"Are you going to stand here talking until they do find you? Pick up your things, Rand, and come with me." Not waiting for an answer, she spun around and started off down the hall. Muttering under his breath, he reluctantly obeyed.
There were few people — servants, mainly — in the back ways they took, but Rand had the feeling that they all took special notice of him. Not notice of a man burdened for a journey, but of him, Rand al'Thor in particular. He knew it was his imagination — he hoped it was — but even so, he felt no relief when they stopped in a passageway deep beneath the keep, before a tall door with a small iron grill set in it, as thickly strapped with iron as any in the outer wall. A clapper hung below the grill.
Through the grill Rand could see bare walls, and two top-knotted soldiers sitting bareheaded at a table with a lamp on it. One of the men was sharpening a dagger with long, slow strokes of a stone. His strokes never faltered when Egwene rapped with the clapper, a sharp clang of iron on iron. The other man, his face flat and sullen, looked at the door as if considering before he finally rose and came over. He was squat and stocky, barely tall enough to look through the cross-hatched bars.
"What do you want? Oh, it's you again, girl. Come to see your Darkfriend? Who's that?" He made no move to open the door.
"He's a friend of mine, Changu. He wants to see Master Fain, too."
The man studied Rand, his upper lip quivering back to bare teeth. Rand did not think it was supposed to be a smile. "Well," Changu said finally. "Well. Tall, aren't you? Tall. And fancy dressed for your kind. Somebody catch you young in the Eastern Marches and tame you?" He slammed back the bolts and yanked open the door. "Well, come in if you're coming." He took on a mocking tone. "Take care not to bump your head, my Lord."
There was no danger of that; the door was tall enough for Loial. Rand followed Egwene in, frowning and wondering if this Changu meant to make some sort of trouble. He was the first rude Shienaran Rand had met; even Masema was only cold, not really rude. But the fellow just banged the door shut and rammed the heavy bolts home, then went to some shelves beyond the end of the table and took one of the lamps there. The other man never ceased stropping his knife, never even looked up from it. The room was bare except for the table and benches and shelves, with straw on the floor and another iron-bound door leading deeper in.
"You'll want some light, won't you," Changu said, "in there in the dark with your Darkfriend friend." He laughed, coarse and humorless, and lit the lamp. "He's waiting for you." He thrust the lamp at Egwene, and undid the inner door almost eagerly. "Waiting for you. In there, in the dark."
Rand paused uneasily at the blackness beyond, and Changu grinning behind, but Egwene caught his sleeve and pulled him in. The door slammed, almost catching his heel; the latch bars clanged shut. There was only the light of the lamp, a small pool around them in the darkness.
"Are you sure he'll let us out?" he asked. The man had never even looked at his sword or bow, he realized, never asked what was in his bundles. "They aren't very good guards. We could be here to break Fain free for all he knows."
"They know me better than that," she said, but she sounded troubled, and she added, "They seem worse every time I come. All the guards do. Meaner, and more sullen. Changu told jokes the first time I came, and Nidao never even speaks anymore. But I suppose working in a place like this can't give a man a light heart. Maybe it is just me. This place does not do my heart any good, either." Despite her words, she drew him confidently into the black. He kept his free hand on his sword.
The pale lamplight showed a wide hall with flat iron grills to either side, fronting stone-walled cells. Only two of the cells they passed held prisoners. The occupants sat up on their narrow cots as the light struck them, shielding their eyes with their hands, glaring between their fingers. Even with their faces hidden, Rand was sure they were glaring. Their eyes glittered in the lamplight.
"That one likes to drink and fight," Egwene murmured, indicating a burly fellow with sunken knuckles. "This time he wrecked the common room of an inn in the town single-handed, and hurt some men badly." The other prisoner wore a gold-embroidered coat with wide sleeves, and low, gleaming boots. "He tried to leave the city without settling his inn bill" — she sniffed loudly at that; her father was an innkeeper as well as Mayor of Emond's Field —"nor paying half a dozen shopkeepers and merchants what he owed."
The men snarled at them, guttural curses as bad as any Rand had heard from merchants' guards.
"They grow worse every day, too," she said in a tight voice, and quickened her step.
