The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  At his first glimpse of Verin’s smooth-cheeked face, Luc stiffened slightly, eyes flickering to her hands so quickly many would not have noticed. He very nearly dropped his embroidered gloves. Plump and plainly dressed, she might have been another farm wife, but clearly he knew an Aes Sedai’s ageless face, when he saw one. He was not particularly happy to see one here. The corner of his left eye twitched as he listened to Mistress al’Seen name “Mistress Mathwin” “a scholar from outside.”

  Verin smiled at him as if half-asleep. “A pleasure,” she murmured. “House Chiendelna. Where is that? It has a Borderland sound.”

  “Nothing so grand,” Luc replied quickly, giving her a wary, fractional bow. “Murandy, actually. A minor house, but old.” He seemed uneasy about taking his eyes from her for the rest of the introductions.

  Tomas he barely glanced at. He had to know him for “Mistress Mathwin’s” Warder, yet dismissed him out of hand as clearly as if he had shouted it. That was purely strange. However good Luc was with that sword, no one was good enough to dismiss a Warder. Arrogance. The fellow had enough for ten men. He proved it with Faile so far as Perrin was concerned.

  The smile Luc offered her was certainly more than self-assured; it was also familiar and decidedly warm. In fact, it was too admiring and too warm by half. He took her hand in both of his to bow over, and peered into her eyes as if trying to see through the back of her head. For an instant Perrin thought she was about to look over at him, but instead she returned the lord’s stare with a red-cheeked pretense to coolness and a slight bow of her head.

  “I, too, am a Hunter for the Horn, my Lord,” she said, sounding a touch breathless. “Do you think to find it here?”

  Luc blinked and released her hand. “Perhaps, my Lady. Who can say where the Horn might be?” Faile looked a little surprised—maybe disappointed—at his sudden loss of interest.

  Perrin kept his expression neutral. If she wanted to smile at Wil al’Seen and blush at fool lords, she could. She could make an idiot of herself any way she wanted, gawking at every man who came along. So Luc wanted to know where the Horn of Valere was? It was hidden away in the White Tower, that was where. He was tempted to tell the man, just to make him grind his teeth in frustration.

  If Luc had been surprised to find out who his other fellows in the al’Seen house were, his reaction to Perrin was peculiar to say the least. He gave a start at the sight of Perrin’s face; shock flashed in his eyes. It was all gone in a moment, masked behind lordly haughtiness, except for a wild fluttering at the corner of one eye. The trouble was, it made no sense. It was not his yellow eyes that took Luc aback; he was sure of that. More as if the fellow knew him, somehow, and was surprised to see him here, but he had never met this Luc before in his life. More than that, he would have bet that Luc was afraid of him. No sense at all.

  “Lord Luc is the one who suggested the boys go up on the rooftops,” Jac said. “No Trolloc will get close without those lads giving warning.”

  “How much warning?” Perrin said dryly. This was an example of the great Lord Luc’s advice? “Trollocs see like cats in the dark. They’ll be on top of you, kicking in the doors, before your boys raise a shout.”

  “We do what we can,” Flann barked. “Stop trying to frighten us. There are children listening. Lord Luc at least offers helpful suggestions. He was at my place the day before the Trollocs came, seeing I had everybody placed properly. Blood and ashes! If not for him, the Trollocs would have killed us all.”

  Luc did not seem to hear the praise offered him. He was watching Perrin cautiously while fussing with his gauntlets, tucking them behind the golden wolf’s-head buckle of his sword belt. Faile was watching him, too, with a slight frown. He ignored her.

  “I thought it was Whitecloaks saved you, Master Lewin. I thought a Whitecloak patrol arrived in the nick of time and drove the Trollocs off.”

  “Well, they did.” Flann scrubbed a hand through his gray hair. “But Lord Luc . . . . If the Whitecloaks hadn’t come, we could have . . . . At least he doesn’t try to frighten us,” he muttered.

  “So he doesn’t frighten you,” Perrin said. “Trollocs frighten me. And the Whitecloaks keep the Trollocs back for you. When they can.”

