Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time 01 - The Eye of the World

About the Author:

Robert Jordan

Note! Robert Jordan is a pseudonym. His real name is James Oliver Rigney Jr!!!

A lifelong resident of Charleston, South Carolina, Jordan was born in 1948. With a brother 12 years his

senior, Robert began his education at an early age, and his future interest in fantastic literature was

inevitable. "When my parents couldn't get a baby-sitter, they'd get my brother," he recalls. "He would

read to me, not kids' books, but things he was interested in, like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Mark

Twain, so I was exposed to a lot of great fiction."

Jordan served two tours of duty in Vietnam (1968-70), earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and the

Bronze star. The Vietnamese twice awarded him with their Cross of Gallantry. After Vietnam, he entered

the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, where he received a degree in physics. In retrospect,

Robert Jordan feels that physics is not such an unusual background for a fantasy writer. "You can't study

quantum mechanics without a feel for fantasy," he recently reflected, "Schrodinger's Cat alone will kill any

logical person dead." After attaining his degree, he was employed by the Navy as a nuclear engineer. He

was hospitalized for an injury which gave him a great deal of time to catch up on his reading. Jordan

quickly ran out of satisfactory material, and in exasperation, thought he could probably write as well as

the authors he had been reading. The Wheel of Time is the happy result.

Robert Jordan has now been writing for 13 years, and he has been married for ten. He and his wife live

in the Old Historic District of Charleston, in a house dating from 1797. A history buff, he is particularly

interested in Charleston's past, and in military history. An outdoors man, Jordan enjoys hunting fishing

and sailing, and the indoor sports of poker, chess and pool, and collecting pipes. .

About this book . . .

The Eye of the World

Book One of the Wheel of Time

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The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades

to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth return again. In the Third Age, an

Age of Prophecy, when the World and Time themselves hang in the balance, a wind rises in the

mountains of mist. . .

. . .and Rand al'Thor is cold. Though the spring festival of Bel Tine comes tomorrow, it is a year without

spring, a year when green things fail and hope is dying.

It is a year of strangers; of a lady; and a gleeman with his tales of heroes; and a peddler with news of the

present—of war with Ghealdan, far away, and of the rising of a false Dragon—the savior whose coming,

foretold and dreaded, will bring a new Breaking to the World. But the worst strangers are monsters

Rand thought only legend—the bestial Trollocs, and the horrifying Halfmen, whose eyeless gaze is fear.

They want a boy on the brink of manhood, born within a certain span of months. They want Rand

himself, or his burly, deliberate friend Perrin, or the prankster Mat.

It is a world where nothing is what it seems. Not Nynaeve, the village Wisdom, who can Read the

Wind. Not Moiraine, the lady from outside, whose beauty hides a terrifying identity and a Power that

seemed only yesterday to be the stuff of legend. Not the lady's companion, Lan, whose chameleon cloak

is stranger than the fluttering, multihued garment that proclaims the gleeman's trade of old Thom Merrilin.

And not Egwene, the innkeeper's dark-haired daughter, caught between childhood and womanhood,

between love of Rand and determination to become all that her destiny would make her.

The villagers know only that Trollocs hunt them. They have no way of knowing that the Dark One,

imprisoned by the Creator at the moment of creation, is stirring in Shayol Ghul.

It is a time for prophecies to be fulfilled. The Wheel of Time is weaving a Web in the Pattern of Ages, a

Web to entangle the World. It is a time when Time itself may die, when the Eye of the World may be

blinded. What was, and what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

Chapter 1

An Empty Road

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend

fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age,

called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of

Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the

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Wheel of Time. But it wasa beginning.

Born below the ever cloud-capped peaks that gave the mountains their name, the wind blew east, out

across the Sand Hills, once the shore of a great ocean, before the Breaking of the World. Down it flailed

into the Two Rivers, into the tangled forest called the Westwood, and beat at two men walking with a

cart and horse down the rock-strewn track called the Quarry Road. For all that spring should have come

a good month since, the wind carried an icy chill as if it would rather bear snow.

