“It is said,” Bael added, “that yesterday a basket of roof tiles fell from a roof and landed in the street unbroken in the shape of the ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai.” He glanced at the open-mouthed white-haired servant, clutching the vase to his chest as they passed. “I do not doubt that it did.”
Rand exhaled slowly. They did not mention the other sort, of course. The man who stumbled on a step and was hanged when his kerchief caught on the door latch. The loose slate ripped from a roof by a high wind that sailed through an open window and a doorway to kill a woman sitting at table with her family. The sort of thing that did happen, but rarely. Only such things were not rare around him. For good or ill, for ill as often as good, he twisted chance merely by being within a few miles. No, if the Dragons disappeared from his arms and the branded herons from his palms, he was still marked. There was a saying in the Borderlands: “Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather.” Once you had that mountain firmly on your shoulders, there was no way to put it down. There was no one else to carry it anyway, and no use whining about it.
He made his voice brisk. “Have you found the men who did the hanging?” Bashere shook his head. “Then find them, and arrest them for murder. I want a stop put to this. Doubting me isn’t a crime.” Rumor said the Prophet had made it one, but there was nothing he could do about that yet. He did not even know where Masema was, beyond somewhere in Ghealdan or Amadicia. If he had not gone elsewhere meantime. Yet another note chalked up in his head; he had to find the man and rein him somehow.
“No matter how far it goes?” Bashere said. “There are whispers you’re a false Dragon who killed Morgase with Aes Sedai help. The people are supposed to rise up against you and avenge their queen. There may be more than one someone. It isn’t clear.”
Rand’s face hardened. The first part he could live with — he had to; there were too many variations to stamp out however many times he denied it — but he would not tolerate incitement to rebellion. Andor would be one land he did not split apart in war. He would give Elayne a land as unblemished as it had come to him. If he ever found her, he would. “Find who began it,” he said harshly, “and toss them in prison.” Light, how to find who started a whisper? “If they seek pardon, they can ask Elayne for it.” A young serving woman in a rough brown dress, dusting a blue spun-glass bowl, caught sight of his face, and the bowl dropped from her suddenly shaking hands and shattered. He did not always alter chance. “Is there any good news? I could do with some.”
The young woman bent unsteadily to gather up the shards of the bowl, but Sulin glanced at her, just glanced, and she sprang back, flattening herself wide-eyed against a tapestry showing a leopard hunt. Rand did not understand it, but some women seemed more frightened of the Maidens than they did of Aielmen. The young woman looked at Bael as if hoping he would protect her. He did not appear to see her at all.
“That depends on how you define good news.” Bashere shrugged. “I’ve learned that Ellorien of House Traemane and Pelivar of House Coelan entered the city three days ago. Sneaked in, you might say, and neither has come near the Inner City that I’ve heard. Talk in the streets has Dyelin of House Taravin in the country nearby. None of them has responded to your invitations. I’ve heard nothing to connect any of them to the whispers.” He glanced at Bael, who gave a slight shake of his head.
“We hear less than you, Davram Bashere. These people speak more freely around other wetlanders.”
It was good news in any case. Those were people Rand needed. If they believed him a false Dragon, he could find a way around that. If they believed he had killed Morgase . . . Well, so much the better if they remained loyal to her memory, and her blood. “Send them fresh invitations to visit me. Include Dyelin’s name; they may know where she is.”
“If I send such an invitation,” Bashere said doubtfully, “it may do no more than remind them there’s a Saldaean army in Andor.”
Rand hesitated, then nodded, suddenly grinning. “Ask the Lady Arymilla to carry it. I don’t doubt she’ll leap at the chance to show them how close she is to me. But you write it out.” Moiraine’s lessons in playing the Game of Houses were coming in useful once more.
“I do not know whether it is good news or bad,” Bael said, “but the Red Shields tell me two Aes Sedai have taken rooms at an inn in the New City.” The Red Shields had been helping Bashere’s men police Caemlyn and were now taking it over alone. Bael grinned slightly at the chagrin on Bashere’s face. “We hear less, Davram Bashere, but perhaps sometimes we see more.”
