Perrin stood near the Tuatha’an wagons under bright sunlight, alone, and there was no arrow in his side, no pain. Among the wagons firewood was stacked ready to be lit beneath iron cookpots hanging from tripods, and clothes hung from washlines; there were no people or horses. He wore neither coat nor shirt, but a blacksmith’s long leather vest that left his arms bare. It could have been any dream, perhaps, except that he was aware it was a dream. And he knew the feel of the wolf dream, the reality and solidity of it, from the long grass around his boots to the breeze out of the west that ruffled his curly hair, to the scattered ash and hemlock. The Tinkers’ gaudy wagons did not seem real, though; they had an air of insubstantiality, a feel that they might shimmer and be gone any moment. They never remained long in one place, Tinkers. No soil held them.
Wondering how much the land held him, he rested a hand on his axe—and looked down in surprise. The heavy blacksmith’s hammer hung in the loop on his belt, not the axe. He frowned; once he would have chosen that way, had even thought he had, but surely no more. The axe. He had chosen the axe. Hammerhead suddenly became half-moon blade and thick spike, flickered back to stout cylinder of cold steel, fluttered between. Finally it stopped, as his axe, and he exhaled slowly. That had never happened before. Here, he could change things as he wanted with ease, things about himself at least. “And I want the axe,” he said firmly. “The axe.”
Looking around, he could just see a farmhouse to the south, and deer browsing the barley field, surrounded by a rough stone wall. There was no feel of wolves, and he did not call Hopper. The wolf might or might not come, or even hear, but Slayer could well be out there somewhere. A bristling quiver abruptly tugged at his belt opposite the axe, and he had a stout longbow in his hand with a broadhead arrow nocked. A long leather bracer covered his left forearm. Nothing moved except those deer.
“Not likely I’ll wake soon,” he muttered to himself. Whatever that stuff was that Faile had fed him, it had taken him right off; he remembered it as clearly as if he had watched over her shoulder. “Fed it to me like I was a babe,” he growled. Women!
He took one of those long strides—the land blurred around him—and stepped into the farmyard. Two or three chickens scattered, running as if they had already gone feral. The rock-walled sheepfold stood empty, and both thatch-roofed barns were barred shut. Despite curtains still at the windows, the two-story farmhouse had the look of emptiness. If this was a true reflection of the waking world—and the wolf dream usually was, in an odd way—the people here had been gone for days. Faile was right; his warning had spread beyond the places he had gone.
“Faile,” he murmured wonderingly. Daughter of a lord. No, not just a lord. Three times a lord, a general, and uncle to a queen. “Light, that makes her a queen’s cousin!” And she loved a simple blacksmith. Women were wondrous strange.
Seeking to see how far the word had spread, he zigzagged more than halfway to Deven Ride, a mile or more at a stride, doubling back and crisscrossing his own path. Most farms he saw had that same emptiness; less than one in five showed signs of habitation, doors open and windows up, wash hung out on a line, dolls or hoops or carved wooden horses lying around a doorstep. The toys especially made his stomach clench. Even if they had not believed his warning, surely there were enough burned farms about to tell them the same, tumbled heaps of charred timbers, soot-black chimneys like stark, dead fingers.
Bending to replace a doll with a smiling glass face and a flower-embroidered dress—some woman had loved her daughter to do all that tiny needlework—he blinked. The same doll still sat on the fieldstone steps where he had picked it up. As he reached out, the one in his hand faded and vanished.
Flashes of black in the sky cut short his amazement. Ravens, twenty or thirty together, winging toward the Westwood. Toward the Mountains of Mist, where he had first seen Slayer. He watched coldly while the ravens dwindled to black specks and disappeared. Then he set off after them.
Long, racing strides carried him five miles each, the land a blur except in the moment between one step and the next, into the thick-treed, rocky Westwood, across the scrub-covered Sand Hills, into the cloud-capped mountains, where fir and pine and leatherleaf forested valleys and slopes, to the very valley where he had first seen the man Hopper called Slayer, to the mountainside where he had returned from Tear.
The Way gate stood there, closed, the Avendesora leaf seemingly just one among a myriad of intricately carved leaves and vines. Scattered trees, wizened and wind-sculpted, dotted the sparse soil among the glazed stone where Manetheren had been burned away. Sunlight sparkled on the waters of the Manetherendrelle below. A faint wind up the valley brought him the scent of deer, rabbits, foxes. Nothing moved that he could see.
