He would have enjoyed Mat's company any time during those eleven days and nights, but Mat never came near for more than a minute or two, the broad brim of his flatcrowned hat pulled down to shade his eyes, the blackhafted spear lying across the pommel of Pips's saddle, with its odd ravenmarked, Powerwrought point, like a short, curving sword blade.
“If your face darkens from the sun any more, you will turn into an Aielman,” he might say, laughing or, “Do you mean to spend the rest of your life here? There's a whole world the other side of the Dragonwall. Wine? Women? You remember these things?”
But Mat looked plainly uneasy, and he was even more reluctant than the Wise Ones to speak of Rhuidean, or what had happened to them there. His hand tightened on that black haft at the very mention of the fogdomed city, and he claimed not to remember anything of his journey through the ter'angreal — then proceeded to contradict himself by saying, “You stay out of that thing, Rand. It isn't like the one in the Stone at all. They cheat. Burn me, I wish I'd never seen it!”
The one time Rand mentioned the Old Tongue, he snapped, “Burn you, I don't know anything about the bloody Old Tongue!” and galloped straight back to the peddlers' wagons.
That was where Mat spent most of his time, dicing with the drivers — until they realized he won a very great deal more often than he lost, no matter whose dice he used — engaging Kadere or Natael in long talks at every opportunity, pursuing Isendre. It was clear what was on his mind from the first time he grinned at her and straightened his hat, the morning after the Trolloc attack. He spoke to her nearly every evening for as long as he could, and pricked himself so badly plucking white blossoms from a spikythorned bush that he could barely handle his reins for two days, though he refused to allow Moiraine to Heal him. Isendre did not precisely encourage him, but her slow, sultry smile was hardly calculated to drive him away, either. Kadere saw — and said not a word, though sometimes his eyes followed Mat like a vulture's. Others did comment.
Late one afternoon as the mules were being unhitched and the tents going up, and Rand was unsaddling Jeade'en, Mat was standing with Isendre in the meager shade of one of the canvastopped wagons. Standing very close. Shaking his head, Rand watched as he wiped the dapple down. The sun burned low on the horizon, and tall spires stretched long shadows across the camp.
Isendre fiddled with her diaphanous scarf as if idly thinking of removing it, smiling, full lips half pouting, ready for a kiss. Encouraged, Mat grinned confidently and moved closer still. She dropped her hand, and slowly shook her head, but that inviting smile never faded. Neither of them heard Keille approach, so light on her feet despite her size.
“Is that what you want, good sir? Her?” The pair jumped apart at the sound of her mellifluous voice, and she laughed just as musically, just as oddly out of that face. “A bargain for you, Matrim Cauthon. A Tar Valon mark, and she is yours. A chit like that cannot be worth more than two, so it is a clear bargain.”
Mat grimaced, looking as though he wished he were anywhere else but there.
Isendre, however, turned slowly to face Keille, a mountain cat facing a bear. “You go too far, old woman,” she said softly, eyes hard above the veiling scarf. “I will put up with your tongue no longer. Have a care. Or perhaps you would like to remain here in the Waste.”
Keille smiled broadly, yet mirth never touched the obsidian eyes glittering behind her fat cheeks. “Would you?”
Nodding decisively, Isendre said, “A Tar Valon mark.” Her voice was iron. “I will see you have a Tar Valon mark when we leave you. I only wish I could see you trying to drink it.” Turning her back, she strode to the lead wagon, not swaying seductively at all, and vanished inside.
Keille watched, round face unreadable, until the white door closed, then suddenly rounded on Mat, who was on the point of slipping away. “Few men have ever refused an offer from me once, much less twice. You should have a care I do not take it in mind to do something about it.” Laughing, she reached up and pinched his cheek with thick fingers, hard enough to make him wince, then turned in Rand's direction. “Tell him, my Lord Dragon. I have a feeling you know something of the dangers of scorning a woman. That Aiel girl who follows you about, glaring. I hear you belong to another. Perhaps she feels scorned.”
“I doubt it, Mistress,” he said dryly. “Aviendha would plant a knife in my ribs if she believed I had thought of her that way.”
The immense woman laughed uproariously. Mat flinched as she reached for him again, but all she did was pat the cheek she had pinched before. “You see, good sir? Scorn a woman's offer, and perhaps she thinks nothing of it, but perhaps” — she made a skewering motion —“the knife. A lesson any man can learn. Eh, my Lord Dragon?” Wheezing with laughter, she hurried off to check on the men tending the mules.
Rubbing his cheek, Mat muttered, “They're all crazy,” before he, too, left. He did not abandon his pursuit of Isendre, though.
So it went, for eleven days and into the twelfth, across a barren, hardbaked land. Twice they saw other stands, small, rough stone buildings much like Imre Stand, sited for easy defense against the sheer side of spire or butte. One had three hundred sheep or more, and men who were as startled to learn of Rand as they were of Trollocs in the Threefold Land. The other was empty; not raided, only not in use. Several times Rand spotted goats, or sheep, or pale, longhorned cattle in the distance. Aviendha said the herds belonged to nearby sept holds, but he saw no people, surely no structure that deserved the name hold.
