A Crown of Swords

## Chapter 27

#### To Be Alone

Slipping the haft of his axe through the loop on his belt opposite his quiver, Perrin took his unstrung longbow from the corner, slung his saddlebags over his shoulder and left the rooms he had shared with Faile without a backward look. They had been happy there—most of the time. He did not think he would ever be back. Sometimes he wondered whether being happy somewhere with Faile meant he would never return there. He hoped not.

The servants he saw in the palace corridors wore unrelieved black livery; perhaps Rand had ordered it, and perhaps the servants themselves had simply adopted it. They had been uneasy without livery, as though they did not know where they belonged, and black seemed safe as Rand’s color because of the Asha’man. Those who saw Perrin scampered away as fast as they could, not waiting for any bows or curtsies. Fear scent drifted behind them.

For once his yellow eyes had nothing to do with anyone being afraid. It might not be safe to loiter near a man at whom the Dragon Reborn had unleashed his rage so publicly this very morning. Perrin eased the shoulder under his saddlebags. A long while had passed since anyone had been able to pick him up and throw him. Of course, no one had ever used the Power to try, before. One moment in particular stuck with him.

He pushed himself up holding his shoulder, sliding his back up the square column that had stopped his flight. He thought a few ribs might have cracked. Around the Grand Hall of the Sun, a scattering of nobles who had come to appeal one thing or another to Rand tried to look anywhere else, tried to pretend they were anywhere else. Only Dobraine watched, shaking his gray head, as Rand stalked across the throne room.

“I will deal with the Aes Sedai as I choose!” Rand shouted. “Do you hear me, Perrin? As I choose!”

“You’ve just handed them over to the Wise Ones,” he growled back, shoving away from the column. “You don’t know whether they’re sleeping on silk or had their throats cut! You are not the Creator!”

With a snarl of rage, Rand threw his head back. “I am the Dragon Reborn!” he cried. “I don’t care how they’re treated! They deserve a dungeon!” Perrin’s hackles stirred as Rand’s eyes lowered from the vaulted ceiling. Blue ice would have been warm and soft beside them, the more so because they stared from a face twisted with pain. “Get out of my sight, Perrin. Do you hear me? Get out of Cairhien! Today! Now! I never want to see you again!” Pivoting on his heel, he strode away with nobles all but throwing themselves to the floor as he passed.

Perrin thumbed a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. For one moment there, he had been sure Rand was going to kill him.

Shaking his head to rid himself of the thought, he rounded a corner and nearly ran into Loial. With a large bundle strapped to his back and a scrip big enough to hold a sheep slung on his shoulder, the Ogier was using his long-handled axe as a walking staff. The capacious pockets of his coat bulged with the shapes of books.

Loial’s tufted ears perked up at the sight of him, then suddenly drooped. His whole face drooped, eyebrows hanging on his cheeks. “I heard, Perrin,” he boomed sadly. “Rand should not have done that. Quick words make long troubles. I know he’ll reconsider. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“It’s all right,” Perrin told him. “Cairhien is too . . . polished . . . for me, anyway. I’m a blacksmith, not a courtier. By tomorrow, I’ll be a long way gone.”

“You and Faile could come with me. Karldin and I are going to visit the stedding, Perrin. All of them, about the Waygates.” A narrow-faced, pale-haired young fellow standing behind Loial stopped frowning at Perrin to frown at the Ogier. He had a scrip and a bundle, too, and a sword on his hip. Despite the blue coat, Perrin recognized one of the Asha’man. Karldin did not look pleased to recognize Perrin; besides, his smell was cold and angry. Loial peered down the hallway behind Perrin. “Where is Faile?”

“She’s . . . meeting me in the stables. We had words.” That was simple truth; Faile seemed to like shouting, sometimes. He lowered his voice. “Loial, I wouldn’t talk about that where anyone could hear. The Waygates, I mean.”

Loial snorted hard enough to make a bull jump, but he did drop his tone. “I don’t see anyone but us,” he rumbled. No one more than two or three paces beyond Karldin could have heard clearly. His ears . . . lashed was the only word . . . and laid back angrily. “Everyone’s afraid to be seen near you. After all you’ve done for Rand.”

Karldin tugged at Loial’s sleeve. “We have to go,” he said, glaring at Perrin. Anyone the Dragon Reborn shouted at was outside the gates so far as he was concerned. Perrin wondered whether he was holding the Power right then.

