The Eye Of The World (The Wheel of Time)

Egwene lay huddled against his back for warmth, sleeping the deep sleep of exhaustion. She never even murmured at his shifting. The sun was long hours below the horizon, and he ached from head to foot after a day walking behind a horse with a halter around his neck, but sleep would not come for him.

The column did not move that fast. With most of their remounts lost to the wolves in the stedding, the Whitecloaks could not push on as hard as they wanted; the delay was another thing they held against the Emond’s Fielders. The sinuous double line did move steadily, though—Lord Bornhald meant to reach Caemlyn in time for whatever it was—and always in the back of Perrin’s mind was the fear that if he fell the Whitecloak holding his leash would not stop, no matter Lord Captain Bornhald’s orders to keep them alive for the Questioners in Amador. He knew he could not save himself if that happened; the only times they freed his hands were when he was fed and for visits to the latrine pit. The halter made every step momentous, every rock underfoot potentially fatal. He walked with muscles tense, scanning the ground with anxious eyes. Whenever he glanced at Egwene, she was doing the same. When she met his eyes, her face was tight and frightened. Neither of them dared take their eyes off the ground long enough for more than a glance.

Usually he collapsed like a wrung-out rag as soon as the Whitecloaks let him stop, but tonight his mind was racing. His skin crawled with dread that had been building for days. If he closed his eyes, he would see only the things Byar promised for them once they reached Amador.

He was sure Egwene still did not believe what Byar told them in that flat voice. If she did, she would not be able to sleep no matter how tired she was. In the beginning he had not believed Byar either. He still did not want to; people just did not do things like that to other people. But Byar did not really threaten; as if he were talking about getting a drink of water he talked about hot irons and pincers, about knives slicing away skin and needles piercing. He did not appear to be trying to frighten them. There was never even a touch of gloating in his eyes. He just did not care if they were frightened or not, if they were tortured or not, if they were alive or not. That was what brought cold sweat to Perrin’s face once it got through to him. That was what finally convinced him Byar was telling the simple truth.

The two guards’ cloaks gleamed grayly in the faint moonlight. He could not make out their faces, but he knew they were watching. As if they could try something, tied hand and foot the way they were. From when there had still been light enough to see, he remembered the disgust in their eyes and the pinched looks on their faces, as though they had been set to guard filth-soaked monsters, stinking and repellent to look at. All the Whitecloaks looked at them that way. It never changed. Light, how do I make them believe we aren’t Darkfriends when they’re already convinced we are? His stomach twisted sickeningly. In the end, he would probably confess to anything just to make the Questioners stop.

Someone was coming, a Whitecloak carrying a lantern. The man stopped to speak with the guards, who answered respectfully. Perrin could not hear what was said, but he recognized the tall, gaunt shape.

He squinted as the lantern was held close to his face. Byar had Perrin’s axe in his other hand; he had appropriated the weapon as his own. At least, Perrin never saw him without it.

“Wake up,” Byar said emotionlessly, as if he thought Perrin slept with his head raised. He accompanied the words with a heavy kick in the ribs.

Perrin gave a grunt through gritted teeth. His sides were a mass of bruises already from Byar’s boots.

“I said, wake up.” The foot went back again, and Perrin spoke quickly.

“I’m awake.” You had to acknowledge what Byar said, or he found ways to get your attention.

Byar set the lantern on the ground and bent to check his bonds. The man jerked roughly at his wrist, twisting his arms in their sockets. Finding those knots still as tight as he had left them, Byar pulled at his ankle rope, scraping him across the rocky ground. The man looked too skeletal to have any strength, but Perrin might as well have been a child. It was a nightly routine.

As Byar straightened, Perrin saw that Egwene was still asleep. “Wake up!” he shouted. “Egwene! Wake up!”

“Wha ... ? What?” Egwene’s voice was frightened and still thick with sleep. She lifted her head, blinking in the lantern light.

Byar gave no sign of disappointment at not being able to kick her awake; he never did. He just jerked at her ropes the same way he had Perrin’s, ignoring her groans. Causing pain was another of those things that seemed not to affect him one way or another; Perrin was the only one he really went out of his way to hurt. Even if Perrin could not remember it, Byar remembered that he had killed two of the Children.

