The Dragon Reborn (61 page)

Slowly the blackness became fog again, and the fog gradually thinned
until he walked out of it with Hopper onto a grassy hillside bright with daylight. Birds began to sing from a thicket at the foot of the hill. He looked back. A hilly plain dotted with clumps of trees stretched to the horizon. There was no sign of fog anywhere. The big, grizzled wolf stood watching him.

“What was that?” he demanded, struggling in his mind to turn the question to thoughts the wolf could understand. “Why did you show it to me? What was it?”

Emotions and images flooded his thoughts, and his mind put words to them.
What you must see. Be careful, Young Bull. This place is dangerous. Be wary as a cub hunting porcupine
. That came as something closer to Small Thorny Back, but his mind named the animal the way he knew it as a man.
You are too young, too new
.

“Was it real?”

All is real, what is seen, and what is not seen
. That seemed to be all the answer Hopper was going to give.

“Hopper, how are you here? I saw you die. I felt you die!”

All are here. All brothers and sisters that are, all that were, all that will be
. Perrin knew that wolves did not smile, not the way humans did, but for an instant he had the impression that Hopper was grinning.
Here, I soar like the eagle
. The wolf gathered himself and leaped, up into the air. Up and up it carried him, until he dwindled to a speck in the sky, and a last thought came.
To soar
.

Perrin stared after him with his mouth hanging open.
He did it
. His eyes burned suddenly, and he cleared his throat and scrubbed at his nose.
I will be crying like a girl, next
. Without thinking, he looked around to see if anyone had seen him, and that quickly everything changed.

He was standing on a rise, with shadowy, indistinct dips and swells all around him. They seemed to fade into the distance too soon. Rand stood below him. Rand, and a ragged circle of Myrddraal and men and women his eyes seemed to slide right past. Dogs howled somewhere in the distance, and Perrin knew they were hunting something. Myrddraal scent and the stink of burned sulphur filled the air. Perrin’s hackles rose.

The circle of Myrddraal and people came closer to Rand, all walking as if asleep. And Rand began to kill them. Balls of fire flew from his hands and consumed two. Lightning flashed from above to shrivel others. Bars of light like white-hot steel flew from his fists to more. And the survivors continued to walk slowly closer, as if none of them saw what was happening. One by one they died, until none were left, and Rand sank down on
his knees, panting. Perrin was not sure whether he was laughing or crying; it seemed to be some of each.

Shapes appeared over the rises, more people coming, more Myrddraal, all intent on Rand.

Perrin cupped his hands to his mouth. “Rand! Rand, there are more coming!”

Rand looked up at him from his crouch, snarling, sweat slicking his face.

“Rand, they’re—!”

“Burn you!” Rand howled.

Light burned Perrin’s eyes, and pain seared everything.

Groaning, he rolled into a ball on the narrow bed, the light still burning behind his eyelids. His chest hurt. He raised a hand to it and winced when he felt a burn under his shirt, a spot no bigger than a silver penny.

Bit by bit he forced his knotted muscles to let him straighten his legs and lie flat in the dark cabin.
Moiraine. I have to tell Moiraine this time. Just have to wait till the pain goes away
.

But as the pain began to fade, exhaustion took him. He barely had a thought that he must get up before sleep pulled him down again.

When he opened his eyes again, he lay staring at the beams overhead. Light at the top and bottom of the door told him morning had come. He put a hand to his chest to convince himself he had imagined it, imagined it so well that he had actually felt a burn. . . .

His fingers found the burn.
I didn’t imagine it, then
. He had dim memories of a few other dreams, fading even as he recalled them. Ordinary dreams. He even felt as if he had had a good night’s sleep.
And could use another one right now
. But it meant he could sleep.
As long as there are no wolves around, anyway
.

He remembered making a decision in that brief waking after the dream with Hopper, and after a moment he decided it had been a good one.

It took knocking on five doors and being cursed at twice—the inhabitants of two cabins had gone on deck—before he found Moiraine. She was fully dressed, but sitting on one of the narrow beds cross-legged, reading in her book of notes by lantern light. Back near the beginning, he saw, notes that must have been made even before she had come to Emond’s Field. Lan’s things were neatly placed on the other bed.

