Friday, June 30, 2006
26. Whitebridge
The last unsteady note of what had been barely recognizable as "The Wind That Shakes the Willow" faded mercifully away, and Mat lowered Thom's gold-and-silver-chased flute. Rand took his hands from his ears. A sailor coiling a line on the deck nearby heaved a loud sigh of relief. For a moment the only sounds were the water slapping against the hull, the rhythmic creak of the oars, and now and again the hum of rigging strummed by the wind. The wind blew dead on to the Spray's bow, and the useless sails were furled.
"I suppose I should thank you," Thom Merrilin muttered finally, "for teaching me how true the old saying is. Teach him how you will, a pig will never play the flute." The sailor burst out laughing, and Mat raised the flute as if to throw it at him. Deftly, Thom snagged the instrument from Mat's fist and fitted it into its hard leather case. "I thought all you shepherds whiled away the time with the flock playing the pipes or the flute. That will show me to trust what I don't know firsthand."
"Rand's the shepherd," Mat grumbled. "He plays the pipes, not me."
"Yes, well, he does have a little aptitude. Perhaps we had better work on juggling, boy. At least you show some talent for that."
"Thom," Rand said, "I don't know why you're trying so hard." He glanced at the sailor and lowered his voice. "After all, we aren't really trying to become gleemen. It's only something to hide behind until we find Moiraine and the others."
Thom tugged at an end of his mustache and seemed to be studying the smooth, dark brown leather of the flute case on his knees. "What if you don't find them, boy? There's nothing to say they're even still alive."
"They're alive," Rand said firmly. He turned to Mat for support, but Mat's eyebrows were pinched down on his nose, and his mouth was a thin line, and his eyes were fixed on the deck. "Well, speak up," Rand told him. "You can't be that mad over not being able to play the flute. I can't either, not very well. You never wanted to play the flute before."
Mat looked up, still frowning. "What if they are dead?" he said softly. "We have to accept facts, right?"
At that moment the lookout in the bow sang out, "Whitebridge! Whitebridge ahead!"
For a long minute, unwilling to believe that Mat could say something like that so casually, Rand held his friend's gaze amid the scramble of sailors preparing to put in. Mat glowered at him with his head pulled down between his shoulders. There was so much Rand wanted to say, but he could not manage to get it all into words. They had to believe the others were alive. They had to. Why? nagged a voice in the back of his head. So it will all turn out like one of Thom's stories? The heroes find the treasure and defeat the villain and live happily ever after? Some of his stories don't end that way. Sometimes even heroes die. Are you a hero, Rand al'Thor? Are you a hero, sheepherder?
Abruptly Mat flushed and pulled his eyes away. Freed from his thoughts, Rand jumped up to move through the hurly-burly to the rail. Mat came after him slowly, not even making an effort to dodge the sailors who ran across his path.
Men dashed about the boat, bare feet thumping the deck, hauling on ropes, tying off some lines and untying others. Some brought up big oilskin bags stuffed almost to bursting with wool, while others readied cables as thick as Rand's wrist. Despite their haste, they moved with the assurance of men who had done it all a thousand times before, but Captain Domon stumped up and down the deck shouting orders and cursing those who did not move fast enough to suit him.
Rand's attention was all for what lay ahead, coming plainly into sight as they rounded a slight bend of the Arinelle. He had heard of it, in song and story and peddlers' tales, but now he would actually see the legend.
The White Bridge arched high over the wide waters, twice as high as the Spray's mast and more, and from end to end it gleamed milky white in the sunlight, gathering the light until it seemed to glow. Spidery piers of the same stuff plunged into the strong currents, appearing too frail to support the weight and width of the bridge. It looked all of one piece, as if it had been carved from a single stone or molded by a giant's hand, broad and tall, leaping the river with an airy grace that almost made the eye forget its size. All in all it dwarfed the town that sprawled about its foot on the east bank, though Whitebridge was larger by far than Emond's Field, with houses of stone and brick as tall as those in Taren Ferry and wooden docks like thin fingers sticking out into the river. Small boats dotted the Arinelle thickly, fishermen hauling their nets. And over it all the White Bridge towered and shone.
"It looks like glass," Rand said to no one in particular.
Captain Domon paused behind him and tucked his thumbs behind his broad belt. "Nay, lad. Whatever it be, it no be glass. Never so hard the rains come, it no be slippery, and the best chisel and the strongest arm no make a mark on it."
"A remnant from the Age of Legends," Thom said. "I have always thought it must be."
The captain gave a dour grunt. "Mayhap. But still useful despite. Could be someone else built it. Does no have to be Aes Sedai work, Fortune prick me. It no has to be so old as all that. Put your back into it, you bloody fool!" He hurried off down the deck.
Rand stared even more wonderingly. From the Age of Legends. Made by Aes Sedai, then. That was why Captain Domon felt the way he did, for all his talk about the wonder and strangeness of the world. Aes Sedai work. One thing to hear about it, another to see it, and touch it. You know that, don't you? For an instant it seemed to Rand that a shadow rippled through the milk-white structure. He pulled his eyes away, to the docks coming nearer, but the bridge still loomed in the corner of his vision.
"We made it, Thom," he said, then forced a laugh. "And no mutiny."