On the point of leaving, he stopped. The Avendesora leaf. One leaf. Loial had locked the Waygate by placing both leaves on this side. He turned, and his hackles rose. The Waygate stood open, twin masses of living greenery stirring in the breeze, exposing that dull silvery surface; his reflection shimmered in it. How? he wondered. Loial locked the bloody thing.
Unaware of crossing the distance, suddenly he was right at the Waygate. There was no trefoil leaf among the verdant tangle on the inside of the two gates. Strange to think that at that moment, in the waking world, someone—or something—was passing through where he stood. Touching the dull surface, he grunted. It might as well have been a mirror; his hand slid across it as across the smoothest glass.
From the corner of his eye he caught the Avendesora leaf suddenly in its place on the inside, and leaped back just as the Waygate began swinging shut. Someone—or something—had come out, or gone in. Out. It has to be out. He wanted to doubt that it was more Trollocs, and Fades, coming into the Two Rivers. The gates merged, became stone carvings again.
A sense of being watched was all the warning he had. He jumped—a half-seen image of black streaking through where his chest had been; an arrow—jumped in one of those world-blurring stretches, landed on a far slope and jumped again, out of the valley of Manetheren into a stand of towering fir, and again. Running, he thought furiously, picturing the valley in his mind, and that brief glimpse of the arrow. It had come from that direction, at that angle when it reached him, so it had to have come from . . .
A final bound took him back onto a slope above Manetheren’s grave, crouching among meager, wind-slanted pines with bow ready to draw. Below him, among the stunted trees and boulders, the arrow had been fired. Slayer had to be down there somewhere. He had to be down . . .
Without thinking, Perrin leaped away, the mountains a smear of gray and brown and green.
“Almost,” he growled. Almost, he had duplicated his mistake in the Waterwood, thinking again an enemy would move to suit him, wait where he wanted.
This time he ran as hard as he could, only three flashing strides to the edge of the Sand Hills, hoping he had not been seen. This time he circled wide, coming back higher on that same mountainside, up where the air felt thin and cold and the few trees were thick-trunked bushes fifty paces or more apart, up above where a man might set himself to watch for another who meant to sneak up on the place that arrow had fired.
And there his quarry was, a hundred paces below, dark-haired and dark-coated, a tall man crouched beside a table-sized granite outcrop, his own half-drawn bow in hand, studying the slope farther down with eager patience. This was the first time Perrin had gotten a good look at him; a hundred paces was little distance for his eyes. This Slayer’s high collared coat had a Borderland cut, and his face looked enough like Lan’s to be the Warder’s brother’s. Only Lan had no brothers—no living kin at all, that Perrin knew—and if he had had any, they would not have been here. A Borderlander, though. Maybe Shienaran, though his hair was long, not shaved to a topknot, and was held back by a braided leather cord just like Lan’s. He could not be Malkieri; Lan was the last living Malkieri.
Wherever he came from, Perrin felt no compunction at all in drawing his bow, broadhead point aimed at Slayer’s back. The man had tried to kill him from ambush. A downhill shot could be tricky.
Perhaps he had taken too long, or perhaps the fellow felt his cold gaze, but suddenly Slayer became a blur, streaking away east.
With a curse, Perrin pursued, three strides to the Sand Hills, another into the Westwood. Among the oaks and leatherleaf and underbrush, Slayer seemed to vanish.
Halting, Perrin listened. Silence. The squirrels and birds had gone still. He inhaled deeply. A small herd of deer had passed that way not long since. And a faint tinge of something, human but too cold for a man, too emotionless, a scent that tickled his mind with familiarity. Slayer was somewhere close. The air lay as still as the forest; no stir of breeze to tell him which way that scent came.
“A neat trick, Goldeneyes, locking the Waygate.”
Perrin tensed, ears straining. No telling from where in this dense growth that voice had come. Not so much as a leaf rustled.
“If you knew how many of the Shadowwrought died trying to get out of the Ways there, it would lift your heart. Machin Shin feasted at that gate, Goldeneyes. But not a good enough trick. You saw: the gate is open now.”
There, off to the right. Perrin slipped through the trees as silently as he had when he had hunted here.
