Текст книги "A Memory of Light"

Автор книги: Robert Jordan

Соавторы: Brandon Sanderson
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Текущая страница: 66 (всего у книги 71 страниц)

The Forsaken made a weave before Aviendha could stop it, a powerful weave of Earth directed beneath Aviendha.

So she leaped.

The ground exploded, rocks flying upward as the blast threw her forward into the air. Stones flayed her legs, carrying ribbons of blood up through the air around her. Her feet were ripped apart, bones cracking, legs burning.

She gripped the spear of fire and light in two hands amid the storm of rock, skirt rippling as it shredded. Graendal looked up, eyes widening, lips parting. She was going to Travel with the True Power. Aviendha knew it. The woman had only avoided it so far because this method of Traveling seemed to require her to touch her companions to take them with her, and she didn’t want to leave any.

Aviendha met the Shadowsouled’s eyes during that brief moment when she hung in the air, and she saw true terror therein.

The air began to warp.

Aviendha’s spear, point first, sank into Graendal’s side.

In a moment, both of them vanished.

CHAPTER 43

A Field of Glass

Logain stood in the middle of a field of glass, hands clasped behind his back. The battle raged across the Heights. The Sharans appeared to be falling back from the onslaught of Cauthon’s armies, and his scouts had just reported that the Shadow was being hit hard all across the Field of Merrilor.

“I guess they probably won’t need you,” Gabrelle said to him as his scouts retreated. “So you were right.”

The bond sent dissatisfaction and even disappointment. “I need to look to the future of the Black Tower,” Logain said.

“You aren’t looking to its future,” she said, soft, almost threatening. “You’re looking to make certain you are a power in these lands, Logain. You cannot hide your emotions from me.”

Logain shoved down his anger. He would not be subject to their power again. He would not. First the White Tower, then M’Hael and his men.

Days of torture. Weeks.

I will be stronger than any other, he thought. That was the only way out, wasn’t it? I will be feared.

Light. He’d resisted their attempts to corrupt him, turn him to the Shadow . . . but he couldn’t help wondering if they had broken something else inside of him. Something profound. He leveled his gaze, looking across the field of crystal.

Another rumble came beneath, and some of the crystals shattered. This entire area was going to collapse soon. And with it, the scepter . . .

Power.

“I’m warning you, mainlander,” a calm voice said nearby. “I have a message to deliver. If I need see your arm broken to deliver it, I will see it done.” That's a Seanchan accent, Logain thought, turning with a frown. A Seanchan woman, accompanied by a large Illianer, was arguing with one of his guards. The woman knew how to make her voice carry without shouting. There was a self-possession to her that Logain found curious.

He walked over, and the Seanchan woman looked up at him. “You have the look of authority about you,” she called to him. “You are the one called Logain?”

He nodded.

“The Amyrlin sends you her last words,” the Seanchan woman called. “You must deliver the seals up to the White Tower to be broken. The sign is the coming of light! She says it will be known when it arrives.”

Logain raised an eyebrow. He nodded to the woman, mostly to put her off, then walked back the other way.

“You don’t intend to do it,” Gabrelle said. “You fool. Those seals belong to—”

“To me,” Logain said.

“Logain,” Gabrelle said softly. “I know you have been hurt. But this is not a time for games.”

“Why not? Has the White Tower’s treatment of me been anything other than a great long game?”

“Logain.” She touched him on the arm.

Light burn that bond! He wished he’d never forced her to it. Tied to her as he was, he could sense her sincerity. How much easier his life would be if he could continue to regard all Aes Sedai with suspicion.

Sincerity. Would that be his downfall?

“Lord Logain!” Desautel called from nearby. The Asha’man Dedicated was as big as a blacksmith. “Lord Logain, I think I’ve found it!”

Logain broke eye contact with Gabrelle, looking toward Desautel. The Asha’man stood beside a large crystal. “It’s here,” Desautel said, wiping the crystal as Logain approached. “See?”

Logain knelt, weaving a globe of light. Yes . . . there, within the crystal. It looked like a hand, made from a slightly different type of crystal, sparkling in his light. That hand held a golden scepter, the top vaguely cup-shaped.

