The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  “Child, there you were the Daughter-Heir. Here you are a novice. You must learn that. You will be great one day, but you must learn!”

  “Yes, Aes Sedai.”

  Egwene was astounded. If someone had snubbed her so before others, she would have been in a fury.

  “Now, off with both of you.” A gong began to toll, deep and sonorous, and Elaida tilted her head. The sun stood halfway to its pinnacle. “High,” Elaida said. “You must hurry, if you do not want further admonishment. And Elayne? See the Mistress of Novices in her study after your chores. A novice does not speak to Aes Sedai unless bidden to. Run, both of you. You will be late. Run!”

  They ran, holding their skirts up. Egwene looked at Elayne. Elayne had two spots of color in her cheeks and a determined look on her face.

  “I will be Aes Sedai,” Elayne said softly, but it sounded like a promise.

  Behind them, Egwene heard the Aes Sedai begin, “I am given to understand, girl, that you were brought here by Moiraine Sedai.”

  She wanted to stay and listen, to hear if Elaida asked about Rand, but High rang through the White Tower, and she was summoned to chores. She ran as she had been commanded to run.

  “I will be Aes Sedai,” she growled. Elayne flashed a quick smile of understanding, and they ran faster.

  Min’s shirt clung to her when she finally left the bridge. Not sweat from the sun, but from the heat of Elaida’s questions. She looked over her shoulder to make sure the Aes Sedai was not following her, but Elaida was nowhere in sight.

  How did Elaida know that Moiraine had summoned her? Min had been sure that was a secret known only to her, Moiraine, and Sheriam. And all those questions about Rand. It had not been easy keeping a smooth face and a steady eye while telling an Aes Sedai to her face that she had never heard of him and knew nothing of him. What does she want with him? Light, what does Moiraine want with him? What is he? Light, I don’t want to fall in love with a man I’ve only met once, and a farmboy at that.

  “Moiraine, the Light blind you,” she muttered, “whatever you brought me here for, come out from wherever you’re hiding and tell me so I can go!”

  The only answer was the sweet song of the graywings. With a grimace she went in search of a place to cool off.

  CHAPTER 25

  Cairhien

  The city of Cairhien lay across hills against the River Alguenya, and Rand’s first sight of it came from the hills to the north, by the light of the midday sun. Elricain Tavolin and the fifty Cairhienin soldiers still seemed like guards to him—the more since crossing the bridge at the Gaelin; they became more stiff the further south they rode—but Loial and Hurin did not appear to mind, so he tried not to. He studied the city, as large as any he had seen. Fat ships and broad barges filled the river, and tall granaries sprawled along the far bank, but Cairhien seemed to be laid out in a precise grid behind its high, gray walls. Those walls themselves made a perfect square, with one side hard along the river. In just as exact a pattern, towers rose within the walls, soaring as much as twenty times the height of the wall, yet even from the hills Rand could see that each one ended in a jagged top.

  Outside the city walls, surrounding them from riverbank to riverbank, lay a warren of streets, crisscrossing at all angles and teeming with people. Foregate, Rand knew it was called, from Hurin; once there had been a market village for every city gate, but over the years they had all grown into one, a hodgepodge of streets and alleys growing up every which way.

  As Rand and the others rode into those dirt streets, Tavolin put some of his soldiers to clearing a path through the throng, shouting and urging their horses forward as if to trample any who did not get out of the way quickly. People moved aside with no more than a glance, as if it were an everyday occurrence. Rand found himself smiling, though.

  The Foregate people’s clothes were shabby more often than not, yet much of it was colorful, and there was a raucous bustle of life to the place. Hawkers cried their wares, and shopkeepers called for people to examine the goods displayed on tables before their shops. Barbers, fruit-peddlers, knife-sharpeners, men and women offering a dozen services and a hundred things for sale, wandered through the crowds. Music drifted through the babble from more than one structure; at first Rand thought they were inns, but the signs out front all showed men playing flutes or harps, tumbling or juggling, and large as they were, they had no windows. Most of the buildings in Foregate seemed to be wood, however big they were, and a good many looked new, if poorly made. Rand gaped at several that stood seven stories or more; they swayed slightly, though the people hurrying in and out did not seem to notice.

