The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,138

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 little chance of ever being. Others are almost as likely as ours. Those are as solid as our world, and have people. The same people, she says, Rand. Imagine it! You could go to one of them and meet yourself. The Pattern has infinite variation, she says, and every variation that can be, will be.”

Rand shook his head, then wished he had not as the landscape flickered back and forth and his stomach lurched. He took a deep breath. “How does she know all that? You know about more things than anybody I ever met before, Loial, and all you knew about this world amounted to no more than a rumor.”

“She’s Cairhienin, Rand. The Royal Library in Cairhien is one of the greatest in the world, perhaps the greatest outside Tar Valon. The Aiel spared it deliberately, you know, when they burned Cairhien. They will not destroy a book. Did you know that they—”

“I don’t care about Aielmen,” Rand said hotly. “If Selene knows so much, I hope she read how to get us home from here. I wish Selene—”

“You wish Selene what?” The woman laughed as she joined them.

Rand stared at her as if she had been gone months; that was how he felt. “I wish Selene would come ride with me some more,” he said. Loial chuckled, and Rand felt his face burn.

Selene smiled, and looked at Loial. “You will excuse us, alantin.”

The Ogier bowed in his saddle and let his big horse fall back, the tufts on his ears drooping with reluctance.

For a time Rand rode in silence, enjoying Selene’s presence. Now and again he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He wished he could get his feelings about her straight. Could she be an Aes Sedai, despite her denial? Someone sent by Moiraine to push him along whatever path he was meant to follow in the Aes Sedai’s plans? Moiraine could not have known he would be taken to this strange world, and no Aes Sedai would have tried to fend off that beast with a stick when she could strike it dead or send it running with the Power. Well. Since she took him for a lord and no one in Cairhien knew different, he might keep on letting her think it. She was surely the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, intelligent and learned, and she thought he was brave; what more could a man ask from a wife? That’s crazy, too. I’d marry Egwene if I could marry anyone, but I can’t ask a woman to marry a man who’s going to go mad, maybe hurt her. But Selene was so beautiful.

She was studying his sword, he saw. He readied the words in his head. No, he was not a blademaster, but his father had given him the sword. Tam. Light, why couldn’t you really be my father? He squashed the thought ruthlessly.

“That was a magnificent shot,” Selene said.

“No, I’m not a—” Rand began, then blinked. “A shot?”

“Yes. A tiny target, that eye, moving, at a hundred paces. You’ve a wonderful hand with that bow.”

Rand shifted awkwardly. “Ah . . . thank you. It’s a trick my father taught me.” He told her about the void, about how Tam had taught him how to use it with the bow. He even found himself telling her about Lan and his sword lessons.

“The Oneness,” she said, sounding satisfied. She saw his questioning look and added, “That is what it is called . . . in some places. The Oneness. To learn the full use of it,