The Dragon Reborn

## Chapter 50

#### The Hammer

The afternoon sun was hot as the ferry docked in Tear; puddles stood on the steaming stones of the dock, and the air seemed almost as damp to Perrin as Illian’s had. The air smelled of pitch and wood and rope—he could see shipyards further south along the river—of spices and iron and barley, of perfumes and wines and a hundred different aromas he could not single out from the melange, most coming from the warehouses behind the docks. When the wind swirled momentarily out of the north, he caught the scents of fish, too, but those faded as the wind swung back. No smells of anything to hunt. His mind reached out to feel for wolves before he realized what he was doing and snapped his guards shut. He had done that too often of late. There had been no wolves, of course. Not in a city like this. He wished it did not feel so—alone.

As soon as the ramp at the end of the barge was lowered, he led Stepper up to the dock after Moiraine and Lan. The huge shape of the Stone of Tear lay off to their left, shadowed so that it looked like a mountain despite the great banner at its highest point. He did not want to look at the Stone, but it seemed impossible to look at the city without seeing it. Is he here yet? Light, if he has already tried to get into that, he could he dead already. And then it would all be for nothing.

“What are we meant to find here?” Zarine asked behind him. She had not stopped asking questions; she just did not ask them of the Aes Sedai or the Warder. “Illian showed us Gray Men and the Wild Hunt. What does Tear hold that—that someone wants to keep you from so badly?”

Perrin glanced around; none of the dockmen shuttling cargo about seemed to have heard. He was sure he would have smelled fear if they had. He bit back the sharp remark that hung on the end of his tongue. She had a quicker tongue, and a sharper.

“I wish you did not sound so eager,” Loial rumbled. “You seem to think it will all be as easy as Illian, Faile.”

“Easy?” Zarine muttered. “Easy! Loial, we were nearly killed twice in one night. Illian was enough for a Hunter’s song in itself. What makes you call it easy?”

Perrin grimaced. He wished Loial had not decided to call Zarine by that name she had chosen; it was a constant reminder that Moiraine thought she was Min’s falcon. And it did nothing to stop Perrin wondering if she was the beautiful woman Min had warned him against, too. At least I’ve not run up against the hawk. Or a Tuatha’an with a sword! Now that would be the strangest of all, or I am a wool merchant!

“Stop asking questions, Zarine,” he said as he swung up into Stepper’s saddle. “You will find out why we are here when Moiraine decides to tell you.” He tried not to look at the Stone.

She turned those dark, tilted eyes on him. “I do not think you know why, blacksmith. I think that is why you will not tell me, because you cannot. Admit it, farmboy.”

With a small sigh, he rode off the docks after Moiraine and Lan. Zarine did not dig at Loial in that cutting way when the Ogier refused to answer her questions. He thought she must be trying to browbeat him into using that name. He would not.

Moiraine had tied the oiled cloak behind her saddle, atop the innocuous-looking bundle that held the Dragon banner, and despite the heat had donned the blue linen cloak from Illian. Its deep, wide hood hid her face. Her Great Serpent ring was on a cord around her neck. Tear, she had said, did not forbid the presence of Aes Sedai, only channeling, but the Defenders of the Stone kept a close eye on any woman who wore the ring. She did not want to be watched on this visit to Tear.

Lan had stuffed his color-shifting cloak into his saddlebags two days earlier, when it had become apparent that whoever had sent the Darkhounds—Sammael, Perrin thought with a shiver, and tried not to think of the name at all—whoever had sent them had not sent any more pursuit. The Warder had made no concessions to the heat of Illian, and he made none to the lesser heat of Tear. His gray-green coat was buttoned up all the way.

Perrin wore his coat half undone, and the neck of his shirt untied. Tear might be a little cooler than Illian, but it was still as hot as summer in the Two Rivers, and as always after rain, the dampness of the air made the heat seem worse. His axe belt hung looped around the tall pommel of his saddle. It was handy there, if he needed it, and he felt better not wearing it.