“Is one of them our friend who likes cats?” Rand asked. The stories of an Aes Sedai in the city persisted; sometimes there were two, or three, or a whole party. The closest Bashere or Bael had come to anything at all, though, were a few stories of an Aes Sedai who Healed dogs and cats, but always the next street over, told by someone who had been told by someone who had heard it in a tavern or in the market.
Bael shook his head. “I do not think so. The Red Shields said these two seem to have arrived in the night.” Bashere looked interested — he seldom let an opportunity pass to repeat that Rand needed Aes Sedai — but Bael was frowning slightly, so slightly it would not have been noticeable on anyone but an Aiel. Aiel were careful in their dealings with Aes Sedai, even reluctant.
Those few words contained plenty for Rand to think on, and every path came back to himself. Two Aes Sedai had to have a reason to come into Caemlyn, when their sisters were avoiding the city since he appeared there. The most likely reason was something to do with him. In the best of times few people journeyed by night, and these were not the best times. Aes Sedai arriving in the dark might be trying to avoid notice, and the most likely notice for them to avoid was his. On the other hand, they might just be going somewhere urgently. Which could spell a mission for the Tower. The truth of it was, he could not think what might be more important to the Tower right now than himself. Or they might be on their way to join the Aes Sedai that Egwene insisted were going to support him.
Whatever it was, he wanted to know. The Light alone knew what the Aes Sedai were up to — the Tower or Elayne’s hidden lot — but he had to find out. There were too many of them, and they could be too dangerous, for him not to. How would the Tower react when Elaida learned of his amnesty? How would any Aes Sedai? Had they heard yet?
As they approached the doors at the end of the corridor, he opened his mouth to tell Bael to ask one of the Aes Sedai to come to the Palace. He could handle two Aes Sedai if it came to that — so long as they did not catch him by surprise — but there was no point taking chances until he knew who they were and what they were about.
Pride fills me. I am sick with the pride that destroyed me!
Rand missed a step. That was the first time today that Lews Therin’s voice had spoken inside his head — and too much like a comment on his thoughts of Aes Sedai for comfort — but it was not what made him swallow what he had been going to say and stop dead.
Because of the heat the doors stood open, giving out into one of the Palace gardens. The flowers were gone, and some of the rose and whitestar bushes looked wilted, but the shade trees still stood, if with few leaves, around the white marble fountain that splashed in the garden’s heart. A woman in bulky brown wool skirts and a loose white algode blouse stood beside the fountain, a gray shawl looped over her arms, staring in wonder as she often did at water with no use except to be looked at. Rand’s eyes drank in the lines of Aviendha’s face, the waves of reddish hair falling to her shoulders from the folded gray scarf fastened around her temples. Light but she was beautiful. Studying the spray of water, she had not seen him yet.
Did he love her? He did not know. She was all tangled in his head and his dreams with Elayne, and even Min. What he did know was that he was dangerous; he had nothing to offer any woman except pain.
Ilyena, Lews Therin wept. I killed her! The Light consume me forever!
“A pair of Aes Sedai showing up like that might be important,” Ran
d said quietly. “I think I should visit this inn and see why they’re here.” Almost everyone stopped when he did, but Enaila and Jalani exchanged glances and kept on right past him toward the garden. He raised his voice a fraction and hardened it considerably more. “The Maidens here will come with me. Anyone who wants to put on a dress and discuss matchmaking can stay behind.”
Enaila and Jalani stiffened and spun to face him, indignation lighting their eyes. A good thing Somara was not in today’s guard; she might have gone on anyway. Sulin’s fingers flashed in Maiden handtalk, and whatever she had to say, it quenched indignation and set embarrassed flames in the two Maidens’ cheeks instead. The Aiel had all sorts of hand signals for when silence was best. Every clan had its private set, and every society as well, besides which there were those all the Aiel knew, but only the Maidens had made a language of them.
