“All these people, and any of them could be Darkfriends. Master Gill promised to help us awfully quick. What kind of man just shrugs off Aes Sedai and Darkfriends? It isn’t natural. Any decent person would tell us to get out, or . . . or . . . or something.”
“Eat,” Rand said gently, and watched until Mat began chewing a piece of beef.
He left his own hands resting beside his plate for a minute, pressing them against the table to keep them from shaking. He was scared. Not about Master Gill, of course, but there was enough without that. Those tall city walls would not stop a Fade. Maybe he should tell the innkeeper about that. But even if Gill believed, would he be as willing to help if he thought a Fade might show up at The Queen’s Blessing? And the rats. Maybe rats did thrive where there were a lot of people, but he remembered the dream that was not a dream in Baerlon, and a small spine snapping. Sometimes the Dark One uses carrion eaters as his eyes, Lan had said. Ravens, crows, rats. . . .
He ate, but when he was done he could not remember tasting a single bite.
A serving maid, the one who had been polishing candlesticks when they came in, showed them up to the attic room. A dormer window pierced the slanting outer wall, with a bed on either side of it and pegs beside the door for hanging their belongings. The dark-eyed girl had a tendency to twist her skirt and giggle whenever she looked at Rand. She was pretty, but he knew if he said anything to her he would just make a fool of himself. She made him wish he had Perrin’s way with girls; he was glad when she left.
He expected some comment from Mat, but as soon as she was gone, Mat threw himself on one of the beds, still in his cloak and boots, and turned his face to the wall.
Rand hung his things up, watching Mat’s back. He thought Mat had his hand under his coat, clutching that dagger again.
“You just going to lie up here hiding?” he said finally.
“I’m tired,” Mat mumbled.
“We have questions to ask Master Gill, yet. He might even be able to tell us how to find Egwene, and Perrin. They could be in Caemlyn already if they managed to hang onto their horses.”
“They’re dead,” Mat said to the wall.
Rand hesitated, then gave up. He closed the door softly behind him, hoping Mat really would sleep.
Downstairs, however, Master Gill was nowhere to be found, though the sharp look in the cook’s eye said she was looking for him, too. For a while Rand sat in the common room, but he found himself eyeing every patron who came in, every stranger who could be anyone—or anything—especially in the moment when he was first silhouetted as a cloaked black shape in the doorway. A Fade in the room would be like a fox in a chicken coop.
A Guardsman entered from the street. The red-uniformed man stopped just inside the door, running a cool eye over those in the room who were obviously from outside the city. Rand studied the tabletop when the Guardsman’s eyes fell on him; when he looked up again, the man was gone.
The dark-eyed maid was passing with her arms full of towels. “They do that sometimes,” she said in a confiding tone as she went by. “Just to see there’s no trouble. They look after good Queen’s folk, they do. Nothing for you to worry about.” She giggled.
Rand shook his head. Nothing for him to worry about. It was not as if the Guardsman would have come over and demanded to know if he knew Thom Merrilin. He was getting as bad as Mat. He scraped back his chair.
Another maid was checking the oil in the lamps along the wall.
“Is there another room where I could sit?” he asked her. He did not want to go back upstairs and shut himself up with Mat’s sullen withdrawal. “Maybe a private dining room that’s not being used?”
“There’s the library.” She pointed to a door. “Through there, to your right, at the end of the hall. Might be empty, this hour.”
“Thank you. If you see Master Gill, would you tell him Rand al’Thor needs to talk to him if he can spare a minute?”
“I’ll tell him,” she said, then grinned. “Cook wants to talk to him, too.”
The innkeeper was probably hiding, he thought as he turned away from her.
When he stepped into the room to which she had directed him, he stopped and stared. The shelves must have held three or four hundred books, more than he had ever seen in one place before. Clothbound, leatherbound with gilded spines. Only a few had wooden covers. His eyes gobbled up the titles, picking out old favorites. The Travels of Jain Farstrider. The Essays of Willim of Maneches. His breath caught at the sight of a leatherbound copy of Voyages Among the Sea Folk. Tam had always wanted to read that.
Picturing Tam, turning the book over in his hands with a smile, getting the feel of it before settling down before the fireplace with his pipe to read, his own hand tightened on his sword hilt with a sense of loss and emptiness that dampened all his pleasure in the books.
A throat cleared behind him, and he suddenly realized he was not alone. Ready to apologize for his rudeness, he turned. He was used to being taller than almost everyone he met, but this time his eyes traveled up and up and up, and his mouth fell open. Then he came to
the head almost reaching the ten-foot ceiling. A nose as broad as the face, so wide it was more a snout than a nose. Eyebrows that hung down like tails, framing pale eyes as big as teacups. Ears that poked up to tufted points through a shaggy, black mane. Trolloc! He let out a yell and tried to back up and draw his sword. His feet got tangled, and he sat down hard, instead.
“I wish you humans wouldn’t do that,” rumbled a voice as deep as a drum. The tufted ears twitched violently, and the voice became sad. “So few of you remember us. It’s our own fault, I suppose. Not many of us have gone out among men since the Shadow fell on the Ways. That’s . . . oh, six generations, now. Right after the War of the Hundred Years, it was.” The shaggy head shook and let out a sigh that would have done credit to a bull. “Too long, too long, and so few to travel and see, it might as well have been none.”
Rand sat there for a minute with his mouth hanging open, staring up at the apparition in wide-toed, knee-high boots and a dark blue coat that buttoned from the neck to the waist, then flared out to his boot tops like a kilt over baggy trousers. In one hand was a book, seeming tiny by comparison, with a finger broad enough for three marking the place.
“I thought you were—” he began, then caught himself. “What are—?” That was not any better. Getting to his feet, he gingerly offered his hand. “My name is Rand al’Thor.”
A hand as big as a ham engulfed his; it was accompanied by a formal bow. “Loial, son of Arent son of Halan. Your name sings in my ears, Rand al’Thor.”