Bartim waved a grubby hand dismissively. “North, that’s all anybody knows around here. You want to see him, go to Caemlyn. That’s all I know, and if there’s anything to know in Whitebridge, I know it.”
“No doubt you do,” Thom said smoothly. “
I expect a lot of strangers passing through stop here. Your sign caught my eye from the foot of the White Bridge.”
“Not just from the west, I’ll have you know. Two days ago there was a fellow in here, an Illianer, with a proclamation all done up with seals and ribbons. Read it right out there in the square. Said he’s taking it all the way to the Mountains of Mist, maybe even to the Aryth Ocean, if the passes are open. Said they’ve sent men to read it in every land in the world.” The innkeeper shook his head. “The Mountains of Mist. I hear they’re covered with fog all the year round, and there’s things in the fog will strip the flesh off your bones before you can run.” Mat snickered, earning a sharp look from Bartim.
Thom leaned forward intently. “What did the proclamation say?”
“Why, the hunt for the Horn, of course,” Bartim exclaimed. “Didn’t I say that? The Illianers are calling on everybody as will swear their lives to the hunt to gather in Illian. Can you imagine that? Swearing your life to a legend? I suppose they’ll find some fools. There’s always fools around. This fellow claimed the end of the world is coming. The last battle with the Dark One.” He chuckled, but it had a hollow sound, a man laughing to convince himself something really was worth laughing at. “Guess they think the Horn of Valere has to be found before it happens. Now what do you think of that?” He chewed a knuckle pensively for a minute. “Course, I don’t know as I could argue with them after this winter. The winter, and this fellow Logain, and those other two before, as well. Why all these fellows the last few years claiming to be the Dragon? And the winter. Must mean something. What do you think?”
Thom did not seem to hear him. In a soft voice the gleeman began to recite to himself.
“In the last, lorn fight
’gainst the fall of long night,
the mountains stand guard,
and the dead shall be ward,
for the grave is no bar to my call.”
“That’s it.” Bartim grinned as if he could already see the crowds handing him their money while they listened to Thom. “That’s it. The Great Hunt of the Horn. You tell that one, and they’ll be hanging from the rafters in here. Everybody’s heard about the proclamation.”
Thom still seemed to be a thousand miles away, so Rand said, “We’re looking for some friends who were coming this way. From the west. Have there been many strangers passing through in the last week or two?”
“Some,” Bartim said slowly. “There’s always some, from east and west both.” He looked at each of them in turn, suddenly wary. “What do they look like, these friends of yours?”
Rand opened his mouth, but Thom, abruptly back from wherever he had been, gave him a sharp, silencing look. With an exasperated sigh the gleeman turned to the innkeeper. “Two men and three women,” he said reluctantly. “They may be together, or maybe not.” He gave thumbnail sketches, painting each one in just a few words, enough for anyone who had seen them to recognize without giving away anything about who they were.
Bartim rubbed one hand over his head, disarranging his thinning hair, and stood up slowly. “Forget about performing here, gleeman. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you drank your wine and left. Leave Whitebridge, if you’re smart.”
“Someone else has been asking after them?” Thom took a drink, as if the answer were the least important thing in the world, and raised an eyebrow at the innkeeper. “Who would that be?”
Bartim scrubbed his hand through his hair again and shifted his feet on the point of walking away, then nodded to himself. “About a week ago, as near as I can say, a weaselly fellow came over the bridge. Crazy, everybody thought. Always talking to himself, never stopped moving even when he was standing still. Asked about the same people . . . some of them. He asked like it was important, then acted like he didn’t care what the answer was. Half the time he was saying as he had to wait here for them, and the other half as he had to go on, he was in a hurry. One minute he was whining and begging, the next making demands like a king. Near got himself a thrashing a time or two, crazy or not. The Watch almost took him in custody for his own safety. He went off toward Caemlyn that same day, talking to himself and crying. Crazy, like I said.”
Rand looked at Thom and Mat questioningly, and they both shook their heads. If this weaselly fellow was looking for them, he was still nobody they recognized.
“Are you sure it was the same people he wanted?” Rand asked.
“Some of them. The fighting man, and the woman in silk. But it wasn’t them as he cared about. It was three country boys.” His eyes slid across Rand and Mat and away again so fast that Rand was not sure if he had really seen the look or imagined it. “He was desperate to find them. But crazy, like I said.”
Rand shivered, and wondered who the crazy man could be, and why he was looking for them. A Darkfriend? Would Ba’alzamon use a madman?
“He was crazy, but the other one. . . .” Bartim’s eyes shifted uneasily, and his tongue ran over his lips as if he could not find enough spit to moisten them. “Next day . . . next day the other one came for the first time.” He fell silent.
“The other one?” Thom prompted finally.
Bartim looked around, although their side of the divided room was still empty except for them. He even raised up on his toes and looked over the low wall. When he finally spoke, it was in a whispered rush.
“All in black he is. Keeps the hood of his cloak pulled up so you can’t see his face, but you can feel him looking at you, feel it like an icicle shoved into your spine. He . . . he spoke to me.” He flinched and stopped to chew at his lip before going on. “Sounded like a snake crawling through dead leaves. Fair turned my stomach to ice. Every time as he comes back, he asks the same questions. Same questions the crazy man asked. Nobody ever sees him coming—he’s just there all of a sudden, day or night, freezing you where you stand. People are starting to look over their shoulders. Worst of it is, the gatetenders claim as he’s never passed through any of the gates, coming or going.”
Rand worked at keeping his face blank; he clenched his jaw until his teeth ached. Mat scowled, and Thom studied his wine. The word none of them wanted to say hung in the air between them. Myrddraal.
“I think I’d remember if I ever met anyone like that,” Thom said after a minute.
Bartim’s head bobbed furiously. “Burn me, but you would. Light’s truth, you would. He . . . he wants the same lot as the crazy man, only he says as there’s a girl with them. And”—he glanced sideways at Thom— “and a white-haired gleeman.”