The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  “Submit,” Gode demanded from the hall, “or spend eternity wishing that you had!”

  “If we don’t have any choice—” Mat licked his lips under Rand’s stare. His eyes darted like the eyes of a badger in a trap; his face was pale, and he panted as he spoke. “We could say yes, and then get away later. Blood and ashes, Rand, there’s no way out!”

  The words seemed to drift to Rand through wool stuffed in his ears. No way out. Thunder muttered overhead, and was drowned in a slash of lightning. Have to find a way out. Gode called to them, demanding, appealing; the door slid another inch toward being open. A way out!

  Light filled the room, flooding vision; the air roared and burned. Rand felt himself picked up and dashed against the wall. He slid down in a heap, ears ringing and every hair on his body trying to stand on end. Dazed, he staggered to his feet. His knees wobbled, and he put a hand against the wall to steady himself. He looked around in amazement.

  The lamp, lying on its side on the edge of one of the few shelves still clinging to the walls, still burned and gave light. All the barrels and crates, some blackened and smoldering, lay toppled where they had been hurled. The window, bars and all, and most of the wall, too, had vanished, leaving a splintered hole. The roof sagged, and tendrils of smoke fought the rain around the jagged edges of the opening. The door hung off its hinges, jammed in the doorframe at an angle slanting into the hall.

  With a feeling of woozy unreality he stood the lamp up. It seemed the most important thing in the world was making sure it did not break.

  A pile of crates suddenly heaved apart, and Mat stood up in the middle of it. He weaved on his feet, blinking and fumbling at himself as if wondering if everything was still attached. He peered toward Rand. “Rand? Is that you? You’re alive. I thought we were both—” He broke off, biting his lip and shaking. It took Rand a moment to realize he was laughing, and on the edge of hysteria.

  “What happened, Mat? Mat? Mat! What happened?”

  One last shiver wracked Mat, and then he was still. “Lightning, Rand. I was looking right at the window when it hit the bars. Lightning. I can’t see worth—” He broke off, squinting at the aslant door, and his voice went sharp. “Where’s Gode?”

  Nothing moved in the dark corridor beyond the door. Of Gode and his companions there was neither sign nor sound, though anything could have lain in the blackness. Rand found himself hoping they were dead, but he would not have put his head into the hall to find out for sure if he had been offered a crown. Nothing moved out in the night beyond where the wall had been, either, but others were up and about. Confused shouts came from abovestairs in the inn, and the pounding of running feet.

  “Let’s go while we can,” Rand said.

  Hastily helping separate their belongings from the rubble, he grabbed Mat’s arm and half pulled, half guided his friend through the gaping hole into the night. Mat clutched his arm, stumbling beside him with his head pushed forward in an effort to see.

  As the first rain hit Rand’s face, lightning forked above the inn, and he came to a convulsive stop. Gode’s men were still there, lying with their feet toward the opening. Pelted by the rain, their open eyes stared at the sky.

  “What is it?” Mat asked. “Blood and ashes! I can hardly see my own bloody hand!”

  “Nothing,” Rand said. Luck. The Light’s own. . . . Is it? Shivering, he carefully guided Mat around the bodies. “Just the lightning.”

  There was no light save the lightning, and he stumbled in the ruts as they ran staggering away from the inn. With Mat almost hanging on him, every stumble almost pulled them both down, but tottering, panting, they ran.

  Once he looked back. Once, before the rain thickened to a deafening curtain that blotted The Dancing Cartman from sight. Lightning silhouetted the figure of a man at the back of the inn, a man shaking his fist at them, or at the sky. Gode or Hake, he did not know, but either one was as bad as the other. The rain came in a deluge, isolating them in a wall of water. He hurried through the night, listening through the roar of the storm for the sound of pursuit.

  CHAPTER

  33

  The Dark Waits

  Under a leaden sky the high-wheeled cart bumped east along the Caemlyn Road. Rand pulled himself out of the straw in back to look over the side. It was easier than it had been an hour earlier. His arms felt as if they might stretch instead of drawing him up, and for a minute his head wanted to keep on going and float away, but it was easier. He hooked his elbows over the low slats and watched the land roll past. The sun, still hidden by dull clouds, yet stood high overhead, but the cart was clattering into another village of vine-covered, red brick houses. Towns had been getting closer together since Four Kings.

