The Wheel of Time, page 259
Then the dreams changed, and he knew he was in the wolf dream he sought. This time he had hoped for it.
He stood atop a high, flat-topped stone spire, the wind ruffling his hair, bringing a thousand dry scents and a faint hint of water hidden in the far distance. For an instant he thought he had the form of a wolf, and fumbled at his own body to make sure what he saw was really him. He wore his own coat and breeches and boots; he held his bow, and his quiver hung at his side. The axe was not there.
“Hopper! Hopper, where are you?” The wolf did not come.
Rugged mountains surrounded him, and other tall spires separated by arid flats and jumbled ridges, and sometimes a large plateau rising with sheer sides. Things grew, but nothing lush. Tough, short grass. Bushes wiry and covered with thorn, and other things that even seemed to have thorns on their fat leaves. Scattered, stunted trees, twisted by the wind. Yet wolves could find hunting even in this land.
As he peered at this rough land, a circle of darkness suddenly blanked out a part of the mountains; he could not have said whether the darkness was right in front of his face or halfway to the mountains, but he seemed to be seeing through it, and beyond. Mat, rattling a dice cup. His opponent stared at Mat with eyes of fire. Mat did not seem to see the man, but Perrin knew him.
“Mat!” he shouted. “It’s Ba’alzamon! Light, Mat, you’re dicing with Ba’alzamon!”
Mat made his toss, and as the dice spun, the vision faded, and the dark place was dry mountains again.
“Hopper!” Perrin turned slowly, looking in every direction. He even looked up in the sky—He can fly, now—where clouds promised a rain the ground far below the spire top would drink up as soon as it fell. “Hopper!”
A darkness formed among the clouds, a hole into somewhere else. Egwene and Nynaeve and Elayne stood looking at a huge metal cage, with a raised door held on a heavy spring. They stepped in and reached up together to loose the catch. The barred door snapped down behind them. A woman with her hair all in braids laughed at them, and another woman all in white laughed at her. The hole in the sky closed, and there were only clouds.
“Hopper, where are you?” he called. “I need you! Hopper!”
And the grizzled wolf was there, alighting on the spire top as if he had leaped from somewhere higher.
Dangerous. You have been warned, Young Bull. Too young. Too new yet.
“I need to know, Hopper. You said there were things I must see. I need to see more, know more.” He hesitated, thinking of Mat, of Egwene and Nynaeve and Elayne. “The strange things I see here. Are they real?” Hopper’s sending seemed slow, as if it were so simple the wolf could not understand the need to explain it, or how to. Finally, though, something came.
What is real is not real. What is not real is real. Flesh is a dream, and dreams have flesh.
“That doesn’t tell me anything, Hopper. I do not understand.” The wolf looked at him, as if he had said he did not understand that water was wet. “You said I had to see something, and you showed me Ba’alzamon, and Lanfear.”
Heartfang. Moonhunter.
“Why did you show me, Hopper? Why did I have to see them?”
The Last Hunt comes. Sadness filled the sending, and a sense of inevitability. What will be must be.
“I do not understand! The Last Hunt? What Last Hunt? Hopper, Gray Men came to kill me tonight.”
The Notdead hunt you?
“Yes! Gray Men! After me! And a Darkhound was right outside the inn! I want to know why they’re after me.”
Shadowbrothers! Hopper crouched, looking to either side as if he almost expected an attack. Long since we have seen the Shadowbrothers. You must go, Young Bull. Great danger! Flee the Shadowbrothers!
“Why are they after me, Hopper? You do know. I know you do!”
Flee, Young Bull. Hopper leaped, forepaws hitting Perrin’s chest, knocking him back, over the edge. Flee the Shadowbrothers.
The wind rushed in his ears as he fell. Hopper and the edge of the spire top dwindled above him. “Why, Hopper?” he shouted. “I have to know why!”
The Last Hunt comes.
He was going to hit. He knew it. The ground below rushed up at him, and he tensed against the crushing impact that. . . .
He started awake, staring at the candle flickering on the small table beside the bed. Lightning flashes lit the window, and thunder rattled it. “What did he mean, the Last Hunt?” he mumbled. I did not light any candle.
