Perrin’s hammer was at his belt—he didn’t remember putting it there—but he didn’t want to hit this man with the hammer. He wanted to feel Slayer as he slammed a fist into the man’s face. The punch connected as they fell, but Slayer’s face was suddenly hard as stone.
In that moment, the fight became not one of flesh against flesh, but will against will. As they fell together, Perrin imagined Slayer’s skin becoming soft, giving beneath his punch, the bones brittle and cracking. Slayer, in response, imagined his skin as stone.
The result was that Slayer’s cheek became hard as rock, but Perrin cracked it anyway. They hit the ground, and rolled apart. When Slayer stood, his right cheek looked like that of a statue hit with a hammer, small cracks moving out over the skin.
Blood began to trickle through those cracks, and Slayer opened his eyes in shock. He raised a hand to his cheek, feeling the blood. The skin became flesh again, and stitches appeared, as if sewn by a master surgeon. One could not heal oneself in the wolf dream.
Slayer sneered at Perrin, then lunged. The two of them danced back and forth, surrounded by churning dust that formed the faces and bodies of people struggling for their lives in another place, another world. Perrin crashed through a pair of them, dust streaming from Mah’alleinir as he swung. Slayer skidded back, creating a wind to blow him out of the way, then struck forward too quickly.
Perrin became a wolf without a thought, Slayer’s sword passing over his head. Young Bull leaped into Slayer, slamming him backward through an impression of two Aiel fighting one another. Those exploded into sand and dust. Others formed to the sides, then blew away.
The howling tempest was a roar in Young Bull’s ears, and the dust ground into his skin and eyes. He rolled across Slayer, then lunged for his throat. How sweet it will be to taste this two-legs’ blood in my mouth. Slayer shifted away.
Young Bull became Perrin, with hammer at the ready, crouching on the plain of fragmentary fighting, changing people. Careful, he thought to himself. You are a wolf, but more a man. With a start, he realized that some of those impressions weren’t completely human. He saw a couple that were distinctly snakelike in appearance, though they faded quickly.
Does this place reflect other worlds? he wondered, not certain what else to make of the phantoms.
Slayer came at him again, teeth clenched. Perrin’s hammer grew hot in his fingers, and his leg throbbed where he’d been hit and then Healed during his last fight with Slayer. He roared, letting Slayer’s sword close—letting it graze him on the cheek—as he crashed his own weapon into the man’s side.
Slayer vanished.
Perrin followed through with the swing, and, for a moment, assumed he’d beaten the man. But no, his hammer had barely connected before Slayer disappeared. The man had been ready, waiting to shift. Perrin felt blood moving through the hair of his beard toward his chin; that graze had cut a gash on his cheek much in the same place as he’d landed that blow on Slayer’s face.
He sniffed at the air, turning about, trying to catch the scent of Slayer’s location. Where had he gone? There was nothing.
Slayer hadn’t shifted to another place in the wolf dream. He knew that Perrin could follow him. Instead, he must have jumped back into the waking world. Perrin howled, realizing he’d lost his prey. The wolf railed against this, a failed hunt, and it was a struggle for Perrin to bring himself back under control.
It was a scent that brought him back to it. Burning fur. It was accompanied by howls of pain.
Perrin shifted himself back to the top of the pathway. Wolves lay burned and dying amid the corpses of red-veils. Two of the men were still up, back to back, and incongruously, they’d lowered their veils. They had teeth filed to points, and were smiling, almost with madness, as they channeled. Burning wolf after wolf to char. Gaul had been forced to take shelter beside a rock, his clothing smoldering. He smelled of pain.
The two smiling channelers didn’t seem to care that their companions were bleeding to death on the ground around them. Perrin walked toward them. One raised a hand and released a jet of fire. Perrin turned it to smoke, then parted that by walking directly into it, the gray-black smoke eddying against him, then streaming off.
The other Aiel man also channeled, trying to rip the earth up beneath Perrin. Perrin knew that earth would not break, that it would resist the weaves. So it did. Perrin could not see the weaves, but he knew that the earth—suddenly far more solid—refused to budge as ordered.