  Some of the people waved or called a greeting to Hyam Kinch, the farmer whose cart it was. Master Kinch, leathery-faced and taciturn, shouted back a few words each time, around the pipe in his teeth. The clenched teeth made what he said all but unintelligible, but it sounded jovial and seemed to satisfy; they went back to what they were doing without another glance at the cart. No one appeared to pay any mind to the farmer’s two passengers.

  The village inn moved through Rand’s field of vision. It was whitewashed, with a gray slate roof. People bustled in and out, nodding casually and waving to one another. Some of them stopped to speak. They knew one another. Villagers, mostly, by their clothes—boots and trousers and coats not much different from what he wore himself, though with an inordinate fondness for colorful stripes. The women wore deep bonnets that hid their faces and white aprons with stripes. Maybe they were all townsmen and local farmfolk. Does that make any difference?

  He dropped back on the straw, watching the village dwindle between his feet. Fenced fields and trimmed hedges lined the road, and small farmhouses with smoke rising from red brick chimneys. The only woods near the road were coppices, well tended for firewood, tame as a farmyard. But the branches stood leafless against the sky, as stark as in the wild woods to the west.

  A line of wagons heading the other way rumbled down the center of the road, crowding the cart over onto the verge. Master Kinch shifted his pipe to the corner of his mouth and spat between his teeth. With one eye on his off-side wheel, to make sure it did not tangle in the hedge, he kept the cart moving. His mouth tightened as he glanced at the merchants’ train.

  None of the wagon drivers cracking their long whips in the air above eight-horse teams, none of the hard-faced guards slouching in their saddles alongside the wagons, looked at the cart. Rand watched them go, his chest tight. His hand was under his cloak, gripping his sword hilt, until the last wagon lurched by.

  As that final wagon rattled away toward the village they had just left, Mat turned on the seat beside the farmer and leaned back until he found Rand’s eyes. The scarf that did duty for dust, when need be, shaded his own eyes, folded over thickly and tied low around his forehead. Even so he squinted in the gray daylight. “You see anything back there?” he asked quietly. “What about the wagons?”

  Rand shook his head, and Mat nodded. He had seen nothing either.

  Master Kinch glanced at them out of the corner of his eye, then shifted his pipe again, and flapped the reins. That was all, but he had noticed. The horse picked up the pace a step.

  “Your eyes still hurt?” Rand asked.

  Mat touched the scarf around his head. “No. Not much. Not unless I look almost right at the sun, anyway. What about you? Are you feeling any better?”

  “Some.” He really was feeling better, he realized. It was a wonder to get over being sick so fast. More than that, it was a gift of the Light. It has to be the Light. It has to be.

  Suddenly a body of horsemen was passing the cart, heading west like the merchants’ wagons. Long white collars hung down over their mail and plate, and their cloaks and undercoats were red, like the gatetenders’ uniforms in Whitebridge, but better made and better fitting. Each man’s conical helmet shone like silver. They sat their horses with straight backs. Thin red st
reamers fluttered beneath the heads of their lances, every lance held at the same angle.

  Some of them glanced into the cart as they passed in two columns. A cage of steel bars masked each face. Rand was glad his cloak covered his sword. A few nodded to Master Kinch, not as if they knew him, but in a neutral greeting. Master Kinch nodded back in much the same way, but despite his unchanging expression there was a hint of approval in his nod.

  Their horses were at a walk, but with the speed of the cart added, they went by quickly. With a part of his mind Rand counted them. Ten . . . twenty . . . thirty . . . thirty-two. He raised his head to watch the columns move on down the Caemlyn Road.

  “Who were they?” Mat asked, half wondering, half suspicious.

  “Queen’s Guards,” Master Kinch said around his pipe. He kept his eyes on the road ahead. “Won’t go much further than Breen’s Spring, ’less they’re called for. Not like the old days.” He sucked on his pipe, then added, “I suppose, these days, there’s parts of the Realm don’t see the Guards in a year or more. Not like the old days.”