Gusts plastered Rand al’Thor’s cloak to his back, whipped the earth-colored wool around his legs, then

streamed it out behind him. He wished his coat were heavier, or that he had worn an extra shirt. Half the

time when he tried to tug the cloak back around him it caught on the quiver swinging at his hip. Trying to

hold the cloak one-handed did not do much good anyway; he had his bow in the other, an arrow nocked

and ready to draw.

As a particularly strong blast tugged the cloak out of his hand, he glanced at his father over the back of

the shaggy brown mare. He felt a little foolish about wanting to reassure himself that Tam was still there,

but it was that kind of day. The wind howled when it rose, but aside from that, quiet lay heavy on the

land. The soft creak of the axle sounded loud by comparison. No birds sang in the forest, no squirrels

chittered from a branch. Not that he expected them, really; not this spring.

Only trees that kept leaf or needle through the winter had any green about them. Snarls of last year’s

bramble spread brown webs over stone outcrops under the trees. Nettles numbered most among the few

weeds; the rest were the sorts with sharp burrs or thorns, or stinkweed, which left a rank smell on the

unwary boot that crushed it. Scattered white patches of snow still dotted the ground where tight clumps

of trees kept deep shade. Where sunlight did reach, it held neither strength nor warmth. The pale sun sat

above the trees to the east, but its light was crisply dark, as if mixed with shadow. It was an awkward

morning, made for unpleasant thoughts.

Without thinking he touched the nock of the arrow; it was ready to draw to his cheek in one smooth

movement, the way Tam had taught him. Winter had been bad enough on the farms, worse than even the

oldest folk remembered, but it must have been harsher still in the mountains, if the number of wolves

driven down into the Two Rivers was any guide. Wolves raided the sheep pens and chewed their way

into barns to get the cattle and horses. Bears had been after the sheep, too, where a bear had not been

seen in years. It was no longer safe to be out after dark. Men were the prey as often as sheep, and the

sun did not always have to be down.

Tam was taking steady strides on the other side of Bela, using his spear as a walking staff, ignoring the

wind that made his brown cloak flap like a banner. Now and again he touched the mare’s flank lightly, to

remind her to keep moving. With his thick chest and broad face, he was a pillar of reality in that morning,

like a stone in the middle of a drifting dream. His sun-roughened cheeks might be lined and his hair have

only a sprinkling of black among the gray, but there was a solidness to him, as though a flood could wash

around him without uprooting his feet. He stumped down the road now impassively. Wolves and bears

were all very well, his manner said, things that any man who kept sheep must be aware of, but they had

best not try to stop Tam al’Thor getting to Emond’s Field.

With a guilty start Rand returned to watching his side of the road, Tam’s matter-of-factness reminding

him of his task. He was a head taller than his father, taller than anyone else in the district, and had little of

Tam in him physically, except perhaps for a breadth of shoulder. Gray eyes and the reddish tinge to his

hair came from his mother, so Tam said. She had been an outlander, and Rand remembered little of her

aside from a smiling face, though he did put flowers on her grave every year, at Bel Tine, in the spring,

and at Sunday, in the summer.

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Two small casks of Tam’s apple brandy rested in the lurching cart, and eight larger barrels of apple

cider, only slightly hard after a winter’s curing. Tam delivered the same every year to the Winespring Inn

for use during Bel Tine, and he had declared that it would take more than wolves or a cold wind to stop

him this spring. Even so they had not been to the village for weeks. Not even Tam traveled much these

days. But Tam had given his word about the brandy and cider, even if he had waited to make delivery

until the day before Festival. Keeping his word was important to Tam. Rand was just glad to get away

from the farm, almost as glad as about the coming of Bel Tine.

As Rand watched his side of the road, the feeling grew in him that he was being watched. For a while he

tried to shrug it off. Nothing moved or made a sound among the trees, except the wind. But the feeling

not only persisted, it grew stronger. The hairs on his arms stirred; his skin prickled as if it itched on the

inside.

He shifted his bow irritably to rub at his arms, and told himself to stop letting fancies take him. There was

nothing in the woods on his side of the road, and Tam would have spoken if there had been anything on

the other. He glanced over his shoulder . . . and blinked. Not more than twenty spans back down the

road a cloaked figure on horseback followed them, horse and rider alike black, dull and ungleaming.

It was more habit than anything else that kept him walking backward alongside the cart even while he

looked.