The gleeman only harrumphed and blew out his mustaches, but two sailors readying a cable nearby gave Rand a sharp glance, then bent quickly back to their work. He stopped laughing and tried not to look at the two for the rest of the approach to Whitebridge.
The Spray curved smoothly in beside the first dock, thick timbers sitting on heavy, tarcoated pilings, and stopped with a backing of oars that swirled the water to froth around the blades. As the oars were drawn in, sailors tossed cables to men on the dock, who fastened them off with a flourish, while other crewmen slung the bags of wool over the side to protect the hull from the dock pilings.
Before the boat was even pulled snug against the dock, carriages appeared at the end of the dock, tall and lacquered shiny black, each one with a name painted on the door in large letters, gold or scarlet. The carriages' passengers hurried up the gangplank as soon as it dropped in place, smooth-faced men in long velvet coats and silk-lined cloaks and cloth slippers, each followed by a plainly dressed servant carrying his iron-bound moneybox.
They approached Captain Domon with painted smiles that slipped when he abruptly roared in their faces. "You!" He thrust a thick finger past them, stopping Floran Gelb in his tracks at the length of the boat. The bruise on Gelb's forehead from Rand's boot had faded away, but he still fingered the spot from time to time as if to remind himself. "You've slept on watch for the last time on my vessel! Or on any vessel, if I have my way of it. Choose your own side - the dock or the river - but off my vessel now!"
Gelb hunched his shoulders, and his eyes glittered hate at Rand and his friends, at Rand especially, a poisonous glare. The wiry man looked around the deck for support, but there was little hope in that look. One by one, every man in the crew straightened from what he was doing and stared back coldly. Gelb wilted visibly, but then his glare returned, twice as strong as it had been. With a muttered curse he darted below to the crew's quarters. Domon sent two men after him to see he did no mischief and dismissed him with a grunt. When the captain turned back to them, the merchants took up their smiles and bows as if they had never been interrupted.
At a word from Thom, Mat and Rand began gathering their things together. There was not much aside from the clothes on their backs, not for any of them. Rand had his blanketroll and saddlebags, and his father's sword. He held the sword for a minute, and homesickness rolled over him so strongly that his eyes stung. He wondered if he would ever see Tam again. Or home? Home. Going to upend the rent of your life running, running and afraid of your own dreams. With a shuddering sigh he slipped the belt around his waist over his coat.
Gelb came back on deck, followed by his twin shadows. He looked straight ahead, but Rand could still feel hatred coming off him in waves. Back rigid and face dark, Gelb walked stiff-legged down the gangplank and pushed roughly into the thin crowd on the dock. In a minute he was gone from sight, vanished beyond the merchants' carriages.
There were not a great many people on the dock, and those were a plainly dressed mix of workmen, fishermen mending nets, and a few townspeople who had come out to see the first boat of the year to come downriver from Saldaea. None of the girls was Egwene and no one looked the least bit like Moiraine, or Lan, of anyone else Rand was hoping to see.
"Maybe they didn't come down to the dock," he said.
"Maybe," Thom replied curtly. He settled his instrument cases on his back with care. "You two keep an eye out for Gelb. He will make trouble if he can. We want to pass through Whitebridge so softly that nobody remembers we were here five minutes after we're gone."
Their cloaks flapped in the wind as they walked to the gangplank. Mat carried his bow crossed in front on his chest. Even after all their days on the boat, it still got a few looks from the crewmen; their bows were short affairs.
Captain Domon left the merchants to intercept Thom at the gangplank.
"You be leaving me now, gleeman? Can I no talk you into continuing on? I be going all the way down to Illian, where folk have a proper regard for gleemen. There be no finer place in the world for your art. I'd get you there in good time for the Feast of Sefan. The competitions, you know. A hundred gold marks for the best telling of The Great Hunt of the Horn."
"A great prize, Captain," Thom replied with an elaborate bow and a flourish of his cloak that set the patches to fluttering, "and great competitions, which rightly draw gleemen from the whole world over. But," he added dryly, "I fear we could not afford the fare at the rates you charge."
"Aye, well, as to that . . ." The captain produced a leather purse from his coat pocket and tossed it to Thom. It clinked when Thom caught it. "Your fares back, and a bit more besides. The damage was no so bad as I thought, and you've worked your way and more with your tales and your harp. I could maybe manage as much again if you stay aboard to the Sea of Storms. And I would set you ashore in Illian. A good gleeman can make his fortune there, even aside from the competitions."
Thom hesitated, weighing the purse on his palm, but Rand spoke up. "We're meeting friends here, Captain, and going on to Caemlyn together. We'll have to see Illian another time."
Thom's mouth twisted wryly, then he blew out his long mustaches and tucked the purse into his pocket. "Perhaps if the people we are to meet are not here, Captain."
"Aye," Domon said sourly. "You think on it. Too bad I can no keep Gelb aboard to take the others' anger, but I do what I say I will do. I suppose I must ease up now, even if it means taking three times as long to reach Illian as I should. Well, mayhap those Trollocs were after you three."
Rand blinked but kept silent, but Mat was not so cautious.
"Why do you think they weren't?" he demanded. "They were after the same treasure we were hunting."