“It was only a few hundred to begin, Goldeneyes. Just enough to keep those fool Whitecloaks off balance and see that the renegade died.” Slayer’s voice became angry. “The Shadow consume me if that man does not have more luck than the White Tower.” Abruptly he chuckled. “But you, Goldeneyes. Your presence was a surprise. There are those who want your head on a pike. Your precious Two Rivers will be harrowed from end to end, now, to root you out. What do you say to that, Goldeneyes?”
Perrin froze close beside the gnarled trunk of a great oak. Why was the man talking so much? Why was he talking at all? He’s drawing me right to him.
Putting his back against the oak’s thick bole, he studied the forest. No movement. Slayer wanted him to come nearer. No doubt into an ambush. And he wanted to find the man and rip his throat out. Yet it could easily be himself who died, and if that happened, no one would know the Waygate was open, and Trollocs coming by hundreds, maybe even thousands. He would not play Slayer’s game.
With a mirthless smile he stepped out of the wolf dream, telling himself to wake, and . . .
. . . Faile twined her arms around his neck and nipped his beard with small white teeth, while Tinkers’ fiddles sang some wild, heated tune around the campfires. Ila’s powder. I can’t wake up! Awareness that it was a dream faded. Laughing, he scooped Faile up in his arms and carried her into the shadows, where the grass was soft.
Waking was a slow process wrapped around the dull pain filling his side. Daylight streamed in at the small windows. Bright light. Morning. He tried to sit up, and fell back with a groan.
Faile sprang up from a low stool; her dark eyes looked as if she had not slept. “Lie still,” she said. “You did enough thrashing in your sleep. I have not kept you from rolling over and driving that thing the rest of the way through you just to watch you do it now you’re awake.” Ihvon stood leaning against the doorframe like a dark blade.
“Help me up,” Perrin said. Talking hurt, but so did breathing, and he had to talk. “I have to get to the mountains. To the Waygate.”
She put a hand to his forehead, frowning. “No fever,” she murmured. Then, more strongly, “You are going to Emond’s Field, where one of the Aes Sedai can Heal you. You are not going to kill yourself trying to ride into the mountains with an arrow in you. Do you hear me? If I hear one more word about mountains or Waygates, I will have Ila mix something that will put you back to sleep, and you will travel on a litter. I’m not certain you should not anyway.”
“The Trollocs, Faile! The Waygate is open again! I have to stop them!”
The woman did not even hesitate before shaking her head. “You can do nothing about it, the state you are in. It is Emond’s Field for you.”
“But—!”
“But me no buts, Perrin Aybara. Not another word on it.”
He ground his teeth. The worst was that she was right. If he could not rise from a bed alone, how could he stay in the saddle as far as Manetheren? “Emond’s Field,” he said graciously, but she still sniffed and muttered something about “pigheaded.” What did she want? I was bloody gracious, burn her for stubborn!
“So there will be more Trollocs,” Ihvon said musingly. He did not ask how Perrin knew. Then he shook his head as if dismissing Trollocs. “I will tell the others you are awake.” He slipped out, closing the door behind him.
“Am I the only one who sees the danger?” Perrin muttered.
“I see an arrow in you,” Faile said firmly.
The reminder gave him a twinge; he just stifled a groan. And she gave a satisfied nod. Satisfied!
He wanted to be up and on the way immediately; the sooner he was Healed, the sooner he could see to closing the Waygate again, permanently this time. Faile insisted on feeding him breakfast, a broth thick with mashed vegetables suitable for a toothless infant, one spoon at a time, with pauses to wipe his chin. She would not let him feed himself, and whenever he protested or asked her to go faster, she shoved the words back into his mouth with a spoonful of pap. She would not even let him wash his own face. By the time she got around to brushing his hair and combing his beard, he had settled on dignified silence.
“You are pretty when you sulk,” she said. And pinched his nose!
Ila, in green blouse and blue skirt this morning, climbed into the wagon with his coat and shirt, both cleaned and mended. To his irritation, he had to let the two women help him don them. He had to let them help him sit up to don them, the coat unbuttoned and the shirt not tucked in, but bunched around the arrow stub.
“Thank you, Ila,” he said, fingering the neat darns. “This is fine needlework.”
“It is,” she agreed. “Faile has a deft touch with a needle.”