The rider’s cloak covered him to his boot tops, the cowl tugged well forward so no part of him showed.

Vaguely Rand thought there was something odd about the horseman, but it was the shadowed opening of

the hood that fascinated him. He could see only the vaguest outlines of a face, but he had the feeling he

was looking right into the rider’s eyes. And he could not look away. Queasiness settled in his stomach.

There was only shadow to see in the hood, but he felt hatred as sharply as if he could see a snarling face,

hatred for everything that lived. Hatred for him most of all, for him above all things.

Abruptly a stone caught his heel and he stumbled, breaking his eyes away from the dark horseman. His

bow dropped to the road, and only an outthrust hand grabbing Bela’s harness saved him from falling flat

on his back. With a startled snort the mare stopped, twisting her head to see what had caught her.

Tam frowned over Bela’s back at him. “Are you all right, lad?”

“A rider,” Rand said breathlessly, pulling himself upright. “A stranger, following us. “

“Where?” The older man lifted his broad-bladed spear and peered back warily.

“There, down the . . .” Rand’s words trailed off as he turned to point. The road behind was empty.

Disbelieving, he stared into the forest on both sides of the road. Bare-branched trees offered no hiding

place, but there was not a glimmer of horse or horseman. He met his father’s questioning gaze. “He was

there. A man in a black cloak, on a black horse.”

“I wouldn’t doubt your word, lad, but where has he gone?”

“I don’t know. But he was there.” He snatched up the fallen bow and arrow, hastily checked the

fletching before renocking, and half drew before letting the bowstring relax. There was nothing to aim at.

“He was.”

Tam shook his grizzled head. “If you say so, lad. Come on, then. A horse leaves hoof prints, even on

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this ground.” He started toward the rear of the cart, his cloak whipping in the wind. “If we find them,

we’ll know for a fact he was there. If not . . . well, these are days to make a man think he’s seeing things.

“

Abruptly Rand realized what had been odd about the horseman, aside from his being there at all. The

wind that beat at Tam and him had not so much as shifted a fold of that black cloak. His mouth was

suddenly dry. He must have imagined it. His father was right; this was a morning to prickle a man’s

imagination. But he did not believe it. Only, how did he tell his father that the man who had apparently

vanished into thin air wore a cloak the wind did not touch?

With a worried frown he peered into the woods around them; it looked different than it ever had before.

Almost since he was old enough to walk, he had run loose in the forest. The ponds and streams of the

Waterwood, beyond the last farms east of Emond’s Field, were where he had learned to swim. He had

explored into the Sand Hills — which many in the Two Rivers said was bad luck — and once he had

even gone to the very foot of the Mountains of Mist, him and his closest friends, Mat Cauthon and Perrin

Aybara. That was a lot further afield than most people in Emond’s Field ever went; to them a journey to

the next village, up to Watch Hill or down to Deven Ride, was a big event. Nowhere in all of that had he

found a place that made him afraid. Today, though, the Westwood was not the place he remembered. A

man who could disappear so suddenly could reappear just as suddenly, maybe even right beside them.

“No, father, there’s no need.” When Tam stopped in surprise, Rand covered his flush by tugging at the

hood of his cloak. “You’re probably right. No point looking for what isn’t there, not when we can use

the time getting on to the village and out of this wind.”

“I could do with a pipe,” Tam said slowly, “and a mug of ale where it’s warm.” Abruptly he gave a

broad grin. “And I expect you’re eager to see Egwene.

Rand managed a weak smile. Of all things he might want to think about right then, the Mayor’s daughter

was far down the list. He did not need any more confusion. For the past year she had been making him

increasingly jittery whenever they were together. Worse, she did not even seem to be aware of it. No, he

certainly did not want to add Egwene to his thoughts.

He was hoping his father had not noticed he was afraid when Tam said, “Remember the flame, lad, and

the void.”

It was an odd thing Tam had taught him. Concentrate on a single flame and feed all your passions into it

— fear, hate, anger — until your mind became empty. Become one with the void, Tam said, and you

could do anything. Nobody else in Emond’s Field talked that way. But Tam won the archery competition

at Bel Tine every year with his flame and his void. Rand thought he might have a chance at placing this

year himself, if he could manage to hold onto the void. For Tam to bring it up now meant hehad noticed,

but he said nothing more about it.