"Mayhap," the captain grunted, sounding unconvinced. He combed thick fingers through his beard, then pointed at the pocket where Thom had put the purse. "Twice that if you come back to keep the men's minds off how hard I work them. Think on it. I sail with the first light on the morrow." He turned on his heel and strode back to the merchants, arms spreading wide as he began an apology for keeping them waiting.
Thom still hesitated, but Rand hustled him down the gangplank without giving him a chance to argue, and the gleeman let himself be herded. A murmur passed through the people on the dock as they saw Thom's patch-covered cloak, and some called out to discover where he would be performing. So much for not being noticed, Rand thought, dismayed. By sundown it would be all over Whitebridge that there was a gleeman in town. He hurried Thom along, though, and Thom, wrapped in sulky silence, did not even try to slow down enough to preen under the attention.
The carriage drivers looked down at Thom with interest from their high perches, but apparently the dignity of their positions forbade shouting. With no idea of where to go exactly, Rand turned up the street that ran along the river and under the bridge.
"We need to find Moiraine and the others," he said. "And fast. We should have thought of changing Thom's cloak."
Thom suddenly shook himself and stopped dead. "An innkeeper will be able to cell us if they're here, or if they've passed through. The right innkeeper. Innkeepers have all the news and gossip. If they aren't here . . ." He looked back and forth from Rand to Mat. "We have to talk, we three." Cloak swirling around his ankles, he set off into the town, away from the river. Rand and Mat had to step quickly to keep up.
The broad, milk-white arch that gave the town its name dominated Whitebridge as much close up as it did from afar, but once Rand was in the streets he realized that the town was every bit as big as Baerlon, though not so crowded with people. A few carts moved in the streets, pulled by horse or ox or donkey or man, but no carriages. Those most likely all belonged to the merchants and were clustered down at the dock.
Shops of every description lined the streets, and many of the tradesmen worked in front of their establishments, under the signs swinging in the wind. They passed a man mending pots, and a tailor holding folds of cloth up to the light for a customer. A shoemaker, sitting in his doorway, tapped his hammer on the heel of a boot. Hawkers cried their services at sharpening knives and scissors, or tried to interest the passersby in their skimpy trays of fruit or vegetables, but none was getting much interest. Shops selling food had the same pitiful displays of produce Rand remembered from Baerlon. Even the fishmongers displayed only small piles of small fish, for all the boats on the river. Times were not really hard yet, but everyone could see what was coming if the weather did not change soon, and those faces that were not fixed into worried frowns seemed to stare at something unseen, something unpleasant.
Where the White Bridge came down in the center of the town was a big square, paved with stones worn by generations of feet and wagon wheels. Inns surrounded the square, and shops, and tall, red brick houses with signs out front bearing the same names Rand had seen on the carriages at the dock. It was into one of those inns, seemingly chosen at random, that Thom ducked. The sign over the door, swinging in the wind, had a striding man with a bundle on his back on one side and the same man with his head on a pillow on the other, and proclaimed The Wayfarers' Rest.
The common room stood empty except for the fat innkeeper drawing ale from a barrel and two men in rough workman's clothes staring glumly into their mugs at a table in the back. Only the innkeeper looked up when they came in. A shoulder-high wall split the room in two from front to back, with tables and a blazing fireplace on each side. Rand wondered idly if all innkeepers were fat and losing their hair.
Rubbing his hands together briskly, Thom commented to the innkeeper on the late cold and ordered hot spiced wine, then added quietly, "Is there somewhere my friends and I could talk without being disturbed?"
The innkeeper nodded to the low wall. "The other side that's as best I've got unless you want to take a room. For when sailors come up from the river. Seems like half the crews got grudges against the other half. I won't have my place broke up by fights, so I keep them apart." He had been eyeing Thom's cloak the whole while, and now he cocked his head to one side, a sly look in his eyes. "You staying? Haven't had a gleeman here in some time. Folks would pay real good for something as would take their minds off things. I'd even take some off on your room and meals."
Unnoticed, Rand thought glumly.
"You are too generous," Thom said with a smooth bow. "Perhaps I will take up your offer. But for now, a little privacy."
"I'll bring your wine. Good money here for a gleeman."
The tables on the far side of the wall were all empty, but Thom chose one right in the middle of the space. "So no one can listen without us knowing," he explained. "Did you hear that fellow? He'll take some off. Why, I'd double his custom just by sitting here. Any honest innkeeper gives a gleeman room and board and a good bit besides."
The bare table was none too clean, and the floor had not been swept in days if not weeks. Rand looked around and grimaced. Master al'Vere would not have let his inn get that dirty if he had had to climb out of a sickbed to see to it. "We're only after information. Remember?"
"Why here?" Mat demanded. "We passed other inns that looked cleaner."
"Straight on from the bridge," Thom said, "is the road to Caemlyn. Anyone passing through Whitebridge comes through this square, unless they're going by river, and we know your friends aren't doing that. If there is no word of them here, it doesn't exist. Let me do the talking. This has to be done carefully."
Just then the innkeeper appeared, three battered pewter mugs gripped in one fist by the handles. The fat man flicked at the table with a towel, set the mugs down, and took Thom's money. "If you stay, you won't have to pay for your drinks. Good wine, here."
Thom's smile touched only his mouth. "I will think on it, innkeeper. What news is there? We have been away from hearing things."
