Broken paving stones crunched under the horses' hooves as Lan led the way into the City. The entire City was broken, what Rand could see of it, and as abandoned as Perrin had said. Not so much as a pigeon moved, and weeds, mainly old and dead, sprouted from cracks in walls as well as pavement. More buildings had roofs fallen in than had them whole. Tumbled walls spilled fans of brick and stone into the streets. Towers stopped, abrupt and jagged, like broken sticks. Uneven rubble hills with a few stunted trees growing on their slopes could have been the remains of palaces or of entire blocks of the city.
Yet what was left standing was enough to take Rand's breath. The largest building in Baerlon would have vanished in the shadows of almost anything here. Pale marble palaces topped with huge domes met him wherever he looked. Every building appeared to have at least one dome; some had four or five, and each one shaped differently. Long walks lined by columns ran hundreds of paces to towers that seemed to reach the sky. At every intersection stood a bronze fountain, or the alabaster spire of a monument, or a statue on a pedestal. If the fountains were dry, most of the spires toppled, and many of the statues broken, what remained was so great that he could only marvel.
And I thought Baerlon was a city! Burn me, but Thom must have been laughing up his sleeve. Moiraine and Lan, too.
He was so caught up in staring that he was taken by surprise when Lan suddenly stopped in front of a white stone building that had once been twice as big as the Stag and Lion in Baerlon. There was nothing to say what it had been when the city lived and was great, perhaps even an inn. Only a hollow shell remained of the upper floors-the afternoon sky was visible through empty window frames, glass and wood alike long since gone-but the ground floor seemed sound enough.
Moiraine, hands still on the pommel, studied the building intently before nodding. "This will do."
Lan leaped from his saddle and lifted the Aes Sedai down in his arms. "Bring the horses inside," he commanded. "Find a room in the back to use for a stable. Move, farmboys. This isn't the village green." He vanished inside carrying the Aes Sedai.
Nynaeve scrambled down and hurried after him, clutching her bag of herbs and ointments. Egwene was right behind her. They left their mounts standing.
"'Bring the horses inside,"' Thom muttered wryly, and puffed out his mustaches. He climbed down, stiff and slow, knuckled his back, and gave a long sigh, then took Aldieb's reins. "Well?" he said, lifting an, eyebrow at Rand and his friends.
They hurried to dismount, and gathered up the rest of the horses. The doorway, without anything to say there had ever been a door in it, was more than big enough to get the animals through, even two abreast.
Inside was a huge room, as wide as the building, with a dirty tile floor and a few ragged wall hangings, faded to a dull brown that looked as if they would fall apart at a touch. Nothing else. Lan had made a place in the nearest corner for Moiraine with his cloak and hers. Nynaeve, muttering about the dust, knelt beside the Aes Sedai, digging in her bag, which Egwene held open.
"I may not like her, it is true," Nynaeve was saying to the Warder as Rand, leading Bela and Cloud, came in behind Thom, "but I help anyone who needs my help, whether I like them or not."
"I made no accusation, Wisdom. I only said, have a care with your herbs. "
She gave him a look from the corner of her eye. "The fact is, she needs my herbs, and so do you." Her voice was acerbic to start, and grew more tart as she spoke. "The fact is, she can only do so much, even with her One Power, and she has done about as much as she can without collapsing. The fact is, your sword cannot help her now, Lord of the Seven Towers, but my herbs can."
Moiraine laid a hand on Lan's arm. "Be at ease, Lan. She means no harm. She simply does not know." The Warder snorted derisively.
Nynaeve stopped digging in her bag and looked at him, frowning, but it was to Moiraine she spoke. "There are many things I don't know. What thing is this?"
"For one," Moiraine replied, "all I truly need is a little rest. For another, I agree with you. Your skills and knowledge will be more useful than I thought. Now, if you have something that will help me sleep for an hour and not leave me groggy -?"
"A weak tea of foxtail, marisin, and -"
Rand missed the last of it as he followed Thom into a room behind the first, a chamber just as big and even emptier. Here was only the dust, thick and undisturbed until they came. Not even the tracks of birds or small animals marked the floor.
Rand began to unsaddle Bela and Cloud, and Thom, Aldieb and his gelding, and Perrin, his horse and Mandarb. All but Mat. He dropped his reins in the middle of the room. There were two doorways from the room besides the one by which they had entered.
