The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  One of the Maidens who had been scouting ahead came trotting back and fell in beside Rhuarc, speaking for his ear alone. She flashed Mat a grin when she was done, and he busied himself picking a sharp burr out of Pips’s mane. He remembered her all too well, a red-haired woman named Dorindha, about Egwene’s age. Dorindha was one of those who had talked him into trying Maidens’ Kiss. She had collected the first forfeit. It was not that he did not want to meet her eyes, certainly not that he could not; keeping your horse free of burrs and the like was important.

  “Peddlers,” Rhuarc announced when Dorindha sprinted off the way she had come. “Peddlers’ wagons, heading in this direction.” He did not sound pleased.

  Mat brightened considerably, though. A peddler might be just the thing. If the fellow knew the way in, he knew the way out. He wondered if Rand suspected what he was thinking; the man had gone as blank-faced as any of the Aiel.

  The Aiel picked up their pace a little—Couladin’s people imitated the Jindo and the Wise Ones’ party with hardly a hesitation; their own scouts had probably brought word, too—a quick enough step that the horses had to maintain a brisk walk. The sun did not bother the Aiel at all, not even the gai’shain in their white robes. They flowed over the broken ground.

  Less than two miles brought the wagons in sight, a dozen and a half of them, strung out in a line. All showed the wear of hard travel, with spare wheels lashed everywhere. Despite a coat of yellow dust, the first two looked like white-painted boxes on wheels, or little houses, complete with wooden steps at the back and a metal stove-chimney sticking through the roof. The last three, drawn by twenty-mule hitches, appeared no more than huge barrels, also white, doubtless full of water. Those in between could have done for peddlers’ wagons in the Two Rivers, with high stout-spoked wheels and clanking clusters of pots and things in big net bags tied all along the tall round canvas covers.

  The wagondrivers drew rein as soon as they spotted the Aiel, waiting for the columns to come to them. A heavy man in a pale gray coat and dark, wide-brimmed hat climbed down from the back of the lead wagon and stood watching, now and then taking off his flat-crowned hat to wipe his forehead with a large white handkerchief. If he was nervous, looking at maybe fifteen hundred Aiel sweeping toward him, Mat could not blame him. The strange thing was the expressions on the Aiel nearest Mat. Rhuarc, trotting ahead of Rand’s horse, looked grim, and Heirn wore a face that could break rocks.

  “I don’t understand,” Mat said. “You look like you’re going to kill somebody.” That would certainly put paid to his hopes. “I thought there were three kinds of people you Aiel let come out here in the Waste; peddlers, gleemen, and the Traveling People.”

  “Peddlers and gleemen are welcome,” Heirn replied curtly. If this was a welcome, Mat did not want to see Aiel being unwelcoming.

  “What about the Traveling People?” he asked curiously. When Heirn kept silent, he added, “Tinkers? The Tuatha’an?” The sept chief’s face grew even harder before he turned his eyes back to the wagons. Aviendha shot Mat a look as if he were a fool.

  Rand drew Jeade’en close to Pips. “I’d not mention Tinkers to the Aiel if I were you,” he said in a low voice. “They are . . . a touchy subject.”

  “If you say so.” Why would Tinkers be a touchy subject? “Looks to me like they’re being touchy enough about this peddler. Peddler! I can remember merchants who came to Emond’s Field with fewer wagons.”

  “He came into the Waste,” Rand chuckled. Jeade’en tossed his head and danced a few steps. “I wonder if he will leave it again?” Rand’s twisted grin did not reach his eyes. Sometimes Mat almost wished Rand would decide whether he was mad or not and get it over with. Almost.

  Three hundred paces short of the wagons, Rhuarc signaled a halt, and he and Heirn went on alone. At least, that seemed to have been his intention, but Rand heeled his dapple stallion after them, and the inevitable bodyguard of a hundred Jindo followed. And Aviendha, of course, keeping close as though tied to Rand’s horse. Mat rode right with them. If Rhuarc sent this fellow packing, he did not mean to miss his chance to go along.

  Couladin came trotting out from the Shaido. Alone. Perhaps he meant to do as Rhuarc and Heirn had intended, but Mat suspected the man was pointing out that he went alone where Rand needed a hundred guards. At first it seemed Moiraine was coming, too, but words passed between the Wise Ones and her, and they all stayed where they were. Watching, though. The Aes Sedai dismounted, playing with something small that sparkled, and Egwene and the Wise Ones clustered around her.

