city, and fast. Two days at the most. Can you get Mat on his feet in that time, or should I send for Mother Grubb?”

  Rand gave him a perplexed look. “Two days?”

  “Elaida is Queen Morgase’s advisor, right next to Captain-General Gareth Bryne himself. Maybe ahead of him. If she sets the Queen’s Guards looking for you—Lord Gareth won’t stop her unless she interferes with their other duties—well, the Guards can search every inn in Caemlyn in two days. And that’s saying some ill chance doesn’t bring them here the first day, or the first hour. Maybe there’s a little time if they start over at the Crown and Lion, but none for dawdling.”

  Rand nodded slowly. “If I can’t get Mat out of that bed, you send for Mother Grubb. I have a little money left. Maybe enough.”

  “I’ll take care of Mother Grubb,” the innkeeper said gruffly. “And I suppose I can lend you a couple of horses. You try walking to Tar Valon and you’ll wear through what’s left of your boots halfway there.”

  “You’re a good friend,” Rand said. “It seems like we’ve brought you nothing but trouble, but you’re still willing to help. A good friend.”

  Master Gill seemed embarrassed. He shrugged his shoulders and cleared his throat and looked down. That brought his eyes to the stones board, and he jerked them away again. Loial was definitely winning. “Aye, well, Thom’s always been a good friend to me. If he’s willing to go out of his way for you, I can do a little bit, too.”

  “I would like to go with you when you leave, Rand,” Loial said suddenly.

  “I thought that was settled, Loial.” He hesitated—Master Gill still did not know the whole of the danger—then added, “You know what waits for Mat and me, what’s chasing us.”

  “Darkfriends,” the Ogier replied in a placid rumble, “and Aes Sedai, and the Light knows what else. Or the Dark One. You are going to Tar Valon, and there is a very fine grove there, which I have heard the Aes Sedai tend well. In any case, there is more to see in the world than the groves. You truly are ta’veren, Rand. The Pattern weaves itself around you, and you stand in the heart of it.”

  This man stands at the heart of it. Rand felt a chill. “I don’t stand at the heart of anything,” he said harshly.

  Master Gill blinked, and even Loial seemed taken aback at his anger. The innkeeper and the Ogier looked at each other, and then at the floor. Rand forced his expression smooth, drawing deep breaths. For a wonder he found the void that had eluded him so often of late, and calmness. They did not deserve his anger.

  “You can come, Loial,” he said. “I don’t know why you would want to, but I’d be grateful for the company. You . . . you know how Mat is.”

  “I know,” Loial said. “I still cannot go into the streets without raising a mob shouting ‘Trolloc’ after me. But Mat, at least, only uses words. He has not tried to kill me.”

  “Of course not,” Rand said. “Not Mat.” He wouldn’t go that far. Not Mat.

  A tap came at the door, and one of the serving maids, Gilda, stuck her head into the room. Her mouth was tight, and her eyes worried. “Master Gill, come quickly, please. There’s Whitecloaks in the common room.”

  Master Gill leaped up with an oath, sending the cat jumping from the table to stalk out of the room, tail stiff and offended. “I’ll come. Run tell them I’m coming, then stay out of their way. You hear me, girl? Keep away from them.” Gilda bobbed her head and vanished. “You had best stay here,�
�� he told Loial.

  The Ogier snorted, a sound like sheets ripping. “I have no desire for any more meetings with the Children of the Light.”

  Master Gill’s eye fell on the stones board and his mood seemed to lighten. “It looks as if we’ll have to start the game over later.”

  “No need for that.” Loial stretched an arm to the shelves and took down a book; his hands dwarfed the clothbound volume. “We can take up from where the board lies. It is your turn.”

  Master Gill grimaced. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another,” he muttered as he hurried from the room.

  Rand followed him, but slowly. He had no more desire than Loial to become involved with the Children. This man stands at the heart of it. He stopped at the door to the common room, where he could see what went on, but far enough back that he hoped he would not be noticed.