She was enough ahead of him when they reached Padan Fain's cell, at the very end, that Rand was out of the light entirely. He stopped there, in the shadows behind her lamp.
Fain was sitting on his cot, leaning forward expectantly as if waiting, just as Changu had said. He was a bony, sharp-eyed man, with long arms and a big nose, even more gaunt now than Rand remembered. Not gaunt from the dungeon — the food here was the same as the servants ate, and not even the worst prisoner was shorted — but from what he had done before coming to Fal Dara.
The sight of him brought back memories Rand would just as soon have done without. Fain on the seat of his big peddler's wagon wheeling across the Wagon Bridge, arriving in Emond's Field the day of Winternight. And on Winternight the Trollocs came, killing and burning, hunting. Hunting three young men, Moiraine had said. Hunting me, if they only knew it, and using Fain for their trail hound.
Fain stood at Egwene's approach, not shielding his eyes or even blinking at the light. He smiled at her, a smile that touched only his lips, then raised his eyes above her head. Looking straight at Rand, hidden in the blackness behind the light, he pointed a long finger at him. "I feel you there, hiding, Rand al'Thor," he said, almost crooning. "You can't hide, not from me, and not from them. You thought it was over, did you not? But the battle's never done, al'Thor. They are coming for me, and they're coming for you, and the war goes on. Whether you live or die, it's never over for you. Never." Suddenly he began to chant.
"Soon comes the day all shall be free.
Even you, and even me.
Soon comes the day all shall die.
Surely you, but never I."
He let his arm fall, and his eyes rose to stare intently at an angle up into the darkness. A crooked grin twisting his mouth, he chuckled deep in his throat as if whatever he saw was amusing. "Mordeth knows more than all of you. Mordeth knows."
Egwene backed away from the cell until she reached Rand, and only the edge of the light touched the bars of Fain's cell. Darkness hid the peddler, but they could still hear his chuckles. Even unable to see him, Rand was sure Fain was still peering off at nothing.
With a shiver, he pried his fingers off his sword hilt. "Light!" he said hoarsely. "This is what you call being like he used to be?"
"Sometimes he's better, and sometimes worse." Egwene's voice was unsteady. "This is worse — much worse than usual."
"What is he seeing, I wonder. He's mad, staring at a stone ceiling in the dark." If the stone weren't there, he'd be looking straight at the women's apartments. Where Moiraine is, and the Amyrlin Seat. He shivered again. "He's mad."
"This was not a good idea, Rand." Looking over her shoulder at the cell, she drew him away from it and lowered her voice as if afraid Fain might overhear. Fain's chuckles followed them. "Even if they don't look here, I cannot stay here with him like this, and I do not think you should, either. There is something about him today that …" She drew a shaky breath. "There is one place even safer from search than here. I did not mention it before because it was easier to get you in here, but they will never look in the women's apartments. Never."
"The women's …! Egwene, Fain may be mad, but you're madder. You can't hide from hornets in a hornets' nest."
"What better place? What is the one part of the keep no man will enter without a woman's invitation, not even Lord Agelmar? What is the one place no one would ever think to look for a man?"
&
nbsp; "What is the one place in the keep sure to be full of Aes Sedai? It is crazy, Egwene."
Poking at his bundles, she spoke as if it were all decided. "You must wrap your sword and bow in your cloak, and then it will look as if you are carrying things for me. It should not be too hard to find you a jerkin and a shirt that isn't so pretty. You will have to stoop, though."
"I told you, I won't do it."
"Since you're acting stubborn as a mule, you should take right to playing my beast of burden. Unless you would really rather stay down here with him." Fain's laughing whisper came through the black shadows. "The battle's never done, al'Thor. Mordeth knows."
"I'd have a better chance jumping off the wall," Rand muttered. But he unslung his bundles and set about wrapping sword and bow and quiver as she had suggested.
In the darkness, Fain laughed. "It's never over, al'Thor. Never."
