The Great Hunt

  But in the morning, Selene was gone. When Rand went down to the common room, Mistress Madwen handed him a sealed parchment. “If you’ll forgive me, my Lord, you should have listened to me. You should have tapped on your Lady’s door.”

  Rand waited until she went away before he broke the white wax seal. The wax had been impressed with a crescent moon and stars.

  I must leave you for a time. There are too many people here, and I do not like Caldevwin. I will await you in Cairhien. Never think that I am too far from you. You will be in my thoughts always, as I know that I am in yours.

  It was not signed, but that elegant, flowing script had the look of Selene.

  He folded it carefully and put it in his pocket before going outside, where Hurin had the horses waiting.

  Captain Caldevwin was there, too, with another, younger officer and fifty mounted soldiers crowding the street. The two officers were bare-headed, but wore steel-backed gauntlets, and gold-worked breastplates strapped over their blue coats. A short staff was fastened to the harness on each officer’s back, bearing a small, stiff blue banner above his head. Caldevwin’s banner bore a single white star, while the younger man’s was crossed by two white bars. They were a sharp contrast to the soldiers in their plain armor and helmets that looked like bells with metal cut away to expose their faces.

  Caldevwin bowed as Rand came out of the inn. “Good morning to you; my Lord Rand. This is Elricain Tavolin, who will command your escort, if I may call it that.” The other officer bowed; his head was shaved as Caldevwin’s was. He did not speak.

  “An escort will be welcome, Captain,” Rand said, managing to sound at ease. Fain would not try anything against fifty soldiers, but Rand wished he could be certain they were only an escort.

  The captain eyed Loial, on his way to his horse with the blanket-covered chest. “A heavy burden, Ogier.”

  Loial almost missed a step. “I never like to be far from my books, Captain.” His wide mouth flashed teeth in a self-conscious grin, and he hurried to strap the chest onto his saddle.

  Caldevwin looked around, frowning. “Your Lady is not down yet. And her fine animal is not here.”

  “She left already,” Rand told him. “She had to go on to Cairhien quickly, during the night.”

  Caldevwin’s eyebrows lifted. “During the night? But my men. . . . Forgive me, my Lord Rand.” He drew the younger officer aside, whispering furiously.

  “He had the inn watched, Lord Rand,” Hurin whispered. “The Lady Selene must have gotten past them unseen somehow.”

  Rand climbed to Red’s saddle with a grimace. If there had been any chance Caldevwin did not suspect them of something, it seemed Selene had finished it. “Too many people, she says,” he muttered. “There’ll be more people by far in Cairhien.”

  “You said something, my Lord?”

  Rand looked up as Tavolin joined him, mounted on a tall, dust-colored gelding. Hurin was in his saddle, too, and Loial stood beside his big horse’s head. The soldiers were formed up in ranks. Caldevwin was nowhere to be seen.

  “Nothing is happening the way I expect,” Rand said.

  Tavolin gave him a brief smile, hardly more than a twitch of his lips. “Shall we ride, my Lord?”

  The strange procession headed for the hard-packed road that led to the city of Cairhien.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Watchers

  Nothing is happening as I expect,” Moiraine muttered, not expecting an answer from Lan. The long, polished table before her was littered with books and papers, scrolls and manuscripts, many of them dusty from long storage and tattered with age, some only fragments. The room seemed almost made of books and manuscripts, filling shelves except where there were doors or windows or the fireplace. The chairs were high-backed and well padded, but half of them, and most of the small tables, held books, and some had books and scrolls tucked under them. Only the clutter in front of Moiraine was hers, though.

  She rose and moved to the window, peered into the night toward the lights of the village, not far off. No danger of pursuit here. No one would expect her to come here. Clear my head, and begin again, she thought. That is all there is to do.

  None of the villagers had any suspicion that the two elderly sisters living in this snug house were Aes Sedai. One did not suspect such things in a small place like Tifan’s Well, a farming community deep in the grassy plains of Arafel. The villagers came to the sisters for advice on their problems and cures for their ills, and valued them as women blessed by the Light, but no more. Adeleas and Vandene had gone into voluntary retreat together so long ago that few even in the White Tower remembered they still lived.

