The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time #2)

Loial had a different look, a slightly puzzled frown, but his eyes were on Rand, too. Rand wondered what he was thinking.

“It was worth a try,” he told them. The rancid oil feel, inside his head — Light, it's inside me! I don't want it inside me! — was fading slowly, but he still thought he might vomit. “I will try again, in a few minutes.”

He hoped he sounded confident. He had no idea how the Stones worked, if what he was doing had any chance of success. Maybe there are ruler for working them. Maybe you have to do something special. Light, maybe you can't use the same Stone twice, or ... He cut off that line of thought. There was no good in thinking like that. He had it to do. Looking at Loial and Hurin, he thought he knew what Lan had meant about duty pressing down like a mountain.

“My Lord, I think ...” Hurin let his words trail off, looking abashed for a moment. “My Lord, maybe, if we find the Darkfriends, we can make one of them tell us how to get back.”

“I would ask a Darkfriend or the Dark One himself if I thought I'd get a true answer back,” Rand said. “But we are all there is. Just us three.” Just me. I'm the one who has to do it.

“We could follow their trail, my Lord. If we catch them ...”

Rand stared at the sniffer. “You can still smell them?”

“I can, my Lord.” Hurin frowned. “It's faint, pale — like, like everything else here, but I can smell the trail. Right up there.” He pointed to the rim of the hollow. “I don't understand it, my Lord, but — Last night, I could have sworn the trail went right on by the hollow back — back where we were. Well, it's in the same place now, only here, and fainter, like I said. Not old, not faint like that, but ... I don't know, Lord Rand, except that it's there.”

Rand considered. If Fain and the Darkfriends were here — wherever here was — they might know how to get back. They had to, if they had reached here in the first place. And they had the Horn, and the dagger. Mat had to have that dagger. For that if for nothing else, he had to find them. What finally decided him, he was ashamed to realize, was that he was afraid to try again. Afraid to try channeling the Power. He was less afraid of confronting Darkfriends and Trollocs with only Hurin and Loial than he was of that.

“Then we will go after the Darkfriends.” He tried to sound sure, the way Lan would, or Ingtar. “The Horn must be recovered. If we can't puzzle out a way to take it from them, at least we will know where they are when we find Ingtar again.” If only they don't ask how we're going to find him again. “Hurin, make sure it really is the trail we're after.”

The sniffer leaped into his saddle, eager to be doing something himself, perhaps eager to be away from the hollow, and scrambled his horse up the broad, colored steps. The animal's hooves rang loudly on the stone, but they made not a mark.

Rand stowed Red's hobbles in his saddlebags — the banner was still there; he would not have minded if that had been left behind — then gathered his bow and quiver and climbed to the stallion's back. The bundle of Thom Merrilin's cloak made a mound behind his saddle.

Loial led his big mount over to him; with the Ogier standing on the ground, Loial's head came almost to Rand's shoulder, and him in his saddle. Loial still looked puzzled.

“You think we should stay here?” Rand said. “Try again to use the Stone? If the Darkfriends are here, in place, we have to find them. We can't leave the Horn of Valere in Darkfriend hands; you heard the Amyrlin. And we have to get that dagger back. Mat will die without it.”

Loial nodded. “Yes, Rand, we do. But, Rand, the Stones ... ”

“We will find another. You said they were scattered all over, and if they're all like this — all this stonework around them — it should not be too hard to find one.”

“Rand, that fragment said the Stones came from an older Age than the Age of Legends, and even the Aes Sedai then did not understand them, though they used them, some of the truly powerful did. They used them with the One Power, Rand. How did you think to use this Stone to take us back? Or any other Stone we find?”

For a moment Rand could only stare at the Ogier, thinking faster than he ever had in his life. “If they are older than the Age of Legends, maybe the people who built them didn't use the Power. There must be another way. The Darkfriends got here, and they certainly couldn't use the Power. Whatever this other way is, I will find it out. I will get us back, Loial.” He looked at the tall stone column with its odd markings, and felt a prickle of fear. Light, if only I don't have to use the Power to do it. “I will, Loial, I promise. One way or another.”

The Ogier gave a doubtful nod. He swung up onto his huge horse and followed Rand up the steps to join Hurin among the blackened trees.

The land stretched out, low and rolling, sparsely forested here and there with grassland between, crossed by more than one stream. In the middle distance Rand thought he could see another burned patch. It was all pale, the colors washed. There was no sign of anything made by men except the stone circle behind them. The sky was empty, no chimney smoke, no birds, only a few clouds and the pale yellow sun.

Worst of all, though, the land seemed to twist the eye. What was close at hand looked all right, and what was seen straight ahead in the distance. But whenever Rand turned his head, things that appeared distant when seen from the corner of his eye seemed to rush toward him, to be nearer when he stared straight at them. It made for dizziness; even the horses whickered nervously and rolled their eyes. He tried moving his head slowly; the apparent movement of things that should have been fixed was still there, but it seemed to help a little.

“Did your piece of a book say anything about this?” Rand asked.

Loial shook his head, then swallowed hard as if he wished he had kept it still. “Nothing.”

“I suppose there's nothing to do for it. Which way, Hurin?”

“South, Lord Rand.” The sniffer kept his eyes on the ground.

“South, then.” There has to be a way back besides using the Power. Rand heeled Red's flanks. He tried to make his voice lighthearted, as if he saw no difficulty at all in what they were about. “What was it Ingtar said? Three or four days to that monument to Artur Hawkwing? I wonder if that exists here, too, the way the Stones do. If this is a world that could be, maybe it's still standing. Wouldn't that be somet