The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,156

to them. He set the Horn back in the chest; it cast back the moonlight, pulled the eye.

“That is madness,” Selene said.

Rand flinched at the word. “Mad or not, it is what I’m doing. I told you, Selene, I want no part of greatness. Back there, I thought I did. For a while, I thought I wanted things. . . .” Light, she’s so beautiful. Egwene. Selene. I’m not worthy of either of them. “Something seemed to take hold of me.” Saidin came for me, but I fought it off with a sword. Or is that mad, too? He breathed deeply. “Shienar is where the Horn of Valere belongs. Or if not there, Lord Agelmar will know what to do with it.”

Hurin appeared from up the mountain. “The fire’s there again, Lord Rand, and bigger than ever. And I thought I heard shouting. It was all down in the hills. I don’t think they’ve come upon the mountain, yet.”

“You misunderstand me, Rand,” Selene said. “You cannot go back, now. You are committed. Those Friends of the Dark will not simply go away because you’ve taken the Horn from them. Far from it. Unless you know some way to kill them all, they will be hunting you now as you hunted them before.”

“No!” Loial and Hurin looked surprised at Rand’s vehemence. He softened his tone. “I don’t know any way to kill them all. They can live forever for all of me.”

Selene’s long hair shifted in waves as she shook her head. “Then you cannot go back, only onward. You can reach the safety of Cairhien’s walls long before you could return to Shienar. Does the thought of a few more days in my company seem so onerous?”

Rand stared at the chest. Selene’s company was far from burdensome, but near her he could not help thinking things he should not. Still, trying to ride back north meant risking Fain and his followers. She was right in that. Fain would never give up. Ingtar would not give up, either. If Ingtar came on southward, and Rand knew of no reason for him to turn aside, he would arrive at Cairhien, soon or late.

“Cairhien,” he agreed. “You will have to show me where you live, Selene. I’ve never been to Cairhien.” He reached to close the chest.

“You took something else from the Friends of the Dark?” Selene said. “You spoke earlier of a dagger.”

How could I forget? He left the chest as it was and pulled the dagger from his belt. The bare blade curved like a horn, and the quillons were golden serpents. Set in the hilt, a ruby as big as his thumbnail winked like an evil eye in the moonlight. Ornate as it was, tainted as he knew it was, it felt no different from any other knife.

“Be careful,” Selene said. “Do not cut yourself.”

Rand felt a shiver inside. If simply carrying it was dangerous, he did not want to know what a cut from it would do. “This is from Shadar Logoth,” he told the others. “It will twist whoever carries it for long, taint them to the bone the way Shadar Logoth is tainted. Without Aes Sedai Healing, that taint will kill, eventually.”

“So that is what ails Mat,” Loial said softly. “I never suspected.” Hurin stared at the dagger in Rand’s hand and wiped his own hands on the front of his coat. The sniffer did not look happy.

“None of us must handle it any more than is necessary,” Rand went on. “I will find some way to carry it—”

“It is dangerous.” Selene frowned at the blade as if the snakes were real, and poisonous. “Throw it away. Leave it, or bury it if you wish to keep it from other hands, but be rid of it.”

“Mat needs it,” Rand said firmly.

“It is too dangerous. You said so yourself.”

“He needs it. The Am . . . the Aes Sedai said he would die without it to use in Healing him.” They still have a string on him, but this blade will cut it. Until I’m rid of it, and the Horn, they have a string on me, but I’ll not dance however much they pull.

He set the dagger in the chest, inside the curl of the Horn—there was just room for it—and pulled the lid down. It locked with a sharp snap. “That should shield us from it.” He hoped it would. Lan said the time to sound most sure was when you were least certain.

“The chest will