are chasing him, personally, but the rest are beginning to think the danger is past. They might just decide they have had enough. They're on the edge of it, as it is.' He hitched his patch-covered cloak, and Rand had the feeling he was checking his hidden knives – his second-best set. 'If they mutiny, boy, they won't leave passengers behind to tell the tale. The Queen's Writ might not have much force this far from Caemlyn, but even a village mayor will do something about that.' That was when Rand, too, began trying not to be noticed when he watched the
crewmen.
Thom did his part in diverting the crew from thoughts of mutiny. He told stories, with all the flourishes, every morning and every night, and in between he played any song they requested. To support the notion that Rand and Mat wanted to be apprentice gleemen, he set aside a time each day for lessons, and that was an entertainment for the crew, as well. He would not let either of them touch his harp, of course, and their sessions with the flute produced pained winces, in the beginning, at least, and laughter from the crew even while they were covering their ears.
He taught the boys some of the easier stories, a little simple tumbling, and, of course, juggling. Mat complained about what Thom demanded of them, but Thom blew out his mustaches and glared right back.
'I don't know how to play at teaching, boy. I either teach a thing, or I don't. Now! Even a country bumpkin ought to be able to do a simple handstand. Up you go.'
Crewmen who were not working always gathered, squatting in a circle around the three. Some even tried their hand at the lessons Thom taught, laughing at their own fumblings. Gelb stood alone and watched it all darkly, hating them all.
A good part of each day Rand spent leaning on the railing, staring at the shore. It was not that he really expected to see Egwene or any of the others suddenly appear on the riverbank, but the boat traveled so slowly that he sometimes hoped for it. They could catch up without riding too hard. If they had escaped. If they were still alive.
The river rolled on without any sign of life, nor any boat to be seen except the Spray. But that was not to say there was nothing to see, and wonder at. In the middle of the first day, the Arinelle ran between high bluffs that stretched for half a mile on either side. For that whole length the stone had been cut into figures, men and women a hundred feet tall, with crowns proclaiming them kings and queens. No two were alike in that royal procession, and long years separated the first from the last. Wind and rain had worn those at the north end smooth and almost featureless, with faces and details becoming more distinct as they went south. The river lapped around the statues' feet, feet washed to smooth nubs, those that were not gone completely. How long have they stood there, Rand wondered. How long for the river to wear away so much stone? None of the crew so much as looked up from their work, they had seen the ancient carvings so many times before.
Another time, when the eastward shore had become flat grassland again, broken only occasionally by thickets, the sun glinted off something in the distance. 'What can that be?' Rand wondered aloud. 'It looks like metal.'
Captain Domon was walking by, and he paused, squinting toward the glint. 'It do be metal,' he said. His words still ran together, but Rand had come to understand without having to puzzle it out. 'A tower of metal. I have seen it close up, and I know. River traders use it as a marker. We be ten days from Whitebridge at the rate we go.'
'A metal tower?' Rand said, and Mat, sitting cross-legged with his back against a barrel, roused from his brooding to listen.
The captain nodded. 'Aye. Shining steel, by the look and feel of it, but no spot of rust. Two hundred feet high, it be, as big around as a house, with no a mark on it and never an opening to be found.'
'I'll bet there's treasure inside,' Mat said. He stood up and stared toward the far tower as the river carried the Spray beyond it. 'A thing like that must have been made to protect something valuable.'
'Mayhap, lad,' the captain rumbled. 'There be stranger things in the world than this, though. On Tremalking, one of the Sea Folk's isles, there be a stone hand fifty feet high sticking out of a hill, clutching a crystal sphere as big as this vessel. There be treasure under that hill if there be treasure anywhere, but the island people want no part of digging there, and the Sea Folk care for naught but sailing their ships and searching for the Coramoor, their Chosen One.'
'I'd dig,' Mat said. 'How far is this ... Tremalking?' A clump of trees slid in front of the shining tower, but he stared as if he could see it yet.
