The woman only shrugged and rearranged her shawl. “She should have arranged it. But I have seen her, and I will act as her near sister.” The emphasis seemed to say his “near sister” might have done the same; Aiel customs were strange, but this was mad! “Her hips —”
“Stop that!”
She gave him a sideways glare. “She is the woman for you. Elayne has laid her heart at your feet for a bridal wreath. Do you think there was anyone in the Stone of Tear who does not know?”
“I do not want to talk about Elayne,” he told her firmly. Certainly not if she meant to go on as she had begun. The thought made his face go hot again. The woman did not seem to care what she said, or who heard!
“You do well to blush, putting her aside when she has bared her heart to you.” Aviendha's voice was hard and contemptuous. “Two letters she wrote, baring all as if she had stripped herself beneath your mother's roof, You entice her into corners for kisses, then reject her. She meant every word of those letters, Rand al'Thor! Egwene told me so. She meant every word. What do you mean toward her, wetlander?”
Rand scrubbed a hand through his hair, and had to rearrange his shoufa. Elayne meant every word? In both letters? That was flat impossible. One contradicted the other nearly point for point! Suddenly he gave a start. Egwene had told her? About Elayne's letters? Did women discuss these things among themselves? Did they plan out between them how best to confuse a man?
He found himself missing Min. Min had never made him look a fool. Well, not more than once or twice. And she had never insulted him. Well, she had called him “sheepherder” a few times. But he felt comfortable around her, warm, in a strange way. She never made him feel a complete idiot, like Elayne, and Aviendha.
His silence seemed to irritate the Aiel woman more, if such was possible. Muttering to herself, striding along as though she wanted to trample something, she adjusted and readjusted her shawl half a dozen times. Finally her grumbling faded away. Instead, she began staring at him. Like a vulture. He could not see how she did not trip and fall on her face.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he demanded.
“I am listening, Rand al'Thor, since you wish me to be silent.” She smiled around gritted teeth. “Do you not enjoy having me listen to you?”
He glanced beyond her at Mat, who shook his head. There was just no understanding women. Rand tried to set himself to considering what lay ahead, but it was difficult with the woman's eyes on him. Pretty eyes, if they had not been full of spite, but he did wish she would look at something else.
Shading his eyes against the sun's glare, Mat did his best to avoid looking at Rand and the Aiel woman striding along between their horses. He could not understand why Rand put up with her. Aviendha was pretty enough, to be sure — more than just pretty, especially now she wore a semblance of proper clothes — but with a viper for a tongue and a temper to make Nynaeve look meek. He was just glad Rand was stuck with her and not him.
He pulled the kerchief from his head and wiped the sweat off of his face, then tied it back. The heat and the eternal sun in his eyes were beginning to get to him. Was there no such thing as shade in this whole land? Sweat stung his wounds. He had refused Healing the night before, when Moiraine wakened him after he had finally gotten to sleep. A few cuts were a small price to avoid having the Power used on you, and the Wise Ones' filthytasting tea had settled his headache. Well, after a fashion, anyway. What else ailed him, he did not think Moiraine could do anything about, and he had no intention of telling her until he understood it himself. If then. He didn't even want to think of it.
Moiraine and the Wise Ones were watching him. Watching Rand, actually, he supposed, but it felt the same. Surprisingly, the sunhaired one, Melaine, had climbed up on Aldieb behind the Aes Sedai, riding awkwardly and holding Moiraine around the waist as they talked. He had not known Aiel would ride at all. A very pretty woman, Melaine, with those fiery green eyes. Except, of course, that she could channel. A man would have to be an utter fool to tangle himself with one of those. Shifting in Pips's saddle, he reminded himself that it did not matter to him what Aiel did.
I've been to Rhuidean. I've done what those snake folk said I had to. And what did he have to show for it? This bloody spear, a silver medallion, and... I could go now. If I have any sense, I will.
He could go. Try to find his own way out of the Waste before he died of thirst or sunstroke. He could if Rand was not still pulling at him, holding him. The easiest manner of finding out was just to try leaving. Looking at the bleak landscape, he grimaced. A wind picked up — it felt as if it blew across an overheated cookstove — and small whirlwinds spun funnels of yellow dust across the cracked ground. Heathaze made the distant mountains shimmer. Maybe it was best to stay around a while longer.
One of the Maidens who had been scouting ahead came trotting back and fell in beside Rhuarc, speaking for his ear alone. She flashed Mat a grin when she was done, and he busied himself picking a sharp burr out of Pips's mane. He remembered her all too well, a redhaired woman named Dorindha, about Egwene's age. Dorindha was one of those who had talked him into trying Maidens' Kiss. She had collected the first forfeit. It was not that he did not want to meet her eyes, certainly not that he could not; keeping your horse free of burrs and the like was important.
“Peddlers,” Rhuarc announced when Dorindha sprinted off the way she had come. “Peddlers' wagons, heading in this direction.” He did not sound pleased.
Mat brightened considerably, though. A peddler might be just the thing. If the fellow knew the way in, he knew the way out. He wondered if Rand suspected what he was thinking; the man had gone as blank faced as any of the Aiel.
