The Wheel of Time, page 81
“I suppose I should thank you,” Thom Merrilin muttered finally, “for teaching me how true the old saying is. Teach him how you will, a pig will never play the flute.” The sailor burst out laughing, and Mat raised the flute as if to throw it at him. Deftly, Thom snagged the instrument from Mat’s fist and fitted it into its hard leather case. “I thought all you shepherds whiled away the time with the flock playing the pipes or the flute. That will show me to trust what I don’t know firsthand.”
“Rand’s the shepherd,” Mat grumbled. “He plays the pipes, not me.”
“Yes, well, he does have a little aptitude. Perhaps we had better work on juggling, boy. At least you show some talent for that.”
“Thom,” Rand said, “I don’t know why you’re trying so hard.” He glanced at the sailor and lowered his voice. “After all, we aren’t really trying to become gleemen. It’s only something to hide behind until we find Moiraine and the others.”
Thom tugged at an end of his mustache and seemed to be studying the smooth, dark brown leather of the flute case on his knees. “What if you don’t find them, boy? There’s nothing to say they’re even still alive.”
“They’re alive,” Rand said firmly. He turned to Mat for support, but Mat’s eyebrows were pinched down on his nose, and his mouth was a thin line, and his eyes were fixed on the deck. “Well, speak up,” Rand told him. “You can’t be that mad over not being able to play the flute. I can’t either, not very well. You never wanted to play the flute before.”
Mat looked up, still frowning. “What if they are dead?” he said softly. “We have to accept facts, right?”
At that moment the lookout in the bow sang out, “Whitebridge! Whitebridge ahead!”
For a long minute, unwilling to believe that Mat could say something like that so casually, Rand held his friend’s gaze amid the scramble of sailors preparing to put in. Mat glowered at him with his head pulled down between his shoulders. There was so much Rand wanted to say, but he could not manage to get it all into words. They had to believe the others were alive. They had to. Why? nagged a voice in the back of his head. So it will all turn out like one of Thom’s stories? The heroes find the treasure and defeat the villain and live happily ever after? Some of his stories don’t end that way. Sometimes even heroes die. Are you a hero, Rand al’Thor? Are you a hero, sheepherder?
Abruptly Mat flushed and pulled his eyes away. Freed from his thoughts, Rand jumped up to move through the hurly-burly to the rail. Mat came after him slowly, not even making an effort to dodge the sailors who ran across his path.
Men dashed about the boat, bare feet thumping the deck, hauling on ropes, tying off some lines and untying others. Some brought up big oilskin bags stuffed almost to bursting with wool, while others readied cables as thick as Rand’s wrist. Despite their haste, they moved with the assurance of men who had done it all a thousand times before, but Captain Domon stumped up and down the deck shouting orders and cursing those who did not move fast enough to suit him.
Rand’s attention was all for what lay ahead, coming plainly into sight as they rounded a slight bend of the Arinelle. He had heard of it, in song and story and peddlers’ tales, but now he would actually see the legend.
The White Bridge arched high over the wide waters, twice as high as the Spray’s mast and more, and from end to end it gleamed milky white in the sunlight, gathering the light until it seemed to glow. Spidery piers of the same stuff plunged into the strong currents, appearing too frail to support the weight and width of the bridge. It looked all of one piece, as if it had been carved from a single stone or molded by a giant’s hand, broad and tall, leaping the river with an airy grace that almost made the eye forget its size. All in all it dwarfed the town that sprawled about its foot on the east bank, though Whitebridge was larger by far than Emond’s Field, with houses of stone and brick as tall as those in Taren Ferry and wooden docks like thin fingers sticking out into the river. Small boats dotted the Arinelle thickly, fishermen hauling their nets. And over it all the White Bridge towered and shone.
“It looks like glass,” Rand said to no one in particular.
Captain Domon paused behind him and tucked his thumbs behind his broad belt. “Nay, lad. Whatever it be, it no be glass. Never so hard the rains come, it no be slippery, and the best chisel and the strongest arm no make a mark on it.”
“A remnant from the Age of Legends,” Thom said. “I have always thought it must be.”
