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Tavolin came out, trailing another officer and two clerks, one carrying a large, wood-bound ledger and the other a tray with writing implements. The front of the officer's head was shaven like Tavolin's, though advancing baldness seemed to have taken more hair than the razor. Both officers looked from the Rand to the chest hidden by Loial's striped blanket and back again. Neither asked what was under the blanket. Tavolin had looked at it often on the way from Tremonsien, but he had never asked, either. The balding man looked at Rand's sword, too, and pursed his lips for an instant.
Tavolin gave the other officer's name as Asan Sandair, and announced loudly, "Lord Rand of House al'Thor, in Andor, and his man, called Hurin, with Loial, an Ogier of Stedding Shangtai." The clerk with the ledger opened it across his two arms, and Sandair wrote the names in a round hand.
"You must return to this guardhouse by this same hour tomorrow, my Lord," Sandair said, leaving the sanding to the second clerk, "and give the name of the inn where you are staying."
Rand looked at the staid streets of Cairhien, then back at the liveliness of the Foregate. "Can you tell me the name of a good inn out there?" He nodded to the Foregate.
Hurin made a frantic hsst and leaned close. "It would not be proper, Lord Rand," he whispered. "If you stay in the Foregate, being a lord and all, they'll be sure you are up to something."
Rand could see the sniffer was right. Sandair's mouth had dropped open and Tavolin's brows had risen at his question, and they were both still watching him intently. He wanted to tell them he was not playing their Great Game, but instead he said, "We will take rooms in the city. We can go now?"
"Of course, my Lord Rand." Sandair made a bow. "But . . . the inn?"
"I will let you know when we find one." Rand turned Red, then paused.
Selene's note crackled in his pocket. "I need to find a young woman from Cairhien. The Lady Selene. She is my age, and beautiful. I don't know her House. "
Sandair and Tavolin exchanged looks, then Sandair said, "I will make inquiries, my Lord. Perhaps I will be able to tell you something when you come tomorrow. "
Rand nodded and led Loial and Hurin into the city. They attracted little notice, though there were few riders. Even Loial attracted almost none. The people seemed nearly ostentatious about minding their own business.
"Will they take it the wrong way," Rand asked Hurin, "my asking after Selene?"
"Who can say with Cairhienin, Lord Rand? They seem to think everything has to do with Daes Dae'mar. "
Rand shrugged. He felt as if people were looking at him. He could not wait to get a good, plain coat again, and stop pretending to be what he was not.
Hurin knew several inns in the city, though his time in Cairhien had been spent mainly in the Foregate. The sniffer led them to one called The Defender of the Dragonwall, the sign bearing a crowned man with his foot on another man's chest and his sword at the man's throat. The fellow on his back had red hair.
A hostler came to take their horses, darting quick looks at Rand and at Loial when he thought he was not observed. Rand told himself to stop having fancies; not everyone in the city could be playing this Game of theirs. And if they were, he was no part of it.
The common room was neat, with the tables laid out as strictly as the city, and only a few people at them. They glanced up at the newcomers, then back to their wine immediately; Rand had the feeling they were still watching, though, and listening. A small fire burned in the big fireplace, though the day was warming.
The innkeeper was a plump, unctuous man with a single stripe of green across his dark gray coat. He gave a start at his first sight of them, and Rand was not surprised. Loial, with the chest in his arms under its striped blanket, had to duck his head to make it in through the door, Hurin was burdened with all their saddlebags and bundles, and his own red coat was a sharp contrast to the somber colors the people at the tables wore.
The innkeeper took in Rand's coat and his sword, and his oily smile came back. He bowed, washing his smooth hands. "Forgive me, my Lord. It was just that for a moment I took you for - Forgive me. My brain is not what it was. You wish rooms, my Lord?" He added another, lesser bow for Loial. "I am called Cuale, my Lord."
He thought I was Aiel, Rand thought sourly. He wanted to be gone from Cairhien. But it was the one place Ingtar might find them. And Selene had said she would wait for him in Cairhien.
It took a little time for their rooms to be readied, Cuale explaining with too many smiles and bows that it was necessary to move a bed for Loial. Rand wanted them all to share a room again, but between the innkeeper's scandalized looks and Hurin's insistence - "We have to show these Cairhienin we know what's right as well as they do, Lord Rand" - they ended with two, one for him alone, with a connecting door.
The rooms were much the same except that theirs had two beds, one sized for an Ogier, while his had only one bed, and that almost as big as the other two, with massive square posts that nearly reached the ceiling. His tall-backed, padded chair and the washstand were square and massive, too, and the wardrobe standing against his wall was carved in a heavy, rigid style that made the thing look ready enough to fall over on him. A pair of windows siding his bed looked out on the street, two floors below.
As soon as the innkeeper left, Rand opened the door and admitted Loial and Hurin into his room. "This place gnaws at me," he told them. "Everybody looks at you as if they think you're doing something. I'm going back to the Foregate, for an hour anyway. At least the people laugh, there. Which of you is willing to take the first watch on the Horn?"
"I will stay," Loial said quickly. "I'd like a chance to do a little reading. Just because I didn't see any Ogier does not mean there are no stonemasons down from Stedding Tsofu. It is not far from the city."
"I'd think you would want to meet them."
"Ah . . . no, Rand. They asked enough questions the last time about why I was outside alone as it was. If they've had word from Stedding Shangtai . . . . Well, I will just rest here and read, I think."