He was surprised at the mud in the first streets they rode along. Only villages and smaller towns had dirt streets, that he had seen, and Tear was one of the great cities. But the people did not seem to mind, many going barefoot. A woman walking on little wooden platforms caught his attention for a time, and he wondered why they did not all wear them. Those baggy breeches on the men looked as if they might be cooler than the snug ones he wore, but he was sure he would feel a fool if he tried them. He made a picture in his head of himself wearing those breeches and one of those round straw hats, and chuckled at it.

“What do you find funny, Perrin?” Loial asked. His ears were drooping till their tufts were hidden in his hair, and he looked at the people in the street worriedly. “These folk look . . . defeated, Perrin. They did not look this way when I was here last. Even people who let their grove be cut down do not deserve to look like this.”

As Perrin began to study faces instead of just looking at everything at once, he saw that Loial was right. Something had gone out of too many of those faces. Hope, maybe. Curiosity. They barely glanced at the party riding by, except to get out of the way of the horses. The Ogier, mounted on an animal as big as a draft horse, might as well have been Lan, or Perrin.

The streets changed, gaining wide stone paving, after they passed inside the gates of the high, gray city wall, past the hard, dark eyes of soldiers in breastplates over red coats with wide sleeves ending in narrow white cuffs, and rimmed, round helmets with a ridge over the top. Instead of the baggy breeches other men wore, theirs were tight, and tucked into knee-high boots. The soldiers frowned at Lan’s sword and fingered their own, stared sharply at Perrin’s axe and his bow, but in a way, despite their frowns and sharp looks, there was something beaten in their faces, too, as if nothing were really worth the effort any longer.

The buildings were larger and taller inside the walls, though most were made no differently from those outside. The roofs looked a bit odd to Perrin, especially those that came to points, but he had seen so many different kinds of roof since leaving home that he only wondered what kind of nails they used with their tiles. In some places, the people did not use nails on their roof tiles at all.

Palaces and great buildings stood among the smaller and more ordinary, seemingly placed haphazardly; a structure of towers and squarish, white domes, surrounded on all sides by wide streets, might have shops and inns and houses on the other sides of those streets. A huge hall fronted by squared columns of marble four paces on a side, with fifty steps to climb to reach bronze doors five spans high, had a bakery one side and a tailor on the other.

More men wore coats and breeches like the soldiers’ here, though in brighter colors and without armor, and some even wore swords. None of them went barefoot, not even those in baggy breeches. The women’s dresses were often longer, their necklines lower to bare shoulders and even bosom, the cloth as likely to be silk as wool. The Sea Folk traded a good deal of silk through Tear. As many sedan chairs and carriages drawn by teams of horses moved through the streets as ox-carts and wagons. Yet too many of the faces had that same look of having given up.

The inn Lan chose, the Star, had a weaver’s shop on one side and a smithy on the other, with narrow alleyways between. The smithy was of undressed gray stone, the weaver’s and the inn of wood, though the Star stood four stories tall and had small windows in its roof as well. The rattle of looms was hard-pressed to compete with the clang of the smith’s hammer. They handed their horses over to stablemen, to be taken around back, and went inside the inn. There were fish smells from the kitchen, baking and perhaps stewing, and the scent of roast mutton. The men in the common room all wore the tight coats and loose breeches; Perrin did not think richer men—somehow he was sure the men in colorful coats with puffy sleeves and the bare-shouldered women in bright silk were all rich, or nobles—those folk would not put up with the noise. Perhaps that was why Lan had chosen it.

“How are we supposed to sleep with this racketing?” Zarine muttered.

“No questions?” he said with a smile. For a moment he thought she was going to stick out her tongue at him.

The innkeeper was a round-faced, balding man in a long, deep blue coat and those loose breeches, who bowed over hands clasped across his stout belly. His face had that look, a weary resignation. “The Light shine on you, mistresses, and welcome,” he sighed. “The Light shine on you, masters, and welcome.” He gave a small start at Perrin’s yellow eyes, then passed wearily on to Loial. “The Light shine on you, friend Ogier, and welcome. It is a year or more since I have seen one of your kind in Tear. Some work or other at the Stone. They stayed in the Stone, of course, but I saw them in the street one day.” He finished with another sigh, seemingly unable to summon any curiosity as to why another Ogier had come to Tear, or why any of them had come, for that matter.