“I had a dream,” he told her, and proceeded to tell her of it. All of it.
He even pulled up his shirt to show her the small circle on his chest, red, with wavy red lines radiating from it. He had kept things from her before, and he suspected he would again, but this might be too important to hold back. The pin was the smallest part of a pair of scissors, and the easiest made, but without it, the scissors cut no cloth. When he was done, he stood there waiting.

She had watched him without expression, except that those dark eyes had examined every word as it came out of his mouth, weighed it, measured it, held it up to the light. Now she sat the same way, only it was he who was examined, weighed, and held up to the light.

“Well, is it important?” he demanded finally. “I think it was one of those wolf dreams you told me about—I’m sure it was; it must have been!—but that doesn’t make what I saw real. Only, you said maybe some of the Forsaken are free, and he called her Lanfear, and. . . . Is it important, or am I standing here making a fool out of myself?”

“There are women,” she said slowly, “who would do their best to gentle you if they heard what I just did.” His lungs seemed to freeze; he could not breathe. “I am not accusing you of being able to channel,” she went on, and the ice inside him melted, “or even of being able to learn. An attempt at gentling would not harm you, beyond the rough treatment the Red Ajah would give you before they realized their error. Such men are so rare, even the Reds with all their hunting have not found more than three in the last ten years. Before the outbreak of false Dragons, at least. What I am trying to make clear to you is that I do not think you will suddenly begin wielding the Power. You do not have to be afraid of that.”

“Well, thank you very much for that,” he said bitterly. “You did not have to scare me to death just so you could tell me there was no need to be frightened!”

“Oh, you do have reason to be frightened. Or at least careful, as the wolf suggested. Red sisters, or others, might kill you before they discovered there was nothing to gentle in you.”

“Light! Light burn me!” He stared at her with a frown. “You’re trying to lead me around by the nose, Moiraine, but I am no calf, and there’s no ring in my nose. The Red Ajah or any other would not think of gentling unless there was something real in what I dreamed. Does it mean the Forsaken are loose?”

“I told you before that they might be. Some of them. Your . . . dreams are nothing I expected, Perrin. Dreamers have written of wolves, but I did not expect this.”

“Well, I think it was real. I think I saw something that really happened, something I wasn’t supposed to see.”
What you must see
. “I think Lanfear is loose at the very least. What are you going to do?”

“I am going to Illian. And then I will go to Tear, and hope to reach it before Rand. We had need to leave Remen too quickly for Lan to learn whether he crossed the river or went down it. We should know before we reach Illian, though. We will find sign if he has gone this way.” She glanced at her book as if she wanted to resume her reading.

“Is that all you are going to do? With Lanfear loose, and the Light alone knows how many of the others?”

“Do not question me,” she said coldly. “You do not know which questions to ask, and you would comprehend less than half the answers if I gave them. Which I will not.”

He shifted his feet under her gaze until it became clear she would say no more on the matter. His shirt rubbed painfully at the burn on his chest. It did not seem a bad hurt—
Not for being struck by lightning it doesn’t!
—but how he had come by it was another matter. “Uh. . . . Will you Heal this?”

“Are you no longer uneasy about the One Power being used on you, then, Perrin? No, I will not Heal it. It is not serious, and it will remind you of the need to be careful.” Careful about pressing her, he knew, as well as about dreams or letting others know of them. “If there is nothing else, Perrin?”

He started for the door, then stopped. “There is one thing. If you knew a woman’s name was Zarine, would you think it meant anything about her?”

“Why under the Light do you ask this question?”

“A girl,” he said awkwardly. “A young woman. I met her last night. She’s one of the other passengers.” He would let her discover for herself that Zarine knew she was Aes Sedai. And seemed to think following them would lead her to the Horn of Valere. He would not keep back anything he thought was important, but if Moiraine could be secretive, so could he.

