The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  A wolf lay in the corner of the room. It was large and grizzled, fur the color of a pale gray river stone, and scarred from a lifetime of battles and hunts. The wolf laid its head on its paws, watching Perrin. That was natural. Of course there was a wolf in the corner. Why wouldn’t there be? It was Hopper.

  Perrin worked, enjoying the deep, burning heat of the forge, the feel of the sweat trailing down his arms, the scent of the fire. He shaped the length of iron, one blow for every second beat of his heart. The metal never grew cool, but instead retained its malleable red-yellow.

  What am I making? Perrin picked up the length of glowing iron with his tongs. The air warped around it.

  Pound, pound, pound, Hopper sent, communicating in images and scents. Like a pup jumping at butterflies.

  Hopper didn’t see the point of reshaping metal, and found it amusing that men did such things. To a wolf, a thing was what it was. Why go through so much effort to change it into something else?

  Perrin set the length of iron aside. It cooled immediately, fading from yellow, to orange, to crimson, to a dull black. Perrin had pounded it into a misshapen nugget, perhaps the size of two fists. Master Luhhan would be ashamed to see such shoddy work. Perrin needed to discover what he was making soon, before his master returned.

  No. That was wrong. The dream shook, and the walls grew misty.

  I’m not an apprentice. Perrin raised a thick-gloved hand to his head. I’m not in the Two Rivers any longer. I’m a man, a married man.

  Perrin grabbed the lump of unshaped iron with his tongs, thrusting it down on the anvil. It flared to life with heat. Everything is still wrong. Perrin smashed his hammer down. It should all be better now! But it isn’t. It seems worse somehow.

  He continued pounding. He hated those rumors that the men in camp whispered about him. Perrin had been sick and Berelain had cared for him. That was the end of it. But still those whispers continued.

  He slammed his hammer down over and over. Sparks flew in the air like splashes of water, far too many to come from one length of iron. He gave one final strike, then breathed in and out.

  The lump hadn’t changed. Perrin growled and grabbed the tongs, setting the lump aside and taking a fresh bar from the coals. He had to finish this piece. It was so important. But what was he making?

  He started pounding. I need to spend time with Faile, to figure things out, remove the awkwardness between us. But there’s no time! Those Light-blinded fools around him couldn’t take care of themselves. Nobody in the Two Rivers ever needed a lord before.

  He worked for a time, then held up the second chunk of iron. It cooled, turning into a misshapen, flattened length about as long as his forearm. Another shoddy piece. He set it aside.

  If you are unhappy, Hopper sent, take your she and leave. If you do not wish to lead the pack, another will. The wolf’s sending came as images of running across open fields, stalks of grain brushing along his snout. An open sky, a cool breeze, a thrill and lust for adventure. The scents of new rain, of wild pastures.

  Perrin reached his tongs into the coals for the final bar of iron. It burned a distant, dangerous yellow. “I can’t leave.” He held the bar up toward the wolf. “It would mean giving in to being a wolf. It would mean losing myself. I won’t do that.”

  He held the near-molten steel between them, and Hopper watched it, yellow pinpricks of light reflecting in the wolf’s eyes. This dream was so odd. In the past, Perrin’s ordinary dreams and the wolf dream had been separate. What did this blending mean?

  Perrin was afraid. He’d come to a precarious truce with the wolf inside of him. Growing too close to the wolves was dangerous, but that hadn’t prevented him turning to them when seeking Faile. Anything for Faile. In doing so, Perrin had nearly gone mad, and had even tried to kill Hopper.

  Perrin wasn’t nearly as in control as he’d assumed. The wolf within him could still reign.

  Hopper yawned, letting his tongue loll. He smelled of sweet amusement.

  “This is not funny.” Perrin set the final bar aside without working on it. It cooled, taking on the shape of a thin rectangle, not unlike the beginnings of a hinge.

  Problems are not amusing, Young Bull, Hopper agreed. But you are climbing back and forth over the same wall. Come. Let us run.

  Wolves lived in the moment; though they remembered the past and seemed to have an odd sense for the future, they didn’t worry about either. Not as men did. Wolves ran free, chasing the winds. To join them would be to ignore pain, sorrow and frustration. To be free…

  That freedom would cost Perrin too much. He’d lose Faile, would lose his very self. He didn’t want to be a wolf. He wanted to be a man. “Is there a way to reverse what has happened to me?”

