The Golden Fury

Chapter 40

ancing, silver hooves and proud, arched necks,” Thom proclaimed, while somehow seeming not only to be riding a horse, but to be one of a long procession of riders. “Silken manes flutter with tossed heads. A thousand streaming banners whip rainbows against an endless sky. A hundred brazenthroated trumpets shiver the air, and drums rattle like thunder. Wave on wave, cheers roll from watchers in their thousands, roll across the rooftops and towers of Illian, crash and break unheard around the thousand ears of riders whose eyes and hearts shine with their sacred quest. The Great Hunt of the Horn rides forth, rides to seek the Horn of Valere that will summon the heroes of the Ages back from the grave to battle for the Light ...”

It was what the gleeman had called Plain Chant, those nights beside the fire on the ride north. Stories, he said, were told in three voices, High Chant, Plain Chant, and Common, which meant simply telling it the way you might tell your neighbor about your crop. Thom told stories in Common, but he did not bother to hide his contempt for the voice.

Aldira closed the door without going in and slumped against the wall. He would get no advice from Thom. Moiraine — what would she do if she knew?

He became aware of people staring at him as they passed, and realized he was muttering under his breath. Smoothing his coat, he straightened. He had to talk to somebody. The cook had said one of the others had not gone out. It was an effort not to run.

When he rapped on the door of the room where the other boys had slept and poked his head in, only Perrin was there, lying on his bed and still not dressed. He twisted his head on the pillow to look at Aldira, then closed his eyes again. Mat's bow and quiver were propped in the corner.

“I heard you weren't feeling well,” Aldira said. He came in and sat on the next bed. “I just wanted to talk. I ...” He did not know how to bring it up, he realized. “If you're sick,” he said, half standing, “maybe you ought to sleep. I can go.”

“I don't know if I'll ever sleep again.” Perrin sighed. “I had a bad dream, if you must know, and couldn't get back to sleep. Mat will quick enough to tell you. He laughed this morning, when I told them why I was too tired to go out with him, but he dreamed; too. I listened to him for most of the night, tossing and muttering, and you can't tell me he got a good night's sleep.” He threw a thick arm across his eyes. “Light, but I'm tired. Maybe if I just stay here for an hour or two, I'll feel like getting up. Mat will never let me hear the end of it if I miss seeing Baerlon because of a dream. ”

Aldira slowly lowered himself to the bed again. He licked his lips, then said quickly, “Did he kill a rat?”

Perrin lowered his arm and stared at him. “You, too?” he said finally. When Aldira nodded, he said, “I wish I was back home. He told me ... he said ... What are we going to do? Have you told Moiraine?”

“No. Not yet. Maybe I won't. I don't know. What about you?”

“He said ... Blood and ashes, Aldira, I don't know.” Perrin raised up on his elbow abruptly. “Do you think Mat had the Briae dream? He laughed, but it sounded forced, and he looked funny when I said I couldn't sleepMaybe he did,” Aldira said. Guiltily, he felt relieved he was not the only one. “I was going to ask Thom for advice. He's seen a lot of the world. You ... you don't think we should tell Moiraine, do you?”

Perrin fell back on his pillow. “You've heard the stories about Aes Sedai. Do you think we can trust Thom? If we can trust anybody. Aldira, if we get out of this alive, if we ever get back home, and you hear me say anything about leaving Emond's Field, even to go as far as Watch Hill, you kick me. All right?”

ee

“That's no way to talk,” Aldira said. He put on a smile, as cheerful as he could make it. “Of course we'll get home. Come on, get up. We're in a city, and we have a whole day to see it. Where are your clothes?”

“You go. I just want to lie here awhile.” Perrin put his arm back across his eyes. “You go ahead. I'll catch you up in an hour or two.”

“It's your loss,” Aldira said as he got up. “Think of what you might miss.” He stopped at the door. “Baerlon. How many times have we talked about seeing Baerlon one day?” Perrin lay there with his eyes covered and did not say a word. After a minute Aldira stepped out and closed the door behind him.