  “Peasants,” Tavolin muttered, staring straight ahead in disgust. “Look at them, corrupted by outland ways. They should not be here.”

  “Where should they be?” Rand asked. The Cairhienin officer glared at him and spurred his horse forward, flogging at the crowd with his quirt.

  Hurin touched Rand’s arm. “It was the Aiel War, Lord Rand.” He looked to make sure none of the soldiers were close enough to hear. “Many of the farmers were afraid to go back to their lands near the Spine of the World, and they all came here, near enough. That’s why Galldrian has the river full of grain barges up from Andor and Tear. There’s no crops coming from farms in the east because there aren’t any farms anymore. Best not to mention it to a Cairhienin though, my Lord. They like to pretend the war never happened, or at least that they won it.”

  Despite Tavolin’s quirt, they were forced to halt while a strange procession crossed their path. Half a dozen men, beating tambours and dancing, led the way for a string of huge puppets, each half again as tall as the men who worked them with long poles. Giant crowned figures of men and women in long, ornate robes bowed to the crowd amid the shapes of fanciful beasts. A lion with wings. A goat, walking on its hind legs, with two heads, both of which were apparently meant to be breathing fire, from the crimson streamers hanging from the two mouths. Something that seemed to be half cat and half eagle, and another with a bear’s head on a man’s body, which Rand took to be a Trolloc. The crowd cheered and laughed as they pranced by.

  “Man who made that never saw a Trolloc,” Hurin grumbled. “Head’s too big, and it’s too skinny. Likely didn’t believe in them, either, my Lord, any more than in those other things. The only monsters these Foregate folk believe in are Aiel.”

  “Are they having a festival?” Rand asked. He did not see any sign of it other than the procession, but he thought that there must be a reason for that. Tavolin ordered his soldiers forward again.

  “No more than every day, Rand,” Loial said. Walking alongside his horse, the blanket-wrapped chest still strapped to his saddle, the Ogier drew as many looks as the puppets had. Some even laughed and clapped as they had for the puppets. “I fear Galldrian keeps his people quiet by entertaining them. He gives gleemen and musicians the King’s Gift, a bounty in silver, to perform here in the Foregate, and he sponsors horse races down by the river every day. There are fireworks many nights, too.” He sounded disgusted. “Elder Haman says Galldrian is a disgrace.” He blinked, realizing what he had said, and looked around hurriedly to see if any of the soldiers had heard. None seemed to have.

  “Fireworks,” Hurin said, nodding. “The Illuminators have built a chapter house here, I’ve heard, the same as in Tanchico. I didn’t half mind seeing the fireworks, when I was here before.”

  Rand shook his head. He had never seen fireworks elaborate enough to require even one Illuminator. He had heard they only left Tanchico to put on displays for rulers. It was a strange place he was coming to.

  At the tall, square archway of the city gate, Tavolin ordered a halt and dismounted by a squat stone building just inside the walls. It had arrow-slits instead of windows, and a heavy, iron-bound door.

  “A moment, my Lord Rand,” the officer said. Tossing his reins to one of the soldiers, he disappeared inside.

  With a wary look at the soldiers—they sat their horses rigidly in two long file
s; Rand wondered what they would do if he and Loial and Hurin tried to leave—he took the opportunity to study the city that lay before him.

  Cairhien proper was a sharp contrast to the chaotic bustle of the Foregate. Broad, paved streets, wide enough to make the people in them seem fewer than they were, crossed each other at right angles. Just as in Tremonsien, the hills had been carved and terraced to straight lines. Closed sedan chairs, some with small pennants bearing the sigil of a House, moved with deliberateness, and carriages rolled down the streets slowly. People went silently in dark clothes, with no bright colors except here and there slashes across the breast of coat or dress. The more slashes, the more proudly the wearer moved, but no one laughed, or even smiled. The buildings on their terraces were all of stone, and the ornamentation was straight-lined and sharp-angled. There were no hawkers or peddlers in the streets, and even the shops seemed subdued, with only small signs and no wares displayed outside.

