The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,139

it is best to wrap it around you continuously, to dwell in it at all times, or so I’ve heard.”

He did not even have to think about what lay waiting for him in the void to know his answer to that, but what he said was, “I’ll think about it.”

“Wear this void of yours all the time, Rand al’Thor, and you’ll learn uses for it you never suspected.”

“I said I will think about it.” She opened her mouth again, but he cut her off. “You know all these things. About the void—the Oneness, you call it. About this world. Loial reads books all the time; he’s read more books than I’ve ever seen, and he’s never seen anything but a fragment about the Stones.”

Selene drew herself up straight in her saddle. Suddenly she reminded him of Moiraine, and of Queen Morgase, when they were angry.

“There was a book written about these worlds,” she said tightly. “Mirrors of the Wheel. You see, the alantin has not seen all the books that are.”

“What is this alantin you call him? I’ve never heard—”

“The Portal Stone beside which I woke is up there,” Selene said, pointing into the mountains, off to the east of their path. Rand found himself wishing for her warmth again, and her smiles. “If you take me to it, you can return me to my home, as you promised. We can reach it in an hour.”

Rand barely looked where she pointed. Using the Stone—Portal Stone, she called it—meant wielding the Power, if he were to take her back to the real world. “Hurin, how is the trail?”

“Fainter than ever, Lord Rand, but still there.” The sniffer spared a quick grin and bob of his head for Selene. “I think it’s starting to angle off to the west. There’s some easier passes there, toward the tip of the Dagger, as I recall from when I went to Cairhien that time.”

Rand sighed. Fain, or one of his Darkfriends, has to know another way to use the Stones. A Darkfriend couldn’t use the Power. “I have to follow the Horn, Selene.”

“How do you know your precious Horn is even in this world? Come with me, Rand. You’ll find your legend, I promise you. Come with me.”

“You can use the Stone, this Portal Stone, yourself,” he said angrily. Before the words were out of his mouth he wanted them back. Why does she have to keep talking about legends? Stubbornly, he forced himself to go on. “The Portal Stone didn’t bring you here by itself. You did it, Selene. If you made the Stone bring you here, you can make it take you back. I’ll take you to it, but then I must go on after the Horn.”

“I know nothing about using the Portal Stones, Rand. If I did anything, I don’t know what it was.”

Rand studied her. She sat her saddle, straight-backed and tall, just as regally as before, but somehow softer, too. Proud, yet vulnerable, and needing him. He had put Nynaeve’s age to her—a handful of years older than himself—but he had been wrong, he realized. She was more his own age, and beautiful, and she needed him. The thought, just the thought, of the void flickered through his head, and of the light. Saidin. To use the Portal Stone, he must dip himself back into that taint.

“Stay with me, Selene,” he said. “We’ll find the Horn, and Mat’s dagger, and we’ll find a way back. I promise you. Just stay with me.”

“You always. . . .” Selene drew a deep breath as if to calm herself. “You always are so stubborn. Well, I can admire stubbornness in a man. There is little to a man who’s too easily biddable.”

Rand colored; it was too much like the things Egwene sometimes said, and they had all but been promised in marriage since they were children. From Selene, the words, and the direct look that went with them, were a shock. He turned to tell Hurin to press on with the trail.

From behind them came a distant, coughing grunt. Before Rand could whirl Red to look, another bark sounded, and three more on its heels. At first he could make out nothing as the landscape seemed to waver in his eyes, but then he saw them through the widespread stands of trees, just topping a hill. Five shapes, it seemed, only half a mile distant, a bare thousand paces at most, and coming in thirty-foot bounds.

“Grolm,” Selene said calmly. “A small pack, but