“Zarine. It is a Saldaean name. No woman would name her daughter that unless she expected her to be a great beauty. And a heartbreaker. One to lie on cushions in palaces, surrounded by servants and suitors.” She smiled, briefly but with great amusement. “Perhaps you have another reason to be careful, Perrin, if there is a Zarine as a passenger with us.”

“I intend to be careful,” he told her. At least he knew why Zarine did not like her name. Hardly fitting for a Hunter of the Horn.
As long as she doesn’t call herself “falcon.”

When he went on deck, Lan was there, looking over Mandarb. And
Zarine was sitting on a coil of rope near the railing, sharpening one of her knives and watching him. The big, triangular sails were set and taut, and the
Snow Goose
flew downriver.

Zarine’s eyes followed Perrin as he walked by her to stand in the bow. The water curled to either side of the prow like earth turning around a good plow. He wondered about dreams and Aielmen, Min’s viewings and falcons. His chest hurt. Life had
never
been as tangled as this.

Rand sat up out of his exhausted sleep, gasping, the cloak he had used as a blanket falling away. His side ached, the old wound from Falme throbbing. His fire had burned down to coals with only a few wavering flames, but it was still enough to make the shadows move.
That was Perrin. It was! It was
him,
not a dream. Somehow. I almost killed him! Light, I have to be careful!

Shivering, he picked up a length of oak branch and started to shove it into the coals. The trees were scattered in these Murandian hills, still close to the Manetherendrelle, but he had found just enough fallen branches for his fire, the wood just old enough to be properly cured but not rotten. Before the wood touched the coals, he stopped. There were horses coming, ten or a dozen of them, walking slowly.
I have to be careful. I cannot make another mistake
.

The horses swung toward his failing fire, entered the dim light, and stopped. The shadows obscured their riders, but most seemed to be rough-faced men wearing round helmets and long leather jerkins sewn all over with metal discs like fish scales. One was a woman with graying hair and a no-nonsense look on her face. Her dark dress was plain wool, but the finest weave, and adorned with a silver pin in the shape of a lion. A merchant, she seemed to him; he had seen her sort among those who came to buy tabac and wool in the Two Rivers. A merchant and her guards.

I have to be careful
, he thought as he stood.
No mistakes
.

“You have chosen a good campsite, young man,” she said. “I have often used it on my way to Remen. There is a small spring nearby. I trust you have no objection to my sharing it?” Her guards were already dismounting, hitching at their sword belts and loosening saddle girths.

“None,” Rand told her.
Careful
. Two steps brought him close enough, and he leaped into the air, spinning—Thistledown Floats on the Whirlwind—heron-mark blade carved from fire coming into his hands to take her head off before surprise could even form on her face.
She was the most dangerous
.

He alighted as the woman’s head rolled from the crupper of her horse. The guards yelled and clawed for their swords, screamed as they realized his blade burned. He danced among them in the forms Lan had taught him, and knew he could have killed all ten with ordinary steel, but the blade he wielded was part of him. The last man fell, and it had been so like practicing the forms that he had already begun the sheathing called Folding the Fan before he remembered he wore no scabbard and this blade would have turned it to ash at a touch if he had.

Letting the sword vanish, he turned to examine the horses. Most had run away, but some not far, and the woman’s tall gelding stood with rolling eyes, whickering uneasily. Her headless corpse, lying on the ground, had maintained its grip on the reins, and held the animal’s head down.

Rand pulled them free, pausing only to gather his few belongings before swinging into the saddle.
I have to be careful
, he thought as he looked over the dead.
No mistakes
.

The Power still filled him, the flow from
saidin
sweeter than honey, ranker than rotted meat. Abruptly he channeled—not really understanding what it was he did, or how, only that it seemed right; and it worked, lifting the corpses. He set them in a line, facing him, kneeling, faces in the dirt. For those who had faces left. Kneeling to him.

“If I
am
the Dragon Reborn,” he told them, “that is the way it is supposed to be, isn’t it?” Letting go of
saidin
was hard, but he did it.
If I hold it too much, how will I keep the madness away?
He laughed bitterly.
Or is it too late for that?