The balding man, whose name was Jurah Haret, showed them to their rooms himself. Apparently Moiraine’s silk dress and the way she kept her face hidden, taken with Lan’s hard face and sword, made them a lady and her guard in his eyes, and so worthy of his personal attention. Perrin he obviously took as some kind of retainer, and Zarine he was plainly unsure of—to her visible disgust—and Loial was, after all, an Ogier. He called men to push beds together for Loial, and offered Moiraine a private room for her meals if she wished. She accepted graciously.

They kept together through it all, making a small procession through the upper halls until Haret bowed and sighed his way out of their presence, leaving them all where they had begun, outside Moiraine’s room. The walls were white plaster, and Loial’s head brushed the hall ceiling.

“Odious fellow,” Zarine muttered, brushing furiously at the dust on her narrow skirts with both hands. “I believe he took me for your handmaid, Aes Sedai. I will not stand for that!”

“Watch your tongue,” Lan said softly. “If you use that name where folk can hear, you will regret it, girl.” She looked as if she were going to argue, but his icy blue eyes stilled her tongue this time, if it did not cool her glare.

Moiraine ignored them. Staring off at nothing, she worked her cloak in her hands almost as if wiping them. Unaware what she was doing, in Perrin’s opinion.

“How do we go about finding Rand?” he asked, but she did not appear to hear him. “Moiraine?”

“Remain close to the inn,” she said after a moment. “Tear can be a dangerous city for those who do not know its ways. The Pattern can be torn, here.” That last was soft, as if to herself. In a stronger voice she said, “Lan, let us see what we can discover without attracting attention. The rest of you, stay close to the inn!”

“ ‘Stay close to the inn,’ ” Zarine mimicked as the Aes Sedai and the Warder disappeared down the stairs. But she said it quietly enough that they would not hear. “This Rand. He is the one you called the . . . ” If she looked like a falcon right then, it was a very uneasy falcon. “And we are in Tear, where the Heart of the Stone holds . . . And the Prophecies say . . . The Light burn me, ta’veren, is this a story I want to be in?”

“It is not a story, Zarine.” For a moment Perrin felt almost as hopeless as the innkeeper had sounded. “The Wheel weaves us into the Pattern. You chose to tangle your thread with ours; it’s too late to untangle it, now.”

“Light!” she growled. “Now you sound like her!”

He left her there with Loial and went to put his things in his room—it had a low bed, comfortable but small, as city people seemed to think befitted a servant, a washstand, a stool, and a few pegs on the cracked plaster wall—and when he came out, they were both gone. The ring of hammer on anvil called to him.

So much in Tear looked odd that it was a relief to walk into the smithy. The ground floor was all one large room with no back wall except for two long doors that stood open on a yard for shoeing horses and oxen, complete with an ox sling. Hammers stood in their stands, tongs of various kinds and sizes hung on the exposed joists of the walls, buttresses and hoof knives and other farrier’s tools lay neatly arranged on wooden benches with chisels and beak irons and swages and all the implements of the blacksmith’s craft. Bins held lengths of iron and steel in various thicknesses. Five grinding wheels of different roughness stood about the hard dirt floor, six anvils, and three stone-sided forges with their bellows, though only one held glowing coals. Quenching barrels stood ready to hand.

The smith was plying his hammer on yellow-hot iron gripped in heavy tongs. He wore baggy breeches and had pale blue eyes, but the long leather vest over his bare chest and apron were not much different from those Perrin and Master Luhhan had worn back in Emond’s Field, and his thick arms and shoulders spoke of years working metal. His dark hair had almost the same amount of gray that Perrin remembered in Master Luhhan’s. More vests and aprons hung on the wall, as if the man had apprentices, but they were not in evidence now. The forge-fire smelled like home. The hot iron smelled like home.

The smith turned to thrust the piece he was working back into the coals, and Perrin stepped over to work the bellows for him. The man glanced at him, but said nothing. Perrin pulled the bellows handle up and down with slow, steady, even strokes, keeping the coals at the right heat. The smith went back to working the hot iron, on the rounded horn of the anvil, this time. Perrin thought he might be making a barrel scrape. The hammer rang with sharp, quick blows.

