The Dragon Reborn (9 page)

“Mistress Leya has the usual news from Almoth Plain,” Moiraine said. “Everyone fighting everyone else. Villages burned. People fleeing in every direction. And Hunters have appeared on the plain, searching for the Horn of Valere.” Perrin shifted—the Horn was where no Hunter on Almoth Plain would find it; where he hoped no Hunter ever would find it—and she gave him a cool look before continuing. She did not like any of them to speak of the Horn. Except when she chose to, of course.

“She brought different news, as well. The Whitecloaks have perhaps five thousand men on Almoth Plain.”

Uno grunted. “That’s flamin’—uh, pardon, Aes Sedai. That must be half their strength. They’ve never committed so much to one place before.”

“Then I suppose all those who declared for Rand are dead or scattered,” Perrin muttered. “Or they soon will be. You were right, Moiraine.” He did
not like the thought of Whitecloaks. He did not like the Children of the Light at all.

“That is what is odd,” Moiraine said. “Or the first part of it. The Children have announced that their purpose is to bring peace, which is not unusual for them. What
is
unusual is that while they are trying to force the Taraboners and the Domani back across their respective borders, they have not moved in any force against those who have declared for the Dragon.”

Min gave an exclamation of surprise. “Is she certain? That does not sound like any Whitecloaks I ever heard of.”

“There can’t be many blood—uh—many Tinkers left on the plain,” Uno said. His voice creaked from the strain of watching his language in front of an Aes Sedai. His real eye matched the frown of the painted one. “They don’t like to stay where there’s any kind of trouble, especially fighting. There can’t be enough of them to see everywhere.”

“There are enough for my purposes,” Moiraine said firmly. “Most have gone, but some few remained because I asked them to. And Leya is quite certain. Oh, the Children have snapped up some of the Dragonsworn, where there were only a handful gathered. But though they proclaim they will bring down this
false
Dragon, though they have a thousand men supposedly doing nothing but hunting him, they avoid contact with any party of as many as fifty Dragonsworn. Not openly, you understand, but there is always some delay, something that allows those they chase to slip away.”

“Then Rand can go down to them as he wants.” Loial blinked uncertainly at the Aes Sedai. The whole camp knew of her arguments with Rand. “The Wheel weaves a way for him.”

Uno and Lan opened their mouths at the same time, but the Shienaran gave way with a small bow. “More likely,” the Warder said, “it is some Whitecloak plot, though the Light burn me if I can see what it is. But when the Whitecloaks give me a gift, I search for the poisoned needle hidden in it.” Uno nodded grimly. “Besides which,” Lan added, “the Domani and the Taraboners are still trying as hard to kill the Dragonsworn as they are to kill each other.”

“And there is another thing,” Moiraine said. “Three young men have died in villages Mistress Leya’s wagons passed near.” Perrin noticed a flicker of Lan’s eyelid; for the Warder, it was as much a sign of surprise as a shout from another man. Lan had not expected her to tell this. Moiraine went on. “One died by poison, two by the knife. Each in circumstances where no
one should have been able to come close unseen, but that is how it happened.” She peered into the flames. “All three young men were taller than most, and had light-colored eyes. Light eyes are uncommon on Almoth Plain, but I think it is very unlucky right now to be a tall young man with light eyes there.”

“How?” Perrin asked. “How could they be killed if no one could get close to them?”

“The Dark One has killers you don’t notice until it is too late,” Lan said quietly.

Uno gave a shiver. “The Soulless. I never heard of one south of the Borderlands before.”

“Enough of such talk,” Moiraine said firmly.

Perrin had questions—
What in the Light are the Soulless? Are they like a Trolloc, or a Fade? What?
—but he left them unasked. When Moiraine decided enough had been said about something, she would not talk of it anymore. And when she shut her mouth, you could not pry Lan’s open with an iron bar. The Shienarans followed her lead, too. No one wanted to anger an Aes Sedai.

