The sky grew purple, with a dull golden sun on the horizon. Scores of dolphins escorted the vessel, rolling and arching alongside, and farther out some sort of sparkling silver blue fish rose above the surface in schools, gliding on outstretched fins a span across for fifty paces or more before plunging back into the swelling gray green water. Elayne watched in amazement for a dozen flights before they did not appear again.
But the dolphins, great sleek shapes, were wondrous enough, a guard of honor taking Wavedancer back where he belonged. Those she recognized from descriptions in books; it was said if they found you drowning, they would push you to shore. She was not sure she believed it, but it was a pretty story. She followed them along the side of the ship, to the bow, where they frolicked in the bow wave, rolling on their sides to look up at her without losing an inch.
She was almost in the narrowest point of the bow before she realized Thom Merrilin was there before her, smiling down at the dolphins a bit sadly, his cloak catching the wind like the cloud of sails above. He had rid himself of his belongings. He did seem familiar; truly he did. “Are you not happy, Master Merrilin?”
He glanced at her sideways. “Please, call me Thom, my Lady.”
“Thom, then. But not my Lady. I am only Mistress Trakand here.”
“As you say, Mistress Trakand,” he said with a hint of a smile.
“How can you look at these dolphins and be unhappy, Thom?”
“They are free,” he murmured, in such a tone that she was not sure he was answering her. “They have no decisions to make, no prices to pay. Not a worry in the world, except finding fish to eat. And sharks, I suppose. And lionfish. And likely a hundred more things I don't know. Perhaps it is not such an enviable life at that.”
“Do you envy them?” He did not answer, but that was the wrong question anyway. She needed to make him smile again. No, laugh. For some reason she was sure if she could make him laugh, she would remember where she had seen him before. She chose another topic, one that should be nearer his heart. “Do you mean to compose the epic of Rand, Thom?” Epics were for bards, not gleemen, but there could be no harm in a little flattery. “The epic of the Dragon Reborn. Loial means to write a book, you know.”
“Perhaps I will, Mistress Trakand. Perhaps. But neither my composing nor the Ogier's book will make much difference in the long run. Our stories will not survive, in the long run. When the next Age comes —” He grimaced, and tugged one of his mustaches. “Come to think of it, that may be no more than a year or two off. How is the end of an Age marked? It cannot always be a cataclysm on the order of the Breaking. But then, if the Prophecies are to be believed, this one will be. That is the trouble with prophecy. The original is always in the Old Tongue, and maybe High Chant as well: if you don't know what a thing means beforehand, there's no way to puzzle it out. Does it mean what it says, or is it a flowery way of saying something entirely different?”
“You were talking of your epic,” she said, trying to guide him back, but he shook his shaggy white head.
“I was talking of change. My epic, if I compose it — and Loial's book — will be no more than seed, if we are both lucky. Those who know the truth will die, and their grandchildren's grandchildren will remember something different. And their grandchildren's grandchildren something else again. Two dozen generations, and you may be the hero of it, not Rand.”
“Me?” she laughed.
“Or maybe Mat, or Lan. Or even myself.” He grinned at her, warming his weathered face. “Thom Merrilin. Not a gleeman — but what? Who can say? Not eating fire, but breathing it. Hurling it about like an Aes Sedai.” He flourished his cloak. “Thom Merrilin, the mysterious hero, toppling mountains and raising up kings.” The grin became a rich belly laugh. “Rand al'Thor may be lucky if the next Age remembers his name correctly.”
She was right; it was not just a feeling. That face, that mirthfilled laugh; she did remember them. But from where? She had to keep him talking. “Does it always happen that way? I do not think anyone doubts, say, that Artur Hawkwing conquered an empire. The whole world, or near enough.”
“Hawkwing, young Mistress? He made an empire, all right, but do you think he did everything the books and stories and epics say he did? The way they say he did it? Killed the hundred best men of an opposing army, one by one? The two armies just stood there while one of the generals — a king — fought a hundred duels?”
