The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,341

put a hand over one of Rand’s comfortingly.

Moiraine reached under her cloak again and came out with a rolled parchment, one of the large sheets such as the street artists in Falme used. The chalks were a little smudged when she unfurled it, but the picture was still clear enough. A man whose face was a solid flame fought with a staff against another with a sword among clouds where lightning danced, and behind them rippled the Dragon banner. Rand’s face was easily recognizable.

“How many have seen that?” he demanded. “Tear it up. Burn it.”

The Aes Sedai let the parchment roll back up. “It would do no good, Rand. I bought that two days gone, in a village we passed through. There are hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, and the tale is being told everywhere of how the Dragon battled the Dark One in the skies above Falme.”

Rand looked at Min. She nodded reluctantly, and squeezed his hand. She looked frightened, but she did not flinch away. I wonder if that’s why Egwene left. She was right to leave.

“The Pattern weaves itself around you even more tightly,” Moiraine said. “You need me now more than ever.”

“I don’t need you,” he said harshly, “and I don’t want you. I will not have anything to do with this.” He remembered being called Lews Therin; not only by Ba’alzamon, but by Artur Hawkwing. “I won’t. Light, the Dragon is supposed to Break the World again, to tear everything apart. I will not be the Dragon.”

“You are what you are,” Moiraine said. “Already you stir the world. The Black Ajah has revealed itself for the first time in two thousand years. Arad Doman and Tarabon were on the brink of war, and it will be worse when news of Falme reaches them. Cairhien is in civil war.”

“I did nothing in Cairhien,” he protested. “You can’t blame that on me.”

“Doing nothing was always a ploy in the Great Game,” she said with a sigh, “and especially as they play it now. You were the spark, and Cairhien exploded like an Illuminator’s firework. What do you think will happen when word of Falme reaches Arad Doman and Tarabon? There have always been men willing to proclaim for any man who called himself the Dragon, but they have never before had such signs as this. There is more. Here.” She tossed a pouch on his chest.

He hesitated a moment before opening it. Within lay shards of what seemed to be black-and-white glazed pottery. He had seen their like before. “Another seal on the Dark One’s prison,” he mumbled. Min gasped; her grip on his hand sought comfort, now, rather than offering it.

“Two,” Moiraine said. “Three of the seven are broken now. The one I had, and two I found in the High Lord’s dwelling in Falme. When all seven are broken, perhaps even before, the patch men put over the hole they drilled into the prison the Creator made will be torn asunder, and the Dark One will once more be able to put his hand through that hole and touch the world. And the only hope of the world is that the Dragon Reborn will be there to face him.”

Min tried to stop Rand from throwing back the blankets, but he pushed her gently aside. “I need to walk.” She helped him up, but with a great many sighs and grumbles about him making his wound worse. He discovered that his chest was wrapped round with bandages. Min draped one of the blankets about his shoulders like a cloak.

For a moment he stood staring down at the heron-mark sword, what was left of it, lying on the ground. Tam’s sword. My father’s sword. Reluctantly, more reluctantly than he had ever done anything in his life, he let go of the hope that he would discover Tam really was his father. It felt as if he were tearing his heart out. But it did not change the way he felt about Tam, and Emond’s Field was the only home he had ever known. Fain is the important thing. I have one duty left. Stopping him.

The two women had to support him, one on either arm, down to where the campfires were already burning, not far from a road of hard-packed dirt. Loial was there, reading a book, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, and Perrin, staring into one of the fires. The Shienarans were making preparations for their evening meal. Lan sat under a tree sharpening his belt