The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,42

stopped dead, hunting for words. “Uh . . . Min, you know I like you. I like you, but. . . . Uh . . . you sort of remind me of my sisters. I mean, you. . . .” The flow stumbled to a halt as she raised her head to look at him, eyebrows arched. She wore a small smile.

“Why, Perrin, you must know that I love you.” She stood there, watching his mouth work, then spoke slowly and carefully. “Like a brother, you great wooden-headed lummox! The arrogance of men never ceases to amaze me. You all think everything has to do with you, and every woman has to desire you.”

Perrin felt his face growing hot. “I never. . . . I didn’t. . . .” He cleared his throat. “What did you see about a woman?”

“Just take my advice,” she said, and started down toward the stream again, walking fast. “If you forget all the rest,” she called over her shoulder, “heed that!”

He frowned after her—for once his thoughts seemed to arrange themselves quickly—then caught up in two strides. “It’s Rand, isn’t it?”

She made a sound in her throat and gave him a sidelong look. She did not slow down, though. “Maybe you aren’t so boneheaded after all,” she muttered. After a moment she added, as if to herself, “I’m bound to him as surely as a stave is bound to the barrel. But I can’t see if he’ll ever love me in return. And I am not the only one.”

“Does Egwene know?” he asked. Rand and Egwene had been all but promised since childhood. Everything but kneeling in front of the Women’s Circle of the village to speak the betrothal. He was not sure how far they had drifted from that, if at all.

“She knows,” Min said curtly. “Much good it does either of us.”

“What about Rand? Does he know?”

“Oh, of course,” she said bitterly. “I told him, didn’t I? ‘Rand, I did a viewing of you, and it seems I have to fall in love with you. I have to share you, too, and I don’t much like that, but there it is.’ You’re a wooden-headed wonder after all, Perrin Aybara.” She dashed a hand across her eyes angrily. “If I could be with him, I know I could help. Somehow. Light, if he dies, I don’t know if I can stand it.”

Perrin shrugged uncomfortably. “Listen, Min. I’ll do what I can to help him.” However much that is. “I promise you that. It really is best for you to go to Tar Valon. You’ll be safe there.”

“Safe?” She tasted the word as if wondering what it meant. “You think Tar Valon is safe?”

“If there’s no safety in Tar Valon, there’s no safety anywhere.”

She sniffed loudly, and in silence they went to join those preparing to leave.

CHAPTER

7

The Way Out of the Mountains

The way down out of the mountains was hard, but the lower they went, the less Perrin needed his fur-lined cloak. Hour by hour, they rode out of the tailings of winter and into the first days of spring. The last remnants of snow vanished, and grasses and wildflowers—white maiden’s hope and pink jump up—began to cover the high meadows they crossed. Trees appeared more often, with more leaves, and grasslarks and robins sang in the branches. And there were wolves. Never in sight—not even Lan mentioned seeing one—but Perrin knew. He kept his mind firmly closed to them, yet now and again a feather-light tickle at the back of his mind reminded him they were there.

Lan spent most of his time scouting their path on his black warhorse, Mandarb, following Rand’s tracks as the rest of them followed the signs the Warder left for them. An arrow of stones laid out on the ground, or one lightly scratched in the rock wall of a forking pass. Turn this way. Cross that saddlepass. Take this switchback, this deer trail, this way through the trees and down along a narrow stream, even though there is nothing to indicate anyone has ever gone that way before. Nothing but Lan’s signs. A tuft of grass or weeds tied one way to say bear left, another for bear right. A bent branch. A pile of pebbles for a rough climb ahead, two leaves caught on a thorn for a steep descent. The Warder had a hundred signs, it seemed to Perrin, and Moiraine knew them all. Lan rarely came back except when they made camp, to confer