  With the one equally aged Warder who remained to them, they lived quietly, still intending to write the history of the world since the Breaking, and as much as they could include of before. One day. In the meantime, there was so much information to gather, so many puzzles to solve. Their house was the perfect place for Moiraine to find the information she needed. Except that it was not there.

  Movement caught her eye, and she turned. Lan was lounging against the yellow brick fireplace, as imperturbable as a boulder. “Do you remember the first time we met, Lan?”

  She was watching for some sign, or she would not have seen the quick twitch of his eyebrow. It was not often she caught him by surprise. This was a subject neither of them ever mentioned; nearly twenty years ago she had told him—with all the stiff pride of one still young enough to be called young, she recalled—that she would never speak of it again and expected the same silence of him.

  “I remember,” was all he said.

  “And still no apology, I suppose? You threw me into a pond.” She did not smile, though she could feel amusement at it, now. “Every stitch I had was soaked, and in what you Bordermen call new spring. I nearly froze.”

  “I recall I built a fire, too, and hung blankets so you could warm yourself in privacy.” He poked at the burning logs and returned the firetool to its hook. Even summer nights were cool in the Borderlands. “I also recall that while I slept that night, you dumped half the pond on me. It would have saved a great deal of shivering on both our parts if you had simply told me you were Aes Sedai rather than demonstrating it. Rather than trying to separate me from my sword. Not a good way to introduce yourself to a Borderman, even for a young woman.”

  “I was young, and alone, and you were as large then as you are now, and your fierceness more open. I did not want you to know I was Aes Sedai. It seemed to me at the time you might answer my questions more freely if you did not know.” She fell silent for a moment, thinking of the years since that meeting. It had been good to find a companion to join her in her quest. “In the weeks that followed, did you suspect that I would ask you to bond to me? I decided you were the one in the first day.”

  “I never guessed,” he said dryly. “I was too busy wondering if I could escort you to Chachin and keep a whole skin. A different surprise you had for me every night. The ants I recall in particular. I don’t think I had one good night’s sleep that whole ride.”

  She permitted herself a small smile, remembering. “I was young,” she repeated. “And does your bond chafe after all these years? You are not a man to wear a leash easily, even so light a one as mine.” It was a stinging comment; she meant it to be so.

  “No.” His voice was cool, but he took up the firetool again and gave the blaze a fierce poking it did not need. Sparks cascaded up the chimney. “I chose freely, knowing what it entailed.” The iron rod clattered back onto its hook, and he made a formal bow. “Honor to serve, Moiraine Aes Sedai. It has been and will be so, always.”

  Moiraine sniffed. “Your humility, Lan Gaidin, has always been more arrogance than most kings could manage with their armies at their backs. From the first day I met you, it has been so.”

  “Why all this talk of days past, Moiraine?”

  For the hundredth time—or so it seemed to her—she considered the words to use. “Before we left Tar
Valon I made arrangements, should anything happen to me, for your bond to pass to another.” He stared at her, silent. “When you feel my death, you will find yourself compelled to seek her out immediately. I do not want you to be surprised by it.”

  “Compelled,” he breathed softly, angrily. “Never once have you used my bond to compel me. I thought you more than disapproved of that.”

  “Had I left this thing undone, you would be free of the bond at my death, and not even my strongest command to you would hold. I will not allow you to die in a useless attempt to avenge me. And I will not allow you to return to your equally useless private war in the Blight. The war we fight is the same war, if you could only see it so, and I will see that you fight it to some purpose. Neither vengeance nor an unburied death in the Blight will do.”

  “And do you foresee your death coming soon?” His voice was quiet, his face expressionless, both like stone in a dead winter blizzard. It was a manner she had seen in him many times, usually when he was on the point of violence. “Have you planned something, without me, that will see you dead?”

  “I am suddenly glad there is no pond in this room,” she murmured, then raised her hands when he stiffened, offended at her light tone. “I see my death in every day, as you do. How could I not, with the task we have followed these years? Now, with everything coming to a head, I must see it as even more possible.”

