The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,64

especially if they started looking at his eyes.

Pausing at the door to listen—he could hear no footsteps down the corridor either way, and nothing on the other side of the door—he went in and closed it softly behind him.

The infirmary was a long room with white walls, and the entrances to archers’ balconies at either end let in lots of light. Mat was in one of the narrow beds that lined the walls. After last night, Perrin had expected most of the beds to have men in them, but in a moment he realized the keep was full of Aes Sedai. The only thing an Aes Sedai could not cure by Healing was death. To him, the room smelled of sickness anyway.

Perrin grimaced when he thought of that. Mat lay still, eyes closed, hands unmoving atop his blankets. He looked exhausted. Not sick really, but as if he had worked three days in the fields and only now laid down to rest. He smelled . . . wrong, though. It was nothing Perrin could put a name to. Just wrong.

Perrin sat down carefully on the bed next to Mat’s. He always did things carefully. He was bigger than most people, and had been bigger than the other boys as long as he could remember. He had had to be careful so he would not hurt someone accidentally, or break things. Now it was second nature to him. He liked to think things through, too, and sometimes talk them over with somebody. With Rand thinking he’s a lord, I can’t talk to him, and Mat certainly isn’t going to have much to say.

He had gone into one of the gardens the night before, to think things through. The memory still made him a little ashamed. If he had not gone, he would have been in his room to go with Egwene and Mat, and maybe he could have kept them from being hurt. More likely, he knew, he would be in one of these beds, like Mat, or dead, but that did not change the way he felt. Still, he had gone to the garden, and it was nothing to do with the Trolloc attack that was worrying him now.

Serving women had found him sitting there in the dark, and one of the Lady Amalisa’s attendants, the Lady Timora. As soon as they came upon him, Timora sent one of the others running, and he had heard her say, “Find Liandrin Sedai! Quickly!”

They had stood there watching him as if they had thought he might vanish in a puff of smoke like a gleeman. That had been when the first alarm bell rang, and everybody in the keep started running.

“Liandrin,” he muttered now. “Red Ajah. About all they do is hunt for men who channel. You don’t think she believes I’m one of those, do you?” Mat did not answer, of course. Perrin rubbed his nose ruefully. “Now I’m talking to myself. I don’t need that on top of everything else.”

Mat’s eyelids fluttered. “Who . . . ? Perrin? What happened?” His eyes did not open all the way, and his voice sounded as if he were still mostly asleep.

“Don’t you remember, Mat?”

“Remember?” Mat sleepily raised a hand toward his face, then let it fall again with a sigh. His eyes began to drift shut. “Remember Egwene. Asked me . . . go down . . . see Fain.” He laughed, and it turned into a yawn. “She didn’t ask. Told me. . . . Don’t know what happened after. . . .” He smacked his lips, and resumed the deep, even breathing of sleep.

Perrin leaped to his feet as his ears caught the sound of approaching footsteps, but there was nowhere to go. He was still standing there beside Mat’s bed when the door opened and Leane came in. She stopped, put her fists on her hips, and looked him slowly up and down. She was nearly as tall as he was.

“Now you,” she said, in tones quiet yet brisk, “are almost a pretty enough boy to make me wish I was a Green. Almost. But if you’ve disturbed my patient . . . well, I dealt with brothers almost as big as you before I went to the Tower, so you needn’t think those shoulders will help you any.”

Perrin cleared his throat. Half the time he did not understand what women meant when they said things. Not like Rand. He always knows what to say to the girls. He