  Dead silence filled the room. Five Whitecloaks stood in the middle of the floor, studiously being ignored by the folk at the tables. One of them had the silver lightning-flash of an under-officer beneath the sunburst on his cloak. Lamgwin was lounging against the wall by the front door, intently cleaning his fingernails with a splinter. Four more of the guards Master Gill had hired were spaced across the wall from him, all industriously paying no attention at all to the Whitecloaks. If the Children of the Light noticed anything, they gave no sign. Only the under-officer showed any emotion at all, impatiently tapping his steel-backed gauntlets against his palm as he waited for the innkeeper.

  Master Gill crossed the room to him quickly, a cautiously neutral look on his face. “The Light illumine you,” he said with a careful bow, not too deep, but not slight enough to actually be insulting, either, “and our good Queen Morgase. How may I help—”

  “I’ve no time for your drivel, innkeeper,” the under-officer snapped. “I’ve been to twenty inns already today, each a worse pigsty than the last, and I’ll see twenty more before the sun sets. I’m looking for Darkfriends, a boy from the Two Rivers—”

  Master Gill’s face grew darker with every word. He puffed up as if he would explode, and finally he did, cutting the Whitecloak off in turn. “There are no Darkfriends in my establishment! Every man here is a good Queen’s man!”

  “Yes, and we all know where Morgase stands,” the under-officer twisted the Queen’s name into a sneer, “and her Tar Valon witch, don’t we?”

  The scrape of chair legs was loud. Suddenly every man in the room was on his feet. They stood still as statues, but every one staring grimly at the Whitecloaks. The under-officer did not appear to notice, but the four behind him looked around uneasily.

  “It will go easier with you, innkeeper,” the under-officer said, “if you cooperate. The temper of the times goes hard with those who shelter Darkfriends. I wouldn’t think an inn with the Dragon’s Fang on its door would get much custom. Might have trouble with fire, with that on your door.”

  “You get out of here now,” Master Gill said quietly, “or I’ll send for the Queen’s Guards to cart what’s left of you to the middens.”

  Lamgwin’s sword rasped out of its sheath, and the coarse scrape of steel on leather was repeated throughout the room as swords and daggers filled hands. Serving maids scurried for the doors.

  The under-officer looked around in scornful disbelief. “The Dragon’s Fang—”

  “Won’t help you five,” Master Gill finished for him. He held up a clenched fist and raised his forefinger. “One.”

  “You must be mad, innkeeper, threatening the Children of the Light.”

  “Whitecloaks hold no writ in Caemlyn. Two.”

  “Can you really believe this will end here?”

  “Three.”

  “We’ll be back,” the under-officer snapped, and then he was hastily turning his men around, trying to pretend he was leaving in good order and in his own time. He was hampered in this by the eagerness his men showed for the door, not running, but not making secret that they wanted to be outside.

  Lamgwin stood across the door with his sword, only giving way in response to Master Gill’s frantic waves. When the Whitecloaks were gone, the innkeeper dropped heavily onto a chair. He rubbed a hand across his forehead, then stared at it as if surprised that it was not covered with sweat. All over the room men seated themselves again, laughing over what they had done. Some went over to clap Master Gill on the shoulder.

  When he saw Rand, the innkeeper tottered off the chair and over to him. “Who would have thought I had it in me to be a hero?” he said wonderingly. “The Light illumine me.” Abruptly he gave himself a shake, and his voice regained almost its normal tone. “You’ll have to stay out of sight until I can get you out of the city.” With a careful look back into the common room, he pushed Rand deeper into the hall. “That lot will be back, or else a few spies wearing red for the day. After that little show I put on, I doubt they’ll care whether you’re here or not, but they’ll act as though you are.”

  “That’s crazy,” Rand protested. At the innkeeper’s gesture he lowered his voice. “The Whitecloaks don’t have any reason to be after me.”

  “I don’t know about reasons, lad, but they’re after you and Mat for certain sure. What have you been up to? Elaida and the Whitecloaks.”

  Rand raised his hands in protest, then let them fall. It made no sense, but he had heard the Whitecloak. “What about you? The Whitecloaks will make trouble for you even when they don’t find us.”

  “No worries about that, lad. The Queen’s Guards still uphold the law, even if they do let traitors strut around showing white. As for the night . . . well, Lamgwin and his friends might not get much sleep, but I could almost pity anybody who tries to put a mark on my door.”