Tam clucked Bela into motion once more, and they resumed their journey, the older man striding along

as if nothing untoward had happened and nothing untoward could. Rand wished he could imitate him. He

tried forming the emptiness in his mind, but it kept slipping away into images of the black-cloaked

horseman.

He wanted to believe that Tam was right, that the rider had just been his imagination, but he could

remember that feeling of hatred too well. Therehad been someone. And that someone had meant him

harm. He did not stop looking back until the high-peaked, thatched roofs of Emond’s Field surrounded

him.

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The village lay close onto the Westwood, the forest gradually thinning until the last few trees stood

actually among the stout frame houses. The land sloped gently down to the east. Though not without

patches of woods, farms and hedge-bordered fields and pastures quilted the land beyond the village all

the way to the Waterwood and its tangle of streams and ponds. The land to the west was just as fertile,

and the pastures there lush in most years, but only a handful of farms could be found in the Westwood.

Even those few dwindled to none miles short of the Sand Hills, not to mention the Mountains of Mist,

which rose above the Westwood treetops, distant but in plain sight from Emond’s Field. Some said the

land was too rocky, as if there were not rocks everywhere in the Two Rivers, and others said it was

hard-luck land. A few muttered that there was no point getting any closer to the mountains than needs be.

Whatever the reasons, only the hardiest men farmed in the Westwood.

Small children and dogs dodged around the cart in whooping swarms once it passed the first row of

houses. Bela plodded on patiently, ignoring the yelling youngsters who tumbled under her nose, playing

tag and rolling hoops. In the last months there had been little of play or laughter from the children; even

when the weather had slackened enough to let children out, fear of wolves kept them in. It seemed the

approach of Bel Tine had taught them how to play again.

Festival had affected the adults as well. Broad shutters were thrown back, and in almost every house the

goodwife stood in a window, apron tied about her and long-braided hair done up in a kerchief, shaking

sheets or hanging mattresses over the windowsills. Whether or not leaves had appeared on the trees, no

woman would let Bel Tine come before her spring cleaning was done. In every yard rugs hung from

stretched lines, and children who had not been quick enough to run free in the streets instead vented their

frustration on the carpets with wicker beaters. On roof after roof the goodman of the house clambered

about, checking the thatch to see if the winter’s damage meant calling on old Cenn Buie, the thatcher.

Several times Tam paused to engage one man or another in brief conversation. Since he and Rand had

not been off the farm for weeks, everyone wanted to catch up on how things were out that way. Few

Westwood men had been in. Tam spoke of damage from winter storms, each one worse than the one

before, and stillborn lambs, of brown fields where crops should be sprouting and pastures greening, of

ravens flocking in where songbirds had come in years before. Grim talk, with preparations for Bel Tine

going on all around them, and much shaking of heads. It was the same on all sides.

Most of the men rolled their shoulders and said, “Well, we’ll survive, the Light willing.” Some grinned

and added, “And if the Light doesn’t will, we’ll still survive.”

That was the way of most Two Rivers people. People who had to watch the hail beat their crops or the

wolves take their lambs, and start over, no matter how many years it happened, did not give up easily.

Most of those who did were long since gone.

Tam would not have stopped for Wit Congar if the man had not come out into the street so they had to

halt or let Bela run over him. The Congars — and the Coplins; the two families were so intermarried no

one really knew where one family let off and the other began — were known from Watch Hill to Deven

Ride, and maybe as far as Taren Ferry, as complainers and troublemakers.

“I have to get this to Bran al’Vere, Wit,” Tam said, nodding to the barrels in the cart, but the scrawny

man held his ground with a sour expression on his face. He had been sprawled on his front steps, not up

on his roof, though the thatch looked as if it badly needed Master Buie’s attention. He never seemed

ready to start over, or to finish what he started the first time. Most of the Coplins and Congars were like

that, those who were not worse.

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“What are we going to do about Nynaeve, al’Thor?” Congar demanded. “We can’t have a Wisdom like

that for Emond’s Field.”