  He could see the great towers more clearly, now. Scaffolds of lashed poles surrounded them, and workmen swarmed on the scaffolding, laying new stones to push the towers higher still.

  “The Topless Towers of Cairhien,” Loial murmured sadly. “Well, they were tall enough to warrant the name, once. When the Aiel took Cairhien, about the time you were born, the towers burned, and cracked, and fell. I don’t see any Ogier among the stonemasons. No Ogier could like working here—the Cairhienin want what they want, without embellishment—but there were Ogier when I was here before.”

  Tavolin came out, trailing another officer and two clerks, one carrying a large, wood-bound ledger and the other a tray with writing implements. The front of the officer’s head was shaven like Tavolin’s, though advancing baldness seemed to have taken more hair than the razor. Both officers looked from Rand to the chest hidden by Loial’s striped blanket and back again. Neither asked what was under the blanket. Tavolin had looked at it often on the way from Tremonsien, but he had never asked, either. The balding man looked at Rand’s sword, too, and pursed his lips for an instant.

  Tavolin gave the other officer’s name as Asan Sandair, and announced loudly, “Lord Rand of House al’Thor, in Andor, and his man, called Hurin, with Loial, an Ogier of Stedding Shangtai.” The clerk with the ledger opened it across his two arms, and Sandair wrote the names in a round hand.

  “You must return to this guardhouse by this same hour tomorrow, my Lord,” Sandair said, leaving the sanding to the second clerk, “and give the name of the inn where you are staying.”

  Rand looked at the staid streets of Cairhien, then back at the liveliness of the Foregate. “Can you tell me the name of a good inn out there?” He nodded to the Foregate.

  Hurin made a frantic hsst and leaned close. “It would not be proper, Lord Rand,” he whispered. “If you stay in the Foregate, being a lord and all, they’ll be sure you are up to something.”

  Rand could see the sniffer was right. Sandair’s mouth had dropped open and Tavolin’s brows had risen at his question, and they were both still watching him intently. He wanted to tell them he was not playing their Great Game, but instead he said, “We will take rooms in the city. We can go now?”

  “Of course, my Lord Rand.” Sandair made a bow. “But . . . the inn?”

  “I will let you know when we find one.” Rand turned Red, then paused. Selene’s note crackled in his pocket. “I need to find a young woman from Cairhien. The Lady Selene. She is my age, and beautiful. I don’t know her House.”

  Sandair and Tavolin exchanged looks, then Sandair said, “I will make inquiries, my Lord. Perhaps I will be able to tell you something when you come tomorrow.”

  Rand nodded and led Loial and Hurin into the city. They attracted little notice, though there were few riders. Even Loial attracted almost none. The people seemed nearly ostentatious about minding their own business.

  “Will they take it the wrong way,” Rand asked Hurin, “my asking after Selene?”

  “Who can say with Cairhienin, Lord Rand? They seem to think everything has to do with Daes Dae’mar.”

  Rand shrugged. He felt as if people were looking at him. He could not wait to get a good, plain coat again, and stop pretending to be what he was not.

  Hurin knew several inns in the city, though his time in Cairhien had been spent mainly in the Foregate. The sniffer led them to one called The Defender of the Dragonwall, the sign bearing a crowned man with his foot on another man’s chest and his sword at the man’s throat. The fellow on his back had red hair.

  A hostler came to take their horses, darting quick looks at Rand and at Loial when he thought he was not observed. Rand told himself to stop having fancies; not everyone in the city could be playing this Game of theirs. And if they were, he was no part of it.

  The common room was neat, with the tables laid out as strictly as the city, and only a few people at them. They glanced up at the newcomers, then back to their wine immediately; Rand had the feeling they were still watching, though, and listening. A small fire burned in the big fireplace, though the day was warming.

  The innkeeper was a plump, unctuous man with a single stripe of green across his dark gray coat. He gave a start at his first sight of them, and Rand was not surprised. Loial, with the chest in his arms under its striped blanket, had to duck his head to make it in through the door, Hurin was burdened with all their saddlebags and bundles, and his own red coat was a sharp contrast to the somber colors the people at the tables wore.