“Yes, yes,” Loial murmured, waving a ham-sized hand, but he leaned on his axe, frowning pensively. “I don’t like this, Perrin. Rand chases you away. He sends me off. How I’m to finish my book . . . ” His ears twitched, and he coughed. “Well, that’s neither here nor there. But you, me, and the Light only knows where Mat is. He’ll send Min away next. He hid from her, this morning. He sent me out to tell her he wasn’t there. I think she knew I was lying. He’ll be alone, then, Perrin. ‘It’s terrible to be alone.’ That’s what he said to me. He is planning to send all of his friends away.”

“The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills,” Perrin said. Loial blinked at that echo of Moiraine. Perrin had been thinking of her a lot recently; she had been a restraining influence on Rand. “Farewell, Loial. Keep safe, and don’t trust anyone you don’t have to.” He did not quite look at Karldin.

“You don’t mean that, Perrin.” Loial sounded shocked; he seemed to trust everyone. “You cannot. Come with me, you and Faile.”

“We’ll meet again, one day,” Perrin told him gently, and hurried past before he had to say more. He did not like lying, especially not to a friend.

In the north stable things were much the same as inside the palace. Grooms saw him walk in, and dropped dung forks and curry combs, crowding out through small doors at the back. Rustles in the loft high above that might have escaped another’s ears told of folk hiding there; he could hear anxious, fearful breaths. He brought Stepper out of a green-streaked marble stall, slipped on his bridle and tied the dun stallion to a gilded hitching ring. He went to fetch blanket and saddle from a marble tack room where half the saddles were mounted with silver or gold. The stable fit very well in a palace, with tall square marble columns and a marble floor, even under the straw in the stalls. He rode out glad to see the back of grandeur.

North of the city he followed the road he had come down so desperately with Rand just a few days before, rode until folds in the land hid Cairhien. Then he turned off to the east, where a fair patch of forest remained, running down one tall hill and over the next, taller one. Just inside the trees, Faile booted Swallow to meet him, Aram heeling her like a hound on his own horse. Aram’s face brightened at the sight of him, though that was not saying much; he merely divided his faithful hound looks between him and Faile.

“Husband,” she said. Not too coolly, but razor-sharp anger and spiky jealousy still threaded through the clean scent of her and her herbal soap. She was garbed for travel, with a thin dust-cloak hanging down her back and red gloves that matched the boots peeking out beneath the dark narrow riding skirts she favored. No fewer than four sheathed daggers were tucked behind her belt.

Movement behind her turned into Bain and Chiad. And Sulin, with a dozen more Maidens. Perrin’s eyebrows rose. He wondered what Gaul thought of that; the Aielman had said he was looking forward to getting Bain and Chiad alone. Even more surprising were Faile’s other companions.

“What are they doing here?” He nodded toward a small cluster who held their horses back. He recognized Selande and Camaille and the tall Tairen woman, all still in men’s clothes and wearing swords. The blocky fellow in a fat-sleeved coat who had kept his beard oiled and trimmed to a point despite wearing his hair tied back with a ribbon also looked familiar. The other two men, both Cairhienin, he did not know, but he could guess, by their youth and the ribbon tying their hair if nothing else, that they were part of Selande’s “society.”

“I took Selande and a few of her friends into my service.” Faile spoke lightly, but suddenly she gave off foggy waves of caution. “They would have gotten themselves into trouble in the city, sooner or later. They need someone to give them direction. Think of them as charity. I won’t let them get under your feet.”

Perrin sighed and scratched his beard. A wise man did not tell his wife to her face that she was hiding things. Especially when that wife was Faile; she was going to be as formidable as her mother. If she was not already. Under his feet? How many of these . . . puppies . . . had she taken on? “Is everything ready? Pretty soon some idiot back there will decide he can curry favor by bringing Rand my head. I’d like to be gone before that.” Aram growled in his throat.

“No one is going to take your head, husband.” Faile showed white teeth, and went on in a whisper she knew he would catch. “Except perhaps me.” In a normal voice, she said, “All is ready.”

In a clear, fairly flat hollow beyond the trees, the Two Rivers men stood beside their horses, a column of twos that wound out of sight around the side of the hill. Perrin sighed again. The red wolfhead banner and the Red Eagle of Manetheren stirred slightly in a hot breeze at the head of the column. Maybe another dozen Maidens squatted on their heels near the banners; on the other side, Gaul wore as close to a sullen expression as Perrin had ever seen on an Aiel.

As he dismounted, two black-coated men came to him, saluting with fist pressed to heart. “Lord Perrin,” Jur Grady said. “We’ve been here since last night. We are ready.”