The first Aiel reached for his spear with a growl, but Perrin grabbed him by the neck.
He wanted so badly to crush this man’s throat. He had lost Slayer again, and wolves were dead because of these two. He held himself back. Slayer … Slayer deserved worse than death for what he had done. He didn’t know about these men, and he wasn’t certain if killing them here would kill them forever, without rebirth.
It seemed to him that everyone, including creatures like these, should have another chance. The red-veil in his hand struggled, trying with weaves of Air to envelop Perrin.
“You are an idiot,” Perrin said softly. Then he looked to the other one. “You too.”
Both blinked, then looked at him with eyes that grew slack. One started drooling. Perrin shook his head. Slayer hadn’t trained them at all. Even Gaul, after only a … how long had it been? Anyway, even Gaul knew not to be caught like that, in the grip of someone who could change the very capacity of one’s mind.
Perrin had to keep thinking of them as idiots to maintain the transformation. He knelt, seeking among the wolves for the wounded he could help. He imagined bindings on the wounds of those who were hurt. They would heal quickly in this place. Wolves seemed to be able to do that. They had lost eight of their members, for whom Perrin howled. The others joined him, but there was no regret to their sendings. They had fought. That was what they had come to do.
After that, Perrin saw to the fallen red-veils. All were dead. Gaul limped up beside him, holding a burned arm. The wound was bad, but not immediately life-threatening.
“We need to take you out of here,” Perrin said to him, “and get you some Healing. I’m not certain what time it is, but I think we should go to Merrilor and wait for the gateway out.”
Gaul gave him a toothy grin. “I killed two of those myself, Perrin Aybara. One could channel. I think myself great with honor, then you slide in and take two captive.” He shook his head. “Bain would laugh herself all the way back to the Three-fold Land if she saw this.”
Perrin turned to his two captives. Killing them here seemed heartlessly cruel, but to release them meant fighting them again—perhaps losing more wolves, more friends.
“I do not suspect these keep to ji’e’toh,” Gaul said. “Would you take a man who could channel as gai’shain anyway?” He shuddered visibly.
“Just kill them and be done with it,” Lanfear said.
Perrin eyed her. He didn’t jump as she spoke—he had grown somewhat accustomed to the way she popped in and out. He did find it annoying, however.
“If I kill them here, will that kill them forever?”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t work that way for men.”
Did he trust her? On this point, for some reason, he found that he did. Why would she lie? Still, killing unarmed men … they were barely more than babies here to him.
No, he thought, considering the dead wolves, not babies. Far more dangerous than that.
“Those two have been Turned,” she said, folding her arms, nodding to the two channelers. “Many are born to their life these days, but those two have the filed teeth. They were taken and Turned.”
Gaul muttered something. It sounded like an oath, but it also sounded reverent. It was in the Old Tongue, and Perrin didn’t catch its meaning. After that, however, Gaul raised a spear. He smelled regretful. “You spat in his eye, and so he uses you, my brothers. Horrible…”
Turned, Perrin thought. Like those men at the Black Tower. He frowned, walking up and taking the head of
one of the men in his hands. Could he will the man back to the Light? If he could be forced to be evil, could he be restored?
Perrin hit something vast as he pushed against the minds of these men. His will bounced free, like a twig used to try beating down an iron gate. Perrin stumbled back.
He looked at Gaul, and shook his head. “I can do nothing for them.”
“I will do it,” Gaul said. “They are brothers.”
Perrin nodded, reluctant, as Gaul slit the throats of the two men. It was better this way. Still, it ripped Perrin up inside to see it. He hated what fighting did to people, what it did to him. The Perrin of months ago could never have stood and watched this. Light … if Gaul hadn’t done it, he would have himself. He knew it.
“You can be such a child,” Lanfear said, arms still folded beneath her breasts as she watched him. She sighed, then took him by the arm. A wave of icy Healing washed through him. The wound on his cheek closed.
