The Great Hunt Read online

  His skin prickled at the thought; he had had more than enough of Aes Sedai for any sane lifetime. One was too many. All the stories said it, and he knew it for fact. But he was not surprised when his feet took him toward the outer courtyard. He would never see legendary Tar Valon—he could not afford that risk, now or ever—but he might catch a glimpse of the Amyrlin Seat before he left. That would be as much as seeing a queen. There can’t be anything dangerous in just looking, from a distance. I’ll keep moving and be gone before she ever knows I was there.

  He opened a heavy, iron-strapped door onto the outer courtyard and stepped out into silence. People forested the guardwalk atop every wall, top-knotted soldiers, and liveried servants, and menials still in their muck, all pressed together cheek by jowl, with children sitting on shoulders to look over their elders’ heads or squeezing in to peer around waists and knees. Every archers’ balcony was packed like a barrel of apples, and faces even showed in the narrow arrowslits in the walls. A thick mass of people bordered the courtyard like another wall. And all of them watched and waited in silence.

  He pushed his way along the wall, in front of the smithies and fletchers’ stalls that lined the court—Fal Dara was a fortress, not a palace, despite its size and grim grandeur, and everything about it served that end—apologizing quietly to the people he jostled. Some looked around with a frown, and a few gave a second stare to his saddlebags and bundles, but none broke the silence. Most did not even bother to look at who had bumped past them.

  He could easily see over the heads of most of them, enough to make out clearly what was going on in the courtyard. Just inside the main gate, a line of men stood beside their horses, fourteen of them. No two wore the same kind of armor or carried the same sort of sword, and none looked like Lan, but Rand did not doubt they were Warders. Round faces, square faces, long faces, narrow faces, they all had the look, as if they saw things other men did not see, heard things other men did not hear. Standing at their ease, they looked as deadly as a pack of wolves. Only one other thing about them was alike. One and all they wore the color-shifting cloak he had first seen on Lan, the cloak that often seemed to fade into whatever was behind it. It did not make for easy watching or a still stomach, so many men in those cloaks.

  A dozen paces in front of the Warders, a row of women stood by their horses’ heads, the cowls of their cloaks thrown back. He could count them, now. Fourteen. Fourteen Aes Sedai. They must be. Tall and short, slender and plump, dark and fair, hair cut short or long, hanging loose down their backs or braided, their clothes were as different as the Warders’ were, in as many cuts and colors as there were women. Yet they, too, had a sameness, one that was only obvious when they stood together like this. To a woman, they seemed ageless. From this distance he would have called them all young, but closer he knew they would be like Moiraine. Young-seeming yet not, smooth-skinned but with faces too mature for youth, eyes too knowing.

  Closer? Fool! I’m too close already! Burn me, I should have gone the long way. He pressed on toward his goal, another iron-bound door at the far end of the court, but he could not stop looking.

  Calmly the Aes Sedai ignored the onlookers and kept their attention on the curtained palanquin, now in the center of the courtyard. The horses bearing it held as still as if ostlers stood at their harness, but there was only one tall woman beside the palanquin, her face an Aes Sedai’s face, and she paid no mind to the horses. The staff she held upright before her with both hands was as tall as she, the gilded flame capping it standing above her eyes.

  Lord Agelmar faced the palanquin from the far end of the court, bluff and square and face unreadable. His high-collared coat of dark blue bore the three running red foxes of the House Jagad as well as the stooping black hawk of Shienar. Beside him stood Ronan, age-withered but still tall; three foxes carved from red avatine topped the tall staff the shambayan bore. Ronan was Elansu’s equal in ordering the keep, shambayan and shatayan, but Elansu left little for him except ceremonies and acting as Lord Agelmar’s secretary. Both men’s topknots were snow-white.

  All of them—the Warders, the Aes Sedai, the Lord of Fal Dara, and his shambayan—stood as still as stone. The watching crowd seemed to hold its breath. Despite himself, Rand slowed.

  Suddenly Ronan rapped his staff loudly three times on the broad paving stones, calling into the silence, “Who comes here? Who comes here? Who comes here?”