Tam sighed heavily. “It’s not our place, Wit. The Wisdom is women’s business. “

“Well, we’d better do something, al’Thor. She said we’d have a mild winter. And a good harvest. Now

you ask her what she hears on the wind, and she just scowls at you and stomps off.”

“If you asked her the way you usually do, Wit,” Tam said patiently, “you’re lucky she didn’t thump you

with that stick she carries. Now if you don’t mind, this brandy — ”

“Nynaeve al’Meara is just too young to be Wisdom, al’Thor. If the Women’s Circle won’t do

something, then the Village Council has to.”

“What business of yours is the Wisdom, Wit Congar?” roared a woman’s voice. Wit flinched as his wife

marched out of the house. Daise Congar was twice as wide as Wit, a hard-faced woman without an

ounce of fat on her. She glared at him with her fists on her hips. “You try meddling in Women’s Circle

business, and see how you like eating your own cooking. Which you won’t do in my kitchen. And

washing your own clothes and making your own bed. Which won’t be under my roof.”

“But, Daise,” Wit whined, “I was just . . .”

“If you’ll pardon me, Daise,” Tam said. “Wit. The Light shine on you both.” He got Bela moving again,

leading her around the scrawny fellow. Daise was concentrating on her husband now, but any minute she

could realize whom it was Wit had been talking to.

That was why they had not accepted any of the invitations to stop for a bite to eat or something hot to

drink. When they saw Tam, the goodwives of Emond’s Field went on point like hounds spotting a rabbit.

There was not a one of them who did not know just the perfect wife for a widower with a good farm,

even if it was in the Westwood.

Rand stepped along just as quickly as Tam, perhaps even more so. He was sometimes cornered when

Tam was not around, with no way to escape outside of rudeness. Herded onto a stool by the kitchen fire,

he would be fed pastries or honeycakes or meatpies. And always the goodwife’s eyes weighed and

measured him as neatly as any merchant’s scales and tapes while she told him that what he was eating

was not nearly so good as her widowed sister’s cooking, or her next-to-eldest cousin’s. Tam was

certainly not getting any younger, she would say. It was good that he had loved his wife so — it boded

well for the next woman in his life — but he had mourned long enough. Tam needed a good woman. It

was a simple fact, she would say, or something very close, that a man just could not do without a woman

to take care of him and keep him out of trouble. Worst of all were those who paused thoughtfully at

about that point, then asked with elaborate casualness exactly how oldhe was now.

Like most Two Rivers folk, Rand had a strong stubborn streak. Outsiders sometimes said it was the

prime trait of people in the Two Rivers, that they could give mules lessons and teach stones. The

goodwives were fine and kindly women for the most part, but he hated being pushed into anything, and

they made him feel as if he were being prodded with sticks. So he walked fast, and wished Tam would

hurry Bela along.

Soon the street opened onto the Green, a broad expanse in the middle of the village. Usually covered

with thick grass, the Green this spring showed only a few fresh patches among the yellowish brown of

dead grass and the black of bare earth. A double handful of geese waddled about, beadily eyeing the

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ground but not finding anything worth pecking, and someone had tethered a milkcow to crop the sparse

growth.

Toward the west end of the Green, the Winespring itself gushed out of a low stone outcrop in a flow that

never failed, a flow strong enough to knock a man down and sweet enough to justify its name a dozen

times over. From the spring the rapidly widening Winespring Water ran swiftly off to the east, willows

dotting its banks all the way to Master Thane’s mill and beyond, until it split into dozens of streams in the

swampy depths of the Waterwood. Two low, railed footbridges crossed the clear stream at the Green,

and one bridge, wider than the others and stout enough to bear wagons. The Wagon Bridge marked

where the North Road, coming down from Taren Ferry and Watch Hill, became the Old Road, leading

to Deven Ride. Outsiders sometimes found it funny that the road had one name to the north and another

to the south, but that was the way it had always been, as far as anyone in Emond’s Field knew, and that

was that. It was a good enough reason for Two Rivers people.

On the far side of the bridges, the mounds were already building for the Bel Tine fires, three careful

stacks of logs almost as big as houses. They had to be on cleared dirt, of course, not on the Green, even

sparse as it was. What of Festival did not take place around the fires would happen on the Green.