Rand did not wait for Sulin to finish before turning away from the garden. These Aes Sedai might leave Caemlyn as quickly as they had come. He glanced over his shoulder. Aviendha was still staring at the water; she had not seen him. He quickened his step. “Bashere, would you send one of your men to have horses readied? At the South Stable Gate.” The main gates of the Palace opened onto the Queen’s Plaza, which would be full of people hoping for a glimpse of him. It would have taken half an hour to make a way through, if he was lucky.
Bashere motioned, and one of the younger Saldaeans loped ahead in that rolling stride of a man more used to a saddle. “A man must know when to retreat from a woman,” Bashere said to the air, “but a wise man knows that sometimes he must stand and face her.”
“Young men,” Bael said indulgently. “A young man chases shadows and runs from moonlight, and in the end he stabs himself in the foot with his own spear.” Some of the other Aiel chuckled, Maidens and Knife Hands alike. The older ones did.
Irritated, Rand looked over his shoulder again. “Neither of you would look well in a dress.” Surprisingly, the Maidens and Knife Hands laughed again, more loudly. Maybe he was getting a grip on Aiel humor.
It was as he expected when he rode out of the South Stable Gate into one of the Inner City’s curving streets. Jeade’en’s hooves rang on the paving stones as the stallion frisked; the dapple seldom got out of the stable of late. There were plenty of people in the street, but nowhere near the numbers to be expected on the other side of the palace and all going about their own business. Even so, fingers pointed, and people leaned close to one another, murmuring. Some might have recognized Bashere — unlike Rand, he had been out and about in the city often — but anybody emerging from the Palace, especially with an escort of trotting Aiel, had to be important. The murmurs and pointing fingers followed.
Despite the stares, Rand tried to enjoy the beauties of the Ogier-built Inner City. The few occasions he found to just enjoy anything were precious. Streets curved out from the shining white Royal Palace, flowing along the contours of the hills like a part of the land. Everywhere stood slender towers covered in colored tiles, or domes of gold or purple or white, sparkling in the sunlight. Here a line of sight had been left clear to give a view of tree-filled park, there a rise threw the eyes across the city to the rolling plains and forests beyond the tall silver-streaked white wall that enclosed all of Caemlyn. The Inner City had been laid out to delight and soothe the eye. According to the Ogier, only Tar Valon itself and storied Manetheren had ever surpassed it, and many humans, Andorans foremost among them, believed that Caemlyn matched either.
The pure white walls of the Inner City marked the beginning of the surrounding New City, with its own domes and spires, some trying to match the height of those in the Inner City on its higher hills. Here the narrower streets were packed full of humanity, and even the broad boulevards, split down the middle by tree-lined expanses, were filled with people and ox-carts and horse-drawn wagons, folk on horseback and in carriages and sedan chairs. A buzz hung in the air, as from a huge hive of bees.
Passage was slower here, though the crowds gave way. They did not know who he was any more than did those in the Inner City, but no one wanted to get in the way of striding Aiel. It simply took time with so many people. And there was every sort of person. Farmers in rough woolens and merchants in coats or dresses of finer cut. Craftsmen hurrying about their trades and hawkers crying their wares from trays and pushcarts, everything from pins and ribbons to fruit and fireworks, the last two equally dear now. A gleeman in his patch-covered cloak rubbed shoulders with three Aiel inspecting the blades displayed on tables before a cutler’s workshop. Two lean fellows with their dark hair in braids and swords on their backs — Hunters for the Horn, Rand expected — stood chatting with a number of Saldaeans as they listened to a woman playing the flute and a man the tambour on a street corner. Cairhienin, shorter and paler, stood out among the Andorans, and so did the darker Tairens, but Rand saw Murandians in long coats and Altarans in elaborate vests, fork-bearded Kandori, even a pair of Domani with long thin mustaches and earrings.
Another sort of people stood out too, those who wandered about in rumpled coats and wrinkled dresses, often dusty and always blinking and staring, plainly with nowhere to go and no idea of what to do next. That sort had gone as far as they could toward what they sought. Him. The Dragon Reborn. What he was to do with them he had no notion, yet they were his responsibility, one way or another. No matter that he had not asked them to throw over their lives, had not wanted them to abandon everything. They had. Because of him. And if they learned who he was, they might well overwhelm the Aiel and tear him apart in their eagerness just to touch him.
