Perrin gave a start; from the corner, Loial moaned. “ ‘The Dark One and all the Forsaken are bound in Shayol Ghul,’ ” Perrin began by rote, but she gave him no time to finish.
“The seals are weakening, Perrin. Some are broken, though the world does not know that. Must not know that. The Father of Lies is not free. Yet. But as the seals weaken, more and more, which of the Forsaken may be loosed already? Lanfear? Sammael? Asmodean, or Be’lal, or Ravhin? Ishamael himself, the Betrayer of Hope? They were thirteen altogether, Perrin, and bound in the sealing, not in the prison that holds the Dark One. Thirteen of the most powerful Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends, the weakest of them stronger than the ten strongest Aes Sedai living today, the most ignorant with all the knowledge of the Age of Legends. And every man and woman of them gave up the Light and dedicated their souls to the Shadow. What if they are free, and out there waiting for him? I will not let them have him.”
Perrin shivered, partly from the icy iron in her last words, and partly from thought of the Forsaken. He did not want to think of even one of the Forsaken loose in the world. His mother had frightened him with those names when he was little. Ishamael comes for boys who do not tell their mothers the truth. Lanfear waits in the night for boys who do not go to bed when they are supposed to. Being older did not help, not when he knew now they were all real. Not when Moiraine said they might be free.
“Bound in Shayol Ghul,” he whispered, and wished he still believed it. Troubled, he studied Rand’s letter again. “Dreams. He was talking about dreams yesterday, too.”
Moiraine stepped closer, and peered up into his face. “Dreams?” Lan and Uno came in, but she waved them to silence. The small room was more than crowded now, with five people in it besides the Ogier. “What dreams have you had the last few days, Perrin?” She ignored his protest that there was nothing wrong with his dreams. “Tell me,” she insisted. “What dream have you had that was not ordinary? Tell me.” Her gaze seized him like smithy tongs, willing him to speak.
He looked at the others—they were all watching him fixedly, even Min—then hesitantly told of the one dream that seemed unusual to him, the dream that came every night. The dream of the sword he could not touch. He did not mention the wolf that had appeared in the last.
“Callandor,” Lan breathed when he was done. Rock-hard face or no, he looked stunned.
“Yes,” Moiraine said, “but we must be absolutely certain. Speak to the others.” As Lan h
urried out, she turned to Uno. “And what of your dreams? Did you dream of a sword, too?”
The Shienaran shifted his feet. The red eye painted on his patch stared straight at Moiraine, but his real eye blinked and wavered. “I dream about flam—uh, about swords all the time, Moiraine Sedai,” he said stiffly. “I suppose I’ve dreamed about a sword the last few nights. I don’t remember my dreams the way Lord Perrin here does.”
Moiraine said, “Loial?”
“My dreams are always the same, Moiraine Sedai. The groves, and the Great Trees, and the stedding. We Ogier always dream of the stedding when we are away from them.”
The Aes Sedai turned back to Perrin.
“It was just a dream,” he said. “Nothing but a dream.”
“I doubt it,” she said. “You describe the hall called the Heart of the Stone, in the fortress called the Stone of Tear, as if you had stood in it. And the shining sword is Callandor, the Sword That Is Not a Sword, the Sword That Cannot Be Touched.”
Loial sat up straight, bumping his head on the roof. He did not seem to notice. “The Prophecies of the Dragon say the Stone of Tear will never fall till Callandor is wielded by the Dragon’s hand. The fall of the Stone of Tear will be one of the greatest signs of the Dragon’s Rebirth. If Rand holds Callandor, the whole world must acknowledge him as the Dragon.”
“Perhaps.” The word floated from the Aes Sedai’s lips like a shard of ice on still water.
“Perhaps?” Perrin said. “Perhaps? I thought that was the final sign, the last thing to fulfill your Prophecies.”
“Neither the first nor the last,” Moiraine said. “Callandor will be but one fulfillment of The Karaethon Cycle, as his birth on the slopes of Dragonmount was the first. He has yet to break the nations, or shatter the world. Even scholars who have studied the Prophecies for their entire lives do not know how to interpret them all. What does it mean that he ‘shall slay his people with the sword of peace, and destroy them with the leaf’? What does it meant that he ‘shall bind the nine moons to serve him’? Yet these are given equal weight with Callandor in the Cycle. There are others. What ‘wounds of madness and cutting of hope’ has he healed? What chains has he broken, and who put into chains? And some are so obscure that he may already have fulfilled them, although I am not aware of it. But, no. Callandor is far from the end of it.”
Perrin shrugged uneasily. He knew only bits and pieces of the Prophecies; he had liked hearing them even less since Rand had let Moiraine put that banner in his hands. No, it had been before that, even. Since a journey by Portal Stone had convinced him his life was bound to Rand’s.
Moiraine was continuing. “If you think he has simply to put out his hand, Loial son of Arent son of Halan, you are a fool, as is he if he thinks it. Even if he lives to reach Tear, he may never attain the Stone.
“Tairens have no love for the One Power, and less for any man claiming to be the Dragon. Channeling is outlawed, and Aes Sedai are tolerated at best, so long as they do not channel. Telling the Prophecies of the Dragon, or even possessing a copy of them, is enough to put you in prison, in Tear. And no one enters the Stone of Tear without permission of the High Lords; none but the High Lords themselves enter the Heart of the Stone. He is not ready for this. Not ready.”
Perrin grunted softly. The Stone would never fall till the Dragon Reborn held Callandor. How in the Light is he supposed to reach it—inside a bloody fortress!—before the fortress falls? It is madness!
“Why are we just sitting here?” Min burst out. “If Rand is going to Tear, why aren’t we following him? He could be killed, or . . . or. . . . Why are we sitting here?”
Moiraine put a hand on Min’s head. “Because I must be sure,” she said gently. “It is not comfortable being chosen by the Wheel, to be great or to be near greatness. The chosen of the Wheel can only take what comes.”
“I am tired of taking what comes.” Min scrubbed a hand across her eyes. Perrin thought he saw tears. “Rand could be dying while we wait.” Moiraine smoothed Min’s hair; there was a look almost of pity on the Aes Sedai’s face.
Perrin sat down on the end of Lan’s bed opposite Loial. The smell of people was thick in the room—people and worry and fear; Loial smelled of books and trees as well as worry. It felt like a trap, with the walls around them, and all so close. The burning slivers stank. “How can my dream tell where Rand is going?” he asked. “It was my dream.”
“Those who can channel the One Power,” Moiraine said quietly, “those who are particularly strong in Spirit, can sometimes force their dreams on others.” She did not stop her soothing of Min. “Especially on those who are—susceptible. I do not believe Rand did it on purpose, but the dreams of those touching the True Source can be powerful. For one as strong as he, they could possibly seize an entire village, or perhaps even a city. He knows little of what he does, and even less of how to control it.”
“Then why didn’t you have it, too?” he demanded. “Or Lan.” Uno stared straight ahead, looking as if he would rather be anywhere else, and Loial’s ears wilted. Perrin was too tired and too hungry to care whether he showed proper respect for an Aes Sedai. And too angry, as well, he realized. “Why?”
Moiraine answered calmly. “Aes Sedai learn to shield their dreams. I do it without thinking, when I sleep. Warders are given something much the same in the bonding. The Gaidin could not do what they must if the Shadow could steal into their dreams. We are all vulnerable when we sleep, and the Shadow is strong in the night.”