The Dragon Reborn twot-3

by Robert Jordan

  Min sat there opening and closing her mouth, obviously searching for another argument, but Moiraine had already gone on. "Lan, I very much fear we will find more evidence of his passing than I would like, but I will rely on your tracking." The Warder nodded. "Perrin? Loial? Will you come with me after Rand?" From her place against the wall, Min gave an indignant squawk, but the Aes Sedai ignored it.

  "I will come," Loial said quickly. "Rand is my friend. And I will admit it; I would not miss anything. For my book, you see."

  Perrin was slower to answer. Rand was his friend, whatever he had become in the forging. And there was that near certainty of their futures being linked, though he would have avoided that part of it if he could. "It has to be done, doesn't it?" he said finally. "I will come."

  "Good." Moiraine rubbed her hands together again, with the air of someone settling to work. "You must all ready yourselves at once. Rand has hours on us. I mean to be well along his trail before midday."

  Slender as she was, the force of her presence herded all of them but Lan toward the door, Loial walking stooped over until he was through the doorway. Perrin thought of a goodwife herding geese.

  Once outside, Min bung back for a moment to address Lan with a too-sweet smile. "And is there any message you want carried? To Nynaeve, perhaps?"

  The Warder blinked as if caught off guard, like a horse on three legs. "Does everyone know —?" He regained his balance almost immediately. "If there is anything else she needs to hear from me, I will tell her myself." He closed the door nearly in her face.

  "Men!" Min muttered at the door. "Too blind to see what a stone could see, and too stubborn to be trusted to think for themselves."

  Perrin inhaled deeply. Faint smells of death still hung in the valley air, but it was better than the closeness inside. Some better.

  "Clean air," Loial sighed. "The smoke was beginning to bother me a little."

  They started down the slope together. Beside the stream below, the Shienarans who could stand were gathered around Uno. From his gestures the one-eyed man was making up for lost time with his cursing.

  "How did you two become privileged?" Min demanded abruptly. "She asked you. She didn't do me the courtesy of asking."

  Loial shook his head. "I think she asked because she knew what we would answer, Min. Moiraine seems able to read Perrin and me; she knows what we'll do. But you are a closed book to her."

  Min appeared only a little mollified. She looked up at them, Perrin head and shoulders taller on one side and Loial towering even higher on the other. "Much good it does me. I am still going where she wants as easily as you two little lambs. You were doing well for a while, Perrin. Standing up to her like she'd sold you a coat and the seams were popping open."

  "I did stand up to her, didn't I," Perrin said wonderingly. He had not really realized he had done that. "It was not so bad as I'd have thought it would be."

  "You were lucky," Loial rumbled." 'To anger an Aes Sedai is to put your head in a hornet's nest.' "

  "Loial," Min said, "I need to speak to Perrin. Alone. Would you mind?"

  "Oh. Of course not." He lengthened his stride to its normal span and quickly moved ahead of them, pulling his pipe and tabac pouch from a coat pocket.

  Perrin eyed her warily. She was biting her lip, as if considering what to say. "Do you ever see things about him?" he asked, nodding after the Ogier.

  She shook her head. "I think it only works with humans. But I've seen things around you that you ought to know about."

  "I've told you —"

  "Don't be more thickheaded than you have to be, Perrin. Back there, right after you said you'd go. They were not there before. They must have to do with this journey. Or at least with you deciding to go."

  After a moment he said reluctantly, "What did you see?"

  "An Aielman in a cage," she said promptly. "A Tuatha'an with a sword. A falcon and a hawk, perching on your shoulders. Both female, I think. And all the rest, of course. What is always there. Darkness swirling 'round you, and —"

  "None of that!" he said quickly. When he was sure she had stopped, he scratched his head, thinking. None of it made any sense to him. "Do you have any idea what it all means? The new things, I mean."

  "No, but they're important. The things I see always are. Turning points in people's lives, or what's fated. It's always important." She hesitated for a moment, glancing at him. "One more thing," she said slowly. "If you meet a woman — the most beautiful woman you've ever seen — run!"