  “You want to credit the Whitecloaks?” Luc fixed Perrin with a cold stare, as if pouncing on a weakness. “Who do you think is responsible for the Dragon’s Fang scribbled on people’s doors? Oh, their hands never hold charcoal, but they are behind it. They stalk into these good people’s homes, asking questions and demanding answers as if it were their own roof overhead. I say these people are their own masters, not dogs for the Whitecloaks to call to heel. Let them patrol the countryside—well and good—but meet them at the door and tell them whose land they are on. That is what I say. If you want to be a Whitecloak dog, be so, but do not begrudge these good people their freedom.”

  Perrin met Luc’s eyes stare for stare. “I hold no affection for Whitecloaks. They want to hang me, or hadn’t you heard?”

  The tall lord blinked as though he had not, or maybe had forgotten in his eagerness to spring. “Exactly what is it you do propose, then?”

  Perrin turned his back on the man and went to stand in front of the fireplace. He did not mean to argue with Luc. Let everyone listen. They were certainly all looking at him. He would say what he thought and be done with it. “You have to depend on the Whitecloaks, have to hope they’ll keep the Trollocs down, hope they’ll come in time if the Trollocs attack. Why? Because every man tries to hang on to his farm, if he can, or to stay as close to it as possible if he can’t. You’re in a hundred little clusters, like grapes ripe for picking. As long as you are, as long as you have to pray the Whitecloaks can keep the Trollocs from stomping you into wine, you’ve no choice but to let them ask any questions they want, demand any answers they want. You have to stand by and watch innocent people hauled off. Or does anyone here think Haral and Alsbet Luhhan are Darkfriends? Natti Cauthon? Bodewhin and Eldrin?” Abell’s stare around the room dared anyone to hint at a yes, but there was no need. Even Adine Lewin’s attention was on Perrin. Luc frowned at him between studying the reactions of the people crowding the room.

  “I know they shouldn’t have arrested Natti and Alsbet and all,” Wit said, “but that’s over.” He rubbed a hand across his bald head, and gave Abell a troubled look. “Except for getting them to let everybody go, I mean. They haven’t arrested anyone since that I’ve heard.”

  “You think that means it’s done?” Perrin said. “Do you really think they’ll be satisfied with the Cauthons and the Luhhans? With two farms burned? Which of you will be next? Maybe because you said the wrong thing, or just to make an example. It could be Whitecloaks putting a torch to this house instead of Trollocs. Or maybe it’ll be the Dragon’s Fang scrawled on your door some night. There are always folk who believe that kind of thing.” A number of eyes darted to Adine, who shifted her feet and hunched her shoulders. “Even if all it means is having to tug your forelock to every Whitecloak who comes along, do you want to live that way? Your children? You’re at the mercy of the Trollocs, the mercy of the Whitecloaks, and the mercy of anybody with a grudge. As long as one has a hold on you, all three do. You’re hiding in the cellar, hoping one rabid dog will protect you from another, hoping the rats don’t sneak out in the dark and bite you.”

  Jac exchanged worried looks with Flann and Wit, with the other men in the room, then said slowly, “If you think we’re doing wrong, what is it you suggest?”

  Perrin was not expecting the question—he had been sure they would get angry—but he went right on telling them what he thought. “Gather your people. Gather your sheep and your cows, your chickens, everything. Gather them up and take them where they might be safe. Go to Emond’s Field. Or Watch Hill, since it’s closer, though that will put you right under the Whitecloaks’ eyes. As long as it’s twenty people here and fifty there, you are game for Trolloc taking. If there are hundreds of you together, you have a chance, and one th
at doesn’t depend on bowing your necks for the Whitecloaks.” That brought the explosion he expected.

  “Abandon my farm completely!” Flann shouted right on top of Wit’s “You’re mad!” Words poured out on top of one another, from them, and from brothers and cousins.

  “Go off to Emond’s Field? I’m too far away to do more than check the fields every day right now!”

  “The weeds will take everything!”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to harvest as it is!”

  “ . . . if the rains come . . . !”

  “ . . . trying to rebuild . . . !”

  “ . . . tabac will rot . . . !”

  “ . . . have to leave the clip . . . !”

