The Dragon Reborn

by Jordan, Robert

  “Every queen of Manetheren was an Aes Sedai, and the king the Warder bound to her. I can’t imagine a place like that, but that is what the books say. It was a large land—most of Andor and Ghealdan and more besides—but the capital, the city itself, was in the Mountains of Mist. That is where I think the Horn is. Unless you four lead me to it.”

  His hackles stirred. She was lecturing him as if he were an untaught village lout. “You’ll not find the Horn or Manetheren. The city was destroyed during the Trolloc Wars, when the last queen drew too much of the One Power to destroy the Dreadlords who had killed her husband.” Moiraine had told him the names of that king and queen, but he did not remember them.

  “Not in Manetheren, farmboy,” she said calmly, “though a land such as that would make a good hiding place. But there were other nations, other cities, in the Mountains of Mist, so old that not even Aes Sedai remember them. And think of all those stories about it being bad luck to enter the mountains. What better place for the Horn to be hidden than in one of those forgotten cities.”

  “I have heard stories of something being hidden in the mountains.” Would she believe him? He had never been good at lying. “The stories did not say what, but it’s supposed to be the greatest treasure in the world, so maybe it is the Horn. But the Mountains of Mist stretch for hundreds of leagues. If you are going to find it, you should not waste time following us. You’ll need it all to find the Horn before Orban and Gann.”

  “I told you, those two have some strange idea the Horn is hidden in the Great Blackwood.” She smiled up at him. Her mouth was not too big at all, when she smiled. “And I told you a Hunter has to follow strange trails. You are lucky Orban and Gann were injured fighting all those Aielmen, or they might well be aboard, too. At least I will not get in your way, or try to take over, or pick a fight with the Warder.”

  He growled disgustedly. “We are just travelers on our way to Illian, girl. What is your name? If I have to share this ship with you for days yet, I can’t keep calling you girl.”

  “I call myself Mandarb.” He could not stop the guffaw that burst out of him. Those tilted eyes regarded him with heat. “I will teach you something, farmboy.” Her voice remained level. Barely. “In the Old Tongue, Mandarb means ‘blade.’ It is a name worthy of a Hunter of the Horn!”

  He managed to get his laughter under control, and hardly wheezed at all as he pointed to the rope pen between the masts. “You see that black stallion? His name is Mandarb.”

  The heat went out of her eyes, and spots of color bloomed on her cheeks. “Oh. I was born Zarine Bashere, but Zarine is no name for a Hunter. In the stories, Hunters have names like Rogosh Eagle-eye.”

  She looked so crestfallen that he hastened to say, “I like the name Zarine. It suits you.” The heat flashed back into her eyes, and for a moment he thought she was about to produce one of her knives again. “It is late, Zarine. I want some sleep.”

  He turned his back to start for the hatch that led belowdeck, prickles running across his shoulders. Crewmen still padded up the deck and back, working the sweeps. Fool. A girl would not stick a knife in me. Not with all these people watching. Would she? Just as he reached the hatch, she called to him.

  “Farmboy! Perhaps I will call myself Faile. My father used to call me that, when I was little. It means ‘falcon.’ ”

  He stiffened and almost missed the first step of the ladder. Coincidence. He made himself go down without looking back toward her. It has to be. The passageway was dark, but enough moonlight filtered down behind him for him to make his way. Someone was snoring loudly in one of the cabins. Min, why did you have to go seeing things?

  CHAPTER

  36

  Daughter of the Night

  Realizing that he had no way of knowing which cabin was supposed to be his, he put his head into several. They were dark, and all of them had two men asleep in the narrow beds built against each side, all but one, which held Loial, sitting on the floor between the beds—and barely fitting—scribbling in his cloth-bound book of notes by the light of a gimballed lantern. The Ogier wanted to talk about the events of the day, but Perrin, jaws creaking with the effort of holding his yawns in, thought the ship must have run far enough downriver by now to make it safe to sleep. Safe to dream. Even if they tried, wolves could not long keep pace with the sweeps and the current.