Grady’s weathered farmer’s face made Perrin almost comfortable with him, but Fager Neald was another matter. Maybe ten years younger than Grady, he might have been a farmer too for all Perrin knew, but he affected airs and graces, and wore his pitiful mustache waxed to a semblance of points. Where Grady was one of the Dedicated, he was a Soldier, without the silver sword pinned to his collar, but that did not hold him back from speaking. “Lord Perrin, is it really necessary to take those women with us? They’ll be nothing but trouble, they will, the whole lot of them, and you know it well.”

Some of the women he was talking about stood not far from the Two Rivers men, shawls looped over their arms. Edarra appeared the eldest of the six Wise Ones impassively watching the two women Neald had nodded to. In truth, that pair worried Perrin as well. Seonid Traighan, all coolness and reserve in green silk, had been haughtily trying to ignore the Aiel women—most Cairhienin who were not pretending to be Aiel despised them—but when she saw Perrin, she shifted her bay’s reins to the other hand and gave Masuri Sokawa a nudge in the ribs. Masuri started—Browns seemed to go off in daydreams fairly often—stared at the Green sister blankly, then directed her stare at Perrin. This one was more the sort she might have given some peculiar and perhaps dangerous animal, one she intended to be sure of before she was done. They had sworn to obey Rand al’Thor, but how would they do obeying Perrin Aybara? Giving orders to Aes Sedai seemed unnatural. But better than the other way around, at least.

“Everybody comes,” Perrin said. “Let’s be gone before we are seen.” Faile sniffed.

Grady and Neald saluted again and strode out to the middle of the treeless area. Perrin had no idea which of them did what was necessary, but suddenly the now-familiar silvery vertical flash in the air rotated into a gateway not quite tall enough to ride through. Trees showed beyond the opening, not that much different from those on the surrounding hills. Grady strode through immediately, but even so he was nearly knocked down by Sulin and a small horde of veiled Maidens. They seemed to have taken the honor of being first through a gateway for themselves, and were not about to let anyone usurp it.

Foreseeing a hundred problems he had not thought of, Perrin led Stepper through into a land not so hilly. There was no clearing, but it was not so thickly treed as the hollow back in Cairhien, either. The scattered trees were taller, but just as sere, even the pines. He did not recognize much else except for oak and leatherleaf. The air seemed a little hotter.

Faile followed him, but when he turned to the left, she took Swallow right. Aram’s head swung worriedly between them until Perrin nodded toward his wife. The onetime Tinker hauled his gelding after her, but quick as he was, he was not before Bain and Chiad, still veiled, and, for all Perrin’s orders that the Two Rivers men were to be next, Selande and a good two dozen young Cairhienin and Tairens poured out of the gateway drawing their horses along. Two dozen! Shaking his head, Perrin stopped beside Grady, who turned this way and that, studying the sparse woodland.

Gaul came stalking up as Dannil finally began leading the Two Rivers men out at a run, pulling their horses. Those bloody banners appeared right behind Dannil, going up as soon as they were clear. The man ought to shave those fool mustaches.

“Women are beyond any belief,” Gaul muttered.

Perrin opened his mouth to defend Faile before he realized it must be Bain and Chiad the man was glaring at. To cover, he said, “Do you have a wife, Grady?”

“Sora,” Grady answered absently, his attention still on the surrounding trees. Perrin would have wagered he held the Power now, for sure. Anyone could see a long way in this, compared to any woods back home, but someone could still sneak up on you. “She’s missing me,” Grady went on, almost to himself. “You learn to recognize that one right off. I wish I knew why her knee hurts, though.”

“Her knee hurts,” Perrin said flatly. “Right this minute, it hurts.”

Grady seemed to realize he was staring, and Gaul was too. He blinked, but went right back to his study. “Forgive me, Lord Perrin. I need to keep a watch.” For a long moment he said nothing, then began slowly, “It’s something a fellow named Canler worked out. The M’Hael doesn’t like us trying to figure out things on our own, but once it was done . . . ” His slight grimace said perhaps Taim had not been all that easy about it even then. “We think maybe it’s something like the bond between Warders and Aes Sedai. Maybe one in three of us is married; anyway, that’s how many wives stayed instead of running off when they learned what their husbands were. This way, when you’re apart from her, you know she’s all right, and she knows you are. A man likes to know his wife’s safe.”

“That he does,” Perrin said. What was Faile up to with those fools? She was mounted on Swallow now, and they were all standing close around, looking up at her. He would not put it past her to leap into this ji’e’toh nonsense herself.

