Loial's wide smile wavered and his eyes blinked as he became aware of having interrupted them. Perrin wondered how anyone could be frightened of the Ogier for long. Yet some of the old stories call them fierce, and implacable as enemies. He could not believe it. Ogier were enemies to no one.
Min told Loial of Leya's arrival, but not of what she had seen. She was usually closemouthed about those seeings, especially when they were bad. Instead, she added, “You should know how I feel, Loial, suddenly caught up by Aes Sedai and these Two Rivers folk.”
Loial made a noncommittal sound, but Min seemed to take it for agreement.
“Yes,” she said emphatically. “There I was, living my life in Baerlon as I liked it, when suddenly I was grabbed up by the scruff of the neck and jerked off to the Light knows where. Well, I might as well have been. My life has not been my own since I met Moiraine. And these Two Rivers farmboys.” She rolled her eyes at Perrin, a wry twist to her mouth. “All I wanted was to live as I pleased, fall in love with a man I chose...” Her cheeks reddened suddenly, and she cleared her throat. “I mean to say, what is wrong with wanting to live your life without all this upheaval?”
“Ta'veren,” Loial began. Perrin waved at him to stop, but the Ogier could seldom be slowed, much less stopped, when one of his enthusiasms had him in its grip. He was accounted extremely hasty, by the Ogier way of looking at things. Loial pushed his book into a coat pocket and went on, gesturing with his pipe. “All of us, all of our lives, affect the lives of others, Min. As the Wheel of Time weaves us into the Pattern, the lifethread of each of us pulls and tugs at the lifethreads around us. Ta'veren are the same, only much, much more so. They tug at the entire Pattern — for a time, at least — forcing it to shape around them. The closer you are to them, the more you are affected personally. It's said that if you were in the same room with Artur Hawkwing, you could feel the Pattern rearranging itself. I don't know how true that is, but I've read that it was. But it doesn't only work one way. Ta'veren themselves are woven to a tighter line than the rest of us, with fewer choices.”
Perrin grimaced. Bloody few of the ones that matter.
Min tossed, her head. “I just wish they didn't have to be so... so bloody ta'veren all the time. Ta'veren tugging on one side, and Aes Sedai meddling on the other. What chance does a woman have?”
Loial shrugged. “Very little, I suppose, as long as she stays close to ta'veren.”
“As if I had a choice,” Min growled.
“It was your good fortune — or misfortune, if you see it that way — to fall in with not one, but three ta'veren. Rand, Mat, and Perrin. I myself count it very good fortune, and would even if they weren't my friends. I think I might even...” The Ogier looked at them, suddenly shy, his ears twitching. “Promise you will not laugh? I think I might write a book about it. I have been taking notes.”
Min smiled, a friendly smile, and Loial's ears pricked back up again. “That's wonderful,” she told him. “But some of us feel as if we're being danced about like puppets by these ta'veren.”
“I didn't ask for it,” Perrin burst out. “I did not ask for it.”
She ignored him. “Is that what happened to you, Loial? Is that why you travel with Moiraine? I know you Ogier almost never leave your stedding. Did one of these ta'veren tug you along with him?”
Loial became engrossed in a study of his pipe. “I just wanted to see the groves the Ogier planted,” he muttered. “Just to see the groves.” He glanced at Perrin as if asking for help, but Perrin only grinned.
Let's see how the shoe nails onto your hoof. He did not know all of it, but he did know Loial had run away. He was ninety years old, but not yet old enough by Ogier standards to leave the stedding — going Outside, they called it — without the permission of the Elders. Ogier lived a very long time, as humans saw things. Loial said the Elders would not be best pleased when they put their hands on him again. He seemed intent on putting that moment off as long as possible.
There was a stir among the Shienarans, men getting to their feet. Rand was coming out of Moiraine's hut.
Even at that distance Perrin could make him out clearly, a young man with reddish hair and gray eyes. He was of an age with Perrin, and would stand half a head taller if they were side by side, though Rand was more slender, if still broad across the shoulders. Embroidered golden thorns ran up the sleeves of his highcollared, red coat, and on the breast of his dark cloak stood the same creature as on the banner, the fourlegged serpent with the golden mane. Rand and he had grown up together as friends. Are we still friends? Can we be? Now?
The Shienarans bowed as one, heads held up but hands to knees. “Lord Dragon,” Uno called, “we stand ready. Honor to serve.”
Uno, who could hardly say a sentence without a curse, spoke now with the deepest respect. The others echoed him. “Honor to serve.” Masema, who saw ill in everything, and whose eyes now shone with utter devotion; Ragan; all of them, awaiting a command if it were Rand's pleasure to give one.
From the slope Rand stared down at them a moment, then turned and disappeared into the trees.
“He has been arguing with Moiraine again,” Min said quietly. “All day, this time.”
Perrin was not surprised, yet he still felt a small shock. Arguing with an Aes Sedai. All the childhood tales came back to him. Aes Sedai, who made thrones and nations dance to their hidden strings. Aes Sedai, whose gift always had a hook in it, whose price was always smaller than you could believe, yet always turned out to be greater than you could imagine. Aes Sedai, whose anger could break the ground and summon lightning. Some of the stories were untrue, he knew now. And at the same time, they did not tell the half.
“I had better go to him,” he said. “After they argue, he always needs someone to talk to.” And aside from Moiraine and Lan, there were only the three of them — Min, Loial, and him — who did not stare at Rand as if he stood above kings. And of the three only Perrin knew him from before.
He strode up the slope, pausing only to glance at the closed door of Moiraine's hut. Leya would be in there, and Lan. The Warder seldom let himself get far from the Aes Sedai's side.
Rand's much smaller but was a little lower down, well hidden in the trees, away from all the rest. He had tried living down among the other men, but their constant awe drove him off. He kept to himself, now. Too much to himself, to Perrin's thinking. But he knew Rand was not headed to his hut now.
Perrin hurried on to where one side of the bowlshaped valley suddenly became sheer cliff, fifty paces high and smooth except for tough brush clinging tenaciously here and there. He knew exactly where a crack in the gray rock wall lay, an opening hardly wider than his shoulders. With only a ribbon of lateafternoon light overhead, it was like walking down a tunnel.
Half a mile the crack ran, abruptly opening out into a narrow vale, less than a mile long, its floor covered with rocks and boulders, and even the steep slopes were thickly forested with tall leatherleaf and pine and fir. Long shadows stretched away from the sun sitting on the mountaintops. The walls of this place were unbroken save for the crack, and as steep as if a giant axe had buried itself in the mountains. It could be even more easily defended by a few than the bowl, but it had neither stream nor spring. No one went there. Except Rand, after he argued with Moiraine.
Rand stood not far from the entrance, leaning against the rough trunk of a leatherleaf, staring at the palms of his hands. Perrin knew that on each there was a heron, branded into the flesh. Rand did not move when Perrin's boot scraped on stone.
Suddenly Rand began to recite softly, never looking up from his hands.
"Twice and twice shall he be marked,