broken neck, or. . . .”
“He’s just worried about the dagger, Rand,” Loial said.
“I know,” Rand said. But how long before he tells somebody what I am, not even meaning to? He could not believe Mat would betray him on purpose; there was that much of their friendship left, at least. “Loial, boost me up where I can see over the wall.”
“Rand, if the Darkfriends are still—”
“They aren’t. Boost me up, Loial.”
The three of them moved close to the wall, and Loial made a stirrup with his hands for Rand’s foot. The Ogier straightened easily with the weight, lifting Rand’s head just high enough to see over the top of the wall.
The thin, waning moon gave little light, and most of the area was in shadow, but there did not seem to be any flowers or shrubs inside the walled square. Only a lone bench of pale marble, placed as if one man might sit on it to stare at what stood in the middle of the space like a huge upright stone slab.
Rand caught the top of the wall and pulled himself up. Loial gave a low hsst and grabbed at his foot, but he jerked free and rolled over the wall, dropping inside. There was close-cropped grass under his feet; he thought vaguely that Barthanes must let sheep in, at least. Staring at the shadowed stone slab, the Waygate, he was startled to hear boots thump to the ground beside him.
Hurin climbed to his feet, dusting himself off. “You should be careful doing that, Lord Rand. Could be anybody hiding in here. Or anything.” He peered into the darkness within the walls, feeling at his belt as if for the short sword and sword-breaker he had had to leave at the inn; servants did not go armed in Cairhien. “Jump in a hole without looking, and there’ll be a snake in it every time.”
“You would smell them,” Rand said.
“Maybe.” The sniffer inhaled deeply. “But I can only smell what they’ve done, not what they intend.”
There was a scraping sound from over Rand’s head, and then Loial was letting himself down from the wall. The Ogier did not even have to straighten his arms completely before his boots touched the ground. “Rash,” he muttered. “You humans are always so rash and hasty. And now you have me doing it. Elder Haman would speak to me severely, and my mother. . . .” The darkness hid his face, but Rand was sure his ears were twitching vigorously. “Rand, if you don’t start being a little careful, you are going to get me in trouble.”
Rand walked to the Waygate, walked all the way around it. Even close up it looked like nothing more than a thick square of stone, taller than he was. The back was smooth and cool to the touch—he only brushed his hand against it quickly—but the front had been carved by an artist’s hands. Vines, leaves, and flowers covered it, each so finely done that in the dim moonlight they seemed almost real. He felt the ground in front of it; the grass had been scraped partly away in two arcs such as those gates would make in opening.
“Is that a Waygate?” Hurin asked uncertainly. “I’ve heard tell of them, of course, but. . . .” He sniffed the air. “The trail goes right to it and stops, Lord Rand. How are we going to follow them, now? I’ve heard if you go through a Waygate, you come out mad, if you come out at all.”
“It can be done, Hurin. I’ve done it, and Loial, and Mat and Perrin.” Rand never took his eyes from the tangles of leaves on the stone. There was one unlike any other carved there, he knew. The trefoil leaf of fabled Avendesora, the Tree of Life. He put his hand on it. “I’ll bet you can smell their trail along the Ways. We can follow anywhere they can run.” It would not hurt to prove to himself that he could make himself step through a Waygate. “I’ll prove it to you.” He heard Hurin groan. The leaf was worked in the stone just as the others were, but it came away in his hand. Loial groaned, too.
In an instant the illusion of living plants seemed suddenly real. Stone leaves appeared to stir with a breeze, flowers appeared to have color even in the dark. Down the center of the mass a line appeared, and the two halves of the slab swung