Else was sitting cross-legged in front of the fire, and as he lowered the flute after the last note, she leaned forward with a long sigh and smiled at him. “You play so beautifully. I never heard anything so beautiful.”
Mistress Grinwell suddenly paused in her sewing and raised an eyebrow at her daughter, then gave Rand a long, appraising look.
He had picked up the leather case to put the flute away, but under her stare he dropped the case and almost the flute, too. If she accused him of trifling with her daughter. . . . In desperation he put the flute back to his lips and played another song, then another, and another. Mistress Grinwell kept watching him. He played “The Wind That Shakes the Willow,” and “Coming Home From Tarwin’s Gap,” and “Mistress Aynora’s Rooster,” and “The Old Black Bear.” He played every song he could think of, but she never took her eyes off him. She never said anything, either, but she watched, and weighed.
It was late when Master Grinwell finally stood up, chuckling and rubbing his hands together. “Well, this has been rare fun, but it’s way past our bedtime. You traveling lads make your own hours, but morning comes early on a farm. I’ll tell you lads, I have paid good money at an inn for no better entertainment than I’ve had this night. For worse.”
“I think they should have a reward, father,” Mistress Grinwell said as she picked up her youngest boy, who had long since fallen asleep in front of the fire. “The barn is no fit place to sleep. They can sleep in Else’s room tonight, and she will sleep with me.”
Else grimaced. She was careful to keep her head down, but Rand saw it. He thought her mother did, too.
Master Grinwell nodded. “Yes, yes, much better than the barn. If you don’t mind sleeping two to a bed, that is.” Rand flushed; Mistress Grinwell was still looking at him. “I do wish I could hear more of that flute. And your juggling, too. I like that. You know, there’s a little task you could help with tomorrow, and—”
“They’ll be wanting an early start, father,” Mistress Grinwell cut in. “Arien is the next village the way they’re going, and if they intend to try their luck at the inn there, they’ll have to walk all day to get there before dark.”
“Yes, mistress,” Rand said, “we will. And thank you.”
She gave him a tight-lipped smile as if she knew very well that his thanks were for more than her advice, or even supper and a warm bed.
The whole next day Mat twitted him about Else as they made their way down the road. He kept trying to change the subject, and what the Grinwells had suggested about performing at inns was the easiest thing to mind. In the morning, with Else pouting as he left, and Mistress Grinwell watching with a sharp-eyed look of good-riddance and soonest-mended, it was just something to keep Mat from talking. By the time they did reach the next village, it was something else again.
With dusk descending, they entered the only inn in Arien, and Rand spoke to the innkeeper. He played “Ferry O’er the River”—which the plump innkeeper called “Darling Sara”—and part of “The Road to Dun Aren,” and Mat did a little juggling, and the upshot was that they slept in a bed that night and ate roasted potatoes and hot beef. It was the smallest room in the inn, to be sure, up under the eaves in the back, and the meal came in the middle of a long night of playing and juggling, but it was still a bed beneath a roof. Even better, to Rand, every daylight hour had been spent traveling. And the inn’s patrons did not seem to care if Mat stared at them suspiciously. Some of them even looked askance at one another. The times made suspicion of strangers a commonplace, and there were always strangers at an inn.
Rand slept better than he had since leaving Whitebridge, despite sharing a bed with Mat and his nocturnal muttering. In the morning the innkeeper tried to talk them into staying another day or two, but when he could not, he called over a bleary-eyed farmer who had drunk too much to drive his cart home the night before. An hour later they were five miles further east, sprawling on their backs on the straw in the back of Eazil Forney’s cart.
That became the way of their traveling. With a little luck, and maybe a ride or two, they could almost always reach the next village by dark. If there was more than one inn in a village, the innkeepers would bid for them once they heard Rand’s flute and saw Mat juggle. Together they still did not come close to a gleeman, but they were more than most villages saw in a year. Two or three inns in a town meant a better room, with two beds, and more generous portions of a better cut of meat, and sometimes even a few coppers in their pockets when they left besides. In the mornings there was almost always someone to offer a ride, another farmer who had stayed too late and drunk too much, or a merchant who had liked their entertainment enough not to mind if they hopped up on the back of one of his wagons. Rand began to think their problems were over till they reached Caemlyn. But then they came to Four Kings.
CHAPTER
32
Four Kings in Shadow
The village was bigger than most, but still a scruffy town to bear a name like Four Kings. As usual, the Caemlyn Road ran straight through the center of the town, but another heavily traveled highway came in from the south, too. Most villages were markets and gathering places for the farmers of the area, but there were few farmers to be seen here. Four Kings survived as a stopover for merchants’ wagon trains on their way to Caemlyn and to the mining towns in the Mountains of Mist beyond Baerlon, as well as the villages between. The southern road carried Lugard’s trade with the mines in the west; Lugarder merchants going to Caemlyn had a more direct route. The surrounding country held few farms, barely enough to feed themselves and the town, and everything in the village centered on the merchants and their wagons, the men who drove them and the laborers who loaded the goods.
Plots of bare earth, ground to dust, lay scattered through Four Kings, filled with wagons parked wheel to wheel and abandoned except for a few bored guards. Stables and horse-lots lined the streets, all of which were wide enough to allow wagons to pass and deeply rutted from too many wheels. There was no village green, and the children played in the ruts, dodging wagons and the curses of wagon drivers. Village women, their heads covered with scarves, kept their eyes down and walked quickly, sometimes followed by wagoneers’ comments that made Rand blush; even Mat gave a start at some of them. No woman stood gossiping over the fence with a neighbor. Drab wooden houses stood cheek by jowl, with only narrow alleys between and whitewash—where anyone had bothered to whitewash the weathered boards—faded as if it had not been freshened in years. Heavy shutters on the houses had not been open in so long that the hinges were solid lumps of rust. Noise hung over everything, clanging from blacksmiths, shouts from the wagon drivers, raucous laughter from the town’s inns.
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 noise 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 bounc
ers 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.
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