Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time #13)

Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time #13) Page 190

Galad turned to Byar as Harnesh left. The skeletal man gave a salute, sunken eyes dangerously resentful, then stalked off. Galad stopped on the field, between white tents, hands behind his back as he watched messengers relay his orders through camp.

“You are quiet, Child Bornhald,” Galad said after a few moments. “Are you as displeased with my actions as Child Byar is?”

“I don’t know,” Bornhald said. “I’ve believed for so long that Aybara killed my father. And yet, seeing how Jaret acts, remembering his description…There is no evidence. It frustrates me to admit it, Galad, but I have no proof. He did kill Lathin and Yamwick, however. He killed Children, so he is a Darkfriend.”

“I killed one of the Children, too,” Galad said. “And was named Darkfriend for it.”

“That was different.” Something seemed to be troubling Bornhald, something he wasn’t saying.

“Well, that is true,” Galad said. “I do not disagree that Aybara should be punished, but the day’s events leave me strangely troubled.”

He shook his head. Finding answers should be easy. The right thing always came to him. However, whenever he thought he’d seized upon the right course of action regarding Aybara, he found distasteful worries cropping up inside of him.

Life is not so easy as the toss of a coin, his mother had said. One side or the other…your simple illusions…

He did not like the feeling. Not at all.

Perrin inhaled deeply. Flowers bloomed in the wolf dream, even as the sky raged silver, black and gold. The scents were so incongruous. Baking cherry pie. Horse dung. Oil and grease. Soap. A wood fire. Arrath. Thyme. Catfern. A hundred other herbs he couldn’t name.

Very few of them fit the meadow where he had appeared. He’d made certain not to appear where his camp was in the wolf dream; that would have put him too near Slayer.

The scents were fleeting. Vanishing too quickly, as if they’d never really been there.

Hopper, he sent.

I am here, Young Bull. The wolf appeared beside him.

“It smells strange.”

Scents blend, Hopper sent. Like the waters of a thousand streams. It is not natural. It is not good. This place begins to break.

Perrin nodded. He shifted, appearing knee deep in brown cockleburrs just outside of the violet dome. Hopper appeared to his right, weeds crackling as he moved among them.

The dome rose, ominous and unnatural. A wind blew, shuffling the weeds and shaking tree limbs. Lightning flashed silently in the sky.

He is there, Hopper sent. Always.

Perrin nodded. Did Slayer come to the wolf dream the way Perrin did? And did spending time in it leave him still tired, as it did Perrin? The man never seemed to leave this area.

He was guarding something. There had to be a way in the wolf dream to disable the dome.

Young Bull, we come. The sending was from Oak Dancer. Her pack was approaching, now only three strong. Sparks, Boundless, Oak Dancer herself. They had chosen to come here, rather than join the wolves running northward.

The three appeared behind Hopper. Perrin looked to them, and sent concern. This will be dangerous. Wolves may die.

Their sending back was insistent. Slayer must fall for what he has done. Together we are strong. Young Bull should not hunt such dangerous prey alone.

He nodded in agreement, letting his hammer appear in his hand. Together, they approached the dome. Perrin walked into it with a slow, determined stride. He refused to feel weakness. He was strong. The dome was nothing but air. He believed the world to be as he wished it.

He stumbled, but pulled through into the inside of the dome. The landscape felt faintly darker here. Elder trees more dim of bark, the dying dogfennel a deeper green or brown. Hopper and the pack moved through the dome around him.

We make for the center, Perrin sent. If there is a secret to discover, it will probably be there.

They moved slowly through the brush and stands of trees. Perrin imposed his will upon the area around him, and the leaves stopped crackling, weeds remaining silent when he brushed against them. That was natural. It was the way things should be. So it was.

It would be a long distance to the center, so Perrin began hopping forward. Not jumps or steps; he simply stopped being in one place, appearing in a different location. He masked his scent, though Slayer was not a wolf.

That has to become my advantage, Perrin thought as they grew closer and closer to the center. He is more experienced than I. But I have the wolf within me. This place is our dream. He is the invader. However skilled he may be, he is not one of us.

And that is why I will win.

Perrin smelled something; an increasing wrongness in the air. He and the wolves crept up to a large hillside, then peered around a cleft in the land there. A small stand of elder trees stood just ahead, perhaps fifty paces away. Looking up, he judged this to be very near the center of the dome. Using the shifting way of wolves, they’d traveled several hours’ worth of walking in a few minutes.

That is it, Perrin sent. He looked at Hopper. The wolf’s scent was masked, but he was coming to know wolves well enough to read concern in Hopper’s stare and the way he stood with forelegs bent just a fraction.

Something changed.

Perrin heard nothing. He smelled nothing. But he felt something, a small tremble in the ground.

Go! he sent, vanishing. He appeared ten paces away to see an arrow hit the hillside where he’d been standing. The shaft split a large stone, embedding itself in the rock and earth up to its black fletching.

Slayer stood from a crouch, turning to look at Perrin across the short expanse of ground. His eyes seemed black, his square face shadowed, his tall body muscular and dangerous. As he often did, he wore a smile. Really a sneer. He wore leather breeches and a shirt of deep green, forearms exposed, hand holding his wicked bow of dark wood. He wore no quiver; he created arrows as he needed them.

Perrin held his eyes, stepping forward as if in challenge. That was enough of a distraction for the wolves to attack from behind.

Slayer yelled, spinning as Boundless slammed into him. Perrin was there in an eyeblink, bringing his hammer down. Slayer vanished, and Perrin struck only earth, but he caught a whiff of where Slayer had gone.

Here? That scent was of the same place that Perrin was. Alarmed, he looked up to see Slayer hovering in the air just above, drawing an arrow.

The wind, Perrin thought. It is so strong!

The arrow loosed, but a sudden gust blew it sideways. It sank into the earth just beside Perrin. He did not flinch, raising his hands, his own bow appearing in them. Alrea