“You talk to yourself. And thrash in your sleep.”
He jumped, and cursed himself for not having noticed the herbal scent in the air. Zarine sat on a stool at the edge of the candlelight, elbow on her knee, chin on her fist, watching him.
“You are ta’veren,” she said as if ticking off a point. “Stone-face thinks those odd eyes of yours can see things his can’t. Gray Men want to kill you. You travel with an Aes Sedai, a Warder, and an Ogier. You free caged Aiel and kill Whitecloaks. Who are you, farmboy, the Dragon Reborn?” Her voice said that was the most ridiculous thing she could think of, but he still shifted uneasily. “Whoever you are, big man,” she added, “you could do with a little more hair on your chest.”
He twisted around, cursing, and scrabbled one of the blankets over him to his neck. Light, she keeps making me jump like a frog on a hot rock. Zarine’s face was at the edge of shadows. He could not see her clearly except when lightning shone through the window, the harsh illumination casting its own shadows across her strong nose and high cheekbones. Suddenly he remembered Min saying he should run from a beautiful woman. Once he had recognized Lanfear in that wolf dream, he had thought Min must mean her—he did not think it was possible for a woman to be any more beautiful than Lanfear—but she was just in a dream. Zarine was sitting there staring at him with those dark, tilted eyes, considering, weighing.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “What do you want? Who are you?”
She threw back her head and laughed. “I am Faile, farmboy, a Hunter of the Horn. Who do you think I am, the woman of your dreams? Why did you jump that way? You would think I had goosed you.”
Before he could find words, the door crashed back against the wall, and Moiraine stood in the doorway, her face as pale and grim as death. “Your wolf dreams tell as truly as a Dreamer’s, Perrin. The Forsaken are loose, and one of them rules in Illian.”
CHAPTER
44
Hunted
Perrin climbed off the bed and started dressing, not caring whether Zarine was watching or not. He knew what he intended to do, but he asked Moiraine anyway. “Do we leave?”
“Unless you want to make closer acquaintance with Sammael,” she said dryly. Thunder crashed overhead as if to punctuate her sentence, and lightning flashed. The Aes Sedai barely glanced at Zarine.
Stuffing his shirttail into his breeches, he suddenly wished he had his coat and cloak on. Naming which one of the Forsaken it was made the room seem cold. Ba’alzamon isn’t bad enough; we have to have the Forsaken loose, too. Light, does it even matter if we find Rand, now? Is it too late? But he kept dressing, stamping his feet into his boots. It was that or give up, and Two Rivers folk were not known for giving up.
“Sammael?” Zarine said faintly. “One of the Forsaken rules . . . ? Light!”
“Do you still wish to follow?” Moiraine said softly. “I would not make you stay here, not now, but I will give you one last chance to swear to go another way than I.”
Zarine hesitated, and Perrin paused with his coat half on. Surely no one would choose to go with people who had incurred the wrath of one of the Forsaken. Not now that she knew something of what they faced. Not unless she has a very good reason. For that matter, anyone who heard one of the Forsaken was loose should already be running for a Sea Folk ship and asking passage to the other side of the Aiel Waste, not sitting there thinking.
“No,” Zarine said finally, and he began to relax. “No, I will not swear to go another way. Whether you lead me to the Horn of Valere or not, not even whoever does find the Horn will have a story such as this. I think this story will be told for the ages, Aes Sedai, and I will be part of it.”
“No!” Perrin snapped. “That is not good enough. What do you want?”
“I have no time for this bickering,” Moiraine broke in. “Any moment Lord Brend may learn that one of his Darkhounds is dead. You can be sure he will know that means a Warder, and he will come looking for the Gaidin’s Aes Sedai. Do you mean to sit here until he discovers where you are? Move, you foolish children! Move!” She vanished down the hall before he could open his mouth.
Zarine did not wait, either, running from the room without her candle. Perrin hastily gathered his things and dashed for the back stairs still buckling his axe belt around his waist. He caught up to Loial going down, the Ogier trying to stuff a wood-bound book into his saddlebags and put on his cloak at the same time. Perrin gave him a hand with the cloak while they both ran down the stairs, and Zarine caught the pair of them before they could dash out into the pouring rain.