"Big news, that's what. Big news."
The innkeeper draped the towel over his shoulder and pulled up a chair. He crossed his arms on the table, took root with a long sigh, saying what a comfort it was to get off his feet. His name was Bartim, and he went on about his feet in detail, about corns and bunions and how much time he spent standing and what he soaked them in, until Thom mentioned the news again, and then he shifted over with hardly a pause.
The news was just as big as he said it was. Logain, the false Dragon, had been captured after a big battle near Lugard while he was trying to move his army from Ghealdan to Tear. The Prophecies, they understood? Thom nodded, and Bartim went on. The roads in the south were packed with people, the lucky ones with what they could carry on their backs. Thousands fleeing in all directions.
"None" - Bartim chuckled wryly - "supported Logain, of course. Oh, no, you won't find many to admit to that, not now. Just refugees trying to find a safe place during the troubles."
Aes Sedai had been involved in taking Logain, of course. Bartim spat on the floor when he said that, and again when he said they were taking the false Dragon north to Tar Valon. Bartim was a decent man, he said, a respectable man, and Aes Sedai could all go back to the Blight where they came from and take Tar Valon with them, as far as he was concerned. He would get no closer to an Aes Sedai than a thousand miles, if he had his way. Of course, they were stopping at every village and town on the way north to display Logain, so he had heard. To show people that the false Dragon had been taken and the world was safe again. He would have liked to see that, even if it did mean getting close to Aes Sedai. He was halfway tempted to go to Caemlyn.
"They'll be taking him there to show to Queen Morgase." The innkeeper touched his forehead respectfully. "I've never seen the Queen. Man ought to see his own Queen, don't you think?"
Logain could do "things," and the way Bartim's eyes shifted and his tongue darted across his lips made it clear what he meant. He had seen the last false Dragon, two years ago, when he was paraded through the countryside, but that was just some fellow who thought he could make himself a king. There had been no need for Aes Sedai, that time. Soldiers had had him chained up on a wagon. A sullen-looking fellow who moaned in the middle of the wagonbed, covering his head with his arms whenever people threw stones or poked him with sticks. There had been a lot of that, and the soldiers had done nothing to stop it, as long as they did not kill the fellow. Best to let the people see he was nothing special after all. He could not do "things." This Logain would be something to see, though. Something for Bartim to tell his grandchildren about. If only the inn would let him get away.
Rand listened with an interest that did not have to be faked. When Padan Fain had brought word to Emond's Field of a false Dragon, a man actually wielding the Power, it had been the biggest news to come into the Two Rivers in years. What had happened since had pushed it to the back of his mind, but it was still the sort of thing people would be talking about for years, and telling their grandchildren about, too. Bartim would probably tell his that he had seen Logain whether he did or not. Nobody would ever think what happened to some village folk from the Two Rivers was worth talking about, not unless they were Two Rivers people themselves.
"That," Thom said, "would be something to make a story of, a story they'd tell for a thousand years. I wish I had been there." He sounded as if it was the simple truth, and Rand thought it really was. "I might try to see him anyway. You didn't say what route they were taking. Perhaps there are some other travelers around? They might have heard the route."
Bartim waved a grubby hand dismissively. "North, that's all anybody knows around here. You want to see him, go to Caemlyn. That's all I know, and if there's anything to know in Whitebridge, I know it."
"No doubt you do," Thom said smoothly. "I expect a lot of strangers passing through stop here. Your sign caught my eye from the foot of the White Bridge."
"Not just from the west, I'll have you know. Two days ago there was a fellow in here, an Illianer, with a proclamation all done up with seals and ribbons. Read it right out there in the square. Said he's taking it all the way to the Mountains of Mist, maybe even to the Aryth Ocean, if the passes are open. Said they've sent men to read it in every land in the world." The innkeeper shook his head. "The Mountains of Mist. I hear they're covered with fog all the year round, and there's things in the fog will strip the flesh off your bones before you can run." Mat snickered, earning a sharp look from Bartim.
Thom leaned forward intently. "What did the proclamation say?"
"Why, the hunt for the Horn, of course," Bartim exclaimed. "Didn't I say that? The Illianers are calling on everybody as will swear their lives to the hunt to gather in Illian. Can you imagine that? Swearing your life to a legend? I suppose they'll find some fools. There's always fools around. This fellow claimed the end of the world is coming. The last battle with the Dark One." He chuckled, but it had a hollow sound, a man laughing to convince himself something really was worth laughing at. "Guess they think the Horn of Valere has to be found before it happens. Now what do you think of that?" He chewed a knuckle pensively for a minute. "Course, I don't know as I could argue with them after this winter. The winter, and this fellow Logain, and those other two before, as well. Why all these fellows the last few years claiming to be the Dragon? And the winter. Must mean something. What do you think?"
Thom did not seem to hear him. In a soft voice the gleeman began to recite to himself.
"In the last, lorn fight
'gainst the fall of long night,
the mountains stand guard,
and the dead shall be ward,
for the grave is no bar to my call."
"That's it." Bartim grinned as if he could already see the crowds handing him their money while they listened to Thom. "That's it. The Great Hunt of the Horn. You tell that one, and they'll be hanging from the rafters in here. Everybody's heard about the proclamation."
