The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  Lan nodded reluctantly, then gave Perrin a hard look. “See that you do, blacksmith. If any harm befalls her. . . .” His cold blue eyes finished the promise.

  Simion snatched one of the candles and scurried into the hallway, still bowing so the candlelight made their shadows dance. “This way—uh—good mistress. This way.”

  Beyond the door at the end of the hall, outside stairs led down to a cramped alleyway, between inn and stable. Night shrank the candle to a flickering pinpoint. The half moon was up in a star-flecked sky, giving more than enough light for Perrin’s eyes. He wondered when Moiraine would tell Simion he did not have to keep bowing, but she never did. The Aes Sedai glided along, clutching her skirts to keep them out of the mud, as though the dark passage were a palace hall and she a queen. The air was already cooling; nights still carried echoes of winter.

  “This way.” Simion led them back to a small shed behind the stable and hurriedly unbarred the door. “This way.” Simion pointed. “There, good mistress. There. My brother. Noam.”

  The far end of the shed had been barred off with slats of wood; hastily, by the rough look of it. A stout iron lock in a hasp held shut a crude door of wooden slats. Behind those bars, a man lay sprawled on his stomach on the straw-covered floor. He was barefoot, his shirt and breeches ripped as if he had torn at them without knowing how to take them off. There was an odor of unwashed flesh that Perrin thought even Simion and Moiraine must smell.

  Noam lifted his head and stared at them silently, without expression. There was nothing at all about him to suggest he was Simion’s brother—he had a chin, for one thing, and he was a big man, with heavy shoulders—but that was not what staggered Perrin. Noam stared at them with burnished golden eyes.

  “He’d been talking crazy almost a year, good mistress, saying he could . . . could talk with wolves. And his eyes. . . .” Simion darted a glance at Perrin. “Well, he’d talk about it when he’d drunk too much. Everybody laughed at him. Then a month or so ago, he didn’t come to town. I went out to see what was the matter, and I found him—like this.”

  Cautiously, unwillingly, Perrin reached out toward Noam as he would have toward a wolf. Running through the woods with the cold wind in his nose. Quick dash from cover, teeth snapping at hamstrings. Taste of blood, rich on the tongue. Kill. Perrin jerked back as he would have from a fire, sealed himself off. They were not thoughts at all, really, just a chaotic jumble of desires and images, part memory, part yearning. But there was more wolf there than anything else. He put a hand to the wall to steady himself; his knees felt weak. Light help me!

  Moiraine put a hand on the lock.

  “Master Harod has the key, good mistress. I don’t know if he’ll—”

  She gave a tug, and the lock sprang open. Simion gaped at her. She lifted the lock free of the hasp, and the chinless man turned to Perrin.

  “Is that safe, good master? He’s my brother, but he bit Mother Roon when she tried to help, and he . . . he killed a cow. With his teeth,” he finished faintly.

  “Moiraine,” Perrin said, “the man is dangerous.”

  “All men are dangerous,” she replied in a cool voice. “Now be quiet.” She opened the door and went in. Perrin held his breath.

  At her first step, Noam’s lips peeled back from his teeth, and he began to growl, a rumble that deepened till his whole body quivered. Moiraine ignored it. Still growling, Noam wriggled backwards in the straw as she came closer to him, until he had backed himself into a corner. Or she had backed him.

  Slowly, calmly, the Aes Sedai knelt and took his head between her hands. Noam’s growl heightened to a snarl, then tailed off in a whimper before Perrin could move. For a long moment Moiraine held Noam’s head, then just as calmly released it and rose. Perrin’s throat tightened as she turned her back on Noam and walked out of the cage, but the man only stared after her. She pushed the slatted door to, slipped the lock back through the hasp, not bothering to snap it shut—and Noam hurled himself snarling against the wooden bars. He bit at them, and battered them with his shoulders, tried to force his head between them, all the while snarling and snapping.

  Moiraine brushed straw from her skirt with a steady hand and no expression.

  “You do take chances,” Perrin breathed. She looked at him—a steady, knowing gaze—and he dropped his eyes. His yellow eyes.

  Simion was staring at his brother. “Can you help him, good mistress?” he asked hoarsely.

  “I am sorry, Simion,” she said.

  “Can’t you do anything, good mistress? Something? One of those”—his voice fell to a whisper—“Aes Sedai things?”

  “Healing is not a simple matter, Simion, and it comes from within as much as from the Healer. There is nothing here that remembers being Noam, nothing that remembers being a man. There are no maps remaining to show him the path back, and nothing left to take that path. Noam is gone, Simion.”

  “He—he just used to talk funny, good mistress, when he’d had too much to drink. He just. . . .” Simion scrubbed a hand across his eyes and blinked. “Thank you, good mistress. I know you’d have done something if you could.” She put a hand on his shoulder, murmured comforting words, and then she was gone from the shed.

  Perrin knew he should follow her, but the man—what had once been a man—snapping at the wooden bars, held him. He took a quick step and surprised himself by removing the dangling lock from the hasp. The lock was a good one, the work of a master smith.

  “Good master?”

  Perrin stared at the lock in his hand, at the man behind in the cage. Noam had stopped biting at the slats; he stared back at Perrin warily, panting. Some of his teeth had broken off jaggedly.

  “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 have. 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.