Rand shrugged. “I was going, but first the Amyrlin came, and then the Horn was stolen, and the dagger, and Moiraine said Mat was dying, and. . . . Light, I thought I could stay with you until we found the dagger, at least; I thought I could help with that. Maybe I was wrong.”
“You came because of the dagger?” Mat said quietly. He rubbed his nose and grimaced. “I never thought of that. I never thought you wanted to. . . . Aaaah! Are you feeling all right? I mean, you aren’t going mad already, are you?”
Rand dug a pebble out of the ground and threw it at him.
“Ouch!” Mat rubbed his arm. “I was just asking. I mean, all those fancy clothes, and all that talk about being a lord. Well, that isn’t exactly right in the head.”
“I was trying to get rid of you, fool! I was afraid I’d go mad and hurt you.” His eyes dropped to the banner, and his voice lowered. “I will, eventually, if I don’t stop it. Light, I don’t know how to stop it.”
“That is what I’m afraid of,” Mat said, standing. “No offense, Rand, but I think I will just sleep as far away from you as I can, if you don’t mind. That’s if you are staying. I heard about a fellow who could channel, once. A merchant’s guard told me. Before the Red Ajah found him, he woke one morning, and his whole village was smashed flat. All the houses, all the people, everything but the bed he was sleeping in, like a mountain had rolled over them.”
Perrin said, “In that case, Mat, you should sleep cheek by jowl with him.”
“I may be a fool, but I intend to be a live fool.” Mat hesitated, looking sideways at Rand. “Look, I know you came along to help me, and I am grateful. I really am. But you just are not the same anymore. You understand that, don’t you?” He waited as if he expected an answer. None came. Finally he vanished into the trees, back toward the camp.
“What about you?” Rand asked.
Perrin shook his head, shaggy curls swinging. “I don’t know, Rand. You are the same, but then again, you aren’t. A man channeling; my mother used to frighten me with that, when I was little. I just do not know.” He stretched out his hand and touched a corner of the banner. “I think I would burn this, or bury it, if I were you. Then I’d run so far, so fast, no Aes Sedai would ever find me. Mat was right about that.” He stood up, squinting at the western sky, beginning to turn red with the sinking sun. “Time to get back to the camp. You think on what I said, Rand. I’d run. But maybe you can’t run. Think of that, too.” His yellow eyes seemed to look inward, and he sounded tired. “Sometimes you can’t run.” Then he was gone, too.
Rand knelt there, staring at the banner spread out on the ground. “Well, sometimes you can run,” he muttered. “Only, maybe she gave me this to make me run. Maybe she has something waiting for me, if I run. I won’t do what she wants. I won’t. I’ll bury it right here. But she said my life may depend on it, and Aes Sedai never lie so you can see it. . . .” Suddenly his shoulders shook with silent laughter. “Now I’m talking to myself. Maybe I am going mad already.”
When he returned to the camp, he carried the banner wrapped in the canvas once more, tied with knots less neat than Moiraine’s had been.
The light had begun to fail and the shadow of the rim covered half the hollow. The soldiers were settling in, all with their horses by their sides, lances propped to hand. Mat and Perrin were bedding down alongside their horses. Rand gave them a sad look, then fetched Red, standing where he had been left with his reins dangling, and went to the other side of the hollow, where Hurin had joined Loial. The Ogier had given over reading and was examining the half-buried stone on which he had been sitting, tracing something on the stone with the long stem of his pipe.
Hurin stood and gave Rand something just short of a bow. “Hope you don’t mind me making my bed here, Lord—uh—Rand. I was just listening to the Builder here.”
“There you are, Rand,” Loial said. “You know, I think this stone was worked once. See, it’s weathered, but it looks as if it was a column of some kind. And there are markings, also. I can’t quite make them out, but they look familiar, somehow.”
“Maybe you’ll be able to see them better in the morning,” Rand said. He pulled the saddlebags from Red. “I’ll be glad of your company, Hurin.” I’m glad of anybody’s company who isn’t afraid of me. How much longer can I have it, though?
