The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,243

wagons and folk afoot, all streaming toward the great city.

Built on rising hills, it was surely as large as Tar Valon, and outside the huge walls—a fifty-foot height of pale, grayish stone streaked with white and silver sparkling in the sun, spaced with tall, round towers with the Lion Banner of Andor waving atop them, white on red—outside those walls, it seemed as if another great city had been placed, wrapping around the walled city, all red brick and gray stone and white plastered walls, inns pushed in on houses of three and four stories so fine they must belong to wealthy merchants, shops with goods displayed on tables under awnings crowding against wide, windowless warehouses. Open markets under red and purple roof tiles lined the road on both sides, men and women already crying their wares, bargaining at the top of their voices, while penned calves and sheep and goats and pigs, caged geese and chickens and ducks, added to the din. He seemed to remember thinking Caemlyn was too noisy when he was here before; now it sounded like a heartbeat, pumping wealth.

The road led to arched gates twenty feet high, standing open under the watchful eye of red-coated Queen’s Guards in their shining breastplates—they eyed Thom and him no more than anyone else, not even the quarterstaff slanted across his saddle in front of him; all they cared was that people keep moving, it seemed—and then they were within. Slender towers here rose even taller than those along the walls, and gleaming domes shone white and gold above streets teeming with people. Just inside the gates the road split into two parallel streets, separated by a wide strip of grass and trees. The hills of the city rose like steps toward a peak, which was surrounded by another wall, shining as white as Tar Valon’s, with still more domes and towers within. That was the Inner City, Mat recalled, and atop those highest hills stood the Royal Palace.

“No point waiting,” he told Thom. “I’ll take the letter straight on.” He looked at the sedan chairs and carriages making their way through the crowds, the shops with all their goods displayed. “A man could earn some gold in this city, Thom, once he found a game of dice, or cards.” He was not quite so lucky at cards as at dice, but few except nobles and the wealthy played those games anyway. Now that’s who I should find a game with.

Thom yawned at him and hitched at his gleeman’s cloak as if it were a blanket. “We have ridden all night, boy. Let’s at least find something to eat, first. The Queen’s Blessing has good meals.” He yawned again. “And good beds.”

“I remember that,” Mat said slowly. He did, in a way. The innkeeper was a fat man with graying hair, Master Gill. Moiraine had caught up to Rand and him there, when he had thought they were finally free of her. She’s off playing her game with Rand, now. Nothing to do with me. Not anymore. “I will meet you there, Thom. I said I’d have this letter out of my hands an hour after I arrived, and I mean to. You go on.”

Thom nodded and turned his horse aside, calling over his shoulder through a yawn. “Do not become lost, boy. It’s a big city, Caemlyn.”

And a rich one. Mat heeled his mount on up the crowded street. Lost! I can find my bloody way. The sickness appeared to have erased parts of his memory. He could look at an inn, its upper floors sticking out over the ground floor all the way around and its sign creaking in the breeze, and remember seeing it before, yet not recall another thing he could see from that spot. A hundred paces of street might abruptly spark in his memory, while the parts before and after remained as mysterious as dice still in the cup.

Even with the holes in his memory he was sure he had never been to the Inner City or the Royal Palace—I couldn’t forget that!—yet he did not need to remember the way. The streets of the New City—he remembered that name suddenly; it was the part of Caemlyn less than two thousand years old—ran every which way, but the main boulevards all led to the Inner City. The Guards at the gates made no effort to stop anyone.

Within those white walls were buildings that could almost have fit in Tar Valon. The curving