  Despite his face mopping, the big, gray-coated fellow did not appear uneasy up close, although he jumped when Maidens suddenly rose out of the ground, encircling his wagons. The wagon drivers, hard-faced men with more than enough scars and broken noses to go around, looked ready to crawl under their seats; they were tough alley dogs compared to Aiel wolves. The peddler recovered right away. He was not fat for all his size; that heaviness was muscle. Rand and Mat on their horses earned his curious glances, but he singled out Rhuarc at once. His hooked beak of a nose and dark, tilted eyes gave his square swarthy face a predatory look not lessened when he put on a wide smile and swept his broad-brimmed hat off in a bow. “I am Hadnan Kadere,” he said, “peddler. I seek Cold Rocks Hold, good sirs, but I will trade with one and all. I have many fine—”

  Rhuarc cut him off like an icy knife. “You head well away from Cold Rocks, or any hold. How is it you have come this far from the Dragonwall without acquiring a guide?”

  “I do not really know, good sir.” Kadere did not lose his smile, but the corners of his mouth tightened a trifle. “I have traveled openly. This is my first visit to the Three-fold Land so far south. I thought perhaps here there are no guides.” Couladin snorted loudly, twirled one of his spears lazily. Kadere hunched his shoulders as if he felt steel sliding into his thick body already.

  “There are always guides,” Rhuarc said coldly. “You have luck to have come so far without one. Luck that you are not dead, or walking back to the Dragonwall in your skin.” Kadere flashed an uneasy, toothy smile, and the clan chief went on. “Luck to meet us. Had you continued this way another day or two, you would have reached Rhuidean.”

  The peddler’s face went gray. “I have heard . . . .” He stopped to swallow. “I did not know, good sirs. You must believe, I would not do such a thing deliberately. Nor by accident,” he added hastily. “The Light illumine my words for truth, good sirs, I would not!”

  “That is well,” Rhuarc told him. “The penalties are severe. You may travel with me to Cold Rocks. It would not do for you to become lost again. The Three-fold Land can be a dangerous place for those who do not know it.”

  Couladin’s head came up defiantly. “Why not with me?” he said in a sharp voice. “The Shaido are the more numerous here, Rhuarc. By custom, he travels with me.”

  “Have you become a clan chief when I did not see?” The fire-haired Shaido flushed, but Rhuarc showed no hint of satisfaction, only went on in that level voice. “The peddler seeks Cold Rocks. He will journey with me. The Shaido with you may trade with him as we travel. The Taardad are not so starved for peddlers that we try to keep them to ourselves.”

  Couladin’s face went even darker, yet he moderated his tone, even if it did creak with the effort. “I will camp near Cold Rocks, Rhuarc. He Who Comes With the Dawn concerns all Aiel, not only the Taardad. The Shaido will have their proper place. The Shaido, too, will follow He Who Comes With the Dawn.” He had not, Mat realized, acknowledged that that was Rand. Peering at the wagons, Rand did not seem to be listening.

  Rhuarc was silent a moment. “The Shaido will be welcome guests in the lands of the Taardad, if they come to follow He Who Comes With the Dawn.” And that could be taken two ways, as well.

  Kadere had been mopping his face all this time, likely seeing himself in the middle of a battle between Aiel. He punctuated Rhuarc’s invitation with a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank you, good sirs. Thank you.” Probably for n
ot killing him. “Perhaps you would care to see what my wagons have to offer? Some special thing you might like?”

  “Later,” Rhuarc said. “We will stop at Imre Stand for the night, and you may show your wares then.” Couladin was already striding away, having heard the name of Imre Stand, whatever that was. Kadere started to put his hat back on.

  “A hat,” Mat said, reining Pips closer to the peddler. If he had to remain in the Waste a bit longer, at least he could keep that bloody sun out of his eyes. “I’ll give a gold mark for a hat like that.”

  “Done!” called a woman’s huskily melodious voice.