"Alley," Mat announced, drawing his head back in from the first. They could all see that much from where they were. The second doorway was only a black rectangle in the rear wall. Mat went through slowly, and came out much faster, vigorously brushing old cobwebs out of his hair. "Nothing in there," he said, giving the alleyway another look.
"You going to take care of your horse?" Perrin said. He had already finished his own and was lifting the saddle from Mandarb. Strangely, the fierce-eyed stallion gave him no trouble at all, though he did watch Perrin. "Nobody is going to do it for you."
Mat gave the alley one last look and went to his horse with a sigh.
As Rand laid Bela's saddle on the floor, he noticed that Mat had taken on a glum stare. His eyes seemed a thousand miles away, and he was moving by rote.
"Are you all right, Mat?" Rand said. Mat lifted the saddle from his horse, and stood holding it. "Mat? Mat!"
Mat gave a start and almost dropped the saddle. "What? Oh. I...I was just thinking."
"Thinking?" Perrin hooted from where he was replacing Mandarb's bridle with a hackamore. "You were asleep."
Mat scowled. "1 was thinking about...about what happened back there. About those words I . . ." Everybody turned to look at him then, not just Rand, and he shifted uneasily. "Well, you heard what Moiraine said. It's as if some dead man was speaking with my mouth. I don't like it." His scowl grew deeper when Perrin chuckled.
"Aemon's warcry, she said - right? Maybe you're Aemon come back again. The way you go on about how dull Emond's Field is, I'd think you would like that - being a king and hero reborn."
"Don't say that!" Thom drew a deep breath; everybody stared at him now. "That is dangerous talk, stupid talk. The dead can be reborn, or take a living body, and it is not something to speak of lightly." He took another breath to calm himself before going on. "The old blood, she said. The blood, not a dead man. I've heard that it can happen, sometimes. Heard, though I never really thought . . . It was your roots, boy. A line running from you to your father to your grandfather, right on back to Manetheren, and maybe beyond. Well, now you know your family is old. You ought to let it go at that and be glad. Most people don't know much more than that they had a father."
Some of us can't even be sure of that, Rand thought bitterly. Maybe the Wisdom was right. Light, I hope she was.
Mat nodded at what the gleeman said. "I suppose I should. Only . . . do you think it has anything to do with what's happened to us? The Trollocs and all? I mean . . . oh, I don't know what I mean."
"I think you ought to forget about it, and concentrate on getting out of here safely." Thom produced his long-stemmed pipe from inside his cloak. " And I think I am going to have a smoke." With a waggle of the pipe in their direction, he disappeared into the front room.
"We are all in this together, not just one of us," Rand told Mat.
Mat gave himself a shake, and laughed, a short bark. "Right. Well, speaking of being in things together, now that we're done with the horses, why don't we go see a little more of this city. A real city, and no crowds to jostle your elbow and poke you in the ribs. Nobody looking down their long noses at us. There's still an hour; maybe two, of daylight left."
"Aren't you forgetting the Trollocs?" Perrin said.
Mat shook his head scornfully. "Lan said they wouldn't come in here, remember? You need to listen to what people say."
"I remember," Perrin said. "And I do listen. This city - Aridhol? - was an ally of Manetheren. See? I listen."
"Aridhol must have been the greatest city in the Trolloc Wars," Rand said, "for the Trollocs to still be afraid of it. They weren't afraid to come into the Two Rivers, and Moiraine said Manetheren was - how did she put it? - a thorn to the Dark One's foot."
Perrin raised his hands. "Don't mention the Shepherd of the Night. Please?" "What do you say?" Mat laughed. "Let's go." "We should ask Moiraine," Perrin said, and Mat threw up his hands.
"Ask Moiraine? You think she'll let us out of her sight? And what about Nynaeve? Blood and ashes, Perrin, why not ask Mistress Luhhan while you're about it?"
Perrin nodded reluctant agreement, and Mat turned to Rand with a grin. "What about you? A real city? With palaces!" He gave a sly laugh. "And no Whitecloaks to stare at us."
Rand gave him a dirty look, but he hesitated only a minute. Those palaces were like a gleeman's tale. "All right."