  The woman beside the palanquin tapped her staff three times in reply. “The Watcher of the Seals. The Flame of Tar Valon. The Amyrlin Seat.”

  “Why should we watch?” Ronan demanded.

  “For the hope of humankind,” the tall woman replied.

  “Against what do we guard?”

  “The shadow at noon.”

  “How long shall we guard?”

  “From rising sun to rising sun, so long as the Wheel of Time turns.”

  Agelmar bowed, his white topknot stirring in the breeze. “Fal Dara offers bread and salt and welcome. Well come is the Amyrlin Seat to Fal Dara, for here is the watch kept, here is the Pact maintained. Welcome.”

  The tall woman drew back the curtain of the palanquin, and the Amyrlin Seat stepped out. Dark-haired, ageless as all Aes Sedai were ageless, she ran her eyes over the assembled watchers as she straightened. Rand flinched when her gaze crossed him; he felt as if he had been touched. But her eyes passed on and came to rest on Lord Agelmar. A liveried servant knelt at her side with folded towels, steam still rising, on a silver tray. Formally, she wiped her hands and patted her face with a damp cloth. “I offer thanks for your welcome, my son. May the Light illumine House Jagad. May the Light illumine Fal Dara and all her people.”

  Agelmar bowed again. “You honor us, Mother.” It did not sound odd, her calling him son or him calling her Mother, though comparing her smooth cheeks to his craggy face made him seem more like her father, or even grandfather. She had a presence that more than matched his. “House Jagad is yours. Fal Dara is yours.”

  Cheers rose on every side, crashing against the walls of the keep like breaking waves.

  Shivering, Rand hurried toward the door to safety, careless of whom he bumped into now. Just your bloody imagination. She doesn’t even know who you are. Not yet. Blood and ashes, if she did. . . . He did not want to think of what would have happened if she knew who he was, what he was. What would happen when she finally found out. He wondered if she had had anything to do with the wind atop the tower; Aes Sedai could do things like that. When he pushed through that door and slammed it shut behind him, muting the roar of welcome that still shook the courtyard, he heaved a relieved sigh.

  The halls here were as empty as the others had been, and he all but ran. Out across a smaller courtyard, with a fountain splashing in the center, down yet another corridor and out into the flagstoned stableyard. The Lord’s Stable itself, built into the wall of the keep, stood tall and long, with big windows here inside the walls, and horses kept on two floors. The smithy across the courtyard stood silent, the farrier and his helpers gone to see the Welcome.

  Tema, the leathery-faced head groom, met him at the wide doors with a deep bow, touching his forehead and then his heart. “Spirit and heart to serve, my Lord. How may Tema serve, my Lord?” No warrior’s topknot here; Tema’s hair sat on his head like an inverted gray bowl.

  Rand sighed. “For the hundredth time, Tema, I am not a lord.”

  “As my Lord wishes.” The groom’s bow was even lower this time.

  It was his name that caused the problem, and a similarity. Rand al’Thor. Al’Lan Mandragoran. For Lan, according to the custom of Malkier, the royal “al” named him King, though he never used it himself. For Rand, “al” was just a part of his name, though he had heard that once, long ago, before the Two Rivers was called the Two Rivers, it had meant “son of.” Some of the servants in Fal Dara keep, though, had taken it to mean he was a king, too, or at least a prince. All of his argument to the contrary had only managed to demote him to lord. At least, he th
ought it had; he had never seen quite so much bowing and scraping, even with Lord Agelmar.

  “I need Red saddled, Tema.” He knew better than to offer to do it himself; Tema would not let Rand soil his hands. “I thought I’d spend a few days seeing the country around the town.” Once he was on the big bay stallion’s back, a few days would see him at the River Erinin, or across the border into Arafel. They’ll never find me then.

  The groom bent himself almost double, and stayed bent. “Forgive, my Lord,” he whispered hoarsely. “Forgive, but Tema cannot obey.”

  Flushing with embarrassment, Rand took an anxious look around—there was no one else in sight—then grabbed the man’s shoulder and pulled him upright. He might not be able to stop Tema and a few others from acting like this, but he could try to stop anyone else from seeing it. “Why not, Tema? Tema, look at me, please. Why not?”

