Then he opened another storeroom door, and human voices, human laughter, drifted out to fill him with relief. There would be no unseen eye here. He went in.
Half the room was stacked to the ceiling with sacks of grain. In the other half a thick semicircle of men knelt in front of one of the bare walls. They all seemed to wear the leather jerkins and bowl-cut hair of menials. No warriors’ topknots, no livery. No one who might betray him accidentally. What about on purpose? The rattle of dice came through their soft murmurs, and somebody let out a raucous laugh at the throw.
Loial was watching them dice, rubbing his chin thoughtfully with a finger thicker than a big man’s thumb, his head almost reaching the rafters nearly two spans up. None of the dicers gave him a glance. Ogier were not exactly common in the Borderlands, or anywhere else, but they were known and accepted here, and Loial had been in Fal Dara long enough to excite little comment. The Ogier’s dark, stiff-collared tunic was buttoned up to his neck and flared below the waist over his high boots, and one of the big pockets bulged and sagged with the weight of something. Books, if Rand knew him. Even watching men gamble, Loial would not be far from a book.
In spite of everything, Rand found himself grinning. Loial often had that effect on him. The Ogier knew so much about some things, so little about others, and he seemed to want to know everything. Yet Rand could remember the first time he ever saw Loial, with his tufted ears and his eyebrows that dangled like long mustaches and his nose almost as wide as his face—saw him and thought he was facing a Trolloc. It still shamed him. Ogier and Trollocs. Myrddraal, and things from the dark corners of midnight tales. Things out of stories and legends. That was how he had thought of them before he left Emond’s Field. But since leaving home he had seen too many stories walking in the flesh ever to be so sure again. Aes Sedai, and unseen watchers, and a wind that caught and held. His smile faded.
“All the stories are real,” he said softly.
Loial’s ears twitched, and his head turned toward Rand. When he saw who it was, the Ogier’s face split in a grin, and he came over. “Ah, there you are.” His voice was a deep bumblebee rumble. “I did not see you at the Welcome. That was something I had not seen before. Two things. The Shienaran Welcome, and the Amyrlin Seat. She looks tired, don’t you think? It cannot be easy, being Amyrlin. Worse than being an Elder, I suppose.” He paused, with a thoughtful look, but only for a breath. “Tell me, Rand, do you play at dice, too? They play a simpler game here, with only three dice. We use four in the stedding. They won’t let me play, you know. They just say, ‘Glory to the Builders,’ and will not bet against me. I don’t think that’s fair, do you? The dice they use are rather small”—he frowned at one of his hands, big enough to cover a human head—“but I still think—”
Rand grabbed his arm and cut him off. The Builders! “Loial, Ogier built Fal Dara, didn’t they? Do you know any way out except by the gates? A crawl hole. A drain pipe. Anything at all, if it’s big enough for a man to wiggle through. Out of the wind would be good, too.”
Loial gave a pained grimace, the ends of his eyebrows almost brushing his cheeks. “Rand, Ogier built Mafal Dadaranell, but that city was destroyed in the Trolloc Wars. This”—he touched the stone wall lightly with broad fingertips—“was built by men. I can sketch a plan of Mafal Dadaranell—I saw the maps, once, in an old book in Stedding Shangtai—but of Fal Dara, I know no more than you. It is well built, though, isn’t it? Stark, but well made.”
Rand slumped against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut. “I need a way out,” he whispered. “The gates are barred, and they won’t let anyone pass, but I need a way out.”
“But why, Rand?” Loial said slowly. “No one here will hurt you. Are you all right? Rand?” Suddenly his voice rose. “Mat! Perrin! I think Rand is sick.”
Rand opened his eyes to see his friends straightening up out of the knot of dicers. Mat Cauthon, long-limbed as a stork, wearing a half smile as if he saw something funny that no one else saw. Shaggy-haired Perrin Aybara, with heavy shoulders and thick arms from his work as a blacksmith’s apprentice. They both still wore their Two Rivers garb, plain and sturdy, but travel-worn.
Mat tossed the dice back into the semicircle as he stepped out, and one of the men called, “Here, southlander, you can’t quit while you’re winning.”