Rand shook his head. He often forgot that Loial had run away from home, in effect, to see the world. "What about you, Hurin? There's music in the Foregate, and people laughing. I'll wager no one is playing Daes Dae'mar there."
"I would not be so certain of that myself, Lord Rand. In any case, I thank you for the invitation, but I think not. There's so many fights - and killings, too - in Foregate, that it stinks, if you know what I mean. Not that they're likely to bother a lord, of course; the soldiers would be down on them if they did. But if it pleases you, I would like to have a drink in the common room."
"Hurin, you don't need my permission for anything. You know that."
"As you say, my Lord." The sniffer gave a suggestion of a bow.
Rand took a deep breath. If they did not leave Cairhien soon, Hurin would be bowing and scraping left and right. And if Mat and Perrin saw that, they would never let him forget it. "I hope nothing delays Ingtar. If he doesn't come quickly, we'll have to take the Horn back to Fal Dara ourselves." He touched Selene's note through his coat. "We will have to Loial, I'll come back so you can see some of the city."
"I'd rather not risk it," Loial said.
Hurin accompanied Rand downstairs. As soon as they reached the common room, Cuale was bowing in front of Rand, pushing a tray at him. Three folded and sealed parchments lay on the tray. Rand took them, since that was what the innkeeper seemed to intend. They were a fine grade of parchment, soft and smooth to his touch. Expensive.
"What are these?" he asked.
Cuale bowed again. "Invitations, of course, my Lord. From three of the noble Houses." He bowed himself away.
"Who would send me invitations?" Rand turned them over in his hand. None of the men at the tables looked up, but he had the feeling they were watching just the same. He did not recognize the seals. None was the crescent moon and stars Selene had used. "Who would know I was here?"
"Everyone by now, Lord Rand," Hurin said quietly. He seemed to feel eyes watching, too. "The guards at the gate would not keep their mouths closed about an outland lord coming to Cairhien. The hostler, the innkeeper . . . everybody tells what they know where they think it will do them the most good, my Lord."
With a grimace, Rand took two steps and hurled the invitations into the fire. They caught immediately. "I am not playing Daes Dae'mar, " he said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. Not even Cuale looked at him. "I've nothing to do with your Great Game. I am just here to wait for some friends. "
Hurin caught his arm. "Please, Lord Rand." His voice was an urgent whisper. "Please don't do that again."
"Again? You really think I'll receive more?"
"I'm certain. Light, but you mind me of the time Teva got so mad at a hornet buzzing round his ears, he kicked the nest. You've likely just convinced everyone in the room you are in some deep part of the Game. It must be deep, as they'll see it, if you deny playing at all. Every lord and lady in Cairhien plays it." The sniffer glanced at the invitations, curling blackly in the fire, and winced. "And you have surely made enemies of three Houses. Not great Houses, or they'd not have moved so quickly, but still noble. You must answer any more invitations you receive, my Lord. Decline if you will - though they'll read things into whose invitations you do decline. And into whose you accept. Of course, if you decline them all, or accept them all - "
"I'll have no part of it," Rand said quietly. "We are leaving Cairhien as soon as we can." He thrust his fists into his coat pockets, and felt Selene's note crumple. Pulling it out, he smoothed it on his coat front. "As soon as we can," he muttered, putting it back in his pocket again. "Have your drink, Hurin."
He stalked out angrily, not sure whether he was angry with himself, or with Cairhien and its Great Game, or Selene for vanishing, or Moiraine. She had started it all, stealing his coats and giving him a lord's clothes instead. Even now that he called himself free of them, an Aes Sedai still managed to interfere in his life, and without even being there.
He went back through the same gate by which he had entered the city, since that was the way he knew. A man standing in front of the guardhouse took note of him - his bright coat marked him out, as well as his height among the Cairhienin - and hurried inside, but Rand did not notice. The laughter and music of the Foregate were pulling him on.
If his gold-embroidered red coat made him stand out inside the walls, it fit right into the Foregate. Many of the men milling through the crowded streets were dressed just as darkly as those in the city, but just as many wore coats of red, or blue, or green, or gold-some bright enough to be a Tinker's clothes-and even more of the women had embroidered dresses and colored scarves or shawls. Most of the finery was tattered and ill-fitting, as if made for someone else originally, but if some of those who wore it eyed his fine coat, none seemed to take it amiss.
Once he had to stop for another procession of giant puppets. While the drummers beat their tambours and capered, a pig-faced Trolloc with tusks fought a man in a crown. After a few desultory blows, the Trolloc collapsed to laughter and cheers from the onlookers.
Rand grunted. They don't die so easily as that.
He glanced into one of the large, windowless buildings, stopping to look through the door. To his surprise, it seemed to be one huge room, open to the sky in the middle and lined with balconies, with a large dais at one end. He had never seen or heard of anything like it. People jammed the balconies and the floor watching people perform on the dais: He peeked into others as he passed them, and saw jugglers, and musicians, any number of tumblers, and even a gleeman, with his cloak of patches, declaiming a story from The Great Hunt of the Horn in sonorous-voice High
以上為部分近期熱門小說，平臺有近100萬部小說供您閱讀，進入「免費小說全本」公眾號。公眾號菜單欄「進入書城」在「書城首頁」可查找所有小說