What was that?
The others in the red veils likewise raised their hands, weaving lights into the black above. Trollocs howled, breaking the air with their screams as the last of them were forced off the edges. But something about those lights—those piercing lights, summoned so deliberately—worried Perrin.
“Stop those men!” Perrin yelled to Grady and Neald. “Throw everything you have at them!”
The two Asha’man were obviously trying, and one of the red-veiled men went up in a flashing explosion. The others, remarkably, turned and ran—ducking directly through the Waygate. Grady and Neald caught a second one, but the other four escaped back into the outside world.
Everything fell silent. Perrin’s soldiers were congratulating one another on the short, but frantic, attack. They’d taken minimal casualties, seized the Island, and rescued the prisoners. On the surface, their assault was an obvious success. It even seemed that the strange channeling Aiel—having put in just a brief appearance—had arrived only to discover themselves outmatched, then fled.
Perrin saw a different story. As Saerin bustled over to try to persuade the Whitecloaks to accept Healing, Perrin strained to listen. He peered through the Waygate at the strange Aiel, whom he could see on the other side, moving very slowly because of the strange time difference between the Ways and the outside world. They lowered their veils, revealing smiling faces. Pleased with themselves.
The doors to the Waygate began to close, blocking the red-veiled Aiel from Perrin’s view. And as his group hushed, tending their wounds, Perrin heard a soft, distant sound.
A faint howl, like the sound of a breeze blowing through a hollow. Somehow, the enemy had learned to summon the Black Wind.
CHAPTER 8
So Sweet to Kill
“Quickly!” Perrin said, grabbing Neald by the shoulder, then looking to Grady. “We need to fight through that Waygate to the other side.”
The doors slipped closer and closer together, cutting off the light. Perrin leaped over the corpse of a falling Trolloc, running toward their exit, their escape. If the Black Wind was coming, they needed to get out now.
“Lord Goldeneyes!” Grady said, dashing after him. “Perrin, listen. We can’t go through there. Light! Can you imagine trying to get through that with channelers guarding the other side? Only two of us could go through at a time; they’d slaughter us as we emerged.”
Perrin halted before the Waygate. Sensing his concern, the Two Rivers men—who had been guarding the channelers while the infantry fought—pulled up around him. Tam nocked an arrow, staring out into the darkness. Nearby, the Aiel moved through the fallen Trollocs, checking for any that were still alive and dispatching them.
“Perrin, lad?” Tam asked. “Is something wrong?”
“We’re trapped,” Perrin whispered as the Waygate closed. Grady was right. Fighting through that would be suicide, so long as the enemy was ready for them. But staying here?
He strained, listening for any hint of sound. He heard nothing, but that faint, earlier howl echoed in his mind. And he felt . . . he felt as if he could smell something on the wind, a scent like rot.
It was coming. “Pull everyone back, Tam,” Perrin said. “Quickly! Quietly! Gather the wounded, lead those people we rescued, and retreat back the way we came. We need to get away from this Island.”
“But . . .” Neald said. “We’ve seized the Waygate on this side. We need to destroy the bridges and isolate it. That’s our mission, right?”
“Those Aiel have done something to summon the Black Wind,” Perrin said, pointing. “We need to get away from where they launched light into the air. Now move.”
Nobody gave further argument. They passed the word in hushed tones, the soldiers moving from battle-ready stances to careful retreat. At Perrin’s orders, they cut away some of the supplies and tied the worst of the wounded to the pack animals. Tam and the other Two Rivers men worked with the frightened former prisoners, and had to prod them sharply to get them moving away from the bonfires.
Perrin grabbed a wounded Whitecloak under one arm as Galad grabbed the other, and they moved across the bridge together. Perrin didn’t know if the Whitecloaks had refused Healing, or if their wounds simply weren’t dire enough to have taken precedence.
They left twelve dead. Low casualties, on one hand—though any loss was terrible. But it felt a terrible injustice to leave those heroes alone in the darkness.