  Perrin blinked. "You saw a beautiful woman? Why should I run from a beautiful woman?"

  "Can't you just take advice?" she said irritably. She kicked at a stone and watched it roll down the slope.

  Perrin did not like jumping to conclusions — it was one of the reasons some people thought him slow-witted — but he totaled up a number of things Min had said in the last few days and came to a startling conclusion. He stopped dead, hunting for words. "Uh… Min, you know I like you. I like you, but… Uh… you sort of remind me of my sisters. I mean, you…" The flow stumbled to a halt as she raised her head to look at him, eyebrows arched. She wore a small smile.

  "Why, Perrin, you must know that I love you." She stood there, watching his mouth work, then spoke slowly and carefully. "Like a brother, you great wooden-headed lummox! The arrogance of men never ceases to amaze me. You all think everything has to do with you, and every woman has to desire you."

  Perrin felt his face growing hot. "I never… I didn't…" He cleared his throat. "What did you see about a woman?"

  "Just take my advice," she said, and started down toward the stream again, walking fast. "If you forget all the rest," she called over her shoulder, "heed that!"

  He frowned after her — for once his thoughts seemed to arrange themselves quickly — then caught up in two strides. "It's Rand, isn't it?"

  She made a sound in her throat and gave him a sidelong look. She did not slow down, though. "Maybe you aren't so boneheaded after all," she muttered. After a moment she added, as if to herself, "I'm bound to him as surely as a stave is bound to the barrel. But I can't see if he'll ever love me in return. And I am not the only one."

  "Does Egwene know?" he asked. Rand and Egwene had been all but promised since childhood. Everything but kneeling in front of the Women's Circle of the village to speak the betrothal. He was not sure how far they had drifted from that, if at all.

  "She knows," Min said curtly. "Much good it does either of us."

  "What about Rand? Does he know?"

  "Oh, of course," she said bitterly. "I told him, didn't I? 'Rand, I did a viewing of you, and it seems I have to fall in love with you. I have to share you, too, and I don't much like that, but there it is.' You're a wooden-headed wonder after all, Perrin Aybara." She dashed a hand across her eyes angrily. "If I could be with him, I know I could help. Somehow. Light, if he dies, I don't know if I can stand it."

  Perrin shrugged uncomfortably. "Listen, Min. I'll do what I can to help him." However much that is. "I promise you that. It really is best for you to go to Tar Valon. You'll be safe there."

  "Safe?" She tasted the word as if wondering what it meant. "You think Tar Valon is safe?"

  "If there's no safety in Tar Valon, there's no safety anywhere."

  She sniffed loudly, and in silence they went to join those preparing to leave.

  Chapter 7

  (Flame of Tar Valon)

  The Way Out of the Mountains

  The way down out of the mountains was hard, but the lower they went, the less Perrin needed his fur-lined cloak. Hour by hour, they rode out of the tailings of winter and into the first days of spring. The last remnants of snow vanished, and grasses and wildflowers — white maiden's hope and pink jump up — began to cover the high meadows they crossed. Trees appeared more often, with more leaves, and grasslarks and robins sang in the branches. And there were wolves. Never in sight — not even Lan mentioned seeing one — but Perrin knew. He kept his mind firmly closed to them, yet
now and again a feather-light tickle at the back of his mind reminded him they were there.

  Lan spent most of his time scouting their path on his black warhorse, Mandarb, following Rand's tracks as the rest of them followed the signs the Warder left for them. An arrow of stones laid out on the ground, or one lightly scratched in the rock wall of a forking pass. Turn this way. Cross that saddle-pass. Take this switchback, this deer trail, this way through the trees and down along a narrow stream, even though there is nothing to indicate anyone has ever gone that way before. Nothing but Lan's signs. A tuft of grass or weeds tied one way to say bear left, another for bear right. A bent branch. A pile of pebbles for a rough climb ahead, two leaves caught on a thorn for a steep descent. The Warder had a hundred signs, it seemed to Perrin, and Moiraine knew them all. Lan rarely came back except when they made camp, to confer with Moiraine quietly, away from the fire. When the sun rose, most often he was hours gone already.

