The peddler's face went gray. “I have heard. . .” He stopped to swallow. “I did not know, good sirs. You must believe, I would not do such a thing deliberately. Nor by accident,” he added hastily. “The Light illumine my words for truth, good sirs, I would not!”
“That is well,” Rhuarc told him. “The penalties are severe. You may travel with me to Cold Rocks. It would not do for you to become lost again. The Threefold Land can be a dangerous place for those who do not know it.”
Couladin's head came up defiantly. “Why not with me?” he said in a sharp voice. “The Shaido are the more numerous here, Rhuarc. By custom, he travels with me.”
“Have you become a clan chief when I did not see?” The firehaired Shaido flushed, but Rhuarc showed no hint of satisfaction, only went on in that level voice. “The peddler seeks Cold Rocks. He will journey with me. The Shaido with you may trade with him as we travel. The Taardad are not so starved for peddlers that we try to keep them to ourselves.”
Couladin's face went even darker, yet he moderated his tone, even if it did creak with the effort. “I will camp near Cold Rocks, Rhuarc. He Who Comes With the Dawn concerns all Aiel, not only the Taardad. The Shaido will have their proper place. The Shaido, too, will follow He Who Comes With the Dawn.” He had not, Mat realized, acknowledged that that was Rand. Peering at the wagons, Rand did not seem to be listening.
Rhuarc was silent a moment. “The Shaido will be welcome guests in the lands of the Taardad, if they come to follow He Who Comes With the Dawn.” And that could be taken two ways, as well.
Kadere had been mopping his face all this time, likely seeing himself in the middle of a battle between Aiel. He punctuated Rhuarc's invitation with a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank you, good sirs. Thank you.” Probably for not killing him. “Perhaps you would care to see what my wagons have to offer? Some special thing you might like?”
“Later,” Rhuarc said. “We will stop at Imre Stand for the night, and you may show your wares then.” Couladin was already striding away, having heard the name of Imre Stand, whatever that was. Kadere started to put his hat back on.“A hat,” Mat said, reining Pips closer to the peddler. If he had to remain in the Waste a bit longer, at least he could keep that bloody sun out of his eyes. “I'll give a gold mark for a hat like that.”
“Done!” called a woman's huskily melodious voice.
Mat looked around, and gave a start. The only woman in sight beside Aviendha and the Maidens was walking up from the second wagon, but she certainly did not match that voice, one of the loveliest he had ever heard. Rand frowned at her and shook his head, and he had cause. A foot shorter than Kadere, she must have weighed as much or more. Rolls of fat nearly hid her dark eyes, disguising whether they were tilted or not, but her nose was a hatchet that dwarfed the peddler's. In a dress of palecream silk stretched tight around her bulk, with a white lace shawl held above her bead on elaborate ivory combs thrust into long, coarse black hair, she moved with incongruous lightness, almost like one of the Maidens.
“A good offer,” she said in those musical tones. “I am Keille Shaogi, peddler.” She snatched the hat away from Kadere and thrust it up at Mat. “Stout, good sir, and nearly new. You will need its like to survive the Threefold Land. Here, a man can die... ” Fat fingers made a whipcrack. “. . . like so.” Her sudden laugh had the same throaty, caressing quality as her voice. “Or a woman. A gold mark, you said.” When he hesitated, her halfburied eyes glittered raven black. “I seldom offer any man a bargain twice.”
A peculiar woman to say the least. Kadere made no protest beyond the slightest grimace. If Keille was his partner, there was no doubt who was the senior. And if the hat kept Mat's head from broiling, it really was worth the price so far as he was concerned. She bit the Tairen mark he handed her before releasing the hat. For a wonder, it fit. And if it was no cooler under that wide brim, at least it was blessedly shady. The kerchief went into his coat pocket.
“Anything for the rest of you?” The stout woman ran her eye over the Aiel, murmuring, “What a pretty child” to Aviendha with a baring of teeth that might have been a smile. To Rand, she said sweetly, “And you, good sir?” That voice coming out of that face was truly jarring, especially when it took on this honeyed tone. “Something to shelter you from this desperate land?” Turning Jeade'en so he could peer at the wagon drivers, Rand only shook his head. With that shoufa around his face, be really did look like an Aiel.
“Tonight, Keille,” Kadere said. “We open trade tonight, at a place called Imre Stand.”
“Do we, now.” For a long moment she peered at the Shaido column, and at the Wise Ones' party for a longer. Abruptly she turned for her own wagon, saying over her shoulder to the other peddler, “Then why are you keeping these good sirs standing here? Move, Kadere. Move.”
Rand stared after her, shaking his head again.
There was a gleeman back by her wagon. Mat blinked, thinking the heat had gotten to him, but the fellow did not vanish, a darkhaired man in his middle years wearing a patchcovered cloak. He watched the gathering apprehensively until Keille shoved him up the wagon's step ahead of her. Kadere looked at her white wagon with less expression than one of the Aiel before stalking off to his own. Truly an odd lot.