  Perrin’s fist smacking the lintel of the fireplace cut them short. “I haven’t seen a field trampled or fired, or a house or barn burned, unless there were people there. It’s people the Trollocs come for. And if they burn it anyway? A new crop can be planted. Stone and mortar and wood can be rebuilt. Can you rebuild that?” He pointed at Laila’s baby, and she clutched the child to her breast, glaring at him as though he had threatened the babe himself. The looks she gave her husband and Flann were frightened, though. An uneasy murmur rose.

  “Leave,” Jac muttered, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Perrin.”

  “It is your choice, Master al’Seen. The land will still be here when you come back. Trollocs can’t carry that off. Think whether the same can be said for your family.”

  The murmur grew to a buzz. A number of women were confronting their husbands, mostly those with a child or two in tow. None of the men seemed to be arguing.

  “An interesting plan,” Luc said, studying Perrin. From his face there was no telling whether he approved of it. “I shall watch to see how it turns out. And now, Master al’Seen, I must be on my way. I only stopped to see how you were doing.” Jac and Elisa saw him to the door, but the others were too busy with their own discussions to pay much attention. Luc left tight-mouthed. Perrin had the feeling his departures were usually as grand as his arrivals.

  Jac came straight from the door to Perrin. “It’s a bold plan you have. I will admit I’m not keen on abandoning my farm, but you talk sense. I don’t know what the Children will make of it, though. They seem a suspicious lot, to me. They might think we’re all plotting something against them if we gather together.”

  “Let them think it,” Perrin said. “A village full of people can take Luc’s advice and tell them to be about their business elsewhere. Or do you think it’s better to stay vulnerable just to hold the Whitecloaks’ goodwill, such as it is?”

  “No. No, I see your point. You’ve convinced me. And everybody else, too, it seems.”

  It did appear to be true. The murmur of discussion was dying down, but only because everyone looked to be in agreement. Even Adine, who was marshaling her daughters with loud orders for packing immediately. She actually gave Perrin a grudgingly approving nod.

  “When do you mean to go?” Perrin asked Jac.

  “As soon as I can get everybody ready. We can make Jon Gaelin’s place on the North Road before sunset. I’ll tell Jon what you say, and everybody down to Emond’s Field. Better there than Watch Hill. If we mean to be out from under the Whitecloaks’ thumb as well as the Trollocs’, best not to sit under their noses.” Jac scratched his narrow fringe of hair with one finger. “Perrin, I don’t think the Children would actually hurt Natti Cauthon and the girls, or the Luhhans, but it worries me. If they do think we’re plotting, who’s to say?”

  “I mean to get them free as soon as I can, Master al’Seen. And anybody else the Whitecloaks arrest, for that matter.”

  “A bold plan,” Jac repeated. “Well, I had better get people moving if I’m going to have us to Jon’s by sundown. Go with the Light, Perrin.”

  “A very bold plan,” Verin said, coming up as Master al’Seen hurried off calling orders for wagons to be hauled out and people to pack what they could carry. She studied Perrin interestedly, head tilted to one side, but no less so than Faile, at her side. Faile looked as though she had never seen him before.

  “I don’t know why everybody keeps calling it that,” he said. “A plan, I mean. That Luc was talking nonsense. Defying Whitecloaks in the door. Boys on the roof to watch for Trollocs. A couple of open gates to disaster. All I did was point it out. They should have been doing this from the start. That man . . . .” He stopped himself from saying Luc irritated him. Not with Faile there. She might misunderstand.

  “Of course,” Verin said smoothly. “I have not had the opportunity to see it work before this. Or perhaps I have and did not know it.”

  “What are you talking about? See what work?”

  “Perrin, when we arrived these people were ready to hold on here at all costs. You gave them good sense and strong emotion, but do you think the same from me would have shifted them, or from Tam, or Abell? Of any of us, you should know how stubborn Two Rivers people can be. You have altered the course events would have followed in the Two Rivers without you. With a few words spoken in . . . irritation? Ta’veren truly do pull other people’s lives into their own pattern. Fascinating. I do hope I have an opportunity to observe Rand again.”

  “Whatever it is,” Perrin muttered, “it’s to the good. The more people together in one place, the safer.”

  “Of course. Rand does have the sword, I take it?”

  He frowned, but there was no reason not to tell her. She knew about Rand, and she knew what Tear had to mean. “He does.”

