The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,228

were waiting for us, and right where you were staying. Offered to guide us himself, but he really looked relieved when Verin told him no.” He snorted. “Lord Rand of House al’Thor.”

“It’s too long a story to explain now,” Rand said. “Where are Uno and the rest? We will need them.”

“In the Foregate.” Mat frowned at him, and went on slowly, “Uno said they’d rather stay there than inside the walls. From what I can see, I’d rather be with them. Rand, why will we need Uno? Have you found . . . them?”

It was the moment Rand realized suddenly he had been avoiding. He took a deep breath and looked his friend in the eye. “Mat, I had the dagger, and I lost it. The Darkfriends took it back.” He heard gasps from the Cairhienin listening, but he did not care. They could play their Great Game if they wanted, but Ingtar had come, and he was finished with it at last. “They can’t have gone far, though.”

Ingtar had been silent, but now he stepped forward and gripped Rand’s arm. “You had it? And the”—he looked around at the onlookers—“the other thing?”

“They took that back, too,” Rand said quietly. Ingtar pounded a fist into his palm and turned away; some of the Cairhienin backed off from the look on his face.

Mat chewed his lip, then shook his head. “I didn’t know it was found, so it isn’t as if I had lost it again. It is just still lost.” It was plain he was speaking of the dagger, not the Horn of Valere. “We’ll find it again. We have two sniffers, now. Perrin is one, too. He followed the trail all the way to the Foregate, after you vanished with Hurin and Loial. I thought you might have just run off . . . well, you know what I mean. Where did you go? I still don’t understand how you got so far ahead of us. That fellow said you have been here days.”

Rand glanced at Perrin—He’s a sniffer?—and found Perrin studying him in return. He thought Perrin muttered something. Shadowkiller? I must have heard him wrong. Perrin’s yellow gaze held him for a moment, seeming to hold secrets about him. Telling himself he was having fancies—I’m not mad. Not yet.—he pulled his eyes away.

Verin was just helping a still-shaky Hurin to his feet. “I feel right as goose feathers,” he was saying. “Still a little tired, but. . . .” He let the words trail off, seeming to see her for the first time, to realize what had happened for the first time.

“The tiredness will last a few hours,” she told him. “The body must strain to heal itself quickly.”

The Cairhienin Reader rose. “Aes Sedai?” she said softly. Verin inclined her head, and the Reader made a full curtsy.

As quiet as they had been, the words “Aes Sedai” ran through the crowd in tones ranging from awe to fear to outrage. Everyone was watching now—not even Cuale gave any attention to his own burning inn—and Rand thought a little caution might not be amiss after all.

“Do you have rooms yet?” he asked. “We need to talk, and we can’t do it here.”

“A good idea,” Verin said. “I have stayed here before at The Great Tree. We will go there.”

Loial went to fetch the horses—the inn roof had now fallen in completely, but the stables had not been touched—and soon they were making their way through the streets, all riding except for Loial, who claimed he had grown used to walking again. Perrin held the lead line to one of the packhorses they had brought south.

“Hurin,” Rand said, “how soon can you be ready to follow their trail again? Can you follow it? The men who hit you and started the fire left a trail, didn’t they?”

“I can follow it now, my Lord. And I could smell them in the street. It won’t last long, though. There weren’t any Trollocs, and they didn’t kill anybody. Just men, my Lord. Darkfriends, I suppose, but you can’t always be sure of that by smell. A day, maybe, before it fades.”

“I don’t think they can open the chest either, Rand,” Loial said, “or they would just have taken the Horn. It would be much easier to take that if they could, rather than the whole chest.”

Rand nodded. “They must have put it in a cart, or on a horse. Once they get it beyond the Foregate, they’ll join the Trollocs again, for