37 The Long Chase

Basel Gill seats Rand and Mat privately, offers meager food due to shortages, and asks for their story. Rand gives a cautious account, omitting Trollocs and Fades, and explains they aimed for Caemlyn and then Tar Valon. Gill vows help for Thom’s friends but warns that involving Elaida or the Guards could end badly, given politics and her reputed Talent.

After Gill is called away by the cook, Mat grows bitter and suspicious, refusing to eat and insisting their friends are dead, clutching his dagger. Rand resolves to keep moving toward Tar Valon and not give up, but leaves Mat to rest. Uneasy in the common room, Rand seeks a quieter place and enters the inn’s library.

There, Rand encounters Loial, an Ogier. Initially mistaking Loial for a Trolloc, Rand recovers as Loial explains his nature, age (ninety), and reasons for leaving the stedding to see the world’s groves and cities the Ogier once nurtured or built. Loial laments the neglect and loss of the old groves and how human cities and names have changed.

As they speak of Manetheren and the Wheel, Rand, starved for honest conversation, confides the true tale of Winternight, Trollocs, Fades, Darkfriends, and their perilous journey. Hearing this, Loial declares Rand ta’veren—one around whom the Pattern bends—and suggests Rand’s friends might be as well. He asks to travel with Rand, intrigued by the shaping of events around him.

Rand, comforted by Loial but mindful of danger and the Ogier’s conspicuous size, declines for now, hoping Moiraine will find them and that their friends live. They agree to talk again, play stones, and perhaps meet in Tar Valon, where Loial says a well-tended grove remains.