The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,267

saidin. He wanted to save Mat and stop Fain, but he did not want to touch saidin. He was afraid to channel, and he hungered for it like a starving man for food. “I don’t remember anything.”

Verin sighed. “The symbols at the bottom indicate Stones at other places. If you know the trick of it, you could take us, not to this same Stone in another world, but to one of those others there, or even to one of them here. It was something akin to Traveling, I think, but just as no one remembers how to Travel, no one remembers the trick. Without that knowledge, trying it might easily destroy us all.” She pointed to two parallel wavy lines crossed by an odd squiggle, carved low on the column. “That indicates a Stone on Toman Head. It is one of three Stones for which I know the symbol; the only one of those three I’ve visited. And what I learned—after nearly being caught by the snows in the Mountains of Mist and freezing my way across Almoth Plain—was absolutely nothing. Do you play at dice, or cards, Rand al’Thor?”

“Mat’s the gambler. Why?”

“Yes. Well, we’ll leave him out of this, I think. These other symbols are also known to me.”

With one finger she outlined a rectangle containing eight carvings that were much alike, a circle and an arrow, but in half the arrow was contained inside the circle, while in the others the point pierced the circle through. The arrows pointed left, right, up and down, and surrounding each circle was a different line of what Rand was sure was script, though in no language he knew, all curving lines that suddenly became jagged hooks, then flowed on again.

“At least,” Verin went on, “I know this much about them. Each stands for a world, the study of which led eventually to the making of the Ways. These are not all of the worlds studied, but the only ones for which I know the symbols. This is where gambling comes in. I don’t know what any of these worlds is like. It is believed there are worlds where a year is only a day here, and others where a day is a year here. There are supposed to be worlds where the very air would kill us at a breath, and worlds that barely have enough reality to hold together. I would not speculate on what might happen if we found ourselves in one of those. You must choose. As my father would have said, it’s time to roll the dice.”

Rand stared, shaking his head. “I could kill all of us, whatever I choose.”

“Are you not willing to take that risk? For the Horn of Valere? For Mat?”

“Why are you so willing to take it? I don’t even know if I can do it. It—it doesn’t work every time I try.” He knew no one had come any closer, but he looked anyway. All of them waited in a loose circle around the Stone, watching, but not close enough to eavesdrop. “Sometimes saidin is just there. I can feel it, but it might as well be on the moon as far as touching it. And even if it does work, what if I take us someplace we can’t breathe? What good will that do Mat? Or the Horn?”

“You are the Dragon Reborn,” she said quietly. “Oh, you can die, but I don’t think the Pattern will let you die until it is done with you. Then again, the Shadow lies on the Pattern, now, and who can say how that affects the weaving? All you can do is follow your destiny.”

“I am Rand al’Thor,” he growled. “I am not the Dragon Reborn. I won’t be a false Dragon.”

“You are what you are. Will you choose, or will you stand here until your friend dies?”

Rand heard his teeth grinding and forced himself to unclench his jaw. The symbols could all have been exactly alike, for all they meant to him. The script could as well have been a chicken’s scratchings. At last he settled on one, with an arrow pointing left because it pointed toward Toman Head, an arrow that pierced the circle because it had broken free, as he wanted to. He wanted to laugh. Such small things on which to gamble all their lives.

“Come closer,” Verin ordered the others. “It will be best if you are near.” They obeyed, with only a little hesitation. “It is time to begin,” she