There were only short rations of bread and cheese to begin with, and what there was gave out by the end of the first day. Perrin set snares along likely rabbit runs—they looked old, but it was worth a chance—while Egwene began laying a fire. When he was done, he decided to try his hand with his sling before the light failed altogether. They had not seen a sign of anything at all alive, but. . . . To his surprise, he jumped a scrawny rabbit almost at once. He was so surprised when it burst from under a bush right beneath his feet that it almost got away, but he fetched it at forty paces, just as it was darting around a tree.
When he came back to the camp with the rabbit, Egwene had broken limbs all laid for the fire, but she was kneeling beside the pile with her eyes closed. “What are you doing? You can’t wish a fire.”
Egwene gave a jump at his first words, and twisted around to stare at him with a hand to her throat. “You . . . you startled me.”
“I was lucky,” he said, holding up the rabbit. “Get your flint and steel. We eat well tonight, at least.”
“I don’t have a flint,” she said slowly. “It was in my pocket, and I lost it in the river.”
“Then how . . . ?”
“It was so easy back there on the riverbank, Perrin. Just the way Moiraine Sedai showed me. I just reached out, and. . . .” She gestured as if grasping for something, then let her hand fall with a sigh. “I can’t find it, now.”
Perrin licked his lips uneasily. “The . . . the Power?” She nodded, and he stared at her. “Are you crazy? I mean . . . the One Power! You can’t just play around with something like that.”
“It was so easy, Perrin. I can do it. I can channel the Power.”
He took a deep breath. “I’ll make a firebow, Egwene. Promise you won’t try this . . . this . . . thing again.”
“I will not.” Her jaw firmed in a way that made him sigh. “Would you give up that axe of yours, Perrin Aybara? Would you walk around with one hand tied behind your back? I won’t do it!”
“I’ll make the firebow,” he said wearily. “At least, don’t try it again tonight? Please?”
She acquiesced grudgingly, and even after the rabbit was roasting on a spit over the flames, he had the feeling she felt she could have done it better. She would not give up trying, either, every night, though the best she ever did was a trickle of smoke that vanished almost immediately. Her eyes dared him to say a word, and he wisely kept his mouth shut.
After that one hot meal, they subsisted on coarse wild tubers and a few young shoots. With still no sign of spring, none of it was plentiful, and none of it tasty, either. Neither complained, but not a meal passed without one or the other sighing regretfully, and they both knew it was for the tang of a bit of cheese, or even the smell of bread. A find of mushrooms—Queen’s Crowns, the best—one afternoon in a shady part of the forest was enough to seem a great treat. They gobbled them down, laughing and telling stories from back in Emond’s Field, stories that began, “Do you remember when—” but the mushrooms did not last long, and neither did the laughter. There was little mirth in hunger.
Whichever was walking carried a sling, ready to let fly at the sight of a rabbit or squirrel, but the only time either hurled a stone was in frustration. The snares they set so carefully each evening yielded nothing at dawn, and they did not dare stay a day in one place to leave the snares out. Neither of them knew how far it was to Caemlyn, and neither would feel safe until they got there, if then. Perrin began to wonder if his stomach could shrink enough to make a hole all the way through his middle.
They made good time, as he saw it, but as they got farther and farther from the Arinelle without seeing a village, or even a farmhouse where they could ask directions, his doubts about his own plan grew. Egwene continued to appear outwardly as confident as when they set out, but he was sure that sooner or later she would say it would have been better to risk the Trollocs than to wander around lost for the rest of their lives. She never did, but he kept expecting it.
Two days from the river the land changed to thickly forested hills, as gripped by the tail end of winter as everywhere else, and a day after that the hills flattened out again, the dense forest broken by glades, often a mile or more across. Snow still lay in hidden hollows, and the air was brisk of a morning, and the wind cold always. Nowhere did they see a road, or a plowed field, or chimney smoke in the distance, or any other sign of human habitation—at least, none where men still dwelt.
