“Of course I have. I daydream sometimes, but I know the difference between daydreams and what's real.”
“And I do not?” she said furiously, and promptly turned her back on him.
“That wasn't what I meant. I was talking about me. Egwene?”
She jerked her cloak around her, a wall to shut him off, and stiffly walked a few paces away. He rubbed his head in frustration. How to explain? This was not the first time she had squeezed meanings from his words that he never knew was in them. In her present mood, a misstep would only make matters worse, and he was fairly sure that nearly anything he said would be a misstep.
Mat and Perrin came back then. Egwene ignored their coming. They looked at her hesitantly, then crowded close to Rand.
“Moiraine gave Perrin a coin, too,” Mat said. “Just like ours.” He paused before adding, “And he saw the rider.”
“Where?” Rand demanded. “When? Did anybody else see him? Did you tell anyone?”
Perrin raised broad hands in a slowing gesture. “One question at a time. I saw him on the edge of the village, watching the smithy, just at twilight Yesterday. Gave me the shivers, he did. I told Master Luhhan, only nobody was there when he looked. He said I was seeing shadows. But he carried his biggest hammer around with him while we were banking the forgefire and putting the tools up. He's never done that before.”
“So he believed you,” Rand said, but Perrin shrugged.
“I don't know. I asked him why he was carrying the hammer if all I saw was shadows, and he said something about wolves getting bold enough to come into the village. Maybe he thought that's what I saw, but he ought to know I can tell the difference between a wolf and a man on horseback, even at dusk. I know what I saw, and nobody is going to make me believe different. ”
“I believe you,” Rand said. “Remember, I saw him, too.” Perrin gave a satisfied grunt, as if he had not been sure of that.
“What are you talking about?” Egwene demanded suddenly.
Rand suddenly wished he had spoken more quietly. He would have if he had realized she was listening. Mat and Perrin, grinning like fools, fell all over themselves telling her of their encounters with the blackcloaked rider, but Rand kept silent. He was sure he knew what she would say when they were done.
“Nynaeve was right,” Egwene announced to the sky when the two youths fell silent. “None of you is ready to be off leading strings. People do ride horses, you know. That doesn't make them monsters out of a gleeman's tale.” Rand nodded to himself, it was just as he had thought. She rounded on him. “And you've been spreading these tales. Sometimes you have no sense, Rand al'Thor. The winter has been frightening enough without you going about scaring the children.”
Rand gave a sour grimace. “I haven't spread anything, Egwene. But I saw what I saw, and it was no farmer out looking for a strayed cow.”
Egwene drew a deep breath and opened her mouth, but whatever she had been going to say vanished as the door of the inn opened and a man with shaggy white hair came hurrying out as if pursued.
Chapter 4
The Gleeman
The door of the inn banged shut behind the whitehaired man, and he spun around to glare at it. Lean, he would have been tall if not for a stoop to his shoulders, but he moved in a spry fashion that belied his apparent age. His cloak seemed a mass of patches, in odd shapes and sizes, fluttering with every breath of air, patches in a hundred colors. It was really quite thick, Rand saw, despite what Master al'Vere had said, with the patches merely sewn on like decorations.
“The gleeman!” Egwene whispered excitedly.
The whitehaired man whirled, cloak flaring. His long coat had odd, baggy sleeves and big pockets. Thick mustaches, as snowy as the hair on his head, quivered around his mouth, and his face was gnarled like a tree that had seen hard times. He gestured imperiously at Rand and the others with a longstemmed pipe, ornately carved, that trailed a wisp of smoke. Blue eyes peered out from under bushy white brows, drilling into whatever he looked at.
Rand stared at the man's eyes almost as much as at the rest of him. Everybody in the Two Rivers had dark eyes, and so did most of the merchants, and their guards, and everyone else he had ever seen. The Congars and the Coplins had made fun of him for his gray eyes, until the day he finally punched Ewal Coplin in the nose; the Wisdom had surely gotten onto him for that. He wondered if there was a place where nobody had dark eyes. Maybe Lan comes from there, too.
“What sort of place is this?” the gleeman demanded in a deep voice that sounded in some way larger than that of an ordinary man. Even in the open air it seemed to fill a great room and resonate from the walls. “The yokels in that village on the hill tell me I can get here before dark, neglecting to say that that was only if I left well before noon. When I finally do arrive, chilled to the bone and ready for a warm bed, your innkeeper grumbles about the hour as if I were a wandering swineherd and your Village Council hadn't begged me to display my art at this festival of yours. And he never even told me he was the Mayor.” He slowed for a breath, taking them all in with a glare, but he was off again on the instant. “When I came downstairs to smoke my pipe before the fire and have a mug of ale, every man in the common room stares at me as if I were his least favorite brotherinlaw seeking to borrow money. One old grandfather starts ranting at me about the kind of stories I should or should not tell, then a girlchild shouts at me to get out, and threatens me with a great club when I don't move quickly enough for her. Who ever heard of treating a gleeman so?”
Egwene's face was a study, her goggleeyed amaze at a gleeman in the flesh marred by a desire to defend Nynaeve.
“Your pardon, Master Gleeman,” Rand said. He knew he was grinning foolishly, himself. “That was our Wisdom, and— ”
“That pretty little slip of a girl?” the gleeman exclaimed. “A village Wisdom? Why, at her age she should better be flirting with the young men than foretelling the weather and curing the sick.”
Rand shifted uncomfortably. He hoped Nynaeve never overheard the man's opinion. At least, not until he had done with his performing. Perrin winced at the gleeman's words, and Mat whistled soundlessly, as if both had had the same thought as he had.
“The men were the Village Council,” Rand went on. “I'm sure they intended no discourtesy. You see, we just learned there's a war in Ghealdan, and a man claiming to be the Dragon Reborn. A false Dragon. Aes Sedai are riding there from Tar Valon. The Council is trying to decide if we might be in danger here.”
“Old news, even in Baerlon,” the gleeman said dismissively, “and that is the last place in the world to hear anything.” He paused, looking around the village, and dryly added, “Almost the last place.” Then his eyes fell on the wagon in front of the inn, standing alone now, with its shafts on the ground. “So. I thought I recognized Padan Fain in there.” His voice was still deep, but the resonance had gone, replaced by scorn. “Fain was always one to carry bad news quickly, and the worse, the faster. There's more raven in him than man.”
“Master Fain has come often to Emond's Field, Master Gleeman,” Egwene said, a hint of disapproval finally breaking through her delight. “He is always full of laughter, and he brings much more good news than bad.”