Logain gathered the One Power, smiling broadly. He let saidin flow from him into the crystal, using a weave to shatter it as he would a stone.

The ground trembled. The crystal, whatever it was, resisted. The harder he pushed, the more violent the shaking became.

“Logain . . Gabrelle said.

“Stand back,” Logain said. “I think I’ll need to try balefire.”

Panic surged through the bond. Fortunately, Gabrelle did not try to tell him what was forbidden and what was not. Asha’man need not obey White Tower law.

“Logain!”

Another voice. Would they not leave him alone? He prepared his weave. “Logain!” Androl was breathing deeply as he arrived. He fell to his knees, face scorched and burned. He looked worse than death itself. “Logain . . . the refugees of Caemlyn . . . The Shadow has sent Trollocs to kill them at the ruins. Light! They’re being murdered.”

Logain wove balefire, but held the weave in place, nearly complete as he looked at the crystal and its golden prize.

“Logain . . .” Androl said, pained. “The others with me stayed to fight, but they are too tired. I can’t find Cauthon, and the soldiers I went to are too busy fighting to help. I don’t think any of the commanders know that the Trollocs are up there. Light.”

Logain held his weave, feeling the One Power pulse within him. Power. Fear.

“Please,” Androl whispered, so soft. “Children, Logain. They’re slaughtering the children . . .”

Logain closed his eyes.

Mat rode with the heroes of the Horn. Apparently, having once been the Hornsounder gave him a special place among them. They joined him, called to him, spoke to him as if they knew him. They looked so, well, heroic, tall in their saddles and surrounded by a mist that glowed against the breaking dawn’s light.

Amid the fighting, he finally asked the question that had been haunting him for a long while now. “I'm not bloody . . . one of you, am I?” he asked Hend the Striker. “You know . . . since heroes are born sometimes, then die and . . . do whatever you do.”

The big man laughed, riding a bay horse that could have almost gone shoulder-to-shoulder with a Seanchan boar-horse. “I knew that you would ask this thing, Gambler!”

“Well, then you should bloody well have an answer prepared.” Mat felt his face flush as he anticipated the reply.

“No, you are not one of us,” Hend said. “Be at ease. Though you have done more than enough to earn a place, you have not been chosen. I do not know why.”

“Maybe because I don’t like the idea of having to hop whenever anyone blows on that bloody instrument.”

“Maybe!” Hend grinned and galloped toward a line of Sharan spears.

Mat no longer directed troop movements on the battlefield. The Light willing, he had set things up well enough that direct control would not be needed. He rode across the plateau, fighting, yelling, joining the heroes.

Elayne was back, and she had rallied her troops. Mat saw Elayne’s banner glowing above them in the sky, crafted of the One Power, and caught a glimpse of someone who looked like her riding among the soldiers, hair glowing as if lit from behind her. She seemed a bloody hero of the Horn herself.

Mat let out a whoop of joy as he saw the Seanchan army marching north, about to merge with Elayne’s army, and he continued riding along the eastern slope of the Heights. Soon after, he slowed, Pips just having trampled a Trolloc. That rushing sound . . . Mat looked down below as the river returned in a swift crash of muddy water. It broke the Trolloc army into two parts, washing away many of them, as it surged back into its bed.

Snow-haired Rogosh watched the water flow, then nodded to Mat in respect. “Well done, Gambler,” he said. The river’s return had divided the Shadow’s forces.

Mat rejoined the battle. He noticed as he galloped across the plateau that the Sharans—what remained of them—were fleeing through gateways. He let them go.

When the Trollocs atop the Heights saw the Sharans fleeing, their resistance cracked, and they panicked. Boxed in and being swept across the plateau by Mat’s combined armies, they had no choice but to flee toward the long slope to the southwest.

It had become total mayhem off the Heights. The Seanchan army had joined with Elayne’s, and both groups lit into the Trollocs with an intense fury. They formed a cordon around the beasts and advanced quickly, not allowing one to escape. The ground quickly turned to a deep, red mud as Trollocs fell by the thousands.