Once the remains of tall stone ramparts encircled a hilltop. Parts of roofless stone houses stood inside the fallen circle. The forest had long swallowed it; trees grew right through everything, and spiderwebs of old creeper enveloped the big stone blocks. Another time they came on a stone tower, broken-topped and brown with old moss, leaning on the huge oak whose thick roots were slowly toppling it. But they found no place where men had breathed in living remembrance. Memories of Shadar Logoth kept them away from the ruins and hurried their footsteps until they were once more deep in places that seemed never to have known a human footstep.
Dreams plagued Perrin’s sleep, fearful dreams. Ba’alzamon was in them, chasing him through mazes, hunting him, but Perrin never met him face-to-face, so far as he remembered. And their journey had been enough to bring a few bad dreams. Egwene complained of nightmares about Shadar Logoth, especially the two nights after they found the ruined fort and the abandoned tower. Perrin kept his own counsel even when he woke sweating and shaking in the dark. She was looking to him to lead them safely to Caemlyn, not share worries about which they could do nothing.
He was walking at Bela’s head, wondering if they would find anything to eat this evening, when he first caught the smell. The mare flared her nostrils and swung her head in the next moment. He seized her bridle before she could whicker.
“That’s smoke,” Egwene said excitedly. She leaned forward in the saddle, drew a deep breath. “A cookfire. Somebody is roasting dinner. Rabbit.”
“Maybe,” Perrin said cautiously, and her eager smile faded. He exchanged his sling for the wicked half-moon of the axe. His hands opened and closed uncertainly on the thick haft. It was a weapon, but neither his hidden practice behind the forge nor Lan’s teachings had really prepared him to use it as one. Even the battle before Shadar Logoth was too vague in his mind to give him any confidence. He could never quite manage that void that Rand and the Warder talked about, either.
Sunlight slanted through the trees behind them, and the forest was a still mass of dappled shadows. The faint smell of woodsmoke drifted around them, tinged with the aroma of cooking meat. It could be rabbit, he thought, and his stomach grumbled. And it could be something else, he reminded himself. He looked at Egwene; she was watching him. There were responsibilities to being leader.
“Wait here,” he said softly. She frowned, but he cut her off as she opened her mouth. “And be quiet! We don’t know who it is, yet.” She nodded. Reluctantly, but she did it. Perrin wondered why that did not work when he was trying to make her take his turn riding. Drawing a deep breath, he started for the source of the smoke.
He had not spent as much time in the forests around Emond’s Field as Rand or Mat, but still he had done his share of hunting rabbits. He crept from tree to tree without so much as snapping a twig. It was not long before he was peering around the bole of a tall oak with spreading, serpentine limbs that bent to touch the ground then rose again. Beyond lay a campfire, and a lean, sun-browned man was leaning against one of the limbs not far from the flames.
At least he was not a Trolloc, but he was the strangest fellow Perrin had ever seen. For one thing, his clothes all seemed to be made from animal skins, with the fur still on, even his boots and the odd, flat-topped round cap on his head. His cloak was a crazy quilt of rabbit and squirrel; his trousers appeared to be made from the long-haired hide of a brown and white goat. Gathered at the back of his neck with a cord, his graying brown hair hung to his waist. A thick beard fanned across half his chest. A long knife hung at his belt, almost
a sword, and a bow and quiver stood propped against a limb close to hand.
The man leaned back with his eyes closed, apparently asleep, but Perrin did not stir from his concealment. Six sticks slanted over the fellow’s fire, and on each stick a rabbit was skewered, roasted brown and now and then dripping juice that hissed in the flames. The smell of them, so close, made his mouth water.
“You done drooling?” The man opened one eye and cocked it at Perrin’s hiding place. “You and your friend might as well sit and have a bite. I haven’t seen you eat much the last couple of days.”
Perrin hesitated, then stood slowly, still gripping his axe tightly. “You’ve been watching me for two days?”
The man chuckled deep in his throat. “Yes, I been watching you. And that pretty girl. Pushes you around like a bantam rooster, doesn’t she? Heard you, mostly. The horse is the only one of you doesn’t trample around loud enough to be heard five miles off. You going to ask her in, or are you intending to eat all the rabbit yourself?”
Perrin bristled; he knew he did not make much noise. You could not get close enough to a rabbit in the Waterwood to fetch it with a sling if you made noise. But the smell of rabbit made him remember that Egwene was hungry, too, not to mention waiting to discover if it was a Trolloc fire they had smelled.