Stepping softly so as not to be heard in the front room, they left by the alley, following it away from the front of the building to a street on the other side. They walked quickly, and when they were a block away from the white stone building Mat suddenly broke into a capering dance.
"Free." He laughed. "Free!" He slowed until he was turning a circle, staring at everything and still laughing. The afternoon shadows stretched long and jagged, and the sinking sun made the ruined city golden. "Did you ever even dream of a place like this? Did you?"
Perrin laughed, too, but Rand shrugged uncomfortably. This was nothing like the city in his first dream, but just the same..."If we're going to see anything," he said, "we had better get on with it. There isn't much daylight left."
Mat wanted to see everything, it seemed, and he pulled the others along with his enthusiasm. They climbed over dusty fountains with basins wide enough to hold everybody in Emond's Field and wandered in and out of structures chosen at random, but always the biggest they could find. Some they understood, and some not. A palace was plainly a palace, but what was a huge building that was one round, white dome as big as a hill outside and one monstrous room inside? And a walled place, open to the sky and big enough to have held all of Emond's Field, surrounded by row on row on row of stone benches?
Mat grew impatient when they found nothing but dust, or rubble, or colorless rags of wall hangings that crumbled at a touch. Once some wooden chairs stood stacked against a wall; they all fell to bits when Perrin tried to pick one up.
The palaces, with their huge, empty chambers, some of which could have held the Winespring Inn with room to spare on every side and above as well, made Rand think too much of the people who had once filled them. He thought everybody in the Two Rivers could have stood under that round dome, and as for the place with the stone benches. ...He could almost imagine he could see the people in the shadows, staring in disapproval at the three intruders disturbing their rest.
Finally even Mat tired, grand as the buildings were, and remembered that he had had only an hour's sleep the night before. Everyone began to remember that. Yawning, they sat on the steps of a tall building fronted by row on row of tall stone columns and argued about what to do next.
"Go back," Rand said, "and get some sleep." He put the back of his hand against his mouth. When he could talk again, he said, "Sleep. That's all I want."
"You can sleep anytime," Mat said determinedly. "Look at where we are. A ruined city. Treasure."
"Treasure?" Perrin's jaws cracked. "There isn't any treasure here. There isn't anything but dust."
Rand shaded his eyes against the sun, a red ball sitting close to the rooftops. "It's getting late, Mat. It'll be dark soon."
"There could be treasure," Mat maintained stoutly. " Anyway, I want to climb one of the towers. Look at that one over there. It's whole. I'll bet you could see for miles from up there. What do you say?"
"The towers are not safe," said a man's voice behind them. Rand leaped to his feet and spun around clutching his sword hilt, and the others were just as quick. A man stood in the shadows among the columns at the top of the stairs. He took half a step forward, raised his hand to shield .his eyes, and stepped back again. "Forgive me," he said smoothly. "I have been quite a long time in the dark inside. My eyes are not yet used to the light."
"Who are you?" Rand thought the man's accent sounded odd, even after Baerlon; some words he pronounced strangely, so Rand could barely understand them. "What are you doing here? We thought the city was empty."
"I am Mordeth." He paused as if expecting them to recognize the name. When none of them gave any sign of doing so, he muttered something under his breath and went on. "I could ask the same questions of you. There has been no one in Aridhol for a long time. A long, long time. I would not have thought to find three young men wandering its streets."
"We're on our way to Caemlyn," Rand said. "We stopped to take shelter for the night."
"Caemlyn," Mordeth said slowly, rolling the name around his tongue, then shook his head. "Shelter for the night, you say? Perhaps you will join me."
"You still haven't said what you're doing here," Perrin said. "Why, I am a treasure hunter, of course. " "Have you found any?" Mat demanded excitedly.
Rand thought Mordeth smiled, but in the shadows he could not be sure. "I have," the man said. "More than I expected. Much more. More than I can carry away. I never expected to find three strong, healthy young men. If you will help me move what I can take to where my horses are, you may each have a share of the rest. As much as you can carry. Whatever I leave will be gone, carried off by some other treasure hunter, before I can return for it. "
"I told you there must be treasure in a place like this," Mat exclaimed. He darted up the stairs. "We'll help you carry it. Just take us to it." He and Mordeth moved deeper into the shadows among the columns.