“Why should Darkfriends sleep,” Byar said dispassionately, “when decent men must stay awake to guard them?”

“For the hundredth time,” Egwene said wearily, “we aren’t Darkfriends.”

Perrin tensed. Sometimes such a denial brought a lecture delivered in a grating near monotone, on confession and repentance, leading into a description of the Questioners’ methods of obtaining them. Sometimes it brought the lecture and a kick. To his surprise, this time Byar ignored it.

Instead the man squatted in front of him, all angles and sunken hollows, with the axe across his knees. The golden sun on his cloak’s left breast, and the two golden stars beneath it, glittered in the lantern light. Taking off his helmet, he set it beside the lantern. For a change there was something besides disdain or hatred on his face, something intent and unreadable. He rested his arms on the axehandle and studied Perrin silently. Perrin tried not to shift under that hollow-eyed stare.

“You are slowing us down, Darkfriend, you and your wolves. The Council of the Anointed has heard reports of such things, and they want to know more, so you must be taken to Amador and given to the Questioners, but you are slowing us down. I had hoped we could move fast enough, even without the remounts, but I was wrong.” He fell silent, frowning at them.

Perrin waited; Byar would tell him when he was ready.

“The Lord Captain is caught in the cleft of a dilemma,” Byar said finally. “Because of the wolves he must take you to the Council, but he must reach Caemlyn, too. We have no spare horses to carry you, but if we continue to let you walk, we will not reach Caemlyn by the appointed time. The Lord Captain sees his duties with a single-minded vision, and he intends to see you before the Council.”

Egwene made a sound. Byar was staring at Perrin, and he stared back, almost afraid to blink. “I don’t understand,” he said slowly.

“There is nothing to understand,” Byar replied. “Nothing but idle speculation. If you escaped, we would not have time to track you down. We don’t have an hour to spare if we are to reach Caemlyn in time. If you frayed your ropes on a sharp rock, say, and vanished into the night, the Lord Captain’s problem would be solved.” Never taking his gaze from Perrin, he reached under his cloak and tossed something on the ground.

Automatically Perrin’s eyes followed it. When he realized what it was, he gasped. A rock. A split rock with a sharp edge.

“Just idle speculation,” Byar said. “Your guards tonight also speculate.”

Perrin’s mouth was suddenly dry. Think it through! Light help me, think it through and don’t make any mistakes!

Could it be true? Could the Whitecloaks’ need to get to Caemlyn quickly be important enough for this? Letting suspected Darkfriends escape? There was no use trying that way; he did not know enough. Byar was the only Whitecloak who would talk to them, aside from Lord Captain Bornhald, and neither was exactly free with information. Another way. If Byar wanted them to escape, why not simply cut their bonds? If Byar wanted them to escape? Byar, who was convinced to his marrow that they were Darkfriends. Byar, who hated Darkfriends worse than he did the Dark One himself. Byar, who looked for any excuse to cause him pain because he had killed two Whitecloaks. Byar wanted them to escape?

If he had thought his mind was racing before, now it sped like an avalanche. Despite the cold, sweat ran down his face in rivulets. He glanced at the guards. They were only shadows of pale gray, but it seemed to him that they were poised, waiting. If he and Egwene were killed trying to escape, and their ropes had been cut on a rock that could have been lying there by chance.... The Lord Captain’s dilemma would be solved, all right. And Byar would have them dead, the way he wanted them.

The gaunt man picked up his helmet from beside the lantern and started to stand.

“Wait,” Perrin said hoarsely. His thoughts tumbled over and over as he searched in vain for some way out. “Wait, I want to talk. I—”

The thought blossomed in his mind, a clear burst of light in the midst of chaos, so startling that for a moment he forgot everything else, even where he was. Dapple was alive. Elyas, he thought at the wolf, demanding without words to know if the man was alive. An image came back. Elyas, lying on a bed of evergreen branches beside a small fire in a cave, tending a wound in his side. It all took only an instant. He gaped at Byar, and his face broke into a foolish grin. Elyas was alive. Dapple was alive. Help was coming.