“Better than when I’m losing,” Mat said with a laugh. Unconsciously he touched his coat at the waist, and Rand winced. Mat had a dagger with a ruby in its hilt under there, a dagger he was never without, a dagger he could not be without. It was a tainted blade, from the dead city of Shadar Logoth, tainted and twisted by an evil almost as bad as the Dark One, the evil that had killed Shadar Logoth two thousand years before, yet still lived among the abandoned ruins. That taint would kill Mat if he kept the dagger; it would kill him even faster if he put it aside. “You’ll have another chance to win it back.” Wry snorts from the kneeling men indicated they did not think there was much chance of that.
Perrin kept his eyes down as he followed Mat across to Rand. Perrin always kept his eyes down these days, and his shoulders sagged as if he carried a weight too heavy even for their width.
“What’s the matter, Rand?” Mat asked. “You’re as white as your shirt. Hey! Where did you get those clothes? You turning Shienaran? Maybe I’ll buy myself a coat like that, and a fine shirt.” He shook his coat pocket, producing a clink of coins. “I seem to have luck with the dice. I can hardly touch them without winning.”
“You don’t have to buy anything,” Rand said tiredly. “Moiraine had all our clothes replaced. They’re burned already for all I know, all but what you two are wearing. Elansu will probably be around to collect those, too, so I’d change fast if I were you, before she takes them off your back.” Perrin still did not look up, but his cheeks turned red; Mat’s grin deepened, though it looked forced. They too had had encounters in the baths, and only Mat tried to pretend it did not matter. “And I’m not sick. I just need to get out of here. The Amyrlin Seat is here. Lan said . . . he said with her here, it would have been better for me if I were gone a week. I need to leave, and all the gates are barred.”
“He said that?” Mat frowned. “I don’t understand. He’d never say anything against an Aes Sedai. Why now? Look, Rand, I don’t like Aes Sedai any more than you do, but they aren’t going to do anything to us.” He lowered his voice to say that, and looked over his shoulder to see if any of the gamblers was listening. Feared the Aes Sedai might be, but in the Borderlands, they were far from being hated, and a disrespectful comment about them could land you in a fight, or worse. “Look at Moiraine. She isn’t so bad, even if she is Aes Sedai. You’re thinking like old Cenn Buie telling his tall tales back home, in the Winespring Inn. I mean, she hasn’t hurt us, and they won’t. Why would they?”
Perrin’s eyes lifted. Yellow eyes, gleaming in the dim light like burnished gold. Moiraine hasn’t hurt us? Rand thought. Perrin’s eyes had been as deep a brown as Mat’s when they left the Two Rivers. Rand had no idea how the change had come about—Perrin did not want to talk about it, or about very much of anything since it happened—but it had come at the same time as the slump in his shoulders, and a distance in his manner as if he felt alone even with friends around him. Perrin’s eyes and Mat’s dagger. Neither would have happened if they had not left Emond’s Field, and it was Moiraine who had taken them away. He knew that was not fair. They would probably all be dead at Trollocs’ hands, and a good part of Emond’s Field as well, if she had not come to their village. But that did not make Perrin laugh the way he used to, or take the dagger from Mat’s belt. And me? If I was home and still alive, would I still be what I am now? At least I wouldn’t be worrying about what the Aes Sedai are going to do to me.
Mat was still looking at him quizzically, and Perrin had raised his head enough to stare from under his eyebrows. Loial waited patiently. Rand could not tell them why he had to stay away from the Amyrlin Seat. They did not know what he was. Lan knew, and Moiraine. An
d Egwene, and Nynaeve. He wished none of them knew, and most of all he wished Egwene did not, but at least Mat and Perrin—and Loial, too—believed he was still the same. He thought he would rather die than let them know, than see the hesitation and worry he sometimes caught in Egwene’s eyes, and Nynaeve’s, even when they were trying their best.
“Somebody’s . . . watching me,” he said finally. “Following me. Only. . . . Only, there’s nobody there.”
Perrin’s head jerked up, and Mat licked his lips and whispered, “A Fade?”
“Of course not,” Loial snorted. “How could one of the Eyeless enter Fal Dara, town or keep? By law, no one may hide his face inside the town walls, and the lamplighters are charged with keeping the streets lit at night so there isn’t a shadow for a Myrddraal to hide in. It could not happen.”
“Walls don’t stop a Fade,” Mat muttered. “Not when it wants to come in. I don’t know as laws and lamps will do any better.” He did not sound like someone who had half thought Fades were only gleemen’s tales less than half a year before. He had seen too much, too.
