The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3)

The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3) Page 175

“Perhaps you have,” Moiraine told him. “I did not know of the name, the Netweaver. Or that he envied the Dragon as well as his companions in the Shadow. That strengthens my belief that he wants Callandor. That must be the reason he has chosen to make himself a High Lord of Tear. And the Netweaver — a name for a schemer, a patient and cunning planner. You have done well, Loial.” For a moment the Ogier's wide mouth curved up in a pleased smile, but then it curved down again.

“I will not pretend I am not afraid,” Zarine said suddenly. “Only a fool would not be afraid of the Forsaken. But I swore I would be one of you, and I will. That is all that I wanted to say.”

Perrin shook his head. She must be crazy. I could wish I were not one of this party. I could wish I were back home working Master Luhhan's forge. Aloud, he said, “If he is inside the Stone, if he is waiting there for Rand, we must go inside to reach him. How do we do that? Everyone keeps saying no one enters the Stone without the permission of the High Lords, and looking at it, I don't see any way but through the gates.”

“You do not go in,” Lan said. “Moiraine and I will be the only ones to enter. The more who go, the harder it will be. Whatever way in I find, I cannot believe it will be easy even for only two.”

“Gaidin,” Moiraine began in a firm voice, but the Warder cut her off with one just as firm.

“We go together, Moiraine. I will not stand aside this time.” After a moment she nodded. Perrin thought he saw Lan relax. “The rest of you had better get some sleep,” the Warder went on. “I have to be out studying the Stone.” He paused. “There is a thing that your news drove out of my head, Moiraine. A small thing, and I cannot see what it might mean. There are Aiel in Tear.”

“Aiel!” Loial exclaimed. “Impossible! The entire city would be in a panic if one Aiel came through the gates.”

“I did not say they were walking the streets, Ogier. The rooftops and chimneys of the city make as good hiding as the Waste. I saw no less than three, though apparently no one else in Tear has seen any of them. And if I saw three, you can be sure there are many times that I did not see.”

“It means nothing to me,” Moiraine said slowly. “Perrin, why are you frowning in that way?”

He had not known that he was frowning. “I was thinking about that Aiel in Remen. He said that when the Stone falls, the Aiel will leave the Threefold Land. That's the Waste, isn't it? He said it was a prophecy.”

“I have read every word of the Prophecies of the Dragon,” Moiraine said softly, “in every translation, and there is no mention of the Aiel. We stagger blindly while Be'lal weaves his nets, and the Wheel weaves the Pattern around us. But are the Aiel the Wheel's weaving, or Be'lal's? Lan, you must find me the way into the Stone quickly. Us. Find us a way in quickly.”

“As you command, Aes Sedai,” he said, but his tone was more warm than formal. He vanished through the door. Moiraine frowned at the table, eyes clouded in thought.

Zarine came over to look down at Perrin, her head tilted to one side. “And what are you going .to do, blacksmith? It seems they mean us to wait and watch while they go adventuring. Not that I will complain.”

He doubted that last. “First,” he told her, “I am going to have something to eat. And then I am going to think about a hammer.” And try to puzzle out how I feel about you. Falcon.

Chapter 51

(Female Silhouettes)

Bait for the Net

From the corner of her eye, Nynaeve thought she glimpsed a tall man with reddish hair, in a swirling brown cloak, well down the sunlit street, but as she turned to peer from under the wide brim of the blue straw hat Ailhuin had given her, an oxdrawn wagon was already lumbering between them. When it lurched on, the man was nowhere to be seen. She was almost certain that had been a wooden flute case on his back, and his clothes were certainly not Tairen. It couldn't be Rand. Just because I keep dreaming about him does not mean he is going to come all the way from Almoth Plain.

One of the barefoot men hurrying past, with the sickleshaped tails of a dozen large fish sticking up from the basket on his back, suddenly tripped, catapulting silverscaled fish over his head as he fell. He landed on hands and knees in the mud, staring at the fish that had come out of his basket. Every one of the long, sleek shapes stood upright, stuck nose down in the mud, forming a neat circle. Even a few passersby gaped at that. Slowly the man got to his feet, apparently unaware of the mud on him. Unslinging his basket, he began gathering the fish back into it, shaking his head and muttering to himself.

Nynaeve blinked, but her business was with this cowfaced brigand, facing her in the doorway of his shop with bloody cuts of meat hanging from hooks behind him. She gave her braid a tug and fixed the fellow with her eye.

“Very well,” she said sharply, “I will take it, but if this is what you charge for so poor a cut, you'll not have more business from me.”

He shrugged placidly as he took her coins, then wrapped the fatty mutton roast in a cloth she produced from the basket on her arm. She glared at him as she put the wrapped meat into the basket, but that did not affect him.

She whirled to stalk away — and nearly fell. She was still not used to these clogs; they kept sticking in the mud, and she could not see how the folk who wore them managed. She hoped this sunshine dried the ground soon, but she had a feeling that the mud was more or less permanent in the Maule.

Stepping gingerly, she started back toward Ailhuin's house, muttering under her breath. The prices were outrageous for everything, the quality inevitably poor, and almost no one seemed to care, not the people buying or those selling. It was a relief to pass a woman shouting at a shopkeeper, waving a bruised reddishyellow fruit—Nynaeve did not know what; they had a good many fruits and vegetables she had never heard of, here—in each hand and calling for everyone to see what refuse the man sold, but the shopkeeper only stared at her wearily, not even bothering to argue back.

There was some excuse for the prices, she knew — Elayne had explained all about the grain being eaten by rats in the granaries because no one in Cairhien could buy, and how big the Cairhienin grain trade had become since the Aiel War — but nothing excused the way everyone seemed ready to lie down and die. She had seen hail ruin food crops in the Two Rivers, and grasshoppers eat them and blacktongue kill the sheep and redspot wither the tabac so there was nothing to sell when the merchants came down from Baerlon. She could remember two years in a row when there had been little to eat except turnip soup and old barley, and hunters had been lucky to bring home a scrawny rabbit, but Two Rivers folk picked themselves up when they were knocked down and went back to work. These people had had only one bad year, and their fisheries and their other trade seemed to be flourishing. She had no patience with them. The trouble was, she knew she should have a little patience. They were odd people with odd ways, and things she took for cringing, they seemed to see as a matter of course, even Ailhuin and Sandar. She should be able to summon