“The books say he did.”
“There isn't time between sunrise and sunset for one man to fight a hundred duels, girl.”
She almost stopped him short — girl? She was Daughter Heir of Andor, not girl — but he had the bit in his teeth. “And that is only a thousand years back. Go back further, back to the oldest tales I know, from the Age before the Age of Legends. Did Mosk and Merk really fight with spears of fire, and were they even giants? Was Elsbet really queen of the whole world, and was Anla really her sister? Was Anla truly the Wise Counselor, or was it someone else? As well ask what sort of animal ivory comes from, or what kind of plant grows silk. Unless that comes from an animal, too.”
“I do not know about those other questions,” Elayne said a bit stiffly; being called girl still rankled, “but you could ask the Sea Folk about ivory and silk.”
He laughed again — as she had hoped, though it still did no more than drive home the certainty that she knew him — but instead of calling her foolish, as she half expected and was prepared for, he said, “Practical and to the point, just like your mother. Both feet on the earth and few flights of fancy.”
She lifted her chin a little, made her face cooler. She might be passing herself off as simple Mistress Trakand, but this was something else. He was an amiable old man, and she did want to reason out the puzzle of him, but he was a gleeman after all, and he should not speak of a queen in such familiar tones. Oddly, infuriatingly, he appeared amused. Amused!
“The Atha'an Miere do not know, either,” he said. “They see no more of the lands beyond the Aiel Waste than a few miles around the handful of harbors where they are permitted to land. Those places are walled high, and the walls guarded so they cannot even climb up to see what is on the other side. If one of their ships makes landfall anywhere else — or any ship not theirs; only the Sea Folk are allowed to come there — that ship and its crew are never seen again. And that is almost as much as I can tell you after more years of asking than I like to think of. The Atha'an Miere keep their secrets, but I do not believe they know much to keep here. From what I have been able to learn, the Cairhienin were treated the same, when they still had the right to travel the Silk Path across the Waste. Cairhienin traders never saw anything but one walled town, and those who wandered from it vanished.”
Elayne found herself studying him much as she had the dolphins. What kind of man was this? Twice now he might have laughed at her — he had been amused just then, as much as she hated to admit it — but instead he talked to her as seriously as... Well, as father to daughter. “You might find a few answers on this ship, Thom. They were bound east until we convinced the Sailmistress to take us to Tanchico. To Shara, the Cargomaster said, east of Mayene; that must mean beyond the Waste.”
He stared at her for a moment. “Shara, you say? I have never heard any such name before. Is Shara city or nation or both? Perhaps I will learn a little more.”
What did I say? she wondered. I said something to make him think. Light! I told him we convinced Coine to change her plans. It could not make any difference, but she scolded herself severely. A careless word to this nice old man might do no harm, but the same might kill her in Tanchico, and Nynaeve, too, not to mention the thiefcatcher and Thom himself. If he was such a nice old man. “Thom, why did you come with us? Just because Moiraine asked?”
His shoulders shook; she realized he was laughing at himself. “As to that, who can say? Aes Sedai asking favors are not easily resisted. Perhaps it was the prospect of your pleasant company for the voyage. Or perhaps I decided Rand is old enough to look after himself for a while.”
He laughed out loud, and she had to laugh with him. The idea of this whitehaired old fellow looking after Rand. The feeling that she could trust him came back, stronger than ever, as he looked at her. Not because he could laugh at himself, or not only that. She could not have given a reason beyond the fact that, looking up into those blue eyes, she could not make herself believe this man would ever do anything to harm her.
The urge to pull one of his mustaches again was almost overwhelming, but she schooled her hands to stillness. She was not a child, after all. A child. She opened her mouth — and suddenly everything went out of her head.
“Please excuse me, Thom,” she said hurriedly. “I must... Excuse me.” She started toward the stern quickly, not waiting for a reply. He probably thought the ship's motion had upset her stomach. Wavedancer was pitching more rapidly, moving faster through the great sea swells as the wind freshened.