  Reverse? Hopper cocked his head. To go backward was not a way of wolves.

  “Can I…” Perrin struggled to explain. “Can I run so far that the wolves cannot hear me?”

  Hopper seemed confused. No. “Confused” did not convey the pained sendings that came from Hopper. Nothingness, the scent of rotting meat, wolves howling in agony. Being cut off was not a thing Hopper could conceive.

  Perrin’s mind grew fuzzy. Why had he stopped forging? He had to finish. Master Luhhan would be disappointed! Those lumps were terrible. He should hide them. Create something else, show he was capable. He could forge. Couldn’t he?

  A hissing came from beside him. Perrin turned, surprised to see that one of the quenching barrels beside the hearth was boiling. Of course, he thought. The first pieces I finished. I dropped them in there.

  Suddenly anxious, Perrin grabbed his tongs and reached into the turbulent water, steam engulfing his face. He found something at the bottom and brought it out with his tongs: a chunk of white-hot metal.

  The glow faded. The chunk was actually a small steel figurine in the shape of a tall, thin man with a sword tied to his back. Each line on the figure was detailed, the ruffles of the shirt, the leather bands on the hilt of the tiny sword. But the face was distorted, the mouth open in a twisted scream.

  Aram, Perrin thought. His name was Aram.

  Perrin couldn’t show this to Master Luhhan! Why had he created such a thing?

  The figurine’s mouth opened farther, screaming soundlessly. Perrin cried out, dropping it from the tongs and jumping back. The figurine fell to the wood floor and shattered.

  Why do you think so much about that one? Hopper yawned a wide-jawed wolf yawn, tongue curling. It is common that a young pup challenges the pack leader. He was foolish, and you defeated him.

  “No,” Perrin whispered. “It is not common for humans. Not for friends.”

  The wall of the forge suddenly melted away, becoming smoke. It felt natural for that to happen. Outside, Perrin saw an open, daylit street. A city with broken-windowed shops.

  “Malden,” Perrin said.

  A smoky, translucent image of himself stood outside. The image wore no coat; his bare arms bulged with muscles. He kept his beard short, but it made him look older, more intense. Did Perrin really look that imposing? A squat fortress of a man with golden eyes that seemed to glow, carrying a gleaming half-moon axe as large as a man’s head.

  There was something wrong about that axe. Perrin stepped out of the smithy, passing through the shadowy version of himself. When he did, he became that image, axe heavy in his hand, work clothes vanishing and battle gear replacing it.

  He took off running. Yes, this was Malden. There were Aiel in the streets. He’d lived this battle, though he was much calmer this time. Before, he’d been lost in the thrill of fighting and of seeking Faile. He stopped in the street. “This is wrong. I carried my hammer into Malden. I threw the axe away.”

  A horn or a hoof, Young Bull, does it matter which one you use to hunt? Hopper was sitting in the sunlit street beside him.

  “Yes. It matters. It does to me.”

  And yet you use them the same way.

  A pair of Shaido Aiel appeared around a corner. They were watching something to the
left, something Perrin couldn’t see. He ran to attack them.

  He sheared through the chin of one, then swung the spike on the axe into the chest of the other. It was a brutal, terrible attack, and all three of them ended on the ground. It took several stabs from the spike to kill the second Shaido.

  Perrin stood up. He did remember killing those two Aiel, though he had done it with hammer and knife. He didn’t regret their deaths. Sometimes a man needed to fight, and that was that. Death was terrible, but that didn’t stop it from being necessary. In fact, it had been wonderful to clash with the Aiel. He’d felt like a wolf on the hunt.

  When Perrin fought, he came close to becoming someone else. And that was dangerous.

  He looked accusingly at Hopper, who lounged on a street corner. “Why are you making me dream this?”

  Making you? Hopper asked. This is not my dream, Young Bull. Do you see my jaws on your neck, forcing you to think it?

  Perrin’s axe streamed with blood. He knew what was coming next. He turned. From behind, Aram approached, murder in his eyes. Half of the former Tinker’s face was coated in blood, and it dripped from his chin, staining his red-striped coat.

  Aram swung his sword for Perrin’s neck, the steel hissing in the air. Perrin stepped back. He refused to fight the boy again.