  Finally he found a windowless cabin with no one in it at all, which suited him just as well. He wanted to be alone. A coincidence in the name, that’s all, he thought as he lit the lantern mounted on the wall. Anyway, her real name is Zarine. But the girl with the high cheekbones and dark, tilted eyes was not uppermost in his thoughts. He put his bow and other belongings on one cramped bed, tossed his cloak over them, and sat on the other to tug off his boots.

  Elyas Machera had found a way to live with what he was, a man somehow linked with wolves, and he had not gone mad. Thinking back, Perrin was sure Elyas had been living that way for years before he ever met the man. He wants to be that way. He accepts it, anyway. That was no solution. Perrin did not want to live that way, did not want to accept. But if you have the bar stock to make a knife, you accept it and make a knife, even if you’d like a woodaxe. No! My life is more than iron to be hammered into shape.

  Cautiously, he reached out with his mind, feeling for wolves, and found—nothing. Oh, there was a dim impression of wolves somewhere in the distance, but it faded even as he touched it. For the first time in so long, he was alone. Blessedly alone.

  Blowing out the lantern, he lay down, for the first time in days. How in the Light will Loial manage in one of these? Those all but sleepless nights rolled over him, exhaustion slacking his muscles. It came to him that he had managed to put the Aiel out of his head. And the Whitecloaks. Light-forsaken axe! Burn me, I wish I had never seen it, was his last thought before sleep.

  Thick gray fog surrounded him, dense enough low down that he could not see his own boots, and so heavy on every side that he could not make out anything ten paces away. There was surely nothing nearer. Anything at all might lie within it. The mist did not feel right; there was no dampness to it. He put a hand to his belt, seeking the comfort of knowing he could defend himself, and gave a start. His axe was not there.

  Something moved in the fog, a swirling in the grayness. Something coming his way.

  He tensed, wondering if it was better to run or stand and fight with his bare hands, wondering if there was anything to fight.

  The billowing furrow boring through the fog resolved itself into a wolf, its shaggy form almost one with the heavy mist.

  Hopper?

  The wolf hesitated, then came to stand beside him. It was Hopper—he was certain—but something about the wolf’s stance, something in the yellow eyes that looked up briefly to meet his, demanded silence, in mind as well as body. Those eyes demanded that he follow, too.

  He laid a hand on the wolf’s back, and as he did, Hopper started forward. He let himself be led. The fur under his hand was thick and shaggy. It felt real.

  The fog began to thicken, until only his hand told him Hopper was still there, until a glance down did not even show him his own chest. Just gray mist. He might as well have been wrapped in new-sheared wool for all he could see. It struck him that he had heard nothing, either. Not even the sound of his own footsteps. He wiggled his toes, and was relieved to feel the boots on his feet.

  The gray became darker, and he and the wolf walked through pitch-blackness. He could not see his hand when he touched his nose. He could not see his nose, for that matter. He tried closing his eyes for a moment, and could not tell any difference. There was still no sound. His hand felt the rough hair of Hopper’s back, but he was not sure he could feel anything under his boots.

  Suddenly Hopper stopped, forcing him to halt, too. He looked around . . . and snapped his eyes shut. He could tell a difference, now. And feel something, too, a queasy twisting of his stomach. He made himself open his eyes and look down.

  What he sa
w could not have been there, not unless he and Hopper were standing in midair. He could see nothing of the wolf or himself, as if neither had bodies at all—that thought nearly tied his stomach into knots—but below him, as clear as if lit by a thousand lamps, stretched a vast array of mirrors, seemingly hanging in blackness though as level as if they stood on a vast floor. They stretched as far as he could see in every direction, but right beneath his feet, there was a clear space. And people in it. Suddenly he could hear their voices as well as if he had been standing among them.

  “Great Lord,” one of the men muttered, “where is this place?” He looked around once, flinching at his image cast back at him many thousandfold, and held his eyes forward after that. The others huddled around him seemed even more afraid. “I was asleep in Tar Valon, Great Lord. I am asleep in Tar Valon! Where is this place? Have I gone mad?”

  Some of the men around him wore ornate coats full of embroidery, others plainer garb, while some seemed to be naked, or in their smallclothes.

  “I, too, sleep,” a naked man nearly screamed. “In Tear. I remember lying down with my wife!”

