Towers of Midnight

  He needed to get back to the city! Out of this terrible place. He turned around.

  Something flashed in the night, and he spun. "Who's there!" he shouted.

  A woman burst from the darkness, running in a mad scramble. She wore a loose white robe, little more than a shift, and she had long dark hair streaming behind her. She saw him and froze, then turned and made as if to run in a different direction.

  Perrin cut her off, snatching her hand, pulling her back. She struggled, feet marring the loamy dark ground beneath as she tried to pull away. She was gasping. In and out. In and out. She smelled frantic.

  "I need to know the way out!" Perrin said. "We have to return to the city."

  She met his eyes. "He's coming," she hissed. Her hand slipped from his and she ran, vanishing into the night, the darkness enfolding her like a shroud. Perrin took a step forward, hand outstretched.

  He heard something behind him. He turned slowly to find something enormous. A looming shadow that sucked in the moonlight. The thing seemed to draw breath away, absorbing his very life and will.

  The thing reared up taller. It was taller than the trees, a hulking monster with arms as thick as barrels, its face and body lost in shadow. It opened deep red eyes, like two huge coals flaring to life.

  I need to fight it! Perrin thought, hammer appearing in his hand. He took a step forward, then thought better of it. Light! That thing was enormous. He couldn't fight it, not out in the open like this. He needed cover.

  He turned and ran through the hostile woods. The thing followed. He could hear it snapping branches, its footsteps making the earth shake. Ahead of him, he saw the woman, her thin white gown slowing her as it caught on a branch. She pulled free and continued to run.

  The creature loomed. It would catch him, consume him, destroy him! He yelled for the woman, reaching out toward her. She glanced over her shoulder at him, and tripped.

  Perrin cursed. He scrambled to her side, to help her up. But the thing was so close!

  It was a fight, then. His heart was thumping as quickly as a woodlark pecking a tree. Hands sweaty, he turned, gripping his hammer to face the terrible thing behind. He placed himself between it and the woman.

  It reared up, growing larger, those red eyes blazing with fire. Light! He couldn't fight that, could he? He needed an edge of some kind. "What is that thing?" he desperately asked of the woman. "Why does it chase us?"

  "It's him" she hissed. "The Dragon Reborn."

  Perrin froze. The Dragon Reborn. But . . . but that was Rand. It's a nightmare, he reminded himself. None of this is real. I can't let myself be caught up in it!

  The ground trembled, as if moaning. He could feel the heat of the monster's eyes. A scrambling sound came from behind as the woman ran, leaving him.

  Perrin stood up, legs shaking, every instinct crying for him to run. But no. He couldn't fight it, either. He could not accept this as real.

  A wolf howled, then leaped into the clearing. Hopper seemed to push back the darkness. The creature bent down toward Perrin, reaching a massive hand as if to crush him.

  This was an alley.

  Inside of Caemlyn.

  It wasn't real.

  I was not.

  The darkness around them faded. The enormous dark shadow creature warped in the air, like a piece of cloth being stretched. The moon vanished. A small pocket of ground the dirty, trampled earth of an alley appeared at their feet.

  Then, with a snap, the dream was gone. Perrin stood in the alley again, Hopper at his side, no sign of the forest or the terrible creature that someone had viewed as the Dragon Reborn.

  Perrin exhaled slowly. Sweat dripped from his brow. He reached up to wipe it away, then willed the sweat away instead.

  Hopper vanished, and Perrin followed, finding himself on the same rooftop as before. He sat down. Merely thinking of that shadow made him shiver. "It felt so real," he said. "A piece of me knew it was a nightmare. I couldn't help but try to fight, or try to run. When I did either, it grew stronger, didn't it? Because I accepted it was real?"

  Yes. You must not believe what you see.

  Perrin nodded. "There was a woman in there. Part of the dream? She wasn't real either?" Yes.

  "Maybe she was the one who dreamed it," Perrin said. "The one having the original nightmare, caught up in it and trapped here in the World of Dreams."

  Men who dream do not stay here long, Hopper sent. To him, that was the end of the discussion. You were strong, Young Bull. You did well. He smelled proud.