Faile colored, and he grinned, thinking of how fiercely she had told him she would never mend his clothes. A glint in her eye held his tongue. Sometimes silence was the wiser course. “Thank you, Faile,” he said gravely instead. She blushed even redder.
Once they had him on his feet he reached the door easily enough, but he had to let the two women half-support him to climb down the wooden steps. At least the horses were saddled, and all the Two Rivers lads gathered, bows slung on their backs. With clean faces and clothes, and only a few bandages out where they showed.
A night with the Tuatha’an had obviously been good for their spirits, too, even those who still looked as though they could not walk a hundred paces. The haggardness that had been in their eyes yesterday was only a shadow now. Wil had each arm around a pretty, big-eyed Tinker girl, of course, and Ban al’Seen, with his nose and a bandage around his head making his dark hair stand up in a brush, held hands with another smiling shyly. Most of the others held bowls of thick vegetable stew and spoons, shoveling away.
“This is good, Perrin,” Dannil said, giving up his empty bowl to a Tinker woman. She gestured as if to ask the beanpole fellow whether he wanted more, and he shook his head, but said, “I don’t think I could ever get enough of it, do you?”
“I had my fill,” Perrin told him sourly. Mashed vegetables and broth.
“The Tinker girls danced last night,” Dannil’s cousin Tell said, wide-eyed. “All the unmarried women, and some of the married! You should have seen it, Perrin.”
“I’ve seen Tinker women dance before, Tell.”
Apparently he had not kept his voice clear of what he had felt watching them, for Faile said dryly, “You’ve seen the tiganza, have you? Someday, if you are good, I may dance the sa’sara for you, and show you what a dance really is.” Ila gasped in recognition of the name, and Faile went even redder than she had inside.
Perrin pursed his lips. If this sa’sara set the heart pounding any harder than the Tinker women’s swaying, hip-rolling dance—the tiganza, was it?—he definitely would like to see Faile dance it. He carefully did not look at her.
Raen came, in the same bright green coat but trousers redder than any red Perrin had ever seen before. The combination made his head ache. “Twice you have visited our fires, Perrin, and for the second time you go without a farewell feast. You must come again soon so we can make up for it.”
Pushing away from Faile and Ila—he could stand by himself, at least—he put a hand on the wiry man’s shoulder. “Come with us, Raen. No one in Emond’s Field will harm you. At worst it’s safer than out here with the Trollocs.”
Raen hesitated, then shook himself, muttering, “I do not know how you can even make me consider such things.” Turning, he spoke loudly. “People, Perrin has asked us to come with him to his village, where we will be safe from Trollocs. Who wishes to go?” Shocked faces stared back at him. Some women gathered their children close, and the children hid in their skirts, as if the very idea frightened them. “You see, Perrin?” Raen said: “For us, safety lies in moving, not in villages. I assure you, we do not spend two nights in one place, and we will travel all day before stopping again.”
“That may not be enough, Raen.”
The Mahdi shrugged. “Your concern warms me, but we will be safe, if the Light wills it.”
“The Way of the Leaf is not only to do no violence,” Ila said gently, “but to accept what comes. The leaf falls in its proper time, uncomplaining. The Light will keep us safe for our time.”
Perrin wanted to argue with them, but behind all the warmth and compassion on their faces lay a stony firmness. He thought he would get Bain and Chiad to don dresses and give up their spears—or Gaul to!—before he made these people budge an inch.
Raen shook Perrin’s hand, and with that the Tinker women began hugging the Two Rivers lads, and Ihvon, too, and the Tinker men began shaking hands, all laughing and saying goodbyes and wishing everyone a safe journey, hoping they would come again. Almost all the men did. Aram stood off to one side, frowning to himself, hands thrust into his coat pockets. The last time Perrin met him he had seemed to have a sour streak, odd for a Tinker.
The men did not content themselves with shaking Faile’s hand, but hugged her. Perrin kept his face smooth when some of the younger men became overly enthusiastic, only grinding his teeth a little; he managed to smile. No woman much younger than Ila hugged him. Somehow, even while Faile was letting some skinny, gaudy-coated Tinker fold his arms around her and try to squeeze her flat, she stood guard on him like a mastiff. Women without gray in their hair took one look at her face and chose someone else. Meanwhile Wil appeared to be kissing every woman in the camp. So was Ban, and his nose. Even Ihvon was enjoying himself, for that matter. It would serve Faile right if one of those fellows cracked a rib for her.
