Crossroads of Twilight

## Chapter 6

#### The Scent of a Dream

The cold air seemed clean and fresh in Perrin’s nose as he galloped into the forest, the breezes full of the crispness of the snow that fountained in sprays beneath Stepper’s hooves. Out here, he could forget old friends who were willing to believe the worst on rumor. He could try to forget Masema, and the Aes Sedai, and the Wise Ones. The Shaido were welded to the inside of his skull, however, an iron puzzle that would not yield no matter how he twisted. He wanted to wrench it apart, but that never worked with a blacksmith’s puzzle.

After one short burst of speed, he slowed the dun to a walk, feeling a touch of guilt. The darkness beneath the forest canopy was deep, and stone outcrops between the tall trees warned of more hidden beneath the snow, a hundred places that could break a running horse’s leg, and that without counting gopher holes and fox dens and badger sets. There was no need to take the risk. A gallop would not free Faile an hour sooner, and no horse could maintain that pace for long in any case. The snow here was knee-deep in places where it had drifted, and deep enough elsewhere. He rode northeast, though. The scouts would be coming from the northeast, with news of Faile. News of the Shaido, at least, a location. He had hoped for that so often, prayed for it, but today, he knew it would come. Yet knowing only increased his anxiety. Finding them was only the first part of solving this puzzle. Anger made his mind flash from one thing to another, yet no matter what Balwer said, Perrin knew he was methodical at best. He did not do well trying to think quickly, and lacking cleverness, methodical was going to have to do. Somehow.

Aram caught up to him, running his gray hard, and slowed to ride just a little behind and to one side like a heeling hound. Perrin let him. Aram never smelled comfortable when Perrin made him ride alongside. The onetime Tinker did not speak, but eddies in the icy air brought his scent, a melange of anger and suspicion and disgruntlement. He sat his saddle as tense as an over-wound clockspring and watched the forest around them grimly, as though he expected Shaido to leap out from behind the nearest tree.

In truth, almost anything could have hidden from most men in these woods. Where the sky overhead could be seen through the canopy of branches, it held a definite tinge of dark grayness, but for the moment that cast the forest in shadows murkier than night, and the trees themselves were massive columns of darkness. Yet even the shift of a black-winged jackdaw on a snow-mounded branch, its feathers fluffed against the cold, caught Perrin’s eyes, and a hunting pine martin, a deeper black than the darkness, cautiously raising its head on another. He caught the scent of both, too. A faint whiff of man scent came from up in a massive oak with dark spreading limbs as thick as a pony. The Ghealdanin and Mayeners had their mounted patrols circling the camp a few miles out, but he preferred to rely on Two Rivers men closer in. He did not have enough men to ring the camp completely, yet they were used to forests, and to hunting animals that might hunt them in turn, used to noticing movement that would escape a man thinking in terms of soldiers and war. Ridgecats down from the mountains after sheep could hide in plain sight, and bear and wild boar were known to double back on their pursuers and lie in ambush. From branches thirty and forty feet above the ground, the men could see anything that moved below in time to warn the camp, and with their longbows, they could exact a heavy price from anyone who tried to force a way past them. Yet the presence of the guard touched his mind as lightly as the presence of the jackdaw. He was focused ahead through the trees and the shadows, intent on picking out the first sign of the scouts returning.

Abruptly Stepper tossed his head and snorted in a spew of mist, eyes rolling in fear as he stopped dead, and Aram’s gray squealed and shied. Perrin leaned forward to pat the trembling stallion’s neck, but his hand froze as he caught a trace of scent, a smell of burned sulphur faint in the air, that made the hair on the back of his neck try to stand. Almost burnt sulphur; that was only a pale imitation of this smell. It had a reek of . . . wrongness, of something that did not belong in this world. The scent was not new—you could not ever have called that stink “fresh”—but not old, either. An hour, perhaps less. Maybe about the time he had wakened. About the time he had dreamed of this scent.

“What is it, Lord Perrin?” Aram was having difficulty controlling his gray, which danced in circles fighting the reins and wanting to run in any direction so long as it was away, but even while sawing at his reins he had his wolfhead-pommeled sword out. He practiced with it daily, for hours on end when he could, and those who knew about such things said he was good. “You may be able to make out a black thread from a white in this, but it isn’t day yet to me. I can’t see anything well enough to matter.”

