The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time #2)

The ceiling above him groaned. He grabbed saddlebags and flute case and threw himself back through the door, landing on his knees as burning timbers crashed where he had stood. Dragging his burden, he crawled into the hall. The floor shook with more falling beams.

The men with the buckets were gone when he reached the stairs. He all but slid down the steps to the next landing, scrambled to his feet and ran through the nowempty building into the street. The onlookers stared at him, with his face blackened and his coat covered with smut, but he staggered to where Loial had propped Hurin against the wall of a house across the street. A woman from the crowd was wiping Hurin's face with a cloth, but his eyes were still closed, and his breath came in heaves.

“Is there a Wisdom nearby?” Rand demanded. “He needs help.” The woman looked at him blankly, and he tried to remember the other names he had heard people call the women who would be Wisdoms in the Two Rivers. “A Wise Woman? A woman you call Mother somebody? A woman who knows herbs and healing?”

“I am a Reader, if that is what you mean,” the woman said, “but all I know to do for this one is to make him comfortable. Something is broken inside his head, I fear.”

“Rand! It is you!”

Rand stared. It was Mat, leading his horse through the crowd, with his bow strung across his back. A Mat whose face was pale and drawn, but still Mat, and grinning, if weakly. And behind him came Perrin, his yellow eyes shining in the fire and earning as many looks as the blaze. And Ingtar, dismounting in a highcollared coat instead of armor, but still with his sword hilt sticking up over his shoulder.

Rand felt a shiver run through him. “It's too late,” he told them. “You came too late.” And he sat down in the street and began to laugh.

Chapter 31

(Rising Sun)

On the Scent

Rand did not know Verin was there until the Aes Sedai took his face in her hands. For a moment he could see worry in her face, perhaps even fear, and then suddenly he felt as if he had been doused with cold water, not the wet but the tingle. He gave one abrupt shudder and stopped laughing; she left him to crouch over Hurin. The Reader watched her carefully. So did Rand. What is she doing here? As if I didn't know.

“Where did you go?” Mat demanded hoarsely. “You all just disappeared, and now you're in Cairhien ahead of us. Loial?” The Ogier shrugged uncertainly and eyed the crowd, his ears twitching. Half the people had turned from the fire to watch the newcomers. A few edged closer trying to listen.

Rand let Perrin give him a hand up. “How did you find the inn?” He glanced at Verin, kneeling with her hands on the sniffer's head. “Her?”

“In a way,” Perrin said. “The guards at the gate wanted our names, and a fellow coming out of the guardhouse gave a jump when he heard Ingtar's name. He said he didn't know it, but he had a smile that shouted 'lie' a mile off.”

“I think I know the man you mean,” Rand said. “He smiles that way all the time.”

“Verin showed him her ring,” Mat put in, “and whispered in his ear.” He looked and sounded sick, his cheeks flushed and tight, but he managed a grin. Rand had never noticed his cheekbones before. “I couldn't hear what she said, but I didn't know whether his eyes were going to pop out of his head or he was going to swallow his tongue first. All of a sudden, he couldn't do enough for us. He told us you were waiting for us, and right where you were staying. Offered to guide us himself, but he really looked relieved when Verin told him no.” He snorted. “Lord Rand of House al'Thor.”

“It's too long a story to explain now,” Rand said. “Where are Uno and the rest? We will need them.”

“In the Foregate.” Mat frowned at him, and went on slowly, “Uno said they'd rather stay there than inside the walls. From what I can see, I'd rather be with them. Rand, why will we need Uno? Have you found ... them?”

It was the moment Rand realized suddenly he had been avoiding. He took a deep breath and looked his friend in the eye. “Mat, I had the dagger, and I lost it. The Darkfriends took it back.” He heard gasps from the Cairhienin listening, but he did not care. They could play their Great Game if they wanted, but Ingtar had come, and he was finished with it at last. “They can't have gone far, though.”

Ingtar had been silent, but now he stepped forward and gripped Rand's arm. “You had it? And the” — he looked around at the onlookers — “the other thing?”

“They took that back, too,” Rand said quietly. Ingtar pounded a fist into his palm and turned away; some of the Cairhienin backed off from the look on his face.

Mat chewed his lip, then shook his head. “I didn't know it was found, so it isn't as if I had lost it again. It is just still lost.” It was plain he was speaking of the dagger, not the Horn of Valere. “We'll find it again. We have two sniffers, now. Perrin is one, too. He followed the trail all the way to the Foregate, after you vanished with Hurin and Loial. I thought you might have just run off ... well, you know what I mean. Where did you go? I still don't understand how you got so far ahead of us. That fellow said you have been here days.”

Rand glanced at Perrin — He's a sniffer? — and found Perrin studying him in return. He thought Perrin muttered something. Shadowkiller? I must have heard him wrong. Perrin's yellow gaze held him for a moment, seeming to hold secrets about him. Telling himself he was having fancies — I'm not mad. Not yet. — he pulled his eyes away.

Verin was just helping a stillshaky Hurin to his feet. “I feel right as goose feathers,” he was saying. “Still a little tired, but ...” He let the words trail off, seeming to see her for the first time, to realize what had happened for the first time.

“The tiredness will last a few hours,” she told him. “The body must strain to heal itself quickly.”

The Cairhienin Reader rose. “Aes Sedai?” she said softly. Verin inclined her head, and the Reader made a full curtsy.

As quiet as they had been, the words “Aes Sedai” ran through the crowd in tones ranging from awe to fear to outrage. Everyone was watching now — not even Cuale gave any attention to his own burning inn — and Rand thought a little caution might not be amiss after all.

“Do you have rooms yet?” he asked. “We need to talk, and we ca