  “What are they doing?” Rand asked.

  The farmer gave him a look. “Keeping the Queen’s peace and upholding the Queen’s law.” He nodded to himself as if he liked the sound of that, and added, “Searching out malefactors and seeing them before a magistrate. Mmmph!” He let out a long streamer of smoke. “You two must be from pretty far off not to recognize the Queen’s Guard. Where you from?”

  “Far off,” Mat said at the same instant that Rand said, “The Two Rivers.” He wished he could take it back as soon as he said it. He still was not thinking clearly. Trying to hide, and mentioning a name a Fade would hear like a bell.

  Master Kinch glanced at Mat out of the corner of his eye, and puffed his pipe in silence for a while. “That’s far off, all right,” he said finally. “Almost to the border of the Realm. But things must be worse than I thought if there’s places in the Realm where people don’t even recognize the Queen’s Guards. Not like the old days at all.”

  Rand wondered what Master al’Vere would say if someone told him the Two Rivers was part of some Queen’s Realm. The Queen of Andor, he supposed. Perhaps the Mayor did know—he knew a lot of things that surprised Rand—and maybe others did, too, but he had never heard anyone mention it. The Two Rivers was the Two Rivers. Each village handled its own problems, and if some difficulty involved more than one village the Mayors, and maybe the Village Councils, solved it between them.

  Master Kinch pulled on the reins, drawing the cart to a halt. “Far as I go.” A narrow cart path led off to the north; several farmhouses were visible in that direction across open fields, plowed but still bare of crops. “Two days will see you in Caemlyn. Least, it would if your friend had his legs under him.”

  Mat hopped down and retrieved his bow and other things, then helped Rand climb off the tail of the cart. Rand’s bundles weighed on him, and his legs wobbled, but he shrugged off his friend’s hand and tried a few steps on his own. He still felt unsteady, but his legs held him up. They even seemed to grow stronger as he used them.

  The farmer did not start his horse up again right away. He studied them for a minute, sucking on his pipe. “You can rest up a day or two at my place, if you want. Won’t miss anything in that time, I suppose. Whatever sickness you’re getting over, young fellow . . . well, the old woman and me, we already had about every sickness you can think of before you were born, and nursed our younglings through ’em, too. I expect you’re past the catching stage, anyway.”

  Mat’s eyes narrowed, and Rand caught himself frowning. Not everyone is part of it. It can’t be everybody.

  “Thank you,” he said, “but I’m all right. Really. How far to the next village?”

  “Carysford? You can reach it before dark, walking.” Master Kinch took his pipe from between his teeth and pursed his lips thoughtfully before going on. “First off, I reckoned you for runaway ’prentices, but now I expect it’s something more serious you’re running from. Don’t know what. Don’t care. I’m a good enough judge to say you’re not Darkfriends, and not likely to rob or hurt anybody. Not like some on the road these days. I got in trouble a time or two myself when I was your age. You need a place to keep out of sight a few days, my farm is five miles that way”—he jerked his head toward the cart track—“and don’t nobody ever come out there. Whatever’s chasing you, won’t likely find you there.” He cleared his throat as if embarrassed by speaking so many words together.

  “How would you know what Darkfriends look like?” Mat demanded. He backed away from the cart, and his hand went under his coat. “What do you know about Darkfriends?”

  Master Kinch’s face tightened. “Suit yourselves,” he said, and clucked to his horse. The cart rolled off down the narrow path, and he never looked back.

  Mat looked at Rand, and his scowl faded. “Sorry, Rand. You need a place to rest. Maybe if we go after him. . . .” He shrugged. “I just can’t get over the feeling that everybody’s after us. Light, I wish I knew why they were. I wish it was over. I wish. . . .” He trailed off miserably.

  “There are still some good people,” Rand said. Mat started toward the cart path, jaw clenched as if it were the last thing he wanted to do, but Rand stopped him. “We can’t afford to stop just to rest, Mat. Besides, I don’t think there is anywhere to hide.”

  Mat nodded, his relief evident. He tried to take some of Rand’s burdens, the saddlebags and Thom’s cloak wrapped around the cased harp, but Rand held onto them. His legs really did feel stronger. Whatever’s chasing us? he thought as they started off down the road. Not chasing. Waiting.