Near the Winespring a score of older women sang softly as they erected the Spring Pole. Shorn of its

branches, the straight, slender trunk of a fir tree stood ten feet high even in the hole they had dug for it. A

knot of girls too young to wear their hair braided sat cross-legged and watched enviously, occasionally

singing snatches of the song the women sang.

Tam clucked at Bela as if to make her speed her pace, though she ignored it, and Rand studiously kept

his eyes from what the women were doing. In the morning the men would pretend to be surprised to find

the Pole, then at noon the unmarried women would dance the Pole, entwining it with long, colored

ribbons while the unmarried men sang. No one knew when the custom began or why — it was another

thing that was the way it had always been — but it was an excuse to sing and dance, and nobody in the

Two Rivers needed much excuse for that.

The whole day of Bel Tine would be taken up with singing and dancing and feasting, with time out for

footraces, and contests in almost everything. Prizes would be given not only in archery, but for the best

with the sling, and the quarterstaff. There would be contests at solving riddles and puzzles, at the rope

tug, and lifting and tossing weights, prizes for the best singer, the best dancer and the best fiddle player,

for the quickest to shear a sheep, even the best at bowls, and at darts.

Bel Tine was supposed to come when spring had well and truly arrived, the first lambs born and the first

crop up. Even with the cold hanging on, though, no one had any idea of putting it off. Everyone could use

a little singing and dancing. And to top everything, if the rumors could be believed, a grand display of

fireworks was planned for the Green — if the first peddler of the year appeared in time, of course. That

had been causing considerable talk; it was ten years since the last such display, and that was still talked

about.

The Winespring Inn stood at the east end of the Green, hard beside the Wagon Bridge. The first floor of

the inn was river rock, though the foundation was of older stone some said came from the mountains. The

white-washed second story — where Brandelwyn al’Vere, the innkeeper and Mayor of Emond’s Field

for the past twenty years, lived in the back with his wife and daughters — jutted out over the lower floor

all the way around. Red roof tile, the only such roof in the village, glittered in the weak sunlight, and

smoke drifted from three of the inn’s dozen tall chimneys.

At the south end of the inn, away from the stream, stretched the remains of a much larger stone

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foundation, once part of the inn — or so it was said. A huge oak grew in the middle of it now, with a

bole thirty paces around and spreading branches as thick as a man. In the summer, Bran al’Vere set

tables and benches under those branches, shady with leaves then, where people could enjoy a cup and a

cooling breeze while they talked or perhaps set out a board for a game of stones.

“Here we are, lad.” Tam reached for Bela’s harness, but she stopped in front of the inn before his hand

touched leather. “Knows the way better than I do”, he chuckled.

As the last creak of the axle faded, Bran al’Vere appeared from the inn, seeming as always to step too

lightly for a man of his girth, nearly double that of anyone else in the village. A smile split his round face,

which was topped by a sparse fringe of gray hair. The innkeeper was in his shirtsleeves despite the chill,

with a spotless white apron wrapped around him. A silver medallion in the form of a set of balance scales

hung on his chest.

The medallion, along with the full-size set of scales used to weigh the coins of the merchants who came

down from Baerlon for wool or tabac, was the symbol of the Mayor’s office. Bran only wore it for

dealing with the merchants and for festivals, feastdays, and weddings. He had it on a day early now, but

that night was Winternight, the night before Bel Tine, when everyone would visit back and forth almost

the whole night long, exchanging small gifts, having a bite to eat and a touch to drink at every house.After

the winter , Rand thought,he probably considers Winternight excuse enough not to wait until

tomorrow.

“Tam,” the Mayor shouted as he hurried toward them. “The Light shine on me, it’s good to see you at

last. And you, Rand. How are you, my boy?”

“Fine, Master al’Vere,” Rand said. “And you, sir?” But Bran’s attention was already back on Tam.

“I was almost beginning to think you wouldn’t be bringing your brandy this year. You’ve never waited so

late before.”

“I’ve no liking for leaving the farm these days, Bran,” Tam replied. “Not with the wolves the way they

are. And the weather.”

Bran harrumphed. “I could wish somebody wanted to talk about something besides the weather.

