“You can leave him in here forever,” Perrin said, “but I—I don’t think he’ll ever get any better.”
“If he gets out, good master, he’ll die!”
“He will die in here or out there, Simion. Out there, at least he’ll be free, and as happy as he can be. He is not your brother anymore, but you’re the one who has to decide. You can leave him in here for people to stare at, leave him to stare at the bars of his cage until he pines away. You cannot cage a wolf, Simion, not and expect it to be happy. Or live long.”
“Yes,” Simion said slowly. “Yes, I see.” He hesitated, then nodded, and jerked his head toward the shed door.
That was all the answer Perrin needed. He swung back the slatted door and stood aside.
For a moment Noam stared at the opening. Abruptly he darted out of the cage, running on all fours, but with surprising agility. Out of the cage, out of the shed, and into the night. The Light help us both, Perrin thought.
“I suppose it’s better for him to be free.” Simion gave himself a shake. “But I don’t know what Master Harod will say when he finds that door standing open and Noam gone.”
Perrin shut the cage door; the big lock made a sharp click as he refastened it. “Let him puzzle that out.”
Simion barked a quick laugh, abruptly cut off. “He’ll make something out of it. They all will. Some of them say Noam turned into a wolf—fur and all!—when he bit Mother Roon. It’s not true, but they say it.”
Shivering, Perrin leaned his head against the cage door. He may not have fur, but he’s a wolf. He’s wolf, not man. Light, help me.
“We didn’t keep him here always,” Simion said suddenly. “He was at Mother Roon’s house, but she and I got Master Harod to move him here after the Whitecloaks came. They always have a list of names, Darkfriends they’re looking for. It was Noam’s eyes, you see. One of the names the Whitecloaks had was a fellow named Perrin Aybara, a blacksmith. They said he has yellow eyes, and runs with wolves. You can see why I didn’t want them to know about Noam.”
Perrin turned his head enough to look at Simion over his shoulder. “Do you think this Perrin Aybara is a Darkfriend?”
“A Darkfriend wouldn’t care if my brother died in a cage. I suppose she found you soon after it happened. In time to help. I wish she’d come to Jarra a few months ago.”
Perrin was ashamed that he had ever compared the man to a frog. “And I wish she could have done something for him.” Burn me, I wish she could. Suddenly it burst on him that the whole village must know about Noam. About his eyes. “Simion, would you bring me something to eat in my room?” Master Harod and the rest might have been too taken with staring at Loial to notice his eyes before, but they surely would if he ate in the common room.
“Of course. And in the morning, too. You don’t have to come down until you are ready to get on your horse.”
“You are a good man, Simion. A good man.” Simion looked so pleased that Perrin felt ashamed all over again.
CHAPTER
9
Wolf Dreams
Perrin returned to his room by the back way, and after a time Simion came up with a covered tray. The cloth did not hold in the smells of roasted mutton, sweetbeans, turnips, and freshly baked bread, but Perrin lay on his bed, staring at the whitewashed ceiling, until the aromas grew cold. Images of Noam ran through his head over and over again. Noam chewing at the wooden slats. Noam running off into the darkness. He tried to think of lock-making, of the careful quenching and shaping of the steel, but it did not work.
Ignoring the tray, he rose and made his way down the hall to Moiraine’s room. She answered his rap on the door with, “Come in, Perrin.”
For an instant all the old stories about Aes Sedai stirred again, but he pushed them aside and opened the door.
Moiraine was alone—for which he was grateful—sitting with an ink bottle balanced on her knee, writing in a small, leather-bound book. She corked the bottle and wiped the steel nib of her pen on a small scrap of parchment without looking at him. There was a fire in the fireplace.
“I have been expecting you for some time,” she said. “I have not spoken about this before because it was obvious you did not want me to. After tonight, though. . . . What do you want to know?”
“Is that what I can expect?” he asked. “To end like that?”
“Perhaps.”
He waited for more, but she only put pen and ink away in their small case of polished rosewood and blew on her writing to dry it. “Is that all? Moiraine, don’t give me slippery Aes Sedai answers. If you know something, tell me. Please.”