  Mat looked around, and gave a start. The only woman in sight beside Aviendha and the Maidens was walking up from the second wagon, but she certainly did not match that voice, one of the loveliest he had ever heard. Rand frowned at her and shook his head, and he had cause. A foot shorter than Kadere, she must have weighed as much or more. Rolls of fat nearly hid her dark eyes, disguising whether they were tilted or not, but her nose was a hatchet that dwarfed the peddler’s. In a dress of pale-cream silk stretched tight around her bulk, with a white lace shawl held above her head on elaborate ivory combs thrust into long, coarse black hair, she moved with incongruous lightness, almost like one of the Maidens.

  “A good offer,” she said in those musical tones. “I am Keille Shaogi, peddler.” She snatched the hat away from Kadere and thrust it up at Mat. “Stout, good sir, and nearly new. You will need its like to survive the Three-fold Land. Here, a man can die . . .” Fat fingers made a whip-crack. “ . . . like so.” Her sudden laugh had the same throaty, caressing quality as her voice. “Or a woman. A gold mark, you said.” When he hesitated, her half-buried eyes glittered raven black. “I seldom offer any man a bargain twice.”

  A peculiar woman to say the least. Kadere made no protest beyond the slightest grimace. If Keille was his partner, there was no doubt who was the senior. And if the hat kept Mat’s head from broiling, it really was worth the price so far as he was concerned. She bit the Tairen mark he handed her before releasing the hat. For a wonder, it fit. And if it was no cooler under that wide brim, at least it was blessedly shady. The kerchief went into his coat pocket.

  “Anything for the rest of you?” The stout woman ran her eye over the Aiel, murmuring, “What a pretty child” to Aviendha with a baring of teeth that might have been a smile. To Rand, she said sweetly, “And you, good sir?” That voice coming out of that face was truly jarring, especially when it took on this honeyed tone. “Something to shelter you from this desperate land?” Turning Jeade’en so he could peer at the wagon drivers, Rand only shook his head. With that shoufa around his face, he really did look like an Aiel.

  “Tonight, Keille,” Kadere said. “We open trade tonight, at a place called Imre Stand.”

  “Do we, now.” For a long moment she peered at the Shaido column, and at the Wise Ones’ party for a longer. Abruptly she turned for her own wagon, saying over her shoulder to the other peddler, “Then why are you keeping these good sirs standing here? Move, Kadere. Move.” Rand stared after her, shaking his head again.

  There was a gleeman back by her wagon. Mat blinked, thinking the heat had gotten to him, but the fellow did not vanish, a dark-haired man in his middle years wearing a patch-covered cloak. He watched the gathering apprehensively until Keille shoved him up the wagon’s step ahead of her. Kadere looked at her white wagon with less expression than one of the Aiel before stalking off to his own. Truly an odd lot.

  “Did you see the gleeman?” Mat asked Rand, who nodded vaguely, eyeing the line of wagons as if he had never seen a wagon before. Rhuarc and Heirn were already on their way back to the rest of the Jindo. The hundred surrounding Rand waited patiently, dividing their gaze between him and anything that might hide even a mouse. The drivers began gathering their reins, but Rand did not move. “Strange people these peddlers, wouldn’t you say, Rand? But I suppose you have to be strange to come to the Waste. Look at us.” That brought a grimace from Aviendha, but Rand seemed not to have heard. Mat wanted him to say something. Anything. This silence was unnerving. “Would you have thought escorting a peddler would be such an honor Rhuarc and Couladin would argue over it? Do you understand any of this ji’e’toh?”

  “You are a fool,” Aviendha muttered. “It had nothing to do with ji’e’toh. Couladin tries to behave as a clan chief. Rhuarc cannot allow that until—unless—he has gone to Rhuidean. The Shaido would steal bones from a dog—they would steal the bones and the dog—yet even they deserve a true chief. And because of Rand al’Thor we must allow a thousand of them to pitch their tents in our lands.”

  “His eyes,” Rand said without looking away from the wagons. “A dangerous man.”

  Mat frowned at him. “Whose eyes? Couladin’s?”

  “Kadere’s eyes. All that sweating, going white in the face. Yet his eyes never changed. You always have to watch the eyes. Not what he seems.”

  “Sure, Rand.” Mat shifted in his saddle, half lifted his reins as if to ride on. Maybe silence had not been so bad. “You have to watch the eyes.”