Byar paused, risen only to a crouch, looking at him. “Some thought has come to you, Perrin of the Two Rivers, and I would know what it is.”

For a moment Perrin thought he meant the thought from Dapple. Panic fled across his face, followed by relief. Byar could not possibly know.

Byar watched his changes of expression, and for the first time the Whitecloak’s eyes went to the rock he had tossed on the ground.

He was reconsidering, Perrin realized. If he changed his mind about the rock, would he dare risk leaving them alive to talk? Ropes could be frayed after the people wearing them were dead, even if it made for risk of discovery. He looked into Byar’s eyes—the shadowed hollows of the man’s eye sockets made them appear to stare at him from dark caves—and he saw death decided.

Byar opened his mouth, and as Perrin waited for sentence to be pronounced, things began to happen too fast for thought.

Suddenly one of the guards vanished. One minute there were two dim shapes, the next the night swallowed one of them. The second guard turned, the beginning of a cry on his lips, but before the first syllable was uttered there was a solid tchunk and he toppled over like a felled tree.

Byar spun, swift as a striking viper, the axe whirling in his hands so fast that it hummed. Perrin’s eyes bulged as the night seemed to flow into the lantern light. His mouth opened to yell, but his throat locked tight with fear. For an instant he even forgot that Byar wanted to kill them. The Whitecloak was another human being, and the night had come alive to take them all.

Then the darkness invading the light became Lan, cloak swirling through shades of gray and black as he moved. The axe in Byar’s hands lashed out like lightning ... and Lan seemed to lean casually aside, letting the blade pass so close he must have felt the wind of it. Byar’s eyes widened as the force of his blow carried him off balance, as the Warder struck with hands and feet in rapid succession, so quick that Perrin was not sure what he had just seen. What he was sure of was Byar collapsing like a puppet. Before the falling Whitecloak had finished settling to the ground, the Warder was on his knees extinguishing the lantern.

In the sudden return to darkness, Perrin stared blindly. Lan seemed to have vanished again.

“Is it really ... ?” Egwene gave a stifled sob. “We thought you were dead. We thought you were all dead.”

“Not yet.” The Warder’s deep whisper was tinged with amusement.

Hands touched Perrin, found his bonds. A knife sliced through the ropes with barely a tug, and he was free. Aching muscles protested as he sat up. Rubbing his wrists, he peered at the graying mound that marked Byar. “Did you ... ? Is he...?”

“No,” Lan’s voice answered quietly from the darkness. “I do not kill unless I mean to. But he won’t bother anyone for a while. Stop asking questions and get a pair of their cloaks. We do not have much time.”

Perrin crawled to where Byar lay. It took an effort to touch the man, and when he felt the Whitecloak’s chest rising and falling he almost jerked his hands away. His skin crawled as he made himself unfasten the white cloak and pull it off. Despite what Lan said, he could imagine the skull-faced man suddenly rearing up. Hastily he fumbled around till he found his axe, then crawled to another guard. It seemed strange, at first, that he felt no reluctance to touch this unconscious man, but the reason came to him. All the Whitecloaks hated him, but that was a human emotion. Byar felt nothing beyond that he should die; there was no hate in it, no emotion at all.

Gathering the two cloaks in his arms, he turned—and panic grabbed him. In the darkness he suddenly had no sense of direction, of how to find his way back to Lan and the others. His feet rooted to the ground, afraid to move. Even Byar was hidden by the night without his white cloak. There was nothing by which to orient himself. Any way he went might be out into the camp.

“Here.”

He stumbled toward Lan’s whisper until hands stopped him. Egwene was a dim shadow, and Lan’s face was a blur; the rest of the Warder seemed not to be there at all. He could feel their eyes on him, and he wondered if he should explain.

“Put on the cloaks,” Lan said softly. “Quickly. Bundle your own. And make no sound. You aren’t safe yet.”

