The Great Hunt Read online

  Hurin stood holding his horse by the reins. He had on one of the long vests instead of his coat, and despite the heavy cloak that hid his short sword and sword-breaker, he shivered with the cold. “Lord Ingtar’s back there,” he said, nodding down the narrow passage. “He says we’ll leave the horses here and go the rest of the way on foot.” As Rand dismounted, the sniffer added, “Fain went right down that street, Lord Rand. I can almost smell it from here.”

  Rand led Red down the way to where Ingtar had already tied his own horse behind the stable. The Shienaran did not look very much a lord in a dirty fleece coat with holes worn through the leather in several places, and his sword looked odd belted over it. His eyes had a feverish intensity.

  Tying Red alongside Ingtar’s stallion, Rand hesitated over his saddlebags. He had not been able to leave the banner behind. He did not think any of the soldiers would have gone into the bags, but he could not say the same for Verin, nor predict what she would do if she found the banner. Still, it made him uneasy to have it with him. He decided to leave the saddlebags tied behind his saddle.

  Mat joined them, and a few moments later Hurin came with Perrin. Mat wore baggy trousers stuffed into the tops of his boots, and Perrin his too-short cloak. Rand thought they all looked like villainous beggars, but they had all passed largely unnoticed in the villages.

  “Now,” Ingtar said. “Let us see what we see.”

  They strolled out to the dirt street as if they had no particular destination in mind, talking among themselves, and ambled past the wagon yards onto sloping cobblestone streets. Rand was not sure what he himself said, much less anyone else. Ingtar’s plan had been for them to look like any other group of men walking together, but there were all too few people out-of-doors. Five men made a crowd on those cold morning streets.

  They walked in a bunch, but it was Hurin who led them, sniffing the air and turning up this street and down that. The rest turned when he did, as if that was what they had intended all along. “He’s crisscrossed this town,” Hurin muttered, grimacing. “His smell is everywhere, and it stinks so, it’s hard to tell old from new. At least I know he’s still here. Some of it cannot be older than a day or two, I’m sure. I am sure,” he added less doubtfully.

  A few more people began to appear, here a fruit peddler setting his wares on tables, there a fellow hurrying along with a big roll of parchments under his arm and a sketch-board slung across his back, a knife-sharpener oiling the shaft of his grinding wheel on its barrow. Two women walked by, headed the other way, one with downcast eyes and a silver collar around her neck, the other, in a dress worked with lightning bolts, holding a coiled silver leash.

  Rand’s breath caught; it was an effort not to look back at them.

  “Was that . . . ?” Mat’s eyes were open wide, staring out of the hollows of his eye sockets. “Was that a damane?”

  “That is the way they were described,” Ingtar said curtly. “Hurin, are we going to walk every street in this Shadow-cursed town?”

  “He’s been everywhere, Lord Ingtar,” Hurin said. “His stench is everywhere.” They had come into an area where the stone houses were three and four stories high, as big as inns.

  They rounded a corner, and Rand was taken aback by the sight of a score of Seanchan soldiers standing guard in front of a big house on one side of the street—and by the sight of two women in lightning-marked dresses talking on the doorsteps of another across from it. A banner flapped in the wind over the house the soldiers protected; a golden hawk clutching lightning bolts. Nothing marked out the house where the women talked except themselves. The officer’s armor was resplendent in red and black and gold, his helmet gilded and painted to look like a spider’s head. Then Rand saw the two big, leathery-skinned shapes crouched among the soldiers and missed a step.

  Grolm. There was no mistaking those wedge-shaped heads with their three eyes. They can’t be. Perhaps he was really asleep, and this was all a nightmare. Maybe we haven’t even left for Falme, yet.

  The others stared at the beasts as they walked past the guarded house.

  “What in the name of the Light are they?” Mat asked.

  Hurin’s eyes seemed as big as his face. “Lord Rand, they’re. . . . Those are. . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rand said. After a moment, Hurin nodded.

  “We are here for the Horn,” Ingtar said, “not to stare at Seanchan monsters. Concentrate on finding Fain, Hurin.”

  The soldiers barely glanced at them. The street ran straight down to the round harbor. Rand could see ships anchored down there; tall, square-looking ships with high masts, small in that distance.

