Shadow Rising, The (65 page)

Read Shadow Rising, The Online

Authors: Robert Jordan

BOOK: Shadow Rising, The
11.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
The fellow was too distant to see clearly, just a tall, dark-haired man, but plainly not a Trolloc or anything of the sort, in a blue coat with a bow on his back, stooping over something on the ground hidden by the low brush. Yet there was something familiar about him.
The wind rose, and Perrin caught his smell faintly. A cold scent, that was the only way to describe it. Cold, and not really human. Suddenly his own bow was in his hand, an arrow nocked, and the weight of a filled quiver tugged at his belt.
The other man looked up, saw Perrin. For a heartbeat he hesitated, then turned and became a streak, slashing away across the hills.
Perrin leaped down to where he had stood, stared at what had occupied the fellow, and without thought pursued, leaving the half-skinned corpse of a wolf behind. A dead wolf in the wolf dream. It was unthinkable. What could kill a wolf here? Something evil.
His prey ran ahead of him in strides that covered miles, never more than barely in sight. Out of the hills and across the tangled Westwood with its wide-scattered farms, over cleared farmland, a quilt of hedged fields and small thickets, and past Watch Hill. It was odd to see the thatched village houses covering the hill with no people in the streets, and farmhouses standing as if abandoned. But he kept his eye on the man fleeing ahead of him. He had become so used to this pursuit that he felt no surprise when one leaping stride put him down on the south bank of the River Taren and the next amid barren hills without trees or grass. North and east he ran, over streams and roads and villages and rivers, intent only on the man ahead. The land grew flat and grassy, broken by scattered thickets, without any sign of man. Then something glittered ahead, sparkling in the sun, a tower of metal. His quarry sped straight for it, and vanished. Two leaps brought Perrin there as well.
Two hundred feet the tower rose, and forty thick, gleaming like burnished steel. It might as well have been a solid column of metal. Perrin walked around it twice without seeing any opening, not so much as a crack, not even a mark on that smooth, sheer wall. The smell hung here, though, that cold, inhuman stink. The trail ended here. The man—if man he was—had gone inside somehow. He only had to find the way to follow.
Stop!
It was a raw flow of emotion that Perrin’s mind put a word to.
Stop!
He turned as a great gray wolf as tall as his waist, grizzled and scarred, alighted as if he had just leaped down from the sky. He might well have. Hopper had always envied eagles their ability to fly, and here, he could too. Yellow eyes met yellow eyes.
“Why should I stop, Hopper? He killed a wolf.”
Men have killed wolves, and wolves men. Why does anger seize your throat like fire this time?
“I don’t know,” Perrin said slowly. “Maybe because it was here. I didn’t know it was possible to kill a wolf here. I thought wolves were safe in the dream.”
You chase Slayer, Young Bull. He is here in the flesh, and he can kill.
“In the flesh? You mean not just dreaming? How can he be here in the flesh?”
I do not know. It is a thing dimly remembered from long ago, come again as so much else. Things of the Shadow walk the dream, now. Creatures of Heartfang. There is no safety.
“Well, he’s inside, now.” Perrin studied the featureless metal tower. “If I can find how he got in, I can put an end to him.”
Cub foolish, digging in a groundwasps’ nest. This place is evil. All know this. And you would chase evil into evil. Slayer can kill.
Perrin paused. There was a sense of finality to the emotions his mind attached the word “kill” to. “Hopper, what happens to a wolf who dies in the dream?”
The wolf was silent for a time.
If we die here, we die forever, Young Bull. I do not know if the same is true for you, but I believe it is.
“A dangerous place, archer. The Tower of Ghenjei is a bad place for humankind.”
Perrin whirled, half-raising his bow before he saw the woman standing a few paces away, her golden hair in a thick braid to her waist, almost the way women wore it in the Two Rivers, but more intricately woven. Her clothes were oddly cut, a short white coat and voluminous trousers of some thin pale yellow material gathered at the ankles above short boots. Her dark cloak seemed to hide something that glinted silver at her side.
She shifted, and the metallic flicker vanished. “You have sharp eyes, archer. I thought that the first time I saw you.”
How long had she been watching? It was embarrassing that she had sneaked up without him hearing. At the least Hopper should have warned him. The wolf was lying down in the knee-high grass, muzzle on his forepaws, watching him.