Rand looked at Perrin. "We can't leave him." Perrin glanced at the sinking sun, and nodded. They went up the stairs warily, Perrin easing his axe in its belt loop. Rand's hand tightened on his sword. But Mat and Mordeth were waiting among the columns, Mordeth with arms folded, Mat peering impatiently into the interior.
"Come," Mordeth said. "I will show you the treasure." He slipped inside, and Mat followed. There was nothing for the others to do but go on.
The hall inside was shadowy, but almost immediately Mordeth turned aside and took some narrow steps that wound around and down through deeper and deeper dark until they fumbled their way in pitch-blackness. Rand felt along the wall with one hand, unsure there would be a step below until his foot met it. Even Mat began to feel uneasy, judging by his voice when he said, "It's awfully dark down here."
"Yes, yes," Mordeth replied. The man seemed to be having no trouble at all with the dark. "There are lights below. Come."
Indeed the winding stairs abruptly gave way to a corridor dimly lit by scattered, smoky torches set in iron sconces on the walls. The flickering flames and shadows gave Rand his first good look at Mordeth, who hurried on without pausing, motioning them to follow.
There was something odd about him, Rand thought, but he could not pick out what it was, exactly. Mordeth was a sleek, somewhat overfed man, with drooping eyelids that made him seem to be hiding behind something and staring. Short, and completely bald, he walked as if he were taller than any of them. His clothes were certainly like nothing Rand had ever seen before, either. Tight black breeches and soft red boots with the tops turned down at his ankles. A long, red vest thickly embroidered in gold, and a snowy white shirt with wide sleeves, the points of his cuffs hanging almost to his knees. Certainly not the kind of clothes in which to run through a ruined city in search of treasure. But it was not that which made him seem strange, either.
Then the corridor ended in a tile-walled room, and he forgot about any oddities Mordeth might have. His gasp was an echo of his friends. Here, too, light came from a few torches staining the ceiling with their smoke and giving everyone more than one shadow, but that light was reflected a thousand times by the gems and gold piled on the floor, mounds of coins and jewelry, goblets and plates and platters, gilded, gem-encrusted swords and daggers, all heaped together carelessly in waist-high mounds.
With a cry Mat ran forward and fell to his knees in front of one of the piles. "Sacks," he said breathlessly, pawing through the gold. "We'll need sacks to carry all of this."
"We can't carry it all," Rand said. He looked around helplessly; all the gold the merchants brought to Emond's Field in a year would not have made the thousandth part of just one of those mounds. "Not now. It's almost dark."
Perrin pulled an axe free, carelessly tossing back the gold chains that had been tangled around it. Jewels glittered along its shiny black handle, and delicate gold scrollwork covered the twin blades. "Tomorrow, then," he said, hefting the axe with a grin. "Moiraine and Lan will understand when we show them this."
"You are not alone?" Mordeth said. He had let them rush past him into the treasure room, but now he followed. "Who else is with you?"
Mat, wrist deep in the riches before him, answered absently. "Moiraine and Lan. And then there's Nynaeve, and Egwene, and Thom. He's a gleeman. We're going to Tar Valon. "
Rand caught his breath. Then the silence from Mordeth made him look at the man.
Rage twisted Mordeth's face, and fear, too. His lips pulled back from his teeth. "Tar Valon!" He shook clenched fists at them. "Tar Valon! You said you were going to this . . . this . . . Caemlyn! You lied to me!"
"If you still want," Perrin said to Mordeth, "we'll come back tomorrow and help you." Carefully he set the axe back on the heap of gem-encrusted chalices and jewelry. "If you want."
"No. That is . . ." Panting, Mordeth shook his head as if he could not decide. "Take what you want. Except . . . Except . . .Suddenly Rand realized what had been nagging at him about the man. The scattered torches in the hallway had given each of them a ring of shadows, just as the torches in the treasure room did. Only . . . He was so shocked he said it out loud. "You don't have a shadow."
A goblet fell from Mat's hand with a crash. Mordeth nodded, and for the first time his fleshy eyelids opened all the way. His sleek face suddenly appeared pinched and hungry. "So." He stood straighter, seeming taller. "It is decided." Abruptly there was no seeming to it. Like a balloon Mordeth swelled, distorted, head pressed against the ceiling, shoulders butting the walls, filling the end of the room, cutting off escape. Hollow-cheeked, teeth bared in a rictus snarl, he reached out with hands big enough to engulf a man's head.