“And there was the wind,” Rand added. His voice hardly shook as he told what had happened on the tower top. Perrin’s fists tightened until his knuckles cracked. “I just want to leave here,” Rand finished. “I want to go south. Somewhere away. Just somewhere away.”
“But if the gates are barred,” Mat said, “how do we get out?”
Rand stared at him. “We?” He had to go alone. It would be dangerous for anyone near him, eventually. He would be dangerous, and even Moiraine could not tell him how long he had. “Mat, you know you have to go to Tar Valon with Moiraine. She said that’s the only place you can be separated from that bloody dagger without dying. And you know what will happen if you keep it.”
Mat touched his coat over the dagger, not seeming to realize what he was doing. “ ‘An Aes Sedai’s gift is bait for a fish,’ ” he quoted. “Well, maybe I don’t want to put the hook in my mouth. Maybe whatever she wants to do in Tar Valon is worse than if I don’t go at all. Maybe she’s lying. ‘The truth an Aes Sedai tells is never the truth you think it is.’ ”
“You have any more old sayings you want to rid yourself of?” Rand asked. “ ‘A south wind brings a warm guest, a north wind an empty house’? ‘A pig painted gold is still a pig’? What about, ‘talk shears no sheep’? ‘A fool’s words are dust’?”
“Easy, Rand,” Perrin said softly. “There is no need to be so rough.”
“Isn’t there? Maybe I don’t want you two going with me, always hanging around, falling into trouble and expecting me to pull you out. You ever think of that? Burn me, did it ever occur to you I might be tired of always having you there whenever I turn around? Always there, and I’m tired of it.” The hurt on Perrin’s face cut him like a knife, but he pushed on relentlessly. “There are some here think I’m a lord. A lord. Maybe I like that. But look at you, dicing with stablehands. When I go, I go by myself. You two can go to Tar Valon or go hang yourselves, but I leave here alone.”
Mat’s face had gone stiff, and he clutched the dagger through his coat till his knuckles were white. “If that is how you want it,” he said coldly. “I thought we were. . . . However you want it, al’Thor. But if I decide to leave at the same time you do, I’ll go, and you can stand clear of me.”
“Nobody is going anywhere,” Perrin said, “if the gates are barred.” He was staring at the floor again. Laughter rolled from the gamblers against the wall as someone lost.
“Go or stay,” Loial said, “together or apart, it doesn’t matter. You are all three ta’veren. Even I can see it, and I don’t have that Talent, just by what happens around you. And Moiraine Sedai says it, too.”
Mat threw up his hands. “No more, Loial. I don’t want to hear about that anymore.”
Loial shook his head. “Whether you hear it or not, it is still true. The Wheel of Time weaves the Pattern of the Age, using the lives of men for thread. And you three are ta’veren, centerpoints of the weaving.”
“No more, Loial.”
“For a time, the Wheel will bend the Pattern around you three, whatever you do. And whatever you do is more likely to be chosen by the Wheel than by you. Ta’veren pull history along behind them and shape the Pattern just by being, but the Wheel weaves ta’veren on a tighter line than other men. Wherever you go and whatever you do, until the Wheel chooses otherwise you will—”
“No more!” Mat shouted. The men dicing looked around, and he glared at them until they bent back to their game.
“I am sorry, Mat,” Loial rumbled. “I know I talk too much, but I did not mean—”
“I am not staying here,” Mat told the rafters, “with a bigmouthed Ogier and a fool whose head is too big for a hat. You coming, Perrin?” Perrin sighed, and glanced at Rand, then nodded.
Rand watched them go with a stick caught in his throat. I must go alone. Light help me, I have to.
Loial was staring after them, too, eyebrows drooping worriedly. “Rand, I really didn’t mean to—”
Rand made his voice harsh. “What are you waiting for? Go on with them! I don’t see why you’re still here. You are no use to me if you don’t know a way out. Go on! Go find your trees, and your precious groves, if they haven’t all been cut down, and good riddance to them if they have.”
Loial’s eyes, as big as cups, looked surprised and hurt, at first, but slowly they tightened into what almost might be anger. Rand did not think it could be. Some of the old stories claimed Ogier were fierce, though they never said how, exactly, but Rand had never met anyone as gentle as Loial.