“Put that away,” Perrin told him. “It isn’t needed. Swords wouldn’t do any good, anyway.” He had to coax his trembling mount to move forward, but he followed the rank smell, scanning the snow-covered ground ahead. He knew that smell, and not just from the dream.

It only took a little while to find what he was looking for, and Stepper gave a grateful whicker when Perrin reined him in well short of a slab-like crest of gray stone, two paces wide, that jutted up to his right. The snow all around was smooth and unmarked, but dog tracks covered the tilted span of stone, as though a pack had scrambled over it as they ran. Dimness and shadows or no, they were plain to Perrin’s eyes. Footprints larger than the palm of his hand, pressed into the stone as though it had been mud. He patted Stepper’s neck again. No wonder the animal was frightened.

“Go back to the camp and find Dannil, Aram. Tell him I said to let everyone know there were Darkhounds here, maybe an hour ago. And put your sword away. You wouldn’t want to try killing a Darkhound with a sword, believe me.”

“Darkhounds?” Aram exclaimed, peering around into the murky shadows between the trees. There was an anxious fear in his scent, now. Most men would have laughed about travelers’ tales or stories for children. Tinkers roamed the countryside, and knew what could found in the wilds. Aram sheathed the sword on his back with obvious reluctance, but his right hand remained raised, half-reaching for the hilt. “How do you kill a Darkhound? Can they be killed?” Then again, maybe he did not have much good sense at that.

“Just be glad you don’t have to try, Aram. Now go do like I told you. Everyone needs to keep a sharp lookout in case they come back. Not much chance of that, I’d say, but better safe.” Perrin remembered facing a pack of them once, and killing one. He thought he had killed one, after hitting it with three good broadhead arrows. Shadowspawn did not die easily. Moiraine had had to finish that pack, with balefire. “Make sure the Aes Sedai and Wise Ones learn of this, and the Asha’man.” Small chance any of them knew how to make balefire—the women might not admit knowing a forbidden weave if they did, and maybe not the men either—but maybe they knew something else that could work.

Aram was reluctant to leave Perrin alone until Perrin snapped at him, and then he turned back toward the camp trailing smells of umbrage and hurt, as if two men would have been a whit safer than one. As soon as the other man was out of sight, Perrin reined Stepper southward, the direction the Darkhounds had been heading. He did not want company for this, even Aram’s. Just because people sometimes noted his sharp eyesight was no reason to flaunt it, or his sense of smell. There were already reasons enough to shun him without adding more.

It might have been chance that the creatures had passed so near his camp, but the last few years had made him uneasy with coincidences. All too often, they were not coincidence at all, not the way other men counted such things. If this was another bit of his ta’veren tugging at the Pattern, it was a bit he could have done without. The thing seemed to have more disadvantages than advantages even when it appeared to be working in your favor. The chance that favored you one minute could turn on you in the next. And there was always another possibility. Being ta’veren made you stand out in the Pattern, and some of the Forsaken could use that to find you at times, or so he had been told. Maybe some Shadowspawn could, too.

The trail he followed was surely near an hour old, but Perrin felt a tightness between his shoulder blades, a prickling on his scalp. The sky was still a deep dark gray where it showed, even to his eyes. The sun had not yet crested the horizon. Just before sunrise was one of the worst times to meet the Wild Hunt, when darkness was changing to light but the light had not taken hold. At least there was no crossroads nearby, no graveyard, but the only hearthstones to touch lay back in Brytan, and he was not certain how much safety those hovels held. In his mind, he marked out the location of a nearby stream, where the camp got its water by chopping through the ice. It was no more than ten or twelve paces wide and only knee-deep, but putting running water between you and Darkhounds would stop them supposedly. But then, so would facing them, supposedly, and he had seen the results of that. His nose tested the breezes, searching for that old scent. And for any hint of a newer. Coming on those things unaware would be worse than unpleasant.

Stepper caught scents almost as easily as Perrin, and sometimes noticed what they were sooner, but whenever the dun balked, Perrin forced him forward. There were plenty of tracks scattered in the snow, hoofprints of the mounted patrols going out and coming back, occasional sign of rabbits and foxes, but the only marks left by the Darkhounds were where stone stuck up out of the snow. The burnt sulphur smell was always strongest there, yet enough trace lingered in between to lead him to the next place where their tracks showed. The huge pawprints overlapped one another, and there was no way to tell how many Darkhounds there had been, but whether a pace wide or six, every rock surface they had crossed was smothered in tracks from one side to the other. A larger pack than the ten he had seen outside Illian. Much larger. Was that why there were no wolves in the area? He was sure that the certainty of death he had felt in the dream was something real, and he had been a wolf in the dream.

