“Quiet?” Min said with a faint smile. “I've heard men talk about you Two Rivers folk. I've heard the jokes about woodenheaded sheepherders, and then there are men who have actually been downcountry.”
“Woodenheaded?” Rand said, frowning. “What jokes?”
“The ones who know,” she went on as if he had not spoken, “say you walk around all smiles and politeness, just as meek and soft as butter. On the surface, anyway. Underneath, they say, you're all as tough as old oak roots. Prod too hard, they say, and you dig up stone. But the stone isn't buried very deep in you, or in your friends. It's as if a storm has scoured away almost all the covering. Moiraine didn't tell me everything, but I see what see.”
Old oak roots? Stone? It hardly sounded like the sort of thing the merchants or their people would say. That last made him jump, though.
He looked around quickly; the stableyard was empty; and the nearest windows were closed. “I don't know anybody named — what was it again?”
“Mistress Alys, then, if you prefer,” Min said with an amused look that made his cheeks color. “There's no one close enough to hear.”
“What makes you think Mistress Alys has another name?”
“Because she told me,” Min said, so patiently that he blushed again. “Not that she had a choice, I suppose. I saw she was ... different ... right away. When she stopped here before, on her way downcountry. She knew about me. I've talked to ... others like her before.”
“'Saw'?” Rand said.
“Well, I don't suppose you'll go running to the Children. Not considering who your traveling companions are. The Whitecloaks wouldn't like what I do any more than they like what she does.”
“I don't understand.”
“She says I see pieces of the Pattern. ” Min gave a little laugh and shook her head. “Sounds too grand, to me. I just see things when I look at people, and sometimes I know what they mean. I look at a man and a woman who've never even talked to one another, and I know they'll marry. And they do. That sort of thing. She wanted me to look at you. All of you together. ”
Rand shivered. “And what did you see?”
“When you're all in a group? Sparks swirling around you, thousands of them, and a big shadow, darker than midnight. It's so strong, I almost wonder why everybody can't see it. The sparks are trying to fill the shadow, and the shadow is trying to swallow the sparks.” She shrugged. “You are all tied together in something dangerous, but I can't make any more of it.”
“All of us?” Rand muttered. “Egwene, too? But they weren't after — I mean —”
Min did not seem to notice his slip. “The girl —? She's part of it. And the gleeman. All of you. You're in love with her.” He stared at her. “I can tell that even without seeing any images. She loves you, too, but she's not for you, or you for her either. Not the way you both want. ”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“When I look at her, I see the same as when I look at ... Mistress Alys. Other things, things I don't understand, too, but I know what that means. She won't refuse it.”
“This is all foolishness,” Rand said uncomfortably. His headache was fading to numbness; his head felt packed with wool. He wanted to get away from this girl and the things she saw. And yet ...“ What do you see when you look at ... the rest of us?”
“All sorts of things,” Min said, with a grin as if she knew what he really wanted to ask. “The War ... ah ... Master Andra has seven ruined towers around his head, and a babe in a cradle holding a sword, and ... ” She shook her head. “Men like him — you understand? — always have so many images they crowd one another. The strongest images around the gleeman are a man — not him — juggling fire, and the White Tower, and that doesn't make any sense at all for a man. The strongest things I see about the big, curlyhaired fellow are a wolf, and a broken crown, and trees flowering all around him. And the other one — a red eagle, an eye on a balance scale, a dagger with a ruby, a horn, and a laughing face. There are other things, but you see what I mean. This time I can't make up or down out of any of it.” She waited then, still grinning, until he finally cleared his throat and asked.
“What about me?”
Her grin stopped just short of outright laughter. “The same kind of things as the rest. A sword that isn't a sword, a golden crown of laurel leaves, a beggar's staff, you pouring water on sand, a bloody hand and a whitehot iron, three women standing over a funeral bier with you on it, black rock wet with blood —”
“All right,” he broke in uneasily. “You don't have to list it all.”
“Most of all, I see lightning around you, some striking at you, some coming out of you. I don't know what any of it means, except for one thing. You and I will meet again.” She gave him a quizzical look, as if she did not understand that either.
“Why shouldn't we?” he said. “I'll be coming back this way on my way home.”
“I suppose you will, at that.” Suddenly her grin was back, wry and mysterious, and she patted his cheek. “But if I told you everything I saw, you'd be as curlyhaired as your friend with the shoulders.”
He jerked back from her hand as if it were redhot. “What do you mean? Do you see anything about rats? Or dreams?”
“Rats! No, no rats. As for dreams, maybe it's your idea of a dream, but I never thought it was mine. ”
He wondered if she was crazy, grinning like that. “I have to go,” he said, edging around her. “I ... I have to meet my friends.”
“Go, then. But you won't escape.”