The captain gave a dour grunt. “Mayhap. But still useful despite. Could be someone else built it. Does no have to be Aes Sedai work, Fortune prick me. It no has to be so old as all that. Put your back into it, you bloody fool!” He hurried off down the deck.
Rand stared even more wonderingly. From the Age of Legends. Made by Aes Sedai, then. That was why Captain Domon felt the way he did, for all his talk about the wonder and strangeness of the world. Aes Sedai work. One thing to hear about it, another to see it, and touch it. You know that, don’t you? For an instant it seemed to Rand that a shadow rippled through the milk-white structure. He pulled his eyes away, to the docks coming nearer, but the bridge still loomed in the corner of his vision.
“We made it, Thom,” he said, then forced a laugh. “And no mutiny.”
The gleeman only harrumphed and blew out his mustaches, but two sailors readying a cable nearby gave Rand a sharp glance, then bent quickly back to their work. He stopped laughing and tried not to look at the two for the rest of the approach to Whitebridge.
The Spray curved smoothly in beside the first dock, thick timbers sitting on heavy, tar-coated pilings, and stopped with a backing of oars that swirled the water to froth around the blades. As the oars were drawn in, sailors tossed cables to men on the dock, who fastened them off with a flourish, while other crewmen slung the bags of wool over the side to protect the hull from the dock pilings.
Before the boat was even pulled snug against the dock, carriages appeared at the end of the dock, tall and lacquered shiny black, each one with a name painted on the door in large letters, gold or scarlet. The carriages’ passengers hurried up the gangplank as soon as it dropped in place, smooth-faced men in long velvet coats and silk-lined cloaks and cloth slippers, each followed by a plainly dressed servant carrying his iron-bound moneybox.
They approached Captain Domon with painted smiles that slipped when he abruptly roared in their faces. “You!” He thrust a thick finger past them, stopping Floran Gelb in his tracks at the length of the boat. The bruise on Gelb’s forehead from Rand’s boot had faded away, but he still fingered the spot from time to time as if to remind himself. “You’ve slept on watch for the last time on my vessel! Or on any vessel, if I have my way of it. Choose your own side—the dock or the river—but off my vessel now!”
Gelb hunched his shoulders, and his eyes glittered hate at Rand and his friends, at Rand especially, a poisonous glare. The wiry man looked around the deck for support, but there was little hope in that look. One by one, every man in the crew straightened from what he was doing and stared back coldly. Gelb wilted visibly, but then his glare returned, twice as strong as it had been. With a muttered curse he darted below to the crew’s quarters. Domon sent two men after him to see he did no mischief and dismissed him with a grunt. When the captain turned back to them, the merchants took up their smiles and bows as if they had never been interrupted.
At a word from Thom, Mat and Rand began gathering their things together. There was not much aside from the clothes on their backs, not for any of them. Rand had his blanketroll and saddlebags, and his father’s sword. He held the sword for a minute, and homesickness rolled over him so strongly that his eyes stung. He wondered if he would ever see Tam again. Or home? Home. Going to spend the rest of your life running, running and afraid of your own dreams. With a shuddering sigh he slipped the belt around his waist over his coat.
Gelb came back on deck, followed by his twin shadows. He looked straight ahead, but Rand could still feel hatred coming off him in waves. Back rigid and face dark, Gelb walked stiff-legged down the gangplank and pushed roughly into the thin crowd on the dock. In a minute he was gone from sight, vanished beyond the merchants’ carriages.
There were not a great many people on the dock, and those were a plainly dressed mix of workmen, fishermen mending nets, and a few townspeople who had come out to see the first boat of the year to come downriver from Saldaea. None of the girls was Egwene and no one looked the least bit like Moiraine, or Lan, or anyone else Rand was hoping to see.
“Maybe they didn’t come down to the dock,” he said.
“Maybe,” Thom replied curtly. He settled his instrument cases on his back with care. “You two keep an eye out for Gelb. He will make trouble if he can. We want to pass through Whitebridge so softly that nobody remembers we were here five minutes after we’re gone.”