With a yell Rand leaped back. His feet tangled in a gold chain, and he crashed to the floor, the wind knocked out of him. Struggling for breath, he struggled at the same time for his sword, fighting his cloak, which had become wrapped around the hilt. The yells of his friends filled the room, and the clash of gold platters and goblets clattering across the floor. Suddenly an. agonized scream shivered in Rand's ears.
Almost sobbing, he managed to inhale at last, just as he got the sword out of its sheath. Cautiously, he got to his feet, wondering which of his friends had given that scream. Perrin looked back at him wide-eyed from across the room, crouched and holding his axe back as if about to chop down a tree. Mat peered around the side of a treasure pile, clutching a dagger snatched from the trove.
Something moved in the deepest part of the shadows left by the torches, and they all jumped. It was Mordeth, clutching his knees to his chest and huddled as deep into the furthest comer as he could get.
"He tricked us," Mat panted. "It was some kind of trick." Mordeth threw back his head and wailed; dust sifted down as the walls trembled. "You are all dead!" he cried. "All dead!" And he leaped up, diving across the room.
Rand's jaw dropped, and he almost dropped the sword as well. As Mordeth dove through the air, he stretched out and thinned, like a tendril of smoke. As thin as a finger he struck a crack in the wall tiles and vanished into it. A last cry hung in the room as he vanished, fading slowly away after he was gone.
"You are all dead!"
"Let's get out of here," Perrin said faintly, firming his grip on his axe while he tried to face every direction at once. Gold ornaments and gems scattered unnoticed under his feet.
"But the treasure," Mat protested. "We can't just leave it now."
"I don't want anything of his," Perrin said, still turning one way after another. He raised his voice and shouted at the walls. "It's your treasure, you hear? We are not taking any of it!"
Rand stared angrily at Mat. "Do you want him coming after us? Or are you going to wait here stuffing your pockets until he comes back with ten more like him?"
Mat just gestured to all the gold and jewels. Before he could say anything, though, Rand seized one of his arms and Perrin grabbed the other. They hustled him out of the room, Mat struggling and shouting about the treasure.
Before they had gone ten steps down the hall, the already dim light behind them began to fail. The torches in the treasure room were going out. Mat stopped shouting. They hastened their steps. The first torch outside the room winked out, then the next. By the time they reached the winding stairs there was no need to drag Mat any longer. They were all running, with the dark closing in behind them. Even the pitch-black of the stairs only made them hesitate an instant, then they sped upwards, shouting at the top of their lungs. Shouting to scare anything that might be waiting; shouting to remind themselves they were still alive.
They burst out into the hall above, sliding and falling on the dusty marble, scrambling out through the columns, to tumble down the stairs and land in a bruised heap in the street.
Rand untangled himself and picked Tam's sword up from the pavement, looking around uneasily. Less than half of the sun still showed above the rooftops. Shadows reached out like dark hands, made blacker by the remaining light, nearly filling the street. He shivered. The shadows looked like Mordeth, reaching.
"At least we're out of it. " Mat got up from the bottom of the pile, dusting himself off in a shaky imitation of his usual manner. "And at least I -"
"Are we?" Perrin said. Rand knew it was not his imagination this time. The back of his neck prickled. Something was watching them from the darkness in the columns. He spun around, staring at the buildings across the way. He could feel eyes on him from there, too. His grip tightened on his sword hut, though he wondered what good it would be. Watching eyes seemed to be everywhere. The others looked around warily; he knew they could feel it, too.
"We stay in the middle of the street," he said hoarsely. They met his eyes; they looked as frightened as he felt. He swallowed hard. "We stay in the middle of the street, keep out of shadows as much as we can, and walk fast. "
"Walk very fast," Mat agreed fervently. The watchers followed them. Or else there were lots of watchers, lots of eyes staring out of almost every building. Rand could not see anything move, hard as he tried, but he could feel the eyes, eager, hungry. He did not know which would be worse. Thousands of eyes, or just a few, following them.
