The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,133

so badly, and the wind felt good on his face.

The mound covered a good two hides, but the grassy slope rose at an easy slant. The gray spire reared into the sky, squared and broad enough despite its height to seem massive, almost squat. Rand’s laughter died, and he pulled Red up, his face grim.

“Is that Hawkwing’s monument, Lord Rand?” Hurin asked uneasily. “It doesn’t look right, somehow.”

Rand recognized the harsh, angular script that covered the face of the monument, and he recognized some of the symbols chiseled on the breadth, chiseled as tall as a man. The horned skull of the Dha’vol Trollocs. The iron fist of the Dhai’mon. The trident of the Ko’bal, and the whirlwind of the Ahf’frait. There was a hawk, too, carved near the bottom. With a wingspan of ten paces, it lay on its back, pierced by a lightning bolt, and ravens pecked at its eyes. The huge wings atop the spire seemed to block the sun.

He heard Loial galloping up behind him.

“I tried to tell you, Rand,” Loial said. “It is a raven, not a hawk. I could see it clearly.” Hurin turned his horse, refusing even to look at the spire any longer.

“But how?” Rand said. “Artur Hawkwing won a victory over the Trollocs here. Ingtar said so.”

“Not here,” Loial said slowly. “Obviously not here. ‘From Stone to Stone run the lines of it, between the worlds that might be.’ I’ve been thinking on it, and I believe I know what ‘the worlds that might be’ are. Maybe I do. Worlds our world might have been if things had happened differently. Maybe that’s why it is all so . . . washed-out looking. Because it’s an ‘if,’ a ‘maybe.’ Just a shadow of the real world. In this world, I think, the Trollocs won. Maybe that’s why we have not seen any villages or people.”

Rand’s skin crawled. Where Trollocs won, they did not leave humans alive except for food. If they had won across an entire world. . . . “If the Trollocs had won, they would be everywhere. We’d have seen a thousand of them by now. We’d be dead since yesterday.”

“I do not know, Rand. Perhaps, after they killed the people, they killed one another. Trollocs live to kill. That is all they do; that is all they are. I just don’t know.”

“Lord Rand,” Hurin said abruptly, “something moved down there.”

Rand whirled his horse, ready to see charging Trollocs, but Hurin was pointing back the way they had come, at nothing. “What did you see, Hurin? Where?”

The sniffer let his arm drop. “Right at the edge of that clump of trees there, about a mile. I thought it was . . . a woman . . . and something else I couldn’t make out, but. . . .” He shivered. “It’s so hard to make out things that aren’t under your nose. Aaah, this place has my guts all awhirl. I’m likely imagining things, my Lord. This is a place for queer fancies.” His shoulders hunched as if he felt the spire pressing on them. “No doubt it was just the wind, my Lord.”

Loial said, “There’s something else to consider, I’m afraid.” He sounded troubled again. He pointed southward. “What do you see off there?”

Rand squinted against the way things far off seemed to slide toward him. “Land like what we’ve been crossing. Trees. Then some hills, and mountains. Nothing else. What do you want me to see?”

“The mountains,” Loial sighed. The tufts on his ears drooped, and the ends of his eyebrows were down on his cheeks. “That has to be Kinslayer’s Dagger, Rand. There aren’t any other mountains they could be, unless this world is completely different from ours. But Kinslayer’s Dagger lies more than a hundred leagues south of the Erinin. A good bit more. Distances are hard to judge in this place, but. . . . I think we will reach them before dark.” He did not have to say any more. They could not have covered over a hundred leagues in less than three days.

Without thinking, Rand muttered, “Maybe this place is like the Ways.” He heard Hurin moan, and instantly regretted not keeping a rein on his tongue.

It was not a pleasant thought. Enter a Waygate—they could be found just outside Ogier stedding, and in Ogier groves—enter and walk for a day, and you could leave by another Waygate a hundred leagues from where you started. The Ways were dark, now, and foul, and