Their cloaks flapped in the wind as they walked to the gangplank. Mat carried his bow crossed in front on his chest. Even after all their days on the boat, it still got a few looks from the crewmen; their bows were short affairs.
Captain Domon left the merchants to intercept Thom at the gangplank.
“You be leaving me now, gleeman? Can I no talk you into continuing on? I be going all the way down to Illian, where folk have a proper regard for gleemen. There be no finer place in the world for your art. I’d get you there in good time for the Feast of Sefan. The competitions, you know. A hundred gold marks for the best telling of The Great Hunt of the Horn.”
“A great prize, Captain,” Thom replied with an elaborate bow and a flourish of his cloak that set the patches to fluttering, “and great competitions, which rightly draw gleemen from the whole world over. But,” he added dryly, “I fear we could not afford the fare at the rates you charge.”
“Aye, well, as to that. . . .” The captain produced a leather purse from his coat pocket and tossed it to Thom. It clinked when Thom caught it. “Your fares back, and a bit more besides. The damage was no so bad as I thought, and you’ve worked your way and more with your tales and your harp. I could maybe manage as much again if you stay aboard to the Sea of Storms. And I would set you ashore in Illian. A good gleeman can make his fortune there, even aside from the competitions.”
Thom hesitated, weighing the purse on his palm, but Rand spoke up. “We’re meeting friends here, Captain, and going on to Caemlyn together. We’ll have to see Illian another time.”
Thom’s mouth twisted wryly, then he blew out his long mustaches and tucked the purse into his pocket. “Perhaps if the people we are to meet are not here, Captain.”
“Aye,” Domon said sourly. “You think on it. Too bad I can no keep Gelb aboard to take the others’ anger, but I do what I say I will do. I suppose I must ease up now, even if it means taking three times as long to reach Illian as I should. Well, mayhap those Trollocs were after you three.”
Rand blinked but kept silent, but Mat was not so cautious. “Why do you think they weren’t?” he demanded. “They were after the same treasure we were hunting.”
“Mayhap,” the captain grunted, sounding unconvinced. He combed thick fingers through his beard, then pointed at the pocket where Thom had put the purse. “Twice that if you come back to keep the men’s minds off how hard I work them. Think on it. I sail with the first light on the morrow.” He turned on his heel and strode back to the merchants, arms spreading wide as he began an apology for keeping them waiting.
Thom still hesitated, but Rand hustled him down the gangplank without giving him a chance to argue, and the gleeman let himself be herded. A murmur passed through the people on the dock as they saw Thom’s patch-covered cloak, and some called out to discover where he would be performing. So much for not being noticed, Rand thought, dismayed. By sundown it would be all over Whitebridge that there was a gleeman in town. He hurried Thom along, though, and Thom, wrapped in sulky silence, did not even try to slow down enough to preen under the attention.
The carriage drivers looked down at Thom with interest from their high perches, but apparently the dignity of their positions forbade shouting. With no idea of where to go exactly, Rand turned up the street that ran along the river and under the bridge.
“We need to find Moiraine and the others,” he said. “And fast. We should have thought of changing Thom’s cloak.”
Thom suddenly shook himself and stopped dead. “An innkeeper will be able to tell us if they’re here, or if they’ve passed through. The right innkeeper. Innkeepers have all the news and gossip. If they aren’t here. . . .”He looked back and forth from Rand to Mat. “We have to talk, we three.” Cloak swirling around his ankles, he set off into the town, away from the river. Rand and Mat had to step quickly to keep up.
The broad, milk-white arch that gave the town its name dominated Whitebridge as much close up as it did from afar, but once Rand was in the streets he realized that the town was every bit as big as Baerlon, though not so crowded with people. A few carts moved in the streets, pulled by horse or ox or donkey or man, but no carriages. Those most likely all belonged to the merchants and were clustered down at the dock.