In the stretches where the sun still reached them, they slowed, just a little, squinting nervously into the darkness that always seemed to lay ahead. None of them was eager to enter the shadows; no one was really sure something might not be waiting. The watchers' anticipation was a palpable thing whenever shadows stretched across the street, barring their way. They ran through those dark places shouting. Rand thought he could hear dry, rustling laughter. .
At last, with twilight falling, they came in sight of the white stone building they had left what seemed like days ago. Suddenly the watching eyes departed. Between one step and the next, they vanished in a blink. Without a word Rand broke into a trot, followed by his friends, then a full run that only ended when they hared through the doorway and collapsed, panting.
A small fire burned in the middle of the tile floor, the smoke vanishing through a hole in the ceiling in a way that reminded Rand unpleasantly of Mordeth. Everyone except Lan was there, gathered around the flames, and their reactions varied considerably. Egwene, warming her hands at the fire, gave a start as the three burst into the room, clutching her hands to her throat; when she saw who it was, a relieved sigh spoiled her attempt at a withering look. Thom merely muttered something around his pipestem, but Rand caught the word "fools" before the gleeman went back to poking the flames with a stick.
"You wool-headed witlings!" the Wisdom snapped. She bristled from head to foot; her eyes glittered, and bright spots of red burned on her cheeks. "Why under the Light did you run off like that? Are you all right? Have you no sense at all? Lan is out looking for you now, and you'll be luckier than you deserve if he does not pound some sense into the lot of you when he gets back."
The Aes Sedai's face betrayed no agitation at all, but her hands had loosed a white-knuckled grip on her dress at the sight of them. Whatever Nynaeve had given her must have helped, for she was on her feet. "You should not have done what you did," she said in a voice as clear and serene as a Waterwood pond. "We will speak of it later. Something happened out there, or you would not be falling all over one another like this. Tell me."
"You said it was safe," Mat complained, scrambling to his feet. "You said Aridhol was an ally of Manetheren, and Trollocs wouldn't come into the city, and-"
Moiraine stepped forward so suddenly that Mat cut off with his mouth open, and Rand and Perrin paused in getting up, halfway crouched or on their knees. "Trollocs? Did you see Trollocs inside the walls?"
Rand swallowed. "Not Trollocs," he said, and all three began talking excitedly, all at the same time.
Everyone began in a different place. Mat started with finding the treasure, sounding almost as if he had done it alone, while Perrin began explaining why they had gone off in the first place without telling anyone. Rand jumped right to what he thought was important, meeting the stranger among the columns. But they were all so excited that nobody told anything in the order it happened; whenever one of them thought of something, he blurted it out with no regard for what came before or after, or for who was saying what. The watchers. They all babbled about the watchers.
It made the whole tale close to incoherent, but their fear came through. Egwene began casting uneasy glances at the empty windows fronting the street. Out there the last remnants of twilight were fading; the fire seemed very small and dim. Thom took his pipe from between his teeth and listened with his head cocked, frowning. Moiraine's eyes showed concern, but not an undue amount. Until . . .
Suddenly the Aes Sedai hissed, and grabbed Rand's elbow in a tight grip. "Mordeth! Are you sure of that name? Be very sure, all of you. Mordeth?"
They murmured a chorused "Yes," taken aback by the Aes Sedai's intensity.
"Did he touch you?" she asked them all. "Did he give you anything, or did you do anything for him? I must know."
"No," Rand said. "None of us. None of those things." Perrin nodded agreement, and added, "All he did was try to kill us. Isn't that enough? He swelled up until he filled half the room, shouted that we were all dead men, then vanished. " He moved his hand to demonstrate. "Like smoke." Egwene gave a squeak.
Mat twisted away petulantly. "Safe, you said. All that talk about Trollocs not coming here. What were we supposed to think?"
"Apparently you did not think at all," she said, coolly composed once more. "Anyone who thinks would be wary of a place that Trollocs are afraid to enter."
"Mat's doing," Nynaeve said, certainty in her voice. "He's always talking some mischief or other, and the others lose the little wits they were born with when they're around him."
Moiraine nodded briefly, but her eyes remained on Rand and his two friends. "Late in the Trolloc Wars, an army camped within these ruins - Trollocs, Darkfriends, Myrddraal, Dreadlords, thousands in all. When they did not come out, scouts were sent inside the walls. The scouts found weapons, bits of armor, and blood splattered everywhere. And messages scratched on walls in the Trolloc tongue, calling on the Dark One to aid them in their last hour. Men who came later found no trace of the blood or the messages. They had been scoured away. Halfmen and Trollocs remember still. That is what keeps them outside this place."