Finally the Tinkers moved back, except for Raen and Ila, opening a space around the Two Rivers folk. The wiry, gray-haired man-bowed formally, hands to chest. “You came in peace. Depart now in peace. Always will our fires welcome you. The Way of the Leaf is peace.”
“Peace be on you always,” Perrin replied, “and on all the People.” Light, let it be so. “I will find the song, or another will find the song, but the song will be sung, this year or in a year to come.” He wondered if there ever had been a song, or if the Tuatha’an had begun their endless journey seeking something else. Elyas had told him they did not know what song, only that they would know it when they found it. Let them find safety, at least. At least that. “As it once was, so shall it be again, world without end.”
“World without end,” the Tuatha’an responded in a solemn murmur. “World and time without end.”
A few final hugs and handshakes were handed ’round while Ihvon and Faile were helping Perrin up on Stepper. A few last kisses collected by Wil. And Ban. Ban! And his nose! Others, the badly wounded, were half-lifted onto their horses, with Tinkers waving as if to old neighbors off on a long journey.
Raen came to shake Perrin’s hand. “Will you not reconsider?” Perrin asked. “I remember hearing you say once there was wickedness loose in the world. It’s worse now, Raen, and here.”
“Peace be on you, Perrin,” Raen replied, smiling.
“And on you,” he said sadly.
The Aiel did not appear until they were a mile north of the Tinker camp, Bain and Chiad looking to Faile before trotting ahead to their usual place. Perrin was not sure what they thought might have happened to her among Tuatha’an.
Gaul moved in beside Stepper, striding easily. The party was not moving very fast, with nearly half the men walking. He glanced at Ihvon measuringly as usual, before turning to Perrin. “Your injury is well?”
His injury hurt like fury; every step his horse took jolted that arrowhead. “I feel fine,” he said, not gritting his teeth. “Maybe we’ll have a dance in Emond’s Field tonight! And you? Did you pass a good night playing Maidens’ Kiss?” Gaul stumbled and nearly fell on his face. “What is the matter?”
“Who did you hear suggest this game?” the Aielman said quietly, staring straight ahead.
“Chiad. Why?”
“Chiad,” Gaul muttered. “The woman is Goshien. Goshien! I should take her back to Hot Springs as gai’shain.” The words sounded angry, but not his odd tone. “Chiad.”
“Will you tell me what is the matter?”
“A Myrddraal has less cunning than a woman,” Gaul said in a flat voice, “and a Trolloc fights with more honor.” After a moment he added, in a fierce undertone, “And a goat has more sense.” Quickening his pace, he ran forward to join the two Maidens. He did not speak to them, as far as Perrin could make out, only slowed to walk alongside.
“Did you understand any of that?” Perrin asked Ihvon. The Warder shook his head.
Faile sniffed. “If he thinks to make trouble for them, they will hang him by his heels from a branch to cool off.”
“Did you understand it?” Perrin asked her. She walked along, neither looking at him nor answering, which he took to mean she did not. “I think I might have to find Raen’s camp again. It has been a long time since I saw the tiganza. It was . . . interesting.”
She muttered something under her breath, but he caught it: “You could do with hanging by the heels yourself!”
He smiled down at the top of her head. “But I won’t have to. You promised to dance this sa’sara for me.” Her face went crimson. “Is it anything close to the tiganza? I mean, there is no point, otherwise.”
“You muscle-brained oaf!” she snapped, glaring up at him. “Men have thrown their hearts and fortunes at the feet of women who danced the sa’sara. If Mother suspected I knew it—” Her teeth clicked shut as though she had said too much, and her head whipped back to face forward; scarlet mortification covered her from her dark hair down to the neck of her dress.
“Then there isn’t any reason for you to dance it,” he said quietly. “My heart and fortune, such as they are, already lie at your feet.”
Faile missed a step, then laughed softly and pressed her cheek against his booted calf. “You are too clever for me,” she murmured. “One day I will dance it for you, and boil the blood in your veins.”
“You already do that,” he said, and she laughed again. Pushing her arm behind his stirrup, she hugged his leg to her as she walked.
