Perrin struggled to fill his lungs. “Rand! For the love of the Light, Rand! Stop it!”
As abruptly as it had begun, it was done. A weakened branch cracked off of a stunted oak with a loud snap. Perrin got to his feet slowly, coughing. Dust hung in the air, sparkling motes in the rays of the setting sun.
Rand was staring at nothing, now, chest heaving as if he had run ten miles. This had never happened before, nor anything remotely like it.
“Rand,” Perrin said carefully, “what —?”
Rand still seemed to be looking into a far distance. “It is always there. Calling to me. Pulling at me. Saidin. The male half of the True Source. Sometimes I can't stop myself from reaching out for it.” He made a motion of plucking something out of the air, and transferred his stare to his closed fist. “I can feel the taint even before I touch it. The Dark One's taint, like a thin coat of vileness trying to hide the Light. It turns my stomach, but I cannot help myself. I cannot! Only sometimes, I reach out, and it's like trying to catch air.” His empty hand sprang open, and he gave a bitter laugh. “What if that happens when the Last Battle comes? What if I reach out and catch nothing?”
“Well, you caught something that time,” Perrin said hoarsely. “What were you doing?”
Rand looked around as if seeing things for the first time. The fallen leatherleaf, and the broken branches. There was, Perrin realized, surprisingly little damage. He had expected gaping rents in the earth. The wall of trees looked almost whole.
“I did not mean to do this. It was as if I tried to open a tap, and instead pulled the whole tap out of the barrel. It... filled me. I had to send it somewhere before it burned me up, but I... I did not mean this.”
Perrin shook his head. What use to tell him to try not to do it again? He barely knows more about what he's doing than I do. He contented himself with, “There are enough who want you dead — and the rest of us — without you doing the job for them.” Rand did not seem to be listening. “We had best get on back to the camp. It will be dark soon, and I don't know about you, but I am hungry.”
“What? Oh. You go on, Perrin. I will be along. I want to be alone again a while.”
Perrin hesitated, then turned reluctantly toward the crack in the valley wall. He stopped when Rand spoke again.
“Do you have dreams when you sleep? Good dreams?”
“Sometimes,” Perrin said warily. “I don't remember much of what I dream.” He had learned to set guards on his dreaming.
“They're always there, dreams,” Rand said, so softly Perrin barely heard. “Maybe they tell us things. True things.” He fell silent, brooding.
“Supper's waiting,” Perrin said, but Rand was deep in his own thoughts. Finally Perrin turned and left him standing there.
Chapter 3
(Serpent and Wheel)
News from the Plain
Darkness shrouded part of the crack, for in one place the tremors had collapsed a part of the wall against the other side, high up. He stared up at the blackness warily before hurrying underneath, but the slab of stone seemed to be solidly wedged in place. The itch had returned to the back of his head, stronger than before. No, burn me! No! It went away.
When he came out above the camp, the bowl was filled with odd shadows from the sinking sun. Moiraine was standing outside her hut, peering up at the crack. He stopped short. She was a slender, darkhaired woman no taller than his shoulder, and pretty, with the ageless quality of all Aes Sedai who had worked with the One Power for a time. He could not put any age at all to her, with her face too smooth for many years and her dark eyes to wise for youth. Her dress of deep blue silk was disarrayed and dusty, and wisps stuck out in her usually wellordered hair. A smudge of dust lay across her face.
He dropped his eyes. She knew about him — she and Lan alone, of those in the camp — and he did not like the knowing in her face when she looked into his eyes. Yellow eyes. Someday, perhaps, he could bring himself to ask her what she knew. An Aes Sedai must know more of it than he did. But this was not the time. There never seemed to be a time. “He... He didn't mean... It was an accident.”
“An accident,” she said in a flat voice, then shook her head and vanished back inside the hut. The door banged shut a little loudly.
Perrin drew a deep breath and continued on down toward the cook fires. There would be another argument between Rand and the Aes Sedai, in the morning if not tonight.
Half a dozen trees lay toppled on the slopes of the bowl, roots ripped out of the earth in arcs of soil. A trail of scrapes and churned ground led down to the streamside and a boulder that had not been there before. One of the huts up the opposite slope had collapsed in the tremors, and most of the Shienarans were gathered around it, rebuilding it. Loial was with them. The Ogier could pick up a log it would take four men to lift. Uno's curses occasionally drifted down.
Min stood by the fires, stirring a kettle with a disgruntled expression. There was a small bruise on her cheek, and a faint smell of burned stew hung in the air. “I hate cooking,” she announced, and peered doubtfully into the kettle. “If something goes wrong with it, it isn't my fault. Rand spilled half of it on the fire with his... What right does he have to bounce us around like sacks of grain?” She rubbed the seat of her breeches and winced. “When I get my hands on him, I'll thump him so he never forgets.” She waved the wooden spoon at Perrin as if she intended to start the thumping with him.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Only if you count bruises,” Min said grimly. “They were upset, all right, at first. Then they saw Moiraine staring off toward Rand's hideyhole, and decided it was his work. If the Dragon wants to shake the mountain down on our heads, then the Dragon must have a good reason for it. If he decided to make them take off their skins and dance in their bones, they would think it all right.” She snorted and rapped the spoon on the edge of the kettle.
He looked back toward Moiraine's hut. If Leya had been hurt — if she were dead — the Aes Sedai would not simply have gone back inside. The sense of waiting was still there. Whatever it is, it hasn't happened yet. “Min, maybe you had better go. First thing in the morning. I have some silver I can let you have, and I'm sure Moiraine would give you enough to take passage with a merchant's train out of Ghealdan. You could be back in Baerlon before you know it.”
She looked at him until he began to wonder if he had said something wrong. Finally, she said, “That is very sweet of you, Perrin. But, no.”
“I thought you wanted to go. You're always carrying on about having to stay here.”