  “He’s been here a lot.” Hurin scrubbed at his nose with the back of his hand. “The street stinks of layer on layer on layer of him. I think he might have been here as late as yesterday, Lord Ingtar. Maybe last night.”

  Mat suddenly clutched his coat with both hands. “It’s in there,” he whispered. He turned around and walked backwards, peering at the tall house with the banner. “The dagger is in there. I didn’t even notice it before, because of those—those things, but I can feel it.”

  Perrin poked a finger in his ribs. “Well, stop that before they start wondering why you’re goggling at them like a fool.”

  Rand glanced over his shoulder. The officer was looking after them.

  Mat turned back around sullenly. “Are we just going to keep on walking? It’s in there, I tell you.”

  “The Horn is what we are after,” Ingtar growled. “I mean to find Fain and make him tell me where it is.” He did not slow down.

  Mat said nothing, but his entire face was a plea.

  I have to find Fain, too, Rand thought. I have to. But when he looked at Mat’s face, he said, “Ingtar, if the dagger is in that house, Fain likely is, too. I can’t see him letting the dagger or the Horn, either one, far out of his sight.”

  Ingtar stopped. After a moment, he said, “It could be, but we will never know from out here.”

  “We could watch for him to come out,” Rand said. “If he comes out at this time of the morning, then he spent the night there. And I’ll wager where he sleeps is where the Horn is. If he does come out, we can be back to Verin by midday and have a plan made before nightfall.”

  “I do not mean to wait for Verin,” Ingtar said, “and neither will I wait for night. I’ve waited too long already. I mean to have the Horn in my hands before the sun sets again.”

  “But we don’t know, Ingtar.”

  “I know the dagger is in there,” Mat said.

  “And Hurin says Fain was here last night.” Ingtar overrode Hurin’s attempts to qualify that. “It is the first time you have been willing to say anything closer than a day or two. We are going to take back the Horn now. Now!”

  “How?” Rand said. The officer was no longer watching them, but there were still at least twenty soldiers in front of the building. And a pair of grolm. This is madness. There can’t be grolm here. Thinking it did not make the beasts disappear, though.

  “There seem to be gardens behind all these houses,” Ingtar said, looking around thoughtfully. “If one of those alleys runs by a garden wall. . . . Sometimes men are so busy guarding their front, they neglect their back. Come.” He headed straight for the nearest narrow passage between two of the tall houses. Hurin and Mat trotted right after him.

  Rand exchanged looks with Perrin—his curly-haired friend gave a resigned shrug—and they followed, too.

  The alley was barely wider than their shoulders, but it ran between high garden walls until it crossed another alley big enough for a pushbarrow or small cart. That was cobblestoned, too, but only the backs of buildings looked down on it, shuttered windows and expanses of stone, and the high back walls of gardens overtopped by nearly leafless branches.

  Ingtar led them along that alley until they were opposite the waving banner. Taking his steel-backed gauntlets from under his coat, he put them on and leaped up to catch the top of the wall, then pulled himsel
f up enough to peek over. He reported in a low monotone. “Trees. Flower beds. Walks. There isn’t a soul to be—Wait! A guard. One man. He isn’t even wearing his helmet. Count to fifty, then follow me.” He swung a boot to the top of the wall and rolled over inside, disappearing before Rand could say a word.

  Mat began to count slowly. Rand held his breath. Perrin fingered his axe, and Hurin gripped the hilts of his weapons.

  “. . . fifty.” Hurin scrambled up and over the wall before the word was well out of Mat’s mouth. Perrin went right beside him.

  Rand thought Mat might need some help—he looked so pale and drawn—but he gave no sign of it as he scrambled up. The stone wall provided plenty of handholds, and moments later Rand was crouched on the inside with Mat and Perrin and Hurin.

  The garden was in the grip of deep autumn, flower beds empty except for a few evergreen shrubs, tree branches nearly bare. The wind that rippled the banner stirred dust across the flagstone walks. For a moment Rand could not find Ingtar. Then he saw the Shienaran, flat against the back wall of the house, motioning them on with sword in hand.

  Rand ran in a crouch, more conscious of the windows blankly peering down from the house than of his friends running beside him. It was a relief to press himself against the house beside Ingtar.

