The Barbarian King

Chapter 9

We already have, Mat, both of us, and we weren't believed. Can you imagine trying to convince Master al'Vere about this fellow, without him seeing him? He'd send us off to Nynaeve to see if we were sick.”

“There are two of us, now. Nobody could believe we both imagined it.”

Melderin rubbed the top of his head briskly, wondering what to say. Mat was something of a byword around the village. Few people had escaped his pranks. Now his name came up whenever a washline dropped the laundry in the dirt or a loose saddle girth deposited a farmer in the road. Mat did not even have to be anywhere around. His support might be worse than none.

After a moment Melderin said, “Your father would believe you put me up to it, and mine ... ” He looked over the cart to where Tam and Bran and Cenn had been talking, and found himself staring his father in the eyes. The Mayor was still lecturing Cenn, who took it now in sullen silence.

“Good morning, Matrim,” Tam said brightly, hefting one of the bMelderiny casks up onto the side of the cart. “I see you've come to help Melderin unload the cider. Good lad.”

Mat leaped to his feet at the first word and began backing away. “Good morning to you, Master al'Thor. And to you, Master al'Vere. Master Buie. May the Light shine on you. My da sent me to — ”

“No doubt he did,” Tam said. “And no doubt, since you are a lad who does his chores right off, you've finished the task already. Well, the quicker you lads get the cider into Master al'Vere's cellar, the quicker you can see the gleeman. ”

“Gleeman!” Mat exclaimed, stopping dead in his footsteps, at the same instant that Melderin asked, “When will he get here?”

Melderin could remember only two gleemen coming into the Two Rivers in his whole life, and for one of those he had been young enough to sit on Tam's shoulders to watch. To have one there actually during Bel Tine, with his harp and his flute and his stories and all ... Emond's Field would still be talking about this Festival ten years off, even if there were not any fireworks.

“Foolishness,” Cenn grumbled, but fell silent at a look from Bran that had all the weight of the Mayor's office in it.

Tam leaned against the side of the cart, using the bMelderiny cask as a prop for his arm. “Yes, a gleeman, and already here. According to Master al'Vere, he's in a room in the inn right now. ”

“Arrived in the dead of night, he did.” The innkeeper shook his head in disapproval. “Pounded on the front door till he woke the whole family. If not for Festival, I'd have told him to stable his own horse and sleep in the stall with it, gleeman or not. Imagine coming in the dark like that.”

Melderin stared wonderingly. No one traveled beyond the village by night, not these days, certainly not alone. The thatcher grumbled under his breath again, too low this time for Melderin to understand more than a word or two. “Madman” and “unnatural.”

“He doesn't wear a black cloak, does he?” Mat asked suddenly.

Bran's belly shook with his chuckle. “Black! His cloak is like every gleeman's cloak I've ever seen. More patches than cloak, and more colors than you can think of. ”

Melderin startled himself by laughing out loud, a laugh of pure relief. The menacing blackclad rider as a gleeman was a ridiculous notion, but... He clapped a hand over his mouth in embarrassment.

“You see, Tam,” Bran said. “There's been little enough laughter in this village since winter came. Now even the gleeman's cloak brings a laugh. That alone is worth the expense of bringing him down from Baerlon. ”

“Say what you will,” Cenn spoke up suddenly. “I still say it's a foolish waste of money. And those fireworks you all insisted on sending off for.”

“So there are fireworks,” Mat said, but Cenn went right on.

“They should have been here a month ago with the first peddler of the year, but there hasn't been a peddler, has there? If he doesn't come by tomorrow, what are we going to do with them? Hold another Festival just to set them off? That's if he even brings them, of course. ”

“Cenn”—Tam sighed—“You've as much trust as a Taren Ferry man.”

“Where is he, then? Tell me that, al'Thor.”

“Why didn't you tell us?” Mat demanded in an aggrieved voice. “The whole village would have had as much fun with the waiting as with the gleeman. Or almost, anyway. You can see how everybody's been over just a rumor of fireworks.”

“I can see,” Bran replied with a sidelong look at the thatcher. “And if I knew for sure how that rumor started ... if I thought, for instance, that somebody had been complaining about how much things cost where people could hear him when the things are supposed to be secret ... ”

Cenn cleared his throat. “My bones are too old for this wind. If you don't mind, I'll just see if Mistress al'Vere won't fix me some mulled wine to take the chill off. Mayor. Al'Thor. ” He was headed for the inn before he finished, and as the door swung shut behind him, Bran sighed.

“Sometimes I think Nynaeve is right about ... Well, that's not important now. You young fellows think for a minute. Everyone's excited about the fireworks, true, and that's only at a rumor. Think how they'll be if the peddler doesn't get here in time, after all their anticipating. And with the weather the way it is, who knows when he will come. They'd be fifty times as excited about a gleeman.”

“And feel fifty times as bad if he hadn't come,” Melderin said slowly. “Even Bel Tine might not do much for people's spirits after that.”

“You have a head on your shoulders when you choose to use it,” Bran said. “He'll follow you on the Village Council one day, Tam. Mark my words. He couldn't do much worse right now than someone I could name.”