The twelfth day, with the thick columns of Jindo and Shaido flanking the Wise Ones' party, and the peddlers' wagons lurching along with Keille and Natael arguing, and Isendre eyeing Rand from Kadere's lap.
“...and that is how it is,” Aviendha said, nodding to herself. “Surely you must understand about a roofmistress, now.”
“Not really,” Rand admitted. He realized that for some time he had just been listening to the sound of her voice, not to the words. “I'm sure it works just fine, though.”
She growled at him. “When you marry,” she said in a tight voice, “with the Dragons on your arms proving your blood, will you follow that blood, or will you demand to own everything but the dress your wife stands in, like some wetland savage?”
“That's not at all the way it is,” he protested, “and any woman where I come from would brain a man who thought it was. Anyway, don't you think that ought to be settled between me and whoever I do decide to marry?” If anything, she scowled harder than before.
To his relief, Rhuarc came trotting back from the head of the Jindo. “We are there,” the Aielman announced with a smile. “Cold Rocks Hold.”
Chapter 49
(Spears and Shield)
Cold Rocks Hold
Frowning, Rand looked around. A mile ahead stood a tight cluster of tall, sheersided buttes, or perhaps one huge butte broken by fissures. To his left the land ran off in patches of tough grass and leafless spiny plants, scattered thorny bushes and low trees, across arid hills and jagged gullies, past huge, rough stone columns to jagged mountains in the distance. To the right the land was the same, except the cracked yellowish clay lay flatter, the mountains closer. It could have been any piece of the Waste he had seen since leaving Chaendaer.
“Where?” he said.
Rhuarc glanced at Aviendha, who was looking at Rand as though he had lost his wits. “Come. Let your own eyes show you Cold Rocks.” Dropping his shoufa to his shoulders, the clan chief turned and loped bareheaded toward the fissured rock wall ahead.
The Shaido had already halted, milling about and beginning to set up their tents. Heirn and the Jindo fell in behind Rhuarc at a trot with their pack mules, uncovering their heads and shouting wordlessly, and the Maidens escorting the peddlers cried for the drivers to hasten their teams and follow the Jindo. One of the Wise Ones lifted her skirts to her knees and ran to join Rhuarc — Rand thought it was Amys, from the pale hair; surely Bair could not move that nimbly — but the rest of the Wise Ones' party maintained its original pace. For a moment Moiraine looked as if she would break away, toward Rand, then hesitated, arguing with one of the other Wise Ones, hair still hidden by her shawl. Finally the Aes Sedai reined her white mare back beside Egwene's gray and Lan's black stallion, just ahead of the whiterobed gai'shain who were tugging the pack animals along. They were heading the same way as Rhuarc and the others, though.
Rand leaned down to offer a hand to Aviendha. When she shook her head, he said, “If they are going to be making all that noise, I won't be able to hear you down there. What if I make a woolheaded mistake because I can't hear what you say?”
Muttering under her breath, she glanced at the Maidens around the peddlers' wagons, then sighed and clasped his arm. He hoisted her up, ignoring her indignant squawk, and swung her onto Jeade'en behind the saddle. Whenever she tried to mount by herself, she came close to pulling him out of the saddle. He gave her a moment to settle her heavy skirts, though at best they bared her legs well above her soft, kneehigh boots, then heeled the dapple to a canter. It was the first time Aviendha had ridden faster than a walk; she flung her arms around his waist and hung on.
“If you make me look the fool before my sisters, wetlander,” she snarled warningly against his back.
“Why would they think you a fool? I've seen Bair and Amys and the others ride behind Moiraine or Egwene sometimes to talk.”
After a moment, she said, “You accept changes more easily than I, Rand al'Thor.” He was not sure what to make of that.
When he brought Jeade'en up with Rhuarc and Heirn and Amys, a little ahead of the still shouting Jindo, he was surprised to see Couladin running easily alongside, flamecolored hair bare. Aviendha tugged Rand's own shoufa down to his shoulders. “You must enter a hold with your face clear to be seen. I told you that. And make noise. We have been seen long since, and they will know who we are, but it is customary, to show you are not trying to take the hold by surprise.”
He nodded, but held his tongue. Neither Rhuarc nor any of the three with him were making a sound, and neither was Aviendha. Besides, the Jindo made enough clamor to be heard for miles.
Couladin's head swung toward him. Contempt flashed across that sundark face, and something else. Hate and disdain Rand had come to expect, but amusement? What did Couladin find amusing?
“Fool Shaido,” Aviendha muttered at his back. Maybe she was right; maybe the amusement was for her riding. But Rand did not think so.
Mat galloped up trailing a cloud of yellowish brown dust, hat pulled low and spear resting upright on his stirrup iron like a lance. “What is this place, Rand?” he asked loudly, to be heard over the shouts. “All those women would say was 'Move faster. Move faster.' ” Rand told him, and he frowned at the towering rock face of the butte. “You could hold that thing for years, I suppose, with supplies, but it isn't a patch on the Stone,