He slipped the haft of his axe through the belt loop and raised his voice. “Egwene! It’s all right! It is rabbit!” Offering his hand, he added in a more normal tone, “My name is Perrin. Perrin Aybara.”
The man considered his hand before taking it awkwardly, as if unused to shaking hands. “I’m called Elyas,” he said, looking up. “Elyas Machera.”
Perrin gasped, and nearly dropped Elyas’s hand. The man’s eyes were yellow, like bright, polished gold. Some memory tickled at the back of Perrin’s mind, then fled. All he could think of right then was that all of the Trollocs’ eyes he had seen had been almost black.
Egwene appeared, cautiously leading Bela. She tied the mare’s reins to one of the smaller branches of the oak, and made polite sounds when Perrin introduced her to Elyas, but her eyes kept drifting to the rabbits. She did not seem to notice the man’s eyes. When Elyas motioned them to the food, she fell to with a will. Perrin hesitated only a minute longer before joining her.
Elyas waited silently while they ate. Perrin was so hungry he tore off pieces of meat so hot he had to juggle them from hand to hand before he could hold them in his mouth. Even Egwene showed little of her usual neatness; greasy juice ran down her chin. Day faded into twilight before they began to slow down, moonless darkness closing in around the fire, and then Elyas spoke.
“What are you doing out here? There isn’t a house inside fifty miles in any direction.”
“We’re going to Caemlyn,” Egwene said. “Perhaps you could—” Her eyebrows lifted coolly as Elyas threw back his head and roared with laughter. Perrin stared at him, a rabbit leg half raised to his mouth.
“Caemlyn?” Elyas wheezed when he could talk again. “The path you’re following, the line you’ve taken the last two days, you’ll pass a hundred miles or more north of Caemlyn.”
“We were going to ask directions,” Egwene said defensively. “We just haven’t found any villages or farms, yet.”
“And none you will,” Elyas said, chuckling. “The way you’re going, you can travel all the way to the Spine of the World without seeing another human. Of course, if you managed to climb the Spine—it can be done, some places—you could find people in the Aiel Waste, but you wouldn’t like it there. You’d broil by day, and freeze by night, and die of thirst anytime. It takes an Aielman to find water in the Waste, and they don’t like strangers much. No, not much, I’d say.” He set off into another, more furious, burst of laughter, this time actually rolling on the ground. “Not much at all,” he managed.
Perrin shifted uneasily. Are we eating with a madman?
Egwene frowned, but she waited until Elyas’s mirth faded a little, then said, “Perhaps you could show us the way. You seem to know a good deal more about where places are than we do.”
Elyas stopped laughing. Raising his head, he replaced his round fur cap, which had fallen off while he was rolling about, and stared at her from under lowered brows. “I don’t much like people,” he said in a flat voice. “Cities are full of people. I don’t go near villages, or even farms, very often. Villagers, farmers, they don’t like my friends. I wouldn’t even have helped you if you hadn’t been stumbling around as helpless and innocent as newborn cubs.”
“But at least you can tell us which way to go,” she insisted. “If you direct us to the nearest village, even if it’s fifty miles away, surely they’ll give us directions to Caemlyn.”
“Be still,” Elyas said. “My friends are coming.”
Bela suddenly whinnied in fear, and began jerking to pull her reins free. Perrin half rose as shapes appeared all around them in the darkening forest. Bela reared and twisted, screaming.
“Quiet the mare,” Elyas said. “They won’t hurt her. Or you, if you’re still.”
Four wolves stepped into the firelight, shaggy, waist-high forms with jaws that could break a man’s leg. As if the people were not there they walked up to the fire and lay down between the humans. In the darkness among the trees firelight reflected off the eyes of more wolves, on all sides.
Yellow eyes, Perrin thought. Like Elyas’s eyes. That was what he had been trying to remember. Carefully watching the wolves among them, he reached for his axe.
“I would not do that,” Elyas said. “If they think you mean harm, they’ll stop being friendly.”