But the engagement on the Shienaran side of the Mora was nothing compared to the struggle taking place on the other side of the river. The corridor between the bogs and Polov Heights was choked with Trollocs trying to escape the Seanchan attacking them from the far side of the corridor on the west.

The vanguard sent in first against the Trollocs in the corridor was not composed of Seanchan soldiers, but squads of lopar and morat’lopar. On their hind legs, the lopar were no taller than Trollocs, but they outweighed them considerably. The lopar came at the Trollocs, raising up and slashing with their razor-sharp claws. Once a lopar softened up its prey, it grasped the Trolloc behind the neck with its paws and bit the beast’s head off at the neck. This gave the lopar great pleasure.

The lopar were withdrawn as the corpses of Trollocs began to stack up at the far end of the corridor. Next into this pit of carnage came flocks of corlm, large, wingless, feathered creatures with long curved beaks designed to shred flesh. These carnivores easily ran over the stacks of corpses toward Trollocs still fighting, to separate the beasts’ meat from bone. The Seanchan soldiers took little part in these proceedings, only setting their pikes to ensure that no Trollocs escaped through the corridor or off the western side of the Heights. The creatures assaulting them so unnerved the Trollocs that few had any notion of running toward the Seanchan troops.

On the slope, terror-stricken Trollocs, fleeing from Mat’s army charging down after them, threw themselves onto the Trollocs that filled the corridor. The monsters tumbled on top of one another, and they fought among themselves, trying to be the ones to reach the top of the pile and continue breathing a while longer.

Talmanes and Aludra had set up their dragons across from the corridor and commenced firing dragons’ eggs into the roiling masses of terrorized Trollocs.

It was all over quickly. The numbers of living Trollocs diminished from the many thousands to the hundreds. Those that remained, seeing death snatching at them from three sides, fled into the bogs, where many of them were sucked down into the shallow waters. Their deaths were less violent, but equally horrifying. The remainder received a more merciful end, shot with arrows, spears and crossbow bolts as they slogged through the mire toward the sweet scent of freedom.

Mat lowered his bloodied ashandarei. He checked the sky. The sun was hidden up there somewhere; he was not certain how long he had been riding with the heroes.

He would have to thank Tuon for returning. He did not go looking for her, though. He had a feeling that she would expect him to perform his princely duties, whatever they might be.

Only . . . he did feel that strange tugging inside. Getting stronger and stronger.

Blood and bloody ashes, Rand, Mat thought. I've done my part. You do yours. Amaresu’s words returned to him. Each breath you take is at his forbearance, Gambler . . .

Mat had been a good friend when Rand needed, had he not? Most of the time? Blood and ashes, you could not expect a fellow to not worry . . . maybe stay a little distant . . . when a madman was involved. Right?

“Hawkwing!” Mat called, riding up to the man. “The battle,” Mat said, drawing a deep breath. “It’s done, right?”

“You have sewn this one up tight, Gambler,” Hawkwing said, sitting his mount regally. “Ah . . . what I would give to go at you across the battlefield. What a grand fight it would be.”

“Great. Wonderful. I didn’t mean this battlefield. I mean the Last Battle. It’s done, right?”

“You ask that under a sky of shadow, atop an earth that trembles in fear? What does your soul say, Gambler?”

Those dice still tumbled inside of Mat’s head.

“My soul says I’m a fool,” Mat growled. “That, and a bloody sparring dummy, set up and waiting to be attacked.” He turned northward. “I need to go to Rand. Hawkwing, would you do me a favor?”

“Ask it, Hornblower.”

“Do you know the Seanchan?”

“I am . . . familiar with them.”

“I think their Empress would like very much to make your acquaintance,” Mat said, galloping away. “If you could go to speak with her, I’d appreciate it. And if you do, kindly tell her I sent you.”

YOU THINK I WILL RETREAT? the Dark One asked.

The thing that spoke those words was something that Rand could never truly comprehend. Even seeing the universe in its entirety did not allow him to understand Evil itself.

I NEVER EXPECT YOU TO RETREAT, Rand said. I BELIEVE YOU INCAPABLE OF IT. I WISH YOU COULD SEE, COULD KNOW, WHY IT IS YOU CONTINUE TO LOSE.

