The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3)

The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3) Page 118

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 strawhaired 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 head. 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 cryng like a girl, next. Without thinking, he looked around to see if anyone had seen him, and that q