“I know very little, Perrin. While searching for other answers among the books and manuscripts two friends keep for their researches, I found a copied fragment of a book from the Age of Legends. It spoke of . . . situations like yours. That may be the only copy anywhere in the world, and it did not tell me much.”
“What did it tell you? Anything at all is more than I know now. Burn me, I’ve been worrying about Rand going mad, but I never thought I had to worry about myself!”
“Perrin, even in the Age of Legends, they knew little of this. Whoever wrote it seemed uncertain whether it was truth or legend. And I only saw a fragment, remember. She said that some who talked to wolves lost themselves, that what was human was swallowed up by wolf. Some. Whether she meant one in ten, or five, or nine, I do not know.”
“I can shut them out. I don’t know how I do it, but I can refuse to listen to them. I can refuse to hear them. Will that help?”
“It may.” She studied him, seeming to choose her words carefully. “Mostly, she wrote of dreams. Dreams can be dangerous for you, Perrin.”
“You said that once before. What do you mean?”
“According to her, wolves live partly in this world, and partly in a world of dreams.”
“A world of dreams?” he said disbelievingly.
Moiraine gave him a sharp look. “That is what I said, and that is what she wrote. The way wolves talk to one another, the way they talk to you, is in some way connected to this world of dreams. I do not claim to understand how.” She paused, frowning slightly. “From what I have read of Aes Sedai who had the Talent called Dreaming, Dreamers sometimes spoke of encountering wolves in their dreams, even wolves that acted as guides. I fear you must learn to be as careful sleeping as waking, if you intend to avoid wolves. If that is what you decide to do.”
“If that is what I decide? Moiraine, I will not end up like Noam. I won’t!”
She eyed him quizzically, shaking her head slowly. “You speak as if you can make all your own choices, Perrin. You are ta’veren, remember.” He turned his back on her, staring at the night-dark windows, but she continued: “Perhaps, knowing what Rand is, knowing how strongly ta’veren he is, I have paid too little attention to the other two ta’veren I found with him. Three ta’veren in the same village, all born within weeks of one another? That is unheard of. Perhaps you—and Mat—have larger purposes in the Pattern than you, or I, thought.”
“I do not want any purpose in the Pattern,” Perrin muttered. “I surely can’t have one if I forget I am a man. Will you help me, Moiraine?” It was hard to say that. What if it means her using the One Power? Would I rather forget I’m a man? “Help me keep from—losing myself?”
“If I can keep you whole, I will. I promise you that, Perrin. But I will not endanger the struggle against the Shadow. You must know that, too.”
When he turned to look at her, she was regarding him unblinkingly. And if your struggle means putting me in my grave tomorrow, will you do that, too? He was icily sure that she would. “What have you not told me?”
“Do not presume too far, Perrin,” she said coldly. “Do not press me further than I think proper.”
He hesitated before asking the next question. “Can you do for me what you did for Lan? Can you shield my dreams?”
“I already have a Warder, Perrin.” Her lips quirked almost into a smile. “And one is all I will h
ave. I am of the Blue Ajah, not the Green.”
“You know what I mean. I don’t want to be a Warder.” Light, bound to an Aes Sedai the rest of my life? That’s as bad as the wolves.
“It would not aid you, Perrin. The shielding is for dreams from the outside. The danger in your dreams is within you.” She opened the small book again. “You should sleep,” she said in dismissal. “Be wary of your dreams, but you must sleep sometime.” She turned a page, and he left.
Back in his own room, he eased the hold he kept on himself, eased it just a trifle, let his senses spread. The wolves were out there still, beyond the edges of the village, ringing Jarra. Almost immediately he snapped back to rigid self-control. “What I need is a city,” he muttered. That would keep them at bay. After I find Rand. After I finish whatever has to be finished with him. He was not sure how sorry he was that Moiraine could not shield him. The One Power or the wolves; that was a choice no man should have to make.