Perrin hunched his shoulders against the wet and ran for the stable across the storm-darkened yard without waiting to pull up the hood of his cloak. She has to have a reason. Being in a bloody story isn’t reason enough for any but a madwoman! The rain soaked his shaggy curls, laying them flat around his head, before he darted through the stable door.
Moiraine was there before them, in an oiled cloak still beaded with rain, and Nieda holding a lantern for Lan to finish saddling the horses. There was an extra, a bay gelding with an even stronger nose than Zarine’s.
“I will send pigeons every day,” the stout woman was saying. “No one will suspect me. Fortune prick me! Even Whitecloaks do speak well of me.”
“Listen to me, woman!” Moiraine snapped. “This is not a Whitecloak or a Darkfriend I speak of. You will flee this city, and make anyone you care for flee with you. For a dozen years you have obeyed me. Obey me now!” Nieda nodded, but reluctantly, and Moiraine growled with exasperation.
“The bay is yours, girl,” Lan said to Zarine. “Get on his back. If you do not know how to ride, you must learn by doing, or take my offer.”
Putting one hand on the high pommel, she vaulted easily into the saddle. “I was on a horse once, stone-face, now that I think of it.” She twisted around to tie her bundle behind her.
“What did you mean, Moiraine?” Perrin demanded as he tossed his saddlebag across Stepper’s back. “You said he would find out where I am. He knows. The Gray Men!” Nieda giggled, and he wondered irritably how much she really knew or believed among the things she said she did not believe in.
“Sammael did not send the Gray Men.” Moiraine mounted Aldieb with a cool, straight-backed precision, almost as if there were no hurry. “The Darkhound was his, however. I believe it followed my trail. He would not have sent both. Someone wants you, but I do not think Sammael even knows you exist. Yet.” Perrin stopped with one foot in the stirrup, staring at her, but she seemed more concerned with patting her mare’s arching neck than with the questions on his face.
“As well I went after you,” Lan said, and the Aes Sedai sniffed loudly.
“I could wish you were a woman, Gaidin. I would send you to the Tower as a novice to learn to obey!” He raised an eyebrow and touched the hilt of his sword, then swung into his saddle, and she sighed. “Perhaps it is as well you are disobedient. Sometimes it is well. Besides, I do not think Sheriam and Siuan Sanche together could teach you obedience.”
“I do not understand,” Perrin said. I seem to be saying that a great deal, and I’m tired of it. I want some answers I can understand. He pulled himself the rest of the way up so Moiraine would not be looking down at him; she had enough advantage without that. “If he did not send the Gray Men, who did? If a Myrddraal, or another Forsaken. . . .” He stopped to swallow. ANOTHER Forsaken! Light! “If somebody else sent them, why did they not tell him? They’re all Darkfriends, aren’t they? And why me, Moiraine? Why me? Rand is the bloody Dragon Reborn!”
He heard the gasps from Zarine and Nieda, and only then realized what he had said. Moiraine’s stare seemed to skin him like the sharpest steel. Hasty bloody tongue. When did I stop thinking before I speak? It seemed to him it had happened when he first felt Zarine’s eyes watching him. She was watching him now, with her mouth hanging open.
“You are sealed to us, now,” Moiraine told the bold-faced woman. “There is no turning back for you. Ever.” Zarine looked as if she wanted to say something and was afraid to, but the Aes Sedai had already turned her attention elsewhere. “Nieda, flee Illian tonight. In this hour! And hold your tongue even better than you have held it all these years. There are those who would cut it out for what you could say, before I could even find you.” Her hard tone left doubts as to exactly how she meant that, and Nieda nodded vigorously as if she had heard it both ways.
“As for you, Perrin.” The white mare moved closer, and he leaned back from the Aes Sedai despite all he could do. “There are many threads woven in the Pattern, and some are as black as the Shadow itself. Take care one of them does not strangle you.” Her heels touched Aldieb’s flanks, and the mare darted into the rain, Mandarb following close behind.
Burn you, Moiraine, Perrin thought as he rode after them. Sometimes I do not know which side you are on. He glanced at Zarine, riding beside him as if she had been born in a saddle. And whose side are you on?