  Mat kept muttering to himself, “It’s in there. I can feel it.”

  “Where is the guard?” Rand whispered.

  “Dead,” Ingtar said. “The man was overconfident. He never even tried to raise a cry. I hid his body under one of those bushes.”

  Rand stared at him. The Seanchan was overconfident? The only thing that kept him from going back right then was Mat’s anguished murmurs.

  “We are almost there.” Ingtar sounded as if he were speaking to himself, too. “Almost there. Come.”

  Rand drew his sword as they started up the back steps. He was aware of Hurin unlimbering his short-bladed sword and notched sword-breaker, and Perrin reluctantly drawing his axe from the loop on his belt.

  The hallway inside was narrow. A half-open door to their right smelled like a kitchen. Several people were moving about in that room; there was an indistinguishable sound of voices, and occasionally the soft clatter of a pot lid.

  Ingtar motioned Mat to lead, and they crept by the door. Rand watched the narrowing opening until they were around the next corner.

  A slender young woman with dark hair came out of a door ahead of them, carrying a tray with one cup. They all froze. She turned the other way without looking in their direction. Rand’s eyes widened. Her long white robe was all but transparent. She vanished around another corner.

  “Did you see that?” Mat said hoarsely. “You could see right through—”

  Ingtar clapped a hand over Mat’s mouth and whispered, “Keep your mind on why we are here. Now find it. Find the Horn for me.”

  Mat pointed to a narrow set of winding stairs. They climbed a flight, and he led them toward the front of the house. The furnishings in the hallways were sparse, and seemed all curves. Here and there a tapestry hung on a wall, or a folding screen stood against it, each painted with a few birds on branches, or a flower or two. A river flowed across one screen, but aside from rippling water and narrow strips of riverbank, the rest of it was blank.

  All around them Rand could hear the sounds of people stirring, slippers scuffing on the floor, soft murmurs of speech. He did not see anyone, but he could imagine it all too well, someone stepping into the hall to see five slinking men with weapons in their hands, shouting an alarm. . . .

  “In there,” Mat whispered, pointing to a big pair of sliding doors ahead, carved handholds their only ornamentation. “At least, the dagger is.”

  Ingtar looked at Hurin; the sniffer slid the doors open, and Ingtar leaped through with his sword ready. There was no one there. Rand and the others hurried inside, and Hurin quickly closed the doors behind them.

  Painted screens hid all the walls and any other doors, and veiled the light coming through windows that had to overlook the street. At one end of the big room stood a tall, circular cabinet. At the other was a small table, the lone chair on the carpet turned to face it. Rand heard Ingtar gasp, but he only felt like heaving a sigh of relief. The curling golden Horn of Valere sat on a stand on the table. Below it, the ruby in the hilt of the ornate dagger caught the light.

  Mat darted to the table, snatching Horn and dagger. “We have it,” he crowed, shaking the dagger in his fist. “We have both of them.”

  “Not so loud,” Perrin said with a wince. “We don’t have them out of here, yet.” His hands were busy on the haft of his axe; they seemed to want to be holding something else.

  “The Horn of Valere.” There was sheer awe in Ingtar’s voice. He touched the Horn hesitantly, tracing a finger along the silver script inlaid around the bell and mouthing the translation, then pulled his hand back with a shiver of excitement. “It is. By the Light, it is! I am saved.”

  Hurin was moving the screens that hid the windows. He shoved the last out of his way and peered into the street below. “Those soldiers are all still there, looking like they’ve took root.” He shuddered. “Those . . . things, too.”

  Rand went to join him. The two beasts were grolm; there was no denying it. “How did they. . . .” As he lifted his eyes from the street, words died. He was looking over a wall into the garden of the big house across the street. He could see where further walls had been torn down, joining other gardens to it. Women sat on benches there, or strolled along the walks, always in pairs. Women linked, neck to wrist, by silver leashes. One of the women with a collar around her neck looked up. He was too far to make out her face clearly, but for an instant it seemed that their eyes met, and he knew. The blood drained from his face. “Egwene,” he breathed.

  “What are you talking about?” Mat said. “Egwene is safe in Tar Valon. I wish I were.”