Perrin took a deep breath, then nodded toward Gaul.
“I am not your errand woman, wolf pup,” she said.
“You want to convince me that you’re not a foe?” he asked. “That’s a good place to start.”
She sighed, then waved impatiently for Gaul to approach. He did so, limping, and she Healed him.
A distant rumbling shook the cavern behind them. She looked at it, and narrowed her eyes. “I cannot stay here,” she said. Then she was gone.
“I do not know what to make of that one,” Gaul said, rubbing his arm where the clothing was burned, but the skin healed. “I believe she is gaming with us, Perrin Aybara. I do not know which game.”
Perrin grunted in agreement.
“This Slayer … he will return.”
“I’m thinking of a way to do something about that,” Perrin said, reaching to his waist where he’d tied the dreamspike to his belt with straps. He freed it. “Watch here,” he told Gaul, then entered the cavern.
Perrin walked past those stones like teeth. It was hard to escape the feeling that he was crawling into the mouth of a Darkhound. The light at the bottom of the descent was blinding, but Perrin created a bubble around himself that was shaded, like glass that was only translucent. He could make out Rand and someone else striking at one another with swords at the lip of a deep pit.
No. It wasn’t a pit. Perrin gaped. The entire world seemed to end here, the cavern opening into a vast nothingness. An eternal expanse, like the blackness of the Ways, only this one seemed to be pulling him into it. Him, and everything else. He’d grown accustomed to the storm raging outside, so he hadn’t noticed the wind in the tunnel. Now that he paid attention, he could feel it streaming through the cavern into that hole.
Looking into that gap, he knew that he’d never understood blackness before, not really. This was blackness. This was nothingness. The absolute end of all. Other darkness was frightening because of what it might hide. This darkness was different; if this engulfed you, you would cease completely.
Perrin stumbled back, though the wind blowing down the tunnel wasn’t strong. Just … steady, like a stream running into nowhere. Perrin gripped the dreamspike, then forced himself to turn away from Rand. Someone knelt on the floor nearby, her head bowed, braced as if against some great force coming from the nothingness. Moiraine? Yes, and that was Nynaeve kneeling to her right.
The veil between worlds was very thin here. If he could see Nynaeve and Moiraine, perhaps they could see or hear him.
He stepped up to Nynaeve. “Nynaeve? Can you hear me?”
She blinked, turning her head. Yes, she could hear him! But she could not see him, it seemed. She searched about, confused as she clung to the stone teeth of the floor as if for life itself.
“Nynaeve!” Perrin yelled.
“Perrin?” she whispered, looking about. “Where are you?”
“I’m going to do something, Nynaeve,” he said. “I will make it impossible to create gateways into this place. If you want to Travel to or from this area, you’ll need to create your gateway out in front of the cavern. All right?”
She nodded, still looking about for him. Apparently, though the real world reflected in the wolf dream, it didn’t work the other way around. Perrin rammed the dreamspike into the ground, then activated it as Lanfear had shown him, creating the bubble of purple just around the cavern itself. He hurried back into the tunnel, emerging through a wall of purple glass to rejoin Gaul and the wolves.
“Light,” Gaul said. “I was about to go search for you. Why did it take so long?”
“So long?” Perrin asked.
“You were gone at least two hours.”
Perrin shook his head. “It’s the Bore playing with our sense of time. Well, at least with that dreamspike in place, Slayer will have trouble reaching Rand.”
After having Slayer use the dreamspike against him, it was satisfying to turn the ter’angreal against the man. Perrin had made the protective bubble just large enough to fit inside the cavern and shelter Rand, the Bore and those with him. The placement meant all of the borders of the dome save the one here at the front were inside rock.
Slayer would not be able to jump into the middle of the cavern and strike; he would have to enter through the front. Either that, or find a way to burrow through the rock, which Perrin supposed was possible here in the wolf dream. However, it would slow him, and that was what Rand needed.
“I need you to protect this place,” Perrin sent to the gathered wolves, many of whom were still licking their wounds. “Shadowkiller fights inside, hunting the most dangerous prey this world has known. We must not let Slayer reach him.”
