The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3)

The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3) Page 146

Then the dreams changed, and he knew he was in the wolf dream he sought. This time he had hoped for it.

He stood atop a high, flattopped stone spire, the wind ruffling his hair, bringing a thousand dry scents and a faint hint of water hidden in the far distance. For an instant he thought he had the form of a wolf, and fumbled at his own body to make sure what he saw was really him. He wore his own coat and breeches and boots; he held his bow, and his quiver hung at his side. The axe was not there.

“Hopper! Hopper, where are you?” The wolf did not come.

Rugged mountains surrounded him, and other tall spires separated by arid flats and jumbled ridges, and sometimes a large plateau rising with sheer sides. Things grew, but nothing lush. Tough, short grass. Bushes wiry and covered with thorn, and other things that even seemed to have thorns on their fat leaves. Scattered, stunted trees, twisted by the wind. Yet wolves could find hunting even in this land.

As he peered at this rough land, a circle of darkness suddenly blanked out a part of the mountains; he could not have said whether the darkness was right in front of his face or halfway to the mountains, but he seemed to be seeing through it, and beyond. Mat, rattling a dice cup. His opponent stared at Mat with eyes of fire. Mat did not seem to see the man, but Perrin knew him.

“Mat!” he shouted. “It's Ba'alzamon! Light, Mat, you're dicing with Ba'alzamon!”

Mat made his toss, and as the dice spun, the vision faded, and the dark place was dry mountains again.

“Hopper!” Perrin turned slowly, looking in every direction. He even looked up in the sky — He can fly, now — where clouds promised a rain the ground far below the spire top would drink up as soon as it fell. “Hopper!”

A darkness formed among the clouds, a hole into somewhere else. Egwene and Nynaeve and Elayne stood looking at a huge metal cage, with a raised door held on a heavy spring. They stepped in and reached up together to loose the catch. The barred door snapped down behind them. A woman with her hair all in braids laughed at them, and another woman all in white laughed at her. The hole in the sky closed, and there were only clouds.

“Hopper, where are you?” he called.“ I need you! Hopper!”

And the grizzled wolf was there, alighting on the spire top as if he had leaped from somewhere higher.

Dangerous. You have been warned, Young Bull. Too young. Too new yet.

“I need to know, Hopper. You said there were things I must see. I need to see more, know more.” He hesitated, thinking of Mat, of Egwene and Nynaeve and Elayne. “The strange things I see here. Are they real?” Hopper's sending seemed slow, as if it were so simple the wolf could not understand the need to explain it, or how to. Finally, though, something came.

What is real is not real. What is not real is real. Flesh is a dream, and dreams have flesh.

“That doesn't tell me anything, Hopper. I do not understand.” The wolf looked at him, as if he had said he did not understand that water was wet. “You said I had to see something, and you showed me Ba'alzamon, and Lanfear.”

Heartfang. Moonhunter.

“Why did you show me, Hopper? Why did I have to see them?”

The Last Hunt comes. Sadness filled the sending, and a sense of inevitability. What will be must be.

“I do not understand! The Last Hunt? What Last Hunt? Hopper, Gray Men came to kill me tonight.”

The Notdead hunt you?

“Yes! Gray Men! After me! And a Darkhound was right outside the inn! I want to know why they're after me.”

Shadowbrothers! Hopper crouched, looking to either side as if he almost expected an attack. Long since we have seen the Shadowbrothers. You must go, Young Bull. Great danger! Flee the Shadowbrothers!

“Why are they after me, Hopper? You do know. I know you do!”

Flee, Young Bull. Hopper leaped, forepaws hitting Perrin's chest, knocking him back, over the edge. Flee the Shadowbrothers.

The wind rushed in his ears as he fell. Hopper and the edge of the spire top dwindled above him. “Why, Hopper?” he shouted. “I have to know why!”

The Last Hunt comes.

He was going to hit. He knew it. The ground below rushed up at him, and he tensed against the crushing impact that...

He started awake, staring at the candle flickering on the small table beside the bed. Lightning flashes lit the window, and thunder rattled it. “What did he mean, the Last Hunt?” he mumbled. I did not light any candle.

“You talk to yourself. And thrash in your sleep.”

He jumped, and cursed himself for not having noticed the herbal scent in the air. Zarine sat on a stool at the edge of the candlelight, elbow on her knee, chin on her fist, watching him.

“You are ta'veren,” she said as if ticking off a point. “Stoneface thinks those odd eyes of yours can see things his can't. Gray Men want to kill you. You travel with an Aes Sedai, a Warder, and an Ogier. You free caged Aiel and kill Whitecloaks. Who are you, farmboy, the Dragon Reborn?” Her voice said that was the most ridiculous thing she could think of, but he still shifted uneasily. “Whoever you are, big man,” she added, “you could do with a little more hair on your chest.”

He twisted around, cursing, and scrabbled one of the blankets over him to his neck. Light, she keeps making me jump like a frog on a hot rock. Zarine's face was at the edge of shadows. He could not see her clearly except when lightning shone through the window, the harsh illumination casting its own shadows across her strong nose and high cheekbones. Suddenly he remembered Min saying he should run from a beautiful woman. Once he had recognized Lanfear in that wolf dream, he had thought Min must mean her — he did not think it was possible for a woman to be any more beautiful than Lanfear — but she was just in a dream. Zarine was sitting there staring at him with those dark, tilted eyes, considering, weighing.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “What do you want? Who are you?”

She threw back her head and laughed. “I am Faile, farmboy, a Hunter of the Horn. Who do you think I am, the woman of your dreams? Why did you jump that way? You would think I had goosed you.”

Before he could find words, the door crashed back against the wall, and Moiraine stood in the doorway, her face as pale and grim as death. “Your wolf dreams tell as truly as a Dreamer's, Perrin. The Forsaken are loose, and one of them rules in Illian.”

Chapter 44