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As they rode into the city, Rand took a last glance at the disappearing steamwagon. Remarkable was hardly the word. A hundred wagons or only fifty-only!-incredible was more like it. Would merchants start using those things instead of horses? It hardly seemed likely. Merchants were conservative folk, not known for leaping at new ways of doing things. For some reason, Lews Therin began laughing again.
Tear was not beautiful, like Caemlyn or Tar Valon, and few of its streets could be called particularly broad, but it was large and sprawling, one of the great cities of the world, and, like most great cities, a jumble that had grown up willy-nilly. In those tangled streets, tile-roofed i
At this hour, the streets themselves were still cast in deep shadows, yet they bustled with that storied southern industry. Sedan chairs borne by pairs of lean men wove through the crowds almost as quickly as the children who raced about in play while coaches and carriages behind teams of four or six moved as slowly as the carts and wagons, most drawn by large oxen. Porters trudged along, their bundles slung beneath poles carried on two men’s shoulders, and apprentices carried rolled carpets and boxes of the masters’ handiwork on their backs. Hawkers cried their wares from trays or handbarrows, pins and ribbons, a few with roasted nuts and meat pies, and tumblers or jugglers or musicians performed at nearly every intersection. You would never have thought this city was the site of a siege.
Not everything was peaceful, though. Early morning or not. Rand saw obstreperous drunks being thrown out of i
The Maidens, drifting through the throng and still trying to pretend they had no association with Rand, drew puzzled looks and head-scratching, mainly from dark-faced Sea Folk, though a gaggle ot children trailed after them gaping. The Tairens. many of whom were not all that much fairer than the Sea Folk, had seen Aiel before, and if they wondered why they had returned to the city, it appeared they had different business at hand this morning, and more important. No one seemed to give Rand or his other companions a second glance. There were other mounted men and women in the streets, most of them outlanders, here a pale Cairhienin merchant in a somber coat, there an Arafellin with silver bells fastened to his dark braids, here a copper-ski
Which was not to say that he passed through the city without incident. Ahead of him, a ru
Not every event would be as harmless as the loaves, or as beneficial as the man landing on his feet rather than his head. Those ripples could turn what should be a bruiseless tumble into broken bones or a broken neck. Lifelong feuds could be started by men speaking words they had never thought to hear come from their own lips. Women could decide to poison their husbands over trivial offenses they had tolerated complacently for years. Oh, some fellow might find a rotting sack full of gold buried in his own basement without really knowing why he had decided to dig in the first place, or a man might ask and gain the hand of a woman he had never before had the courage to approach, but as many would find ruination as found good fortune. Balance, Min had called it. A good to balance every ill. He saw an ill to balance every good. He needed to be done in Tear and gone as soon as possible. Galloping in those crowded streets was out of the question, but he picked up his pace enough that the Maidens had to trot.
His destination had been in sight since long before he entered the city, a mass of stone like a barren, sheer-sided hill that stretched from the River Erinin into the city’s heart, covering at least eight or nine marches, a good square mile or more, and dominating the city’s sky. The Stone of Tear was mankind’s oldest stronghold, the oldest structure in the world, made with the One Power in the last days of the Breaking itself. One solid piece of stone it was, without a single join, though better than three thousand years of rain and wind had weathered the surface to roughness. The first battlements stood a hundred paces above the ground, though there were arrowslits aplenty lower, and stone spouts for showering attackers with boiling oil or molten lead. No besieger could stop the Stone from being supplied through its own wall-shielded docks, and it contained forges and manufactories to replace or mend every sort of weapon should its armories fall short. Its highest tower, rearing over the very center of the Stone, held the ba
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