Thom still seemed to be a thousand miles away, so Rand said, "We're looking for some friends who were coming this way. From the west. Have there been many strangers passing through in the last week or two?"
"Some," Bartim said slowly. "There's always some, from east and west both." He looked at each of them in turn, suddenly wary. "What do they look like, these friends of yours?"
Rand opened his mouth, but Thom, abruptly back from wherever he had been, gave him a sharp, silencing look. With an exasperated sigh the gleeman turned to the innkeeper. "Two men and three women," he said reluctantly. "They may be together, or maybe not." He gave thumbnail sketches, painting each one in just a few words, enough for anyone who had seen them to recognize without giving away anything about who they were.
Bartim rubbed one hand over his head, disarranging his thinning hair, and stood up slowly. "Forget about performing here, gleeman. In fact, I'd appreciate it if you drank your wine and left. Leave Whitebridge, if you're smart. "
"Someone else has been asking after them?" Thom took a drink, as if the answer were the least important thing in the world, and raised an eyebrow at the innkeeper. "Who would that be?"
Bartim scrubbed his hand through his hair again and shifted his feet on the point of walking away, then nodded to himself. "About a week ago, as near as I can say, a weaselly fellow came over the bridge. Crazy, everybody thought. Always talking to himself, never stopped moving even when he was standing still. Asked about the same people . . . some of them. He asked like it was important, then acted like he didn't care what the answer was. Half the time he was saying as he had to wait here for them, and the other half as he had to go on, he was in a hurry. One minute he was whining and begging, the next making demands like a king. Near got himself a thrashing a time or two, crazy or not. The Watch almost took him in custody for his own safety. He went off toward Caemlyn that same day, talking to himself and crying. Crazy, like I said."
Rand looked at Thom and Mat questioningly, and they both shook their heads. If this weaselly fellow was looking for them, he was still nobody they recognized.
"Are you sure it was the same people he wanted?" Rand asked.
"Some of them. The fighting man, and the woman in silk. But it wasn't them as he cared about. It was three country boys." His eyes slid across Rand and Mat and away again so fast that Rand was not sure if he had really seen the look or imagined it. "He was desperate to find them. But crazy, like I said."
Rand shivered, and wondered who the crazy man could be, and why he was looking for them. A Darkfriend? Would Ba'alzamon rue a madman?
"He was crazy, but the other one . . ." Bartim's eyes shifted uneasily, and his tongue ran over his lips as if he could not find enough spit to moisten them. "Next day . . . next day the other one came for the first time." He fell silent.
"The other one?" Thom prompted finally.
Bartim looked around, although their side of the divided room was still empty except for them. He even raised up on his toes and looked over the low wall. When he finally spoke, it was in a whispered rush.
"All in black he is. Keeps the hood of his cloak pulled up so you can't see his face, but you can feel him looking at you, feel it like an icicle shoved into your spine. He . . . he spoke to me." He flinched and stopped to chew at his lip before going on. "Sounded like a snake crawling through dead leaves. Fair turned my stomach to ice. Every time as he comes back, he asks the same questions. Same questions the crazy man asked. Nobody ever sees him coming-he's just there all of a sudden, day or night, freezing you where you stand. People are starting to look over their shoulders.
Worst of it is, the gatetenders claim as he's never passed through any of the gates, coming or going."
Rand worked at keeping his face blank; he clenched his jaw until his teeth ached. Mat scowled, and Thom studied his wine. The word none of them wanted to say hung in the air between them. Myrddraal.
"I think I'd remember if I ever met anyone like that," Thom said after a minute.
Bartim's head bobbed furiously. "Burn me, but you would. Light's truth, you would. He . . . he wants the same lot as the crazy man, only he says as there's a girl with them. And" - he glanced sideways at Thom - "and a white-haired gleeman."
Thom's eyebrows shot up in what Rand was sure was unfeigned surprise. "A white-haired gleeman? Well, I'm hardly the only gleeman in the world with a little age on him. I assure you, I don't know this fellow, and he can have no reason to be looking for me."
"That's as may be," Bartim said glumly. "He didn't say it in so many words, but I got the impression as he would be very displeased with anyone as tried to help these people, or tried to hide them from him. Anyway, I'll tell you what I told him. I haven't seen any of them, nor heard tell of them, and that's the truth. Not any of them," he finished pointedly. Abruptly he slapped Thom's money down on the table. "Just finish your wine and go. All right? All right?" And he trundled away as fast as he could, looking over his shoulder.
"A Fade," Mat breathed when the innkeeper was gone. "I should have known they'd be looking for us here."
"And he'll be back," Thom said, leaning across the table and lowering his voice. "I say we sneak back to the boat and take Captain Domon up on his offer. The hunt will center on the road to Caemlyn while we're on our way to Illian, a thousand miles from where the Myrddraal expect us."
"No," Rand said firmly. "We wait for Moiraine and the others in Whitebridge, or we go on to Caemlyn. One or the other, Thom. That's what we decided."
"That's crazed, boy. Things have changed. You listen to me. No matter what this innkeeper says, when a Myrddraal stares at him, he'll tell all about us down to what we had to drink and how much dust we had on our boots." Rand shivered, remembering the Fade's eyeless stare. "As for Caemlyn ... You think the Halfmen don't know you want to get to Tar Valon? It's a good time to be on a boat headed south."