  "It helped when she called the thing the Dragon Reborn. That showed it wasn't real. Helped me believe it wasn't."

  You did well, foolish cub, Hopper repeated. Perhaps you can learn.

  "Only if I keep practicing. We need to do that again. Can you find another?"

  Yes, Hopper sent. There are always nightmares when your kind is near. Always. The wolf turned northward again, however. Perrin had thought that the thing that had been distracting him earlier was the dreams, but it didn't seem to have been the case.

  "What is up there?" Perrin asked. "What is it you keep looking toward?"

  It comes, Hopper sent.

  "What?"

  The Last Hunt. It begins. Or it does not.

  Perrin frowned, standing. "You mean . . . right now?"

  The decision will be made. Soon.

  "What decision?" Hopper's sendings were confusing, and he couldn't

  decipher them. Light and darkness, a void and fire, a coldness and a terrible, terrible heat. Mixed with wolves howling, calling, lending strength. Come. Hopper stood, looking to the northeast.

  Hopper vanished. Perrin shifted after him, appearing low down on the slopes of the Dragonmount, beside an outcropping of stone.

  "Light," Perrin said softly, looking up in awe. The storm that had been brewing for months had come to a head. A massive black thunderhead dominated the sky, covering the top of the mountain. It spun slowly in the air, an enormous vortex of blackness, emitting bolts of lightning that connected to the clouds above. In other parts of the wolf dream the clouds were tempestuous, yet distant. This felt immediate.

  This was . . . the focus of something. Perrin could feel it. Often, the wolf dream reflected things in the real world in strange or unexpected ways.

  Hopper stood on the outcropping. Perrin could feel wolves all across the slopes of Dragonmount. In even greater numbers than he'd felt here recently.

  They wait, Hopper said. The Last Hunt comes.

  As Perrin reached out, he found that other packs were coming, still distant but moving toward Dragonmount. Perrin looked upward at the monstrous peak. The tomb of the Dragon, Lews Therin. It was a monument to his madness, to both his failure and his success. His pride and his self-sacrifice.

  "The wolves," Perrin said. "They gather for the Last Hunt?" Yes. If it occurs.

  Perrin turned back to Hopper. "You said that it would. 'The Last Hunt comes,' you said."

  A choice must be made, Young Bull. One path leads to the Last Hunt. "And the other?" Perrin asked.

  Hopper didn't respond immediately. He turned toward Dragonmount.

  The other path does not lead to the Last Hunt. "Yes, but what does it lead to?" To nothing.

  Perrin opened his mouth to press further, but then the weight of Hopper's sending hit him. "Nothing" to the wolf meant a vacant den, all of the pups taken by trappers. A night sky empty of stars. The moon fading. The smell of old blood, dry, stale and flaked away.

  Perrin closed his mouth. The sky continued to churn with that black storm. He smelled it on the wind, the smell of broken trees and dirt, of flooded fields and lightning fires. As so often, particularly recently, those scents seemed to contrast with the world around him. One of his senses

  told him he was in the very center of a catastrophe while the others saw nothing amiss.

  "This choice. Why don't we just make it?"

  It is not our choice, Young Bull.

  Perrin felt drawn to the clouds above. Despite
himself, he began to walk up the slope. Hopper loped up beside him. It is dangerous above, Young Bull.

  "I know," Perrin said. But he couldn't stop. Instead, he increased his speed, each step launching him just a little farther. Hopper ran beside him, passing trees, rocks, groups of watching wolves. Upward Perrin and Hopper went, climbing until the trees dwindled and the ground grew cold with frost and ice.

  Eventually, they approached the cloud itself. It seemed a dark fog, shaking with currents as it spun. Perrin hesitated at the perimeter, then stepped inside. It was like stepping into the nightmare. The wind was suddenly violent, the air buzzing with energy. Leaves and dirt and grit blew in the tempest, and he had to raise a hand against it.

  No, he thought.

  A small bubble of calm air opened around him. The tempest continued to blow just inches from his face, and he had to strain to keep from being claimed by it again. This storm wasn't a nightmare or a dream; it was something more vast, something more real. This time, Perrin was the one creating something abnormal with the bubble of safety.