Hurriedly Perrin passed one of the cloaks to Egwene, relieved at being saved from having to tell of his fear. He made his own cloak into a bundle to carry, and swung the white cloak around his shoulders in its place. He felt a prickle as it settled around his shoulders, a stab of worry between his shoulder blades. Was it Byar’s cloak he had ended up with? He almost thought he could smell the gaunt man on it.

Lan directed them to hold hands, and Perrin gripped his axe in one hand and Egwene’s hand with the other, wishing the Warder would get on with their escape so he could stop his imagination from running wild. But they just stood there, surrounded by the tents of the Children, two shapes in white cloaks and one that was sensed but not seen.

“Soon,” Lan whispered. “Very soon.”

Lightning broke the night above the camp, so close that Perrin felt the hair on his arms, his head, lifting as the bolt charged the air. Just beyond the tents the earth erupted from the blow, the explosion on the ground merging with that in the sky. Before the light faded Lan was leading them forward.

At their first step another strike sliced open the blackness. Lightning came like hail, so that the night flickered as if the darkness were coming in momentary flashes. Thunder drummed wildly, one roar rumbling into the next, one continuous, rippling peal. Fear-stricken horses screamed, their whinnies drowned except for moments when the thunder faded. Men tumbled out of their tents, some in their white cloaks, some only half clothed, some dashing to and fro, some standing as if stunned.

Through the middle of it Lan pulled them at a trot, Perrin bringing up the rear. Whitecloaks looked at them, wild-eyed, as they passed. A few shouted at them, the shouts lost in the pounding from the heavens, but with their white cloaks gathered around them no one tried to stop them. Through the tents, out of the camp and into the night, and no one raised a hand against them.

The ground turned uneven under Perrin’s feet, and brush slapped at him as he let himself be drawn along. The lightning flickered fitfully and was gone. Echoes of thunder rolled across the sky before they, too, faded away. Perrin looked over his shoulder. A handful of fires burned back there, among the tents. Some of the lightning must have struck home, or perhaps men had knocked over lamps in their panic. Men still shouted, voices tiny in the night, trying to restore order, to find out what had happened. The land began to slope upwards, and tents and fires and shouting were left behind.

Suddenly he almost trod on Egwene’s heels as Lan stopped. Ahead in the moonlight stood three horses.

A shadow stirred, and Moiraine’s voice came, weighted with irritation. “Nynaeve has not returned. I fear that young woman has done something foolish.” Lan spun on his heel as if to return the way they had come, but a single whip-crack word from Moiraine halted him. “No!” He stood looking at her sideways, only his face and hands truly visible, and they but dimly shadowed blurs. She went on in a gentler tone; gentler but no less firm. “Some things are more important than others. You know that.” The Warder did not move, and her voice hardened again. “Remember your oaths, al’Lan Mandragoran, Lord of the Seven Towers! What of the oath of a Diademed Battle Lord of the Malkieri?”

Perrin blinked. Lan was all of that? Egwene was murmuring, but he could not take his eyes off the tableau in front of him, Lan standing like a wolf from Dapple’s pack, a wolf at bay before the diminutive Aes Sedai and vainly seeking escape from doom.

The frozen scene was broken by a crash of breaking branches in the woods. In two long strides Lan was between Moiraine and the sound, the pale moonlight rippling along his sword. To the crackle and snap of underbrush a pair of horses burst from the trees, one with a rider.

“Bela!” Egwene exclaimed at the same time that Nynaeve said from the shaggy mare’s back, “I almost didn’t find you again. Egwene! Thank the Light you’re alive!”

She slid down off Bela, but as she started toward the Emond’s Fielders Lan caught her arm and she stopped short, staring up at him.

“We must go, Lan,” Moiraine said, once more sounding unruffled, and the Warder released his grip.

Nynaeve rubbed her arm as she hurried to hug Egwene, but Perrin thought he heard her give a low laugh, too. It puzzled him because he did not think it had anything to do with her happiness at seeing them again.

“Where are Rand and Mat?” he asked.

“Elsewhere,” Moiraine replied, and Nynaeve muttered something in a sharp tone that made Egwene gasp. Perrin blinked; he had caught the edge of a wagoneer’s oath, and a coarse one. “The Light send they are well,” the Aes Sedai went on as if she had not noticed.