The man spoke without looking up from his work. “Apprentice?” was all he said.

“Yes,” Perrin replied just as simply.

The smith worked on for a time. It was a barrel scrape, for cleaning the insides of wooden barrels. Now and again he eyed Perrin consideringly. Setting his hammer down, just for a moment, the smith picked up a short length of thick, square stock and pushed it into Perrin’s hand, then picked up his hammer again and resumed work. “See what you can do with that,” he said.

Without even thinking about it, Perrin stepped over to an anvil on the other side of the forge and tapped the stock against its edge. It made a nice ring. The steel had not been left long enough in the slowfurnace to pick up a great deal of carbon from the coal. He pushed it into the hot coals for almost its entire length, tasted the two water barrels to see which had been salted—the third was olive oil—then took off his coat and shirt and chose a leather vest that would fit his chest. Most of these Tairen fellows were not as large as he, but he found one that would do. Finding an apron was easier.

When he turned around, he saw the smith, still with his head down over his work, nodding and smiling to himself. But just because he knew his way around a smithy did not mean he had any skill at smithing. That was yet to be shown.

When he came back to the anvil with two hammers, a set of long-handled flat-tongs, and a sharp-topped hardy, the steel bar had heated to a dark red except for a small bit of what he had left out of the coals. He worked the bellows, watching the color of the metal lighten, until it reached a yellow just short of white. Then he pulled it out with the tongs, laid it on the anvil, and picked up the heavier of the two hammers. About ten pounds, he estimated, and with a longer handle than most people, who did not know metal working, thought was necessary. He held it near the end; hot metal gave off sparks, sometimes, and he had seen the scars on the hands of the smith from up at Roundhill, a careless fellow.

He did not want to make anything elaborate or fancy. Simple things seemed best at the moment. He began by rounding the edges of the bar, then hammered the middle out into a broad blade, almost as thick as the original at the butt, but a good hand and a half long. From time to time he returned the metal to the coals, to keep it at the pale yellow, and after a time he shifted to the lighter hammer, half the weight of the first. The piece beyond the blade, he thinned down, then bent it over the anvil horn in a curve down beside the blade. A wooden handle could be fixed onto that, eventually. Setting the sharp-chisel hardy in the anvil’s hardy-hole, he laid the glowing metal atop it. One sharp blow of the hammer cut off the tool he had made. Or almost made. It would be a chamfer knife, for smoothing and leveling the tops of barrel staves after they were hopped together, among other things. When he was done. The other man’s barrel scrape had made him think of it.

As soon as he had made the hot-cut, he tossed the glowing metal into the salted quenching barrel. Unsalted gave a harder quench, for the hardest metal, while the oil gave the softest, for good knives. And swords, he had heard, but he had never had any part in making anything like that.

When the metal had cooled enough, to a dull gray, he removed it from the water and took it to the grinding wheels. A little slow work with the footpedals ground a polish onto the blade. Carefully, he heated the blade portion again. This time the colors deepened, to straw, to bronze. When the bronze color began to run up the blade in waves, he set it aside to cool. The final edge could be sharpened then. Quenching again would destroy the tempering he had just done.

“A very neat bit of work,” the smith said. “No wasted motion. You looking for work? My apprentices just walked away, all three of them, the worthless fools, and I’ve plenty you could do.”

Perrin shook his head. “I do not know how long I will be in Tear. I’d like to work a little longer, if you do not mind. It has been a long time, and I miss it. Maybe I could do some of the work your apprentices would have done.”

The smith snorted loudly. “You’re a deal better than any of those louts, moping around and staring, muttering about their nightmares. As if everyone doesn’t have nightmares, sometimes. Yes, you can work here, as long as you want. Light, I’ve orders for a dozen drawknives and three cooper’s adzes, and a carpenter down the street needs a mortise hammer, and . . . Too much to list it. Start with the drawknives, and we will see how far we get before night.”