Captain Domon shook his head. 'No, lad, it no be the treasure that makes for seeing the world. If you find yourself a fistful of gold, or some dead king's jewels, all well and good, but it be the strangeness you see that pulls you to the next horizon. In Tanchico – that be a port on the Aryth Ocean – part of the Panarch's Palace were built in the Age of Legends, so it be said. There be a wall there with a frieze showing animals no man living has ever seen.'
'Any child can draw an animal nobody's ever seen,' Rand said, and the captain chuckled.
'Aye, lad, so they can. But can a child make the bones of those animals? In Tanchico they have them, all fastened together like the animal was. They stand in a part of the Panarch's Palace where any can enter and see. The Breaking left a thousand wonders behind, and there been half a dozen empires or more since, some rivaling Artur Hawkwing's, every one leaving things to see and find. Lightsticks and razorlace and heartstone. A crystal lattice covering an island, and it hums when the moon is up. A mountain hollowed into a bowl, and in its center, a silver spike a hundred spans high, and any who comes within a mile of it, dies. Rusted ruins, and broken bits, and things found on the bottom of the sea, things not even the oldest books know the meaning of. I've gathered a few, myself. Things you never dreamed of, in more places than you can see in ten lifetimes. That be the strangeness that will draw you on.'
'We used to dig up bones in the Sand Hills,' Rand said slowly. 'Strange bones. There was part of a fish – I think it was a fish – as big as this boat, once. Some said it was bad luck, digging in the hills.'
The captain eyed him shrewdly. 'You thinking about home already, lad, and you just set out in the world? The world will put a hook in your mouth. You'll set off chasing the sunset, you wait and see ... and if you ever go back, your village'll no be big enough to hold you.'
'No!' He gave a start. How long had it been since he had thought of home, of Emond's Field? And what of Tam? It had to be days. It felt like months. 'I will go home, one day, when I can. I'll raise sheep, like... like my father, and if I never leave again it will be too soon. Isn't that right, Mat? As soon as we can we're going home and forget all this even exists. '
With a visible effort Mat pulled away from staring upriver after the vanished tower. 'What? Oh. Yes, of course. We'll go home. Of course.' As he turned to go, Rand heard him muttering under his breath. 'I'll bet he just doesn't want anybody else going after the treasure.' He did not seem to realize he had spoken aloud.
Four days into their trip downriver found Rand atop the mast, sitting on the blunt end with his legs wrapped in the stays. The Spray rolled gently on the river, but fifty feet above the water that easy roll made the top of the mast sway back and forth through wide arcs. He threw back his head and laughed into the wind that blew in his face.
The oars were out, and from here the boat looked like some twelve-legged spider creeping down the Arinelle. He had been as high as this before, in trees back in the Two Rivers, but this time there were no branches to block his view. Everything on deck, the sailors at the sweeps, men on their knees scrubbing the deck with smoothstones, men doing things with lines and hatchcovers, looked so odd when seen from right overhead, all squat and foreshortened, that he had spent an hour just staring at them and chuckling.
He still chuckled whenever he looked down at them, but now he was staring at the riverbanks flowing by. That was the way it seemed, as if he were still – except for the swaying back and forth, of course – and the banks slid slowly by, trees and hills marching along to either side. He was still, and the whole world moved past him.
On sudden impulse he unwrapped his legs from the stays bracing the mast and held his arms and legs out to either side, balancing against the sway. For three complete arcs he kept his balance like that, then suddenly it was gone. Arms and legs windmilling, he toppled forward and grabbed the forestay. Legs splayed to either side of the mast, nothing holding him to his precarious perch but his two hands on the stay, he laughed. Gulping huge breaths of the fresh, cold wind, he laughed with the exhilaration of it.
'Lad,' came Thom's hoarse voice. 'Lad, if you're trying to break your fool neck, don't do it by falling on me.'
Rand looked down. Thom clung to the ratlines just below him, staring up the last few feet grimly. Like Rand, the gleeman had left his cloak below. 'Thom,' he said delightedly. 'Thom, when did you come here?'
