“Are you all right, Mat?” Rand said. Mat lifted the saddle from his horse, and stood holding it. “Mat? Mat!”
Mat gave a start and almost dropped the saddle. “What? Oh. I . . . I was just thinking.”
“Thinking?” Perrin hooted from where he was replacing Mandarb’s bridle with a hackamore. “You were asleep.”
Mat scowled. “I was thinking about . . . about what happened back there. About those words I. . . .” Everybody turned to look at him then, not just Rand, and he shifted uneasily. “Well, you heard what Moiraine said. It’s as if some dead man was speaking with my mouth. I don’t like it.” His scowl grew deeper when Perrin chuckled.
“Aemon’s warcry, she said—right? Maybe you’re Aemon come back again. The way you go on about how dull Emond’s Field is, I’d think you would like that—being a king and hero reborn.”
“Don’t say that!” Thom drew a deep breath; everybody stared at him now. “That is dangerous talk, stupid talk. The dead can be reborn, or take a living body, and it is not something to speak of lightly.” He took another breath to calm himself before going on. “The old blood, she said. The blood, not a dead man. I’ve heard that it can happen, sometimes. Heard, though I never really thought. . . . It was your roots, boy. A line running from you to your father to your grandfather, right on back to Manetheren, and maybe beyond. Well, now you know your family is old. You ought to let it go at that and be glad. Most people don’t know much more than that they had a father.”
Some of us can’t even be sure of that, Rand thought bitterly. Maybe the Wisdom was right. Light, I hope she was.
Mat nodded at what the gleeman said. “I suppose I should. Only . . . do you think it has anything to do with what’s happened to us? The Trollocs and all? I mean . . . oh, I don’t know what I mean.”
“I think you ought to forget about it, and concentrate on getting out of here safely.” Thom produced his long-stemmed pipe from inside his cloak. “And I think I am going to have a smoke.” With a waggle of the pipe in their direction, he disappeared into the front room.
“We are all in this together, not just one of us,” Rand told Mat.
Mat gave himself a shake, and laughed, a short bark. “Right. Well, speaking of being in things together, now that we’re done with the horses, why don’t we go see a little more of this city. A real city, and no crowds to jostle your elbow and poke you in the ribs. Nobody looking down their long noses at us. There’s still an hour, maybe two, of daylight left.”
“Aren’t you forgetting the Trollocs?” Perrin said.
Mat shook his head scornfully. “Lan said they wouldn’t come in here, remember? You need to listen to what people say.”
“I remember,” Perrin said. “And I do listen. This city—Aridhol?—was an ally of Manetheren. See? I listen.”
“Aridhol must have been the greatest city in the Trolloc Wars,” Rand said, “for the Trollocs to still be afraid of it. They weren’t afraid to come into the Two Rivers, and Moiraine said Manetheren was—how did she put it?—a thorn to the Dark One’s foot.”
Perrin raised his hands. “Don’t mention the Shepherd of the Night. Please?”
“What do you say?” Mat laughed. “Let’s go.”
“We should ask Moiraine,” Perrin said, and Mat threw up his hands.
“Ask Moiraine? You think she’ll let us out of her sight? And what about Nynaeve? Blood and ashes, Perrin, why not ask Mistress Luhhan while you’re about it?”
Perrin nodded reluctant agreement, and Mat turned to Rand with a grin. “What about you? A real city? With palaces!” He gave a sly laugh. “And no Whitecloaks to stare at us.”
Rand gave him a dirty look, but he hesitated only a minute. Those palaces were like a gleeman’s tale. “All right.”
Stepping softly so as not to be heard in the front room, they left by the alley, following it away from the front of the building to a street on the other side. They walked quickly, and when they were a block away from the white stone building Mat suddenly broke into a capering dance.
“Free.” He laughed. “Free!” He slowed until he was turning a circle, staring at everything and still laughing. The afternoon shadows stretched long and jagged, and the sinking sun made the ruined city golden. “Did you ever even dream of a place like this? Did you?”
Perrin laughed, too, but Rand shrugged uncomfortably. This was nothing like the city in his first dream, but just the same. . . . “If we’re going to see anything,” he said, “we had better get on with it. There isn’t much daylight left.”
Mat wanted to see everything, it seemed, and he pulled the others along with his enthusiasm. They climbed over dusty fountains with basins wide enough to hold everybody in Emond’s Field and wandered in and out of structures chosen at random, but always the biggest they could find. Some they understood, and some not. A palace was plainly a palace, but what was a huge building that was one round, white dome as big as a hill outside and one monstrous room inside? And a walled place, open to the sky and big enough to have held all of Emond’s Field, surrounded by row on row on row of stone benches?
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 n
ight, 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 gra
bbed 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.”
The Eye of the World Page 33