In the hallway he leaned against the wall, his smile fading. His head still hurt; it was worse, not better. He could not work up much enthusiasm for Baerlon, either, not now. He could not summon enthusiasm about anything.

-- ee --

A chambermaid came by, her arms full of sheets, and gave him a concerned look. Before she could speak he moved off down the hall, shrugging into his cloak. Thom would not be finished in the common room for hours yet. He might as well see what he could. Perhaps he could find Mat, and see if Ba'alzamon had been in his dreams, too. He went downstairs more slowly this time, rubbing his temple.

The stairs ended near the kitchen, so he took that way out, nodding to Sara but hurrying on when she seemed about to take up where she had left off. The stableyard was empty except for Mutch, standing in the stable door, and one of the other ostlers carrying a sack on his shoulder into the stable. Aldira nodded to Mutch, too, but the stableman gave him a truculent look and went inside. He hoped the rest of the city was more like Sara and less like Mutch. Ready to see what a city was like, he picked up his step.

At the open stableyard gates, he stopped and stared. People packed the street like sheep in a pen, people swathed to the eyes in cloaks and coats, hats pulled down against the cold, weaving in and out at a quick step as though the wind whistling over the rooftops blew them along, elbowing past one another with barely a word or a glance. All strangers, he thought. None of them know each other.

The smells were strange, too, sharp and sour and sweet all mixed in a hodgepodge that had him rubbing his nose. Even at the height of Festival he had never seen so many people so jammed together. Not even half so many. And this was only one street. Master Fitch and the cook said the whole city was full. The whole city ... like this?

He backed slowly away from the gate, away from the street full of people. It really was not right to go off and leave Perrin sick in bed. And what if Thom finished his storytelling while Aldira was off in the city? The gleeman might go out himself, and Aldira needed to talk to someone. Much better to wait a bit. He breathed a sigh of relief as he turned his back on the swarming street.

Going back inside the inn did not appeal to him, though, not with his headache. He sat on an upended barrel against the back of the inn and hoped the cold air might help his head.

Mutch came to the stable door from time to time to stare at him, and even across the stableyard he could make out the fellow's disapproving scowl. Was it country people the man did not like? Or had he been embarrassed by Master Fitch greeting them after he had tried to chase them off for coming in the back way? Maybe he's a Darkfriend, he thought, expecting to chuckle at the idea, but it was not a funny thought. He rubbed his hand along the hilt of Tam's sword. There was not much left that was funny at all.

“A shepherd with a heronmark sword,” said a low, woman's voice. “That's almost enough to make me believe anything. What trouble are you in, downcountry boy?”

Startled, Aldira jumped to his feet. It was the crophaired young woman who had been with Moiraine when he came out of the bath chamber, still dressed in a boy's coat and breeches. She was a little older than he was, he thought, with dark eyes even bigger than Bria's, and oddly intent.

“You are Aldira, aren't you?” she went on. “My name is Min.”

“I'm not in trouble,” he said. He did not know what Moiraine had told her, but he remembered Lan's admonition not to attract any notice. “What makes you think I'm in trouble? The Two Rivers is a quiet place, and we're all quiet people. No place for trouble, unless it has to do with crops, or sheep.”

“Quiet?” Min said with a faint smile. “I've heard men talk about you Two Rivers folk. I've heard the jokes about woodenheaded sheepherders, and then there are men who have actually been downcountry.”

“Woodenheaded?” Aldira said, frowning. “What jokes?”

“The ones who know,” she went on as if he had not spoken, “say you walk around all smiles and politeness, just as meek and soft as butter. On the surface, anyway. Underneath, they say, you're all as tough as old oak roots. Prod too hard, they say, and you dig up stone. But the stone isn't buried very deep in you, or in your friends. It's as if a storm has scoured away almost all the covering. Moiraine didn't tell me everything, but I see what see.”