“We will none of us be well,” Lan said, “if the Whitecloaks find us. Change your cloaks, and get mounted.”

Perrin scrambled up onto the horse Nynaeve had brought behind Bela. The lack of a saddle did not hamper him; he did not ride often at home, but when he did it was more likely bare-back than not. He still carried the white cloak, now rolled up and tied to his belt. The Warder said they must leave no more traces for the Children to find than they could help. He still thought he could smell Byar on it.

As they started out, the Warder leading on his tall black stallion, Perrin felt Dapple’s touch on his mind once more. One day again. More a feeling than words, it sighed with the promise of a meeting foreordained, with anticipation of what was to come, with resignation to what was to come, all streaked in layers. He tried to ask when and why, fumbling in haste and sudden fear. The trace of the wolves grew fainter, fading. His frantic questions brought only the same heavy-laden answer. One day again. It hung haunting in his mind long after awareness of the wolves winked out.

Lan pressed southward slowly but steadily. The night-draped wilderness, all rolling ground and underbrush hidden until it was underfoot, shadowed trees thick against the sky, allowed no great speed in any case. Twice the Warder left them, riding back toward the slivered moon, he and Mandarb becoming one with the night behind. Both times he returned to report no sign of pursuit.

Egwene stayed close beside Nynaeve. Soft-spoken scraps of excited talk floated back to Perrin. Those two were as buoyed up as if they had found home again. He hung back at the tail of their little column. Sometimes the Wisdom turned in her saddle to look back at him, and each time he gave her a wave, as if to say that he was all right, and stayed where he was. He had a lot to think about, though he could not get any of it straight in his head. What was to come. What was to come?

Perrin thought it could not be much short of dawn when Moiraine finally called a halt. Lan found a gully where he could build a fire hidden within a hollow in one of the banks.

Finally they were allowed to rid themselves of the white cloaks, burying them in a hole dug near the fire. As he was about to toss in the cloak he had used, the embroidered golden sun on the breast caught his eye, and the two golden stars beneath. He dropped the cloak as if it stung and walked away, scrubbing his hands on his coat, to sit alone.

“Now,” Egwene said, once Lan was shoveling dirt into the hole, “will somebody tell me where Rand and Mat are?”

“I believe they are in Caemlyn,” Moiraine said carefully, “or on their way there.” Nynaeve gave a loud, disparaging grunt, but the Aes Sedai went on as if she had not been interrupted. “If they are not, I will yet find them. That I promise.”

They made a quiet meal on bread and cheese and hot tea. Even Egwene’s enthusiasm succumbed to weariness. The Wisdom produced an ointment from her bag for the weals the ropes had left on Egwene’s wrists, and a different one for her other bruises. When she came to where Perrin sat on the edge of the firelight, he did not look up.

She stood looking at him silently for a time, then squatted with her bag beside her, saying briskly, “Take your coat and shirt off, Perrin. They tell me one of the Whitecloaks took a dislike to you.”

He complied slowly, still half lost in Dapple’s message, until Nynaeve gasped. Startled, he stared at her, then at his own bare chest. It was a mass of color, the newer, purple blotches overlaying older ones faded into shades of brown and yellow. Only thick slabs of muscle earned by hours at Master Luhhan’s forge had saved him from broken ribs. With his mind filled by the wolves, he had managed to forget the pain, but he was reminded of it now, and it came back gladly. Involuntarily he took a deep breath, and clamped his lips on a groan.

“How could he have disliked you so much?” Nynaeve asked wonderingly.

I killed two men. Aloud, he said, “I don’t know.”

She rummaged in her bag, and he flinched when she began spreading a greasy ointment over his bruises. “Ground ivy, five-finger, and sunburst root,” she said.

It was hot and cold at the same time, making him shiver while he broke into a sweat, but he did not protest. He had had experience of Nynaeve’s ointments and poultices before. As her fingers gently rubbed the mixture in, the heat and cold vanished, taking the pain with them. The purple splotches faded to brown, and the brown and yellow paled, some disappearing altogether. Experimentally, he took a deep breath; there was barely a twinge.