Perrin lost himself in the work, for a time forgetting everything but the heat of the metal, the ring of his hammer, and the smell of the forge, but there came a time when he looked up and found the smith—Dermid Ajala, he had said his name was—taking off his vest, and the shoeing yard dark. All the light came from the forge and a pair of lamps. And Zarine was sitting on an anvil by one of the cold forges, watching him.

“So you really are a blacksmith, blacksmith,” she said.

“He is that, mistress,” Ajala said. “Apprentice, he says, but the work he did today amounts to his master’s piece as far as I am concerned. Fine stroking, and better than steady.” Perrin shifted his feet at the compliments, and the smith grinned at him. Zarine stared at both of them with a lack of comprehension.

Perrin went to replace the vest and apron on their peg, but once he had them off, he was suddenly conscious of Zarine’s eyes on his back. It was if she were touching him; for a moment, the herbal scent of her seemed overwhelming. He quickly pulled his shirt over his head, stuffed it raggedly into his breeches, and jerked on his coat. When he turned around, Zarine wore one of those small, secretive smiles that had always made him nervous.

“Is this what you mean to do, then?” she asked. “Did you come all this way to be a blacksmith again?” Ajala paused in the act of pulling the yard doors closed and listened.

Perrin picked up the heavy hammer he had used, a ten-pound head with a handle as long as his forearm. It felt good in his hands. It felt right. The smith had glanced at his eyes once and never even blinked; it was the work that was important, the skill with metal, not the color of a man’s eyes. “No,” he said sadly. “One day, I hope. But not yet.” He started to hang the hammer back on the wall.

“Take it.” Ajala cleared his throat. “I do not usually give away good hammers, but . . . The work you’ve done today is worth more than the price of that hammer by far, and maybe it will help you to that ‘one day.’ Man, if I have ever seen anyone made to hold a smith’s hammer, it is you. So take it. Keep it.”

Perrin closed his hand around the haft. It did feel right. “Thank you,” he said. “I cannot say what this means to me.”

“Just remember the ‘one day,’ man. Just you remember it.”

As they left, Zarine looked up at him and said, “Do you have any idea how strange men are, blacksmith? No. I did not think you did.” She darted ahead, leaving him holding the hammer in one hand and scratching his head with the other.

No one in the common room looked at him twice, a golden-eyed man carrying a smith’s hammer. He went up to his room, remembering for once to light a tallow candle. His quiver and the axe hung from the same peg on the plaster wall. He hefted the axe in one hand, the hammer in the other. By weight of metal, the axe, with its half-moon blade and thick spike, was a good five or six pounds lighter than the hammer, but it felt ten times heavier. Replacing the axe in the loop on its belt, he set the hammer on the floor beneath the peg, handle against the wall. Axe haft and hammer haft almost touched, two pieces of wood equally thick. Two pieces of metal, near enough the same weight. For a long time he sat on the stool staring at them. He was still staring when Lan put his head into the room.

“Come, blacksmith. We have things to talk over.”

“I am a blacksmith,” Perrin said, and the Warder frowned at him.

“Don’t go winter-crazy on me now, blacksmith. If you cannot carry your weight any longer, you may drag us all down the mountain.”

“I’ll carry my weight,” Perrin growled. “I will do what has to be done. What do you want?”

“You, blacksmith. Don’t you listen? Come on, farmboy.”

That name that Zarine so often called him pulled him to his feet angrily, now, but Lan was already turning away. Perrin hurried into the hall and followed him toward the front of the inn, meaning to tell the Warder he had had enough of this “blacksmith” and “farmboy,” his name was Perrin Aybara. The Warder ducked into the inn’s only private dining room, overlooking the street.

Perrin followed him. “Now listen, Warder, I—”

“You listen, Perrin,” Moiraine said. “Be quiet and listen.” Her face was smooth, but her eyes looked as grim as her voice sounded.

Perrin had not realized anyone was in the room except for himself and the Warder, standing with one arm up on the mantel of the unlit fireplace. Moiraine sat at the table in the middle of the floor, a simple piece, of black oak. None of the other chairs with their high, carved backs were occupied. Zarine was leaning against the wall at the other end of the room from Lan, scowling, and Loial had chosen to sit on the floor since none of the chairs really fit him.