Chapter 4
(Horn)
Summoned
Alone in her rooms in the women's apartments, Moiraine adjusted the shawl, embroidered with curling ivy and grapevines, on her shoulders and studied the effect in the tall frame mirror standing in a corner. Her large, dark eyes could appear as sharp as a hawk's when she was angry. They seemed to pierce the silvered glass, now. It was only happenstance that she had had the shawl in her saddlebags when she came to Fal Dara. With the blazing white Flame of Tar Valon centered on the wearer's back and long fringe colored to show her Ajah — Moiraine's was as blue as a morning sky — the shawls were seldom worn outside Tar Valon, and even there usually only inside the White Tower. Little in Tar Valon besides a meeting of the Hall of the Tower called for the formality of the shawls, and beyond the Shining Walls a sight of the Flame would send too many people running, to hide or perhaps to fetch the Children of the Light. A Whitecloak's arrow was as fatal to an Aes Sedai as to anyone else, and the Children were too wily to let an Aes Sedai see the bowman before the arrow struck, while she still might do something about it. Moiraine had certainly never expected to wear the shawl in Fal Dara. But for an audience with the Amyrlin, there were proprieties to observe.
She was slender and not at all tall, and smooth-cheeked Aes Sedai agelessness often made her appear younger than she was, but Moiraine had a commanding grace and calm presence that could dominate any gathering. A manner ingrained growing up in the Royal Palace of Cairhien had been heightened, not submerged, by still more years as an Aes Sedai. She knew she might need every bit of it today. Yet much of the calm was on the surface, today. There must be trouble, or she would not have come herself, she thought for at least the tenth time. But beyond that lay a thousand questions more. What trouble, and who did she choose to accompany her? Why here? Why now? It cannot be allowed to go wrong now.
The Great Serpent ring on her right hand caught the light dully as she touched the delicate golden chain fastened in her dark hair, which hung in waves to her shoulders. A small, clear blue stone dangled from the chain, in the middle of her forehead. Many in the White Tower knew of the tricks she could do using that stone as a focus. It was only a polished bit of blue crystal, just something a young girl had used in her first learning, with no one to guide her. That girl had remembered tales of angreal and even more powerful sa'angreal — those fabled remnants of the Age of Legends that allowed Aes Sedai to channel more of the One Power than any could safely handle unaided — remembered and thought some such focus was required to channel at all. Her sisters in the White Tower knew a few of her tricks, and suspected others, including some that did not exist, some that had shocked her when she learned of them. The things she did with the stone were simple and small, if occasionally useful; the kind a child would imagine. But if the wrong women had accompanied the Amyrlin, the crystal might put them off balance, because of the tales.
A rapid, insistent knocking came at the chamber door. No Shienaran would knock that way, not at anyone's door, but least of all hers. She remained looking into the mirror until her eyes stared back serenely, all thought hidden in their dark depths. She checked the soft leather pouch hanging at her belt. Whatever troubles brought her out of Tar Valon, she will forget them when I lay this trouble before her. A second thumping, even more vigorous than the first, sounded before she crossed the room and opened the door with a calm smile for the two women who had come for her.
She recognized them both. Dark-haired Anaiya in her blue-fringed shawl, and fair-haired Liandrin in her red. Liandrin, not only young-seeming but young and pretty, with a doll's face and a small, petulant mouth, had her hand raised to pound again. Her dark brows and darker eyes were a sharp contrast to the multitude of pale honey braids brushing her shoulders, but the combination was not uncommon in Tarabon. Both women were taller than Moiraine, though Liandrin by less than a hand.
Anaiya's blunt face broke into a smile as soon as Moiraine opened the door. That smile gave her the only beauty she would ever have, but it was enough; almost everyone felt comforted, safe and special, when Anaiya smiled at them. "The Light shine on you, Moiraine. It's good to see you again. Are you well? It has been so long."
"My heart is lighter for your presence, Anaiya." That was certainly true; it was good to know she had at least one friend among the Aes Sedai who had come to Fal Dara. "The Light illumine you."
Liandrin's mouth tightened, and she gave her shawl a twitch. "The Amyrlin Seat, she requires your presence, Sister." Her voice was petulant, too, and cold-edged. Not for Moiraine's sake, or not solely; Liandrin always sounded dissatisfied with something. Frowning, she tried to look over Moiraine's shoulder into the room. "This chamber, it is warded. We cannot enter. Why do you ward against your sisters?"