After a while even the thought of Faile dancing—he extrapolated from the Tinker dance; it must be something to top that—could not compete with the pain in his side. Every stride Stepper took was agony. He held himself upright. It seemed to hurt a fraction less, that way. Besides, he did not want to spoil the lift the Tuatha’an had given everyone’s spirits. The other men were sitting up straight in their saddles, too, even those who had been hunched over and clinging the day before. And Ban and Dannil and the others walked with heads up. He would not be the first to slump.
Wil began to whistle “Coming Home from Tarwin’s Gap,” and three or four more took it up. After a time, Ban began to sing in a clear, deep voice:
“My home is waiting there for me,
and the girl I left behind.
Of all the treasure that waits for me,
that’s what I want to find.
Her eyes so merry, and her smile so sweet,
her hugs so warm, and her ankle neat,
her kisses hot, now there’s a treat.
If there’s a treasure greater, it lies not in my mind.”
More joined in on the second verse, until everyone sang, even Ihvon. And Faile. Not Perrin, of course; he had been told often enough that he sounded like a stepped-on frog, singing. Some even fell into step with the music.
“Oh, I have seen stark Tarwin’s Gap,
and the Trollocs’ raving horde.
I have stood ’fore the Halfman’s charge,
and walked on death’s cold borde.
But a winsome lass, she waits for me,
for a dance, and a kiss ’neath the apple tree . . . ”
Perrin shook his head. A day before they had been ready to run and hide. Today they sang, about a battle so long ago that it had left no memory but this song in the Two Rivers. Perhaps they were becoming soldiers. They would have to, unless he managed to close that Waygate.
Farms began to appear more often, closer together, until they traveled along hard-packed dirt between fields bordered by hedges or low, rough stone walls. Abandoned farms. No one here clung to the land.
They came to the Old Road, which ran north from the White River, the Manetherendrelle, through Deven Ride to Emond’s Field, and at last began to see sheep in the pastures, great clumps like a dozen men’s flocks gathered together, with ten shepherds where there once would have been one, and half of them grown men. Bow-armed shepherds watched them pass, singing at the tops of their lungs, not knowing quite what to make of it.
Perrin did not know what to make of his first view of Emond’s Field, and neither did the other Two Rivers men, from the way their singing faltered and died.
The trees, fences and hedges closest to the village were simply gone, cleared away. The westernmost houses of Emond’s Field had once stood among the trees on the edge of the Westwood. The oaks and leatherleaf between the houses remained, but now the forest’s brim stood five hundred paces away, a long bowshot, and axes rang loud as men pushed it back farther. Row on row of waist-high stakes, driven into the ground at an angle, surrounded the village a little out from the houses and presented a continuous hedge of sharpened points, except where the road ran in. At intervals behind the stakes men stood like sentries, some wearing bits of old armor or leather shirts sewn with rusty steel discs, a few in dented old steel caps, with boar spears, or halberds rooted out of attics, or bush hooks fitted to long poles. Other men, and boys, were up on some of the thatched roofs with bows; they stood when they saw Perrin and the others coming, and shouted to people below.
Beside the road behind the stakes stood a contraption of wood and thick, twisted rope, with a nearby pile of stones bigger than a man’s head. Ihvon noticed Perrin frowning at it as they came closer. “Catapult,” the Warder said. “Six, so far. Your carpenters knew what to do once Tomas and I showed them. The stakes will hold off charging Trollocs or Whitecloaks, either one.” He might have been discussing the prospects for more rain.
“I told you your village was preparing to defend itself.” Faile sounded fiercely proud, as though it were her village. “A hard people, for such a soft land. They could almost be Saldaean. Moiraine always said Manetheren’s blood runs strong here still.”
Perrin could only shake his head.
The hard-packed dirt streets were nearly crowded enough for a city, the gaps between houses filled with carts and wagons, and through open doors and unshuttered windows he could see more people. The crowd parted before Ihvon and the Aiel, and rustling whispers accompanied them along the street.
“It’s Perrin Goldeneyes.”
“Perrin Goldeneyes.”
“Perrin Goldeneyes.”