“Light!” Min muttered, uneasily eyeing the deepening darkness around them. “You don’t
notice
them? Light!”

“So nothing has changed,” Perrin said glumly. “Not really. We cannot go down to the plain, and the Dark One wants us dead.”

“Everything changes,” Moiraine said calmly, “and the Pattern takes it all in. We must ride on the Pattern, not on the changes of a moment.” She looked at them each in turn, then said, “Uno, are you certain your scouts missed nothing suspicious? Even something small?”

“The Lord Dragon’s Rebirth has loosed the bonds of certainty, Moiraine Sedai, and there is never certainty if you fight Myrddraal, but I will stake my life that the scouts did as good a job as any Warder.” It was one of the longest speeches Perrin had ever heard out of Uno without any curses. There was sweat on the man’s forehead from the effort.

“We all may,” Moiraine said. “What Rand did might as well have been a fire on the mountaintop for any Myrddraal within ten miles.”

“Maybe . . .” Min began hesitantly. “Maybe you ought to set wards that will keep them out.” Lan gave her a hard stare. He sometimes questioned Moiraine’s decisions himself, though he seldom did so where anyone could overhear, but he did not approve of others doing the same. Min frowned right back at him. “Well, Myrddraal and Trollocs are bad enough, but at
least I can see them. I don’t like the idea that one of these . . . these Soulless might sneak in here and slit my throat before I even noticed him.”

“The wards I set will hide us from the Soulless as well as from any other Shadowspawn,” Moiraine said. “When you are weak, as we are, the best choice is often to hide. If there
is
a Halfman close enough to have. . . . Well, to set wards that would kill them if they tried to enter camp is beyond my abilities, and even if I could, such a warding would only pen us here. Since it is not possible to set two kinds of warding at once, I leave the scouts and the guards—and Lan—to defend us, and use the one warding that may do some good.”

“I could make a circuit around the camp,” Lan said. “If there is anything out there that the scouts missed, I will find it.” It was not a boast, just a statement of fact. Uno even nodded agreement.

Moiraine shook her head. “If you are needed tonight, my Gaidin, it will be here.” Her gaze rose toward the dark mountains around them. “There is a feeling in the air.”

“Waiting.” The word left Perrin’s tongue before he could stop it. When Moiraine looked at him—into him—he wished he had it back.

“Yes,” she said. “Waiting. Make sure your guards are especially alert tonight, Uno.” There was no need to suggest that the men sleep with their weapons close at hand; Shienarans always did that. “Sleep well,” she added to them all, as if there were any chance of that now, and started back for her hut. Lan stayed long enough to spoon up three dishes of stew, then hurried after her, quickly swallowed by the night.

Perrin’s eyes shone golden as they followed the Warder through the darkness. “Sleep well,” he muttered. The smell of cooked meat suddenly made him queasy. “I have the third watch, Uno?” The Shienaran nodded. “Then I will try to take her advice.” Others were coming to the fires, and murmurs of conversation followed him up the slope.

He had a hut to himself, a small thing of logs barely tall enough to stand in, the chinks filled with dried mud. A rough bed, padded with pine boughs beneath a blanket, took up nearly half of it. Whoever had unsaddled his horse had also propped his bow just inside the door. He hung up his belt, with axe and quiver, on a peg, then stripped down to his smallclothes, shivering. The nights were cold still, but cold kept him from sleeping too deeply. In deep sleep, dreams came that he could not shake off.

For a time, with a single blanket over him, he lay staring at the log roof, shivering. Then sleep came, and with it, dreams.

Cold filled the common room of the inn despite the fire blazing on the long, stone hearth. Perrin rubbed his hands before the flames, but he could get no warmth in them. There was an odd comfort in the cold, though, as if it were a shield. A shield against what, he could not think. Something murmured in the back of his mind, a dim sound only vaguely heard, scratching to get in.

“So you will give it up, then. It is the best thing for you. Come. Sit, and we will talk.”