Beneath them, on the battlefield, the Trollocs had fallen, beaten by a young gambler from the Two Rivers. The Shadow shouldn’t have lost. It made no sense. The Trollocs had the greater force.

However, Trollocs fought only because the Myrddraal forced them—on its own, a Trolloc would no more fight something stronger than a fox would attempt to kill a lion.

It was one of the most basic rules among predators. Eat that which was weaker than you. Flee from that stronger than you.

The Dark One seethed with a boiling anger that Rand felt in this place as a physical force.

YOU SHOULD NOT BE SURPRISED, Rand said. WHEN HAVE YOU EVER INSPIRED THE BEST IN MEN? YOU CANNOT. IT IS OUTSIDE YOUR POWER, SHAI'TAN. YOUR MINIONS WILL NEVER FIGHT ON WHEN HOPE IS LOST. THEY WILL NEVER STAND BECAUSE DOING SO IS RIGHT. IT IS NOT STRENGTH THAT BEATS YOU. IT IS NOBILITY.

I WILL DESTROY! I WILL REND AND BURN! I WILL BRING DARKNESS TO ALL, AND DEATH WILL BE THE TRUMPET I SOUND BEFORE MY ARRIVAL! AND YOU, ADVERSARY . . . OTHERS MAY ESCAPE, BUT YOU WILL DIE. YOU MUST KNOW THIS.

OH, I DO, SHAI'TAN, Rand said softly. I EMBRACE IT, FOR DEATH IS—AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN—LIGHTER THAN A FEATHER. DEATH ARRIVES IN A HEARTBEAT, NO MORE TANGIBLE THAN A FLICKER OF LIGHT. IT HAS NO WEIGHT, NO SUBSTANCE—

Rand strode forward, speaking louder. DEATH CANNOT KEEP ME AT BAY, AND IT CANNOT RULE ME. IT COMES DOWN TO THIS, FATHER OF LIES. WHEN HAVE YOU INSPIRED A PERSON TO GIVE THEIR LIFE FOR YOU? NOT FOR THE PROMISES YOU GIVE, NOT FOR THE RICHES THEY SEEK OR THE POSITIONS THEY WOULD HOLD, BUT FOR YOU. HAS IT EVER HAPPENED?

The darkness grew still.

BRING MY DEATH, SHAI’TAN, Rand growled, throwing himself into the blackness. FOR I BRING YOURS!

Aviendha dropped to a rocky ledge far above the floor of Thakan’dar. She tried to stand, but her ruined feet and legs couldn’t support her weight. She collapsed on the ledge, the spear of light vanishing from her fingers. Pain climbed up her legs as if they’d been thrust into a fire.

Graendal stumbled back from her, gasping huge breaths, holding her side. Aviendha immediately wove an attack, flames of fire, but Graendal cut them down with her own weaves.

“You!” Graendal spat. “You vermin, you detestable child!” The woman was still strong, though wounded.

Aviendha needed help. Amys, Cadsuane, the others. Desperate, clinging to the One Power despite her agony, she began weaving a gateway back to where she had been. It was near enough that she did not need to know the area well.

Graendal let this weave pass. Blood gushed between the woman’s fingers. While Aviendha worked, Graendal wove a thin trickle of Air and stanched the wound with it. Then she pointed bloody fingers at Aviendha. “Trying to escape?”

The woman began weaving a shield.

Frantic, her strength waning, Aviendha tied off her weave, leaving the gateway open and in place. Please, Amys, see it! she thought as she countered Graendal’s shield.

She barely managed to block it; she was very weak. Graendal had been using borrowed power for their entire fight, while Aviendha had been using her own. Even with her angreal, in her state she was really no match for Graendal.

Graendal pulled herself upright, pain showing in her face. Aviendha spat at the woman's feet, then pulled herself away, leaving a trail of blood behind her.

Nobody came through the gateway. Had she made it to the wrong place?

She reached the rim of the ledge overlooking the battlefield of Thakan’dar below. If she went farther, she’d fall. Better that than becoming another of her pets . . .