  “She’s here,” Rand said. The two women were turning, walking toward one of the buildings on the far side of the joined gardens. “She is there, right across the street. Oh, Light, she’s wearing one of those collars!”

  “Are you sure?” Perrin said. He came to peer from the window. “I don’t see her, Rand. And—and I could recognize her if I did, even at this distance.”

  “I am sure,” Rand said. The two women disappeared into one of the houses that faced the next street over. His stomach was twisted into a knot. She is supposed to be safe. She’s supposed to be in the White Tower. “I have to get her out. The rest of you—”

  “So!” The slurring voice was as soft as the sound of the doors sliding in their tracks. “You are not who I expected.”

  For a brief moment, Rand stared. The tall man with the shaven head who had stepped into the room wore a long, trailing blue robe, and his fingernails were so long that Rand wondered if he could handle anything. The two men standing obsequiously behind him had only half their dark hair shaved, the rest hanging in a dark braid down each man’s right cheek. One of them cradled a sheathed sword in his arms.

  It was only a moment he had for staring, then screens toppled to reveal, at either end of the room, a doorway crowded with four or five Seanchan soldiers, bareheaded but armored, and swords in hand.

  “You are in the presence of the High Lord Turak,” the man who carried the sword began, staring at Rand and the others angrily, but a brief motion of a finger with a blue-lacquered nail cut him short. The other servant stepped forward with a bow and began undoing Turak’s robe.

  “When one of my guards was found dead,” the shaven-headed man said calmly, “I suspected the man who calls himself Fain. I have been suspicious of him since Huan died so mysteriously, and he has always wanted that dagger.” He held out his arms for the servant to remove his robe. Despite his soft, almost-singing voice, hard muscles roped his arms and smooth chest, which was bare to a blue sash holding wide, white trousers that seemed made of hundreds of pleats. He sounded uninterested, and indifferent to the blades in their hands. “And now to find str
angers with not only the dagger, but the Horn. It will please me to kill one or two of you for disturbing my morning. Those who survive will tell me of who you are and why you came.” He stretched out a hand without looking—the man with the scabbarded sword laid the hilt in the hand—and drew the heavy, curved blade. “I would not have the Horn damaged.”

  Turak gave no other signal, but one of the soldiers stalked into the room and reached for the Horn. Rand did not know whether he should laugh, or not. The man wore armor, but his arrogant face seemed as oblivious to their weapons as Turak was.

  Mat put an end to it. As the Seanchan reached out his hand, Mat slashed it with the ruby-hilted dagger. With a curse, the soldier leaped back, looking surprised. And then he screamed. It chilled the room, held everyone where they stood in astonishment. The trembling hand he held up in front of his face was turning black, darkness creeping outwards from the bleeding gash that crossed his palm. He opened his mouth wide and howled, clawing at his arm, then his shoulder. Kicking, jerking, he toppled to the floor, thrashing on the silken carpet, shrieking as his face grew black and his dark eyes bulged like overripe plums, until a dark, swollen tongue gagged him. He twitched, choking raggedly, heels drumming, and did not move again. Every bit of his exposed flesh was black as putrid pitch and looked ready to burst at a touch.

  Mat licked his lips and swallowed; his grip shifted uneasily on the dagger. Even Turak stared, openmouthed.

  “You see,” Ingtar said softly, “we are no easy meat.” Suddenly he leaped over the corpse, toward the soldiers still goggling at what was left of the man who had stood at their shoulders only moments before. “Shinowa!” he cried. “Follow me!” Hurin leaped after him, and the soldiers fell back before them, the sounds of steel on steel rising.

  The Seanchan at the other end of the room started forward as Ingtar moved, but then they were falling back, too, before Mat’s thrusting dagger even more than from the axe Perrin swung with wordless snarls.

  In the space of heartbeats, Rand stood alone, facing Turak, who held his blade upright before him. His moment of shock was gone. His eyes were sharp on Rand’s face; the black and swollen body of one of his soldiers might as well not have existed. It did not seem to exist for the two servants, either, any more than Rand and his sword existed, or the sounds of fighting, fading now from the rooms to either side out into the house. The servants had begun calmly folding Turak’s robe as soon as the High Lord took his sword, and had not looked up even for the dead soldier’s shrieks; now they knelt beside the door and watched with impassive eyes.