The Dragon Reborn (13 page)

“You’re from his village,” Masema said hoarsely. “You must know. Why did the Lord Dragon abandon us? What sin did we commit?”

“Sin? What are you talking about? Whyever Rand went, it was nothing you did or didn’t do.” Masema did not appear satisfied; he kept his grip on Perrin’s sleeve, peering into his face as if there were answers there. Icy water began to seep into Perrin’s left boot. “Masema,” he said carefully, “whatever the Lord Dragon did, it was according to his plan. The Lord Dragon would not abandon us.”
Or would he? If I were in his place, would I?

Masema nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I see that, now. He has gone out alone to spread the word of his coming. We must spread the word, too. Yes.” He limped on across the stream, muttering to himself.

Squelching at every other step, Perrin climbed to Moiraine’s hut and knocked. There was no answer. He hesitated a moment, then went in.

The outer room, where Lan slept, was as stark and simple as Perrin’s own hut, with a rough bed built against one wall, a few pegs for hanging possessions, and a single shelf. Not much light entered through the open door, and the only other illumination came from crude lamps on the shelf, slivers of oily fat-wood wedged into cracks in pieces of rock. They gave off thin streamers of smoke that made a layer of haze under the roof. Perrin’s nose wrinkled at the smell.

The low roof was only a little higher than his head. Loial’s head actually brushed it, even seated as he was on one end of Lan’s bed, with his knees drawn up to make himself small. The Ogier’s tufted ears twitched uneasily. Min sat cross-legged on the dirt floor beside the door that led to Moiraine’s room, while the Aes Sedai paced back and forth in thought. Dark thoughts, they must have been. Three paces each way was all she had, but she made vigorous use of the space, the calm on her face belied by the quickness of her step.

“I think Masema is going crazy,” Perrin said.

Min sniffed. “With him, how can you tell?”

Moiraine rounded on him, a tightness to her mouth. Her voice was soft. Too soft. “Is Masema the most important thing in your mind this morning, Perrin Aybara?”

“No. I’d like to know when Rand left, and why. Did anyone see him go? Does anyone know where he went?” He made himself meet her look with one just as level and firm. It was not easy. He loomed over her, but she was Aes Sedai. “Is this of your making, Moiraine? Did you rein him in until he was so impatient he’d go anywhere, do anything, just to stop sitting still?” Loial’s ears went stiff, and he motioned a surreptitious warning with one thick-fingered hand.

Moiraine studied Perrin with her head tilted to one side, and it was all he could do not to drop his eyes. “This is none of my doing,” she said. “He left sometime during the night. When and how and why, I yet hope to learn.”

Loial’s shoulders heaved in a quiet sigh of relief. Quiet for an Ogier, it sounded like steam rushing out from quenching red-hot iron. “Never anger an Aes Sedai,” he said in a whisper obviously meant just for himself, but audible to everyone. “ ‘Better to embrace the sun than to anger an Aes Sedai.’ ”

Min reached up enough to hand Perrin a folded piece of paper. “Loial went to see him after we got him to bed last night, and Rand asked to borrow pen and paper and ink.”

The Ogier’s ears jerked, and he frowned worriedly until his long eyebrows hung down on his cheeks. “I did not know what he was planning. I didn’t.”

“We know that,” Min said. “No one is accusing you of anything, Loial.”

Moiraine frowned at the paper, but she did not try to stop Perrin from reading. It was in Rand’s hand.

What I do, I do because there is no other way. He is hunting me again, and this time one of us has to die, I think. There is no need for those around me to die, also. Too many have died for me already. I do not want to die either, and will not, if I can manage it. There are lies in dreams, and death, but dreams hold truth, too
.

That was all, with no signature. There was no need for Perrin to wonder who Rand meant by “he.” For Rand, for all of them, there could be only one. Ba’alzamon.

“He left that tucked under the door there,” Min said in a tight voice. “He took some old clothes the Shienarans had hanging out to dry, and his flute, and a horse. Nothing else but a little food, as far as we can tell. None
of the guards saw him go, and last night they would have seen a mouse creeping.”

“And would it have done any good if they had?” Moiraine said calmly. “Would any of them have stopped the
Lord Dragon
, or even challenged him? Some of them—Masema for one—would slit their own throats if the
Lord Dragon
told them to.”