Threads of Air wrapped around Aviendha’s legs and jerked her back. She screamed through her clenched teeth, then twisted about; her feet seemed little more than stumps of raw flesh. The pain washed over her, and her vision darkened. She struggled to reach the One Power.

Graendal held her off, but the woman flagged and growled, then slumped down, gasping. The weave stanching her wound was still in place, but the woman’s face grew pale. She seemed almost ready to faint.

The open gateway beside her invited Aviendha, a means of escape—but it might as well have been a mile away. Mind clouding, legs afire with pain, Aviendha slipped her knife from its sheath.

It fell from her trembling fingers. She was too weak to hold it.

CHAPTER 44

Two Craftsmen

Perrin awoke to something rustling. He cracked his eyes open, wary, and found himself in a dark room.

Berelain's palace, he remembered. The sound of the waves had grown softer outside, the calls of gulls silent. Thunder rumbled, distant.

What time was it? It smelled like morning, but it was dark outside still. He had trouble picking out the dark silhouette moving through the room toward him. He tensed until he picked out the scent.

“Chiad?” he asked, sitting up.

The Aiel did not jump, though he was certain from the way she stopped that he’d surprised her. “I should not be here,” she whispered. “I push my honor to the very edge of what should be allowed.”

“It’s the Last Battle, Chiad,” Perrin said. “You are allowed to push some boundaries . . . assuming we haven’t won yet.”

“The battle at Merrilor is won, but the greater battle—that at Thakan’dar—still rages.”

“I need to return to work,” Perrin said. He was in his smallclothes only. He didn’t let that bother him. An Aiel like Chiad wouldn’t blush. He pushed off his blanket.

Unfortunately, the bone-eating weariness inside him had subsided only a little. “Not going to tell me to stay in bed?” he asked, tiredly searching out his shirt and trousers. They were folded with his hammer at the foot of the bed. He had to lean against the mattress as he walked there. “You’re not going to tell me I have no business fighting while tired? Every woman I know seems to think that is one of her primary jobs.”

“I have found,” Chiad said dryly, “that pointing out stupidity serves only to make men stupider. Besides, I’m gai’shain. It’s not my place.”

He looked at her, and though he couldn’t see her blush in the darkness, he could smell her embarrassment. She wasn’t acting much like gai’shain. “Rand should have just released you all from your vows.”

“He does not have that power,” she said hotly.

“What good is honor if the Dark One wins the Last Battle?” Perrin snapped, pulling up his trousers.

“It is everything,” Chiad said softly. “It is worth death, it is worth risking the world itself. If we have no honor, better that we lose.”

Well, he supposed there were things he’d say the same thing about. Not wearing silly white robes, of course—but he wouldn’t do some of the things the Whitecloaks had done, even if the world was at stake. He didn’t press her further.

“Why are you here?” he asked, putting on his shirt.

“Gaul,” Chiad said. “Is he . . .”

“Oh, Light!” Perrin said. “I should have told you earlier. I’ve scrap iron for a brain lately, Chiad. He was fine when I left him. He’s still in the dream, and time passes more slowly where he is. It has probably only been an hour or so in his time, but I need to return to him.”

“In your condition?” she asked, ignoring the fact that she’d said she wouldn’t chivvy him for that.

“No,” Perrin said, sitting on the bed. “Last time, I nearly broke my neck. I need one of the Aes Sedai to cure me of my fatigue.”

“This thing is dangerous,” Chiad said.

“More dangerous than letting Rand die?” Perrin said. “More dangerous than leaving Gaul without an ally in the World of Dreams, protecting the Car’a’carn alone?”

“That one is likely to stab himself with his own spear if left to fight alone,” Chiad said.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Hush, Perrin Aybara. I will try.” She left in a rustle of cloth.

Perrin lay back on the bed, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. He’d been far more certain of himself when he’d fought Slayer this last time, yet still he’d failed. He gritted his teeth, hoping Chiad would return soon.

Something moved outside his room. He revived, hauling himself up to a sitting position again.