“You look surprised,” Nynaeve said. She looked a little surprised herself, and strangely frightened. “Next time, you can go to her.”

“Not surprised,” he said soothingly, “just glad.” Sometimes Nynaeve’s ointments worked fast and sometimes slow, but they always worked. “What ... what happened to Rand and Mat?”

Nynaeve began stuffing her vials and pots back into her bag, jamming each one in as if she were thrusting it through a barrier. “She says they’re all right. She says we’ll find them. In Caemlyn, she says. She says it’s too important for us not to, whatever that means. She says a great many things.”

Perrin grinned in spite of himself. Whatever else had changed, the Wisdom was still herself, and she and the Aes Sedai were still far from fast friends.

Abruptly Nynaeve stiffened, staring at his face. Dropping her bag, she pressed the backs of her hands to his cheeks and forehead. He tried to pull back, but she caught his head in both hands and thumbed back his eyelids, peering into his eyes and muttering to herself. Despite her small size she held his face easily; it was never easy to get away from Nynaeve when she did not want you to.

“I don’t understand,” she said finally, releasing him and settling back to sit on her heels. “If it was yelloweye fever, you wouldn’t be able to stand. But you don’t have any fever, and the whites of your eyes aren’t yellowed, just the irises.”

“Yellow?” Moiraine said, and Perrin and Nynaeve both jumped where they sat. The Aes Sedai’s approach had been utterly silent. Egwene was asleep by the fire, wrapped in her cloaks, Perrin saw. His own eyelids wanted to slide closed.

“It isn’t anything,” he said, but Moiraine put a hand under his chin and turned his face up so she could peer into his eyes the way Nynaeve had. He jerked away, prickling. The two women were handling him as if he were a child. “I said it isn’t anything.”

“There was no foretelling this.” Moiraine spoke as if to herself. Her eyes seemed to look at something beyond him. “Something ordained to be woven, or a change in the Pattern? If a change, by what hand? The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. It must be that.”

“Do you know what it is?” Nynaeve asked reluctantly, then hesitated. “Can you do something for him? Your Healing?” The request for aid, the admission that she could do nothing, came out of her as if dragged.

Perrin glared at both the women. “If you’re going to talk about me, talk to me. I’m sitting right here.” Neither looked at him.

“Healing?” Moiraine smiled. “Healing can do nothing about this. It is not an illness, and it will not....” She hesitated briefly. She did glance at Perrin, then, a quick look that regretted many things. The look did not include him, though, and he muttered sourly as she turned back to Nynaeve. “I was going to say it will not harm him, but who can say what the end will be? At least I can say it will not harm him directly.”

Nynaeve stood, dusting off her knees, and confronted the Aes Sedai eye to eye. “That’s not good enough. If there’s something wrong with—”

“What is, is. What is woven already is past changing.” Moiraine turned away abruptly. “We must sleep while we can and leave at first light. If the Dark One’s hand grows too strong.... We must reach Caemlyn quickly.”

Angrily, Nynaeve snatched up her bag and stalked off before Perrin could speak. He started to growl an oath, but a thought hit him like a blow and he sat there gaping silently. Moiraine knew. The Aes Sedai knew about the wolves. And she thought it could be the Dark One’s doing. A shiver ran through him. Hastily he shrugged back into his shirt, tucking it in awkwardly, and pulled his coat and cloak back on. The clothing did not help very much; he felt chilled right down to his bones, his marrow like frozen jelly.

Lan dropped to the ground cross-legged, tossing back his cloak. Perrin was glad of that. It was unpleasant, looking at the Warder and having his eyes slide past.

For a long moment they simply stared at one another. The hard planes of the Warder’s face were unreadable, but in his eyes Perrin thought he saw ... something. Sympathy? Curiosity? Both?

“You know?” he said, and Lan nodded.

“I know some, not all. Did it just come to you, or did you meet a guide, an intermediary?”

“There was a man,” Perrin said slowly. He knows, but does he think the same as Moiraine? “He said his name was Elyas. Elyas Machera.” Lan drew a deep breath, and Perrin looked at him sharply. “You know him?”