  “And I do sleep in Illian,” a man in red and gold said, sounding shaken. “I know that I do sleep, but that cannot be. I know that I do dream, but that does be impossible. Where does this be, Great Lord? Are you really come to me?”

  The dark-haired man who faced them was garbed in black, with silver lace at his throat and wrists. Now and again he put a hand to his chest, as if it hurt him. There was light everywhere down there, coming from nowhere, but this man below Perrin seemed cloaked in shadow. Darkness rolled around him, caressed him.

  “Silence!” The black-clothed man did not speak loudly, but he had no need to. For the space of that word, he had raised his head; his eyes and mouth were holes boring into a raging forge-fire, all flame and fiery glow.

  Perrin knew him, then. Ba’alzamon. He was staring down at Ba’alzamon himself. Fear struck through him like hammered spikes. He would have run, but he could not feel his feet.

  Hopper shifted. He felt the thick fur under his hand and gripped it hard. Something real. Something more real, he hoped, than what he saw. But he knew that both were real.

  The men huddling together cowered.

  “You have been given tasks,” Ba’alzamon said. “Some of these tasks you have carried out. At others, you have failed.” Now and again his eyes and mouth vanished in flame again, and the mirrors flashed with reflected fire. “Those who have been marked for death must die. Those who have been marked for taking must bow to me. To fail the Great Lord of the Dark cannot be forgiven.” Fire shone through his eyes, and the darkness around him roiled and spun. “You.” His finger pointed out the man who had spoken of Tar Valon, a fellow dressed like a merchant, in plainly cut clothes of the finest cloth. The others shied away from him as if he had blackbile fever, leaving him to cower alone. “You allowed the boy to escape Tar Valon.”

  The man screamed, and began to quiver like a file struck against an anvil. He seemed to become less solid, and his scream thinned with him.

  “You all dream,” Ba’alzamon said, “but what happens in this dream is real.” The shrieking man was only a bundle of mist shaped like a man, his scream far distant, and then even the mist was gone. “I fear he will never wake.” He laughed, and his mouth roared flame. “The rest of you will not fail me again. Begone! Wake, and obey!” The other men vanished.

  For a moment Ba’alzamon stood alone, then suddenly there was a woman with him, clad all in white and silver.

  Shock hit Perrin. He could never forget a woman so beautiful. She was the woman from his dream, the one who had urged him to glory.

  An ornate silver throne appeared behind her, and she sat, carefully arranging her silken skirts. “You make free use of my domain,” she said.

  “Your domain?” Ba’alzamon said. “You claim it yours, then? Do you no longer serve the Great Lord of the Dark?” The darkness around him thickened for an instant, seemed to boil.

  “I serve,” she said quickly. “I have served the Lord of the Twilight long. Long did I lie imprisoned for my service, in an endless, dreamless sleep. Only Gray Men and Myrddraal are denied dreams. Even Trollocs can dream. Dreams were always mine, to use and walk. Now I am free again, and I will use what is mine.”

  “What is yours,” Ba’alzamon said. The blackness swirling ’round him seemed mirthful. “You always thought yourself greater than you were, Lanfear.”

  The name cut at Perrin like a newly honed knife. One of the Forsaken had been in his dreams. Moiraine had been right. Some of them were free.

  The woman in white was on her feet, the throne gone. “I am as great as I am. What have your plans come to? Three thousand years and more of whispering in ears and pulling the strings of throned puppets like an Aes Sedai!” Her voice invested the name with all scorn. “Three thousand years, and yet Lews Therin walks the world again, and these Aes Sedai all but have him leashed. Can you control him? Can you turn him? He was mine before ever that straw-haired chit Ilyena saw him! He will be mine again!”

  “Do you serve yourself now, Lanfear?” Ba’alzamon’s voice was soft, but flame raged continuously in his eyes and mouth. “Have you abandoned your oaths to the Great Lord of the Dark?” For an instant the darkness nearly obliterated him, only the glowing fires showing through. “They are not so easily broken as the oaths to the Light you forsook, proclaiming your new master in the very Hall of the Servants. Your master claims you forever, Lanfear. Will you serve, or do you choose an eternity of pain, of endless dying without release?”

