The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,116

Anaiya. Formally, she said, “Anaiya Sedai, I know it sounds foolish, but he is in danger. Great danger. I know it. I could feel it. I still can.”

Anaiya wore a thoughtful look. “Well, now,” she said softly, “that’s a possibility I’ll wager no one has considered. You may be a Dreamer. It is a small chance, child, but. . . . We haven’t had one of those in—oh—four or five hundred years. And Dreaming is close linked to Foretelling. If you really can Dream, it may be that you can Foretell, as well. That would be a finger in the Reds’ eye. Of course, it could be just an ordinary nightmare, brought on by a late night, and cold food, and us traveling so hard since we left Fal Dara. And you missing your young man. Much more likely. Yes, yes, child, I know. You are worried about him. Did your dream indicate what kind of danger?”

Egwene shook her head. “He just vanished, and I felt danger. And evil. I felt it even before he vanished.” She shivered and rubbed her hands together. “I can still feel it.”

“Well, we will talk about it more on the River Queen. If you are a Dreamer, I will see you have the training Moiraine should be here to. . . . You there!” the Aes Sedai barked suddenly, and Egwene jumped. A tall man, who had just sat down on a cask of wine, jumped, too. Several others quickened their step. “That’s for loading aboard, not resting on! We will talk on the boat, child. No, you fool! You can’t carry it by yourself! Do you want to hurt yourself?” Anaiya went striding off down the dock, giving the unfortunate villagers a rougher side of her tongue than Egwene would have suspected she had.

Egwene peered into the dark, toward the south. He was out there, somewhere. Not in Fal Dara, not in the Blight. She was sure of it. Hold on, you wool-headed idiot. If you get yourself killed before I can get you out of this, I will skin you alive. It did not occur to her to ask how she was going to get him out of anything, going to Tar Valon as she was.

Snugging her cloak around her, she set out to find a boat to the River Queen.

CHAPTER

13

From Stone to Stone

The light of the rising sun woke Rand, and he wondered if he were dreaming. He sat up slowly, staring. Everything had changed, or almost everything. The sun and the sky were as he expected to see, if pallid and all but cloudless. Loial and Hurin still lay on either side of him, wrapped in their cloaks asleep, and their horses still stood hobbled a pace away, but everyone else was gone. Soldiers, horses, his friends, everyone and everything gone.

The hollow itself had changed, too, and they were in the middle of it now, no longer on the edge. At Rand’s head rose a gray stone cylinder, every bit of three spans high and a full pace thick, covered with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deeply incised diagrams and markings in some language he did not recognize. White stone paved the bottom of the hollow, as level as a floor, polished so smooth it almost glistened. Broad, high steps rose to the rim in concentric rings of different colored stone. And about the rim, the trees stood blackened and twisted as if a firestorm had roared through them. Everything seemed paler than it should be, just like the sun, more subdued, as if seen through mist. Only there was no mist. Just the three of them and the horses appeared truly solid. But when he touched the stone under him, it felt solid enough.

He reached out and shook Loial and Hurin. “Wake up! Wake up and tell me I’m dreaming. Please wake up!”

“Is it morning already?” Loial began, sitting up, then his mouth fell open, and his big, round eyes grew wider and wider.

Hurin woke with a start, then leaped to his feet, jumping like a flea on a hot rock to look this way, then that. “Where are we? What’s happened? Where is everybody? Where are we, Lord Rand?” He sank to his knees, wringing his hands, but his eyes still darted. “What’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” Rand said slowly. “I was hoping it was a dream, but. . . . Maybe it is a dream.” He had had experience of dreams that were not dreams, experience he wanted neither