The reedy shrill came again, like a cracked shepherd’s pipes, and was answered in kind by a chorus. Half a dozen, singing among themselves, far behind.
“Worms,” Lan said grimly, bringing a moan from Loial. “They’ve given us a respite, if we have time to use it.” His eyes were mea suring the distance yet to the mountains. “Few things in the Blight will face a Worm, can it be avoided.” He dug his heels into Mandarb’s flanks. “Ride!” The whole party plunged after him, through a Blight that suddenly seemed truly dead, except for the piping behind.
“They were scared off by worms?” Mat said incredulously. He was bouncing in his saddle, trying to sling his bow across his back.
“A Worm”—there was a sharp difference in the way the Warder said it from the way Mat had—“can kill a Fade, if the Fade hasn’t the Dark One’s own luck with it. We have an entire pack on our trail. Ride! Ride!” The dark peaks were closer now. An hour, Rand estimated, at the pace the Warder was setting.
“Won’t the Worms follow us into the mountains?” Egwene asked breathlessly, and Lan gave a sharp laugh.
“They won’t. Worms are afraid of what lives in the high passes.” Loial moaned again.
Rand wished the Ogier would stop doing that. He was well aware that Loial knew more about the Blight than any of them except Lan, even if it was from reading books in the safety of a stedding. But why does he have to keep reminding me that there’s worse yet than we’ve seen?
The Blight flowed past, weeds and grasses splashing rotten under galloping hooves. Trees of the kinds that had earlier attacked did not so much as twitch even when they rode directly under the twisted branches. The Mountains of Dhoom filled the sky ahead, black and bleak, and almost near enough to touch, it seemed. The piping came both sharp and clear, and there were squishing sounds behind them, louder than the things crushed under hooves. Too loud, as if half-decayed trees were being crushed by huge bodies slithering over them. Too near. Rand looked over his shoulder. Back there treetops whipped and went down like grass. The land began sloping upward, toward the mountains, tilting enough so that he knew they were climbing.
“We are not going to make it,” Lan announced. He did not slow Mandarb’s gallop, but his sword was suddenly in his hand again. “Watch yourself in the high passes, Moiraine, and you’ll get through.”
“No, Lan!” Nynaeve called.
“Be quiet, girl! Lan, even you cannot stop a Wormpack. I will not have it. I will need you for the Eye.”
“Arrows,” Mat called breathlessly.
“The Worms wouldn’t even feel them,” the Warder shouted. “They must be cut to pieces. Don’t feel much but hunger. Sometimes fear.”
Clinging to his saddle with a deathgrip, Rand shrugged, trying to loosen the tightness in his shoulders. His whole chest felt tight, until he could hardly breathe, and his skin stung in hot pinpricks. The Blight had turned to foothills. He could see the route they must climb once they reached the mountains, the twisting path and the high pass beyond, like an axe blow cleaving into the black stone. Light, what’s up ahead that can scare what’s behind? Light help me, I’ve never been so afraid. I don’t want to go any further. No further! Seeking the flame and the void, he railed at himself. Fool! You frightened, cowardly fool! You can’t stay here, and you can’t go back. Are you going to leave Egwene to face it alone? The void eluded him, forming, then shivering into a thousand points of light, re-forming and shattering again, each point burning into his bones until he quivered with the pain and thought he must burst open. Light help me, I can’t go on. Light help me!
He was gathering the bay’s reins to turn back, to face the Worms or anything rather than what lay ahead, when the nature of the land changed. Between one slope of a hill and the next, between crest and peak, the Blight was gone.
Green leaves covered peacefully spreading branches. Wildflowers made a carpet of bright patches in grasses stirred by a sweet spring breeze. Butterflies fluttered from blossom to blossom, with buzzing bees, and birds trilled their songs.
Gaping, he galloped on, until he suddenly realized that Moiraine and Lan and Loial had stopped, the others, too. Slowly he drew rein, his face frozen in astonishment. Egwene’s eyes were about to come out of her head, and Nynaeve’s jaw had dropped.
“We have reached safety,” Moiraine said. “This is the Green Man’s place, and the Eye of the World is here. Nothing of the Blight can enter here.”
“I thought it was on the other side of the mountains,” Rand mumbled. He could still see the peaks filling the northern horizon, and the high passes. “You said it was always beyond the passes.”
“This place,” said a deep voice from the trees, “is always where it is. All that changes is where those who need it are.”
A figure stepped out of the foliage, a man-shape as much bigger than Loial as the Ogier was bigger than Rand. A man-shape of woven vines and leaves, green and growing. His hair was grass, flowing to his shoulders; his eyes, huge hazelnuts; his fingernails, acorns. Green leaves made his tunic and trousers; seamless bark, his boots. Butterflies swirled around him, lighting on his fingers, his shoulders, his face. Only one thing spoiled the verdant perfection. A deep fissure ran up his cheek and temple across the top of his head, and in that the vines were brown and withered.
“The Green Man,” Egwene whispered, and the scarred face smiled. For a moment it seemed as if the birds sang louder.
“Of course I am. Who else would be here?” The hazelnut eyes regarded Loial. “It is good to see you, little brother. In the past, many of you came to visit me, but few of recent days.”
Loial scrambled down from his big horse and bowed formally. “You honor me, Treebrother. Tsingu ma choshih, T’ingshen.”
Smiling, the Green Man put an arm around the Ogier’s shoulders. Alongside Loial, he looked like a man beside a boy. “There is no honoring, little brother. We will sing Tree Songs together, and remember the Great Trees, and the stedding, and hold the Longing at bay.” He studied the others, just now getting down from their horses, and his eyes lit on Perrin. “A Wolfbrother! Do the old times truly walk again then?”
Rand stared at Perrin. For his part, Perrin turned his horse so it was between him and the Green Man, and bent to check the girth. Rand was sure he just
wanted to avoid the Green Man’s searching gaze. Suddenly the Green Man spoke to Rand.
“Strange clothes you wear, Child of the Dragon. Has the Wheel turned so far? Do the People of the Dragon return to the first Covenant? But you wear a sword. That is neither now nor then.”
Rand had to work moisture in his mouth before he could speak. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you mean?”
The Green Man touched the brown scar across his head. For a moment he seemed confused. “I . . . cannot say. My memories are torn and often fleeting, and much of what remains is like leaves visited by caterpillars. Yet, I am sure. . . . No, it is gone. But you are welcome here. You, Moiraine Sedai, are more than a surprise. When this place was made, it was made so that none could find it twice. How have you come here?”