  “I serve.” Despite her words, she stood tall and defiant. “I serve the Great Lord of the Dark and none other. Forever!”

  The vast array of mirror began to vanish as if black waves rolled in over it, ever closer to the center. The tide rolled over Ba’alzamon and Lanfear. There was only blackness.

  Perrin felt Hopper move, and he was more than glad to follow, guided only by the feel of fur under his hand. It was not until he was moving that he realized he could. He tried to puzzle out what he had seen, without any success. Ba’alzamon and Lanfear. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. For some reason, Lanfear frightened him more than Ba’alzamon did. Perhaps because she had been in his dreams in the mountains. Light! One of the Forsaken in my dreams! Light! And unless he had missed something, she had defied the Dark One. He had been told and taught that the Shadow could have no power over you if you denied it; but how could a Darkfriend—not just a Darkfriend; one of the Forsaken!—defy the Shadow? I must be mad, like Simion’s brother. These dreams have driven me mad!

  Slowly the blackness became fog again, and the fog gradually thinned until he walked out of it with Hopper onto a grassy hillside bright with daylight. Birds began to sing from a thicket at the foot of the hill. He looked back. A hilly plain dotted with clumps of trees stretched to the horizon. There was no sign of fog anywhere. The big, grizzled wolf stood watching him.

  “What was that?” he demanded, struggling in his mind to turn the question to thoughts the wolf could understand. “Why did you show it to me? What was it?”

  Emotions and images flooded his thoughts, and his mind put words to them. What you must see. Be careful, Young Bull. This place is dangerous. Be wary as a cub hunting porcupine. That came as something closer to Small Thorny Back, but his mind named the animal the way he knew it as a man. You are too young, too new.

  “Was it real?”

  All is real, what is seen, and what is not seen. That seemed to be all the answer Hopper was going to give.

  “Hopper, how are you here? I saw you die. I felt you die!”

  All are here. All brothers and sisters that are, all that were, all that will be. Perrin knew that wolves did not smile, not the way humans did, but for an instant he had the impression that Hopper was grinning. Here, I soar like the eagle. The wolf gathered himself and leaped, up into the air. Up and up it carried him, until he dwindled to a speck in the sky, and a last thought came.
To soar.

  Perrin stared after him with his mouth hanging open. He did it. His eyes burned suddenly, and he cleared his throat and scrubbed at his nose. I will be crying like a girl, next. Without thinking, he looked around to see if anyone had seen him, and that quickly everything changed.

  He was standing on a rise, with shadowy, indistinct dips and swells all around him. They seemed to fade into the distance too soon. Rand stood below him. Rand, and a ragged circle of Myrddraal and men and women his eyes seemed to slide right past. Dogs howled somewhere in the distance, and Perrin knew they were hunting something. Myrddraal scent and the stink of burned sulphur filled the air. Perrin’s hackles rose.

  The circle of Myrddraal and people came closer to Rand, all walking as if asleep. And Rand began to kill them. Balls of fire flew from his hands and consumed two. Lightning flashed from above to shrivel others. Bars of light like white-hot steel flew from his fists to more. And the survivors continued to walk slowly closer, as if none of them saw what was happening. One by one they died, until none were left, and Rand sank down on his knees, panting. Perrin was not sure whether he was laughing or crying; it seemed to be some of each.

  Shapes appeared over the rises, more people coming, more Myrddraal, all intent on Rand.

  Perrin cupped his hands to his mouth. “Rand! Rand, there are more coming!”

  Rand looked up at him from his crouch, snarling, sweat slicking his face.

  “Rand, they’re—!”

  “Burn you!” Rand howled.

  Light burned Perrin’s eyes, and pain seared everything.

  Groaning, he rolled into a ball on the narrow bed, the light still burning behind his eyelids. His chest hurt. He raised a hand to it and winced when he felt a burn under his shirt, a spot no bigger than a silver penny.

  Bit by bit he forced his knotted muscles to let him straighten his legs and lie flat in the dark cabin. Moiraine. I have to tell Moiraine this time. Just have to wait till the pain goes away.