out of here one at a time, just close enough to keep each other in sight. Shouldn't be remembered especially, that way. Can't you slouch?' he added to Rand. 'That height of yours is as bad as a banner.' He slung the bundle across his back and stood, drawing his hood back up. He looked nothing like a white-haired gleeman. He was just another traveler, a man too poor to afford a horse, much less a carriage. 'Let's go. We've wasted too much time already.'
Rand agreed fervently, but even so he hesitated before stepping out of the alley into the square. None of the sparse scattering of people gave them a second look – most did not look at them at all – but his shoulders knotted, waiting for the cry of Darkfriend that could turn ordinary people into a mob bent on murder. He ran his eyes across the open area, over people moving about on their daily business, and when he brought them back a Myrddraal was halfway across the square.
Where the Fade had come from, he could not begin to guess, but it strode toward the three of them with a slow deadliness, a predator with the prey under its gaze. People shied away from the black-cloaked shape, avoided looking at it. The square began to empty out as people decided they were needed elsewhere.
The black cowl froze Rand where he stood. He tried to summon up the void, but it was like fumbling after smoke. The Fade's hidden gaze knifed to his bones and turned his marrow to icicles.
'Don't look at its face,' Thom muttered. His voice shook and cracked, and it sounded as if he were forcing the words out. 'The Light burn you, don't look at its face!'
Rand tore his eyes away – he almost groaned; it felt like tearing a leech off of his face – but even staring at the stones of the square he could still see the Myrddraal coming, a cat playing with mice, amused at their feeble efforts to escape, until finally the jaws snapped shut. The Fade had halved the distance. 'Are we just going to stand here?' he mumbled. 'We have to run ... get away.' But he could not make his feet move.
Mat had the ruby-hilted dagger out at last, in a trembling hand. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, a snarl and a rictus of fear.
'Think ...' Thom stopped to swallow, and went on hoarsely. 'Think you can outrun it, do you, boy?' He began to mutter to himself; the only word Rand could make out was 'Owyn.' Abruptly Thom growled, 'I never should have gotten mixed up with you boys. Should never have.' He shrugged the bundled gleeman's cloak off of his back and thrust it into Rand's arms. 'Take care of that. When I say run, you run and don't stop until you get to Caemlyn. The Queen's Blessing. An inn. Remember that, in case... Just remember it.'
'I don't understand,' Rand said. The Myrddraal was not twenty paces away, now. His feet felt like lead weights.
'Just remember it!' Thom snarled. 'The Queen's Blessing. Now. RUN!'
He gave them a push, one hand on the shoulder of each of them, to get them started, and Rand stumbled away in a lurching run with Mat at his side.
'RUN!' Thom sprang into motion, too, with a long, wordless roar. Not after them, but toward the Myrddraal. His hands flourished as if he were performing at his best, and daggers appeared. Rand stopped, but Mat pulled him along.
The Fade was just as startled. Its leisurely pace faltered in mid-stride. Its hand swept toward the hilt of the black sword hanging at its waist, but the gleeman's long legs covered the distance quickly. Thom crashed into the Myrddraal before the black blade was half drawn, and both went down in a thrashing heap. The few people still in the square fled.
'RUN!' The air in the square flashed an eye-searing blue, and Thom began to scream, but even in the middle of the scream he managed a word. 'RUN!'
Rand obeyed. The gleeman's screams pursued him.
Clutching Thom's bundle to his chest, he ran as hard as he could. Panic spread from the square out through the town as Rand and Mat fled on the crest of a wave of fear. Shopkeepers abandoned their goods as the boys passed. Shutters banged down over storefronts, and frightened faces appeared in the windows of houses, then vanished. People who had not been close enough to see ran through the streets wildly, paying no heed. They bumped into one another, and those who were knocked down scrambled to their feet or were trampled. Whitebridge roiled like a kicked anthill.
As he and Mat pounded toward the gates, Rand abruptly remembered what Thom had said about his height. Without slowing down, he crouched as best he could without looking as if he was crouching. But the gates themselves, thick wood bound with black iron straps, stood open. The two gatetenders, in steel caps and mail tunics worn over cheap-looking red coats with white collars, fingered their halberds and stared uneasily into the town. One of them glanced at Rand and Mat, but they were not the only ones running out of the gates. A steady stream boiled through, panting men clutching wives, weeping women carrying babes and dragging crying children, palefaced craftsmen still in their aprons, still heedlessly gripping their tools.
There would be no one who could tell which way they had gone, Rand thought as he ran, dazed. Thom. Oh, Light save me, Thom.
Mat staggered beside him, caught his balance, and they ran until the last of the fleeing people had fallen away, ran until the town and the White Bridge were far out of sight behind them.
Finally Rand fell to his knees in the dust, pulling air raggedly into his raw throat with great gulps. The road behind stretched empty until it was lost to sight among bare trees. Mat plucked at him.
'Come on. Come on.' Mat panted the words. Sweat and dust streaked his face, and he looked ready to collapse. 'We have to keep going.'
'Thom,' Rand said. He tightened his arms around the bundle of Thom's cloak; the instrument cases were hard lumps inside. 'Thom.'
'He's dead. You saw. You heard. Light, Rand, he's dead!'
'You think Egwene and Moiraine and the rest are dead, too. If they're dead, why are the Myrddraal still hunting them? Answer me that?'
Mat dropped to his knees in the dust beside him. 'All right. Maybe they are alive. But Thom – You saw! Blood and ashes, Rand, the same thing can happen to us.'
Rand nodded slowly. The road behind them was still empty. He had been halfway expecting – hoping, at least – to see Thom appear, striding along, blowing out his mustaches to tell them how much trouble they were. The Queen's Blessing in Caemlyn. He struggled to his feet and slung Thom's bundle on his back alongside his blanketroll. Mat stared up at him, narrow-eyed and wary.
'Let's go,' Rand said, and started down the road toward Caemlyn. He heard Mat muttering, and after a moment he caught up to Rand.
They trudged along the dusty road, heads down and not talking. The wind spawned dustdevils that whirled across their path. Sometimes Rand looked back, but the road behind was always empty.
Chapter 27
Shelter From the Storm
Perrin fretted over the days spent with the Tuatha'an, traveling south and east in a leisurely fashion. The Traveling People saw no need to hurry; they never did. The colorful wagons did not roll out of a morning until the sun was well above the horizon, and they stopped as early as midafternoon if they came across a congenial spot. The dogs trotted easily alongside the wagons, and often the children did, too. They had no difficulty in keeping up. Any suggestion that they might go further, or more quickly, was met with laughter, or perhaps, 'Ah, but would you make the poor horses work so hard?'
He was surprised that Elyas did not share his feelings. Elyas would not ride on the wagons, he preferred to walk, sometimes loping along at the head of the column – but he never suggested leaving, or pressing on ahead.
The strange bearded man in his strange skin clothes was so different from the gentle Tuatha'an that he stood out wherever he went among the wagons. Even from across the camp there was no mistaking Elyas for one of the People, and not just because of clothes. Elyas moved with the lazy grace of a wolf, only emphasized by his skins and his fur hat, radiating danger as naturally as a fire radiated heat, and the contrast with the Traveling People was sharp. Young and old, the People were joyful on their feet. There was no danger in their grace, only delight. Their children darted about filled with the pure zest of moving, of course, but among the Tuatha'an, graybeards and grandmothers, too, still stepped lightly, their walk a stately dance no less exuberant for its dignity. All the People seemed on the point of dancing, even when standing still, even during the rare times when there was no music in the camp. Fiddles and flutes, dulcimers and zithers and drums spun harmony and counterpoint around the
