The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,294

me!”

“A hedgehog,” she murmured. “A hedgehog. Be silent, Perrin. I must think. I felt it trigger. I can sense the residues of the flows woven to set it. Spirit. Pure Spirit, and nothing else. Almost nothing uses pure flows of Spirit! Why does that hedgehog make me think of Spirit?”

“You felt what trigger, Moiraine? What was set? A trap?”

“Yes, a trap,” she said, irritation making tiny cracks in her cool serenity. “A trap meant for me. I would have been first into that room if Zarine had not rushed ahead. Lan and I would surely have gone there to plan and wait for supper. I will not wait on supper now. Be quiet, if you wish me to help the girl at all. Lan! Bring me that innkeeper!” The Warder flowed away down the stairs.

Moiraine paced up and down in the hall, sometimes stopping to peer through the door from the depths of her hood. Perrin could see no sign that Zarine lived. Her breast did not stir. He tried listening for her heartbeat, but even for his ears it was impossible.

When Lan returned, shoving a frightened Jurah Haret ahead of him by the scruff of his fat neck, the Aes Sedai rounded on the balding man. “You promised to keep this room for me, Master Haret.” Her voice was as hard, as precise, as a skinning knife. “To allow not even a serving woman to enter to clean unless I was present. Who did you let enter it, Master Haret? Tell me!”

Haret shook like a bowl of pudding. “O-only the t-two Ladies, mistress. T-they w-wished to leave a surprise for you. I swear, mistress. T-they showed it t-to me. A little h-hedgehog. T-they said you w-would be surprised.”

“I was surprised, innkeeper,” she said softly. “Leave me! And if you whisper a word of this, even in your sleep, I will pull this inn down and leave only a hole in the ground.”

“Y-yes, mistress,” he whispered. “I swear it! I do swear!

“Go!”

The innkeeper fell to his knees in his haste to reach the stairs, and went scrambling down with thumps that suggested he fell more than once as he ran.

“He knows I am here,” Moiraine told the Warder, “and he has found someone of the Black Ajah to set his trap, yet perhaps he thinks I am caught in it. It was a tiny flash of the Power, but perhaps he is strong enough to have sensed it.”

“Then he will not suspect we are coming,” Lan said quietly. He almost smiled.

Perrin stared at them, his teeth bared. “What about her?” he demanded. “What was done to her, Moiraine? Is she alive? I cannot see her breathe!”

“She is alive,” Moiraine said slowly. “I cannot, I dare not, go close enough to her to tell much beyond that, but she is alive. She . . . sleeps, in a way. As a bear sleeps in the winter. Her heart beats so slowly you could count minutes between. Her breathing is the same. She sleeps.” Even from within that hood, he could feel her eyes on him. “I fear she is not there, Perrin. Not in her body any longer.”

“What do you mean she is not in her body? Light! You don’t mean they . . . took her soul. Like the Gray Men!” Moiraine shook her head, and he drew a relieved breath. His chest hurt as if he had not breathed since she last spoke. “Then where is she, Moiraine?”

“I do not know,” she said. “I have a suspicion, but I do not know.”

“A suspicion, a hint, anything! Burn me, where?” Lan shifted at the roughness in his voice, but he knew he would try to break the Warder like iron over a hardy if the man tried to stop him. “Where?”

“I know very little, Perrin.” Moiraine’s voice was like cold, unfeeling music. “I have remembered the little I know of what connects a carved hedgehog with Spirit. The carving is a ter’angreal last studied by Corianin Nedeal, the last Dreamer the Tower had. The Talent called Dreaming is a thing of Spirit, Perrin. It is not a thing I have ever studied; my Talents lie in other ways. I believe that Zarine has been trapped inside a dream, perhaps even the World of Dreams, Tel’aran’rhiod. All that is her is inside that dream. All. A Dreamer sends only a part of herself. If Zarine does not return soon, her body will die. Perhaps she will live on in the dream.