“Selene,” he said softly, “are you an Aes Sedai?”
“Aes Sedai,” she almost spat, flinging his hands away. “Aes Sedai! Always you hurl that at me!” She took a deep breath and smoothed her dress, as if gathering herself. “I am what and who I am. And I am no Aes Sedai!” And she wrapped herself in a silent coldness that made even the morning sun seem chill.
Loial and Hurin bore it all with as good a grace as they could manage, trying to make conversation and hiding their embarrassment when she froze them with a look. They rode on.
By the time they made camp that night beside a mountain stream that provided fish for their supper, Selene seemed to have regained some of her temper, chatting with the Ogier about books, speaking kindly to Hurin.
She barely spoke to Rand, though, unless he spoke first, either that evening or the following day as they rode through mountains that reared on either side of them like huge, jagged gray walls, ever climbing. But whenever he looked at her, she was watching him and smiling. Sometimes it was the sort of smile that made him smile back, sometimes the sort that made him clear his throat and blush at his own thoughts, and sometimes the mysterious, knowing smile that Egwene sometimes wore. It was a kind of smile that always put his back up—but at least it was a smile.
She can’t be Aes Sedai.
The way began to slope downwards, and with the promise of twilight in the air, Kinslayer’s Dagger at last gave way to hills, rolling and round, with more brush than trees, more thickets than forest. There was no road, just a dirt track, such as might be used by a few carts now and again. Fields carved some of the hills into terraces, fields full of crops but empty of people at this hour. None of the scattered farm buildings lay close enough to the path they rode for Rand to make out more than that they were all made of stone.
When he saw the village ahead, lights already twinkled in a few windows against the coming of night.
“We’ll sleep in beds tonight,” he said.
“That I will enjoy, Lord Rand.” Hurin laughed. Loial nodded agreement.
“A village inn,” Selene sniffed. “Dirty, no doubt, and full of unwashed men swilling ale. Why can’t we sleep under the stars again? I find I enjoy sleeping under the stars.”
“You would not enjoy it if Fain caught up with us while we slept,” Rand said, “him and those Trollocs. He’s coming after me, Selene. After the Horn, too, but it is me he can find. Why do you think I’ve kept such a close watch these past nights?”
“If Fain catches us, you will deal with him.” Her voice was coolly confident. “And there could be Darkfriends in the village, too.”
“But even if they knew who we are, they can’t do much with the rest of the villagers around. Not unless you think everyone in the village is a Darkfriend.”
“And if they discover you carry the Horn? Whether you want greatness or not, even farmers dream of it.”
“She is right, Rand,” Loial said. “I fear even farmers might want to take it.”
“Unroll your blanket, Loial, and throw it over the chest. Keep it covered.” Loial complied, and Rand nodded. It was obvious there was a box or chest beneath the Ogier’s striped blanket, but nothing suggested it was more than a travel chest. “My Lady’s chest of clothes,” Rand said with a grin and a bow.
Selene met his sally with silence and an unreadable look. After a moment, they started on again.
Almost immediately, off to Rand’s left, a glitter from the setting sun reflected from something on the ground. Something large. Something very large, by the light it threw up. Curious, he turned his horse that way.
“My Lord?” Hurin said. “The village?”
“I just want to see this first,” Rand said. It’s brighter than sunlight on water. What can it be?
His eyes on the reflection, he was surprised when Red suddenly stopped. On the point of urging the bay on, he realized that they stood on the edge of a clay precipice, above a huge excavation. Most of the hill had been dug away to a depth of easily a hundred paces. Certainly more than one hill had vanished, and maybe some farmers’ fields, for the hole was at least ten times as wide as it was deep. The far side appeared to have been packed hard to a ramp. There were men on the bottom, a dozen of them, getting a fire started; down there, night was already descending. Here and there among them armor turned the light, and swords swung at their sides. He hardly glanced at them.
Out of the clay at the bottom of the pit slanted a gigantic stone hand holding a crystal sphere, and it was this that shone with the last sunlight. Rand gaped at the size of it, a smooth ball—he was sure not so much as a scratch marred its surface—at least twenty paces through.
