“Selene, you must not say anything of the Horn to anyone. If it gets out, we'll have a hundred people on our heels trying to get the Horn for themselves.”
“No, it would never do,” Selene said, “for that to fall into the wrong hands. The Horn of Valere. I could not tell you how often I've dreamed of touching it, holding it in my hands. You must promise me, when you have it, you will let me touch it.”
“Before I can do that, we have to find it. We had better be on our way.” Rand offered his hand to help her mount; Hurin scrambled down to hold her stirrup. “Whatever that thing was I killed — a grolm? — there may be more of them around.” Her hand was firm — there was surprising strength in her grip — and her skin was ... Silk? Something softer, smoother. Rand shivered.
“There always are,” Selene said. The tall white mare frisked and bared her teeth once at Red, yet Selene's touch on the reins quieted her.
Rand slung his bow across his back and climbed onto Red. Light, how could anyone's skin be so soft? “Hurin, where's the trail? Hurin? Hurin!”
The sniffer gave a start, and left off staring at Selene. “Yes, Lord Rand. Ah... the trail. South, my Lord. Still south.”
“Then let's ride.” Rand gave an uneasy look at the graygreen bulk of the grolm lying in the stream. It had been better believing they were the only living things in that world. “Take the trail, Hurin.”
Selene rode alongside Rand at first, talking of this and that, asking him questions and calling him lord. Half a dozen times he started to tell her he was no lord, only a shepherd, and every time, looking at her, he could not get the words out. A lady like her would not talk the same way with a shepherd, he was sure, even one who had saved her life.
“You will be a great man when you've found the Horn of Valere,” she told him. “A man for the legends. The man who sounds the Horn will make his own legends.”
“I don't want to sound it, and I don't want to be part of any legend.” He did not know if she was wearing perfume, but there seemed to be a scent to her, something that filled his head with her. Spices, sharp and sweet, tickling his nose, making him swallow.
“Every man wants to be great. You could be the greatest man in all the Ages.”
It sounded too close to what Moiraine had said. The Dragon Reborn would certainly stand out through the Ages. “Not me,” he said fervently. “I'm just” — he thought of her scorn if he told her now that he was only a shepherd after letting her believe he was a lord, and changed what he had been going to say — “just trying to find it. And to help a friend.”
She was silent a moment, then said, “You've hurt your hand.”
“It is nothing.” He started to put his injured hand inside his coat — it throbbed from holding the reins — but she reached out and took it.
He was so surprised he let her, and then there was nothing to do except either jerk away rudely or else let her unwrap the kerchief. Her touch felt cool and sure. His palm was angrily red and puffy, but the heron still stood out, plainly and clearly.
She touched the brand with a finger, but made no comment on it, not even to ask how he had come by it. “This could stiffen your hand if it's untended. I have an ointment that should help.” From a pocket inside her cloak she produced a small stone vial, unstopped it, and began gently rubbing a white salve on the burn as they rode.
The ointment felt cold at first, then seemed to melt away warmly into his flesh. And it worked as well as Nynaeve's ointments sometimes did. He stared in amazement as the redness faded and the swelling went down under her stroking fingers.
“Some men,” she said, not raising her eyes from his hand, “choose to seek greatness, while others are forced to it. It is always better to choose than to be forced. A man who's forced is never completely his own master. He must dance on the strings of those who forced him.”
Rand pulled his hand free. The brand looked a week old or more, all but healed. “What do you mean?” he demanded.
She smiled at him, and he felt ashamed of his outburst. “Why, the Horn, of course,” she said calmly, putting away her salve. Her mare, stepping along beside Red, was tall enough that her eyes were only a little below Rand's. “If you find the Horn of Valere, there will be no avoiding greatness. But will it be forced on you, or will you take it? That's the question.”
He flexed his hand. She sounded so much like Moiraine. “Are you Aes Sedai?”
Selene's eyebrows lifted; her dark eyes glittered at him, but her voice was soft. “Aes Sedai? I? No.”
“I didn't mean to offend you. I'm sorry.”
“Offend me? I am not offended, but I'm no Aes Sedai.” Her lip curled in a sneer; even that was beautiful. “They cower in what they think is safety when they could do so much. They serve when they could rule, let men fight wars when they could bring order to the world. No, never call me Aes Sedai. ” She smiled and laid her hand on his arm to show she was not angry — her touch made him swallow — but he was relieved when she let the mare drop back beside Loial. Hurin bobbed his head at her like an old family retainer.
Rand was relieved, but he missed her presence, too. She was only two spans away — he twisted in his saddle to stare at her, riding by Loial's side; the Ogier was bent half double in his saddle so he could talk with her — but that was not the same as being right there beside him, close enough for him to smell her heady scent, close enough to touch. He settled back angrily. It was not that he wanted to touch her, exactly — he reminded himself that he loved Egwene; he felt guilty at the need for reminding — but she was beautiful, and she thought he was a lord, and she said he could be a great man. He argued sourly with himself inside his head. Moiraine says you can be great, too; the Dragon Reborn. Selene is not Aes Sedai. That's right; she's a Cairhienin noblewoman. And you're a shepherd. She doesn't know that. How long do you let her believe a lie? It's only till we get out of this place. If we get out. If. On that note, his thoughts subsided to sullen silence.
He tried to keep a watch on the country through which they rode — if Selene said there were more of those things ... those grolm ... about, he believed her, and Hurin was too intent on smelling the trail to notice anything else. Loial was too wrapped up in his talk with Selene to see anything until it bit him on the heel — but it was hard to watch. Turning his head too quickly made his eyes water; a hill or a stand of trees could seem a mile off when seen from one angle and only a few hundred spans when seen from another.
The mountains were growing closer, of that much he was sure. Kinslayer's Dagger, looming against the sky now, a sawtooth expanse of snowcapped peaks. The land around them already rose in foothills heralding the coming of the mountains. They would reach the edge of the mountains proper well before dark, perhaps in only another hour or so. More than a hundred leagues in less than three days. Worse than that. We spent most of a day south of the Erinin in the real world. Over a hundred leaguer in less than two days, here.
“She says you were right about this place, Rand.”
Rand gave a start before he realized Loial had ridden up beside him. He looked for Selene and found her riding with Hurin; the sniffer was grinning and ducking his head and all but knuckling his forehead at everything she said. Rand glanced sideways at the Ogier. “I'm surprised you could let her go, the way you two had your heads together. What do you mean, I was right?”
"She is a fascinating woman, isn't she? Some of the Elders don't know as much as she does about history — especially the Age of Legends — and about — oh, yes. She says you were right about the Ways, Rand. The Aes Sedai, some of them, studied worlds like this, and that study was the basis of how they grew the Ways. She says there are worlds where it is time rather than distance that changes. Spend a day in one of those, and you might come back to find a year has passed in the real world, or twenty. Or it could be the other way round. Those worlds — this one, all the others — are reflections of the real world, she says. This one seems pale to us because it is a weak reflection, a world that had