As the trail began to curve to the west, he felt a growing suspicion that firmed into certainty as it continued to bend. The Darkhounds had circled the camp completely, running right across the place north of the camp where several huge trees lay half toppled and propped by their neighbors, each with a tall chunk sliced cleanly out of its splintered trunk. The tracks covered a stone outcrop as smooth and flat as a polished marble floor except for one hair-thin gouge cut through it straight as a plumb line. Nothing resisted the opening of an Asha’man’s gateway, and two had opened here. A thick pine that had fallen blocking one had a section four paces wide burned out of it, but the charred ends were as neat as if they had come from a sawmill. It seemed that evidence of the One Power did not interest Darkhounds, however. The pack had not paused there any more than anywhere else, or even slowed that he could tell. Darkhounds could run faster than horses, and for longer, and the stench of them hardly seemed to have faded more in one place than another. At two points in that circuit he had picked up a forking in the trail, but that was only the pack coming from the north and departing south. Once around the camp, and then on their way after whatever or whoever they were hunting.

Plainly, that was not him. Perhaps the pack had circled because they sensed him, sensed someone who was ta’veren, yet he doubted that Darkhounds would have hesitated one instant at coming into the camp, had they been after him. The pack he had faced before had entered the city of Illian, though it had not tried to kill him till later. But did Darkhounds report what they saw, the way rats and ravens did? The thought made his jaw clench. The Shadow’s attention was something any sane man feared, the Shadow’s attention might interfere with freeing Faile. That concerned him more than anything else. Yet there were ways to fight Shadowspawn, ways to fight the Forsaken, if it came to that. Whatever came between him and Faile, Darkhounds or the Forsaken or anything else, he would find a way to go around or through, whichever was necessary. A man could only have so much fear in him at one time, and all of his fear was centered on Faile. There just was no room for any more.

Before he reached his starting place again, the breezes brought him the smells of people and horses, sharp in the icy cold, and he reined Stepper to a slow walk, and then to a halt. He had spotted some fifty or sixty horses near a hundred paces ahead. The sun had finally peeked above the horizon and begun to send sharply slanted shafts of light through the forest canopy, reflecting off the snow and lessening the gloom a little, though deep, dappled shadows remained between the sun’s slender fingers. Some of those shadows enveloped him. The mounted party was not far from where he had first seen the Darkhounds’ tracks, and he could see Aram’s sickly green cloak and red-striped coat, the Tinker garments jarring with the sword on his back. Most of the riders wore rimmed red helmets shaped like pots and dark cloaks over red breastplates, and the long red streamers on their lances stirred in the light airs as the soldiers tried to keep watch in every direction. The First of Mayene often rode out in the mornings, with a suitable bodyguard of the Winged Guards.

He started to slip away without having to meet Berelain, but then he saw three tall women afoot among the horses, long dark shawls wrapped around their heads and draped over their upper bodies, and he hesitated. Wise Ones rode when they had to, if unwillingly, but tramping a mile or two in the snow wearing heavy woolen skirts was insufficient reason to force them onto horseback. Almost certainly Seonid or Masuri was in that group, as well, though the Aiel women seemed to like Berelain for some reason he could not fathom.

He had no thought of joining the riders, no matter who was with them, but hesitation cost him his chance at evasion. One of the Wise Ones—he thought it was Carelle, a fire-haired woman who always had a challenge in her sharp blue eyes—raised a hand to point in his direction, and the whole party turned, the soldiers whipping their horses around and peering through the trees toward him, lances tipped with a foot of steel half lowered. It was unlikely they could make him out clearly through the deep pools of shadow and bright bars of sunlight. He was surprised the Wise One had, but then, Aiel generally had sharp eyes.