“If you wish it so, Rand al’Thor,” Loial said stiffly. He gave a rigid bow and stalked away after Mat and Perrin.
Rand slumped against the stacked sacks of grain. Well, a voice in his head taunted, you did it, didn’t you. I had to, he told it. I will be dangerous just to be around. Blood and ashes, I’m going to go mad, and. . . . No! No, I won’t! I will not use the Power, and then I won’t go mad, and. . . . But I can’t risk it. I can’t, don’t you see? But the voice only laughed at him.
The gamblers were looking at him, he realized. All of them, still kneeling against the wall, had turned to stare at him. Shienarans of any class were almost always polite and correct, even to blood enemies, and Ogier were never any enemies of Shienar. Shock filled the gamblers’ eyes. Their faces were blank, but their eyes said what he had done was wrong. Part of him thought they were right, and that drove their silent accusation deep. They only looked at him, but he stumbled out of the storeroom as if they were chasing him.
Numbly he went on through the storerooms, hunting a place to secrete himself until some traffic was allowed through the gates again. Then he could hide in the bottom of a victualer’s cart, maybe. If they did not search the carts on the way out. If they did not search the storerooms, search the whole keep for him. Stubbornly he refused to think about that, stubbornly concentrated on finding a safe place. But every place he found—a hollow in a stack of grain sacks, a narrow alley along the wall behind some wine barrels, an abandoned storeroom half filled with empty crates and shadows—he could imagine searchers finding him there. He could imagine that unseen watcher, whoever it was—or whatever—finding him there, too. So he hunted on, thirsty and dusty and with cobwebs in his hair.
And then he came out into a dimly torch-lit corridor, and Egwene was creeping along it, pausing to peer into the storerooms she passed. Her dark hair, hanging to her waist, was caught back with a red ribbon, and she wore a goose-gray dress in the Shienaran fashion, trimmed in red. At the sight of her, sadness and loss rolled over him, worse than when he had chased Mat and Perrin and Loial away. He had grown up thinking he would marry Egwene one day; they both had. But now. . . .
She jumped when he popped out right in front of her, and her breath caught loudly, but what she said was, “So there you are. Mat and Perrin told me what you did. And Loial. I know what you’re trying to do, Rand, and it is plain foolish.” She crossed her arms
under her breasts, and her big, dark eyes fixed him sternly. He always wondered how she managed to seem to be looking down at him—she did it at will—although she was only as tall as his chest, and two years younger besides.
“Good,” he said. Her hair suddenly made him angry. He had never seen a grown woman with her hair unbraided until he left the Two Rivers. There, every girl waited eagerly for the Women’s Circle of her village to say she was old enough to braid her hair. Egwene certainly had. And here she was with her hair loose except for a ribbon. I want to go home and can’t, and she can’t wait to forget Emond’s Field. “You go away and leave me alone, too. You don’t want to keep company with a shepherd anymore. There are plenty of Aes Sedai here for you to moon around, now. And don’t tell any of them you saw me. They’re after me, and I don’t need you helping them.”
Bright spots of color bloomed in her cheeks. “Do you think I would—”
He turned to walk away, and with a cry she threw herself at him, flung her arms around his legs. They both tumbled to the stone floor, his saddlebags and bundles flying. He grunted when he hit, sword hilt digging into his side, and again when she scrabbled up and plopped herself down on his back as if he were a chair. “My mother,” she said firmly, “always told me the best way to learn to deal with a man was to learn to ride a mule. She said they have about equal brains most of the time. Sometimes the mule is smarter.”
He raised his head to look over his shoulder at her. “Get off me, Egwene. Get off! Egwene, if you don’t get off”—he lowered his voice ominously—“I’ll do something to you. You know what I am.” He added a glare for good measure.
Egwene sniffed. “You wouldn’t, if you could. You would not hurt anybody. But you can’t, anyway. I know you cannot channel the One Power whenever you want; it just happens, and you cannot control it. So you are not going to do anything to me or anybody else. I, on the other hand, have been taking lessons with Moiraine, so if you don’t listen to some sense, Rand al’Thor, I might just set your breeches on fire. I can manage that much. You keep on as you are and see if I cannot.” Suddenly, for just a moment, the torch nearest them on the wall flared up with a roar. She gave a squeak and stared at it, startled.
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