The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,260

cousin, and if Rhian put on a dress and said she was your aunt, you’d believe it yourself. Oh, all right. Don’t look at me like that, Perrin. If he wants to say he isn’t, all right. What difference does it make, anyway?” Perrin shook his head.

Ogier girls brought water and towels for washing faces and hands, and cheese and fruit and wine, with pewter goblets a little too large to be comfortable in the hand. Other Ogier women came, too, their dresses all embroidered. One by one they appeared, a dozen of them all told, to ask if the humans were comfortable, if they needed anything. Each turned her attentions to Loial just before she left. He gave his answers respectfully but in as few words as Rand had ever heard him use, standing with an Ogier-sized, wood-bound book clutched to his chest like a shield, and when they went, he huddled in his chair with the book held up in front of his face. The books in the house were one thing not sized for humans.

“Just smell this air, Lord Rand,” Hurin said, filling his lungs with a smile. His feet dangled from one of the chairs at the table; he swung them like a boy. “I never thought most places smelled bad, but this. . . . Lord Rand, I don’t think there’s ever been any killing here. Not even any hurting, except by accident.”

“The stedding are supposed to be safe for everyone,” Rand said. He was watching Loial. “That’s what the stories say, anyway.” He swallowed a last bit of white cheese and went over to the Ogier. Mat followed with a goblet in his hand. “What’s the matter, Loial?” Rand said. “You’ve been as nervous as a cat in a dogyard ever since we came here.”

“It is nothing,” Loial said, giving the door an uneasy glance from the corner of his eye.

“Are you afraid they’ll find out you left Stedding Shangtai without permission from your Elders?”

Loial looked around wildly, the tufts on his ears vibrating. “Don’t say that,” he hissed. “Not where anyone can hear. If they found out. . . .” With a heavy sigh, he slumped back, looking from Rand to Mat. “I don’t know how humans do it, but among Ogier. . . . If a girl sees a boy she likes, she goes to her mother. Or sometimes the mother sees someone she thinks is suitable. In any case, if they agree, the girl’s mother goes to the boy’s mother, and the next thing the boy knows, his marriage is all arranged.”

“Doesn’t the boy have any say in it?” Mat asked incredulously.

“None. The women always say we would spend our lives married to the trees if it was left to us.” Loial shifted, grimacing. “Half of our marriages take place between stedding; groups of young Ogier visit from stedding to stedding so they can see, and be seen. If they discover I’m Outside without permission, the Elders will almost certainly decide I need a wife to settle me down. Before I know it, they’ll have sent a message to Stedding Shangtai, to my mother, and she will come here and have me married before she washes off the dust of her journey. She’s always said I am too hasty and need a wife. I think she was looking when I left. Whatever wife she chooses for me . . . well, any wife at all won’t let me go back Outside until I have gray in my beard. Wives always say no man should be allowed Outside until he’s settled enough to control his temper.”

Mat gave a guffaw loud enough to draw every head, but at Loial’s frantic gesture he spoke softly. “Among us, men do the choosing, and no wife can stop a man doing what he wants.”

Rand frowned, remembering how Egwene had begun following him around when they were both little. It was then that Mistress al’Vere had begun taking a special interest in him, more than in any of the other boys. Later, some girls would dance with him on feastdays and some would not, and those who would were always Egwene’s friends, while those who would not were girls Egwene did not like. He also seemed to remember Mistress al’Vere taking Tam aside—And she was muttering about Tam not having a wife for her to talk to!—and after that, Tam and everyone else had acted as if he and Egwene were promised, even though they had not