Masuri was there, a slim woman in a bronze-colored cloak riding a dapple mare, and Annoura as well, keeping her brown mare well back but marked by the dozens of thin dark braids that hung from the opening of her cowl. Berelain herself sat a sleek bay gelding at the forefront, a tall beautiful young woman with long black hair, in a red cloak lined with black fur. A simple flaw lessened her beauty, though; she was not Faile. A worse flaw ruined it, as far as he was concerned. He had learned of Faile’s kidnapping from her, and of Masema’s contact with the Seanchan, but nearly everyone in the camp believed that he had slept with Berelain on the very night Faile was taken, and she had done nothing to correct the tale. It was hardly the kind of story he could ask her to stand up and deny publicly, yet she could have said something, told her maids to deny it, anything. Instead, Berelain held her silence, and her maids, gossiping like magpies, actually fostered the tale. That sort of reputation stuck to a man, in the Two Rivers.

He had avoided Berelain since that night, and he would have ridden away now even after they saw him, but she took a hoop-handled basket from the maid accompanying her, a plump woman wrapped in a blue-and-gold cloak, then spoke to the others and started her sleek bay gelding toward him. Alone. Annoura raised a hand and called something after her, but Berelain never glanced back. Perrin did not doubt she would follow wherever he went, and the way things were, leaving would only make people believe he wanted to be private with her. He dug his heels into Stepper’s flanks, meaning to join the others no matter how little he wanted to—let her follow him back to them if she wanted—but she urged the bay to a canter despite the rough ground and the snow, even leaping a stone outcrop, her red cloak flowing out behind her, and met him halfway. She was a good rider, he admitted grudgingly. Not as good as Faile, but better than most.

“Your scowl is quite fierce,” she laughed softly as she halted right in front of Stepper. From the way she held her reins, she was ready to block him if he tried going around. The woman had no shame at all! “Smile, so people think we are flirting.” She pushed the basket at him with one crimson-gloved hand. “This should make you smile, at least. I hear you forget to eat.” Her nose wrinkled. “And to wash, it seems. Your beard needs trimming, too. A careworn, somewhat disheveled husband rescuing his wife is a romantic figure, but she might not think so well of a dirty ragamuffin. No woman will ever forgive you ruining her image of you.”

Suddenly confused, Perrin took the basket, sitting it in front of him on the tall pommel of his saddle, and unconsciously rubbed at his nose. He was accustomed to certain smells from Berelain, usually those of a hunting she-wolf, and he was the intended prey, but today she gave off no hunting scent. Not a whisker of it. She smelled patient as stone, and amused, with undercurrents of fear. The woman certainly had never been afraid of him that he recalled. And what did she have to be patient about? For that matter, what did she have to amused about? A ridge cat smelling like a lamb would not have confounded him more.

Confusion or no, his stomach rumbled at the aromas drifting from the lidded basket. Roasted woodhen, unless he was much mistaken, and bread still warm from the baking. Flour was in short supply, and bread almost as rare as meat. It was true that he missed eating some days. He really did forget, sometimes, and when he remembered, eating was a chore, for he had to run the gauntlet of Lini and Breane or be given the cold shoulder by people he had grown up with just to get a meal. Food right under his nose made his mouth water. Would it be disloyal to eat food brought by Berelain?

“Thank you for the loaf and the woodhen,” he said roughly, “but the last thing on earth I want is for anyone to think we’re flirting. And I wash when I can, if it’s any of your business. It isn’t easy in this weather. Besides, nobody else smells any better than I do.” She did, he realized suddenly. There was no hint of sweat or dirt under her light, flowery perfume. It irritated him that he had noticed she was wearing perfume, or that she smelled clean. It seemed a betrayal.

Berelain’s eyes widened momentarily in startlement—why?—but then she sighed through her smile, which was beginning to look fixed, and a thread of irritation entered her scent. “Have your tent set up. I know there’s a good copper bathtub in one of your carts. You won’t have thrown that out. People expect a noble to look like a noble, Perrin, and that includes being presentable, even when it takes extra effort. It’s a bargain between you and them. You must give them what they expect as well as what they need or want, or they lose respect and start resenting you for making them lose it. Frankly, none of us can afford for you to let that happen. We’re all far from our homes, surrounded by enemies, and I very much believe that you, Lord Perrin Goldeneyes, may be our only chance of living to reach our homes again. Without you, everything falls apart. Now smile, because if we’re flirting, then we aren’t talking about something else.”

Perrin bared his teeth. The Mayeners and the Wise Ones were watching, but at fifty paces, in this gloom, it would be taken for a smile. Lose respect? Berelain had helped strip him of any respect he once had from the Two Rivers folk, not to mention Faile’s servants. Worse, Faile had given him some version of that lecture about a noble’s duty to give people what they expected more than once. What he resented was hearing this woman, of all people, echo his wife. “What are we talking about, then, that you don’t trust your own people to know?”