  Moiraine was always first into the saddle after him, while the eastern sky was just turning pink. The Aes Sedai would not have climbed down from Aldieb, her white mare, until full dark or later, except that Lan refused to track further once the light began to fail.

  "We'll go even slower if a horse breaks a leg," the Warder would tell Moiraine when she complained.

  Her reply was always very much the same. "If you cannot move any faster than this, perhaps I should send you off to Myrelle before you get any older. Well, perhaps that can wait, but you must move us faster."

  She half sounded as if the threat were irritated truth, half as if she were making a joke. There was something of a threat in it, or maybe a warning, Perrin was sure, from the way Lan's mouth tightened even when she smiled afterwards and reached up to pat his shoulder soothingly.

  "Who is Myrelle?" Perrin asked suspiciously, the first time it happened. Loial shook his head, murmuring something about unpleasant things happening to those who pried into Aes Sedai affairs. The Ogier's hairy-fetlocked horse was as tall and heavy as a Dhurran stallion, but with Loial's long legs dangling to either side, the animal looked undersized, like a large pony.

  Moiraine gave an amused, secretive smile. "Just a Green sister. Someone to whom Lan must one day deliver a package for safekeeping."

  "No day soon," Lan said, and surprisingly, there was open anger in his voice. "Never, if I can help it. You will outlive me long, Moiraine Aes Sedai!"

  She has too many secrets, Perrin thought, but asked no more about a subject that could crack the Warder's iron self-control.

  The Aes Sedai had a blanket-wrapped bundle tied behind her saddle: the Dragon banner. Perrin was uneasy about having it with them, but Moiraine had neither asked his opinion nor listened when he offered it. Not that anyone was likely to recognize it if they saw it, yet he hoped she was as good at keeping secrets from other people as she was at keeping them from him.

  In the beginning, at least, it was a boring journey. One cloud-capped mountain was very much like another, one pass little different from the next. Supper was usually rabbit, dropped by stones from Perrin's sling. He did not have so many arrows as to risk shooting at rabbits in that rocky country. Breakfast was cold rabbit, more often than not, and the midday meal the same, eaten in the saddle.

  Sometimes when they camped near a stream and there was still light enough to see, he and Loial caught mountain trout, lying on their bellies, hands elbow-deep in the cold water, tickling the green-backed fish out from under the rock ledges where they hid. Loial's fingers, big as they were, were even more deft at it than Perrin's.

  Once, three days after setting out, Moiraine joined them, stretching herself out on the streamside and undoing rows of pearl buttons to roll up her sleeves as she asked how the thing was done. Perrin exchanged surprised looks with Loial. The Ogier shrugged.

  "It is not that hard, really," Perrin told her. "Just bring your hand up from behind the fish, and underneath, as if you're trying to tickle its belly. Then you pull it out. It takes practice, though. You might not catch anything the first few times you try."

  "I tried for days before I ever caught anything," Loial added. He was already easing his huge hands into the water, careful to keep his shadow from scaring the fish.

  "As difficult as that?" Moiraine murmured. Her hands slipped into the water — and a moment later came out with a splash, holding a fat trout that thrashed the surface. She laughed with delight as she tossed it up onto the bank.

  Perrin blinked at the big fish flopping in the fading sunlight. It must have weighed at least five pounds. "You were very lucky," he said. "Trout that size don't often shelter under a ledge this small. We'll have to move upstream a bit. It will be dark before any of them settle under this ledge again."

  "Is that so?" Moiraine said. "You two go ahead. I think I will just try here again."