  He pressed forward, soon leaving tracks in snow. Hopper strode against the wind, lessening its effect on him as well. He was stronger at it than Perrin was Perrin barely managed to keep his own bubble up. He feared that without it, he would be sucked into the storm and tossed into the air. He saw large branches rip past in the air, and even some smaller trees.

  Hopper slowed, then sat down in the snow. He looked upward, toward the peak. I cannot stay, the wolf sent. This is not my place.

  "I understand," Perrin said.

  The wolf vanished, but Perrin continued. He couldn't explain what drew him, but he knew that he needed to witness. Someone did. He walked for what seemed like hours, focused completely on only two things: keeping the winds off him and putting one foot in front of the other.

  The storm grew increasingly violent. It was so bad here that he couldn't keep all of the storm off, just the worst of it. He passed the ridged lip where the mountaintop was broken, picking his way alongside it, hunkered against the gusts, a steep fall on either side. Wind began to whip at his clothing, and he had to squint his eyes against the dust and snow in the air.

  But he continued on. Striving for the peak, which rose ahead, rising above the blasted out side of the mountain. He knew that atop that point, he would find what he searched for. This horrible maelstrom was the wolf dream's reaction to something great, something terrible. In this place, sometimes things were more real than in the waking world. The dream reflected a tempest because something very important was happening. He worried that it was something terrible.

  Perrin pressed forward, shoving his way through the snows, crawling up rock faces, his fingers leaving skin sticking to the frigid stones. But he had trained well these last few weeks. He leapt chasms he shouldn't have been able to leap and climbed rocks that should have been too high for him.

  A figure stood at the very top of the jagged, broken tip of the mountain. Perrin kept pressing onward. Someone needed to watch. Someone needed to be there when it happened.

  Finally, Perrin heaved atop one last stone and found himself within a dozen feet of the top. He could make out the figure now. The man stood at the very heart of the vortex of winds, staring eastward, motionless. He was faint and translucent, a reflection of the real world. Like a shadow. Perrin had never seen anything like it.

  It was Rand, of course. Perrin had known that it would be. Perrin held to the stone with one ragged hand and pulled his cloak close with the other he'd created the cloak several cliff faces ago. He blinked through reddened eyes, gazing upward. He had to focus most of his concentration on pushing back some of the winds to keep himself from being flung out into the tempest.

  Lightning flashed suddenly, thunder sounding for the first time since he'd begun climbing. That lightning began to arc in a dome around the top of the mountain. It threw light across Rand's face. That hard, impassive face, like stone itself. Where had its curves gone? When had Rand gained so many lines and angles? And those eyes, they seemed made of marble!

  Rand wore a coat of black and red. Fine and ornamented, with a sword at his waist. The winds didn't affect Rand's clothes. Those fell unnaturally still, as if he really were just a statue. Carved from stone. The only thing that moved was his dark red hair, blowing in the wind, thrown and spun.

  Perrin clung to the rocks for his life, cold wind biting into his cheeks, his fingers and feet so numb he could barely feel them. His beard bristled with dusty ice and snow. Something black began to spin around Rand. It wasn't part of the storm; it seemed like night itself leaking from him. Tendrils of it grew from Rand's own skin, like tiny hands curling back and wrapping around him. It seemed evil itself given life.

  "Rand!" Perrin bellowed. "Fight it! Rand!"

  His voice was lost in the wind, and he doubted that Rand could have heard him anyway. The darkness continued to seep out, like a liquid tar coming through Rand's pores, creating a miasma of pitch around the Dragon Reborn. Within moments, Perrin could barely see Rand through the blackness. It enclosed him, cutting him off, banishing him. The Dragon Reborn was gone. Only evil remained.

  "Rand, please . . ." Perrin whispered.

  And then from the midst of the blackness, from the center of the uproar and the tempest a tiny sliver of light split through the evil. Like a candle's glow on a very dark night. The light shone upward, toward the distant sky, like a beacon. So frail.