The woman seemed vaguely familiar, though Perrin was certain he would have remembered her had he ever seen her before. Who was she, to be in the wolf dream? Or was it Moiraine’s
Tel’aran’rhiod
, too? “Are you Aes Sedai?”
“No, archer.” She laughed. “I only came to warn you, despite the prescripts. Once entered, the Tower of Ghenjei is hard enough to leave in the world of men. Here it is all but impossible. You have a bannerman’s courage, which some say cannot be told from foolhardiness.”
Impossible to leave? The fellow—Slayer—surely had gone in. Why
would he do that if he could not leave? “Hopper said it’s dangerous, too. The Tower of Ghenjei? What is it?”
Her eyes widened, and she glanced at Hopper, who still lay stretched out on the grass ignoring her and watching Perrin. “You can talk to wolves? Now that is a thing long lost in legend. So that is how you are here. I should have known. The tower? It is a doorway, archer, to the realms of the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn.” She said the names as if he should recognize them. When he looked at her blankly, she said, “Did you ever play the game called Snakes and Foxes?”
“All children do. At least, they do in the Two Rivers. But they give it up when they get old enough to realize there’s no way to win.”
“Except to break the rules,” she said. “‘Courage to strengthen, fire to blind, music to daze, iron to bind.’”
“That’s a line from the game. I don’t understand. What does it have to do with this tower?”
“Those are the ways to win against the snakes and the foxes. The game is a remembrance of old dealings. It does not matter so long as you stay away from the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn. They are not evil the way the Shadow is evil, yet they are so different from humankind they might as well be. They are not to be trusted, archer. Stay clear of the Tower of Ghenjei. Avoid the World of Dreams, if you can. Dark things walk.”
“Like the man I was chasing? Slayer.”
“A good name for him. This Slayer is not old, archer, but his evil is ancient.” She almost appeared to be leaning slightly on something invisible; perhaps that silver thing he had never quite seen. “I seem to be telling you a great deal. I do not understand why I spoke in the first place. Of course. Are you
ta’veren
, archer?”
“Who are you?” She seemed to know a lot about the tower, and the wolf dream.
But she was surprised I could talk to Hopper.
“I’ve met you before somewhere, I think.”
“I have broken too many of the prescripts already, archer.”
“Prescripts? What prescripts?” A shadow fell on the ground behind Hopper, and Perrin turned quickly, angry at being caught by surprise again. There was no one there. But he had seen it; the shadow of a man with the hilts of two swords rising above his shoulders. Something about that image teased his memory.
“He is right,” the woman said behind him. “I should not be talking to you.”
When he turned back, she was gone. As far as he could see were only grassland and scattered thickets. And the gleaming, silvery tower.
He frowned at Hopper, who finally lifted his head from his paws. “It’s a wonder you aren’t attacked by chipmunks,” Perrin muttered. “What did you make of her?”
Her? A she?
Hopper stood, looking around.
Where?
“I was talking to her. Right here. Just now.”
You made noises at the wind, Young Bull. There was no she here. None but you and I.
Perrin scratched his beard irritably. She had been there. He had not been talking to himself. “Strange things can happen here,” he told himself. “She agreed with you, Hopper. She told me to stay away from this tower.”
She is wise.
There was an element of doubt in the thought; Hopper still did not believe there had been any “she.”
“I’ve come awfully far afield from what I intended,” Perrin muttered. He explained his need to find wolves in the Two Rivers, or the mountains above, explained about the ravens, and the Trollocs in the Ways.
When he was done, Hopper remained silent for a long time, his bushy tail held low and stiff. Finally … .
Avoid your old home, Young Bull.
The image Perrin’s mind called “home” was of the land marked by a wolfpack.
There are no wolves there now. Those who were and did not flee are dead. Slayer walks the dream there.
“I have to go home, Hopper. I have to.”
Take care, Young Bull. The day of the Last Hunt draws near. We will run together in the Last Hunt.
“We will,” Perrin said sadly. It would be nice if he could come here when he died; he was half wolf already, it seemed sometimes. “I have to go now, Hopper.”
May you know good hunting, Young Bull, and shes to give you many cubs.
“Goodbye, Hopper.”