He left the fire laid on the hearthstone unlit, and threw open both windows. Cold night air rushed in. Tossing blankets and comforter on the floor, he lay down fully clothed on the lumpy bed, not bothering to try to find a comfortable position. His last thought before sleep came was that if anything would keep him from deep sleep and dangerous dreams, that mattress would.
He was in a long hallway, its high stone ceiling and walls glistening with damp and streaked by odd shadows. They lay in contorted strips, stopping as abruptly as they began, too dark for the light between them. He had no idea where the light came from.
“No,” he said, then louder, “No! This is a dream. I need to wake up. Wake up!”
The hallway did not change.
Danger. It was a wolf’s thought, faint and distant.
“I will wake up. I will!” He pounded a fist against the wall. It hurt, but he did not wake. He thought one of the sinuous shadows shifted away from his blow.
Run, brother. Run.
“Hopper?” he said wonderingly. He was sure he knew the wolf whose thoughts he heard. Hopper, who had envied the eagles. “Hopper is dead!”
Run!
Perrin lurched into a run, one hand holding his axe to keep the haft from banging against his leg. He had no idea where he was running, or why, but the urgency of Hopper’s sending could not be ignored. Hopper’s dead, he thought. He’s dead! But Perrin ran.
Other hallways crossed the one he ran along, at odd angles, sometimes descending, sometimes climbing. None looked any different from the passage he was in, though. Damp stone walls unbroken by doors, and strips of darkness.
As he came on one of those crossing halls, he skidded to a halt. A man stood there, blinking at him uncertainly, in strangely cut coat and breeches, the coat flaring over his hips as the bottoms of the breeches flared over his boots. Both were bright yellow, and his boots were only a little paler.
“This is more than I can stand,” the man said, to himself, not Perrin. He had an odd accent, quick and sharp. “Not only do I dream of peasants, now, but foreign peasants, from those clothes. Begone from my dreams, fellow!”
“Who are you?” Perrin asked. The man’s eyebrows rose as if he were offended.
The strips of shadow around them writhed. One detached from the ceiling at one end and drifted down to touch the strange man’s head. It appeared to tangle in his hair. The man’s eyes widened, and everything seemed to happen at once. The shadow jerked back to the ceiling, ten feet overhead, trailing something pale. Wet drops splattered Perrin’s face. A bone-rattling shriek shattered the air.
Frozen, Perrin stared at the bloody shape wearing the man’s clothes, screaming and thrashing on the floor. Unbidden, his eyes rose to the pale thing like an empty sack that dangled from the ceiling. Part of it was already absorbed by the black strip, but he had no trouble recognizing a human skin, apparently whole and unbroken.
The shadows around him danced in agitation, and Perrin ran, pursued by dying screams. Ripples ran along the shadow strips, pacing him.
“Change, burn you!” he shouted. “I know it’s a dream! Light burn you, change!”
Colorful tapestries hung along the walls between tall golden stands holding dozens of candles that illuminated white floor tiles and a ceiling painted with fluffy clouds and fanciful birds in flight. Nothing moved but the flickering candle flames along the length of that hall, stretching as far as he could see, or in the pointed arches of white stone that occasionally broke the walls.
Danger. The sending was even fainter than before. And more urgent, if that were possible.
Axe in hand, Perrin started warily down the hall, muttering to himself. “Wake up. Wake up, Perrin. If you know it’s a dream, it changes or you wake up. Wake up, burn you!” The hallway stayed as solid as any he had ever walked.
He came abreast of the first of the pointed white archways. It let into a huge room, apparently windowless, but furnished as ornately as any palace, the furniture all carved and gilded and inlaid with ivory. A woman stood in the middle of the room, frowning at a tattered manuscript lying open on a table. A black-haired, black-eyed, beautiful woman clothed in white and silver.
Even as he recognized her, she lifted her head and looked straight at him. Her eyes widened, in shock, in anger. “You! What are you doing here? How did you—? You’ll ruin things you could not begin to imagine!”
Abruptly the space seemed to flatten, as if he were suddenly staring at a picture of a room. The flat image appeared to turn sideways, become only a bright vertical line down the middle of blackness. The line flashed white, and was gone, leaving only the dark, blacker than black.