Her face remained smooth and smiling, yet the undercurrent of fear in her scent strengthened. It was nowhere near panic, but she believed herself in danger. Her gloved hands were tight on the bay’s reins. “I’ve had my thief-catchers nosing about in Masema’s camp, making ‘friends.’ Not as good as having eyes-and-ears there, but they took wine they supposedly stole from me, and they learned a little by listening.” For an instant she regarded him quizzically, tilting her head. Light! She knew Faile used Selande and those other idiots as spies! It had been Berelain who told him about them in the first place. Likely Gendar and Santes, her thief-catchers, had seen Haviar and Nerion in Masema’s camp. Balwer would have to be warned before he tried to set Medore on Berelain and Annoura. That would certainly make a fine tangle.

When he said nothing, she went on. “I put something in that basket besides bread and a woodhen. A . . . document . . . that Santes found early yesterday, locked away in Masema’s camp desk. The fool never saw a lock without wanting to know what it hid. If he had to meddle with what Masema kept under lock and key, he should have memorized the thing instead of taking it, but what’s done is done. Don’t let anyone see you reading it after I went to all this trouble to hide it!” she added sharply as he lifted the basket’s lid, revealing a cloth-wrapped bundle and releasing stronger smells of roasted bird and warm bread. “I’ve seen Masema’s men following you before. They could be watching now!”

“I’m not a fool,” he growled. He knew about Masema’s watchers. Most of the man’s followers were townsmen, and most of the rest awkward enough in the woods to shame a ten-year-old back home. Which was not to say one or two might not be hiding somewhere among the trees close enough to spy from among the shadows. They always kept their distance, since his eyes made them believe he was some sort of half-tame Shadowspawn, so he seldom detected their scents, and he had had other things on his mind this morning.

Fingering the cloth aside to expose the woodhen, almost as large as a fair-sized chicken, with its skin crisply browned, he tore off one of the bird’s legs while feeling under the bundle and sliding out a piece of heavy, cream-colored paper folded in four. Careless of grease-spots, he unfolded the paper atop the bird, a little clumsily in his gauntlets, and read while nibbling on the leg. To everyone watching, he would appear to be studying what part of the wood-hen to attack next. A thick green wax seal, cracked on one side, held an impression of what he decided were three hands, each with the forefinger and little finger raised and the others folded. The letters written on the paper in a flowing script were oddly formed, some unrecognizable, but the thing was readable with a little effort.

The bearer of this stands under my personal protection. In the name of the Empress, may she live forever, give him whatever aid he requires in service to the Empire and speak of it to none but me.

By her seal
Suroth Sabelle Meldarath
of Asinbayar and Barsabba
High Lady

“The Empress,” he said softly, soft like iron brushing silk. Confirmation of Masema’s dealings with the Seanchan, though for himself, he had needed none. It was not the sort of thing Berelain would have lied about. Suroth Sabelle Meldarath must be someone important, to be handing out this kind of document. “This will finish him, once Santes testified where he found it.” Service to the Empire?

Masema knew Rand had fought the Seanchan! That rainbow burst into his head, and was swept away. The man was a traitor!

Berelain laughed as if he had said something witty, but her smile definitely looked forced, now. “Santes told me no one saw him in the bustle of setting up camp, so I allowed him and Gendar to go back with my last cask of good Tunaighan. They were supposed to return by an hour after dark, but neither has. I suppose they could be sleeping it off, but they’ve never—”

She broke off with a startled sound, staring at him, and he realized that he had bitten the thighbone in half. Light, he had stripped all the flesh from the leg without noticing. “I’m hungrier than I thought,” he muttered. Spitting the nub of bone into the palm of his gauntlet, he dropped the pieces to the ground. “It’s safe to assume Masema knows you have this. I hope you’re keeping a heavy guard around you all the time, not just when you ride out.”

“Gallenne has fifty men sleeping around my tent as of last night,” she said, still staring, and he sighed. You would think she had never seen anybody bite a bone in two before.

“What has Annoura told you?”

“She wanted me to give it to her to destroy, so if I was asked, I could say I didn’t have it and didn’t know where it was, and she could support my word. I doubt that would satisfy Masema, though.”

