“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 quickly everything changed.
He was standing on a rise, with shadowy, indistinct dips and swells all around him. They seemed to fade into the distance too soon. Rand stood below him. Rand, and a ragged circle of Myrddraal and men and women his eyes seemed to slide right past. Dogs howled somewhere in the distance, and Perrin knew they were hunting something. Myrddraal scent and the stink of burned sulphur filled the air. Perrin's hackles rose.
The circle of Myrddraal and people came closer to Rand, all walking as if asleep. And Rand began to kill them. Balls of fire flew from his hands and consumed two. Lightning flashed from above to shrivel others. Bars of light like whitehot steel flew from his fists to more. And the survivors continued to walk slowly closer, as if none of them saw what was happening. One by one they died, until none were left, and Rand sank down on his knees, panting. Perrin was not sure whether he was laughing or crying; it seemed to be some of each.
Shapes appeared over the rises, more people coming, more Myrddraal, all intent on Rand.
Perrin cupped his hands to his mouth. “Rand! Rand, there are more coming!”
Rand looked up at him from his crouch, snarling, sweat slicking his face.“Rand, they're —!”
“Burn you!” Rand howled.
Light burned Perrin's eyes, and pain seared everything.
Groaning, he rolled into a ball on the narrow bed, the light still burning behind his eyelids. His chest hurt. He raised a hand to it and winced when he felt a burn under his shirt, a spot no bigger than a silver penny.
Bit by bit he forced his knotted muscles to let him straighten his legs and lie flat in the dark cabin. Moiraine. I have to tell Moiraine this time. Just have to wait till the pain goes away.
But as the pain began to fade, exhaustion took him. He barely had a thought that he must get up before sleep pulled him down again.
When he opened his eyes again, he lay staring at the beams overhead. Light at the top and bottom of the door told him morning had come. He put a hand to his chest to convince himself he had imagined it, imagined it so well that he had actually felt a burn...
His fingers found the burn. I didn't imagine it, then. He had dim memories of a few other dreams, fading even as he recalled them. Ordinary dreams. He even felt as if he had had a good night's sleep. And could use another one right now. But it meant he could sleep. As long as there are no wolves around, anyway.
He remembered making a decision in that brief waking after the dream with Hopper, and after a moment he decided it had been a good one.
It took knocking on five doors and being cursed at twice — the inhabitants of two cabins had gone on deck — before he found Moiraine. She was fully dressed, but sitting on one of the narrow beds crosslegged, reading in her book of notes by lantern light. Back near the beginning, he saw, notes that must have been made even before she had come to Emond's Field. Lan's things were neatly placed on the other bed.
“I had a dream,” he told her, and proceeded to tell her of it. All of it. He even pulled up his shirt to show her the small circle on his chest, red, with wavy red lines radiating from it. He had kept things from her before, and he suspected he would again, but this might be too important to hold back. The pin was the smallest part of a pair of scissors, and the easiest made, but without it, the scissors cut no cloth. When he was done, he stood there waiting.