  “It is commanded, my Lord,” Tema said, still whispering. He kept dropping his eyes, not afraid, but ashamed that he could not do what Rand asked. Shienarans took shame the way other people took being branded a thief. “No horse may leave this stable until the order is changed. Nor any stable in the keep, my Lord.”

  Rand had his mouth open to tell the man it was all right, but instead he licked his lips. “No horse from any stable?”

  “Yes, my Lord. The order came down only a short time ago. Only moments.” Tema’s voice picked up strength. “All the gates are closed as well, my Lord. None may enter or leave without permission. Not even the city patrol, so Tema has been told.”

  Rand swallowed hard, but it did not lessen the feeling of fingers clutching his windpipe. “The order, Tema. It came from Lord Agelmar?”

  “Of course, my Lord. Who else? Lord Agelmar did not speak the command to Tema, of course, nor even to the man who did speak to Tema, but, my Lord, who else could give such a command in Fal Dara?”

  Who else? Rand jumped as the biggest bell in the keep bell tower let out a sonorous peal. The other bells joined in, then bells from the town.

  “If Tema may be bold,” the groom called above the reverberations, “my Lord must be very happy.”

  Rand had to shout back to be heard. “Happy? Why?”

  “The Welcome is finished, my Lord.” Tema’s gesture took in the bell tower. “The Amyrlin Seat will be sending for my Lord, and my Lord’s friends, to come to her, now.”

  Rand broke into a run. He just had time to see the surprise on Tema’s face, and then he was gone. He did not care what Tema thought. She will be sending for me now.

  CHAPTER 3

  Friends and Enemies

  Rand did not run far, only as far as the sally gate around the corner from the stable. He slowed to a walk before he got there, trying to appear casual and unhurried.

  The arched gate was closed tight. It was barely big enough for two men to ride through abreast, but like all the gates in the outer wall, it was covered with broad strips of black iron, and locked shut with a thick bar. Two guards stood before the gate in plain conical helmets and plate-and-mail armor, with long swords on their backs. Their golden surcoats bore the Black Hawk on the chest. He knew one of them slightly, Ragan. The scar from a Trolloc arrow made a white triangle against Ragan’s dark cheek behind the bars of his face-guard. The puckered skin dimpled with a grin when he saw Rand.

  “Peace favor you, Rand al’Thor.” Ragan almost shouted to be heard over the bells. “Do you intend to go hit rabbits over the head, or do you still insist that club is a bow?” The other guard shifted to stand more in front of the gate.

  “Peace favor you, Ragan,” Rand said, stopping in front of them. It was an effort to keep his voice calm. “You know it’s a bow. You’ve seen me shoot it.”

  “No good from a horse,” the other guard said sourly. Rand recognized him, now, with his deep-set, almost-black eyes that never seemed to blink. They peered from his helmet like twin caves inside another cave. He supposed there could be worse luck for him than Masema guarding the gate, but he was not sure how, short of a Red Aes Sedai. “It’s too long,” Masema added. “I can shoot three arrows with a horsebow while you loose one with that monster.”

  Rand forced a grin, as if he thought it was a joke. Masema had never made a joke in his hearing, nor laughed at one. Most of the men at Fal Dara accepted Rand; he trained with Lan, and Lord Agelmar had him at table, and most important of all, he had arrived at Fal Dara in company with Moiraine, an Aes Sedai. Some seemed unable to forget his being an outlander, though, barely saying two words to him, and then only if they had to. Masema was the worst of those.

  “It’s good enough for me,” Rand said. “Speaking of rabbits, Ragan, how about letting me out? All this noise and bustle is too much for me. Better to be out hunting rabbits, even if I never see one.”

  Ragan half turned to look at his companion, and Rand’s hopes began to lift. Ragan was an easygoing man, his manner belying his grim scar, and he seemed to like Rand. But Masema was already shaking his head. Ragan sighed. “It cannot be, Rand al’Thor.” He gave a tiny nod toward Masema as if to explain. If it were up to him alone. . . . “No one is to leave without a written pass. Too bad you did not ask a few minutes ago. The command just came down to bar the gates.”