  For a moment he studied his hands, large and square. “I had never thought,” he said slowly, “that I might not be the first of us to die. Somehow, even at the worst, it always seemed. . . .” Abruptly he scrubbed his hands against each other. “If there is a chance I might be given like a pet lapdog, I would at least like to know to whom I am being given.”

  “I have never seen you as a pet,” Moiraine said sharply, “and neither does Myrelle.”

  “Myrelle.” He grimaced. “Yes, she would have to be Green, or else some slip of a girl just raised to full sisterhood.”

  “If Myrelle can keep her three Gaidin in line, perhaps she has a chance to manage you. Though she would like to keep you, I know, she has promised to pass your bond to another when she finds one who suits you better.”

  “So. Not a pet but a parcel. Myrelle is to be a—a caretaker! Moiraine, not even the Greens treat their Warders so. No Aes Sedai has passed her Warder’s bond to another in four hundred years, but you intend to do it to me not once, but twice!”

  “It is done, and I will not undo it.”

  “The Light blind me, if I am to be passed from hand to hand, do you at least have some idea in whose hand I will end?”

  “What I do is for your own good, and perhaps it may be for another’s, as well. It may be that Myrelle will find a slip of a girl just raised to sisterhood—was that not what you said?—who needs a Warder hardened in battle and wise in the ways of the world, a slip of a girl who may need someone who will throw her into a pond. You have much to offer, Lan, and to see it wasted in an unmarked grave, or left to the ravens, when it could go to a woman who needs it would be worse than the sin of which the Whitecloaks prate. Yes, I think she will have need of you.”

  Lan’s eyes widened slightly; for him it was the same as another man gasping in shocked surmise. She had seldom seen him so off balance. He opened his mouth twice before he spoke. “And who do you have in mind for this—”

  She cut him off. “Are you sure the bond does not chafe, Lan Gaidin? Do you realize for the first time, only now, the strength of that bond, the depth of it? You could end with some budding White, all logic and no heart, or with a young Brown who sees you as nothing more than a pair of hands to carry her books and sketches. I can hand you where I will, like a parcel—or a lapdog—and you can do no more than go. Are you sure it does not chafe?”

  “Is that what this has been for?” he grated. His eyes burned like blue fire, and his mouth twisted. Anger; for the first time ever that she had seen, open anger etched his face. “Has all this talk been a test—a test!—to see if you could make my bond rub? After all this time? From the day I pledged to you, I have ridden where you said ride, even when I thought it foolish, even when I had reason to ride another way. Never did you need my bond to force me. On your word I have watched you walk into danger and kept my hands at my sides when I wanted nothing more than to out sword and carve a path to safety for you. After this, you test me?”

  “Not a test, Lan. I spoke plainly, not twisting, and I have done as I said. But at Fal Dara, I began to wonder if you were still wholly with me.” A wariness entered his eyes. Lan, forgive me. I would not have cracked the walls you hold so hard, but I must know. “Why did you do as you did with Rand?” He blinked; it was obviously not what he expected. She knew what he had thought was coming, and she would not let up now that he was off balance. “You brought him to the Amyrlin speaking and acting as a Border lord and a soldier born. It fit, in a way, with what I planned for him, but you and I never spoke of teaching him any of that. Why, Lan?”

  “It seemed . . . right. A young wolfhound must meet his first wolf someday, but if the wolf sees him as a puppy, if he acts the puppy, the wolf will surely kill him. The wolfhound must be a wolfhound in the wolf’s eyes even more than in his own, if he is to survive.”

  “Is that how you see Aes Sedai? The Amyrlin? Me? Wolves out to pull down your young wolfhound?” Lan shook his head. “You know what he is, Lan. You know what he must become. Must. What I have worked for since the day you and I met, and before. Do you now doubt what I do?”

  “No. No, but. . . .” He was recovering himself, building his walls again. But they were not rebuilt yet. “How many times have you said that ta’veren pull those around them like twigs in a whirlpool? Perhaps I was pulled, too. I only know that it felt right. Those farm folk needed someone on their side. Rand did, at least. Moiraine, I believe in what you do, even as now, when I know not half of it; believe as I believe in you. I have not asked to be released from my bond, nor will I. Whatever your plans for dying and seeing me safely—disposed of—I will take great pleasure in keeping you alive and seeing those plans, at least, go for nothing.”

