Chapter 32: Four Kings in Shadow

Rand and Mat reach Four Kings, a grim wagon-trade town on the Caemlyn Road. After three rowdy inns turn them away, they take a deal at the run-down Dancing Cartman: a storeroom pallet and a meal in exchange for a night's playing and juggling. The skinny innkeeper, Saml Hake, cannot keep his eyes off Rand's heron-mark sword and Thom's gold-and-silver flute, and he keeps two heavy-shouldered bouncers close at hand.

The common room fills. A soft, well-dressed merchant arrives in velvet and silk and watches the boys with a smile of recognition. Kitchen gossip tells Rand the man is Howal Gode of Whitebridge, and that he tried half the inns in town before settling on this one.

Hake locks them in a back storeroom with a barred window, intending to rob them in their sleep. Gode reaches them first. Hake and his bullies are already down somewhere in the inn, and through the door Gode demands the boys submit to the Dark One as future Dreadlords. As his men batter the door, lightning strikes the iron bars, blasting the wall open and killing the men outside. Rand and Mat flee into the storm, and Rand wonders whether the luck was the Light's, or something else.