“What is this you said earlier?” Saerin said, bustling up beside him as they crossed the bridge. “You think those Darkfriends in the red veils could summon the Black Wind? You think it serves them?”
“I doubt Machin Shin serves anything but its own hunger,” Perrin said. “And I hope I’m wrong—I hope it’s not coming for us. But that signal was meant to do something. Those Aiel didn’t attack us; they simply made the lights appear, then left.”
Saerin grunted, glancing over her shoulder, though the bonfires were already starting to die. As if lack of attention let the darkness smother them.
“I’ve wondered how the Shadow moves so many Trollocs through this place,” Perrin grumbled, still walking with his arm supporting Golever, the Whitecloak. “Both times I entered the Ways before, Saerin, the Black Wind eventually found us. It can sense noise, channeling, life—and it will feast on Trollocs as eagerly as men; I’ve seen that for myself. But the enemy transports hundreds of thousands of troops through here.
“What if they found a way to distract the Black Wind? Draw it away? The Shadow could enter a Waygate far off and draw the attention of the Black Wind—keeping it focused there while others move through the darkness.”
“Speculation,” Saerin said. “You can’t extrapolate circumstances backward from these effects.”
They stopped, finally, at the other side of the bridge. Perrin turned, listening. A distant, soft sound came to him. The sound of a breeze. Elsewhere, it would have been a common, everyday kind of sound.
Here, it was the most terrifying thing he could have heard.
“We need another Waygate,” he said to Saerin. “Where is the closest one? I don’t care where it leads, as long as it gets us out of the Ways.”
“Are you sure you want me to do this?” she said. “I told you before, I doubt my ability to navigate on my own.”
“Either you find us a way out,” he said, “or this place will take us all. We don’t have time for hesitation.”
“I’m no frightened child, uncertainly anticipating a test, Perrin Aybara,” she said. “I’m being honest, not hesitant.” She opened the book of notes, flipping through. “If I lead us out into the dark, we might never come back.”
“Do it anyway.”
She nodded curtly. “Give me a minute.”
He took the time to pass the word, hushing the men. Oddly, he found one standing apart from the others. Bornhald was at the edge of their light, standing on the bridge, looking back the way they’d come.
“What is that?” he said to Perrin. “I hear something. A breeze. It will be good to feel some wind. It’s so still here, like death itself . . .”
“Blood and ashes,” Neald said, hand to his head nearby.
Perrin got them moving as Saerin struck out, leading the way across a bridge—one they hadn’t taken before. Perrin hurried to help with the wounded again. Nearby, Seonid tried to walk while at the same time applying Healing to one of the wounded Mayeners, who had been thrown across a pack mule. Perrin couldn’t smell any emotions from him any longer.
“This place,” Seonid said. “Healing through the taint of it is uncomfortable. I worry I’m going to leave wounds infected, not Healed.”
“No more channeling,” Perrin said. “Not even to Heal.” He looked to the Mayener who led the pack mule bearing his unconscious friend. “I’m sorry.”
Perrin joined Saerin, who was reading her notebook. “I don’t know if this will work,” she whispered to him. “The notes here say there’s a Waygate four bridges in this direction, but they
don’t say where it leads.”
Four more bridges? That would take time. As they started across the next one, men started muttering—and he realized that their ears were only now picking up what he’d noticed earlier. That howling wind, growing louder and louder.
Four more bridges. Perrin made a decision. He stopped everyone in place on their current bridge, hushing them. Then he told them to huddle down, stay quiet, and fully close the shields on their lanterns.
The order drew panicked expressions. Arganda looked at him as if he’d already been taken by the Wind and had gone mad.
“This is our best bet,” Perrin told them. “We have to hope that it will come to the Waygate, where the lights were released, but won’t sense us out here.”
“And if it does?” one of the Whitecloaks asked.
“Hope it doesn’t,” Perrin said, a dread growing within him. “Now. Do as I said.”
The men did it, bless them, one by one closing their lanterns. Plunging them all into darkness.