It was Perrin’s turn to study her. “Did you expect anything else? They swore to follow him. Light, Moiraine, he’d never have named himself Dragon if not for you. What did you expect of them?” She did not speak, and he went on more quietly. “Do you believe, Moiraine? That he’s really the Dragon Reborn? Or do you just think he’s someone you can use before the One Power kills him or drives him mad?”

“Go easy, Perrin,” Loial said. “Not so angry.”

“I’ll go easy when she answers me. Well, Moiraine?”

“He is what he is,” she said sharply.

“You said the Pattern would force him to the right path eventually. Is that what this is, or is he just trying to get away from you?” For a moment he thought he had gone too far—her dark eyes sparkled with anger—but he refused to back down. “Well?”

Moiraine took a deep breath. “This may well be what the Pattern has chosen, yet I did not mean for him to go off alone. For all his power, he is as defenseless as a babe in many ways, and as ignorant of the world. He channels, but he has no control over whether or not the One Power comes when he reaches for it and almost as little over what he does with it if it does come. The power itself will kill him before he has a chance to go mad if he does not learn that control. There is so much he must learn, yet. He wants to run before he has learned to walk.”

“You split hairs and lay false trails, Moiraine.” Perrin snorted. “If he is what you say he is, did it never occur to you that he might know what he has to do better than you?”

“He is what he is,” she repeated firmly, “but I must keep him alive if he is to do anything. He will fulfill no prophecies dead, and even if he manages to avoid Darkfriends and Shadowspawn, there are a thousand other hands ready to slay him. All it will take is a hint of the hundredth part of what he is. Yet if that were all he might face, I would not worry half so much as I do. There are the Forsaken to be accounted for.”

Perrin gave a start; from the corner, Loial moaned. “ ‘The Dark One and all the Forsaken are bound in Shayol Ghul,’ ” Perrin began by rote, but she gave him no time to finish.

“The seals are weakening, Perrin. Some are broken, though the world does not know that. Must not know that. The Father of Lies is not free. Yet. But as the seals weaken, more and more, which of the Forsaken may be loosed already? Lanfear? Sammael? Asmodean, or Be’lal, or Ravhin? Ishamael himself, the Betrayer of Hope? They were thirteen altogether, Perrin, and bound in the sealing, not in the prison that holds the Dark One. Thirteen of the most powerful Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends, the weakest of them stronger than the ten strongest Aes Sedai living today, the most ignorant with all the knowledge of the Age of Legends. And every man and woman of them gave up the Light and dedicated their souls to the Shadow. What if they are free, and out there waiting for him? I will not let them have him.”

Perrin shivered, partly from the icy iron in her last words, and partly from thought of the Forsaken. He did not want to think of even one of the Forsaken loose in the world. His mother had frightened him with those names when he was little.
Ishamael comes for boys who do not tell their mothers the truth. Lanfear waits in the night for boys who do not go to bed when they are supposed to
. Being older did not help, not when he knew now they were all real. Not when Moiraine said they might be free.

“Bound in Shayol Ghul,” he whispered, and wished he still believed it. Troubled, he studied Rand’s letter again. “Dreams. He was talking about dreams yesterday, too.”

Moiraine stepped closer, and peered up into his face. “Dreams?” Lan and Uno came in, but she waved them to silence. The small room was more than crowded now, with five people in it besides the Ogier. “What dreams have
you
had the last few days, Perrin?” She ignored his protest that there was nothing wrong with his dreams. “Tell me,” she insisted. “What dream have you had that was not ordinary? Tell me.” Her gaze seized him like smithy tongs, willing him to speak.

He looked at the others—they were all watching him fixedly, even Min—then hesitantly told of the one dream that seemed unusual to him, the dream that came every night. The dream of the sword he could not touch. He did not mention the wolf that had appeared in the last.

“Callandor,”
Lan breathed when he was done. Rock-hard face or no, he looked stunned.

“Yes,” Moiraine said, “but we must be absolutely certain. Speak to the others.” As Lan hurried out, she turned to Uno. “And what of your dreams? Did you dream of a sword, too?”

The Shienaran shifted his feet. The red eye painted on his patch stared
straight at Moiraine, but his real eye blinked and wavered. “I dream about flam—uh, about swords all the time, Moiraine Sedai,” he said stiffly. “I suppose I’ve dreamed about a sword the last few nights. I don’t remember my dreams the way Lord Perrin here does.”