"No, Thom. " Rand had to force the words out, thinking of being a thousand miles from where the Fades were looking, but he took a deep breath and managed to firm his voice. "No."
"Think, boy. Illian! There isn't a grander city on the face of the earth. And the Great Hunt of the Horn! There hasn't been a Hunt of the Horn in near four hundred years. A whole new cycle of stories waiting to be made. Just think. You never dreamed of anything like it. By the time the Myrddraal figure out where you've gone to, you'll be old and gray and so tired of watching your grandchildren you won't care if they do find you."
Rand's face took on a stubborn set. "How many times do I have to say no? They'll find us wherever we go. There'd be Fades waiting in Illian, too. And how do we escape the dreams? I want to know what's happening to me, Thom, and why. I'm going to Tar Valon. With Moiraine if I can; without her if I have to. Alone, if I have to. I need to know."
"But Illian, boy! And a safe way out, downriver while they're looking for you in another direction. Blood and ashes, a dream can't hurt you."
Rand kept silent. A dream can't hurt? Do dream thorns draw real blood? He almost wished he had told Thom about that dream, too. Do you dare tell anybody? Ba'alzamon it in your dreams, but what's between dreaming and waking, now? Who do you dare to tell that the Dark One is touching you?
Thom seemed to understand. The gleeman's face softened. "Even those dreams, lad. They are still just dreams, aren't they? For the Light's sake, Mat, talk to him. I know you don't want to go to Tar Valon, at least."
Mat's face reddened, half embarrassment and half anger. He avoided looking at Rand and scowled at Thom instead. "Why are you going to all this fuss and bother? You want to go back to the boat? Go back to the boat. We'll take care of ourselves."
The gleeman's thin shoulders shook with silent laughter, but his voice was anger tight. "You think you know enough about Myrddraal to escape by yourself, do you? You're ready to walk into Tar Valon alone and hand yourself over to the Amyrlin Seat? Can you even tell one Ajah from another? The Light burn me, boy, if you think you can even get to Tar Valon alone, you tell me to go."
"Go," Mat growled, sliding a hand under his cloak. Rand realized with a shock that he was gripping the dagger from Shadar Logoth, maybe even ready to use it.
Raucous laughter broke out on the other side of the low wall dividing the room, and a scornful voice spoke up loudly.
"Trollocs? Put on a gleeman's cloak, man! You're drunk! Trollocs! Borderland fables!"
The words doused anger like a pot of cold water. Even Mat half turned to the wall, eyes widening.
Rand stood just enough to see over the wall, then ducked back down again with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Floran Gelb sat on the other side of the wall, at the table in the back with the two men who had been there when they came in. They were laughing at him, but they were listening. Bartim was wiping a table that badly needed it, not looking at Gelb and the two men, but he was listening, too, scrubbing one spot over and over with his towel and leaning toward them until he seemed almost ready to fall over.
"Gelb," Rand whispered as he dropped back into his chair, and the others tensed. Thom swiftly studied their side of the room.
On the other side of the wall the second man's voice chimed in. "No, no, there used to be Trollocs. But they killed them all in the Trolloc Wars."
"Borderland fables!" the first man repeated.
"It's true, I tell you," Gelb protested loudly. "I've been in the Borderlands. I've seen Trollocs, and these were Trollocs as sure as I'm sitting here. Those three claimed the Trollocs were chasing them, but I know better. That's why I wouldn't stay on the Spray. I've had my suspicions about Bayle Domon for some time, but those three are Darkfriends for sure. I tell you. . ." Laughter and coarse jokes drowned out the rest of what Gelb had to say.
How long, Rand wondered, before the innkeeper heard a description of "those three"? If he had not already. If he did not just leap to the three strangers he had already seen. The only door from their half of the common room would take them right past Gelb's table.
"Maybe the boat isn't such a bad idea," Mat muttered, but Thom shook his head.
"Not anymore." The gleeman spoke softly and fast. He pulled out the leather purse Captain Domon had given him and hastily divided the money into three piles. "That story will be all through the town in an hour, whether anybody believes it or not, and the Halfman could hear any time. Domon isn't sailing until tomorrow morning. At best he'll have Trollocs chasing him all the way to Illian. Well, he's half expecting it for some reason, but that won't do us any good. There's nothing for it but to run, and run hard."
Mat quickly stuffed the coins Thom shoved in front of him into his pocket. Rand picked his pile up more slowly. The coin Moiraine had given him was not among them. Domon had given an equal weight of silver, but Rand, for some reason he could not fathom, wished he had the Aes Sedai's coin instead. Stuffing the money in his pocket, he looked a question at the gleeman.
"In case we're separated," Thom explained We probably won't be, but if it does happen . . . well, you two will make out all right by yourselves. You're good lads. Just keep clear of Aes Sedai, for your lives."
"I thought you were staying with us," Rand said.
"I am, boy. I am. But they're getting close, now, and the Light only knows. Well, no matter. It isn't likely anything will happen." Thom paused, looking at Mat. "I hope you no longer mind me staying with you," he said dryly.
