The Great Hunt (34 page)

Selene smiled, and looked at Loial. “You will excuse us,
alantin.
”

The Ogier bowed in his saddle and let his big horse fall back, the tufts on his ears drooping with reluctance.

For a time Rand rode in silence, enjoying Selene’s presence. Now and again he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He wished he could get his feelings about her straight. Could she be an Aes Sedai, despite her denial? Someone sent by Moiraine to push him along whatever path he was meant to follow in the Aes Sedai’s plans? Moiraine could not have known he would be taken to this strange world, and no Aes Sedai would have tried to fend off that beast with a stick when she could strike it dead or send it running with the Power. Well. Since she took him for a lord and no one in Cairhien knew different, he might keep on letting her think it. She was surely the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, intelligent and learned, and she thought he was brave; what more could a man ask from a wife?
That’s crazy, too. I’d marry Egwene if I could marry anyone, but I can’t ask a woman to marry a man who’s going to go mad, maybe hurt her.
But Selene was so beautiful.

She was studying his sword, he saw. He readied the words in his head. No, he was not a blademaster, but his father had given him the sword.
Tam. Light, why couldn’t you really be my father?
He squashed the thought ruthlessly.

“That was a magnificent shot,” Selene said.

“No, I’m not a—” Rand began, then blinked. “A shot?”

“Yes. A tiny target, that eye, moving, at a hundred paces. You’ve a wonderful hand with that bow.”

Rand shifted awkwardly. “Ah . . . thank you. It’s a trick my father taught me.” He told her about the void, about how Tam had taught him how to use it with the bow. He even found himself telling her about Lan and his sword lessons.

“The Oneness,” she said, sounding satisfied. She saw his questioning look and added, “That is what it is called . . . in some places. The Oneness. To learn the full use of it, it is best to wrap it around you continuously, to dwell in it at all times, or so I’ve heard.”

He did not even have to think about what lay waiting for him in the void to know his answer to that, but what he said was, “I’ll think about it.”

“Wear this void of yours all the time, Rand al’Thor, and you’ll learn uses for it you never suspected.”

“I said I will think about it.” She opened her mouth again, but he cut her off. “You know all these things. About the void—the Oneness, you call it. About this world. Loial reads books all the time; he’s read more books than I’ve ever seen, and he’s never seen anything but a fragment about the Stones.”

Selene drew herself up straight in her saddle. Suddenly she reminded him of Moiraine, and of Queen Morgase, when they were angry.

“There was a book written about these worlds,” she said tightly. “
Mirrors of the Wheel.
You see, the
alantin
has not seen
all
the books that are.”

“What is this
alantin
you call him? I’ve never heard—”

“The Portal Stone beside which I woke is up there,” Selene said, pointing into the mountains, off to the east of their path. Rand found himself wishing for her warmth again, and her smiles. “If you take me to it, you can return me to my home, as you promised. We can reach it in an hour.”

Rand barely looked where she pointed. Using the Stone—Portal Stone, she called it—meant wielding the Power, if he were to take her back to the real world. “Hurin, how is the trail?”

“Fainter than ever, Lord Rand, but still there.” The sniffer spared a quick grin and bob of his head for Selene. “I think it’s starting to angle off to the west. There’s some easier passes there, toward the tip of the Dagger, as I recall from when I went to Cairhien that time.”

Rand sighed.
Fain, or one of his Darkfriends, has to know another way to use the Stones. A Darkfriend couldn’t use the Power.
“I have to follow the Horn, Selene.”

“How do you know your precious Horn is even in this world? Come with me, Rand. You’ll find your legend, I promise you. Come with me.”

“You can use the Stone, this Portal Stone, yourself,” he said angrily. Before the words were out of his mouth he wanted them back.
Why does she have to keep talking about legends?
Stubbornly, he forced himself to go on. “The Portal Stone didn’t bring you here by itself. You did it, Selene. If you made the Stone bring you here, you can make it take you back. I’ll take you to it, but then I must go on after the Horn.”

“I know nothing about using the Portal Stones, Rand. If I did anything, I don’t know what it was.”

Rand studied her. She sat her saddle, straight-backed and tall, just as regally as before, but somehow softer, too. Proud, yet vulnerable, and needing him. He had put Nynaeve’s age to her—a handful of years older than himself—but he had been wrong, he realized. She was more his own age, and beautiful, and she needed him. The thought, just the thought, of the void flickered through his head, and of the light.
Saidin.
To use the Portal Stone, he must dip himself back into that taint.