Blackness became absolute. Nobody spoke, even to whisper. He could still smell them, though. Panicked emotions, terror at being in the darkness of this place. He could smell their sweat and their worry.
They all could hear the sounds of the wind now, the rushing breeze, the howling coming from the place they’d left. Perrin shifted his hammer back and forth between his hands, knowing full well that it would be useless if Machin Shin reached them. He forced himself to stop.
The sounds of the wind increased to a distant, terrible roar. Then, Perrin started to pick out the words.
. . . blood, so wet, so wet to bleed, drink it in, drink and drink . . .
Light. He held his breath.
. . . so sweet, so sweet to kill, to rend, to drink and drink and drink. To drink it, to drink his and kill him. To be mine, to be mine for now, to rend, to break while he shouts, to crunch the bones, to make them mine. To kill, and maim, and crunch, and sing . . . Aybara!
The wind turned toward them, growing louder. In that moment, Perrin knew that no hiding would work. It had caught their scent. It knew they were here.
“Lights on!” he roared, leaping to his feet. “And run!”
CHAPTER 9
Song and Fire
The men had been waiting for this. They rammed open their shielded lanterns and began running along the bridge.
They knew.
Perrin urged them on, yelling at them to pick up their pace. There was no longer time for whispers or stealth. He grabbed Azi, a Two Rivers man, and helped him along. He practically carried the limping man, but Azi wasn’t the only straggler. Galad stuck beside Golever, and the Aes Sedai held back with the rest of the Two Rivers men, trying to usher the former prisoners. Many of them were weak from obvious lack of food.
The wind howled in the distance, drawing closer.
Light, Perrin thought. Even if we were all galloping on horseback, we wouldn’t to be able to outrun it. There’s no way.
He passed Azi off to Seonid’s Warders as they reached the next Island. He hung back, waving the force forward. “Keep running!” he shouted.
Something about the urgency in his voice must have alarmed them, for his yell sent a wave of motion through the former prisoners, who spilled off the bridge onto the Island. Galad and Golever went next, though one figure in white lingered—alone on the bridge, looking back at the darkness.
“What is that?” Bornhald asked.
“That’s our end, if you don’t keep moving!” Perrin shouted.
“It’s coming for me, isn’t it?” Bornhald said. “Light, it knows my name. How can it know my name?”
“Come on, you fool,” Perrin said, yanking him by the shoulder. That pulled Bornhald out of his stupor, and he fell into a dash beside Perrin. But he kept looking over his shoulder as they ran, while most everyone else kept their eyes forward or heads bowed as Saerin led them across the next bridge.
They didn’t want to know. Perrin didn’t blame them. The rushing sound advanced, and what had at first been a breeze now blew like a terrible howl, with overlapping voices. It drowned out Perrin’s shouts to keep moving.
. . . death, so delicious, so sweet to taste, to taste your life as it drains. Blood, blood, blood and pain. Pain, pain, pain and death. Death, death, death and loss . . .
It was like a thousand voices, each chanting. The Black Wind was a thing of the Ways, an ancient thing, the essence of madness itself.
“How can it know . . .” Bornhald shouted, his voice nearly consumed in that of the Black Wind. “There was so much blood. A person couldn’t have done that, could they? Even Ordeith? It wasn’t right. They couldn’t have all been Darkfriends. Some of them were just children . . .”
They reached the next Island. The wind tugged at Perrin’s cloak, and . . . and then he felt it in his face. The terrible wind rushed around, coming in from all directions. His party pulled up short as Saerin, at the front, stopped in place. Clothing fluttered and rippled as the mass of people pulled in closer, huddling into their frail light.
“It’s here,” Bornhald said, stopping at the edge of the Island.
“Grady! Neald!” Perrin said, turning and pointing Mah’alleinir into the darkness.
. . . Aybara, Aybara, Aybara. Promised, to drink, promised to kill, so sweet, sing the sweetness, sing it to us. Tiny souls have become greatness to feast upon, to feast and sing. Sing, sing, sing!
The two Asha’man released streams of yellow fire, sickly. Particles of black ash floated down from the streams like corrupted snow.