  “Watch yourself with Alanna, Perrin.”

  “What?” The Aes Sedai’s quick changes of topic were beginning to confuse him. Especially when she started telling him to do what he had already thought of, and thought to keep secret from her. “Why?”

  Verin’s face did not change, but her dark eyes were suddenly bird bright and sharp. “There are many . . . designs in the White Tower. Not all are malignant, by far, but sometimes it is difficult to say until it is too late. And even the most benevolent often allow for a few threads snapped in the weaving, a few reeds broken and discarded in making a basket. A ta’veren would make a useful reed in any number of possible plans.” Just as suddenly she was looking a little confused by the bustle around her, more at home in a book or her own thoughts than in the real world. “Oh, my. Master al’Seen is not wasting any time, is he? I’ll just see if he can spare someone to fetch our horses.”

  Faile shivered as the Brown sister moved away. “Sometimes Aes Sedai make me . . . uneasy,” she murmured.

  “Uneasy?” Perrin said. “Most of the time they scare me half to death.”

  She laughed softly and began playing with a button on his coat, peering at it intently. “Perrin, I . . . have . . . been a fool.”

  “What do you mean?” She glanced up at him—she was about to twist the button right off—and he hastily added, “You are one of the least foolish people I know.” He clamped his teeth shut before he could add “most of the time,” and was glad he had when she smiled.

  “That is very nice of you to say, but I was.” She patted the coat button and began adjusting his coat—which it did not need—and smoothing his lapels—which they did not need. “You were so silly,” she said, speaking too fast, “just because that young man looked at me—really, he is much too boyish; not at all like you—that I thought I would make you jealous—just a little—by pretending—just pretending—to be attracted to Lord Luc. I should not have done it. Will you forgive me?”

  He tried to sort through the jumbled words. It was good she thought Wil was boyish—if he tried to grow a beard it would probably be straggly—but she had not mentioned the way she returned Wil’s look. And if she had been pretending to be attracted to Luc, why had she blushed that way? “Of course I forgive you,” he said. A dangerous light appeared in her eyes. “I mean, there’s nothing to forgive.” If anything, the light sparkled hotter. What did she want him to say? “Will you forgive me? When I was trying to chase you away, I said thin
gs I shouldn’t have. Will you forgive me that?”

  “You said some things that need forgiving?” she said sweetly, and he knew he was in trouble. “I cannot think what, but I will take it into consideration.”

  Into consideration? She sounded very much the noblewoman there; maybe her father worked for some lord, so she could study the way ladies talked. He had no idea what she meant. Whenever he found out would be too soon, he was certain.

  It was a relief to climb back into Stepper’s saddle amid the confusion of wagon teams being hitched and people arguing over what they could or could not take and children chasing down chickens and geese and tying their feet for loading. Boys were already driving the cattle eastward, and others herding the sheep out of the cote.

  Faile made no reference to what had been said inside. Indeed, she smiled at him, and compared the keeping of sheep here to in Saldaea, and when one of the girls brought her a bunch of small red flowers, heartsblush, she tried to thread some of them into his beard, laughing at his efforts to stop her. In short, she had him jumping out of his skin. He needed another talk with Master Cauthon.

  “Go with the Light,” Master al’Seen told him again just as they were ready to ride out, “and look after the boys.”

  Four of the young men had decided to go with them, on rough-coated horses not nearly as good as those Tam and Abell rode. Perrin was not sure why he was the one who was supposed to look after them. They were all older than he, if not by much. Wil al’Seen was one, with his cousin Ban, one of Jac’s sons, who had gotten all the nose in that family, and a pair of the Lewins, Tell and Dannil, who looked so much like Flann that they could have been his sons instead of his nephews. Perrin had tried to talk them out of it, especially when they all made it plain that they wanted to help rescue the Cauthons and the Luhhans from the Whitecloaks. They seemed to think it was a matter of riding into the Children’s camp and demanding everybody’s return. Casting down our defiance, Tell called it, which nearly made Perrin’s hair stand on end. Too many gleeman’s tales. Too much listening to fools like Luc. He suspected that Wil had another reason, though he tried to pretend Faile did not exist, but the others were bad enough.