We will guard this place, Young Bull, one sent. Others gather. He will not pass us.
“Can you do this?” Perrin sent an image of wolves spaced through the Borderlands, relaying messages quickly between themselves. There were thousands upon thousands of them roaming the area.
Perrin was proud of his sending. He didn’t send it as words, or as images, but as a concept mixed with scents, with a hint of instinct. With the wolves positioned as he sent, they could send to him through the network almost instantly if Slayer returned.
We can do it, the wolves sent.
Perrin nodded, then waved to Gaul.
“We are not staying?” he asked.
“There is too much happening,” Perrin said. “Time moves too slowly here. I don’t want the war to pass us by.”
Besides, there was still the matter of whatever Graendal was doing.
CHAPTER
26
Considerations
“I don’t like fighting beside those Seanchan,” Gawyn said softly, coming up beside Egwene.
She didn’t like it either, and she knew he would be able to sense that from her. What could she say? She couldn’t turn the Seanchan away. The Shadow had brought the Sharans to fight under its banner. Egwene, therefore, would have to use what she had. Anything she had.
Her neck itched as she crossed the field to the meeting place about a mile or so east of the ford in Arafel. Bryne had already arrayed most of her forces at the ford. Aes Sedai could be seen atop the hills just south of the ford, and large squadrons of archers and pikemen were positioned below them on the slopes. The troops were feeling fresher. The days Egwene’s force had spent retreating had relieved some of the pressure of warfare, despite attempts by the enemy to make them commit to combat.
Egwene’s chances depended on the Seanchan joining the battle and engaging the Sharan channelers. Her stomach twisted. She had once heard that in Caemlyn, unscrupulous men would throw starving dogs into a pit together and bet on which one would survive the ensuing fight. This felt the same to her. The Seanchan damane were not free women; they could not choose to fight. From what she’d seen of the Sharan male channelers, they were little more than animals themselves.
Egwene should be fighting the Seanchan with every breath, not allying with them. Her instincts rebelled as she approached the gathering of Seanchan. The Seanchan leader demanded this a
udience with Egwene. The Light send it would be quick.
Egwene had received reports on this Fortuona, so she knew what to expect. The diminutive Seanchan Empress stood atop a small platform, watching the battle preparations. She wore a glittering dress whose train extended a ridiculous distance behind her, carried by eight da’covale, those servants in the horribly immodest clothing. Various members of the Blood stood in groups, waiting with careful poses. Deathwatch Guards, hulking in their near-black armor, stood like boulders around the Empress.
Egwene approached, guarded by her own soldiers and much of the Hall of the Tower. Fortuona had first tried to insist that Egwene come to visit her in her camp. Egwene had, of course, refused. It had taken hours to reach an agreement. Both would come to this location in Arafel, and both would stand rather than sit so that neither could give the impression of being above the other. Still, Egwene was irritated to find the woman waiting. She’d wanted to time this meeting so they both arrived at the same moment.
Fortuona turned from the battle preparations and looked at Egwene. It appeared that many of Siuan’s reports were false. True, Fortuona did look something like a child, with that slight build and delicate features. Those similarities were minor. No child had ever had eyes so discerning, so calculating. Egwene revised her expectations. She’d imagined Fortuona as a spoiled adolescent, the product of a coddled lifetime.
“I have considered,” Fortuona said, “whether it would be appropriate to speak to you in person, with my own voice.”
Nearby, several of the Seanchan Blood—with their painted fingernails and partially shaved heads—gasped. Egwene ignored them. They stood near several pairs of sul’dam and damane. If she let those pairs draw her attention, her temper might get the better of her.
“I have considered myself,” Egwene said, “whether it would be appropriate to speak to one such as yourself, who has committed such terrible atrocities.”
“I have decided that I will speak to you,” Fortuona continued, ignoring Egwene’s remark. “I think that, for the time, it would be better if I see you not as marath’damane, but as a queen among the people of this land.”
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