Moiraine said, “Loial?”

“My dreams are always the same, Moiraine Sedai. The groves, and the Great Trees, and the
stedding
. We Ogier always dream of the
stedding
when we are away from them.”

The Aes Sedai turned back to Perrin.

“It was just a dream,” he said. “Nothing but a dream.”

“I doubt it,” she said. “You describe the hall called the Heart of the Stone, in the fortress called the Stone of Tear, as if you had stood in it. And the shining sword is
Callandor
, the Sword That Is Not a Sword, the Sword That Cannot Be Touched.”

Loial sat up straight, bumping his head on the roof. He did not seem to notice. “The Prophecies of the Dragon say the Stone of Tear will never fall till
Callandor
is wielded by the Dragon’s hand. The fall of the Stone of Tear will be one of the greatest signs of the Dragon’s Rebirth. If Rand holds
Callandor
, the whole world must acknowledge him as the Dragon.”

“Perhaps.” The word floated from the Aes Sedai’s lips like a shard of ice on still water.

“Perhaps?” Perrin said. “Perhaps? I thought that was the final sign, the last thing to fulfill your Prophecies.”

“Neither the first nor the last,” Moiraine said. “
Callandor
will be but one fulfillment of
The Karaethon Cycle
, as his birth on the slopes of Dragonmount was the first. He has yet to break the nations, or shatter the world. Even scholars who have studied the Prophecies for their entire lives do not know how to interpret them all. What does it mean that he ‘shall slay his people with the sword of peace, and destroy them with the leaf’? What does it meant that he ‘shall bind the nine moons to serve him’? Yet these are given equal weight with
Callandor
in the
Cycle
. There are others. What ‘wounds of madness and cutting of hope’ has he healed? What chains has he broken, and who put into chains? And some are so obscure that he may already have fulfilled them, although I am not aware of it. But, no.
Callandor
is far from the end of it.”

Perrin shrugged uneasily. He knew only bits and pieces of the Prophecies; he had liked hearing them even less since Rand had let Moiraine put that banner in his hands. No, it had been before that, even. Since a journey by Portal Stone had convinced him his life was bound to Rand’s.

Moiraine was continuing. “If you think he has simply to put out his hand, Loial son of Arent son of Halan, you are a fool, as is he if he thinks it. Even if he lives to reach Tear, he may never attain the Stone.

“Tairens have no love for the One Power, and less for any man claiming to be the Dragon. Channeling is outlawed, and Aes Sedai are tolerated at best, so long as they do not channel. Telling the Prophecies of the Dragon, or even possessing a copy of them, is enough to put you in prison, in Tear. And no one enters the Stone of Tear without permission of the High Lords; none but the High Lords themselves enter the Heart of the Stone. He is not ready for this. Not ready.”

Perrin grunted softly. The Stone would never fall till the Dragon Reborn held
Callandor. How in the Light is he supposed to reach it—inside a bloody fortress!—before the fortress falls? It is madness!

“Why are we just sitting here?” Min burst out. “If Rand is going to Tear, why aren’t we following him? He could be killed, or . . . or. . . . Why are we sitting here?”

Moiraine put a hand on Min’s head. “Because I must be sure,” she said gently. “It is not comfortable being chosen by the Wheel, to be great or to be near greatness. The chosen of the Wheel can only take what comes.”

“I am tired of taking what comes.” Min scrubbed a hand across her eyes. Perrin thought he saw tears. “Rand could be dying while we wait.” Moiraine smoothed Min’s hair; there was a look almost of pity on the Aes Sedai’s face.

Perrin sat down on the end of Lan’s bed opposite Loial. The smell of people was thick in the room—people and worry and fear; Loial smelled of books and trees as well as worry. It felt like a trap, with the walls around them, and all so close. The burning slivers stank. “How can my dream tell where Rand is going?” he asked. “It was my dream.”

“Those who can channel the One Power,” Moiraine said quietly, “those who are particularly strong in Spirit, can sometimes force their dreams on others.” She did not stop her soothing of Min. “Especially on those who are—susceptible. I do not believe Rand did it on purpose, but the dreams of those touching the True Source can be powerful. For one as strong as he, they could possibly seize an entire village, or perhaps even a city. He knows little of what he does, and even less of how to control it.”