He wished they would not do that. These people knew him, some of them. What did they think they were doing? There was horse-faced Neysa Ayellin, who had paddled his ten-year-old backside that time Mat talked him into stealing one of her gooseberry pies. And there was pink-cheeked, big-eyed Cilia Cole, the first girl he had ever kissed and still pleasingly plump, and Pel Aydaer, with his pipe and his bald head, who had taught Perrin how to catch trout with his hands, and Daise Congar herself, a tall, wide woman who made Alsbet Luhhan seem soft, with her husband Wit, a scrawny man overshadowed as always by his wife. And they were all staring at him, and whispering to the people from off, who might not know who he was. When old Cenn Buie lifted a little boy up on his shoulder, pointing at Perrin and talking enthusiastically to the boy, Perrin groaned. They had all gone mad.
Townsfolk trailed after Perrin and the others, around them, in a parade that rode a swell of murmurs. Chickens scurried every which way under people’s feet. Bawling calves and pigs squealing in pens behind the houses competed with the noise of the humans. Sheep crowded the Green, and black-and-white milkcows cropped the grass in company with flocks of geese, gray and white.
And in the middle of the Green rose a tall pole, the red-bordered white banner at its peak rippling lazily, displaying a red wolf’s head. He looked at Faile, but she shook her head, as surprised as he.
“A symbol.”
Perrin had not heard Verin approach, though now he caught hushed whispers of “Aes Sedai” floating around her. Ihvon did not look surprised. People stared at her with awe-filled eyes.
“People need symbols,” Verin went on, resting a hand on Stepper’s shoulder. “When Alanna told a few of the villagers how much Trollocs fear wolves, everyone seemed to think this banner a grand idea. Don’t you, Perrin?” Was there a dryness in her voice then? Her dark eyes looked up at him, birdlike. A bird watching a worm?
“I wonder what Queen Morgase will think of that,” Faile said. “This is part of Andor. Queens seldom like strange banners being raised in their realms.”
“That’s nothing but lines on a map,” Perrin told her. It was good to be still; the throbbing from the arrowhead seemed to have abated somewhat. “I did not even know we were supposed to be part of Andor until I went to Caemlyn. I doubt many people here do.”
“Rulers have a tendency to believe maps, Perrin.” There was no doubt of the dryness in Faile’s tone. “When I was a child, there were parts of Saldaea that had not seen a taxman in five generations. Once Father could turn his attention from the Blight for a time, Tenobia made sure they knew who their queen was.”
“This is the Two Rivers,” he said, grinning, “not Saldaea.” They did sound very fierce, up there in Saldaea. As he turned back to Verin, the grin became a frown. “I thought you were . . . hiding . . . who you are.” He could not say which was more disturbing; Aes Sedai there in secret, or Aes Sedai in the open.
The Aes Sedai’s hand hovered an inch from the broken-off arrow jutting from his side. Something tingled around the wound. “Oh, this is not good,” she murmured. “Caught in the rib, and some infection in spite of that poultice. This needs Alanna, I think.” She blinked and pulled her hand back; the tingle went, too. “What? Hiding? Oh. With what has been stirred up here now, we could hardly remain hidden. I suppose we could have . . . gone away. You wouldn’t want that, would you?” There was that sharp, considering, birdlike stare again.
He hesitated, and finally sighed. “I suppose not.”
“Oh, that is good to hear,” she said with a smile.
“Why did you really come here, Verin?”
She did not seem to hear him. Or did not want to. “Now we need to see to that thing in you. And these other lads need to be looked after, too. Alanna and I will see to the worst, but . . . ”
The men with him were as stunned by what they found here as he was. Ban scratched his head at the banner, and a few just stared around in amazement. Most looked at Verin, though, wide-eyed and uneasy; they had surely heard the whispers of “Aes Sedai.” Perrin was not escaping those looks entirely himself, he realized, talking to an Aes Sedai as though she were just any village woman.
Verin considered them right back, then suddenly, without seeming to look, reached behind her to snatch a girl of about ten or twelve out of the onlookers. The girl, her long dark hair caught up with blue ribbons, went rigid with shock. “You know Daise Congar, girl?” Verin said. “Well, you find her and tell her there are injured men who need a Wisdom’s herbs. And tell her to jump. You tell her I’ll have no patience with her airs. Do you have that? Off with you.”
Perrin did not recognize the girl, but evidently she did know Daise, because she flinched at the message. But Verin was an Aes Sedai. After a moment of weighing—Daise Congar against an Aes Sedai—the girl scampered away into the crowd.
“And Alanna will take care of you,” Verin said, peering up at him again.
He wished she did not sound as though there might be two meanings to that.