The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3)

The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3) Page 33

At her first step, Noam's lips peeled back from his teeth, and he began to growl, a rumble that deepened till his whole body quivered. Moiraine ignored it. Still growling, Noam wriggled backwards in the straw as she came closer to him, until he had backed himself into a corner. Or she had backed him.

Slowly, calmly, the Aes Sedai knelt and took his head between her hands. Noam's growl heightened to a snarl, then tailed off in a whimper before Perrin could move. For a long moment Moiraine held Noam's head, then just as calmly released it and rose. Perrin's throat tightened as she turned her back on Noam and walked out of the cage, but the man only stared after her. She pushed the slatted door to, slipped the lock back through the hasp, not bothering to snap it shut — and Noam hurled himself snarling against the wooden bars. He bit at them, and battered them with his shoulders, tried to force his head between them, all the while snarling and snapping.

Moiraine brushed straw from her skirt with a steady hand and no expression.

“You do take chances,” Perrin breathed. She looked at him — a steady, knowing gaze — and he dropped his eyes. His yellow eyes.

Simion was staring at his brother. “Can you help him, good mistress?” he asked hoarsely.

“I am sorry, Simion,” she said.

“Can't you do anything, good mistress? Something? One of those— ” his voice fell to a whisper — “Aes Sedai things?”

“Healing is not a simple matter, Simion, and it comes from within as much as from the Healer. There is nothing here that remembers being Noam, nothing that remembers being a man. There are no maps remaining to show him the path back, and nothing left to take that path. Noam is gone, Simion.”

“He — he just used to talk funny, good mistress, when he'd had too much to drink. He just...” Simion scrubbed a hand across his eyes and blinked. “Thank you, good mistress. I know you'd have done something if you could.” She put a hand on his shoulder, murmured comforting words, and then she was gone from the shed.

Perrin knew he should follow her, but the man — what had once been a man — snapping at the wooden bars, held him. He took a quick step and surprised himself by removing the dangling lock from the hasp. The lock was a good one, the work of a master smith.

“Good master?”

Perrin stared at the lock in his hand, at the man behind in the cage. Noam had stopped biting at the slats; he stared back at Perrin warily, panting. Some of his teeth had broken off jaggedly.

“You can leave him in here forever,” Perrin said, “but I — I don't think he'll ever get any better.”

“If he gets out, good master, he'll die!”

“He will die in here or out there, Simion. Out there, at least he'll be free, and as happy as he can be. He is not your brother anymore, but you're the one who has to decide. You can leave him in here for people to stare at, leave him to stare at the bars of his cage until he pines away. You cannot cage a wolf, Simion, not and expect it to be happy. Or live long.”

“Yes,” Simion said slowly. “Yes, I see.” He hesitated, then nodded, and jerked his head toward the shed door.

That was all the answer Perrin needed. He swung back the slatted door and stood aside.

For a moment Noam stared at the opening. Abruptly he darted out of the cage, running on all fours, but with surprising agility. Out of the cage, out of the shed, and into the night. The Light help us both, Perrin thought.

“I suppose it's better for him to be free.” Simion gave himself a shake. “But I don't know what Master Harod will say when he finds that door standing open and Noam gone.”

Perrin shut the cage door; the big lock made a sharp click as he refastened it. “Let him puzzle that out.”

Simion barked a quick laugh, abruptly cut off. “He'll make something out of it. They all will. Some of them say Noam turned into a wolf — fur and all! — when he bit Mother Roon. It's not true, but they say it.”

Shivering, Perrin leaned his head against the cage door. He may not have fur, but he's a wolf. He's wolf, not man. Light, help me.

“We didn't keep him here always,” Simion said suddenly. “He was at Mother Roon's house, but she and I got Master Harod to move him here after the Whitecloaks came. They always have a list of names, Darkfriends they're looking for. It was Noam's eyes, you see. One of the names the Whitecloaks had was a fellow named Perrin Aybara, a blacksmith. They said he has yellow eyes, and runs with wolves. You can see why I didn't want them to know about Noam.”

Perrin turned his head enough to look at Simion over his shoulder. “Do you think this Perrin Aybara is a Darkfriend?”

“A Darkfriend wouldn't care if my brother died in a cage. I suppose she found you soon after it happened. In time to help. I wish she'd come to Jarra a few months ago.”

Perrin was ashamed that he had ever compared the man to a frog. “And I wish she could have done something for him.” Burn me, I wish she could. Suddenly it burst on him that the whole village must know about Noam. About his eyes. “Simion, would you bring me something to eat in my room?” Master Harod and the rest might have been too taken with staring at Loial to notice his eyes before, but they surely would if he ate in the common room.

“Of course. And in the morning, too. You don't have to come down until you are ready to get on your horse.”

“You are a good man, Simion. A good man.” Simion looked so pleased that Perrin felt ashamed all over again.

Chapter 9

(Dragon's Fang)

Wolf Dreams

Perrin returned to his room by the back way, and after a time Simion came up with a covered tray. The cloth did not hold in the smells of roasted mutton, sweetbeans, turnips, and freshly baked bread, but Perrin lay on his bed, staring at the whitewashed ceiling, until the aromas grew cold. Images of Noam ran through his head over and over again. Noam chewing at the wooden slats. Noam running off into the darkness. He tried to think of lockmaking, of the careful quenching and shaping of the steel, but it did not work.

Ignoring the tray, he rose and made his way down the hall to Moiraine's room. She answered his rap on the door with, “Come in, Perrin.”

For an instant all the old stories about Aes Sedai stirred again, but he pushed them aside and opened the door.

Moiraine was alone — for which he was grateful — sitting with an ink bottle balanced on her knee, writing in a small, leatherbound book. She corked the bottle and wiped the steel nib of her pen on a small scrap of parchment without looking at him. There wa