  The shadowy version of himself split off, leaving the real Perrin in his blacksmith’s clothing. The shadow exchanged blows with Aram. The Prophet explained it to me…You’re really Shadowspawn…. I have to rescue the Lady Faile from you….

  The shadowy Perrin changed, suddenly, into a wolf. It leaped, fur nearly as dark as that of a Shadowbrother, and ripped out Aram’s throat.

  “No! It didn’t happen like that!”

  It is a dream, Hopper sent.

  “But I didn’t kill him,” Perrin protested. “Some Aiel shot him with arrows right before….”

  Right before Aram would have killed Perrin.

  The horn, the hoof, or the tooth, Hopper sent, turning and ambling toward a building. Its wall vanished, revealing Master Luhhan’s smithy inside. Does it matter? The dead are dead. Two-legs do not come here, not usually, once they die. I do not know where it is that they go.

  Perrin looked down at Aram’s body. “I should have taken that fool sword from him the moment he picked it up. I should have sent him back to his family.”

  Does not a cub deserve his fangs? Hopper asked, genuinely confused. Why would you pull them?

  “It is a thing of men,” Perrin said.

  Things of two-legs, of men. Always, it is a thing of men to you. What of things of wolves?

  “I am not a wolf.”

  Hopper entered the forge, and Perrin reluctantly followed. The barrel was still boiling. The wall returned, and Perrin was once again wearing his leather vest and apron, holding his tongs.

  He stepped over and pulled out another figurine. This one was in the shape of Tod al’Caar. As it cooled, Perrin found that the face wasn’t distorted like Aram’s, though the lower half of the figurine was unformed, still a block of metal. The figurine continued to glow, faintly reddish, after Perrin set it down on the floor. He thrust his tongs back into the water and pulled free a figure of Jori Congar, then one of Azi al’Thone.

  Perrin went to the bubbling barrel time and time again, pulling out figurine after figurine. After the way of dreams, fetching them all took both a brief second and what seemed like hours. When he finished, hundreds of figurines stood on the floor facing him. Watching. Each steel figure was lit with a tiny fire inside, as if waiting to feel the forger’s hammer.

  But figurines like this wouldn’t be forged; they’d be cast. “What does it mean?” Perrin sat down on a stool.

  Mean? Hopper opened his mouth in a wolf laugh. It means there are many little men on the floor, none of which you can eat. Your kind is too fond of rocks and what is inside of them.

  The figurines seemed accusing. Around them lay the broken shards of Aram. Those pieces seemed to be growing larger. The shattered hands began working, clawing on the ground. The shards all became little hands, climbing toward Perrin, reaching for him.

  Perrin gasped, leaping to his feet. He heard laughter in the distance, ringing closer, shaking the building. Hopper jumped, slamming into him. And then…

  Perrin started awake. He was back in his tent, in the field where they’d been camped for a few days now. They’d run across a bubble of evil the week before that had caused angry red, oily serpents to wiggle from the ground all through camp. Several hundred were sick from their bites; Aes Sedai Healing had been enough to keep most of them alive, but not restore them completely.

  Faile slept beside Perrin, peaceful. Outside, one of his men tapped a post to count off the hour. Three taps. Still hours until dawn.

  Perrin’s heart pounded softly, and he raised a hand to his bare chest. He half-expected an army of tiny metal hands to crawl out from beneath his bedroll.

  Eventually, he forced his eyes closed and tried to relax. This time, sleep was very elusive.

  Graendal sipped at her wine, which glistened in a goblet trimmed with a web of silver around the sides. The goblet had been crafted with drops of blood caught in a ring pattern within the crystal. Frozen forever, tiny bubbles of brilliant red.

  “We should be doing something,” Aran’gar said, lounging on the chaise and eyeing one of Graendal’s pets with a predatory hunger as he passed. “I don’t know how you stand it, staying so far from important events, like some scholar holed up in a dusty corner.”

  Graendal arched an eyebrow. A scholar? In some dusty corner? Natrin’s Barrow was modest compared to some palaces she had known, during the previous Age, but it was hardly a hovel. The furnishings were fine, the walls bearing an arching pattern of thick, dark hardwoods, the marble of the floor sparkling with inlaid chips of mother-of-pearl and gold.