Some distance away from the hand, a stone face in proportion had been uncovered. A bearded man’s face, it thrust out of the soil with the dignity of vast years; the broad features seemed to hold wisdom and knowledge.
Unsummoned, the void formed, whole and complete in an instant, saidin glowing, beckoning. So intent was he on the face and the hand that he did not even realize what had happened. He had once heard a ship captain speak of a giant hand holding a huge crystal sphere; Bayle Domon had claimed it stuck out of a hill on the island of Tremalking.
“This is dangerous,” Selene said. “Come away, Rand.”
“I believe I can find a way down there,” he said absently. Saidin sang to him. The huge ball seemed to glow white with the light of the sinking sun. It seemed to him that in the depths of the crystal, light swirled and danced in time to the song of saidin. He wondered why the men below did not appear to notice.
Selene rode close and took hold of his arm. “Please, Rand, you must come away.” He looked at her hand, puzzled, then followed her arm up to her face. She seemed genuinely worried, perhaps even afraid. “If this bank doesn’t give way beneath our horses and break our necks with the fall, those men are guards, and no one puts guards on something they wish every passerby to examine. What good will it do you to avoid Fain, if some lord’s guards arrest you? Come away.”
Suddenly—a drifting, distant thought—he realized that the void surrounded him. Saidin sang, and the sphere pulsed—even without looking, he could feel it—and the thought came that if he sang the song saidin sang, that huge stone face would open its mouth and sing with him. With him and with saidin. All one.
“Please, Rand,” Selene said. “I will go to the village with you. I won’t mention the Horn again. Only come away!”
He released the void . . . and it did not go. Saidin crooned, and the light in the sphere beat like a heart. Like his heart. Loial, Hurin, Selene, they all stared at him, but they seemed oblivious to the glorious blaze from the crystal. He tried to push the void away. It held like granite; he floated in an emptiness as hard as stone. The song of saidin, the song of the sphere, he could feel them quivering along his bones. Grimly, he refused to give in, reached deep inside himself . . . I will not. . . .
“Rand.” He did not know whose voice it was.
. . . reached for the core of who he was, the core of what he was . . .
. . . will not . . .
“Rand.” The song filled him, filled the emptiness.
. . . touched stone, hot from a pitiless sun, cold from a merciless night. . . .
. . . not . . .
Light filled him, blinded him.
“Till shade is gone,” he mumbled, “till water is gone . . .”
Power filled him. He was one with the sphere.
“. . . into the Shadow with teeth bared . . .”
The power was his. The Power was his.
“. . . to spit in Sightblinder’s eye . . .”
Power to Break the World.
“. . . on the last day!” It came out as a shout, and the void was gone. Red shied at his cry; clay crumbled under the stallion’s hoof, spilling into the pit. The big bay went to his knees. Rand leaned forward, gathering the reins, and Red scrambled to safety, away from the edge.
They were all staring at him, he saw. Selene, Loial, Hurin, all
of them. “What happened?” The void. . . . He touched his forehead. The void had not gone when he released it, and the glow of saidin had grown stronger, and. . . . He could not remember anything more. Saidin. He felt cold. “Did I . . . do something?” He frowned, trying to remember. “Did I say something?”
“You just sat there stiff as a statue,” Loial said, “mumbling to yourself no matter what anyone said. I couldn’t make out what you were saying, not until you shouted ‘day!’ loud enough to wake the dead and nearly put your horse over the edge. Are you ill? You’re acting more and more oddly every day.”
“I’m not sick,” Rand said harshly, then softened it. “I am all right, Loial.” Selene watched him warily.
From the pit came the sound of men calling, the words indistinguishable.
“Lord Rand,” Hurin said, “I think those guards have finally noticed us. If they know a way up this side, they could be here any minute.”
“Yes,” Selene said. “Let us leave here quickly.”