  “But why would Lord Agelmar want to keep me in?” Masema was eyeing the bundles on Rand’s back, and his saddlebags. Rand tried to ignore him. “I’m his guest,” he went on to Ragan. “By my honor, I could have left anytime these past weeks. Why would he mean this order for me? It is Lord Agelmar’s order, isn’t it?” Masema blinked at that, and his perpetual frown deepened; he almost appeared to forget Rand’s packs.

  Ragan laughed. “Who else could give such an order, Rand al’Thor? Of course, it was Uno who passed it to me, but whose order could it have been?”

  Masema’s eyes, fixed on Rand’s face, did not blink. “I just want to go out by myself, that’s all,” Rand said. “I’ll try one of the gardens, then. No rabbits, but at least there won’t be a crowd. The Light illumine you, and peace favor you.”

  He walked away without waiting for an answering blessing, resolving not to go near any of the gardens on any account. Burn me, once the ceremonies are done there could be Aes Sedai in any of them. Aware of Masema’s eyes on his back—he was sure it was Masema—he kept his pace normal.

  Suddenly the bells stopped ringing, and he skipped a step. Minutes were passing. A great many of them. Time for the Amyrlin Seat to be shown to her chambers. Time for her to send for him, to start a search when he was not found. As soon as he was out of sight of the sally gate, he began to run again.

  Near the barracks’ kitchens, the Carters’ Gate, where all the foodstuffs for the keep were brought in, stood closed and barred, behind a pair of soldiers. He hurried past, across the kitchen yard, as if he had never meant to stop.

  The Dog Gate, at the back of the keep, just high enough and wide enough for one man on foot, had its guards, too. He turned around before they saw him. There were not many gates, even as big as the keep was, but if the Dog Gate was guarded, they all would be.

  Perhaps he could find a length of rope. . . . He climbed one of the stairs to the top of the outer wall, to the wide parapet with its crenellated walls. It was not comfortable for him, being so high and exposed if that wind came again, but from there he could see across the tall chimneys and sharp roofs of the town all the way to the city wall. Even after nearly a month, the houses still looked odd to his Two Rivers eyes, eaves reaching almost to the ground as if the houses were all wood-shingled roof, and chimneys angled to let heavy snow slide past. A broad, paved square surrounded the keep, but only a hundred paces from the wall lay streets full of people going about their daily business, aproned shopkeepers out under the awnings in front of their shops, rough-clothed farmers in town to buy and sell, hawkers and tradesmen and townspeople gathered in knots, no doubt to talk about the surprise visit from the Amyrlin Seat. He could see carts and people flowing through one of the gates in the town wall. Apparently the guards there had
no orders about stopping anyone.

  He looked up at the nearest guardtower; one of the soldiers raised a gauntleted hand to him. With a bitter laugh, he waved back. Not a foot of the wall but was under the eyes of guards. Leaning through an embrasure, he peered down past the slots in the stone for setting hoardings, down the sheer expanse of stone to the drymoat far below. Twenty paces wide and ten deep, faced with stone polished slippery smooth. A low wall, slanted to give no hiding place, surrounded it to keep anyone from falling in by accident, and its bottom was a forest of razor-sharp spikes. Even with a rope to climb down and no guards watching, he could not cross that. What served to keep Trollocs out in the last extreme served just as well to keep him in.

  Suddenly he felt weary to the bone, drained. The Amyrlin Seat was there, and there was no way out. No way out, and the Amyrlin Seat there. If she knew he was there, if she had sent the wind that had seized him, then she was already hunting him, hunting with an Aes Sedai’s powers. Rabbits had more chance against his bow. He refused to give up, though. There were those who said Two Rivers folk could teach stones and give lessons to mules. When there was nothing else left, Two Rivers people hung on to their stubbornness.

  Leaving the wall, he wandered through the keep. He paid no mind to where he went, so long as it was nowhere he would be expected. Not anywhere near his room, nor any of the stables, nor any gate—Masema might risk Uno’s tongue to report him trying to leave—nor garden. All he could think of was keeping away from any Aes Sedai. Even Moiraine. She knew about him. Despite that, she had done nothing against him. So far. So far as you know. What if she’s changed her mind? Maybe she sent for the Amyrlin Seat.