  Aran’gar was just trying to provoke her. Graendal put the irritation out of her mind. The fire burned low in the hearth, but the pair of doors—leading out onto a fortified walkway three stories in the air—was open, letting in a crisp mountain breeze. She rarely left a window or door open to the outside, but today she liked the contrast: warmth from one side, a cool breeze from the other.

  Life was about feeling. Touches on your skin, both passionate and icy. Anything other than the normal, the average, the lukewarm.

  “Are you listening to me?” Aran’gar asked.

  “I always listen,” Graendal said, setting aside her goblet as she sat on her own chaise. She wore a golden, enveloping dress, sheer but buttoned to the neck. What marvelous fashions these Domani had, ideal for teasing while revealing.

  “I loathe being so removed from things,” Aran’gar continued. “This Age is exciting. Primitive people can be so interesting.” The voluptuous, ivory-skinned woman arched her back, stretching arms toward the wall. “We’re missing all of the excitement.”

  “Excitement is best viewed from a distance,” Graendal said. “I would think you’d understand that.”

  Aran’gar fell silent. The Great Lord had not been pleased with her for losing control of Egwene al’Vere.

  “Well,” Aran’gar said, standing. “If that is your thought on it, I will seek more interesting evening sport.”

  Her voice was cool; perhaps their alliance was wearing thin. In that case, it was time for reinforcement. Graendal opened herself and accepted the Great Lord’s dominance of her, feeling the thrilling ecstasy of his power, his passion, his very substance. It was so much more intoxicating than the One Power, this raging torrent of fire.

  It threatened to overwhelm and consume her, and despite being filled with the True Power, she could channel only a thin trickle of it. A gift to her from Moridin. No, from the Great Lord. Best not to begin associating those two in her mind. For now, Moridin was Nae’blis. For now only.

  Graendal wove a ribbon of Air. Working with the True Power was similar, yet not identical, to working with the One Power. A weave of the True Power would often funct
ion in a slightly different way, or have an unanticipated side effect. And there were some weaves that could only be crafted by the True Power.

  The Great Lord’s essence forced the Pattern, straining it and leaving it scarred. Even something the Creator had designed to be eternal could be unraveled using the Great Lord’s energies. It bespoke an eternal truth—something as close to being sacred as Graendal was willing to accept. Whatever the Creator could build, the Great Lord could destroy.

  She snaked her ribbon of Air through the room toward Aran’gar. The other Chosen had stepped out onto the balcony; Graendal forbade the creation of gateways inside, lest they damage her pets or her furnishings. Graendal lifted the ribbon of Air up to Aran’gar’s cheek and caressed it delicately.

  Aran’gar froze. She turned, suspicious, but it took only a moment for her eyes to open wide. She wouldn’t have felt the goose bumps on her arms to indicate Graendal was channeling. The True Power gave no hint, no sign. Male or female, no one could see or sense the weaves—not unless he or she had been granted the privilege of channeling the True Power.

  “What?” the woman asked. “How? Moridin is—”

  “Nae’blis,” Graendal said. “Yes. But once the Great Lord’s favor in this regard was not confined to the Nae’blis.” She continued to caress Aran’gar’s cheek, and the woman flushed.

  Aran’gar, like the other Chosen, lusted for the True Power while fearing it at the same time—dangerous, pleasurable, seductive. When Graendal withdrew her line of Air, Aran’gar stepped back into the room and returned to her chaise, then sent one of Graendal’s pets to fetch her toy Aes Sedai. Lust still burned Aran’gar’s cheeks; likely she would use Delana to distract herself. Aran’gar seemed to find it amusing to force the homely Aes Sedai into subservience.

  Delana arrived moments later; she always remained nearby. The Shienaran woman was pale-haired and stout, with thick limbs. Graendal’s lips turned down. Such an unpretty thing. Not like Aran’gar herself. She’d have made an ideal pet. Maybe someday Graendal would have the chance to make her into one.

  Aran’gar and Delana began to exchange affections on the chaise. Aran’gar was insatiable, a fact Graendal had exploited on numerous occasions, the lure of the True Power being only the latest. Of course, Graendal enjoyed pleasures herself, but she made certain that people thought she was far more self-indulgent than she was. If you knew what people expected you to be, you could use those expectations. It—