The Eye of the World: Chapter Thirty-Two

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: FOUR KINGS IN SHADOW

Even though Jordan made the stupid move of flat-out telling me that something bad would happen to the boys in Four Kings, I managed to stay in suspense throughout this chapter again because at least Jordan didn't say what would happen, exactly. For a while, I debated to myself whether that little disclosure actually heightened my suspense, but in the end I decided that it didn't.

The titular Four Kings is a village right next to Caemlyn, sitting at the nine-tenths mark of the Caemlyn Road. Once they get there, Mat and Rand try to find an inn to play at, but the only one that doesn't have much better musicians playing is a wretched hive of scum and villainy called The Dancing Cartman. Rand and Mat decide that they'd much rather have a roof over their heads as they sleep than stay under a bridge, but after the first look at the inn's proprietor, I would have made an about-face and searched for the nearest bridge, pneumonia be damned:

• "I've got a man plays the dulcimer," the innkeeper said sourly.
  
  "You have a drunk, Saml Hake," one of the serving maids said. She was passing him with a tray and two mugs, and she paused to give Rand and Mat a plump smile. "Most times, he can't see well enough to find the common room," she confided in a loud whisper. "Haven't even seen him in two days."
  
  Without taking his eyes off Rand and Mat, Hake casually backhanded her across the face. She gave a surprised grunt and fell heavily to the unwashed floor; one of the mugs broke, and the spilled wine washed rivulets in the dirt. "You're docked for the wine and breakage. Get 'em fresh drinks. And hurry. Men don't pay to wait while you laze around." His tone was as offhand as the blow. None of the patrons looked up from their wine, and the other serving maids kept their eyes averted.

By the end of the chapter, I could picture this creep giving me a weird look on the subway. At first he just seems like a joyless asshole who abuses the women he employs like it's no big deal, but after Rand and Mat break a deal with him and start to draw a crowd, he suddenly develops a new layer of slime:

• Hake smiled when he looked at Rand and Mat. After a while Rand realized that Hake was not smiling at them; the smiles came when his eyes slid behind them, to where the heron-mark sword lay. Once, when Rand set the gold-and-silver-chased flute down beside his stool, the flute got a smile, too.

And thus begins a subtle cat-and-mouse game, where Rand and Mat look for a way to escape the inn (and hopefully get at least a meal out of the deal) without being robbed while Hake and his bouncers, Jak and Strom (If you must use contemporary English names like "Jack" or "Samuel" in your fantasy epic, make sure to at least spell them differetly, I suppose) keep the two of them trapped in the inn until it's time for bed. Throughout the evening neither party outright lets the other know of their intentions, but they manage to pick up on subtle things and learn about them anyway.

The game gets even more complex when a "sleekly fleshy" (really, Jordan?) stranger enters, dressed in fancy finery and taking a rather worrying interest in Rand and Mat. Because I haven't worked the urge to reference Lord of the Rings out of my system yet, I immediately (and incorrectly) thought of Aragorn here.

The suspense continues without a hiccup as Rand and Mat keep playing for the crowd. They even nut up and demand food from Hake:

• When they had been performing for two hours, as near as Rand could estimate, he slipped the flute into its case and he and Mat gathered up their belongings. As they were stepping down from the low platform, Hake came bustling up, anger twisting his narrow face.
  
  "It's time to eat," Rand said to forestall him, "and we don't want our things stolen. You want to tell the cook?" Hake hesitated, still angry, trying unsuccessfully to keep his eyes off what Rand held in his arms. Casually Rand shifted his bundles so he could rest one hand on the sword. "Or you can try throwing us out." He made the emphasis deliberately, then added, "There's a lot of night left for us to play, yet. We have to keep our strength up if we're going to perform well enough to keep this crowd spending money. How long do you think this room will stay full if we fall over from hunger?"
  
  Hake's eyes twitched over the room full of men putting money in his pocket, then he turned and stuck his head through the door to the rear of the inn. "Feed 'em!" he shouted. Rounding on Rand and Mat, he snarled, "Don't be all night about it. I expect you up there till the last man's gone."

But the token of goodwill that makes me give Jordan for that display gets rescinded almost immediately when Rand just happens to overhear a conversation two of the serving maids have about the rich stranger who's eyeing Rand. He learns that the man has been ducking in and out of every Four Kings inn but this one, and in a cinematic moment, Rand steps into the outside, where it's pitch black and pouring buckets, and reads the name Howal Gode off the man's carriage thanks to a flash of lightning.

• [Rand] had never realized before what a good trap the inn made. Hake, Jak and Strom did not even have to keep a close eye on them; the crowd would let them know if he or Mat left the dais. As long as the common room was full of people, Hake could not send Jak and Strom after them, but as long as the common room was full of people they could not get away without Hake knowing. And Gode was watching their every move, too. It was so funny he would have laughed if he had not been on the point of throwing up. They would just have to be wary and wait their chance.

Unfortunately, the closest thing they get to that chance comes when they're shown to their rooms. They find something to block the door, but the window is not only jammed and hard to open, but it's also barred. As they try to pry off the bars and get the window open, with the pouring rain making everything slippery, Gode offers his ultimatum:

• "Stop being foolish, my young friends. You know. You know very well. The Great Lord of the Dark has marked you for his own. It is written that when he awakes, the new Dreadlords will be there to praise him. You must be two of them, else I would not have been sent to find you. Think of it. Life everlasting, and power beyond dreams." His voice was thick with hunger for that power himself.
  
  Rand glanced back at the window just as lightning split the sky, and he almost groaned. The brief flash of light showed men outside, men ignoring the raid that drenched them as they stood watching the window.
  
  "I tire of this," Gode announced. "You will submit to my master - to your master - or you will be made to submit. That would not be pleasant for you. The Great Lord of the Dark rules death, and the can give life in death or death in like as he chooses. Open this door. One way or another, your running is at an end. Open it, I say!"

And as Gode hammers down the door, it would seem that their running is indeed at an end, were it not for the lightning blasting a hole in the wall, clearing a way for Rand and Mat to escape and leaving them completely unharmed.

What seems at first like a deus ex machina is obviously Rand tapping into the One Power for the first time. Even if I hadn't remembered reading a spoiler a long time ago about Rand having magic, I probably could have figured things out from knowing that Rand's going to be the Dragon Reborn, and that even the false Dragon Logaine had magic at his disposal. In other words, we're seeing the beginning of another subplot here, and I'm beginning to think that none of them are going to be resolved in this book.

NEXT TIME: Not much of anything, really.