The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time #2)

The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time #2) Page 18

“That one likes to drink and fight,” Egwene murmured, indicating a burly fellow with sunken knuckles. “This time he wrecked the common room of an inn in the town singlehanded, and hurt some men badly.” The other prisoner wore a goldembroidered coat with wide sleeves, and low, gleaming boots. “He tried to leave the city without settling his inn bill”—she sniffed loudly at that; her father was an innkeeper as well as Mayor of Emond's Field —“nor paying half a dozen shopkeepers and merchants what he owed.”

The men snarled at them, guttural curses as bad as any Rand had heard from merchants' guards.

“They grow worse every day, too,” she said in a tight voice, and quickened her step.

She was enough ahead of him when they reached Padan Fain's cell, at the very end, that Rand was out of the light entirely. He stopped there, in the shadows behind her lamp.

Fain was sitting on his cot, leaning forward expectantly as if waiting, just as Changu had said. He was a bony, sharpeyed man, with long arms and a big nose, even more gaunt now than Rand remembered. Not gaunt from the dungeon — the food here was the same as the servants ate, and not even the worst prisoner was shorted — but from what he had done before coming to Fal Dara.

The sight of him brought back memories Rand would just as soon have done without. Fain on the seat of his big peddler's wagon wheeling across the Wagon Bridge, arriving in Emond's Field the day of Winternight. And on Winternight the Trollocs came, killing and burning, hunting. Hunting three young men, Moiraine had said. Hunting me, if they only knew it, and using Fain for their trail hound.

Fain stood at Egwene's approach, not shielding his eyes or even blinking at the light. He smiled at her, a smile that touched only his lips, then raised his eyes above her head. Looking straight at Rand, hidden in the blackness behind the light, he pointed a long finger at him. “I feel you there, hiding, Rand al'Thor,” he said, almost crooning. “You can't hide, not from me, and not from them. You thought it was over, did you not? But the battle's never done, al'Thor. They are coming for me, and they're coming for you, and the war goes on. Whether you live or die, it's never over for you. Never.” Suddenly he began to chant.

"Soon comes the day all shall be free.

Even you, and even me.

Soon comes the day all shall die.

Surely you, but never I."

He let his arm fall, and his eyes rose to stare intently at an angle up into the darkness. A crooked grin twisting his mouth, he chuckled deep in his throat as if whatever he saw was amusing. “Mordeth knows more than all of you. Mordeth knows.”

Egwene backed away from the cell until she reached Rand, and only the edge of the light touched the bars of Fain's cell. Darkness hid the peddler, but they could still hear his chuckles. Even unable to see him, Rand was sure Fain was still peering off at nothing.

With a shiver, he pried his fingers off his sword hilt. “Light!” he said hoarsely. “This is what you call being like he used to be?”

“Sometimes he's better, and sometimes worse.” Egwene's voice was unsteady. “This is worse — much worse than usual.”

“What is he seeing, I wonder. He's mad, staring at a stone ceiling in the dark.”If the stone weren't there, he'd he looking straight at the women's apartments. Where Moiraine is, and the Amyrlin Seat. He shivered again. “He's mad.”

“This was not a good idea, Rand.” Looking over her shoulder at the cell, she drew him away from it and lowered her voice as if afraid Fain might overhear. Fain's chuckles followed them. “Even if they don't look here, I cannot stay here with him like this, and I do not think you should, either. There is something about him today that ...” She drew a shaky breath. “There is one place even safer from search than here. I did not mention it before because it was easier to get you in here, but they will never look in the women's apartments. Never.”

“The women's ... ! Egwene, Fain may be mad, but you're madder. You can't hide from hornets in a hornets' nest.”

“What better place? What is the one part of the keep no man will enter without a woman's invitation, not even Lord Agelmar? What is the one place no one would ever think to look for a man?”

“What is the one place in the keep sure to be full of Aes Sedai? It is crazy, Egwene.”

Poking at his bundles, she spoke as if it were all decided. “You must wrap your sword and bow in your cloak, and then it will look as if you are carrying things for me. It should not be too hard to find you a jerkin and a shirt that isn't so pretty. You will have to stoop, though.”

“I told you, I won't do it.”

“Since you're acting stubborn as a mule, you should take right to playing my beast of burden. Unless you would really rather stay down here with him.”Fain's laughing whisper came through the black shadows. “The battle's never done, al'Thor. Mordeth knows.”

“I'd have a better chance jumping off the wall,” Rand muttered. But he unslung his bundles and set about wrapping sword and bow and quiver as she had suggested.

In the darkness, Fain laughed. “It's never over, al'Thor. Never.”

Chapter 4

(Horn)

Summoned

Alone in her rooms in the women's apartments, Moiraine adjusted the shawl, embroidered with curling ivy and grapevines, on her shoulders and studied the effect in the tall frame mirror standing in a corner. Her large, dark eyes could appear as sharp as a hawk's when she was angry. They seemed to pierce the silvered glass, now. It was only happenstance that she had had the shawl in her saddlebags when she came to Fal Dara. With the blazing white Flame of Tar Valon centered on the wearer's back and long fringe colored to show her Ajah — Moiraine's was as blue as a morning sky — the shawls were seldom worn outside Tar Valon, and even there usually only inside the White Tower. Little in Tar Valon besides a meeting of the Hall of the Tower called for the formality of the shawls, and beyond the Shining Walls a sight of the Flame would send too many people running, to hide or perhaps to fetch the Children of the Light. A Whitecloak's arrow was as fatal to an Aes Sedai as to anyone else, and the Children were too wily to let an Aes Sedai see the bowman before the arrow struck, while she still might do something about it. Moiraine had certainly never expected to wear the shawl in Fal Dara. But for an audience with the Amyrlin, there we