“Excuse me for a moment,” he told Melindhra hurriedly. Leaning his spear against the low wall around the fountain, he leaped up already running. His head still buzzed, but not so loudly as before, and he did not stagger. He had no worries about his winnings. The Aiel had very definite views of what was allowed: taking in a raid was one thing, theft another. Kadere's men had learned to keep their hands in their pockets after one of them had been caught stealing. After a beating that left him striped from shoulders to heels, he had been sent away. The one water bag he had been allowed would not have been nearly enough for him to reach the Dragonwall, even if he had had any clothes on. Now Kadere's men would not pick up a copper they found lying in the street.
“Rand?” The other man walked on with his encircling escort. “Rand?” Rand was not even ten paces away, but he did not waver. Some of the Maidens looked back, but not Rand. Mat felt cold suddenly, and it had nothing to do with the onset of night. He wet his lips and spoke again, not a shout. “Lews Therin.” And Rand turned around. Mat almost wished he had not.
For a time they only looked at one another in the twilight. Mat hesitated about going closer. He tried telling himself it was because of the Maidens. Adelin had been one of those who taught him a socalled game, Maidens' Kiss, that he was never likely to forget; or play again, if he had any say in it. And he could feel Enaila's gaze like an auger boring into his skull. Who would have expected a woman to go up like oil thrown on a fire just because you told her she was the prettiest little flower you had ever seen?
Rand, now. He and Rand had grown up together. They and Perrin, the blacksmith's apprentice back in Emond's Field, had hunted together, fished together, tramped through the Sand Hills to the edge of the Mountains of Mist, camped under the stars. Rand was his friend. Only now he was the kind of friend who might bash your head in without meaning to. Perrin could be dead, because of Rand.
He made himself walk to arm's reach of the other man. Rand was nearly a head taller, and in the earlyevening gloom he seemed taller yet. Colder than he had been. “I've been thinking, Rand.” Mat wished he did not sound hoarse. He hoped Rand would answer to his right name this time. “I've been away from home a long time.”
“We both have,” Rand said softly. “A long time.” Suddenly he gave a laugh, not loud, but almost like the old Rand. “Are you beginning to miss milking your father's cows?”
Mat scratched his ear, grinning a bit. “Not that, exactly.” If he never saw the inside of another barn it would be too soon. “But I was thinking that when Kadere's wagons go, I might go with them.”
Rand was silent. When he spoke again, the brief flash of mirth was gone. “All the way to Tar Valon?”
It was Mat's turn to hesitate. He wouldn't give me away to Moiraine. Would he? “Maybe,” he said casually. “I don't know. That's where Moiraine will want me. Maybe I'll find a chance to get back to the Two Rivers. See if everything's all right at home.” See if Perrin's alive. See if my sisters are, and Mother and Da.
“We all have to do what we must, Mat. Not what we want to, very often. What we must.”
It sounded like an excuse, to Mat, as if Rand was asking him to understand. Only, he had done what he had to himself a few times. I can't blame Perrin on him, not by himself. Nobody bloody forced me to follow after Rand like some bloody heelhound! Only that was not true, either. He had been forced. Just not by Rand. “You won't — stop me leaving?”
“I don't try to tell you to come or go, Mat,” Rand said wearily. “The Wheel weaves the Pattern, not me, and the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills.” For all the world like a bloody Aes Sedai! Half turning; to go, Rand added, “Don't trust Kadere, Mat. In some ways he's about as dangerous a man as you ever met. Don't trust him an inch, or you might get your throat slit, and you and I wouldn't be the only ones to regret that.” Then he was gone, down the street in the deepening dusk, with the Maidens around him like slinking wolves.
Mat stared after him. Trust the merchant? I wouldn't trust Kadere if he was tied in a sack. So Rand did not weave the Pattern? He came close! Before ever any of them learned that the Prophecies had anything to do with them, they had learned that Rand was ta'veren, one of those rare individuals who, instead of being woven willynilly into the Pattern, instead forced the Pattern to shape itself around them. Mat knew about being ta'veren; he was one himself, though not as strong as Rand. Sometimes Rand could affect people's lives, change the course of them, just by being in the same town. Perrin was ta'veren as well — or, maybe had been. Moiraine had thought it was significant, finding three young men who grew up in the same village, all destined to be ta'veren. She meant to fit them all into her plans, whatever they were.
It was supposed to be a grand thing; all the ta'veren Mat had been able to learn about had been men like Artur Hawkwing, or women like Mabriam en Shereed, who stories said had founded the Compact of the Ten Nations after the Breaking. But none of the stories told what happened when one ta'veren was close to another as strong as Rand. It was like being a leaf in a whirlpool.
Melindhra stopped beside him and handed him his spear and a heavy, coarsewoven sack that clinked. “I put your winnings in this for you.” She was taller than he was, by a good two inches. She glanced after Rand. “I had heard you were nearbrother to Rand al'Thor.”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said dryly.
“It does not matter,” she said dismissively, and concentrated her gaze on him, fists on her hips. “You attracted my interest, Mat Cauthon, before you gave me a regardgift. Not that I will give up the spear for you, of course, but I have had my eye on you for days. You have a smile like a boy about to do mischief. I like that. And those eyes.” In the failing light her grin was slow and wide. And warm. “I do like your eyes.”
Mat tugged his hat straight, though it had not been crooked. From pursuer to pursued, in the blink of an eye. It could happen like that, with Aiel women. Especially Maidens. “Does 'Daughter of the Nine Moons' mean anything to you?” It was a question he asked women sometimes. The wrong answer would send him out of Rhuidean tonight if he had to try walking out of the Waste.
“Nothing,” she said. “But there are things I like to do by moonlight.” Putting an arm around his shoulder, she took off his hat and began to whisper in his ear. In no time at all he was grinning