  Gilda appeared beside them, dropping a curtsy to Master Gill. “Sir, there’s . . . there’s a lady. In the kitchens.” She sounded scandalized at the combination. “She’s asking for Master Rand, sir, and Master Mat, by name.”

  Rand exchanged a puzzled look with the innkeeper.

  “Lad,” Master Gill said, “if you’ve actually managed to bring the Lady Elayne down from the Palace to my inn, we’ll all end up facing the headsman.” Gilda squeaked at the mention of the Daughter-Heir and gave Rand a round-eyed stare. “Off with you, girl,” the innkeeper said sharply. “And keep quiet about what you’ve heard. It’s nobody’s business.” Gilda bobbed again and darted down the hallway, flashing glances over her shoulder at Rand as she went. “In five minutes”—Master Gill sighed—“she will be telling the other women you’re a prince in disguise. By nightfall it will be all over the New City.”

  “Master Gill,” Rand said, “I never mentioned Mat to Elayne. It can’t be—” Suddenly a huge smile lit up his face, and he ran for the kitchens.

  “Wait!” the innkeeper called behind him. “Wait until you know. Wait, you fool!”

  Rand threw open the door to the kitchens, and there they were. Moiraine rested her serene eyes on him, unsurprised. Nynaeve and Egwene ran laughing to throw their arms around him, with Perrin crowding in behind them, all three patting his shoulders as if they had to be convinced that he was really there. In the doorway leading to the stableyard Lan lounged with one boot up on the doorframe, dividing his attention between the kitchen and the yard outside.

  Rand tried to hug the two women and shake Perrin’s hand, all at the same time, and it was a tangle of arms and laughter complicated by Nynaeve trying to feel his face for fever. They looked somewhat the worse for wear—bruises on Perrin’s face, and he had a way of keeping his eyes downcast that he had never had before—but they were alive, and together again. His throat was so tight he could barely talk. “I was afraid I’d never see you again,” he managed finally. “I was afraid you were all. . . .”

  “I knew you were alive,” Egwene said against his chest. “I always knew it. Always.”

  “I did not,” Nynaeve said. Her voice was sharp for just that moment, but it softened in the next, and she smiled up at him. “You look well, Rand. Not overfed by any means, but wel
l, thank the Light.”

  “Well,” Master Gill said behind him, “I guess you know these people after all. Those friends you were looking for?”

  Rand nodded. “Yes, my friends.” He made introductions all around; it still felt odd to be giving Lan and Moiraine their right names. They both eyed him sharply when he did.

  The innkeeper greeted everyone with an open smile, but he was properly impressed at meeting a Warder, and especially at Moiraine. At her he gaped openly—it was one thing knowing an Aes Sedai had been helping the boys, quite something else having her appear in the kitchen—then bowed deeply. “You are welcome to The Queen’s Blessing, Aes Sedai, as my guest. Though I suppose you will be staying at the Palace with Elaida Sedai, and the Aes Sedai who came with the false Dragon.” Bowing again, he gave Rand a quick, worried look. It was all very well to say he did not speak ill of Aes Sedai, but that was not the same as saying he wanted one sleeping under his roof.

  Rand nodded encouragingly, trying to tell him silently that it was all right. Moiraine was not like Elaida, with a threat hidden behind every glance, under every word. Are you sure? Even now, are you sure?

  “I believe I will stay here,” Moiraine said, “for the short time I remain in Caemlyn. And you must allow me to pay.”

  A calico cat sauntered in from the hallway to strop the innkeeper’s ankles. No sooner had the calico begun than a fuzzy gray sprang from under the table, arching its back and hissing. The calico crouched with a threatening growl, and the gray streaked past Lan into the stableyard.

  Master Gill began apologizing for the cats at the same time he protested that Moiraine would honor him by being his guest, and was she sure she would not prefer the Palace, which he would quite understand, but he hoped she would accept his best room as a gift. It made a jumble to which Moiraine seemed to pay no attention at all. Instead she bent down to scratch the orange-and-white cat; it promptly left Master Gill’s ankles for hers.