“You wish everything could be the way it was, sheepherder? Or you wish the girl would go with you instead of to Tar Valon? You think she’ll give up becoming an Aes Sedai for a life of wandering? With you? If you put it to her in the right way, she might. Love is an odd thing.” Lan sounded suddenly weary. “As odd a thing as there is.”
“No.” It was what he had been wishing, that she would want to go with him. He opened his eyes and squared his back and made his voice firm. “No, I wouldn’t let her come with me if she did ask.” He could not do that to her. But Light, wouldn’t it be sweet, just for a minute, if she said she wanted to? “She gets muley stubborn if she thinks I’m trying to tell her what to do, but I can still protect her from that.” He wished she were back home in Emond’s Field, but all hope of that had gone the day Moiraine came to the Two Rivers. “Even if it means she does become an Aes Sedai!” The corner of his eye caught Lan’s raised eyebrow, and he flushed.
“And that is all the reason? You want to spend as much time as you can with your friends from home before they go? That’s why you’re dragging your feet? You know what’s sniffing at your heels.”
Rand surged angrily to his feet. “All right, it
’s Moiraine! I wouldn’t even be here if not for her, and she won’t as much as talk to me.”
“You’d be dead if not for her, sheepherder,” Lan said flatly, but Rand rushed on.
“She tells me . . . tells me horrible things about myself”—his knuckles whitened on the sword. That I’m going to go mad and die!—“and then suddenly she won’t even say two words to me. She acts as if I’m no different than the day she found me, and that smells wrong, too.”
“You want her to treat you like what you are?”
“No! I don’t mean that. Burn me, I don’t know what I mean half the time. I don’t want that, and I’m scared of the other. Now she’s gone off somewhere, vanished . . .”
“I told you she needs to be alone sometimes. It isn’t for you, or anyone else, to question her actions.”
“. . . without telling anybody where she was going, or when she’d be back, or even if she would be back. She has to be able to tell me something to help me, Lan. Something. She has to. If she ever comes back.”
“She’s back, sheepherder. Last night. But I think she has told you all she can. Be satisfied. You’ve learned what you can from her.” With a shake of his head, Lan’s voice became brisk. “You certainly aren’t learning anything standing there. Time for a little balance work. Go through Parting the Silk, beginning from Heron Wading in the Rushes. Remember that that Heron form is only for practicing balance. Anywhere but doing forms, it leaves you wide open; you can strike home from it, if you wait for the other man to move first, but you’ll never avoid his blade.”
“She has to be able to tell me something, Lan. That wind. It wasn’t natural, and I don’t care how close to the Blight we are.”
“Heron Wading in the Rushes, sheepherder. And mind your wrists.”
From the south came a faint peal of trumpets, a rolling fanfare slowly growing louder, accompanied by the steady thrum-thrum-THRUM-thrum of drums. For a moment Rand and Lan stared at each other, then the drums drew them to the tower wall to stare southward.
The city stood on high hills, the land around the city walls cleared to ankle height for a full mile in all directions, and the keep covered the highest hill of all. From the tower top, Rand had a clear view across the chimneys and roofs to the forest. The drummers appeared first from the trees, a dozen of them, drums lifting as they stepped to their own beat, mallets whirling. Next came trumpeters, long, shining horns raised, still calling the flourish. At that distance Rand could not make out the huge, square banner whipping in the wind behind them. Lan grunted, though; the Warder had eyes like a snow eagle.
Rand glanced at him, but the Warder said nothing, his eyes intent on the column emerging from the forest. Mounted men in armor rode out of the trees, and women ahorseback, too. Then a palanquin borne by horses, one before and one behind, its curtains down, and more men on horseback. Ranks of men afoot, pikes rising above them like a bristle of long thorns, and archers with their bows held slanted across their chests, all stepping to the drums. The trumpets cried again. Like a singing serpent the column wound its way toward Fal Dara.
The wind flapped the banner, taller than a man, straight out to one side. As big as it was, it was close enough now for Rand to see clearly. A swirl of colors that meant nothing to him, but at the heart of it, a shape like a pure white teardrop. His breath froze in his throat. The Flame of Tar Valon.
“Ingtar’s with them.” Lan sounded as if his thoughts were elsewhere. “Back from his hunting at last. Been gone long enough. I wonder if he had any luck?”
“Aes Sedai,” Rand whispered when he finally could. All those women out there. . . . Moiraine was Aes Sedai, yes, but he had traveled with her, and if he did not entirely trust her, at least he knew her. Or thought he did. But she was only one. So many Aes Sedai together, and coming like this, was something else again. He cleared his throat; when he spoke, his voice grated. “Why so many, Lan? Why any at all? And with drums and trumpets and a banner to announce them.”
Aes Sedai were respected in Shienar, at least by most people, and the rest respectfully feared them, but Rand had been in places where it was different, where there was only the fear, and often hate. Where he had grown up, some men, at least, spoke of “Tar Valon witches” as they would speak of the Dark One. He tried to count the women, but they kept no ranks or order, moving their horses around to converse with one another or with whoever was in the palanquin. Goose bumps covered him. He had traveled with Moiraine, and met another Aes Sedai, and he had begun to think of himself as worldly. Nobody ever left the Two Rivers, or almost nobody, but he had. He had seen things no one back in the Two Rivers had ever laid eyes on, done things they had only dreamed of, if they had dreamed so far. He had seen a queen and met the Daughter-Heir of Andor, faced a Myrddraal and traveled the Ways, and none of it had prepared him for this moment.
“Why so many?” he whispered again.
“The Amyrlin Seat’s come in person.” Lan looked at him, his expression as hard and unreadable as a rock. “Your lessons are done, sheepherder.” He paused then, and Rand almost thought there was sympathy on his face. That could not be, of course. “Better for you if you were a week gone.” With that the Warder snatched up his shirt and disappeared down the ladder into the tower.
Rand worked his mouth, trying to get a little moisture. He stared at the column approaching Fal Dara as if it really were a snake, a deadly viper. The drums and trumpets sang, loud in his ears. The Amyrlin Seat, who ordered the Aes Sedai. She’s come because of me. He could think of no other reason.
They knew things, had knowledge that could help him, he was sure. And he did not dare ask any of them. He was afraid they had come to gentle him. And afraid they haven’t, too, he admitted reluctantly. Light, I don’t know which scares me more.
“I didn’t mean to channel the Power,” he whispered. “It was an accident! Light, I don’t want anything to do with it. I swear I’ll never touch it again! I swear it!”
With a start, he realized that the Aes Sedai party was entering the city gates. The wind swirled up fiercely, chilling his sweat like droplets of ice, making the trumpets sound like sly laughter; he thought he could smell an opened grave, strong in the air. My grave, if I keep standing here.
Grabbing his shirt, he scrambled down the ladder and began to run.
CHAPTER
2