Or it could be something else. People lost games up here and couldn’t pay, then disappeared. And often, the Samma N’Sei who didn’t breed true washed out of their training. Bodies vanished. Corpses rarely lasted long enough for burial.
Burn this place, Isam thought, stomach unsettled. Burn it with—
Someone entered the inn. He couldn’t watch both approaches to the door from this direction, unfortunately. She was a pretty woman, dressed in black trimmed with red. Isam didn’t recognize her slim figure and delicate face. He was increasingly certain he could recognize all of the Chosen; he’d seen them often enough in the dream. They didn’t know that, of course. They thought themselves masters of the place, and some of them were very skilled.
He was equally skilled, and also exceptionally good at not being seen.
Whoever this was, she was in disguise, then. Why bother hiding herself here? Either way, she had to be the one who had summoned him. No woman walked the Town with such an imperious expression, such self assurance, as if she expected the rocks themselves to obey if told to jump. Isam went quietly down on one knee.
That motion woke the ache inside his stomach from where he’d been wounded. He still hadn’t recovered from the fight with the wolf. He felt a stirring inside of him; Luc hated Aybara. Unusual. Luc tended to be the more accommodating one, Isam the hard one. Well, that was how he saw himself.
Either way, on this particular wolf, they agreed. On one hand, Isam was thrilled; as a hunter, he’d rarely been presented with such a challenge as Aybara. However, his hatred was deeper. He would kill Aybara.
Isam covered a grimace at the pain and bowed his head. The woman left him kneeling and took a seat at his table. She tapped a finger on the side of the tin cup for a few moments, staring at its contents, and did not speak.
Isam remained still. Many of those fools who named themselves Dark-friends would squirm and writhe when another asserted power over them. Indeed, he admitted with reluctance, Luc would probably squirm just as much.
Isam was a hunter. That was all he cared to be. When you were secure with what you were, there was no cause to resent being shown your place.
Burn it, but the side of his belly did ache.
"I want him dead", the woman said. Her voice was soft, yet intense.
Isam said nothing.
"I want him gutted like an animal, his bowels spilled onto the ground, his blood a milkpan for ravens, his bones left to bleach, then gray, then crack in the heat of the sun. I want him dead, hunter".
"Al’Thor".
"Yes. You have failed in the past". Her voice was ice. He felt a chill. This one was hard. Hard as Moridin.
In his years of service, he had learned contempt for most of the Chosen. They bickered like children, for all their power and supposed wisdom. This woman made him pause, and he wondered if he actually had spied on all of them. She seemed different.
"Well?" she asked. "Do you speak for your failures?"
"Each time one of the others has tasked me with this hunt", he said, "another has come to pull me away and set me on some other task".
In truth, he’d rather have continued his hunt for the wolf. He would not disobey orders, not direct ones from the Chosen. Other than Aybara, one hunt was much the same to him as another. He would kill this Dragon, if he had to.
"Such won’t happen this time", the Chosen said, still staring at his cup. She hadn’t looked at him, and she did not give him leave to stand, so he remained kneeling. "All others have renounced claim on you. Unless the Great Lord tells you otherwise—unless he summons you himself—you are to keep to this task. Kill al’Thor".
Motion outside the window caused Isam to glance to the side. The Chosen didn’t look as a group of black-hooded figures passed. The winds didn’t cause the cloaks of these figures to stir.
They were accompanied by carriages; an unusual sight in the Town. The carriages moved slowly, but still rocked and thumped on the uneven street. Isam didn’t need to see into the carriages’ curtained windows to know that thirteen women rode inside, matching the number of Myrddraal. None of the Samma N’Sei returned to the street. They tended to avoid processions like this. For obvious reasons, they had . . . strong feelings about such things.
The carriages passed. So. Another had been caught. Isam would have assumed that the practice had ended, once the taint was cleansed.
Before he turned back to look at the floor, he caught sight of something more incongruous. A small, dirty face watching from the shadows of an alleyway across the street. Wide eyes but a furtive posture. Moridin’s passing, and the coming of the thirteens, had driven the Samma N’Sei off the street. Where they were not, the urchins could go in some safety. Maybe.
Isam wanted to scream at the child to go. Tell it to run, to risk crossing the Blight. To die in the stomach of a Worm was better than to live in this Town, and suffer what it did to you. Go! Flee! Die!
The moment passed quickly, the urchin retreating to the shadows.
Isam could remember being that child. He’d learned so many things then. How to find food that you could mostly trust, and wouldn’t vomit back up once you found out what was in it. How to fight with knives. How to avoid being seen or noticed.
And how to kill a man, of course. Everyone who survived long enough in the Town learned that particular lesson.
The Chosen was still looking at his cup. It was her reflection she was looking at, Isam realized. What did she see there?
"I will need help", Isam finally said. "The Dragon Reborn has guards, and he is rarely in the dream".
"Help has been arranged", she said softly. "But you are to find him, hunter. None of this playing as you did before, trying to draw him to you. Lews Therin will sense such a trap. Besides, he will not deviate from his cause now. Time is short".
She spoke of the disastrous operation in the Two Rivers. Luc had been in charge then. What knew Isam of real towns, real people? Almost, he felt a longing for those things, though he suspected that was really Luc’s emotion. Isam was just a hunter. People held little interest for him beyond the best places for an arrow to enter so as to hit the heart.
That Two Rivers operation, though . . . it stank like a carcass left to rot. He still didn’t know. Had the point really been to lure al’Thor, or had it been to keep Isam away from important events? He knew his abilities fascinated the Chosen; he could do something that they could not. Oh, they could imitate the way he stepped into the dream, but they needed ch