  Rand changed his study to the tops of the nearest spires and buttes, twisting his head this way and that. “Time is the risk,” he murmured. “Time sets snares. I have to avoid theirs while setting mine.”

  There was nothing up there that Mat could make out beyond an occasional scattering of brush and now and then a stunted tree. Aviendha frowned at the heights, then at Rand, adjusting her shawl. “Snares?” Mat said. Light, let him give me an answer that isn’t crazy. “Who’s setting snares?”

  For a moment Rand looked at him as if he did not understand the question. The peddlers’ wagons were starting off with an escort of Maidens loping alongside, turning to follow the Jindo as they trotted past, mirrored by the Shaido. More Maidens sped ahead to scout. Only the Aiel around Rand stood still, though the Wise Ones’ party dawdled and watched, and from Egwene’s gestures, Mat thought she wanted to come check on them.

  “You can’t see it, or feel it,” Rand said finally. Leaning a little toward Mat, he whispered loudly, as though pretending. “We ride with evil now, Mat. Watch yourself.” He wore that twisted grin again, as he watched the wagons lumber by.

  “You think this Kadere is evil?”

  “A dangerous man, Mat—the eyes always give it away—yet who can say? But what cause have I to worry, with Moiraine and the Wise Ones watching out for me? And we mustn’t forget Lanfear. Has any man ever been under so many watchful eyes?” Abruptly Rand straightened in his saddle. “It has begun,” he said quietly. “Wish that I have your luck, Mat. It has begun, and there is no turning back, now, however the blade falls.” Nodding to himself, he started his dapple after Rhuarc, Aviendha trotting alongside, the hundred Jindo following.

  Mat was glad enough to follow too. Better than being left there, certainly. The sun burned high in a stark blue sky. There was a lot of traveling yet to be done before sunset. It had begun? What did he mean, it had begun? It had begun in Rhuidean; or better, in Emond’s Field on Winternight a year gone. “Riding with evil” and “no turning back”? And Lanfear? Rand was walking the razor’s edge, now. No doubt about it. There had to be a way out of the Waste before it was too late. From time to time Mat studied the peddlers’ wagons. Before it was too late. If it was not already.

  CHAPTER 37

  Imre Stand

  The sun still stood more than its own height above the jagged western horizon when Rhuarc said that Imre Stand, where he intended to stay for the night, lay only a mile or so ahead.

  “Why are we stopping already?” Rand asked. “There are hours more daylight left.”

  It was Aviendha, walking along on the other side of Jeade’en from the clan chief, who answered, in the scornful tone he had come to expect. “There is water at Imre Stand. It is best to camp near water when the chance presents itself.”

  “And the peddlers’ wagons cannot go much farther,” Rhuarc added. “When the shadows lengthen, they must stop or begin b
reaking wheels and mules’ legs. I do not want to leave them behind. I cannot spare anyone to watch over them, and Couladin can.”

  Rand twisted in his saddle. Flanked now by Jindo Duadhe Mahdi’in, Water Seekers, the wagons were making heavy going a few hundred paces off to the side, lurching along, raising a tall plume of yellow dust. Most gullies were too deep or too steep-walled, forcing the drivers to go around, so the train twisted like a drunken snake. Loud curses floated from the wavering line, most blaming the mules for it all. Kadere and Keille were still inside their white-painted wagons.

  “No,” Rand said, “you don’t want to do that.” He laughed softly in spite of himself.

  Mat was looking at him oddly from under the broad brim of his new hat. He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way, but Mat’s expression did not change. He’s going to have to take care of himself, Rand thought. Too much is riding on this.

  Speaking of taking care, he became aware of Aviendha studying him, her shawl wrapped around her head much like a shoufa. He straightened himself again. Moiraine might have told her off to nurse him, but he had the impression the woman was waiting to see him fall. Doubtless she would find that funny, Aiel humor being what it was. He would have liked to think she simply resented being stuffed into a dress and set to watch him, but the glitter in her eyes seemed too personal for that.

  For once Moiraine and the Wise Ones were not watching him. Halfway between the Jindo and the Shaido, Moiraine and Egwene were walking with Amys and the others, all six women looking at something in the Aes Sedai’s hands. It caught the light of the falling sun, sparkling like a gem; they certainly seemed as intent as any girl on a pretty. Lan rode back among the gai’shain and packhorses, as though they had sent him away.