  The rain had continued through the night they staggered away from The Dancing Cartman, hammering at them as hard as the thunder out of a black sky split by lightning. Their clothes became sodden in minutes; in an hour Rand’s skin felt sodden, too, but they had left Four Kings behind them. Mat was all but blind in the dark, squinting painfully at the sharp flashes that made trees stand out starkly for an instant. Rand led him by the hand, but Mat still felt out each step uncertainly. Worry creased Rand’s forehead. If Mat did not regain his sight, they would be slowed to a crawl. They would never get away.

  Mat seemed to sense his thought. Despite the hood of his cloak, the rain had plastered Mat’s hair across his face. “Rand,” he said, “you won’t leave me, will you? If I can’t keep up?” His voice quavered.

  “I won’t leave you.” Rand tightened his grip on his friend’s hand. “I won’t leave you no matter what.” Light help us! Thunder crashed overhead, and Mat stumbled, almost falling, almost pulling him down, too. “We have to stop, Mat. If we keep going, you’ll break a leg.”

  “Gode.” Lightning split the dark right above them as Mat spoke, and the thunder crack pounded every other sound into the ground, but in the flash Rand could make out the name on Mat’s lips.

  “He’s dead.” He has to be. Light, let him be dead.

  He led Mat to some bushes the lightning flash had showed him. They had leaves enough to give a little shelter from the driving rain. Not as much as a good tree might, but he did not want to risk another lightning strike. They might not be so lucky, next time.

  Huddled together beneath the bushes, they tried to arrange their cloaks to make a little tent over the branches. It was far too late to think of staying dry, but just stopping the incessant pelting of the raindrops would be something. They crouched against each other to share what little body warmth was left to them. Dripping wet as they were, and more drips coming through the cloaks, they shivered themselves into sleep.

  Rand knew right away it was a dream. He was back in Four Kings, but the town was empty except for him. The wagons were there, but no people, no horses, no dogs. Nothing alive. He knew someone was waiting for him, though.

  As he walked down the rutted street, the buildings seemed to blur as they slid behind him. When he turned his head, they were all there, solid, but the indistinctness remained at the corners of his vision. It was a
s if only what he saw really existed, and then just while he was seeing. He was sure if he turned quickly enough he would see. . . . He was not sure what, but it made him uneasy, thinking about it.

  The Dancing Cartman appeared in front of him. Somehow its garish paint seemed gray and lifeless. He went in. Gode was there, at a table.

  He only recognized the man from his clothes, his silk and dark velvets. Gode’s skin was red, burned and cracked and oozing. His face was almost a skull, his lips shriveled to bare teeth and gums. As Gode turned his head, some of his hair cracked off, powdering to soot when it hit his shoulder. His lidless eyes stared at Rand.

  “So you are dead,” Rand said. He was surprised that he was not afraid. Perhaps it was knowing that it was a dream this time.

  “Yes,” said Ba’alzamon’s voice, “but he did find you for me. That deserves some reward, don’t you think?”

  Rand turned, and discovered he could be afraid, even knowing it was a dream. Ba’alzamon’s clothes were the color of dried blood, and rage and hate and triumph battled on his face.

  “You see, youngling, you cannot hide from me forever. One way or another I find you. What protects you also makes you vulnerable. One time you hide, the next you light a signal fire. Come to me, youngling.” He held out his hand to Rand. “If my hounds must pull you down, they may not be gentle. They are jealous of what you will be, once you have knelt at my feet. It is your destiny. You belong to me.” Gode’s burned tongue made an angry, eager garble of sound.

  Rand tried to wet his lips, but he had no spit in his mouth. “No,” he managed, and then the words came more easily. “I belong to myself. Not you. Not ever. Myself. If your Darkfriends kill me, you’ll never have me.”

  The fires in Ba’alzamon’s face heated the room till the air swam. “Alive or dead, youngling, you are mine. The grave belongs to me. Easier dead, but better alive. Better for you, youngling. The living have more power in most things.” Gode made a gabbling sound again. “Yes, my good hound. Here is your reward.”