Rand glanced at the excavation, then away again, quickly. The great crystal held nothing except reflected light from the evening sun, but he did not want to look at it. He could almost remember . . . something about the sphere. “I don’t see any reason to wait for them. We didn’t do anything. Let’s find an inn.” He turned Red toward the village, and they soon left pit and shouting guards behind.
As many villages did, Tremonsien covered the top of a hill, but like the farms they had passed, this hill had been sculpted into terraces with stone retaining walls. Square stone houses sat on precise plots of land, with exact gardens behind, along a few straight streets that crossed each other at right angles. The necessity of a curve to streets going around the hill seemed begrudged.
Yet the people seemed open and friendly enough, pausing to nod to each other as they hurried about their last chores before nightfall. They were a short folk—none taller than Rand’s shoulder, and few as tall as Hurin—with dark eyes and pale, narrow faces, and dressed in dark clothes except for a few who wore slashes of color across the chest. Smells of cooking—oddly spiced, to Rand’s nose—filled the air, though a handful of goodwives still hung over their doors to talk; the doors were split, so the top could stand open while the bottom was closed. The people eyed the newcomers curiously, with no sign of hostility. A few stared a moment longer at Loial, an Ogier walking alongside a horse as big as a Dhurran stallion, but never more than a moment longer.
The inn, at the very top of the hill, was stone like every other building in the town, and plainly marked by a painted sign hanging over the wide doors. The Nine Rings. Rand swung down with a smile and tied Red to one of the hitching posts out front. “The Nine Rings” had been one of his favorite adventure stories when he was a boy; he supposed it still was.
Selene still seemed uneasy when he helped her dismount. “Are you all right?” he asked. “I didn’t frighten you back there, did I? Red would never fall over a cliff with me.” He wondered what had really happened.
“You terrified me,” she said in a tight voice, “and I do not frighten easily. You could have killed yourself, killed. . . .” She smoothed her dress. “Ride with me. Tonight. Now. Bring the Horn, and I will stay by your side forever. Think of it. Me by your side, and the Horn of Valere in your hands. And that will only be the beginning, I promise. What more could you ask for?”
Rand shook his head. “I can’t, Selene. The Horn. . . .” He looked around. A man looked out his window across the way, then twitched the curtains closed; evening darkened the street, and there was no one else in sight now except Loial and Hurin. “The Horn is not mine. I told you that.” She turned her back on him, her white cloak walling him off as effectively as bricks.
CHAPTER 21
The Nine Rings
Rand expected the common room to be empty, since it was nearly suppertime, but half a dozen men crowded one table, dicing among their jacks of ale, and another sat by himself over a meal. Though the dicers carried no weapons in sight and wore no armor, only plain coats and breeches of dark blue, something about the way they held themselves told Rand they were soldiers. His eyes went to the solitary man. An officer, with the tops of his high boots turned down, and his sword propped against the table beside his chair. A single slash of red and one of yellow crossed the chest of the officer’s blue coat from shoulder to shoulder, and the front of his head was shaved, though his black hair hung long in the back. The soldiers’ hair was clipped short, as if it all had been cut under the same bowl. All seven turned to look as Rand and the others came in.
The innkeeper was a lean woman with a long nose and graying hair, but her wrinkles seemed part of her ready smile more than anything else. She came bustling up, wiping her hands on a spotless white apron. “Good even to you”—her quick eyes took in Rand’s gold-embroidered red coat, and Selene’s fine white dress—“my Lord, my Lady. I am Maglin Madwen, my Lord. Be welcome to The Nine Rings. And an Ogier. Not many of your kind come this way, friend Ogier. Would you be up from Stedding Tsofu, then?”
Loial managed an awkward half bow under the weight of the chest. “No, good innkeeper. I come the other way, from the Borderlands.”
“From the Borderlands, you say. Well. And you, my Lord? Forgive me for asking, but you’ve not the look of the Borderlands, if you don’t mind my saying it.”
“I’m from the Two Rivers, Mistress Madwen, in Andor.” He glanced at Selene—she did not seem to admit he existed; her level look barely admitted that the room existed, or anyone in it. “The Lady Selene is from Cairhien, from the capital, and I am from Andor.”