"And this is where you picked for us to hide?" Rand said in disbelief. "We'd be safer out there trying to outrun them."
"If you had not gone running off," Moiraine said patiently, "you would know that I set wards around this building. A Myrddraal would not even know these wards were there, for it is a different kind of evil they are meant to stop, but what resides in Shadar Logoth will not cross them, or eyen come too near. In the morning it will be safe for us to go; these things cannot stand the light of the sun. They will be hiding deep in the earth."
"Shadar Logoth?" Egwene said uncertainly. "I thought you said this city was called Aridhol."
"Once it was called Aridhol," Moiraine replied, "and was one of the Ten Nations, the lands that made the Second Covenant, the lands that stood against the Dark One from the first days after the Breaking of the World. In the days when Thorin al Toren al Ban was King of Manetheren, the King of Aridhol was Balwen Mayel, Balwen Ironhand. In a twilight of despair during the Trolloc Wars, when it seemed the Father of Lies must surely conquer, the man called Mordeth came to Balwen's court."
"The same man?" Rand exclaimed, and Mat said, "It couldn't be!" A glance from Moiraine silenced them. Stillness filled the room except for the Aes Sedai's voice.
"Before Mordeth had been long in the city he had Balwen's ear, and soon he was second only to the King. Mordeth whispered poison in Balwen's ear, and Aridhol began to change. Aridhol drew in on itself, hardened. It was said that some would rather see Trollocs come than the men of Aridhol. The victory of the Light is all. That was the battlecry Mordeth gave them, and the men of Aridhol shouted it while their deeds abandoned the Light.
"The story is too long to tell in full, and too grim, and only fragments are known, even in Tar Valon. How Thorin's son, Caar, came to win Aridhol back to the Second Covenant, and Balwen sat his throne, a withered shell with the light of mad- ness in his eyes, laughing while Mordeth smiled at his side and ordered, the deaths of Caar and the embassy as Friends of the Dark. How Prince Caar came to be called Caar One-Hand. How he escaped the dungeons of Aridhol and fled alone to the Borderlands with Mordeth's unnatural assassins at his heels. How there he met Rhea, who did not know who he was, and married her, and set the skein in the Pattern that led to his death at her hands, and hers by her own hand before his tomb, and the fall of Aleth-loriel. How the armies of Manetheren came to avenge Caar and found the gates of Aridhol torn down, no living thing inside the walls, but something worse than death. No enemy had come to Aridhol but Aridhol. Suspicion and hate had given birth to something that fed on that which created it, something locked in the bedrock on which the city stood. Mashadar waits still, hungering. Men spoke of Aridhol no more. They named it Shadar Logoth, the Place Where the Shadow Waits, or more simply, Shadow's Waiting.
"Mordeth alone was not consumed by Mashadar, but he was snared by it, and he, too, has waited within these walls through the long centuries. Others have seen him. Some he has influenced through gifts that twist the mind and taint the spirit, the taint waxing and waning until it rules...or kills. If ever he convinces someone to accompany him to the walls, to the boundary of Mashadar's power, he will be able to consume the soul of that person. Mordeth will leave, wearing the body of the one he worse than killed, to wreak his evil on the world again."
"The treasure," Perrin mumbled when she stopped. "He wanted us to help carry the treasure to his horses." His face was haggard. "I'll bet they were supposed to be outside the city somewhere." Rand shivered.
"But we are safe, now, aren't we?" Mat asked. "He didn't give us anything, and he didn't touch us, we're safe, aren't we, with the wards you set?"
"We are safe," Moiraine agreed. "He cannot cross the ward line, nor can any other denizen of this place. And they must hide from the sunlight, so we can leave safely once it is day. Now, try to sleep. The wards will protect us until Lan returns."
"He has been gone a long time." Nynaeve looked worriedly at the night outside. Full dark had fallen, as black as pitch.