 
 
He opened his eyes to the dim light of dying coals on the mountainside. Gaul was squatting just beyond the edge of the light, watching the night. In the other camp, Faile was up, taking her turn at guard. The moon hung above the mountains, turning the clouds to pearly shadows. Perrin estimated he had been asleep two hours.
“I’ll keep guard awhile,” he said, tossing off his cloak. Gaul nodded
and settled himself on the ground where he was. “Gaul?” The Aiel raised his head. “It may be worse in the Two Rivers than I thought.”
“Things often are,” Gaul replied quietly. “It is the way of life.” The Aielman calmly put his head down for sleep.
Slayer. Who was he? What was he? Shadowspawn at the Waygate, ravens in the Mountains of Mist, and this man called Slayer in the Two Rivers. It could not be coincidence, however much he wished it.
Homecoming
T
he journey into the Westwood that had taken him perhaps half a dozen strides or so in the wolf dream, out of the mountains and across the Sand Hills, lasted three long days on horses. The Aiel had no trouble keeping up afoot, but then the animals themselves could not manage much speed with the land mostly up and down as it was. Perrin’s wounds itched fiercely, healing; Faile’s ointment seemed to be working.
It was a quiet journey by and large, broken more often by the bark of a hunting fox or the echoing cry of a hawk than by anyone speaking. At least they saw no more ravens. More than once he thought Faile was about to bring her mare over close to him, about to say something, but each time she restrained herself. He was glad of it; he wanted to talk to her more than anything, but what if he found himself making up with her? He berated himself for wanting to. She had tricked Loial, tricked him. She was going to make everything worse, make it harder. He wished he could kiss her again. He wished she would decide she had had her fill of him and go. Why did she have to be so stubborn?
She and the two Aiel women kept to themselves, Bain and Chiad striding along on either side of Swallow when one or the other was not ranging ahead. Sometimes the three of them murmured softly among themselves, after which they avoided looking at him so pointedly that they might as
well have thrown rocks. Loial rode with them at Perrin’s request, though the situation obviously upset him no end. Loial’s ears twitched as if he wished he had never heard of humans. Gaul seemed to find the entire thing vastly amusing; whenever Perrin looked at him, he wore an inward grin.
For himself, Perrin traveled wrapped in worry, and kept his strung bow across the tall pommel of his saddle. Did this man called Slayer rove the Two Rivers only in the wolf dream, or was he in the waking world, too? Perrin suspected the latter, and that Slayer was the one who had shot the hawk for no reason. It was another complication he could do without, on top of the Children of the Light.
His family lived on a sprawling farm more than half a day beyond Emond’s Field, almost to the Waterwood. His father and mother, his sisters, his baby brother. Paetram would be nine now, no doubt objecting more strenuously than ever to being called the baby, Deselle a plump twelve, and Adora sixteen, probably ready to braid her hair. Uncle Eward, his da’s brother, and Aunt Magde, stout and looking nearly alike, and their children. Aunt Neain, who visited Uncle Carlin’s grave every morning, and their children, and Great-Aunt Ealsin, who had never married, with her sharp nose and sharper eye for discovering what everyone for miles around was up to. Once apprenticed to Master Luhhan, he had seen them only on feastdays; the distance was too great for casual travel, and there had always been work to do. If the Whitecloaks hunted for Aybaras, they were easy to find. They were his responsibility, not this Slayer. He could only do so much. Protect his family, and Faile. That was first. Then came the village, and the wolves, and this Slayer last. One man could not manage everything.
The Westwood grew on stony soil broken by bramble-covered outcrops, a hard, thickly treed land with few farms or paths. He had wandered these heavy woods as a boy, alone or with Rand and Mat, hunting with bow or sling, setting snares for rabbits or simply roaming for the sake of roaming. Bushy-tailed squirrels chittering in the trees, speckled thrushes warbling on branches imitated by black-winged mockers, bluebacked quail bursting up out of the brush in front of the travelers—all spoke to him of home. The very smell of the dirt the horses’ hooves turned was a recognition.