Perrin turned to look at the speaker. The round tables scattered about the room were empty except for the lone man seated in a corner, in the shadows. The rest of the room seemed in some way hazy, almost an impression rather than a place, especially anything he was not looking at directly. He glanced back at the fire; it burned on a brick hearth, now. Somehow, none of it bothered him.
It should
. But he could not have said why.

The man beckoned, and Perrin walked closer to his table. A square table. The tables were square. Frowning, he reached out to finger the tabletop, but pulled his hand back. There were no lamps in that corner of the room, and despite the light elsewhere, the man and his table were almost hidden, nearly blended with the dimness.

Perrin had a feeling that he knew the man, but it was as vague as
what he saw out of the corner of his eye. The fellow was in his middle years, handsome and too well dressed for a country inn, in dark, nearly black, velvets with white lace falls at his collar and cuffs. He sat stiffly, sometimes pressing a hand to his chest, as if moving hurt him. His dark eyes were fixed on Perrin’s face; they appeared like glistening points in the shadows.

“Give up what?” Perrin asked.

“That, of course.” The man nodded to the axe at Perrin’s waist. He sounded surprised, as if it were a conversation they had had before, an old argument taken up again.

Perrin had not realized the axe was there, had not felt the weight of it pulling at his belt. He ran a hand over the half-moon blade and the thick spike that balanced it. The steel felt—solid. More solid than anything else there. Maybe even more solid than he was himself. He kept his hand there, to hold onto something real.

“I have thought of it,” he said, “but I do not think I can. Not yet.”
Not yet?
The inn seemed to flicker, and the murmur sounded again in his head.
No!
The murmur faded.

“No?” The man smiled, a cold smile. “You are a blacksmith, boy. And a good one, from what I hear. Your hands were made for a hammer, not an axe. Made to make things, not to kill. Go back to that before it is too late.”

Perrin found himself nodding. “Yes. But I’m
ta’veren
.” He had never said that out loud before.
But he knows it already
. He was sure of that, though he could not say why.

For an instant the man’s smile became a grimace, but then it returned in more strength than before. A cold strength. “There are ways to change things, boy. Ways to avoid even fate. Sit, and we will talk of them.” The shadows appeared to shift and thicken, to reach out.

Perrin took a step back, keeping well in the light. “I don’t think so.”

“At least have a drink with me. To years past and years to come. Here, you will see things more clearly after.” The cup the man pushed across the table had not been there a moment before. It shone bright silver, and dark, blood-red wine filled it to the brim.

Perrin peered at the man’s face. Even to his sharp eyes, the shadows seemed to shroud the other man’s features like a Warder’s cloak. Darkness molded the man like a caress. There was something about the man’s eyes, something he thought he could remember if he tried hard enough. The murmur returned.

“No,” he said. He spoke to the soft sound inside his head, but when the
man’s mouth tightened in anger, a flash of rage suppressed as soon as begun, he decided it would do for the wine as well. “I am not thirsty.”

He turned and started for the door. The fireplace was rounded river stones; a few long tables lined by benches filled the room. He suddenly wanted to be outside, anywhere away from this man.

“You will not have many chances,” the man said behind him in a hard voice. “Three threads woven together share one another’s doom. When one is cut, all are. Fate can kill you, if it does not do worse.”

Perrin felt a sudden heat against his back, rising then fading just as quickly, as if the doors of a huge smelting furnace had swung open and closed again. Startled, he turned back to the room. It was empty.

Only a dream
, he thought, shivering from the cold, and with that everything shifted.

He stared into the mirror, a part of him not comprehending what he saw, another part accepting. A gilded helmet, worked like a lion’s head, sat on his head as if it belonged there. Gold leaf covered his ornately hammered breastplate, and gold-work embellished the plate and mail on his arms and legs. Only the axe at his side was plain. A voice—his own—whispered in his mind that he would take it over any other weapon, had carried it a thousand times, in a hundred battles.
No!
He wanted to take it off, throw it away.
I can’t!
There was a sound in his head, louder than a murmur, almost at the level of understanding.