"Lan will be well," Moiraine said soothingly, and spread her blankets beside the fire while she spoke. "He, was pledged to fight the Dark One before he left the cradle, a sword placed in his infant hands. Besides, I would know the minute of his death and the way of it, just as he would know mine. Rest, Nynaeve. All will be well." But as she was rolling herself into her blankets, she paused, staring at the street as if she, too, would have liked to know what kept the Warder.
Rand's arms and legs felt like lead and his eyes wanted to slide shut on their own, yet sleep did not come quickly, and once it did, he dreamed, muttering and kicking off his blankets. When he woke, it was suddenly, and he looked around for a moment before he remembered where he was.
The moon was up, the last thin sliver before the new moon, its faint light defeated by the night. Everyone else was still asleep, though not all soundly. Egwene and his two friends twisted and murmured inaudibly. Thom's snores, soft for once, were broken from time to time by half-formed words. There was still no sign of Lan.
Suddenly he felt as if the wards were no protection at all. Anything at all could be out there in the dark. Telling himself he was being foolish, he added wood to the last coals of the fire. The blaze was too small to give much warmth, but it gave more light.
He had no idea what had awakened, him from his unpleasant dream. He had been a little boy again, carrying Tam's sword and with a cradle strapped to his back, running through empty streets, pursued by Mordeth, who shouted that he only wanted his hand. And there had been an old man who watched them and cackled with mad laughter the whole time.
He gathered his blankets and lay back, staring at the ceiling. He wanted very much to sleep, even if he had more dreams like the last one, but he could not make his eyes close.
Suddenly the Warder trotted silently out of the darkness into the room. Moiraine came awake and sat up as if he had rung a bell. Lan opened his hand; three small objects fell to the tiles in front of her with the clink of iron. Three blood-red badges in the shape of homed skulls.
"There are Trollocs inside the walls," Lan said. "They will be here in little more than an hour. And the Dha'vol are the worst of them." He began waking the others.
Moiraine smoothly began folding her blankets. "How many? Do they know we are here?" She sounded as if there were no urgency at all.
"I don't think they do," Lan replied. "There are well over a hundred, frightened enough to kill anything that moves, including one another. The Halfmen are having to drive them - four just to handle one fist - and even the Myrddraal seem to want nothing more than to pass through the city and out as quickly as possible. They are not going out of their way to search, and they're so slipshod that if they were not heading nearly straight for us I would say we had nothing to worry about." He hesitated.
"There is something else?" "Only this," Lan said slowly. "The Myrddraal forced the Trollocs into the city. What forced the Myrddraal?"
Everyone had been listening in silence. Now Thom cursed under his breath, and Egwene breathed a question. "The Dark One?"
"Don't be a fool, girl," Nynaeve snapped. "The Dark One is bound in Shayol Ghul by the Creator."
"For the time being, at least," Moiraine agreed. "No, the Father of Lies is not out there, but we must leave in any case."
Nynaeve eyed her narrowly. "Leave the protection of the wards, and cross Shadar Logoth in the night."
"Or stay here and face the Trollocs," Moiraine said. "To hold them off here would require the One Power. It would destroy the wards and attract the very thing the wards are meant to protect against. Besides, as well build a signal fire atop one of those towers for every Halfman within twenty miles. To leave is not what I would choose to do, but we are the hare, and it is the hounds who dictate the chase."
"What if there are more outside the walls?" Mat asked. "What are we going to do?"
"We will use my original plan," Moiraine said. Lan looked at her. She held up a hand and added, "Which I was too tired to carry out before. But I am rested, now, thanks to the Wisdom. We will make for the river. There, with our backs guarded by the water, I can raise a smaller ward that will hold the Trollocs and Halfmen back until we can make rafts and cross over. Or better yet, we may even be able to hail a trader's boat coming down from Saldaea."
The faces of the Emond's Fielders looked blank, Lan noticed.
"Trollocs and Myrddraal loathe deep water, Trollocs are terrified of it. Neither can swim. A Halfman will not wade anything more than waist deep, especially if it's moving. Trollocs won't do even that if they can find any way to avoid it."
"So once we get across the river we're safe," Rand said, and the Warder nodded.
"The Myrddraal will find it almost as hard to make the Trollocs build rafts as it was to drive them into Shadar Logoth, and if they try to make them cross the Arinelle that way, half will run away and the rest probably drown."
"Get to your horses," Moiraine said. "We are not across the river yet."