“None of this is unloading the cart,” Tam said briskly, handing the first cask of bMelderiny to the Mayor. “I want a warm fire, my pipe, and a mug of your good ale.” He hoisted the second bMelderiny cask onto his shoulder. “I'm sure Melderin will thank you for your help, Matrim. Remember, the sooner the cider is in the cellar... ”

As Tam and Bran disappeared into the inn, Melderin looked at his friend. “You don't have to help. Dav won't keep that badger long.”

“Oh, why not?” Mat said resignedly. “Like your da said, the quicker it's in the cellar ...” Picking up one of the casks of cider in both arms, he hurried toward the inn in a half trot. “Maybe Egwene is around. Watching you stare at her like a poleaxed ox will be as good as a badger any day.”

Melderin paused in the act of putting his bow and quiver in the back of the cart. He really had managed to put Egwene out of his mind. That was unusual in itself. But she would likely be around the inn somewhere. There was not much chance he could avoid her. Of course, it had been weeks since he saw her last.

“Well?” Mat called from the front of the inn. “I didn't say I would do it by myself. You aren't on the Village Council yet.”

With a start, Melderin took up a cask and followed. Perhaps she would not be there after all. Oddly, that possibility did notWhen Melderin and Mat carried the first barrels through the common room, Master al'Vere was already filling a pair of mugs with his best brown ale, his own make, from one of the casks cracked against one wall. Scratch, the inn's yellow cat, crouched atop it with his eyes closed and his tail wrapped around his feet. Tam stood in front of the big fireplace of river rock, thumbing a longstemmed pipe full of tabac from a polished canister the innkeeper always kept on the plain stone mantel. The fireplace stretched half the length of the big, square room, with a lintel as high as a man's shoulder, and the crackling blaze on the hearth vanquished the chill outside.

At that time of the busy day before Festival, Melderin expected to find the common room empty except for Bran and his father and the cat, but four more members of the Village Council, including Cenn, sat in highbacked chairs in front of the fire, mugs in hand and bluegray pipesmoke wreathing their heads. For once none of the stones boards were in use, and all of Bran's books stood idle on the shelf opposite the fireplace. The men did not even talk, peering silently into their ale or tapping pipestems against their teeth in impatience, as they waited for Tam and Bran to join them.

Worry was not uncommon for the Village Council these days, not in Emond's Field, and likely not in Watch Hill, or Deven Ride. Or even Taren Ferry, though who knew what Taren Ferry folk really thought about anything?

Only two of the men before the fire, Haral Luhhan, the blacksmith, and Jon Thane, the miller, so much as glanced at the boys as they entered. Master Luhhan, though, made it more than a glance. The blacksmith's arms were as big as most men's legs, roped with heavy muscle, and he still wore his long leather apron as if he had hurried to the meeting straight from the forge. His frown took them both in, then he straightened around in his chair deliberately, turning his attention back to an overstudious tamping of his pipe with a thick thumb.

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Curious, Melderin slowed, then barely bit back a yelp as Mat kicked his ankle. His friend nodded insistently toward the doorway at the back of the common room and hurried on without waiting. Limping slightly, Melderin followed less quickly.

“What was that about?“ he demanded as soon as he was in the hall that to the kitchen. ”You almost broke my — "

“It's old Luhhan,” Mat said, peering past Melderin's shoulder into the common room. “I think he suspects I was the one who — ” He cut off abruptly as Mistress al'Vere bustled out of the kitchen, the aroma of freshbaked bread wafting ahead of her.

The tray in her hands carried some of the crusty loaves for which she was famous around Emond's Field, as well as plates of pickles and cheese. The food reminded Melderin abruptly that he had eaten only an end of bread before leaving the farm that morning. His stomach gave an embarrassing rumble.

A slender woman, with her thick braid of graying hair pulled over one shoulder, Mistress al'Vere smiled in a motherly fashion that took in both of them. “There is more of this in the kitchen, if you two are hungry, and I never knew boys your age who weren't. Or any other age, for that matter. If you prefer, I'm baking honeycakes this morning.”

She was one of the few married women in the area who never tried to play matchmaker with Tam. Toward Melderin her motherliness extended to warm smiles and a quick snack whenever he came by the inn, but she did as much for every young man in the area. If she occasionally looked at him as if she wanted to do more, at least she took it no further than looks, for that he was deeply grateful.Without waiting for a reply she swept on into the common room. Immediately there was the sound of chairs scraping on the floor as the men got to their feet, and exclaimings over the smell of the bread. She was easily the best cook in Emond's Field, and not a man for miles around but eagerly leaped at a chance to put his feet under her table.

“Honeycakes,” Mat said, smacking his lips.

“After,” Melderin told him firmly, “or we'll never get done.”

A lamp hung over the cellar stairs, just beside the kitchen door, and another made a bright pool in the stonewalled room beneath the inn, banishing all but a little dimness in the furthest corners. Wooden racks along the walls and across the floor held casks of bMelderiny and cider, and larger barrels of ale and wine, some with taps driven in. Many of the wine barrels were marked with chalk in Bran al'Vere's hand, giving the year they had been bought, what peddler had brought them, and in which city they had been made, but all of the ale and bMelderiny was the make of Two Rivers farmers or of Bran himself. Peddlers, and even merchants, sometimes brought bMelderiny or ale from outside, but it was never as good and cost the earth, besides, and nobody ever drank it more than once.