“I knew him. He taught me much, about the Blight, and about this.” Lan touched his sword hilt. “He was a Warder, before ... before what happened. The Red Ajah....” He glanced to where Moiraine was, lying before the fire.

It was the first time Perrin could remember any uncertainty in the Warder. At Shadar Logoth Lan had been sure and strong, and when he was facing Fades and Trollocs. He was not afraid now—Perrin was convinced of that—but he was wary, as if he might say too much. As if what he said could be dangerous.

“I’ve heard of the Red Ajah,” he told Lan.

“And most of what you’ve heard is wrong, no doubt. You must understand, there are ... factions within Tar Valon. Some would fight the Dark One one way, some another. The goal is the same, but the differences ... the differences can mean lives changed, or ended. The lives of men or nations. He is well, Elyas?”

“I think so. The Whitecloaks said they killed him, but Dapple—” Perrin glanced at the Warder uncomfortably. “I don’t know.” Lan seemed to accept that he did not, reluctantly, and it emboldened him to go on. “This communicating with the wolves. Moiraine seems to think it’s something the ... something the Dark One did. It isn’t, is it?” He would not believe Elyas was a Darkfriend.

But Lan hesitated, and sweat started on Perrin’s face, chill beads made colder by the night. They were sliding down his cheeks by the time the Warder spoke.

“Not in itself, no. Some believe it is, but they are wrong; it was old and lost long before the Dark One was found. But what of the chance involved, blacksmith? Sometimes the Pattern has a randomness to it—to our eyes, at least—but what chance that you should meet a man who could guide you in this thing, and you one who could follow the guiding? The Pattern is forming a Great Web, what some call the Lace of Ages, and you lads are central to it. I don’t think there is much chance left in your lives, now. Have you been chosen out, then? And if so, by the Light, or by the Shadow?”

“The Dark One can’t touch us unless we name him.” Immediately Perrin thought of the dreams of Ba’alzamon, the dreams that were more than dreams. He scrubbed the sweat off his face. “He can’t.”

“Rock-hard stubborn,” the Warder mused. “Maybe stubborn enough to save yourself, in the end. Remember the times we live in, blacksmith. Remember what Moiraine Sedai told you. In these times many things are dissolving, and breaking apart. Old barriers weaken, old walls crumble. The barriers between what is and what was, between what is and what will be.” His voice turned grim. “The walls of the Dark One’s prison. This may be the end of an Age. We may see a new Age born before we die. Or perhaps it is the end of Ages, the end of time itself. The end of the world.” Suddenly he grinned, but his grin was as dark as a scowl; his eyes sparkled merrily, laughing at the foot of the gallows. “But that’s not for us to worry about, eh, blacksmith? We’ll fight the Shadow as long as we have breath, and if it overruns us, we’ll go under biting and clawing. You Two Rivers folk are too stubborn to surrender. Don’t you worry whether the Dark One has stirred in your life. You are back among friends, now. Remember, the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, and even the Dark One cannot change that, not with Moiraine to watch over you. But we had better find your friends soon.”

“What do you mean?”

“They have no Aes Sedai touching the True Source to protect them. Blacksmith, perhaps the walls have weakened enough for the Dark One himself to touch events. Not with a free hand, or we’d be done already, but maybe tiny shiftings in the threads. A chance turning of one corner instead of another, a chance meeting, a chance word, or what seems like chance, and they could be so far under the Shadow not even Moiraine could bring them back.”

“We have to find them,” Perrin said, and the Warder gave a grunt of a laugh.

“What have I been saying? Get some sleep, blacksmith.” Lan’s cloak swung back around him as he stood. In the faint light from fire and moon he seemed almost part of the shadows beyond. “We have a hard few days to Caemlyn. Just you pray we find them there.”

“But Moiraine ... she can find them anywhere, can’t she? She says she can.”

“But can she find them in time? If the Dark One is strong enough to take a hand himself, time is running out. You pray we find them in Caemlyn, blacksmith, or we may all be lost.”