His face was suddenly as taut as a drumhead. He managed a hoarse chuckle. “She does think of some odd things. I hope you assured her we're all Emond's Field born. ”
“Of course,” she replied. There had only been a heartbeat's pause before she spoke, so brief he would have missed it if he had not been watching for it.
He tried to think of something to say, but his tongue felt like a piece of leather. She knows. She was the Wisdom, after all, and the Wisdom was supposed to know everything about everyone. If she knows, it was no feverdream. Oh, Light help me, father!
“Are you all right?” Nynaeve asked.
“He said ... said I ... wasn't his son. When he was delirious ... with the fever. He said he found me. I thought it was just ...” His throat began to burn, and he had to stop.
“Oh, Rand.” She stopped and took his face in both hands. She had to reach up to do it. “People say strange things in a fever. Twisted things. Things that are not true, or real. Listen to me. Tam al'Thor ran away seeking adventure when he was a boy no older than you. I can just remember when he came back to Emond's Field, a grown man with a redhaired, outlander wife and a babe in swaddling clothes. I remember Kari al'Thor cradling that child in her arms with as much love given and delight taken as I have ever seen from any woman with a babe. Her child, Rand. You. Now you straighten up and stop this foolishness.”
“Of course,” he said. I was born outside the Two Rivers. “Of course.” Maybe Tam had been having a feverdream, and maybe he had found a baby after a battle. “Why didn't you tell her?”
“It is none of any outlander's business. ”
“Were any of the others born outside?” As soon as the question was out, he shook his head. “No, don't answer. It's none of my business, either.” But it would be nice to know if Moiraine had some special interest in him, over and above what she had in the whole lot of them. Would it?
“No, it isn't your business,” Nynaeve agreed. “It might not mean anything. She could just be searching blindly for a reason, any reason, why those things are after you. After all of you.”
Rand managed a grin. “Then you do believe they're chasing us.”
Nynaeve shook her head wryly. “You've certainly learned to twist words since you met her.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
She studied him; he met her eyes steadily. “Today, I am going to have a bath. For the rest, we will have to see, won't we?”
Chapter 17
Watchers and Hunters
After the Wisdom left him, Rand made his way to the common room. He needed to hear people laughing, to forget what Nynaeve had said and the trouble she might cause alike.
The room was crowded indeed, but no one was laughing, though every chair and bench was filled and people lined the walls. Thom was performing again, standing on a table against the far wall, his gestures grand enough to fill the big room. It was The Great Hunt of the Horn again, but no one complained, of course. There were so many tales to be told about each of the Hunters, and so many Hunters to tell of, that no two tellings were ever the same. The whole of it in one telling would have taken a week or more. The only sound competing with the gleeman's voice and harp was the crackling of the fires in the fireplaces.
“ ... To the eight corners of the world, the Hunters ride, to the eight pillars of heaven, where the winds of time blow and fate seizes the mighty and the small alike by the forelock. Now, the greatest of the Hunters is Rogosh of Talmour, Rogosh Eagleeye, famed at the court of the High King, feared on the slopes of Shayol Ghul ...” The Hunters were always mighty heroes, all of them.
Rand spotted his two friends and squeezed onto a place Perrin made for him on the end of their bench. Kitchen smells drifting into the room reminded him that he was hungry, but even the people who had food in front of them gave it little attention. The maids who should have been serving stood entranced, clutching their aprons and looking at the gleeman, and nobody seemed to mind at all. Listening was better than eating, no matter how good the food.
“ ... since the day of her birth has the Dark One marked Blaes as his own, but not of this mind is she — no Darkfriend, Blaes of Matuchin! Strong as the ash she stands, lithe as the willow branch, beautiful as the rose. Goldenhaired Blaes. Ready to die before she yields. But hark! Echoing from the towers of the city, trumpets blare, brazen and bold. Her heralds proclaim the arrival of a hero at her court. Drums thunder and cymbals sing! Rogosh Eagleeye comes to do homage ...”
“The Bargain of Rogosh Eagleeye” wound its way to an end, but Thom paused only to wet his throat from a mug of ale before launching into “Lian's Stand.” In turn that was followed by “The Fall of AlethLoriel,” and “Gaidal Cain's Sword,” and “The Last Ride of Buad of Albhain.” The pauses grew longer as the evening wore on, and when Thom exchanged the harp for his flute, everyone knew it was the end of storytelling for the night. Two men joined Thom, with a drum and a hammered dulcimer, but sitting beside the table while he remained atop it.
The three young men from Emond's Field began clapping their hands with the first note of “The Wind That Shakes the Willow,” and they were not the only ones. It was a favorite in the Two Rivers, and in Baerlon, too, it seemed. Here and there voices even took up the words, not so offkey as for anyone to hush them.
"My love is gone, carried away
by the wind that shakes the willow,
and all the land is beaten hard
by the wind that shakes the willow.
But I will hold her close to me
in heart and dearest memory,
and with her strength to steel my soul,