“Did you see the gleeman?” Mat asked Rand, who nodded vaguely, eyeing the line of wagons as if he had never seen a wagon before. Rhuarc and Heirn were already on their way back to the rest of the Jindo. The hundred surrounding Rand waited patiently, dividing their gaze between him and anything that might hide even a mouse. The drivers began gathering their reins, but Rand did not move. “Strange people these peddlers, wouldn't you say, Rand? But I suppose you have to be strange to come to the Waste. Look at us.” That brought a grimace from Aviendha, but Rand seemed not to have heard. Mat wanted him to say something. Anything. This silence was unnerving. “Would you have thought escorting a peddler would be such an honor Rhuarc and Couladin would argue over it? Do you understand any of this ji'e'toh?”
“You are a fool,” Aviendha muttered. “'It had nothing to do with ji'e'toh. Couladin tries to behave as a clan chief. Rhuarc cannot allow that until — unless — he has gone to Rhuidean. The Shaido would steal bones from a dog — they would steal the bones and the dog — yet even they deserve a true chief. And because of Rand al'Thor we must allow a thousand of them to pitch their tents in our lands.”
“His eyes,” Rand said without looking away from the wagons. “A dangerous man.”
Mat frowned at him. “Whose eyes? Couladin's?”
“Kadere's eyes. All that sweating, going white in the face. Yet his eyes never changed. You always have to watch the eyes. Not what he seems.”
“Sure, Rand.” Mat shifted in his saddle, half lifted his reins as if to ride on. Maybe silence had not been so bad. “You have to watch the eyes.”
Rand changed his study to the tops of the nearest spires and buttes, twisting his head this way and that. “Time is the risk,” he murmured. “Time sets snares. I have to avoid theirs while setting mine.”
There was nothing up there that Mat could make out beyond an occasional scattering of brush and now and then a stunted tree. Aviendha frowned at the heights, then at Rand, adjusting her shawl. “Snares?” Mat said. Light, let him give me an answer that isn't crazy. “Who's setting snares?”
For a moment Rand looked at him as if he did not understand the question. The peddlers' wagons were starting off with an escort of Maidens loping alongside, turning to follow the Jindo as they trotted past, mirrored by the Shaido. More Maidens sped ahead to scout. Only the Aiel around Rand stood still, though the Wise Ones' party dawdled and watched, and from Egwene's gestures, Mat thought she wanted to come check on them.
“You can't see it, or feel it,” Rand said finally. Leaning a little toward Mat, he whispered loudly, as though pretending. “We ride with evil now, Mat. Watch yourself.” He wore that twisted grin again, as he watched the wagons lumber by.
“You think this Kadere is evil?”
“A dangerous man, Mat — the eyes always give it away — yet who can say? But what cause have I to worry, with Moiraine and the Wise Ones watching out for me? And we mustn't forget Lanfear. Has any man ever been under so many watchful eyes?”
Abruptly Rand straightened in his saddle. “It has begun,” be said quietly. “Wish that I have your luck, Mat. It has begun, and there is no turning back, now, however the blade falls.” Nodding to himself, he started his dapple after Rhuarc, Aviendha trotting alongside, the hundred Jindo following.
Mat was glad enough to follow too. Better than being left there, certainly. The sun burned high in a stark blue sky. There was a lot of traveling yet to be done before sunset. It had begun? What did he mean, it had begun? It had begun in Rhuidean; or better, in Emond's Field on Winternight a year gone. “Riding with evil” and “no turning back”? And Lanfear? Rand was walking the razor's edge, now. No doubt about it. There had to be a way out of the Waste before it was too late. From time to time Mat studied the peddlers' wagons. Before it was too late. If it was not already.
Chapter 37
(Horned Skull)
Imre Stand
The sun still stood more than its own height above the jagged western horizon when Rhuarc said that Imre Stand, where he intended to stay for the night, lay only a mile or so ahead.
“Why are we stopping already?” Rand asked. “There are hours more daylight left.”
It was Aviendha, walking along on the other side of Jeade'en from the clan chief, who answered, in the scornful tone he had come to expect. “There is water at Imre Stand. It is best to camp near water when the chance presents itself.”
“And the peddlers' wagons cannot go much farther,” Rhuarc added. “When the shadows lengthen, they must stop or begin breaking wheels and mules' legs. I do not want to leave them behind. I cannot spare anyone to watch over them, and Couladin can.” Rand twisted in his saddle. Flanked now by Jindo Duadhe Mahdi'in, Water Seekers, the wagons were making heavy going a few hundred paces off to the side, lurching along, raising a tall plume of yellow dust. Most gullies were too deep or too steepwalled, forcing the drivers to go around, so the train twisted like a drunken snake. Loud curses floated from the wavering line, most blaming the mules for it all. Kadere and Keille were still inside their whitepainted wagons.
“No,” Rand said, “you don't want to do that.” He laughed softly in spite of himself.
Mat was looking at him oddly from under the broad brim of his new hat. He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way, but Mat's expression did not change. He's going to have to take care of himself, Rand thought. T