“Stay with me, Selene,” he said. “We’ll find the Horn, and Mat’s dagger, and we’ll find a way back. I promise you. Just stay with me.”

“You always. . . .” Selene drew a deep breath as if to calm herself. “You always are so stubborn. Well, I can admire stubbornness in a man. There is little to a man who’s too easily biddable.”

Rand colored; it was too much like the things Egwene sometimes said, and they had all but been promised in marriage since they were children. From Selene, the words, and the direct look that went with them, were a shock. He turned to tell Hurin to press on with the trail.

From behind them came a distant, coughing grunt. Before Rand could whirl Red to look, another bark sounded, and three more on its heels. At first he could make out nothing as the landscape seemed to waver in his eyes, but then he saw them through the widespread stands of trees, just topping a hill. Five shapes, it seemed, only half a mile distant, a bare thousand paces at most, and coming in thirty-foot bounds.

“Grolm,”
Selene said calmly. “A small pack, but they have our scent, it seems.”

CHAPTER
17

Choices

“W
e’ll run for it,” Rand said. “Hurin, can you gallop and still follow the trail?”

“Yes, Lord Rand.”

“Then push on. We will—”

“It won’t do any good,” Selene said. Her white mare was the only one of their mounts not dancing at the gruff barks coming from the
grolm.
“They don’t give up, not ever. Once they have your scent,
grolm
keep coming, day and night, until they run you down. You must kill them all, or find a way to go elsewhere. Rand, the Portal Stone can take us elsewhere.”

“No! We
can
kill them. I can. I already killed one. There are only five. If I can just find. . . .” He cast around for the spot he needed, and found it. “Follow me!” Digging his heels in, he set Red to a gallop, confident before he heard their hooves that the others would come.

The place he had chosen was a low, round hill, bare of trees. Nothing could come close without him seeing. He swung down from his saddle and unlimbered his longbow. Loial and Hurin joined him on the ground, the Ogier hefting his huge quarterstaff, the sniffer with his short sword in his fist. Neither quarterstaff nor sword would be of much use if the
grolm
closed with them.
I won’t let them get close.

“This risk is not necessary,” Selene said. She barely looked toward the
grolm,
bending from her saddle to concentrate on Rand. “We can easily reach the Portal Stone ahead of them.”

“I will stop them.” Hastily Rand counted the arrows remaining in his quiver. Eighteen, each as long as his arm, ten of them with points like chisels, designed to drive through Trolloc armor. They would do as well for
grolm
as for Trollocs. He stuck four of those upright in the ground in front of him; a fifth he nocked to the bow. “Loial, Hurin, you can do no good down here. Mount and be ready to take Selene to the Stone if any get through.” He wondered whether he could kill one of the things with his sword, if it came to that.
You
are
mad! Even the Power is not as bad as this.

Loial said something, but he did not hear; he was already seeking the void, as much to escape his own thoughts as for need.
You know what’s waiting. But this way I don’t have to touch it.
The glow was there, the light just out of sight. It seemed to flow toward him, but the emptiness was all. Thoughts darted across the surface of the void, visible in that tainted light.
Saidin. The Power. Madness. Death.
Extraneous thoughts. He was one with the bow, with the arrow, with the things topping the next rise.

The
grolm
came on, overreaching one another in their leaps, five great, leathery shapes, triple-eyed, with horny maws gaping. Their grunting calls rebounded from the void, barely heard.

Rand was not aware of raising his bow, or drawing the fletching against his cheek, to his ear. He was one with the beasts, one with the center eye of the first. Then the arrow was gone. The first
grolm
died; one of its companions leaped on it as it fell, beak of a mouth ripping gobbets of flesh. It snarled at the others, and they circled wide. But they came on, and as if compelled, it abandoned its meal and leaped after them, its horny maw already bloody.

Rand worked smoothly, unconsciously, nock and release. Nock and release.

The fifth arrow left his bow, and he lowered it, still deep in the void, as the fourth
grolm
fell like a huge puppet with its strings cut. Though the final arrow still flew, somehow he knew there was no need for another shot. The last beast collapsed as if its bones had melted, a feathered shaft jutting from its center eye. Always the center eye.