“I’m glad you decided to join us, farmboy,” Zarine said sarcastically. “Moiraine would not say anything till you came. She just looks at us as if she is deciding which of us is going to die. I—”

“Be quiet,” Moiraine told her sharply. “One of the Forsaken is in Tear. The High Lord Samon is Be’lal.” Perrin shivered.

Loial squeezed his eyes shut and groaned. “I could have remained in the stedding. I would probably have been very happy, married, whoever my mother chose. She is a fine woman, my mother, and she would not give me to a bad wife.” His ears seemed to have hidden themselves completely in his shaggy hair.

“You can go back to Stedding Shangtai,” Moiraine said. “Leave now, if you wish. I will not stop you.”

Loial opened one eye. “I can go?”

“If you wish,” she said.

“Oh.” He opened the other eye, and scratched his cheek with blunt fingers the size of sausages. “I suppose . . . I suppose . . . if I have a choice . . . that I will stay with all of you. I have taken a great many notes, but not nearly enough to complete my book, and I would not like to leave Perrin, and Rand—”

Moiraine cut him off in a cold voice. “Good, Loial. I am glad that you are staying. I will be glad to use any knowledge you have. But until this is done, I have no time to listen to your complaints!”

“I suppose,” Zarine said in an unsteady voice, “that there is no chance of me leaving?” She looked at Moiraine, and shivered. “I thought not. Blacksmith, if I live through this, I will make you pay.”

Perrin stared at her. Me! The fool woman thinks it my fault? Did I ask her to come? He opened his mouth, saw the look in Moiraine’s eyes, and closed it again quickly. After a moment he said, “Is he after Rand? To stop him, or kill him?”

“I think not,” she said quietly. Her voice was like cold steel. “I fear he means to let Rand enter the Heart of the Stone and take Callandor, then take it away from him. I fear he means to kill the Dragon Reborn with the very weapon that is meant to herald him.”

“Do we run again?” Zarine said. “Like Illian? I never thought to run, but I never thought to find the Forsaken when I took the Hunter’s oath.”

“This time,” Moiraine said, “we do not run. We dare not run. Worlds and time rest on Rand, on the Dragon Reborn. This time, we fight.”

Perrin took a chair uneasily. “Moiraine, you are saying a lot of things right out that you told us we must not even think about. You do have this room warded against listening, don’t you?” When she shook her head, he gripped the edge of the table hard enough to make the dark oak creak.

“I do not speak of a Myrddraal, Perrin. No one knows the strength of the Forsaken, except that Ishamael and Lanfear were the strongest, but the weakest of them could sense any warding I might set from a mile or more away. And rip all of us to shreds in seconds. Possibly without stirring from where he stood.”

“You’re saying he can tie you in knots,” Perrin muttered. “Light! What are we supposed to do? How can we do anything?”

“Even the Forsaken cannot stand up to balefire,” she said. He wondered if that was what she had used on the Darkhounds; it still made him uneasy, what he had seen, and what she had said then. “I have learned things in the last year, Perrin. I am . . . more dangerous than when I came to Emond’s Field. If I can come close enough to Be’lal, I can destroy him. But if he sees me first, he can destroy us all, long before I have a chance.” She turned her attention to Loial. “What can you tell me of Be’lal?”

Perrin blinked in confusion. Loial?

“Why are you asking him?” Zarine burst out angrily. “First you tell the blacksmith you mean us to fight one of the Forsaken!—who can kill us all before we can even think!—and now you ask Loial about him?” Loial murmured urgently, that name she used—“Faile! Faile!”—but she did not even slow. “I thought Aes Sedai knew everything. Light, at least I am smart enough not to say I will fight someone unless I know everything I can of him! You . . . ” She trailed off under Moiraine’s stare, muttering.

“Ogier,” the Aes Sedai said coolly, “have long memories, girl. It has been well over a hundred generations since the Breaking for humans, but less than thirty for Ogier. We still learn things from their stories that we did not know. Now tell me, Loial. What do you know of Be’lal. And briefly, for once. I want your long memory, not your long wind.”