Rain kept people off the streets and canals, so no visible eyes watched them go, but it made the footing uncertain for the horses on the uneven paving stones. By the time they reached the Maredo Causeway, a wide road of packed dirt stretching north through the marsh, the downpour had begun to slacken. Thunder still boomed, but the lightning flashed far behind them, perhaps out to sea.
Perrin felt a bit of luck was coming their way. The rain had stayed long enough to hide their departure, but now it seemed they would have a clear night for riding. He said as much, but Lan shook his head.
“Darkhounds like clear, moonlit nights best, blacksmith, rain the least. A good thunderstorm can keep them away completely.” As if his words had bidden it, the rain faded to a faint drizzle. Perrin heard Loial groan behind him.
Causeway and marsh ended together, some two miles or so from the city, but the road kept on, slowly bearing a little eastward. Cloud-dark evening faded into night, and the misting rain continued. Moiraine and Lan kept a steady, ground-eating pace. The horses’ hooves splashed through puddles on the hard-packed dirt. The moon shone through gaps in the clouds. Low hills began to rise around them, and trees to appear more and more often. Perrin thought there must be forest ahead, but he was not sure how he liked the idea. Woods could hide them from pursuit; woods could let pursuit come close before they saw.
A thin howl rose far behind them. For a moment he thought it was a wolf; he surprised himself by nearly reaching out to the wolf before he could stop. The cry came again, and he knew it was no wolf. Others answered it, all miles behind, eerie wails holding blood and death, cries that spoke of nightmares. To his surprise, Lan and Moiraine slowed, the Aes Sedai studying the hills around them in the night.
“They are a long way,” he said. “They’ll not catch us if we keep on.”
“The Darkhounds?” Zarine muttered. “Those are the Darkhounds? Are you sure it isn’t the Wild Hunt, Aes Sedai?”
“But it is,” Moiraine replied. “It is.”
“You can never outrun the Darkhounds, blacksmith,” Lan said, “not on the fastest horse. Always, you must face them and defeat them, or they will pull you down.”
“I could have stayed in the stedding, you know,” Loial said. “My mother would have had me married by now, but it would not have been a bad life. Plenty of books. I did not have to come Outside.”
“There,” Moiraine said, pointing to a tall, treeless mound well off to their right. There were no trees that Perrin could see for two hundred paces or more around it, either, and they were still sparse beyond that. “We must see them coming to have a chance.”
The Darkhounds’ dire cries rose again, closer, yet still far.
Lan quickened Mandarb’s pace a little, now that Moiraine had chosen their ground. As they climbed, the horses’ hooves clattered on rocks half-buried in the dirt and slicked by the drizzle. To Perrin’s eyes, most of them had too many squared corners to be natural. At the top, they dismounted around what seemed to be a low, rounded boulder. The moon appeared through a gap in the clouds, and he found himself looking at a weathered stone face two paces long. A woman’s face, he thought from the length of the hair. The rain made her seem to be weeping.
Moiraine dismounted and stood looking off in the direction of the howls. She was a shadowed, hooded shape, rain catching moonlight as it rolled down her oiled cloak.
Loial led his horse over to peer at the carving, then bent closer and felt the features. “I think she was an Ogier,” he said at last. “But this is not an old stedding; I would feel it. We all would. And we would be safe from Shadowspawn.”
“What are you two staring at?” Zarine squinted at the rock. “What is it? Her? Who?”
“Many nations have risen and fallen since the Breaking,” Moiraine said without turning, “some leaving no more than names on a yellowed page, or lines on a tattered map. Will we leave as much behind?” The blood-drenched howls rose again, still closer. Perrin tried to calculate their pace, and thought Lan had been right; the horses could not have outrun them, after all. They would not have long to wait.
“Ogier,” Lan said, “you and the girl hold the horses.” Zarine protested, but he rode straight over to her. “Your knives will not do much good here, girl.” His sword blade gleamed in the moonlight as he drew it. “Even this is a last resort. It sounds like ten out there, not one. Your work is to keep the horses from running when they smell the Darkhounds. Even Mandarb does not like that smell.”