Mat shrugged. He eyed each of them, then shrugged again. "I'm just on edge. I can't seem to get rid of it. Every time we stop for a breath, they're there, hunting us. I feel like somebody's staring at the back of my head all the time. What are we going to do?"
The laughter erupted on the other side of the wall, broken again by Gelb, trying loudly to convince the two men that he was telling the truth. How much longer, Rand wondered. Sooner or later Bartim had to put together Gelb's three and the three of them.
Thom eased his chair and rose, but kept his height crouched. No one looking casually toward the wall from the other side could see him. He motioned for them to follow, whispering, "Be very quiet."
The windows on either side of the fireplace on their side of the wall looked out into an alleyway. Thom studied one of the windows carefully before drawing it up just enough for them to squeeze through. It barely made a sound, nothing that could have been heard three feet away over the laughing argument on the other side of the low wall.
Once in the alley, Mat started for the street right away, but Thom caught his arm. "Not so fast," the gleeman told him. "Not till we know what we're doing." Thom lowered the window again as much as he could from outside, and turned to study the alley.
Rand followed Thom's eyes. Except for half a dozen rain barrels against the inn and the next building, a tailor shop, the alley was empty, the hardpacked dirt dry and dusty.
"Why are you doing this?" Mat demanded again. "You'd be safer if you left us. Why are you staying with us?"
Thom stared at him for a long moment. "I had a nephew, Owyn," he said wearily, shrugging out of his cloak. He made a pile with his blanketroll as he talked, carefully setting his cased instruments on top. "My brother's only son, my only living kin. He got in trouble with the Aes Sedai, but I was too busy with . . . other things. I don't know what I could have done, but when I finally tried, it was too late. Owyn died a few years later. You could say Aes Sedai killed him." He straightened up, not looking at them. His voice was still level, but Rand glimpsed tears in his eyes as he turned his head away. "If I can keep you two free of Tar Valon, maybe I can stop thinking about Owyn. Wait here." Still avoiding their eyes, he hurried to the mouth of the alley, slowing before he reached it. After one quick look around, he strolled casually into the street and out of sight.
Mat half rose to follow, then settled back. "He won't leave these," he said, touching the leather instrument cases. "You believe that story?"
Rand squatted patiently beside the rain barrels. "What's the matter with you, Mat? You aren't like this. I haven't heard you laugh in days."
"I don't like being hunted like a rabbit," Mat snapped. He sighed, letting his head fall back against the brick wall of the inn. Even like that he seemed tense. His eyes shifted warily. "Sorry. It's the running, and all these strangers, and . . . and just everything. It makes me jumpy. I look at somebody, and I can't help wondering if he's going to tell the Fades about us, or cheat us, or rob us, or . . . Light, Rand, doesn't it make you nervous?"
Rand laughed, a quick bark in the back of his throat. "I'm too scared to be nervous."
"What do you think the Aes Sedai did to his nephew?"
"I don't know," Rand said uneasily. There was only one kind of trouble that he knew of for a man to get into with Aes Sedai. "Not like us, I guess. "
"No. Not like us."
For a time they leaned against the wall, not talking. Rand was not sure how long they waited. A few minutes, probably, but it felt like an hour, waiting for Thom to come back, waiting for Bartim and Gelb to open the window and denounce them for Darkfriends. Then a man turned in at the mouth of the alley, a tall man with the hood of his cloak pulled up to hide his face, a cloak black as night against the light of the street.
Rand scrambled to his feet, one hand wrapped around the hilt of Tam's sword so hard that his knuckles hurt. His mouth went dry, and no amount of swallowing helped. Mat rose to a crouch with one hand under his cloak.
The man came closer, and Rand's throat grew tighter with every step. Abruptly the man stopped and tossed back his cowl. Rand's knees almost gave way. It was Thom.
"Well, if you don't recognize me" - the gleeman grinned - "I guess it's a good enough disguise for the gates."
Thom pushed past them and began transferring things from his patchcovered cloak to his new one so nimbly that Rand could not make out any of them. The new cloak was dark brown, Rand saw now. He drew a deep, ragged breath; his throat still felt as if it were clutched in a fist. Brown, not black. Mat still had his hand under his cloak, and he stared at Thom's back as if he were thinking of using the hidden dagger.
Thom glanced up at them, then gave them a sharper look. "This is no time to get skittish." Deftly he began folding his old cloak into a bundle around his instrument cases, inside out so the patches were hidden. "We'll walk out of here one at a time, just close enough to keep each other in sight. Shouldn't be remembered especially, that way. Can't you slouch?" he added to Rand. "That height of yours is as bad as a banner." He slung the bundle across his back and stood, drawing his hood back up. He looked nothing like a white-haired gleeman. He was just another traveler, a man too poor to afford a horse, much less a carriage. "Let's go. We've wasted too much time already."
Rand agreed fervently, but even so he hesitated before stepping out of the alley into the square. None of the sparse scattering of people gave them a second look-most did not look at them at all-but his shoulders knotted, waiting for the cry of Darkfriend that could turn ordinary people into a mob bent on murder. He ran his eyes across the open area, over people moving about on their daily business, and when he brought them back a Myrddraal was halfway across the square.