He could have headed straight for Emond’s Field, but instead he angled more northward through the forest, finally crossing the wide, rough track called the Quarry Road as the sun slanted down toward the treetops. Why
“quarry” no one in the Two Rivers knew, and it scarcely looked a road at all, only a weedy stretch that you did not even notice was bare of trees until you saw the overgrown ruts from generations of wagons and carts. Sometimes shards of old pavement worked their way to the surface. Perhaps it had led to a quarry for Manetheren.
The farm Perrin sought lay not far from the road, beyond rows of apple and pear trees where fruit was setting. He smelled the farm before he saw it. The smell of char; not new, yet a full year would not soften that smell.
He reined in at the edge of the trees and sat staring before he made himself ride into what had been the al’Thor farm, the packhorse trailing behind his dun. Only the stone-walled sheep pen still stood, railed gate open and hanging by one hinge. The soot-blackened chimney cast a slanting shadow across the tumbled burned beams of the farmhouse. The barn and the tabac-curing shed were only ashes. Weeds choked the tabac field and the vegetable garden, and the garden had a trampled look; most of what was not sawleaf or feathertop lay broken and brown.
He did not even think of nocking an arrow. The fire was weeks old, the burned wood slicked and dulled by past rains. Chokevine needed nearly a month to grow that tall. It had even enveloped the plow and harrow lying beside the field; rust showed under the pale, narrow leaves.
The Aiel searched carefully, though, spears ready and eyes wary, quartering the ground and poking through the ashes. When Bain clambered out of the ruins of the house, she looked at Perrin and shook her head. At least Tam al’Thor had not died in there.
They know. They know, Rand. You should have come.
It was very nearly more than he could do to stop from putting Stepper to a gallop, keeping him there all the way to his family’s farm. Trying to, at least; even Stepper would fall dead before he ran that far. Maybe this was Trolloc work. If it was Trollocs, maybe his family was still working their farm, still safe. He drew a deep breath, but the char obliterated any other smell.
Gaul stopped beside him. “Whoever did this is long gone. They killed some of the sheep and scattered the rest. Someone came later to gather the flock and drive it off north. Two men, I think, but the tracks are too old to be sure.”
“Is there any clue to who did it?” Gaul shook his head. It could have been Trollocs. Strange, to wish for a thing like that. And foolish. The Whitecloaks knew his name, and they knew Rand’s as well, it seemed.
They know my name.
He looked at the ashes of the al’Thor farmhouse, and Stepper moved as the reins trembled in his hands.
Loial had dismounted at the edge of the fruit trees, but his head was still in the branches. Faile rode toward Perrin, studying his face, her mare stepping delicately. “Is this … ? Do you know the people who lived here?”
“Rand and his father.”
“Oh. I thought it might be … .” The relief and sympathy in her voice were enough to finish the sentence. “Does your family live near?”
“No,” he said curtly, and she recoiled as if slapped. But she still watched him, waiting. What did he have to do to drive her away? More than he could bring himself to, if he had not managed it already.
The shadows were growing longer, the sun sitting on the treetops. He reined Stepper around, rudely turning his back on her. “Gaul, we will have to camp close by tonight. I want to start early in the morning.” He sneaked a glance over his shoulder; Faile was riding back to Loial, sitting stiff in her saddle. “In Emond’s Field, they will know … .” Where the Whitecloaks were, so he could turn himself in before they hurt his family. If his family was all right. If the farm where he had been born was not already like this. No. He had to be in time to stop that. “They’ll know how things are.”
“Early, then.” Gaul hesitated. “You will not drive her off. That one is almost
Far Dareis Mai
, and if a Maiden loves you, you cannot escape her however hard you run.”
“You let me worry about Faile.” He softened his voice; it was not Gaul he wanted to be rid of. “Very early. While Faile is still asleep.”
Both camps, beneath the apple trees, were quiet that night. Several times one or the other of the Aiel women stood, staring toward the small fire where he and Gaul sat, but an owl hooting and the horses stamping were the only sounds. Perrin could not sleep, and it was still an hour short of first light, with the full moon setting, when he and Gaul slipped away, the Aiel silent in his soft boots and the horses’ hooves making little more noise. Bain, or maybe Chiad, watched them go. He could not tell which, but she did not wake Faile, and he was grateful.