Seonid and Masuri glided behind the last of the Two Rivers men with the three Warders they had between them, and the Wise Ones right behind them, which was no surprise. They were along to keep an eye on the Aes Sedai. Seonid gathered her reins as if to mount, but Edarra said something in a low voice, pointing to a fat lopsided oak, and the two Aes Sedai looked at her, heads swiveling as one, then exchanged glances and led their horses to the tree. Matters would go a deal smoother if that pair was always so meek—well, not meek exactly; Seonid’s neck was stiff as a rod.

After that came the remounts, a herd of spare horses tied ten to a lead, under the watchful eyes of folk from Dobraine’s estates who supposedly knew what they were about. Perrin automatically picked out Stayer, on a lead by himself; the woman taking care of him better know what she was doing. A great many high-wheeled supply carts came through, drivers tugging the horses and shouting as if they feared the gateway might close on them—a great many because carts could not carry as much as wagons, and carts because a wagon and team would not fit through the gateway. It seemed neither Neald nor Grady could make one as big as Rand could, or Dashiva.

When the last cart finally trundled out on a squealing axle, Perrin considered ordering the gateway closed right then, but Neald was the man holding the thing open, and him on the other side of it back in Cairhien. A moment later, it was too late.

Berelain strode through leading a mare as white as Swallow was black, and he offered up small thanks that her gray riding dress had a neck right to her chin. On the other hand, from the waist up, it fit as snugly as any Taraboner dress. Perrin groaned. With her came Nurelle and Bertain Gallenne, the Lord Captain of her Winged Guards, a gray-haired fellow who wore his black eyepatch as another man might a plume in his hat, and then the red-armored Winged Guards themselves, more than nine hundred of them. Nurelle and the rest who had been at Dumai’s Wells wore a yellow cord tied high on the left arm.

Climbing onto her mare, Berelain rode off to one side with Gallenne while Nurelle formed the Winged Guards among the trees. There must have been fifty paces between her and Faile, and dozens of trees, but she placed herself where they could stare at each other. Stare with so little expression that Perrin’s skin crawled. Putting Berelain at the rear, as far from Faile as he could manage, had seemed a good notion, but he was going to face this every bloody evening. Burn Rand!

Now Neald popped out of the gateway, stroking his ridiculous mustache and preening for anyone who might be watching as the opening vanished. No one was, and he climbed onto his horse with a disgruntled expression.

Mounting Stepper, Perrin rode to a slight rise. Not everyone could see him because of the trees, but it was enough they could hear. A stir ran through the assemblage as he reined in, people shifting for a better look.

“As far as anyone’s eyes-and-ears back in Cairhien know,” he said loudly, “I’ve been banished, the First of Mayene is on her way back home, and the rest of you have just disappeared like fog in the sun.”

To his surprise, they laughed. A cry of “Perrin Goldeneyes” went up, and not just from the Two Rivers folk. He waited for it to quiet; that took a while. Faile neither laughed nor shouted, nor did Berelain. Each woman shook her head; neither believed he should tell as much as he intended to. Then they saw each other, and those shaking heads froze as if trapped in amber. They did not like agreeing. It was no surprise when their eyes swung to him with identical expressions. There was an old saying in the Two Rivers, though how you said it and what you meant depended on circumstance and who you were. “It’s always a man’s fault.” One thing, he had learned, women were better at than anything else: teaching a man to sigh.

“Some of you may be wondering where we are, and why,” he went on when silence fell at last. A smaller ripple of laughter. “This is Ghealdan.” Murmurs of awe, and maybe disbelief, at having crossed fifteen hundred miles or more in a step. “The first thing we have to do is convince Queen Alliandre we aren’t here to invade.” Berelain was supposed to talk to Alliandre, and Faile was going to give him fits for it. “Then we’re going to find a fellow who calls himself the Prophet of the Lord Dragon.” That would not be much pleasure, either; Masema had been no joy before he tipped over the edge. “This Prophet has been causing some problems, but we’re going to let him know Rand al’Thor doesn’t want anybody frightened into following him, and we’ll take him and any of his people who want to come back to the Lord Dragon.” And we’ll frighten the breeches off Masema to do it if need be, he though wryly.

They cheered. They whooped and shouted that they would march this Prophet back to Cairhien for the Lord Dragon till Perrin hoped this spot was even farther from any village than it was supposed to be. Even the cart drivers and horse handlers joined in. More than that, he prayed that everything went smoothly, and quickly. The sooner he could put as much distance as possible between Berelain and himself and Faile, the better. No surprises, that was what he wanted once they rode south. It was about time his being ta’veren showed itself good for something.