“No, I doubt it would.” Annoura had to know that, too. Aes Sedai could be wrongheaded, or even foolish upon occasion, but they were never stupid. “Did she say she would destroy it, or that if you gave it to her, she could?”

Berelain’s brow furrowed in thought, and it took her a moment to say, “That she would.” The bay danced a few impatient steps, but she brought him under control easily, without paying attention. “I can’t think what else she would want it for,” she said after another pause. “Masema is hardly likely to be susceptible to . . . pressure.” Blackmail, she meant. Perrin could not see Masema standing still for that either. Especially blackmail by an Aes Sedai.

Under cover of tearing the other leg loose from the bird, he managed to refold the piece of paper and tuck it into his sleeve, where his gauntlet would keep it from falling out. It was still evidence. But of what? How could the man be both a fanatic for the Dragon Reborn and a traitor? Could he have taken the document from . . . ? Who? Some collaborator he had captured? But why would Masema keep it locked away unless it had been meant for him? He had met with Seanchan. And how had he intended to use it? Who could tell what a thing this would allow a man to call on? Perrin sighed heavily. He had too many questions, and no answers. Answers required a quicker mind than his. Maybe Balwer would have a notion.

With a taste of food in it, his stomach wanted him to devour the leg in his hand and the rest of the bird too, but he closed the lid firmly and tried to take measured bites. There was one thing he could find out for himself. “What else has Annoura said? About Masema.”

“Nothing, besides that he’s dangerous and I should avoid him, as if I didn’t know that already. She dislikes him and talking about him.” Another brief hesitation, and Berelain added, “Why?” The First of Mayene was used to intrigues, and she listened for what was not said.

Perrin took another bite to give himself a moment while he chewed and swallowed. He was not used to intrigues, yet he had been exposed to enough of them to know that saying too much could be dangerous. So could saying too little, no matter what Balwer thought. “Annoura has been meeting with Masema in secret. So has Masuri.”

Berelain’s fixed smile remained in place, but alarm entered her scent. She started to twist in her saddle as if to look back at the two Aes Sedai, and stopped herself, licking her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Aes Sedai always have their reasons” was all she said. So, was she alarmed over her advisor meeting Masema, or alarmed that Perrin knew, or . . . ? He hated all these complications. They just got in the way of what was important. Light, he had managed to clean the second leg already! Hoping Berelain had not noticed, he hastily tossed the bones aside. His belly growled for more.

Her people had maintained their distance, but Aram had ridden a short way toward Perrin and Berelain and was leaning forward to peer at them through the shadowed trees. The Wise Ones were standing to one side talking among themselves, seemingly unaware that they were over their ankles in snow or that the cold breezes had picked up enough to flap the dangling ends of their shawls. Every so often one or another of the three looked Perrin and Berelain’s way, too. Notions of privacy never kept a Wise One from sticking her nose wherever she wanted. They were like Aes Sedai that way. Masuri and Annoura were watching, too, though they appeared to be keeping their distance from one another. Perrin would have wagered that without the Wise Ones there, both sisters would have been using the One Power to eavesdrop. Of course, the Wise Ones probably knew how to do that, too, and they had allowed Masuri’s visits to Masema. Would either Aes Sedai crack her teeth if they saw the Wise Ones listening with the Power? Annoura seemed almost as careful with the Wise Ones as Masuri was. Light, he had no time for this briar thicket! He had to live in it, though.

“We’ve given tongues enough to wag over,” he said. Not that they needed any more than they had. Hooking the basket’s hoop-handles over his pommel, he heeled Stepper’s flanks. It could hardly be disloyal just to eat a bird.

Berelain did not follow immediately, yet before he reached Aram, she caught up and slowed her bay beside him. “I’ll find out what Annoura is up to,” she said determinedly, looking straight ahead. Her eyes were hard. Perrin would have pitied Annoura, if he had not been ready to try shaking answers out of her himself. But then, Aes Sedai seldom needed pity, and they seldom gave answers they did not want to give. The next instant, Berelain was all smiles and gaiety again, though the scent of determination still hung about her, almost crushing the fear scent. “Young Aram has been telling us all about Heartsbane riding these woods with the Wild Hunt, Lord Perrin. Could it really be so, do you think? I remember hearing those tales in the nursery.” Her voice was light and amused and carrying. Aram’s cheeks turned red, and some of the men beyond him laughed.

They stopped laughing when Perrin showed them the tracks in the stone slab.