Loial cleared his throat, a sound much like firewood tumbling down a chute. “Be’lal.” His ears flickered out of his hair like hummingbird wings, then snapped down again. “I do not know what can be in the stories about him you do not already know. He is not much mentioned, except in the razing of the Hall of the Servants just before Lews Therin Kinslayer and the Hundred Companions sealed him up with the Dark One. Jalanda son of Aried son of Coiam wrote that he was called the Envious, that he forsook the Light because he envied Lews Therin, and that he envied Ishamael and Lanfear, too. In A Study of the War of the Shadow, Moilin daughter of Hamada daughter of Juendan called Be’lal the Netweaver, but I do not know why. She mentioned him playing a game of stones with Lews Therin and winning, and that he always boasted of it.” He glanced at Moiraine and rumbled, “I am trying to be brief. I do not know anything important about him. Several writers say Be’lal and Sammael were both leaders in the fight against the Dark One before they forsook the Light, and both were masters of the sword. That is truly all I know. He may be mentioned in other books, other stories, but I have not read them. Be’lal is just not spoken of very often. I am sorry I could not tell you anything useful.”

“Perhaps you have,” Moiraine told him. “I did not know of the name, the Netweaver. Or that he envied the Dragon as well as his companions in the Shadow. That strengthens my belief that he wants Callandor. That must be the reason he has chosen to make himself a High Lord of Tear. And the Netweaver—a name for a schemer, a patient and cunning planner. You have done well, Loial.” For a moment the Ogier’s wide mouth curved up in a pleased smile, but then it curved down again.

“I will not pretend I am not afraid,” Zarine said suddenly. “Only a fool would not be afraid of the Forsaken. But I swore I would be one of you, and I will. That is all that I wanted to say.”

Perrin shook his head. She must be crazy. I could wish I were not one of this party. I could wish I were back home working Master Luhhan’s forge. Aloud, he said, “If he is inside the Stone, if he is waiting there for Rand, we must go inside to reach him. How do we do that? Everyone keeps saying no one enters the Stone without the permission of the High Lords, and looking at it, I don’t see any way but through the gates.”

“You do not go in,” Lan said. “Moiraine and I will be the only ones to enter. The more who go, the harder it will be. Whatever way in I find, I cannot believe it will be easy even for only two.”

“Gaidin,” Moiraine began in a firm voice, but the Warder cut her off with one just as firm.

“We go together, Moiraine. I will not stand aside this time.” After a moment she nodded. Perrin thought he saw Lan relax. “The rest of you had better get some sleep,” the Warder went on. “I have to be out studying the Stone.” He paused. “There is a thing that your news drove out of my head, Moiraine. A small thing, and I cannot see what it might mean. There are Aiel in Tear.”

“Aiel!” Loial exclaimed. “Impossible! The entire city would be in a panic if one Aiel came through the gates.”

“I did not say they were walking the streets, Ogier. The rooftops and chimneys of the city make as good hiding as the Waste. I saw no less than three, though apparently no one else in Tear has seen any of them. And if I saw three, you can be sure there are many times that I did not see.”

“It means nothing to me,” Moiraine said slowly. “Perrin, why are you frowning in that way?”

He had not known that he was frowning. “I was thinking about that Aiel in Remen. He said that when the Stone falls, the Aiel will leave the Three-fold Land. That’s the Waste, isn’t it? He said it was a prophecy.”

“I have read every word of the Prophecies of the Dragon,” Moiraine said softly, “in every translation, and there is no mention of the Aiel. We stagger blindly while Be’lal weaves his nets, and the Wheel weaves the Pattern around us. But are the Aiel the Wheel’s weaving, or Be’lal’s? Lan, you must find me the way into the Stone quickly. Us. Find us a way in quickly.”

“As you command, Aes Sedai,” he said, but his tone was more warm than formal. He vanished through the door. Moiraine frowned at the table, eyes clouded in thought.

Zarine came over to look down at Perrin, her head tilted to one side. “And what are you going to do, blacksmith? It seems they mean us to wait and watch while they go adventuring. Not that I will complain.”

He doubted that last. “First,” he told her, “I am going to have something to eat. And then I am going to think about a hammer.” And try to puzzle out how I feel about you. Falcon.