Everyone complains about it, and folk who should know better expect me to set it right. I’ve just spent

twenty minutes explaining to Mistress al’Donel that I can do nothing about the storks. Though what she

expected me to do . . . “He shook his head.

“An ill omen,” a scratchy voice announced, “no storks nesting on the rooftops at Bel Tine.” Cenn Buie,

as gnarled and dark as an old root, marched up to Tam and Bran and leaned on his walking staff, near as

tall as he was and just as gnarled. He tried to fix both men at once with a beady eye. “There’s worse to

come, you mark my words.”

“Have you become a soothsayer, then, interpreting omens?” Tam asked dryly. “Or do you listen to the

wind, like a Wisdom? There’s certainly enough of it. Some originating not far from here.”

“Mock if you will,” Cenn muttered, “but if it doesn’t warm enough for crops to sprout soon, more than

one root cellar will come up empty before there’s a harvest. By next winter there may be nothing left alive

in the Two Rivers but wolves and ravens. If it is next winter at all. Maybe it will still be this winter.”

“Now what is that supposed to mean?” Bran said sharply.

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Cenn gave them a sour look. “I’ve not much good to say about Nynaeve al’Meara. You know that. For

one thing, she’s too young to — No matter. The Women’s Circle seems to object to the Village Council

even talking about their business, though they interfere in ours whenever they want to, which is most of

the time, or so it seems to — ”

“Cenn,” Tam broke in, “is there a point to this?”

“This is the point, al’Thor. Ask the Wisdom when the winter will end, and she walks away. Maybe she

doesn’t want to tell us what she hears on the wind. Maybe what she hears is that the winter won’t end.

Maybe it’s just going to go on being winter until the Wheel turns and the Age ends. There’s your point.”

“Maybe sheep will fly,” Tam retorted, and Bran threw up his hands. “The Light protect me from fools.

You sitting on the Village Council, Cenn, and now you’re spreading that Coplin talk. Well, you listen to

me. We have enough problems without . . .”

A quick tug at Rand’s sleeve and a voice pitched low, for his ear alone, distracted him from the older

men’s talk. “Come on, Rand, while they’re arguing. Before they put you to work.”

Rand glanced down, and had to grin. Mat Cauthon crouched beside the cart so Tam and Bran and

Cenn could not see him, his wiry body contorted like a stork trying to bend itself double.

Mat’s brown eyes twinkled with mischief, as usual. “Dav and I caught a big old badger, all grouchy at

being pulled out of his den. We’re going to let it loose on the Green and watch the girls run. “

Rand’s smile broadened; it did not sound as much like fun to him as it would have a year or two back,

but Mat never seemed to grow up. He took a quick look at his father — the men had their heads

together still, all three talking at once — then lowered his own voice. “I promised to unload the cider. I

can meet you later, though. “

Mat rolled his eyes skyward. “Toting barrels! Burn me, I’d rather play stones with my baby sister. Well,

I know of better things than a badger. We have strangers in the Two Rivers. Last evening — ”

For an instant Rand stopped breathing. “A man on horseback?” he asked intently. “A man in a black

cloak, on a black horse? And his cloak doesn’t move in the wind?”

Mat swallowed his grin, and his voice dropped to an even hoarser whisper. “You saw him, too? I

thought I was the only one. Don’t laugh, Rand, but he scared me.”

“I’m not laughing. He scared me, too. I could swear he hated me, that he wanted to kill me.” Rand

shivered. Until that day he had never thought of anyone wanting to kill him, really wanting to kill him. That

sort of thing just did not happen in the Two Rivers. A fistfight, maybe, or a wrestling match, but not

killing.

“I don’t know about hating, Rand, but he was scary enough anyway. All he did was sit on his horse

looking at me, just outside the village, but I’ve never been so frightened in my life. Well, I looked away,

just for a moment — it wasn’t easy, mind you — then when I looked back he’d vanished. Blood and

ashes! Three days, it’s been, and I can hardly stop thinking about him. I keep looking over my shoulder.”

Mat attempted a laugh that came out as a croak. “Funny how being scared takes you. You think strange

things. I actually thought — just for a minute, mind — it might be the Dark One. “He tried another laugh,

but no sound at all came out this time.

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Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time 01 - The Eye of the World

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