The Aiel picked up their pace a little — Couladin's people imitated the Jindo and the Wise Ones' party with hardly a hesitation; their own scouts had probably brought word, too — a quick enough step that the horses had to maintain a brisk walk. The sun did not bother the Aiel at all, not even the gai'shain in their white robes. They flowed over the broken ground.
Less than two miles brought the wagons in sight, a dozen and a half of them, strung out in a line. All showed the wear of hard travel, with spare wheels lashed everywhere. Despite a coat of yellow dust, the first two looked like whitepainted boxes on wheels, or little houses, complete with wooden steps at the back and a metal stovechimney sticking through the roof. The last three, drawn by twentymule hitches, appeared no more than huge barrels, also white, doubtless full of water. Those in between could have done for peddlers' wagons in the Two Rivers, with high stoutspoked wheels and clanking clusters of pots and things in big net bags tied all along the tall round canvas covers.
The wagondrivers drew rein as soon as they spotted the Aiel, waiting for the columns to come to them. A heavy man in a pale gray coat and dark, widebrimmed hat climbed down from the back of the lead wagon and stood watching, now and then taking off his flatcrowned hat to wipe his forehead with a large white handkerchief. If he was nervous, looking at maybe fifteen hundred Aiel sweeping toward him, Mat could not blame him. The strange thing was the expressions on the Aiel nearest Mat. Rhuarc, trotting ahead of Rand's horse, looked grim, and Heirn wore a face that could break rocks.
“I don't understand,” Mat said. “You look like you're going to kill somebody.” That would certainly put paid to his hopes. “I thought there were three kinds of people you Aiel let come out here in the Waste; peddlers, gleemen, and the Traveling People.”
“Peddlers and gleemen are welcome,” Heirn replied curtly. If this was a welcome, Mat did not want to see Aiel being unwelcoming.
“What about the Traveling People?” he asked curiously. When Heirn kept silent, he added, “Tinkers? The Tuatha'an?” The sept chief's face grew even harder before he turned his eyes back to the wagons. Aviendha shot Mat a look as if he were a fool.
Rand drew Jeade'en close to Pips. “I'd not mention Tinkers to the Aiel if I were you,” he said in a low voice. “They are a touchy subject.”
“If you say so.” Why would Tinkers be a touchy subject? “Looks to me like they're being touchy enough about this peddler. Peddler! I can remember merchants who came to Emond's Field with fewer wagons.”
“He came into the Waste,” Rand chuckled. Jeade'en tossed his head and danced a few steps. “I wonder if he will leave it again?” Rand's twisted grin did not reach his eyes. Sometimes Mat almost wished Rand would decide whether he was mad or not and get, it over with. Almost.
Three hundred paces short of the wagons, Rhuarc signaled a halt, and he and Heirn went on alone. At least, that seemed to have been his intention, but Rand heeled his dapple stallion after them, and the inevitable bodyguard of a hundred Jindo followed. And Aviendha, of course, keeping close as though tied to Rand's horse. Mat rode right with them. If Rhuarc sent this fellow packing, he did not mean to miss his chance to go along.
Couladin came trotting out from the Shaido. Alone. Perhaps he meant to do as Rhuarc and Heirn had intended, but Mat suspected the man was pointing out that he went alone where Rand needed a hundred guards. At first it seemed Moiraine was coming, too, but words passed between the Wise Ones and her, and they all stayed where they were. Watching, though. The Aes Sedai dismounted, playing with something small that sparkled, and Egwene and the Wise Ones clustered around her.
Despite his face mopping, the big, graycoated fellow did not appear uneasy up close, although he jumped when Maidens suddenly rose out of the ground, encircling his wagons. The wagon drivers, hardfaced men with more than enough scars and broken noses to go around, looked ready to crawl under their seats; they were tough alley dogs compared to Aiel wolves. The peddler recovered right away. He was not fat for all his size; that heaviness was muscle. Rand and Mat on their horses earned his curious glances, but he singled out Rhuarc at once. His hooked beak of a nose and dark, tilted eyes gave his square swarthy face a predatory look not lessened when he put on a wide smile and swept his broadbrimmed hat off in a bow. “I am Hadnan Kadere,” he said, “peddler. I seek Cold Rocks Hold, good sirs, but I will trade with one and all. I have many fine—”
Rhuarc cut him off like an icy knife. “You head well away from Cold Rocks, or any hold. How is it you have come this far from the Dragonwall without acquiring a guide?”
“I do not really know, good sir.” Kadere did not lose his smile, but the corners of his mouth tightened a trifle. “I have traveled openly. This is my first visit to the Threefold Land so far south. I thought perhaps here there are no guides.”
Couladin snorted loudly, twirled one of his spears lazily. Kadere hunched his shoulders as if he felt steel sliding into his thick body already.
“There are always guides,” Rhuarc said coldly. “You have luck to have come so far without one. Luck that you are not dead, or walking back to the Dragonwall in your skin.” Kadere flashed an uneasy, toothy smile, and the clan Chief went on. “Luck to meet us. Had you continued this way another day or two, you would hav