They were staring at him, those four wolves, Perrin saw. He had the feeling that all the wolves, those in the trees, as well, were staring at him. It made his skin itch. Cautiously he moved his hands away from the axe. He imagined he could feel the tension ease among the wolves. Slowly he sat back down; his hands shook until he gripped his knees to stop them. Egwene was so stiff she almost quivered. One wolf, close to black with a lighter gray patch on his face, lay nearly touching her.
Bela had ceased her screaming and rearing. Instead she stood trembling and shifting in an attempt to keep all of the wolves in view, kicking occasionally to show the wolves that she could, intending to sell her life dearly. The wolves seemed to ignore her and everyone else. Tongues lolling out of their mouths, they waited at their ease.
“There,” Elyas said. “That’s better.”
“Are they tame?” Egwene asked faintly, and hopefully, too. “They’re . . . pets?”
Elyas snorted. “Wolves don’t tame, girl, not even as well as men. They’re my friends. We keep each other company, hunt together, converse, after a fashion. Just like any friends. Isn’t that right, Dapple?” A wolf with fur that faded through a dozen shades of gray, dark and light, turned her head to look at him.
“You talk to them?” Perrin marveled.
“It isn’t exactly talking,” Elyas replied slowly. “The words don’t matter, and they aren’t exactly right, either. Her name isn’t Dapple. It’s something that means the way shadows play on a forest pool at a midwinter dawn, with the breeze rippling the surface, and the tang of ice when the water touches the tongue, and a hint of snow before nightfall in the air. But that isn’t quite it, either. You can’t say it in words. It’s more of a feeling. That’s the way wolves talk. The others are Burn, Hopper, and Wind.” Burn had an old scar on his shoulder that might explain his name, but there was nothing about the other two wolves to give any indication of what their names might mean.
For all the man’s gruffness, Perrin thought Elyas was pleased to have the chance to talk to another human. He seemed eager enough to do it, at least. Perrin eyed the wolves’ teeth glistening in the firelight and thought it might be a good idea to keep him talking. “How . . . how did you learn to talk to wolves, Elyas?”
“They found out,” Elyas replied, “I didn’t. Not at first. That’s always the way of it, I understand. The wolves find you, not you them. Some people
thought me touched by the Dark One, because wolves started appearing wherever I went. I suppose I thought so, too, sometimes. Most decent folk began to avoid me, and the ones who sought me out weren’t the kind I wanted to know, one way or another. Then I noticed there were times when the wolves seemed to know what I was thinking, to respond to what was in my head. That was the real beginning. They were curious about me. Wolves can sense people, usually, but not like this. They were glad to find me. They say it’s been a long time since they hunted with men, and when they say a long time, the feeling I get is like a cold wind howling all the way down from the First Day.”
“I never heard of men hunting with wolves,” Egwene said. Her voice was not entirely steady, but the fact that the wolves were just lying there seemed to give her heart.
If Elyas heard her, he gave no sign. “Wolves remember things differently from the way people do,” he said. His strange eyes took on a faraway look, as if he were drifting off on the flow of memory himself. “Every wolf remembers the history of all wolves, or at least the shape of it. Like I said, it can’t be put into words very well. They remember running down prey side-by-side with men, but it was so long ago that it’s more like the shadow of a shadow than a memory.”
“That’s very interesting,” Egwene said, and Elyas looked at her sharply. “No, I mean it. It is.” She wet her lips. “Could . . . ah . . . could you teach us to talk to them?”
Elyas snorted again. “It can’t be taught. Some can do it, some can’t. They say he can.” He pointed at Perrin.
Perrin looked at Elyas’s finger as if it were a knife. He really is a madman. The wolves were staring at him again. He shifted uncomfortably.
“You say you’re going to Caemlyn,” Elyas said, “but that still doesn’t explain what you’re doing out here, days from anywhere.” He tossed back his fur-patch cloak and lay down on his side, propped on one elbow and waiting expectantly.
Perrin glanced at Egwene. Early on they had concocted a story for when they found people, to explain where they were going without bringing them any trouble. Without letting anyone know where they were really from, or where they were really going, eventually. Who knew what careless word might reach a Fade’s ear? They had worked on it every day, patching it together, honing out flaws. And they had decided Egwene was the one to tell it. She was better with words than he was, and she claimed she could always tell when he was lying by his face.
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