He leaned back in his bed, frustrated.
“Be of good cheer, Perrin,” Berelain said softly, walking up to the bed. “You should be dead. How did you reach that battlefield? If Haral Luhhan and his men hadn’t spotted you lying there…”
Perrin shook his head. What he’d done defied explanation for one who did not know the wolf dream. “What is happening, Berelain? The war? Our armies?”
She pursed her lips.
“I can smell the truth on you,” Perrin said. “Worry, anxiety.” He sighed. “I saw that the battlefronts had moved. If the Two Rivers men are at the Field of Merrilor as well, all three of our armies have been pushed back to the same place. Everyone but those at Thakan’dar.”
“We don’t know how the Lord Dragon is doing,” she said softly, gliding onto a stool beside his bed. Beside the wall, Janina took Uno by the arm. He shivered as the Healing coursed through him.
“Rand still fights,” Perrin said.
“Too much time has passed,” she said. There was something she wasn’t telling him, something she was dancing around. He could smell it on her.
“Rand still fights,” Perrin repeated. “If he had lost, we wouldn’t be here.” He leaned back, exhaustion deep in his bones. Light! He couldn’t just lie here while men died, could he? “Time is different at the Bore. I visited it and saw firsthand. It has been many days out here, but I’ll bet it has only been a day for Rand. Maybe less.”
“That is well. I will pass what you say to the others.”
“Berelain,” Perrin said. “I need you to do something for me. I sent Elyas with a message to our armies, but I don’t know if he delivered it. Graendal is interfering with the minds of our great captains. Will you find out for me if his message arrived?”
“It arrived,” she said. “Almost too late, but it arrived. You did well. Sleep now, Perrin.” She rose.
“Berelain?” he asked.
She turned back to him.
“Faile,” he said. “What of Faile?”
Her anxiety sharpened. No.
“Her supply caravan was destroyed in a bubble of evil, Perrin,” Berelain said softly. “I’m
sorry.”
“Was her body recovered?” he forced himself to ask. “No.”
“Then she still lives.”
“It—”
“She still lives,” Perrin insisted. He would have to assume that was true. If he didn’t…
“There is, of course, hope,” she said, then walked to Uno, who was flexing his Healed arm, and nodded for him to join her as she left the room. Janina was puttering around the washstand. Perrin could still hear moaning in the hallways outside, and the place smelled of healing herbs and of pain.
Light, he thought. Faile’s caravan had carried the Horn. Did the Shadow now have it?
And Gaul. He had to return to Gaul. He’d left the man in the wolf dream, guarding Rand’s back. If Perrin’s exhaustion was any guide, Gaul couldn’t hold much longer.
Perrin felt as if he could sleep for weeks. Janina returned to his bedside, then shook her head. “There is no good purpose in trying to force yourself to hold your eyes open, Perrin Aybara.”
“I have too much to do, Janina. Please. I need to return to the battlefield and—”
“You will stay here, Perrin Aybara. You are of no use to anyone in your state, and will gain no ji by trying to prove otherwise. If the blacksmith who brought you here knew I’d let you stumble off and die on the battlefield, I believe he’d come try to hang me out the window by my heels.” She hesitated. “And that one… I almost think he could manage it.”
“Master Luhhan,” Perrin said, recalling faintly those moments before he blacked out. “He was there. He found me?”
“He saved your life,” Janina said. “That man threw you on his back and ran you to an Aes Sedai for a gateway. You were seconds from death when he arrived. Considering your size, just lifting you is some feat.”