Shops of every description lined the streets, and many of the tradesmen worked in front of their establishments, under the signs swinging in the wind. They passed a man mending pots, and a tailor holding folds of cloth up to the light for a customer. A shoemaker, sitting in his doorway, tapped his hammer on the heel of a boot. Hawkers cried their services at sharpening knives and scissors, or tried to interest the passersby in their skimpy trays of fruit or vegetables, but none was getting much interest. Shops selling food had the same pitiful displays of produce Rand remembered from Baerlon. Even the fishmongers displayed only small piles of small fish, for all the boats on the river. Times were not really hard yet, but everyone could see what was coming if the weather did not change soon, and those faces that were not fixed into worried frowns seemed to stare at something unseen, something unpleasant.
Where the White Bridge came down in the center of the town was a big square, paved with stones worn by generations of feet and wagon wheels. Inns surrounded the square, and shops, and tall, red brick houses with signs out front bearing the same names Rand had seen on the carriages at the dock. It was into one of those inns, seemingly chosen at random, that Thom ducked. The sign over the door, swinging in the wind, had a striding man with a bundle on his back on one side and the same man with his head on a pillow on the other, and proclaimed The Wayfarers’ Rest.
The common room stood empty except for the fat innkeeper drawing ale from a barrel and two men in rough workman’s clothes staring glumly into their mugs at a table in the back. Only the innkeeper looked up when they came in. A shoulder-high wall split the room in two from front to back, with tables and a blazing fireplace on each side. Rand wondered idly if all innkeepers were fat and losing their hair.
Rubbing his hands together briskly, Thom commented to the innkeeper on the late cold and ordered hot spiced wine, then added quietly, “Is there somewhere my friends and I could talk without being disturbed?”
The innkeeper nodded to the low wall. “The other side that’s as best I’ve got unless you want to take a room. For when sailors come up from the river. Seems like half the crews got grudges against the other half. I won’t have my place broke up by fights, so I keep them apart.” He had been eyeing Thom’s cloak the whole while, and now he cocked his head to one side, a sly look in his eyes. “You staying? Haven’t had a gleeman here in some time. Folks would pay real good for something as would take their minds off things. I’d even take some off on your room and meals.”
Unnoticed, Rand thought glumly.
“You are too generous,” Thom said with a smooth bow. “Perhaps I will take up your offer. But for now, a little privacy.”
“I’ll bring your wine. Good money here for a gleeman.”
The tables on the far side of the wall were all empty, but Thom chose one right in the middle of the space. “So no one can listen without us knowing,” he explained. “Did you hear that fellow? He’ll take some off. Why, I’d double his custom just by sitting here. Any honest innkeeper gives a gleeman room and board and a good bit besides.”
The bare table was none too clean, and the floor had not been swept in days if not weeks. Rand looked around and grimaced. Master al’Vere would not have let his inn get that dirty if he had had to climb out of a sickbed to see to it. “We’re only after information. Remember?”
“Why here?” Mat demanded. “We passed other inns that looked cleaner.”
“Straight on from the bridge,” Thom said, “is the road to Caemlyn. Anyone passing through Whitebridge comes through this square, unless they’re going by river, and we know your friends aren’t doing that. If there is no word of them here, it doesn’t exist. Let me do the talking. This has to be done carefully.”
Just then the innkeeper appeared, three battered pewter mugs gripped in one fist by the handles. The fat man flicked at the table with a towel, set the mugs down, and took Thom’s money. “If you stay, you won’t have to pay for your drinks. Good wine, here.”
Thom’s smile touched only his mouth. “I will think on it, innkeeper. What news is there? We have been away from hearing things.”
“Big news, that’s what. Big news.”
The innkeeper draped the towel over his shoulder and pulled up a chair. He crossed his arms on the table, took root with a long sigh, saying what a comfort it was to get off his feet. His name was Bartim, and he went on about his feet in detail, about corns and bunions and how much time he spent standing and what he soaked them in, until Thom mentioned the news, again, and then he shifted over with hardly a pause.
The news was just as big as he said it was. Logain, the false Dragon, had been captured after a big battle near Lugard while he was trying to move his army from Ghealdan to Tear. The Prophecies, they understood? Thom nodded, and Bartim went on. The roads in the south were packed with people, the lucky ones with what they could carry on their backs. Thousands fleeing in all directions.
