The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,37

took some old clothes the Shienarans had hanging out to dry, and his flute, and a horse. Nothing else but a little food, as far as we can tell. None of the guards saw him go, and last night they would have seen a mouse creeping.”

“And would it have done any good if they had?” Moiraine said calmly. “Would any of them have stopped the Lord Dragon, or even challenged him? Some of them—Masema for one—would slit their own throats if the Lord Dragon told them to.”

It was Perrin’s turn to study her. “Did you expect anything else? They swore to follow him. Light, Moiraine, he’d never have named himself Dragon if not for you. What did you expect of them?” She did not speak, and he went on more quietly. “Do you believe, Moiraine? That he’s really the Dragon Reborn? Or do you just think he’s someone you can use before the One Power kills him or drives him mad?”

“Go easy, Perrin,” Loial said. “Not so angry.”

“I’ll go easy when she answers me. Well, Moiraine?”

“He is what he is,” she said sharply.

“You said the Pattern would force him to the right path eventually. Is that what this is, or is he just trying to get away from you?” For a moment he thought he had gone too far—her dark eyes sparkled with anger—but he refused to back down. “Well?”

Moiraine took a deep breath. “This may well be what the Pattern has chosen, yet I did not mean for him to go off alone. For all his power, he is as defenseless as a babe in many ways, and as ignorant of the world. He channels, but he has no control over whether or not the One Power comes when he reaches for it and almost as little over what he does with it if it does come. The power itself will kill him before he has a chance to go mad if he does not learn that control. There is so much he must learn, yet. He wants to run before he has learned to walk.”

“You split hairs and lay false trails, Moiraine.” Perrin snorted. “If he is what you say he is, did it never occur to you that he might know what he has to do better than you?”

“He is what he is,” she repeated firmly, “but I must keep him alive if he is to do anything. He will fulfill no prophecies dead, and even if he manages to avoid Darkfriends and Shadowspawn, there are a thousand other hands ready to slay him. All it will take is a hint of the hundredth part of what he is. Yet if that were all he might face, I would not worry half so much as I do. There are the Forsaken to be accounted for.”

Perrin gave a start; from the corner, Loial moaned. “ ‘The Dark One and all the Forsaken are bound in Shayol Ghul,’ ” Perrin began by rote, but she gave him no time to finish.

“The seals are weakening, Perrin. Some are broken, though the world does not know that. Must not know that. The Father of Lies is not free. Yet. But as the seals weaken, more and more, which of the Forsaken may be loosed already? Lanfear? Sammael? Asmodean, or Be’lal, or Ravhin? Ishamael himself, the Betrayer of Hope? They were thirteen altogether, Perrin, and bound in the sealing, not in the prison that holds the Dark One. Thirteen of the most powerful Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends, the weakest of them stronger than the ten strongest Aes Sedai living today, the most ignorant with all the knowledge of the Age of Legends. And every man and woman of them gave up the Light and dedicated their souls to the Shadow. What if they are free, and out there waiting for him? I will not let them have him.”

Perrin shivered, partly from the icy iron in her last words, and partly from thought of the Forsaken. He did not want to think of even one of the Forsaken loose in the world. His mother had frightened him with those names when he was little. Ishamael comes for boys who do not tell their mothers the truth. Lanfear waits in the night for boys who do not go to bed when they are supposed to. Being older did not help, not when he knew now they were all real. Not when Moiraine said they might be free.

“Bound in Shayol Ghul,” he