“Magnificent, Lord Rand,” Hurin said. “I . . . I’ve never seen shooting like that.”

The void held Rand. The light called to him, and he . . . reached . . . toward it. It surrounded him, filled him.

“Lord Rand?” Hurin touched his arm, and Rand gave a start, the emptiness filling up with what was around him. “Are you all right, my Lord?”

Rand brushed his forehead with fingertips. It was dry; he felt as if it should have been covered with sweat. “I. . . . I’m fine, Hurin.”

“It grows easier each time you do it, I’ve heard,” Selene said. “The more you live in the Oneness, the easier.”

Rand glanced at her. “Well, I won’t need it again, not for a while.”
What happened? I wanted to
. . . . He still wanted to, he realized with horror. He
wanted
to go back into the void, wanted to feel that light filling him again. It had seemed as if he were truly alive then, sickliness and all, and now was only an imitation. No, worse. He had been almost alive, knowing what “alive” would be like. All he had to do was reach out to
saidin. . . .

“Not again,” he muttered. He gazed off at the dead
grolm,
five monstrous shapes lying on the ground. Not dangerous anymore. “Now we can be on our—”

A coughing bark, all too familiar, sounded beyond the dead
grolm,
beyond the next hill, and others answered it. Still more came, from the east, from the west.

Rand half raised his bow.

“How many arrows do you have left?” Selene demanded. “Can you kill twenty
grolm
? Thirty? A hundred? We
must
go to the Portal Stone.”

“She is right, Rand,” Loial said slowly. “You do not have any choice now.” Hurin was watching Rand anxiously. The
grolm
called, a score of barks overlapping.

“The Stone,” Rand agreed reluctantly. Angrily he threw himself back into his saddle, slung the bow on his back. “Lead us to this Stone, Selene.”

With a nod she turned her mare and heeled it to a trot. Rand and the others followed, they eagerly, he holding back. The barks of
grolm
pursued them, hundreds it seemed. It sounded as if the
grolm
were ranged in a semicircle around them, closing in from every direction but the front.

Swiftly and surely Selene led them through the hills. The land rose in the beginning of mountains, slopes steepening so the horses scrambled over washed-out-looking rocky outcrops and the sparse, faded-looking brush that clung to them. The way became harder, the land slanting more and more upward.

We’re not going to make it,
Rand thought, the fifth time Red slipped and slid backwards in a shower of stone. Loial threw his quarterstaff aside; it would be of no use against
grolm,
and it only slowed him. The Ogier had given up riding; he used one hand to haul himself up, and pulled his tall horse behind him with the other. The hairy-fetlocked animal made heavy going, but easier than with Loial on its back.
Grolm
barked behind them, closer now.

Then Selene drew rein and pointed to a hollow nestled below them in the granite. It was all there, the seven wide, colored stairs around a pale floor, and the tall stone column in the middle.

She dismounted and led her mare into the hollow, down the stairs to the column. It loomed over her. She turned to look back up at Rand and the others. The
grolm
gave their grunting barks, scores of them, loud. Near. “They will be on us soon,” she said. “You must use the Stone, Rand. Or else find a way to kill all the
grolm.
”

With a sigh, Rand got down from his saddle and led Red into the hollow. Loial and Hurin followed hastily. He stared at the symbol-covered column, the Portal Stone, uneasily.
She must be able to channel, even if she doesn’t know it, or it couldn’t have brought her here. The Power doesn’t harm women.
“If this brought you here,” he began, but she interrupted him.

“I know what it is,” she said firmly, “but I do not know how to use it. You must do what must be done.” She traced one symbol, a little larger than the others, with a finger. A triangle standing on its point inside a circle. “This stands for the true world, our world. I believe it will help if you hold it in your mind while you. . . .” She spread her hands as if unsure exactly what it was he was supposed to do.

“Uh . . . my Lord?” Hurin said diffidently. “There isn’t much time.” He glanced over his shoulder at the rim of the hollow. The barking was louder. “Those things will be here in minutes, now.” Loial nodded.

Drawing a deep breath, Rand put his hand on the symbol Selene had pointed out. He looked at her to see if he was doing it right, but she merely watched, not even the slightest frown of worry wrinkling her pale forehead.
She’s confident you can save her. You have to.
The scent of her filled his nostrils.

“Uh . . . my Lord?”

