Rand hesitated, then asked, “What about Elaida?”

The innkeeper hesitated, too, and finally shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe if you didn’t have a connection to Thom. She’d winkle it out, and then where would you be? No telling. Maybe in a cell. Maybe worse. They say she has a way of feeling things, what’s happened, what’s going to happen. They say she can cut right through to what a man wants to hide. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t risk it. If it wasn’t for Thom, you could go to the Guards. They’d take care of any Darkfriends quick enough. But even if you could keep Thom quiet from the Guards, word would reach Elaida as soon as you mentioned Darkfriends, and then you’re back where we started.”

“No Guards,” Rand agreed. Mat nodded vigorously while stuffing a fork into his mouth and got gravy on his chin.

“Trouble is, you’re caught up in the fringes of politics, lad, even if it’s none of your doing, and politics is a foggy mire full of snakes.”

“What about—” Rand began, but the innkeeper grimaced suddenly, his chair creaking under his bulk as he sat up straight.

The cook was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, wiping her hands with her apron. When she saw the innkeeper looking she motioned for him to come, then vanished back into the kitchen.

“Might as well be married to her.” Master Gill sighed. “Finds things that need fixing before I know there’s anything wrong. If it’s not the drains stopped up, or the downspouts clogged, it’s rats. I keep a clean place, you understand, but with so many people in the city, rats are everywhere. Crowd people together and you get rats, and Caemlyn has a plague of them all of a sudden. You wouldn’t believe what a good cat, a prime ratter, fetches these days. Your room is in the attic. I’ll tell the girls which; any of them can show you to it. And don’t worry about Darkfriends. I can’t say much good about the Whitecloaks, but between them and the Guards, that sort won’t dare show their filthy faces in Caemlyn.” His chair squeaked again as he pushed it back and stood. “I hope it isn’t the drains again.”

Rand went back to his food, but he saw that Mat had stopped eating. “I thought you were hungry,” he said. Mat kept staring at his plate, pushing one piece of potato in a circle with his fork. “You have to eat, Mat. We need to keep up our strength if we’re going to reach Tar Valon.”

Mat let out a low, bitter laugh. “Tar Valon! All this time it’s been Caemlyn. Moiraine would be waiting for us in Caemlyn. We’d find Perrin and Egwene in Caemlyn. Everything would be all right if we only got to Caemlyn. Well, here we are, and nothing’s right. No Moiraine, no Perrin, no anybody. Now it’s everything will be all right if we only get to Tar Valon.”

“We’re alive,” Rand said, more sharply than he had intended. He took a deep breath and tried to moderate his tone. “We are alive. That much is all right. And I intend to stay alive. I intend to find out why we’re so important. I won’t give up.”

“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.”

That sounded like a ritual greeting to Rand. He returned the bow. “Your name sings in my ears, Loial, son of Arent . . . ah . . . son of Halan.”

It was all a little unreal. He still did not know what Loial was. The grip of Loial’s huge fingers was surprisingly gentle, but he was still relieved to get his hand back in one piece.

“You humans are very excitable,” Loial said in that bass rumble. “I had heard all the stories, and read the books, of course, but I didn’t realize. My first day in Caemlyn, I could not believe the uproar. Children cried, and women screamed, and a mob chased me all the way across the city, waving clubs and knives and torches, and shouting, ‘Trolloc!’ I’m afraid I was almost beginning to get a little upset. There’s no telling what would have happened if a party of the Queen’s Guards hadn’t come along.”

“A lucky thing,” Rand said faintly.

“Yes, but even the Guardsmen seemed almost as afraid of me as the others. Four days in Caemlyn now, and I haven’t been able to put my nose outside this inn. Good Master Gill even asked me not to use the common room.” His ears twitched. “Not that he hasn’t been very hospitable, you understand. But there was a bit of trouble that first night. All the humans seemed to want to leave at once. Such screaming and shouting, everyone trying to get through the door at the same time. Some of them could have been hurt.”

Rand stared in fascination at those twitching ears.

“I’ll tell you, it was not for this I left the stedding.”

“You’re an Ogier!” Rand exclaimed. “Wait! Six generations? You said the War of the Hundred Years! How old are you?” He knew it was rude as soon as he said it, but Loial became defensive rather than offended.

“Ninety years,” the Ogier said stiffly. “In only ten more I’ll be able to address the Stump. I think the Elders should have let me speak, since they were deciding whether I could leave or not. But then they always worry about anyone of any age going Outside. You humans are so hasty, so erratic.” He blinked and gave a short bow. “Please forgive me. I shouldn’t have said that. But you do fight all the time, even when there’s no need to.”

“That’s all right,” Rand said. He was still trying to take in Loial’s age. Older than old Cenn Buie, and still not old enough to. . . . He sat down in one of the high-backed chairs. Loial took another, made to hold two; he filled it. Sitting, he was as tall as most men standing. “At least they did let you go.”

Loial looked at the floor, wrinkling his nose and rubbing at it with one thick finger. “Well, as to that, now. You see, the Stump had not been meeting very long, not even a year, but I could tell from what I heard that by the time they reached a decision I would be old enough to go without their permission. I am afraid they’ll say I put a long handle on my axe, but I just . . . left. The Elders always said I was too hotheaded, and I fear I’ve proven them right. I wonder if they have realized I’m gone, yet? But I had to go.”