Where the Fade had come from, he could not begin to guess, but it strode toward the three of them with a slow deadliness, a predator with the prey under its gaze. People shied away from the black-cloaked shape, avoided looking at it. The square began to empty out as people decided they were needed elsewhere.
The black cowl froze Rand where he stood. He tried to summon up the void, but it was like fumbling after smoke. The Fade's hidden gaze knifed to his bones and turned his marrow to icicles.
"Don't look at its face," Thom muttered. His voice shook and cracked, and it sounded as if he were forcing the words out. "The Light burn you, don't look at its face!"
Rand tore his eyes away - he almost groaned; it felt like tearing a leech off of his face - but even staring at the stones of the square he could still see the Myrddraal coming, a cat playing with mice, amused at their feeble efforts to escape, until finally the jaws snapped shut. The Fade had halved the distance. "Are we just going to stand here?" he mumbled. "We have to run . . . get away." But he could not make his feet move.
Mat had the ruby-hilted dagger out at last, in a trembling hand. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, a snarl and a rictus of fear.
"Think. . . ." Thom stopped to swallow, and went on hoarsely. "Think you can outrun it, do you, boy?" He began to mutter to himself; the only word Rand could make out was "Owyn." Abruptly Thom growled, "I never should have gotten mixed up with you boys. Should never have." He shrugged the bundled gleeman's cloak off of his back and thrust it into Rand's arms. "Take care of that. When I say run, you run and don't stop until you get to Caemlyn. The Queen's Blessing. An inn. Remember that, in case. . . Just remember it."
"I don't understand," Rand said. The Myrddraal was not twenty paces away, now. His feet felt like lead weights.
"Just remember it!" Thom snarled. "The Queen's Blessing. Now. RUN!"
He gave them a push, one hand on the shoulder of each of them, to get them started, and Rand stumbled away in a lurching run with Mat at his side.
"RUN!" Thom sprang into motion, too, with a long, wordless roar. Not after them, but toward the Myrddraal. His hands flourished as if he were performing at his best, and daggers appeared. Rand stopped, but Mat pulled him along.
The Fade was just as startled. Its leisurely pace faltered in mid-stride. Its hand swept toward the hilt of the black sword hanging at its waist, but the gleeman's long legs covered the distance quickly. Thom crashed into the Myrddraal before the black blade was half drawn, and both went down in a thrashing heap. The few people still in the square fled.
"RUN!" The air in the square flashed an eye-searing blue, and Thom began to scream, but even in the middle of the scream he managed a word. "RUN!"
Rand obeyed. The gleeman's screams pursued him.
Clutching Thom's bundle to his chest, he ran as hard as he could. Panic spread from the square out through the town as Rand and Mat fled on the crest of a wave of fear. Shopkeepers abandoned their goods as the boys passed. Shutters banged down over storefronts, and frightened faces appeared in the windows of houses, then vanished. People who had not been close enough to see ran through the streets wildly, paying no heed. They bumped into one another, and those who were knocked down scrambled to their feet or were trampled. Whitebridge roiled like a kicked anthill.
As he and Mat pounded toward the gates, Rand abruptly remembered what Thom had said about his height. Without slowing down, he crouched as best he could without looking as if he was crouching. But the gates themselves, chick wood bound with black iron straps, stood open. The two gatetenders, in steel caps and mail tunics worn over cheap-looking red coats with white collars, fingered their halberds and stared uneasily into the town. One of them glanced at Rand and Mat, but they were not the only ones running out of the gates. A steady stream boiled through, panting men clutching wives, weeping women carrying babes and dragging crying children, palefaced craftsmen still in their aprons, still heedlessly gripping their tools.
There would be no one who could tell which way they had gone, Rand thought as he ran, dazed. Thom. Oh, Light save me, Thom.
Mat staggered beside him, caught his balance, and they ran until the last of the fleeing people had fallen away, ran until the town and the White Bridge were far out of sight behind them.
Finally Rand fell to his knees in the dust, pulling air raggedly into his raw throat with great gulps. The road behind stretched empty until it was lost to sight among bare trees. Mat plucked at him.
"Come on. Come on." Mat panted the words. Sweat and dust streaked his face, and he looked ready to collapse. "We have to keep going."
"Thom," Rand said. He tightened his arms around the bundle of Thom's cloak; the instrument cases were hard lumps inside. "Thom."
"He's dead. You saw. You heard. Light, Rand, he's dead!"
"You think Egwene and Moiraine and the rest are dead, too. If they're dead, why are the Myrddraal still hunting them? Answer me that?"
Mat dropped to his knees in the dust beside him. "All right. Maybe they are alive. But Thom- You saw! Blood and ashes, Rand, the same thing can happen to us."
Rand nodded slowly. The road behind them was still empty. He had been halfway expecting-hoping, at least-to see Thom appear, striding along, blowing out his mustaches to tell them how much trouble they were. The Queen's Blessing in Caemlyn. He struggled to his feet and slung Thom's bundle on his back alongside his blanketroll. Mat stared up at him, narrow-eyed and wary.
"Let's go," Rand said, and started down the road toward Caemlyn. He heard Mat muttering, and after a moment he caught up to Rand.
They trudged along the dusty road, heads down and not talking. The wind spawned dustdevils that whirled across their path. Sometimes Rand looked back, but the road behind was always empty.