  The tempest buffeted it. The winds stormed, howled, and screamed. The lightning beat against the top of the rocky peak, blasting free chunks of rock, scoring the ground. The blackness undulated and pulsed.

  But still the light shone.

  A web of cracks appeared down the side of the shell of evil blackness, light shining from within. Another fracture joined it, and another. Something strong was inside, something glowing, something brilliant.

  The shell exploded outward, vaporizing and releasing a column of light so bright, so incredible that it seemed to sear the eyes from Perrin's head. But he looked on anyway, not raising arm to shade or block the resplendent image before him. Rand stood within that light, mouth open as if bellowing toward the skies above. The sun-yellowed column shot into the air, and the storm seemed to shudder, the entire sky itself undulating.

  The tempest vanished.

  That column of fiery light became a column of sunlight streaming down, illuminating the peak of Dragonmount. Perrin pulled his fingers free from the rock, gazing on with wonder at Rand standing within the light. It seemed so long, so very long, since Perrin had seen a ray of pure sunlight.

  The wolves began to howl. It was a howl of triumph, of glory and of victory. Perrin raised his head and howled as well, becoming Young Bull for a moment. He could feel the pool of sunlight growing, and it washed over him, its warmth banishing the frozen chill. He barely noticed when Rand's image vanished, for he left that sunlight behind.

  Wolves appeared around Perrin, flashing into existence midleap. They continued to bay, jumping at one another, exulting and dancing in the sunlight as it washed over them. They yipped and barked, tossing up patches of snow as they bounded. Hopper was among them, and he leaped into the air, soaring over to Perrin.

  The Last Hunt begins, Young Bull! Hopper screamed. We live. We live!

  Perrin turned back to the place where Rand had stood. If that darkness had taken Rand . . .

  But it hadn't. He smiled broadly. "The Last Hunt has come!" he screamed to the wolves. "Let it begin!"

  They howled their agreement, as loud as the storm had been just moments before.

  CHAPTER 31

  Into the Void

  Mat dumped the rest of the wine into his mouth, savoring the sweet, cool taste. He brought the cup down and tossed a handful of five dice. They tumbled to the wooden floor of the tavern, clacking against one another.

  The air was thick. Thick with sounds, thick with curses, thick with scents. Smoke, pungent liquors, a steak that had been peppered so much that you could
hardly taste the meat. That was probably for the best. Even in Caemlyn, meat spoiled unpredictably.

  The pungent men around Mat watched his dice fall: one of the men stank of garlic, another of sweat, a third of a tannery. Their hair was stringy, their fingers were grimy, but their coin was good. The game was called Koronko's Spit, and hailed from Shienar. Mat did not know the rules.

  "Five ones," said the man who stank of garlic. His name was Rittle. He seemed unsettled. "That's a loss."

  "No it's not," Mat said softly. Never mind that he did not know the rules. He knew he had won; he could feel it. His luck was with him.

  Good thing, too. He needed it tonight.

  The man that smelled of a tannery reached for his belt, where he carried a wicked knife. His name was Saddler, and he had a chin that could have been used to sharpen swords. "I thought you said you didn't know this game, friend."

  "I don't," Mat said. "Friend. But that's a win. Do we need to ask around the room to see if anyone else can confirm it?"

  The three men looked at each other, expressions dark. Mat stood up. The inn had walls dark from years of men smoking pipes inside it, and the windows though of fine glass had grown opaque with dirt and smoke. It was a tradition that they never be cleaned. The weathered sign out front had a wagon wheel painted on it, and the official name was The Dusty Wheel. Everyone called it The Rumor Wheel instead; it was the best place in Caemlyn to listen to rumors. Most of them were untrue, but that was half the fun.

  Most everyone in the place was drinking ale, but Mat had taken a fancy to good red wine lately. "Want some more, Master Crimson?" Kati, the serving woman, asked. She was a raven-haired beauty with a smile so wide it reached halfway to Cairhien. She had been flirting with him all night. Never mind that he had told her he was married. He had not even smiled at her. Well, not much. And hardly his best smile. Some women could not see the truth of things, even if it was written on their own foreheads, that was a fact.