Robert Jordan - The Fires of Heaven

Everywhere people thronged, in noisy milling clusters of men and women and children, in chattering streams flowing from one attraction to the next. All but the s'redit performed on raised wooden stages Luca had had built. Cerandin's boar-horses had the largest crowd, the huge gray animals actually balancing on their forelegs, even the baby, long snouts curved up sinuously, while Clarine's dogs had the smallest, for all they did back-springs and flips over each others' backs. A good many people paused to stare at the lions and the hairy boarlike capars in their cages, the strangely horned deer from Arafel and Saldaea and Arad Doman and the bright birds from the Light knew where, and some waddling, brown-furred creatures with big eyes and round ears that sat placidly eating leaves from branches gripped in their forepaws. Luca's tale on where they came from varied — she supposed he did not know — and he had not been able to make up a name for them that pleased him. A huge snake from the marshes of Illian, four times as long as a man, earned nearly as many gasps as the s'redit, although simply lying there, apparently asleep, but she was pleased to see that Latelle's bears, at the moment standing atop huge red wooden balls that they rolled in circles with their feet, attracted few more than the dogs. Bears these people could see in their own forests, even if these did have white faces.

Latelle sparkled in the afternoon sunlight in her black spangles. Cerandin glittered almost as much in blue, and Clarine in green, though neither had quite as many sequins sewn on as Latelle, but every last one of the dresses had a collar right up under the chin. Of course, Petra and the Chavanas were performing attired only in bright blue breeches, but that was to show off their muscles. Only understandable. The acrobats were standing one atop the other's shoulders, four high. Not far from them, the strongman took a long bar with a large iron ball at each end — two men were needed to hand the thing up to him — and immediately began twirling it in his thick hands, even spinning the bar around his neck and across his back.

Thom was juggling fire, and eating it as well. Eight flaming batons made a perfect circle: then suddenly he had four in each hand, one sticking up from each cluster. Deftly popping each upraised flaming end into his mouth in turn, he appeared to swallow, and took them out extinguished, looking as if he had just had something tasty. Nynaeve could not fathom how he did not scorch his mustaches off, much less burn his throat. A twist of his wrists, and the unlit batons folded into the lit like fans. A moment later they were making two interlinked circles above his head. He wore the same brown coat he always did, though Luca had given him a red one sewn with sequins. From the way Thom's bushy eyebrows rose as she stalked past, he did not understand why she glared at him. His own coat, indeed!

She hurried on toward the thick, impatiently buzzing crowd circled around the two tall poles with the rope stretched tightly between. She had to use her elbows to reach the front row, though two women did glare and snatch their men out of her way when the shawl slipped. She would have glared back had she not been so busy blushing and covering herself. Luca was there, frowning as anxiously as a husband outside a birthing room, next to a thick fellow with his head shaved except for a grizzled topknot. She slipped in on the other side of Luca. The shaven-headed man had a villainous look; a long scar sliced down his left cheek, and a patch over that eye was painted with a scowling red replacement. Few of the men she had seen here were armed with more than a belt knife, but he wore a sword strapped to his back, the long hilt rising above his right shoulder. He looked vaguely familiar for some reason, but her mind was all on the highrope. Luca frowned at the shawl, smiled at her, and tried to put an arm around her waist.

While he was still trying to catch his breath from her elbow and she was still getting her shawl decently back in place, Juilin came staggering out of the crowd on the other side, conical red hat tilted jauntily, coat half off one shoulder and a wooden mug in his fist slopping over the rim. With the over-careful steps of a man whose head contains more wine than brains, he approached the rope ladder leading up to one of the high platforms and stared at it.

"Go on!" someone shouted. "Break your fool neck!"

"Wait, friend," Luca called, starting forward with smiles and flourishes of his cloak. "That is no place for a man with a belly full of —"

Setting the mug on the ground, Juilin scampered up the ladder and stood swaying on the platform. Nynaeve held her breath. The man had a head for heights, and well he should after a life of chasing thieves across the rooftops of Tear, but still…

Juilin turned as if lost; he appeared too drunk to see or remember the ladder. His eyes fixed on the rope. Tentatively, he put one foot onto the narrow span, then drew it back. Pushing the hat back to scratch his head, he studied the taut rope, and abruptly brightened visibly. Slowly he got down on hands and knees and crawled wobbling out onto the rope. Luca shouted for him to come down, and the crowd roared with laughter.

Halfway across, Juilin stopped, swaying awkwardly, and peered back, his eyes latching onto the mug he had left on the ground. Plainly he was considering how to get back to it. Slowly, with exceeding care, he stood, facing the way he had come and wavering from side to side. A gasp rose from the crowd as his foot slipped and he fell, somehow catching himself with one hand and a knee hooked around the rope. Luca caught the Taraboner hat as it fell, shouting to everyone that the man was mad, and whatever happened was no responsibility of his. Nynaeve pressed both hands tight against her middle; she could imagine being up there, and even that was enough to make her feel ill. The man was a fool. A pure bull-goose fool!

With an obvious effort, Juilin managed to catch the rope with his other hand, and pulled himself along it hand-over-hand. To the far platform. Swaying from side to side, he brushed his coat, tried to pull it straight and succeeded only in changing which shoulder hung down — and spotted his mug at the floor of the other pole. Pointing to it gleefully, he stepped out onto the rope again.

This time at least half the onlookers shouted for him to go back, shouted that there was a ladder behind him; the others only laughed uproariously, no doubt waiting for him to break his neck. He walked across smoothly, slid down the rope ladder with his hands and feet on the outside, and snatched up the wooden mug to take a deep drink. Not until Luca clapped the red hat on Juilin's head and they both bowed — Luca flourishing his cloak in such a way that Juilin was behind it half the time — did the watchers realize that it had all been part of the show. A moment of silence, and then they exploded with applause and cheers and laughter. Nynaeve had half thought they might turn ugly after being duped. The fellow with the topknot looked villainous even while laughing.

Leaving Juilin standing beside the ladder, Luca came back to stand between, Nynaeve and the man with the topknot. "I thought that would go well." He sounded incredibly self-satisfied, and he made little bows to the crowd as if he had been the one up on the rope.

Giving him a sour frown, she had no time to speak the acid comment on her tongue, because Elayne came bounding through the crowd to stand beside Juilin with her arms upraised and one knee bent.

Nynaeve's mouth tightened, and she shifted her shawl irritably. Whatever she thought of the red dress that she had found herself wearing without really knowing how, she was not sure that Elayne's costume was not worse. The Daughter-Heir of Andor was all in snow white, with a scattering of white sequins sparkling on her short coat and snug breeches. Nynaeve had not really believed that Elayne would actually appear in the clothes in public, but she had been too concerned over her own attire to give her opinion. The coat and breeches made her think of Min. She had never approved of Min wearing boy's clothes, but the color and spangles made these even more — flagrant.