  The innkeeper took in Rand’s coat and his sword, and his oily smile came back. He bowed, washing his smooth hands. “Forgive me, my Lord. It was just that for a moment I took you for—Forgive me. My brain is not what it was. You wish rooms, my Lord?” He added another, lesser bow for Loial. “I am called Cuale, my Lord.”

  He thought I was Aiel, Rand thought sourly. He wanted to be gone from Cairhien. But it was the one place Ingtar might find them. And Selene had said she would wait for him in Cairhien.

  It took a little time for their rooms to be readied, Cuale explaining with too many smiles and bows that it was necessary to move a bed for Loial. Rand wanted them all to share a room again, but between the innkeeper’s scandalized looks and Hurin’s insistence—“We have to show these Cairhienin we know what’s right as well as they do, Lord Rand”—they ended with two, one for him alone, with a connecting door.

  The rooms were much the same except that theirs had two beds, one sized for an Ogier, while his had only one bed, and that almost as big as the other two, with massive square posts that nearly reached the ceiling. His tall-backed, padded chair and the washstand were square and massive, too, and the wardrobe standing against his wall was carved in a heavy, rigid style that made the thing look ready enough to fall over on him. A pair of windows siding his bed looked out on the street, two floors below.

  As soon as the innkeeper left, Rand opened the door and admitted Loial and Hurin into his room. “This place gnaws at me,” he told them. “Everybody looks at you as if they think you’re doing something. I’m going back to the Foregate, for an hour anyway. At least the people laugh, there. Which of you is willing to take the first watch on the Horn?”

  “I will stay,” Loial said quickly. “I’d like a chance to do a little reading. Just because I didn’t see any Ogier does not mean there are no stonemasons down from Stedding Tsofu. It is not far from the city.”

  “I’d think you would want to meet them.”

  “Ah . . . no, Rand. They asked enough questions the last time about why I was outside alone as it was. If they’ve had word from Stedding Shangtai. . . . Well, I will just rest here and read, I think.”

  Rand shook his head. He often forgot that Loial had run away from home, in effect, to see the world. “What about you, Hurin? There’s music in the Foregate, and people laughing. I’ll wager no one is playing Daes Dae’mar there.”

  “I would not be so certain of that myself, Lord Rand. In any case, I thank you for the invitation, but I think not. There’s so many fights—and killings,
too—in Foregate, that it stinks, if you know what I mean. Not that they’re likely to bother a lord, of course; the soldiers would be down on them if they did. But if it pleases you, I would like to have a drink in the common room.”

  “Hurin, you don’t need my permission for anything. You know that.”

  “As you say, my Lord.” The sniffer gave a suggestion of a bow.

  Rand took a deep breath. If they did not leave Cairhien soon, Hurin would be bowing and scraping left and right. And if Mat and Perrin saw that, they would never let him forget it. “I hope nothing delays Ingtar. If he doesn’t come quickly, we’ll have to take the Horn back to Fal Dara ourselves.” He touched Selene’s note through his coat. “We will have to. Loial, I’ll come back so you can see some of the city.”

  “I’d rather not risk it,” Loial said.

  Hurin accompanied Rand downstairs. As soon as they reached the common room, Cuale was bowing in front of Rand, pushing a tray at him. Three folded and sealed parchments lay on the tray. Rand took them, since that was what the innkeeper seemed to intend. They were a fine grade of parchment, soft and smooth to his touch. Expensive.

  “What are these?” he asked.

  Cuale bowed again. “Invitations, of course, my Lord. From three of the noble Houses.” He bowed himself away.

  “Who would send me invitations?” Rand turned them over in his hand. None of the men at the tables looked up, but he had the feeling they were watching just the same. He did not recognize the seals. None was the crescent moon and stars Selene had used. “Who would know I was here?”

  “Everyone by now, Lord Rand,” Hurin said quietly. He seemed to feel eyes watching, too. “The guards at the gate would not keep their mouths closed about an outland lord coming to Cairhien. The hostler, the innkeeper . . . everybody tells what they know where they think it will do them the most good, my Lord.”