Rand swallowed, and sought the void. It came easily, springing up around him without effort. Emptiness. Emptiness except for the light, wavering in a way that turned his stomach. Emptiness except for
saidin.
But even the queasiness was distant. He was one with the Portal Stone. The column felt smooth and slightly oily under his hand, but the triangle-and-circle seemed warm against the brand on his palm.
Have to get them to safety.
Have to get them home.
The light drifted toward him, it seemed, surrounded him, and he . . . embraced . . . it.

Light filled him. Heat filled him. He could see the Stone, see the others watching him—Loial and Hurin anxiously, Selene showing no doubt that he could save her—but they might as well not have been there. The light was all. The heat and the light, suffusing his limbs like water sinking into dry sand, filling him. The symbol burned against his flesh. He tried to suck it all in, all the heat, all the light. All. The symbol. . . .

Suddenly, as if the sun had gone out for the blink of an eye, the world flickered. And again. The symbol was a live coal under his hand; he drank in the light. The world flickered. Flickered. It made him sick, that light; it was water to a man dying of thirst. Flicker. He sucked at it. It made him want to vomit; he wanted it all. Flicker. The triangle-and-circle seared him; he could feel it charring his hand. Flicker. He wanted it all! He screamed, howling with pain, howling with wanting.

Flicker . . . flicker . . . flickerflickerflicker. . . .

Hands pulled at him; he was only vaguely aware of them. He staggered back; the void was slipping away, the light, and the sickness that twisted at him. The light. He watched it go regretfully.
Light, that’s crazy to want it. But I was so
full
of it! I was so. . . .
Dazed, he stared at Selene. It was she who held his shoulders, stared wonderingly into his eyes. He raised his hand in front of his face. The heron brand was there, but nothing else. No triangle-and-circle burned into his flesh.

“Remarkable,” Selene said slowly. She glanced at Loial and Hurin. The Ogier looked stunned, his eyes as big as plates; the sniffer was squatting with one hand on the ground, as if unsure he could support himself else. “All of us here, and all of our horses. And you do not even know what you did. Remarkable.”

“Are we . . . ?” Rand began hoarsely, and had to stop to swallow.

“Look around you,” Selene said. “You’ve brought us home.” She gave a sudden laugh. “You brought all of us home.”

For the first time Rand became aware of his surroundings again. The hollow surrounded them without any stairs, though here and there lay a suspiciously smooth piece of stone, colored red, or blue. The column lay against the mountainside, half buried in the loose rock of a fall. The symbols were unclear, here; wind and water had worked long on them. And everything looked real. The colors were solid, the granite a strong gray, the brush green and brown. After that other place, it seemed almost too vivid.

“Home,” Rand breathed, and then he was laughing, too. “We’re home.” Loial’s laughter sounded like a bull bellowing. Hurin danced a caper.

“You did it,” Selene said, leaning closer, until her face filled Rand’s eyes. “I knew that you could.”

Rand’s laughter died. “I—I suppose I did.” He glanced at the fallen Portal Stone and managed a weak laugh. “I wish I knew what it was I did, though.”

Selene looked deep into his eyes. “Perhaps one day you will know,” she said softly. “You are surely destined for great things.”

Her eyes seemed as dark and deep as night, as soft as velvet. Her mouth. . . .
If I kissed her
. . . . He blinked and stepped back hurriedly, clearing his throat. “Selene, please don’t tell anyone about this. About the Portal Stone, and me. I don’t understand it, and neither will anybody else. You know how people are about things they don’t understand.”

Her face wore no expression at all. Suddenly he wished very much that Mat and Perrin were there. Perrin knew how to talk to girls, and Mat could lie with a straight face. He could manage neither very well.

Suddenly Selene smiled, and dropped a half-mocking curtsy. “I will keep your secret, my Lord Rand al’Thor.”

Rand glanced at her, and cleared his throat again.
Is she angry with me? She’d certainly be angry if I had tried to kiss her. I think.
He wished she would not look at him as she was, as if she knew what he was thinking. “Hurin, is there any chance the Darkfriends used this Stone before us?”

The sniffer shook his head ruefully. “They were angling to the west of here, Lord Rand. Unless these Portal Stone things are more common than I’ve seen, I’d say they’re still in that other world. But it wouldn’t take me an hour to check it. The land’s the same here as there. I could find the place here where I lost the trail there, if you see what I mean, and see if they’ve already gone by.”