"Against all," Moiraine replied smoothly. "Many of the serving women are curious about Aes Sedai, and I do not want them pawing through my rooms when I am not here. There was no need to make a distinction until now." She pulled the door shut behind her, leaving all three of them in the corridor. "Shall we go? We must not keep the Amyrlin waiting."
She started down the hallway with Anaiya chatting at her side. Liandrin stood for a moment staring at the door as if wondering what Moiraine was hiding, then hurried to join the others. She bracketed Moiraine, walking as stiffly as a guard. Anaiya merely walked, keeping company. Their slippered footsteps fell softly on thick-woven carpets with simple patterns.
Liveried women curtsied deeply as they passed, many more deeply than they would have for the Lord of Fal Dara himself. Aes Sedai, three together, and the Amyrlin Seat herself in the keep; it was more honor than any woman of the keep had ever expected in her lifetime. A few women of noble Houses were out in the halls, and they curtsied, too, which they most certainly would not have done for Lord Agelmar. Moiraine and Anaiya smiled and bowed their heads to acknowledge each reverence, from servant or noble equally. Liandrin ignored them all.
There were only women here, of course, no men. No Shienaran male above the age of ten would enter the women's rooms without permission or invitation, although a few small boys ran and played in the halls here. They knelt on one knee, awkwardly, when their sisters dropped deep curtsies. Now and then Anaiya smiled and ruffled a small head as she passed.
"This time, Moiraine," Anaiya said, "you have been gone from Tar Valon too long. Much too long. Tar Valon misses you. Your sisters miss you. And you are needed in the White Tower."
"Some of us must work in the world," Moiraine said gently. "I will leave the Hall of the Tower to you, Anaiya. Yet in Tar Valon, you hear more of what occurs in the world than I. Too often I outrun what happens where I was yesterday. What news have you?"
"Three more false Dragons." Liandrin bit the words off. "In Saldaea, Murandy, and Tear false Dragons ravage the land. The while, you Blues smile and talk of nothing, and try to hold on to the past." Anaiya raised an eyebrow, and Liandrin snapped her mouth shut with a sharp sniff.
"Three," Moiraine mused softly. For an instant her eyes gleamed, but she masked it quickly. "Three in the last two years, and now three more at once."
"As t
he others were, these will be dealt with also. This male vermin and any ragtag rabble who follow their banners."
Moiraine was almost amused by the certainty in Liandrin's voice. Almost. She was too aware of the realities, too aware of the possibilities. "Have a few months been enough for you to forget, Sister? The last false Dragon all but tore Ghealdan apart before his army, ragtag rabble or not, was defeated. Yes, Logain is in Tar Valon by now, gentled and safe, I suppose, but some of our sisters died to overpower him. Even one sister dead is more loss than we can bear, but Ghealdan's losses were much worse. The two before Logain could not channel, yet even so the people of Kandor and Arad Doman remember them well. Villages burned and men dead in battle. How easily can the world deal with three at one time? How many will flock to their banners? There has never been a shortage of followers for any man claiming to be the Dragon Reborn. How great will the wars be this time?"
"It isn't so grim as that," Anaiya said. "As far as we know, only the one in Saldaea can channel. He has not had time to attract many followers, and sisters should already be there to deal with him. The Tairens are harrying their false Dragon and his followers through Haddon Mirk, while the fellow in Murandy is already in chains." She gave a short, wondering laugh. "To think the Murandians, of all people, would deal with theirs so quickly. Ask, and they do not even call themselves Murandians, but Lugarders, or Inishlinni, or this or that lord's or lady's man. Yet for fear one of their neighbors would take the excuse to invade, the Murandians leaped on their false Dragon almost as soon as he opened his mouth to proclaim himself."
"Still," Moiraine said, "three at the same time cannot be ignored. Has any sister been able to do a Foretelling?" It was a slight chance — few Aes Sedai had manifested any part of that Talent, even the smallest part, in centuries — so she was not surprised when Anaiya shook her head. Not surprised, but a little relieved.
The Great Hunt twot-2 Page 7