Rand bit his lip to keep from laughing. If Loial was a hotheaded Ogier, he could imagine what most Ogier were like. Had not been meeting very long, not even a year? Master al’Vere would just shake his head in wonder; a Village Council meeting that lasted half a day would have everybody jumping up and down, even Haral Luhhan. A wave of homesickness swept over him, making it hard to breathe for memories of Tam, and Egwene, and the Winespring Inn, and Bel Tine on the Green in happier days. He forced them away.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, clearing his throat, “why did you want to go . . . ah, Outside, so much? I wish I’d never left my home, myself.”

“Why, to see,” Loial said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I read the books, all the travelers’ accounts, and it began to burn in me that I had to see, not just read.” His pale eyes brightened, and his ears stiffened. “I studied every scrap I could find about traveling, about the Ways, and customs in human lands, and the cities we built for you humans after the Breaking of the World. And the more I read, the more I knew that I had to go Outside, go to those places we had been, and see the groves for myself.”

Rand blinked. “Groves?”

“Yes, the groves. The trees. Only a few of the Great Trees, of course, towering to the sky to keep memories of the stedding fresh.” His chair groaned as he shifted forward, gesturing with his hands, one of which still held the book. His eyes were brighter than ever, and his ears almost quivered. “Mostly they used the trees of the land and the place. You cannot make the land go against itself. Not for long; the land will rebel. You must shape the vision to the land, not the land to the vision. In every grove was planted every tree that would grow and thrive in that place, each balanced against the next, each placed to complement the others, for the best growing, of course, but also so that the balance would sing in the eye and the heart. Ah, the books spoke of groves to make Elders weep and laugh at the same time, groves to remain green in memory forever.”

“What about the cities?” Rand asked. Loial gave him a puzzled look. “The cities. The cities the Ogier built. Here, for instance. Caemlyn. Ogier built Caemlyn, didn’t you? The stories say so.”

“Working with stone. . . .” His shoulders gave a massive shrug. “That was just something learned in the years after the Breaking, during the Exile, when we were still trying to find the stedding again. It is a fine thing, I suppose, but not the true thing. Try as you will—and I have read that the Ogier who built those cities truly did try—you cannot make stone live. A few still do work with stone, but only because you humans damage the buildings so often with your wars. There were a handful of Ogier in . . . ah . . . Cairhien, it’s called now . . . when I passed through. They were from another stedding, luckily, so they didn’t know about me, but they were still suspicious that I was Outside alone so young. I suppose it’s just as well there was no reason for me to linger there. In any case, you see, working with stone is just something that was thrust on us by the weaving of the Pattern; the groves came from the heart.”

Rand shook his head. Half the stories he had grown up with had just been stood on their heads. “I didn’t know Ogier believed in the Pattern, Loial.”

“Of course, we believe. The Wheel of Time weaves the Pattern of the Ages, and lives are the threads it weaves. No one can tell how the thread of his own life will be woven into the Pattern, or how the thread of a people will be woven. It gave us the Breaking of the World, and the Exile, and Stone, and the Longing, and eventually it gave us back the stedding before we all died. Sometimes I think the

reason you humans are the way you are is because your threads are so short. They must jump around in the weaving. Oh, there, I’ve done it again. The Elders say you humans don’t like to be reminded of how short a time you live. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings.”

Rand laughed and shook his head. “Not at all. I suppose it’d be fun to live as long as you do, but I never really thought about it. I guess if I live as long as old Cenn Buie, that’ll be long enough for anybody.”

“He is a very old man?”

Rand just nodded. He was not about to explain that old Cenn Buie was not quite as old as Loial.

“Well,” Loial said, “perhaps you humans do have short lives, but you do so much with them, always jumping around, always so hasty. And you have the whole world to do it in. We Ogier are bound to our stedding.”

“You’re Outside.”

“For a time, Rand. But I must go back, eventually. This world is yours, yours and your kind’s. The stedding are mine. There’s too much hurly-burly Outside. And so much is changed from what I read about.”

“Well, things do change over the years. Some, anyway.”

“Some? Half the cities I read about aren’t even there any longer, and most of the rest are known by different names. You take Cairhien. The city’s proper name is Al’cair’rahienallen, Hill of the Golden Dawn. They don’t even remember, for all of the sunrise on their banners. And the grove there. I doubt if it has been tended since the Trolloc Wars. It’s just another forest, now, where they cut firewood. The Great Trees are all gone, and no one remembers them. And here? Caemlyn is still Caemlyn, but they let the city grow right over the grove. We’re not a quarter of a mile from the center of it right where we sit—from where the center of it should be. Not a tree of it left. I’ve been to Tear and Illian, too. Different names, and no memories. There’s only pasture for their horses where the grove was at Tear, and at Illian the grove is the King’s park, where he hunts his deer, and none allowed inside without his permission. It has all changed, Rand. I fear very much that I will find the same everywhere I go. All the groves gone, all the memories gone, all the dreams dead.”