The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,27

than when he had chased Mat and Perrin and Loial away. He had grown up thinking he would marry Egwene one day; they both had. But now. . . .

She jumped when he popped out right in front of her, and her breath caught loudly, but what she said was, “So there you are. Mat and Perrin told me what you did. And Loial. I know what you’re trying to do, Rand, and it is plain foolish.” She crossed her arms under her breasts, and her big, dark eyes fixed him sternly. He always wondered how she managed to seem to be looking down at him—she did it at will—although she was only as tall as his chest, and two years younger besides.

“Good,” he said. Her hair suddenly made him angry. He had never seen a grown woman with her hair unbraided until he left the Two Rivers. There, every girl waited eagerly for the Women’s Circle of her village to say she was old enough to braid her hair. Egwene certainly had. And here she was with her hair loose except for a ribbon. I want to go home and can’t, and she can’t wait to forget Emond’s Field. “You go away and leave me alone, too. You don’t want to keep company with a shepherd anymore. There are plenty of Aes Sedai here for you to moon around, now. And don’t tell any of them you saw me. They’re after me, and I don’t need you helping them.”

Bright spots of color bloomed in her cheeks. “Do you think I would—”

He turned to walk away, and with a cry she threw herself at him, flung her arms around his legs. They both tumbled to the stone floor, his saddlebags and bundles flying. He grunted when he hit, sword hilt digging into his side, and again when she scrabbled up and plopped herself down on his back as if he were a chair. “My mother,” she said firmly, “always told me the best way to learn to deal with a man was to learn to ride a mule. She said they have about equal brains most of the time. Sometimes the mule is smarter.”

He raised his head to look over his shoulder at her. “Get off me, Egwene. Get off! Egwene, if you don’t get off”—he lowered his voice ominously—“I’ll do something to you. You know what I am.” He added a glare for good measure.

Egwene sniffed. “You wouldn’t, if you could. You would not hurt anybody. But you can’t, anyway. I know you cannot channel the One Power whenever you want; it just happens, and you cannot control it. So you are not going to do anything to me or anybody else. I, on the other hand, have been taking lessons with Moiraine, so if you don’t listen to some sense, Rand al’Thor, I might just set your breeches on fire. I can manage that much. You keep on as you are and see if I cannot.” Suddenly, for just a moment, the torch nearest them on the wall flared up with a roar. She gave a squeak and stared at it, startled.

Twisting around, he grabbed her arm, pulled her off his back, and sat her against the wall. When he sat up himself, she was sitting there across from him, rubbing her arm furiously. “You really would have, wouldn’t you?” he said angrily. “You’re fooling with things you don’t understand. You could have burned both of us to charcoal!”

“Men! When you cannot win an argument, you either run away or resort to force.”

“Hold on there! Who tripped who? Who sat on who? And you threatened—tried!—to—” He raised both hands. “No, you don’t. You do this to me all the time. Whenever you realize the argument isn’t going the way you want, suddenly we are arguing about something else completely. Not this time.”

“I am not arguing,” she said calmly, “and I am not changing the subject, either. What is hiding except running away? And after you hide, you’ll run away for true. And what about hurting Mat, and Perrin, and Loial? And me? I know why. You’re afraid you will hurt somebody even worse if you let them stay near you. If you don’t do what you shouldn’t, then you do not have to worry about hurting anybody. All this running around and striking out, and you don’t even know if there’s a reason. Why should the Amyrlin, or any Aes Sedai but Moiraine, even know you exist?”

For a