Just in front of Perrin’s boots, the floor tiles came to an abrupt end. As he watched, the white edges dissolved into the black like sand washed away by water. He stepped back hastily.
Run.
Perrin turned, and Hopper was there, a big gray wolf, grizzled and scarred. “You are dead. I saw you die. I felt you die!” A sending flooded Perrin’s mind.
Run now! You must not be here now. Danger. Great danger. Worse than all the Neverborn. You must go. Go now! Now!
“How?” Perrin shouted. “I want to go, but how?”
Go! Teeth bared, Hopper leaped for Perrin’s throat.
With a strangled cry, Perrin sat up on the bed, hands going to his throat to hold in lifeblood. They met unbroken skin. He swallowed with relief, but the next moment his fingers touched a damp spot.
Almost falling in his haste, he scrambled off the bed, stumbled to the washstand and seized the pitcher, splashed water everywhere as he filled the basin. The water turned pink as he washed his face. Pink with the blood of that strangely dressed man.
More dark spots dotted his coat and breeches. He tore them off and tossed them into the furthest corner. He meant to leave them there. Simion could burn them.
A gust of wind whipped in the open window. Shivering in shirt and smallclothes, he sat on the floor and leaned back against the bed. This should be uncomfortable enough. Sourness tinged his thoughts, and worry, and fear. And determination. I won’t give in to this. I won’t!
He was still shivering when sleep finally came, a shallow half sleep filled with vague awareness of the room around him and thoughts of the cold. But the bad dreams that came were better than some others.
Rand huddled under the trees in the night, watching the heavy-shouldered black dog come nearer his hiding place. His side ached, the wound Moiraine could not quite Heal, but he ignored it. The moon gave barely enough light for him to make out the dog, waist-high, with its thick neck and massive head, and its teeth that seemed to shine like wet silver in the night. It sniffed the air and trotted toward him.
Closer, he thought. Come closer. No warning for your master this time. Closer. That’s it. The dog was only ten paces away, now, a deep growl rumbling in its chest as it suddenly bounded forward. Straight at Rand.
The Power filled him. Something leaped from his outstretched hands; he was not sure what it was. A bar of white light, solid as steel. Liqui
d fire. For an instant, in the middle of that something, the dog seemed to become transparent, and then it was gone.
The white light faded except for the afterimage burned across Rand’s vision. He sagged against the nearest tree trunk, the bark rough on his face. Relief and silent laughter shook him. It worked. Light save me, it worked this time. It had not always. There had been other dogs this night.
The One Power pulsed in him, and his stomach twisted with the Dark One’s taint on saidin, wanted to empty itself. Sweat beaded on his face despite the cold night wind, and his mouth tasted full of sickness. He wanted to lie down and die. He wanted Nynaeve to give him some of her medicines, or Moiraine to Heal him, or. . . . Something, anything, to stop the sick feeling that was suffocating him.
But saidin flooded him with life, too, life and energy and awareness larded through the illness. Life without saidin was a pale copy. Anything else was a wan imitation.
But they can find me if I hold on. Track me, find me. I have to reach Tear. I’ll find out there. If I am the Dragon, there’ll be an end to it. And if I am not. . . . If it’s all a lie, there will be an end to that, too. An end.
Reluctantly, with infinite slowness, he severed contact with saidin, gave up its embrace as if giving up life’s breath. The night seemed drab. The shadows lost their infinite sharp shadings and washed together.
In the distance, to the west, a dog howled, a shivering cry in the silent night.
Rand’s head came up. He peered in that direction as though he could see the dog if he tried hard enough.
A second dog answered the first, then another, and two more together, all spread out somewhere west of him.
“Hunt me,” Rand snarled. “Hunt me if you will. I’m no easy meat. No more!”
Pushing himself away from the tree, he waded a shallow, icy stream, then settled into a steady trot eastward. Cold water filled his boots, and his side hurt, but he ignored both. The night was quiet again behind him, but he ignored that, too. Hunt me. I can hunt, too. I am no easy meat.