A large shape darkened the doorway, then removed the shield from a lamp. Master Luhhan was built like an anvil, with a compact—yet powerful—torso and arms that bulged. In Perrin's mind’s eye, the man didn’t have so much gray in his hair. Master Luhhan had grown older, but he was not frail. Perrin doubted he ever would be.

“Lord Goldeneyes?” he asked.

“Light, please,” Perrin said. “Master Luhhan, you of all people should feel free to call me Perrin. If not ‘that worthless apprentice of mine.’ ”

“Here, now,” Master Luhhan said, walking into the room. “I don’t believe I called you that except once.”

“When I broke the new blade for Master al’Moor’s scythe,” Perrin said, smiling. “I was sure I could get it right.”

Master Luhhan chuckled. He paused beside Perrin’s hammer, which still lay on the table at the foot of the bed, and rested his fingers on it. “You have become a master of the craft.” Master Luhhan seated himself on a stool beside the bed. “One craftsman to another, I’m impressed. I don’t think I could have ever made something so fine as that hammer.”

“You made the axe.”

“I guess I did that,” he said. “It was not a thing of beauty. It was a thing of killing.”

“Killing sometimes needs to be done.”

“Yes, but it’s never beautiful. Never.”

Perrin nodded. “Thank you. For finding me, bringing me here. For saving me.”

“It was self-interest, son!” Master Luhhan said. “If we escape this, it will be because of you boys, mark my words on it as true.” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe it. One man, at least, remembered the three of them as youths—youths who, in Mat’s case at least, had been in trouble more often than not.

Actually, Perrin thought, I'm pretty sure Mat’s still in trouble more often than not. At least, at the moment, he wasn’t fighting but instead talking with some Seanchan, according to the spinning colors that resolved into an image.

“Chiad said that the fighting at Merrilor was finished?” Perrin asked.

“It is,” Master Luhhan said. “I came through, carrying some of our wounded. I should be getting back to Tam and Abell soon, but I wanted to check on you.”

Perrin nodded. That tugging inside of him . . . if anything, it was stronger now than it ever would be. Rand needed him. The war wasn’t finished yet. Not by far.

“Master Luhhan,” Perrin said with a sigh. “I’ve made a mistake.”

“Mistake?”

“I ran myself ragged,” Perrin said. “I pushed myself too hard.” He made a fist, slamming it into the corner post of the bed. “I should know better, Master Luhhan. I always do this. I work myself so hard, I make myself useless the next day.”

“Perrin, lad?” Master Luhhan said, leaning forward. “Today, I’m more worried that there’s not going to be a next day.”

Perrin looked up at him, frowning.

“If there was ever a time to push yourself, this is it,” Master Luhhan said. “We’ve won one fight, but if the Dragon Reborn doesn’t win his . . . Light, I don’t think you’ve made a mistake at all. This is our last chance at the forge. This is the morning that the big piece is due. Today, you just keep working until it’s done.”

“But if I collapse . . .”

“Then you gave it your all.”

“I could fail because I’ve run myself out of strength.”

“Then at least you didn’t fail because you held back. I know it sounds bad, and maybe I’m wrong. But . . . well, everything you’re talking about is good advice for an average day. This isn’t an average day. No, by the Light it’s not.”

Master Luhhan took Perrin by the arm. “You may see in yourself someone who lets himself go too far, but that’s not the man I see. If anything, Perrin, I’ve seen in you someone who has learned to hold himself back. I’ve watched you hold a teacup with extreme delicacy, as if you feared breaking it with your strength. I’ve seen you clasp hands with a man, holding his hand in yours with such care, never squeezing too hard. I’ve watched you move with deliberate reserve, so that you don’t shove anyone or knock anything over.

“Those were good lessons for you to learn, son. You needed control. But in you, I’ve seen a boy grow into a man who doesn’t know how to let those barriers go. I see a man who’s frightened of what happens when he gets a little out of control. I realize you do what you do because you’re afraid of hurting people. But Perrin . . . it’s time to stop holding back.”

“I’m not holding back, Master Luhhan,” Perrin protested. “Really, I promise.”