He touched the fat-little-man angreal in his coat pocket. A fine thing, if it came to him using the One Power to protect himself against people who had given up everything because of him. That was why he seldom ventured into the city. One reason, anyway. There was just too much to be done to go for an idle ride.
The inn Bael led him to, toward the western end of the city, was called Culain’s Hound, three stories of stone with a red tile roof. On the twisting side street, the passing throng backed up both ways, narrowing to crowd around Rand’s party when it stopped. Rand touched the angreal again — two Aes Sedai; he should be able to handle them without resorting to that — before dismounting and going in. Not before three Maidens and a pair of Knife Hands, of course, all on their toes and a hair from veiling. He could have taught a cat to sing first. Leaving two Saldaeans with the horses, Bashere and the others strode in at his heels along with Bael, the rest of the Aiel following except for those who had taken up guard outside. What they found was not what Rand expected.
The common room could have changed places with any of a hundred or more in Caemlyn, great barrels of ale and wine lining one plain plastered wall, topped with smaller casks of brandy, and a gray-striped cat sprawled on top of all, a pair of stone fireplaces, the hearths swept bare, and three or four aproned serving women moving among tables and benches scattered around a bare wooden floor beneath a beamed ceiling. The innkeeper, a round-faced man with three chins, a white apron straining around his bulk, trotted up washing his hands and eyeing the Aiel only a touch nervously. Caemlyn had learned they were not going to pillage and burn everything in sight — convincing the Aiel that Andor was not a conquered land and they could not take the fifth had been a harder proposition — but that was not to say innkeepers were used to having two dozen appear in their common rooms at once.
The innkeeper concentrated on Rand and Bashere. Mainly on Bashere. Both were clearly men of substance by their clothes, but Bashere was the elder by a good many years and thus likely to be the more important, “Welcome, my Lord, my Lords. What may I offer you? I have wines from Murandy as well as Andoran, brandy from . . . “
Rand ignored the man. What was not like a hundred other common rooms was the patrons. At this hour he would have expected one or two men perhaps, but there were none. Instead most of the tables were filled with plainly dressed young women, girls really for the most part, who twisted around on their benches, te
acups in hand, to gawk at the new arrivals. More than one gasped at Bael’s height. Not all of them stared at the Aiel, though, and it was the near dozen who gaped at him that made Rand’s eyes widen. He knew them. Not all well, but he did know them. One in particular seized his attention.
“Bode?” he said in disbelief. That big-eyed girl staring at him — when had she gotten old enough to put her hair in a braid? — was Bodewhin Cauthon, Mat’s sister. And there was plump Hilde Barran sitting next to skinny Jerilin al’Caar, and pretty Marisa Ahan, with her hands clapped to her cheeks the way she always did when surprised, and buxom Emry Lewin and Elise Marwin and Darea Candwin and . . . They were from Emond’s Field, or close by. Darting a look over the rest of the tables, he realized the others must be Two Rivers girls, too. Most of them, anyway — he saw a Domani face, and one or two more that might well be from off — but every dress could have been seen any day on the Green in Emond’s Field. “What under the Light are you doing here?”
“We are on our way to Tar Valon,” Bode managed despite gaping. The only thing about her that looked at all like Mat was a mischievous something around the eyes. Her astonishment at seeing him vanished quickly in a broad smile of wonder and delight. “To become Aes Sedai, like Egwene and Nynaeve.”
“We could ask the same of you,” willowy Larine Ayellin put in, arranging her thick braid over her shoulder with studied casualness. The oldest of the Emond’s Field girls — a good three years younger than him, but the only one besides Bode to have her hair braided — she had always had a good opinion of herself. She was pretty enough for all the boys to have confirmed it for her. “Lord Perrin hardly said two words about you except to say you were off having adventures. And wearing fine coats, which I see you are.”
“Is Mat well?” Bode asked, suddenly anxious. “Is he with you? Mother worries about him so. He wouldn’t even remember to put on clean stockings if someone didn’t tell him.”