Suddenly he was tearing at ... something. He did not know what, or how. Cobwebs made of steel. Moonbeams carved from stone. They crumbled at his touch, but he knew he had not touched anything. They shriveled and melted with the heat that surged through him, heat like a forge fire, heat like the world burning, heat like—
It was gone. Panting, he looked around with wide eyes. A few flies lay on the halfcarved roast, in the platter. Dead flies. Six flies. Only six. There were more in the bowls, half a dozen tiny black specks among the cold vegetables. All dead. He staggered out into the street.
Mat was just coming out of a house across the street, shaking his head. “Nobody there,” he told Perrin, still on his horse. “It looks like they just got up in the middle of supper and walked away.”
A shout came from the square.
“They've found something,” Perrin said, digging his heels into his horse's flanks. Mat scrambled into his saddle and galloped after him.
Rand mounted Red more slowly; the stallion shied as if feeling his unease. He glanced at the houses as he rode slowly toward the square, but he could not make himself look at them for long. Mat went in one, and nothing happened to him. He resolved not to set foot inside another house in that village no matter what. Booting Red, he quickened his pace.
Everyone was standing like statues in front of a large building with wide double doors. Rand did not think it could be an inn; there was no sign, for one thing. Perhaps a village meeting place. He joined the silent circle, and stared along with the rest.
There was a man spreadeagled across the doors with thick spikes through wrists and shoulders. More spikes had been driven into his eyes to hold his head up. Dark, dried blood made fans down his cheeks. Scuff marks on the wood behind his boots showed that he had been alive when it was done. When it began, anyway.Rand's breath caught. Not a man. Those black clothes, blacker than black, had never been worn by any human. The wind flapped an end of the cloak caught behind the body — which it did not always, he knew too well; the wind did not always touch those clothes — but there had never been any eyes in that pale, bloodless face.
“Myrddraal,” he breathed, and it was as if his speaking released all the others. They began to move again, and breathe.
“Who,” Mat began, and had to stop to swallow. “Who could do this to a Fade?” His voice squeaked at the end.
“I don't know,” Ingtar said. “I do not know.” He looked around, examining faces, or perhaps counting to be sure everyone was there. “And I do not think we will learn anything here. We ride. Mount! Hurin, find the trail out of this place.”
“Yes, my Lord. Yes. With pleasure. That way, my Lord. They're still heading south.”
They rode away leaving the dead Myrddraal where it hung, the wind stirring its black cloak. Hurin was first beyond the wall, not waiting on Ingtar for a change, but Rand came close behind him.
Chapter 11
(Serpent and Wheel)
Glimmers of the Pattern
For once, Ingtar called a halt to the day's march with the sun still golden above the horizon. The toughened Shienarans were feeling the effects of what they had seen in the village. Ingtar had not stopped so early before, and the campsite he chose had the look of a place that could be defended. It was a deep hollow, almost round, and big enough to hold all the men and horses comfortably. A sparse thicket of scrub oak and leatherleaf covered the outer slopes. The rim itself stood more than high enough to hide anyone in the campsite even without the trees. The height nearly passed for a hill, in that country.
“All I'm bloody saying,” he heard Uno tell Ragan as they dismounted, “is that I bloody saw her, burn you. Just before we found the goatkissing Halfman. The same flaming woman as at the flaming ferry. She was there, and then she bloody wasn't. You say what you bloody want to, but you watch how you flaming say it, or I'll bloody skin you myself, and burn the goatkissing hide, you sheepgutted milkdrinker.”
Rand paused with one foot on the ground and the other still in the stirrup. The same woman? But there wasn't any woman at the ferry, just some curtains blowing in the wind. And she couldn't have gotten to that village ahead of us if there had been. The village ...
He shied away from the thought. Even more than the Fade nailed to the door, he wanted to forget that room, and the flies, and the people who were there and not there. The Halfman had been real — everybody had seen that — but the room ... Maybe I'm finally going mad. He wished Moiraine was there to talk to. Wishing for an Aes Sedai. You are a fool. You're well out of that, now stay out. But am I out? What happened there?
“Packhorses and supplies in the middle,” Ingtar commanded as the lancers went about setting up camp. “Rub the horses down, then saddle them again in case we must move quickly. Every man sleeps by his mount, and there'll be no fires tonight. Watch changes every two hours. Uno, I want scouts out, as far as they can ride and return before dark. I want to know what is out there.”
He's feeling it, Rand thought. It isn't just some Darkfriends and a few Trollocs and maybe a Fade anymore. Just some Darkfriends and a few Trollocs, and maybe a Fade! Even a few days before there would not have been any “just” about it. Even in the Borderlands, even with the Blight less than a day's ride, Darkfriends and Trollocs and Myrddraal had been bad enough for a nightmare, then. Before he had seen a Myrddraal nailed to a door. What in the Light could have done that? What not in the Light? Before he had walked into a room where a family had had their supper and their laughter cut off. I must have imagined it. I must have. Even in his own head he did not sound very convincing. He had not imagined the wind on the tower top, or the Amyrlin saying—
“Rand?” He jumped as Ingtar spoke at his shoulder. “Are you going to stay all night with one foot in the stirrup?”
Rand put his other foot on the ground. “Ingtar, what happened back at that village?”
“Trollocs took them. The same as the people at the ferry. That is what happened. The Fade ...” Ingtar shrugged and stared down at a flat, canvaswrapped bundle, large and square, in his arms; he stared at it as if he saw hidden secrets he would rather not know. “The Trollocs took them for food. They do it in villages and farms near the Blight, too, sometimes, if a raid gets past the border towers in the night. Sometimes we get the people back, and sometimes not. Sometimes we get them back and almost wish we hadn't. Trollocs don't always kill before they start butchering. And Halfmen like to have their ... fun. That's worse than what the Trollocs do.” His voice was as steady as if he were talking of every day, and perhaps he was, for a Shienaran soldier.
Rand took a deep breath to steady his stomach. “The Fade back there didn't have any fun, Ingtar. What could nail a Myrddraal to a door, alive?”
Ingtar hesitated, shaking his head, then pushed the big bundle at Rand. “Here. Moiraine Sedai told me to give you this at the first camp south of the Erinin. I don't know what is in it, but she said you would need it. She said to tell you to take care of it; your life may depend on it.”
Rand took it reluctantly; his skin prickled at the touch of the canvas. There was something soft inside. Cloth, maybe. He held it gingerly. He doesn't want to think about the Myrddraal either. What happened in that room? He realized suddenly that for him, the Fade, or even that room, was preferable to thinking about what Moiraine might have sent him.
“I was told to tell you at the same time that if anything happens to me, the lances will follow you.”
“Me!” Rand gasped, forgetting the bundle and everything else. Ingtar met his incredulous stare with a calm nod. “That's crazy! I've never led anything but a flock of sheep, Ingtar. They would not follow me anyway. Besides, Moiraine can't tell you who your second is. It's Uno.”