He shifted everything into one side of the saddlebags—spare shirts and breeches and woolen stockings, sewing kit, tinder box, tin plate and cup, a greenwood box with knife and fork and spoon, a packet of dried meat and flatbread for emergency rations, and all the other traveler’s necessaries—then stuffed the canvas-wrapped banner into the empty pocket. It bulged, the
straps barely reaching the buckles, but then, the other side bulged now, too. It would do.
Loial and Hurin seemed to sense his mood, leaving him in silence while he stripped saddle and bridle from Red, rubbed the big bay down with tufts of grass torn from the ground, then resaddled him. Rand refused their offer of food; he did not think he could have stomached the best meal he had ever seen just then. All three of them made their beds there beside the stone, a simple matter of a blanket folded for a pillow and cloak to cover.
The camp was silent now, but Rand lay awake past the fall of full dark. His mind darted back and forth. The banner. What is she trying to make me do? The village. What could kill a Fade like that? Worst of all, the house in the village. Did it really happen? Am I going mad already? Do I run, or do I stay? I have to stay. I have to help Mat find the dagger.
An exhausted sleep finally came, and with sleep, unbidden, the void surrounded him, flickering with an uneasy glow that disturbed his dreams.
Padan Fain stared northward out into the night, past the only fire in his camp, smiling a fixed smile that never touched his eyes. He still thought of himself as Padan Fain—Padan Fain was the core of him—but he had been changed, and he knew it. He knew many things, now, more than any of his old masters could suspect. He had been a Darkfriend long years before Ba’alzamon summoned him and set him on the track of the three young men from Emond’s Field, distilling what he knew of them, distilling him, and feeding the essence back so that he could feel them, smell where they had been, follow wherever they ran. Especially the one. A part of him still cringed, remembering what Ba’alzamon had done to him, but it was a small part, hidden, suppressed. He was changed. Following the three had led him into Shadar Logoth. He had not wanted to go, but he had had to obey. Then. And in Shadar Logoth. . . .
Fain drew a deep breath and fingered the ruby-hilted dagger at his belt. That had come from Shadar Logoth, too. It was the only weapon he carried, the only one he needed; it felt like a part of him. He was whole within himself, now. That was all that mattered.
He cast a glance to either side of his fire. The twelve Darkfriends who were left, their once-fine clothes now rumpled and dirty, huddled in the darkness to one side, staring not at the fire, but at him. On the other squatted his Trollocs, twenty in number, the all-too-human eyes in those animal-twisted men’s faces following his every move like mice watching a cat.
It had been a struggle at first, waking each morning to find himself not completely whole, to find the Myrddraal back in command, raging and demanding they go north, to the Blight, to Shayol Ghul. But bit by bit those mornings of weakness grew shorter, until. . . . He remembered the feel of the hammer in his hand, driving the spikes in, and he smiled; this time it did touch his eyes, with the joy of sweet memory.
Weeping from the dark caught his ear, and his smile faded. I should never have let the Trollocs take so many. An entire village to slow them down. If those few houses at the ferry had not been deserted, perhaps. . . . But Trollocs were greedy by nature, and in the euphoria of watching the Myrddraal die, he had not paid attention as he should.
He glanced at the Trollocs. Any one of them was nearly twice as tall as he, strong enough to break him to flinders with one hand, yet they edged back, still crouching. “Kill them. All. You may feed, but then make a pile of everything that remains—for our friends to find. Put the heads on top. Neatly, now.” He laughed, and cut it off short. “Go!”
The Trollocs scrambled away, drawing scythe-like swords and raising spiked axes. In moments shrieks and bellows rose from where the villagers were bound. Pleas for mercy and children’s screams were cut off by solid thuds and unpleasant squishing noises, like melons being broken.
Fain turned his back on the cacophony to look at his Darkfriends. They were his, too, body and soul. Such souls as they had left. Every one of them was mired as deeply as he had been, before he found his way out. Every one with nowhere to go except to follow him. Their eyes clung to fearful, pleading. “You think they will grow hungry again before we find another village or a farm? They may. You think I will be letting them have some more of you? Well, perhaps one or two. There aren’t any more horses to spare.”
“The others were only commoners,” one woman managed in an unsteady voice. Dirt streaked her face above a finely cut dress that marked her as a merchant, and wealthy. Smears stained the good gray cloth, and a long tear marred her skirt. “They were peasants. We have served—I have served—”