Their channeling drove back the regular darkness of the Ways, but not the thing that had arrived. A blackness made incarnate, a churning wind that streamed and spun upon itself, wave upon wave of motion.
Its voice . . . its voices . . . were thunderous. Screams of pleasure, even as the fire struck it. Blood to spill, bones to splinter, to grind, to feast upon!
Behind Perrin, men fell to their knees. Saerin screamed at the front of the group, and released her own sickly beam of fire, joined by those of Seonid and Edarra, spraying in all directions. The wind rushed around them, and the shifting blackness of its substance undulated, shivered. Bits of light exploded outward from it, like frozen sparks. For a moment, Perrin actually thought they were winning.
Then the rushing blackness around them tightened, drawing closer and closer. By the light of the fires, by the sounds of the Black Wind singing, by men yelling, by the feel of wind whipping at his face and chilling his skin—he saw it, smelled it, heard it. Machin Shin was vastly larger than he’d assumed. Perrin had focused on the patch in front of them, the patch that they were fighting. His senses revealed something else, a deep, vast blackness that extended far into the distance.
This blackness wasn’t just the size of an army, it would have dwarfed most cities. While a piece of it writhed from the fires of the channelers, the greater portion of it swept in and enveloped their Island.
They were surrounded. The bridges leading away from the Island lay inside the mad spinning of Machin Shin. The wind became a vortex, buffeting men and women who watched with horror as the fire of the channelers felt smaller and smaller, grew somehow sicklier and sicklier.
Grady and Neald—white-faced and trembling—stopped for a moment. Then something new shot from their fingers: white-hot lines of light, one striking in either direction.
Those lines of light left afterimages in Perrin’s eyes. They were so intense, it was difficult to look at them—in fact, being near them made him feel as if he were going to burst into flame. Balefire, the forbidden weave.
The balefire drove back portions of the wind, causing it to bubble like leather thrown on a fire. Still, the wind continued its song, its mad chanting.
. . . pain, so sweet, so sweet to sing the song, so wonderful to break and kill . . .
It seemed—somehow—more hungry for being held back a short time. Perrin set his hammer on his shoulder, turning about, his heart thumping. A way out. There had to be a way out.
Gaul stepped up beside him. “And so we wake,” he said softly. “I should have liked to know whether or not this final battle was won. Perhaps I shall know, if I dream again.”
“So much blood,” Bornhald said. “Aybara, I’m sorry for what . . . what we did . . .” The scent of the man’s emotions struck Perrin, despite the terrible wind. The pain, the horror, the loss, the fury. “I’m sorry for your family. It was Ordeith. I should have . . . I . . .”
Bornhald looked to Perrin once, seeming hollow. Then he ran into the blackness.
“Bornhald!” Perrin bellowed, reaching forward as the wind surged like a snapping predator, engulfing the Whitecloak.
. . . souls, so sweet! So sweet to gnash and the end to know. To know, and to rend, and to rip, and to feast, and to blood! The blood to spill and drink!
Machin Shin howled and pulled tighter, like a coiling serpent. Its voices overlapped like a choir of the demented, each member screaming his own song, trying to yell over his neighbors. Perrin backed away, raising an arm against the increasingly powerful wind. Gaul reluctantly joined him, the others pulling into a huddle in the very center of the Island.
The channelers continued to pour fire and light in all directions. But it was as if they were trying to destroy air itself; Machin Shin had no true substance to destroy.
Perrin’s back hit that of Galad, the people all pressed together, with the wind spinning around them. Perrin lowered his hammer, thinking of Faile. Of Rand, and the Last Hunt, in which Perrin would not run. Light send that his failure here would not doom them all.
He looked at Gaul, who nodded. A final charge, then. Into the darkness.
Perrin could no longer hear the shouts of the men and women with him. He could only hear the roar of the wind and the chanting of voices. New ones faded in and out, and the cohesion—if there had ever been one—fractured.
. . . sweet! Sing the sweetness! Say it . . .
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