“As you say, my Lord.” Mistress Madwen’s glance flickered to Rand’s sword; the bronze herons were plain on scabbard and hilt. She frowned slightly, but her face was clear again in a blink. “You’ll be wanting a meal for yourself and your beautiful Lady, and your followers. And rooms, I expect. I’ll have your horses seen to. I’ve a good table for you, right this way, and pork with yellow peppers on the fire. Would you be hunting the Horn of Valere, then, my Lord, you and your Lady?”
In the act of following her, Rand almost stumbled. “No! Why would you think we were?”
“No offense, my Lord. We’ve had two through here already, all polished to look like heroes—not to suggest anything of the kind about you, my Lord—in the last month. Not many strangers come here, except traders up from the capital to buy oats and barley. I’d not suppose the Hunt has left Illian, yet, but maybe some don’t think they really need the blessing, and they’ll get a jump on the others by missing it.”
“We are not hunting the Horn, mistress.” Rand did not glance at the bundle in Loial’s arms; the blanket with its colorful stripes hung bunched over the Ogier’s thick arms and disguised the chest well. “We surely are not. We are on our way to the capital.”
“As you say, my Lord. Forgive me for asking, but is your Lady well?”
Selene looked at her, and spoke for the first time. “I am quite well.” Her voice left a chill in the air that stifled talk for a moment.
“You’re not Cairhienin, Mistress Madwen,” Hurin said suddenly. Burdened down with their saddlebags and Rand’s bundle, he looked like a walking baggage cart. “Pardon, but you don’t sound it.”
Mistress Madwen’s eyebrows rose, and she shot a glance at Rand, then grinned. “I should have known you’d let your man speak freely, but I’ve grown used to—” Her glance darted toward the officer, who had gone back to his own meal. “Light, no, I’m not Cairhienin, but for my sins, I married one. Twenty-three years I lived with him, and when he died on me—the Light shine on him—I was all ready to go back to Lugard, but he had the last laugh, he did. He left me the inn, and his brother the money, when I was sure it would be the other way round. Tricksome and scheming, Barin was, like every man I’ve ever known, Cairhienin most of all. Will you be seated, my Lord? My Lady?”
The innkeeper gave a surprised blink when Hurin sat at table with them—an Ogier, it seemed, was one thing, but Hurin was clearly
a servant in her eyes. With another quick look at Rand, she bustled off to the kitchens, and soon serving girls came with their meal, giggling and staring at the lord and the lady, and the Ogier, till Mistress Madwen chased them back to their work.
At first, Rand stared at his food doubtfully. The pork was cut in small bits, mixed with long strips of yellow peppers, and peas, and a number of vegetables and things he did not recognize, all in some sort of clear, thick sauce. It smelled sweet and sharp, both at the same time. Selene only picked at hers, but Loial was eating with a will.
Hurin grinned at Rand over his fork. “They spice their food oddly, Cairhienin do, Lord Rand, but for all that, it’s not bad.”
“It won’t bite you, Rand,” Loial added.
Rand took a hesitant mouthful, and almost gasped. It tasted just as it smelled, sweet and sharp together, the pork crisp on the outside and tender inside, a dozen different flavors, spices, all blending and contrasting. It tasted like nothing he had ever put in his mouth before. It tasted wonderful. He cleaned his plate, and when Mistress Madwen returned with the serving girls to clear away, he nearly asked for more the way Loial did. Selene’s was still half full, but she motioned curtly for one of the girls to take it.
“A pleasure, friend Ogier.” The innkeeper smiled. “It takes a lot to fill up one of you. Catrine, bring another helping, and be quick.” One of the girls darted away. Mistress Madwen turned her smile on Rand. “My Lord, I had a man here who played the bittern, but he married a girl off one of the farms, and she has him strumming reins behind a plow, now. I couldn’t help noticing what looks like a flute case sticking out of your man’s bundle. Since my musician’s gone, would you let your man favor us with a little music?”
Hurin looked embarrassed.
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