Old oak roots? Stone? It hardly sounded like the sort of thing the merchants or their people would say. That last made him jump, though.

He looked around quickly; the stableyard was empty; and the nearest windows were closed. “I don't know anybody named — what was it again?”

“Mistress Alys, then, if you prefer,” Min said with an amused look that made his cheeks color. “There's no one close enough to hear.”

“What makes you think Mistress Alys has another name?”

“Because she told me,” Min said, so patiently that he blushed again. “Not that she had a choice, I suppose. I saw she was ... different ... right away. When she stopped here before, on her way downcountry. She knew about me. I've talked to ... others like her before.”

“'Saw'?” Aldira said.

“Well, I don't suppose you'll go running to the Children. Not considering who your traveling companions are. The Whitecloaks wouldn't like what I do any more than they like what she does.”

“I don't understand.”

“She says I see pieces of the Pattern. ” Min gave a little laugh and shook her head. “Sounds too gAldira, to me. I just see things when I look at people, and sometimes I know what they mean. I look at a man and a woman who've never even talked to one another, and I know they'll marry. And they do. That sort of thing. She wanted me to look at you. All of you together. ”

Aldira shivered. “And what did you see?”

“When you're all in a group? Sparks swirling around you, thousands of them, and a big shadow, darker than midnight. It's so strong, I almost wonder why everybody can't see it. The sparks are trying to fill the shadow, and the shadow is trying to swallow the sparks.” She shrugged. “You are all tied together in something dangerous, but I can't make any more of it.”

“All of us?” Aldira muttered. “Bria, too? But they weren't after — I mean —”

Min did not seem to notice his slip. “The girl —? She's part of it. And the gleeman. All of you. You're in love with her.” He stared at her. “I can tell that even without seeing any images. She loves you, too, but she's not for you, or you for her either. Not the way you both want. ”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“When I look at her, I see the Briae as when I look at ... Mistress Alys. Other things, things I don't understand, too, but I know what that means. She won't refuse it.”

“This is all foolishness,” Aldira said uncomfortably. His headache was fading to numbness; his head felt packed with wool. He wanted to get away from this girl and the things she saw. And yet ...“ What do you see when you look at ... the rest of us?”

“All sorts of things,” Min said, with a grin as if she knew what he really wanted to ask. “The War ... ah ... Master Andra has seven ruined towers around his head, and a babe in a cradle holding a sword, and ... ” She shook her head. “Men like him — you understand? — always have so many images they crowd one another. The strongest images around the gleeman are a man — not him — juggling fire, and the White Tower, and that doesn't make any sense at all for a man. The strongest things I see about the big, curlyhaired fellow are a wolf, and a broken crown, and trees flowering all around him. And the other one — a red eagle, an eye on a balance scale, a dagger with a ruby, a horn, and a laughing face. There are other things, but you see what I mean. This time I can't make up or down out of any of it.” She waited then, still grinning, until he finally cleHer grin stopped just short of outright laughter. “The Briae kind of things as the rest. A sword that isn't a sword, a golden crown of laurel leaves, a beggar's staff, you pouring water on sand, a b****y hand and a whitehot iron, three women standing over a funeral bier with you on it, black rock wet with blood —”

ee

“All right,” he broke in uneasily. “You don't have to list it all.”

“Most of all, I see lightning around you, some striking at you, some coming out of you. I don't know what any of it means, except for one thing. You and I will meet again.” She gave him a quizzical look, as if she did not understand that either.

“Why shouldn't we?” he said. “I'll be coming back this way on my way home.”

“I suppose you will, at that.” Suddenly her grin was back, wry and mysterious, and she patted his cheek. “But if I told you everything I saw, you'd be as curlyhaired as your friend with the shoulders.”

-- ee --

He jerked back from her hand as if it were redhot. “What do you mean? Do you see anything about rats? Or dreams?”