The sun had climbed well up by the time they came out of the Westwood a little below the village, amid cart tracks and paths, most bordered by hedges or low rough stone walls. Smoke made feathery gray plumes above farmhouse chimneys, goodwives doing the morning’s baking, by the smell. Men dotted the fields of tabac or barley, and boys watched flocks of black-faced sheep in the pastures. Some people took note of their passing, but Perrin kept Stepper at a fast walk and hoped none were close enough to recognize him or wonder at the strangeness of Gaul’s clothes, or his spears.
People would be out and about in Emond’s Field, too, so he circled
around to the east, wide of the village, wide of the hard-packed dirt streets and thatched roofs clustered around the Green, where the Winespring itself gushed from a stone outcrop with enough force to knock a man down and gave birth to the Winespring Water. The damage he remembered from Winternight a year gone, the burned houses and charred roofs, were all rebuilt and repaired. The Trollocs might as well never have come back then. He prayed no one would have to live through that again. The Winespring Inn stood practically at the eastern end of Emond’s Field, between the stout wooden Wagon Bridge across the rushing Winespring Water and a huge old stone foundation with a great oak growing up through the middle of it. Tables beneath the thick branches were where folk sat of a fine afternoon and watched the play at bowls. At this hour of the morning, the tables were empty, of course. There were only a few houses farther east. The inn itself was river rock on the first floor, with a whitewashed second story jutting out all the way around and a dozen chimneys rising above a glittering red tile roof, the only tile roof for miles.
Tying Stepper and the packhorse to a hitchpost near the kitchen door, Perrin glanced at the thatch-roofed stable. He could hear men working in there, probably Hu and Tad, mucking out the stalls where Master al’Vere kept the big Dhurran team he rented out for heavy hauling. There were sounds from the other side of the inn, too, the murmur of voices on the Green, geese honking, the rumble of a wagon. What was on the horses, he left; this would be a short stop. He motioned for Gaul to follow and hurried inside, carrying his bow, before either stableman could come out.
The kitchen was empty, both iron stoves and all but one fireplace cold, though the smell of baking still hung in the air. Bread and honeycakes. The inn seldom had guests except when merchants came down from Baer-lon to buy wool or tabac, or a monthly peddler when snow had not made the road impassable, and the village folk who might come for a drink or a meal later in the day would all be hard at work at their own homes now. Someone might be there, though, so Perrin tiptoed along the short hallway leading from the kitchen to the common room and cracked the door to peek inside.
He had seen that square room a thousand times, with its fireplace of river stones stretching half the room’s length, the lintel as high as a man’s shoulder, Master al’Vere’s polished tabac canister and prized clock sitting on the mantel. It all seemed smaller than it had, somehow. The tall-backed chairs in front of the fireplace were where the Village Council met. Brandelwyn al’Vere’s books sat on a shelf opposite the fireplace—once, Perrin
had been unable to imagine more books in one place than those few dozen mostly worn volumes—and casks of ale and wine lined another wall. Scratch, the inn’s yellow cat, sprawled asleep as usual atop one.
Except for Bran al’Vere himself and his wife, Marin, in long white aprons, polishing the inn’s silver and pewter at one of the tables, the common room stood empty. Master al’Vere was a wide, round man, with a sparse fringe of gray hair; Mistress al’Vere was slender and motherly, her thick, graying braid pulled over one shoulder. She smelled of baking, and under that of roses. Perrin remembered them as smiling people, but both looked intent now, and the Mayor wore a frown that surely had nothing to do with the silver cup in his hands.
“Master al’Vere?” He pushed open the door and went in. “Mistress al’Vere. It’s Perrin.”
They sprang to their feet, knocking their chairs over and making Scratch jump. Mistress al’Vere clapped her hands to her mouth; she and her husband gaped as much at him as they did at Gaul. It was enough to make Perrin shift his bow awkwardly from hand to hand. Especially when Bran hurried to one of the front windows—he moved with surprising lightness for a man of his bulk—and twitched the summer curtains aside to peer out, as though for more Aiel outside.

Other books

Moonstar by David Gerrold
Breaking the Bank by Yona Zeldis McDonough
Sanctuary by Rowena Cory Daniells
Runaway by Peter May
Still Here: A Secret Baby Romance by Kaylee Song, Laura Belle Peters
Barely Yours by Charlotte Eve
Título by Autor
Kim Philby by Tim Milne