“Is that the case? Well, maybe you’re right.” Master Luhhan suddenly smelled embarrassed. “Look at me. Here, acting like it’s my business. I’m not your father, Perrin. I’m sorry.”

“No,” Perrin said as Master Luhhan stood to leave. “I no longer have a father.”

Master Luhhan gave him a pained look. “What those Trollocs did . .”

“My family wasn’t killed by Trollocs,” Perrin said softly. “It was Padan Fain.”

“What? Are you certain?”

“One of the Whitecloaks told me,” Perrin said. “He wasn’t lying.”

“Well, then,” Luhhan said. “Fain . . . he’s still out there, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Perrin said. “He hates Rand. And there’s another man. Lord Luc. You remember him? He’s been ordered to kill Rand. I think . . . I think they’re both going to try for him, before this is over.”

“Then you’ll have to make sure they don’t succeed, won’t you?”

Perrin smiled, then turned toward the footsteps outside. Chiad entered a moment later, and he could smell her annoyance that he’d sensed her coming. Bain followed, another figure in complete white. And after them . . .

Masuri. Not the Aes Sedai he would have chosen. Perrin felt his lips tighten.

“You do not like me,” Masuri said. “I know this.”

“I have never said that,” Perrin replied. “You were a great help to me during our travels.”

“And yet, you do not trust me, but that is beside the point. You wish to have your strength restored, and I am probably the only one willing to do it for you. The Wise Ones and the Yellows would paddle you like a babe for wanting to leave.”

“I know,” Perrin said, sitting down on the bed. He hesitated. “I need to know why you were meeting with Masema behind my back.”

“I come here to fulfill a request,” Masuri said, smelling amused, “and you tell me you won’t let me do you that favor until I respond to interrogation?”

“Why’d you do it, Masuri?” Perrin said. “Out with it.”

“I planned to use him,” the slender Aes Sedai said.

“Use him.”

“Having influence with one who called himself the Prophet of the Dragon could have been useful.” She smelled embarrassed. “It was a different time, Lord Aybara. Before I knew you. Before any of us knew you.” Perrin grunted.

“I was foolish,” Masuri said. “Is that what you wanted to hear? I was foolish, and I have since learned.”

Perrin eyed her, then sighed, proffering his arm. It was still an Aes Sedai answer, but one of the straighter ones he had heard. “Do it,” he said. “And thank you.”

She took his arm. He felt his fatigue evaporate—felt it get shoved back, like an old quilt being stuffed into a small box. Perrin felt invigorated, strengthened. Powerful again. He practically leaped as he came to his feet.

Masuri sagged, sitting down on his bed. Perrin flexed his hand, looking down at his fist. He felt as if he could challenge anyone, even the Dark One himself. “That feels wonderful.”

“I’ve been told I excel at this particular weave,” Masuri said. “But be careful, it—”

“Yes,” Perrin said. “I know. The body is still tired. I just can’t feel it.” And, as he considered, that last part wasn’t exactly true. He could sense his fatigue, like a serpent deep within its hole, lurking and waiting. It would consume him again.

That meant he had to finish his job first. He inhaled deeply, then summoned his hammer to him. It didn’t move.

Right; he thought. This is the real world, not the wolf dream. He walked over and slipped the hammer into its straps on his belt, the new ones that he had fashioned to hold the larger hammer. He turned toward Chiad, who stood by the doorway; he could smell Bain out there, too, where she’d retreated. “I will find him,” Perrin said. “If he is wounded, I will bring him here.”

“Do that,” Chiad said, “but you will not find us here.”

“You are going to Merrilor?” Perrin asked, surprised.

Chiad said, “Some of us are needed to bring the wounded in to be Healed. It is not a thing gai’shain have done in the past, but perhaps it is a thing we can do this time.”

Perrin nodded, then closed his eyes. He imagined himself close to sleep, drifting. His time in the wolf dream had trained his mind well. He could fool himself, with concentration. That didn’t change the world here, but it did change his perceptions.

Yes . . . drifting close to sleep . . . and there was the pathway. He took the branch toward the wolf dream in the flesh, and caught just a hint of a gasp from Masuri as he felt himself shift between worlds.