  Perrin hesitated a moment before moving up the bank to another overhang. She was up to something, but he could not imagine what. That troubled him. Belly down, and careful not to let his shadow fall on the water, he peered over the edge. Half a dozen slender shapes hung suspended in the water, barely moving a fin to hold their places. All of them together would not weigh as much as Moiraine's fish, he decided with a sigh. If they were lucky, he and Loial might take two apiece, but the shadows of trees on the far bank already stretched across the water. Whatever they caught now would be it, and Loial's appetite was big enough by itself to swallow those four and most of the bigger fish, too. Loial's hands were already easing up behind one of the trout.

  Before Perrin could even slide his hands into the water, Moiraine gave a shout. "Three should be enough, I think. The last two are bigger than the first."

  Perrin gave Loial a startled look. "She can't have!"

  The Ogier straightened, sending the small trout scattering. "She is Aes Sedai," he said simply.

  Sure enough, when they returned to Moiraine, three big trout lay on the bank. She was already buttoning her sleeves up again.

  Perrin thought about reminding her that whoever took the fish was supposed to clean them, too, but just at that moment she caught his eye. There was no particular expression on her smooth face, but her dark eyes did not waver, and they appeared to know what he was going to say, and to have dismissed it out of hand already. When she turned away, it seemed somehow too late to say anything.

  Muttering to himself, Perrin pulled out his belt knife and set to the scaling and gutting. "All of a sudden she's forgotten about sharing the chores, it seems. I suppose she'll want us to do the cooking, as well, and the cleaning up after."

  "No doubt she will," Loial said without pausing over the fish he was working on. "She is Aes Sedai."

  "I seem to remember hearing that somewhere." Perrin's knife made fish scales fly. "The Shienarans might have been willing to run around fetching and carrying for her, but there are only four of us now. We should keep on turn and turn about. It's only fair."

  Loial gave a great snort of laughter. "I doubt she sees it that way. First she had to put up with Rand arguing with her all the time, and now you're ready to take over for him. As a rule, Aes Sedai do not let anyone argue with them. I expect she means to have us back in the habit of doing what she says by the time we reach the first village."

  "A good habit to be in," Lan said, throwing back his cloak. In the fading light he had appeared out of nowhere.

  Perrin nearly fell over from surprise, and Loial's ears went stiff with shock. Neither of them had heard the Warder's step.

  "A habit you should never have lost," Lan added, then strode off toward Moiraine and the horses. His boots barely made a sound, even on that rocky ground, and once he was a few paces away the cloak hanging down his back gave him the uneasy appearance of a disembodied head and arms drifting up from the stream.

  "We need her to find Rand," Perrin said softly, "but I am not going to let her shape my life anymore." He went back to his scaling vigorously.

  He meant to keep that promise — he really did — but during the days that followed
, in some way he did not quite understand, he found that he and Loial were doing the cooking, and the cleaning up, and any other little chore that Moiraine thought of. He even discovered that somehow or other he had taken over tending Aldieb every night, unsaddling the mare and rubbing her down while Moiraine settled herself, apparently deep in thought.

  Loial gave in to it as inevitable, but not Perrin. He tried refusing, resisting, but it was hard to resist when she made a reasonable suggestion, and a small one at that. Only there was always another suggestion behind it, as reasonable and small as the first, and then another. The simple force of her presence, the strength of her gaze, made it difficult to protest. Her dark eyes would catch his at the moment he opened his mouth. A lift of her eyebrow to suggest he was being rude, a surprised widening of her eyes that he could object to so small a request, a level stare that held in it everything that was Aes Sedai, all these things could make him hesitate, and once he hesitated there was never any recovering lost ground. He accused her of using the One Power on him, though he did not really think that was it, and she told him not to be a fool. He began to feel like a piece of iron trying to stop a smith from hammering it into a scythe.

  The Mountains of Mist gave way abruptly to the forested foothills of Ghealdan, to land that seemed all up and down, but never very high. Deer, which in the mountains had often watched them warily, as if uncertain what a man was, began to bound away, white tails flickering, at the first sight of the horses. Even Perrin now caught only the faintest glimpses of the gray-striped mountain cats that seemed to fade away like smoke. They were coming into the lands of men.