  “Ta’veren,” Moiraine sighed. “Perhaps it was that. Rather than guiding a chip floating down a stream, I am trying to guide a log through rapids. Every time I push at it, it pushes at me, and the log grows larger the farther we go. Yet I must see it through to the end.” She gave a little laugh. “I will not be unhappy, my old friend, if you manage to put those plans awry. Now, please leave me. I need to be alone to think.” He hesitated only a moment before turning for the door. At the last moment, though, she could not let him go without one more question. “Do you ever dream of something different, Lan?”

  “All men dream. But I know dreams for dreams. This”—he touched his sword hilt—“is reality.” The walls were back, as high and hard as ever.

  For a time after he left, Moiraine leaned back in her chair, looking into the fire. She thought of Nynaeve and cracks in a wall. Without trying, without thinking what she was doing, that young woman had put cracks in Lan’s walls and seeded the cracks with creepers. Lan thought he was secure, imprisoned in his fortress by fate and his own wishes, but slowly, patiently, the creepers were tearing down the walls to bare the man within. Already he was sharing some of Nynaeve’s loyalties; in the beginning he had been indifferent to the Emond’s Field folk, except as people in whom Moiraine had some interest. Nynaeve had changed that as she had changed Lan.

  To her surprise, Moiraine felt a flash of jealousy. She had never felt that before, certainly not for any of the women who had thrown their hearts at his feet, or those who had shared his bed. Indeed, she had never thought of him as an object of jealousy, had never thought so of any man. She was married to her battle, as he was married to his. But they had been companions in those battles for so long. He had ridden a horse to death, then run himself nearly to death, carrying her in his arms at the last, to Anaiya for Healing. She had tended his wounds more than once, keeping with her arts a life he had been ready to thro
w away to save hers. He had always said he was wedded with death. Now a new bride had captured his eyes, though he was blind to it. He thought he still stood strong behind his walls, but Nynaeve had laced bridal flowers in his hair. Would he still find himself able to court death so blithely? Moiraine wondered when he would ask her to release him from his bond. And what she would do when he did.

  With a grimace, she got to her feet. There were more important matters. Far more important. Her eyes ran over the open books and papers crowding the room. So many hints, but no answers.

  Vandene came in with a teapot and cups on a tray. She was slender and graceful, with a straight back, and the hair gathered neatly at the nape of her neck was almost white. The agelessness of her smooth face was that of long, long years. “I would have had Jaem bring this, and not disturb you myself, but he’s out in the barn practicing with his sword.” She made a clucking sound as she pushed a battered manuscript aside to set the tray on the table. “Lan being here has him remembering he’s more than a gardener and handyman. Gaidin are so stiff-necked. I thought Lan would still be here; that’s why I brought an extra cup. Have you found what you were seeking?”

  “I am not even sure what it is I am seeking.” Moiraine frowned, studying the other woman. Vandene was of the Green Ajah, not Brown like her sister, yet the two of them had studied so long together that she knew as much of history as Adeleas.

  “Whatever it is, you don’t even seem to know where to look.” Vandene shifted some of the books and manuscripts on the table, shaking her head. “So many subjects. The Trolloc Wars. The Watchers Over the Waves. The legend of the Return. Two treatises on the Horn of Valere. Three on dark prophecy, and—Light, here’s Santhra’s book on the Forsaken. Nasty, that. As nasty as this on Shadar Logoth. And the Prophecies of the Dragon, in three translations and the original. Moiraine, whatever are you after? The Prophecies, I can understand—we hear some news here, remote as we are. We hear some of what’s happening in Illian. There’s even a rumor in the village that someone has already found the Horn.” She gestured with a manuscript on the Horn, and coughed in the dust that rose from it. “I discount that, of course. There would be rumors. But what—? No. You said you wanted privacy, and I’ll give it to you.”