The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time 3)

Rand’s much smaller hut was a little lower down, well hidden in the trees, away from all the rest. He had tried living down among the other men, but their constant awe drove him off. He kept to himself, now. Too much to himself, to Perrin’s thinking. But he knew Rand was not headed to his hut now.

Perrin hurried on to where one side of the bowl-shaped valley suddenly became sheer cliff, fifty paces high and smooth except for tough brush clinging tenaciously here and there. He knew exactly where a crack in the gray rock wall lay, an opening hardly wider than his shoulders. With only a ribbon of late-afternoon light overhead, it was like walking down a tunnel.

Half a mile

the crack ran, abruptly opening out into a narrow vale, less than a mile long, its floor covered with rocks and boulders, and even the steep slopes were thickly forested with tall leatherleaf and pine and fir. Long shadows stretched away from the sun sitting on the mountaintops. The walls of this place were unbroken save for the crack, and as steep as if a giant axe had buried itself in the mountains. It could be even more easily defended by a few than the bowl, but it had neither stream nor spring. No one went there. Except Rand, after he argued with Moiraine.

Rand stood not far from the entrance, leaning against the rough trunk of a leatherleaf, staring at the palms of his hands. Perrin knew that on each there was a heron, branded into the flesh. Rand did not move when Perrin’s boot scraped on stone.

Suddenly Rand began to recite softly, never looking up from his hands.

“Twice and twice shall he be marked,

twice to live, and twice to die.

Once the heron, to set his path.

Twice the heron, to name him true.

Once the Dragon, for remembrance lost.

Twice the Dragon, for the price he must pay.”

With a shudder he tucked his hands under his arms. “But no Dragons, yet.” He chuckled roughly. “Not yet.”

For a moment Perrin simply looked at him. A man who could channel the One Power. A man doomed to go mad from the taint on saidin, the male half of the True Source, and certain to destroy everything around him in his madness. A man—a thing!—everyone was taught to loathe and fear from childhood. Only . . . it was hard to stop seeing the boy he had grown up with. How do you just stop being somebody’s friend? Perrin chose a small boulder with a flat top, and sat, waiting.

After a while Rand turned his head to look at him. “Do you think Mat is all right? He looked so sick, the last I saw him.”

“He must be all right by now.” He should be in Tar Valon, by now. They’ll Heal him, there. And Nynaeve and Egwene will keep him out of trouble. Egwene and Nynaeve, Rand and Mat and Perrin. All five from Emond’s Field in the Two Rivers. Few people had come into the Two Rivers from outside, except for occasional peddlers, and merchants once a year to buy wool and tabac. Almost no one had ever left. Until the Wheel chose out its ta’veren, and five simple country folk could stay where they were no longer. Could be what they had been no longer.

Rand nodded and was silent.

“Lately,” Perrin said, “I find myself wishing I was still a blacksmith. Do you. . . . Do you wish you were still just a shepherd?”

“Duty,” Rand muttered. “Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain. That’s what they say in Shienar. ‘The Dark One is stirring. The Last Battle is coming. And the Dragon Reborn has to face the Dark One in the Last Battle, or the Shadow will cover everything. The Wheel of Time broken. Every Age remade in the Dark One’s image.’ There’s only me.” He began to laugh mirthlessly, his shoulders shaking. “I have the duty, because there isn’t anybody else, now is there?”

Perrin shifted uneasily. The laughter had a raw edge that made his skin crawl. “I understand you were arguing with Moiraine again. The same thing?”

Rand drew a deep, ragged breath. “Don’t we always argue about the same thing? They’re down there, on Almoth Plain, and the Light alone knows where else. Hundreds of them. Thousands. They declared for the Dragon Reborn because I raised that banner. Because I let myself be called the Dragon. Because I could see no other choice. And they’re dying. Fighting, searching, and praying for the man who is supposed to lead them. Dying. And I sit here safe in the mountains all winter. I . . . I owe them . . . something.”

“You think I like it?” Perrin swung his head in irritation.

“You take whatever she says to you,” Rand grated. “You never stand up to her.”

“Much good it has done you, standing up to her. You have argued all winter, and we have sat here like lumps all winter.”

“Because she is right.” Rand laughed again, that chilling laugh. “The Light burn me, she is right. They are all split up into little groups all over the plain, all across Tarabon and Arad Doman. If I join any one of them, the Whitecloaks and the Domani army and the Taraboners will be on top of them like a duck on a beetle.”

Perrin almost laughed himself, in confusion. “If you agree with her, why in the Light do you argue all the time?”

“Because I have to do something. Or I’ll . . . I’ll—burst like a rotted melon!”

“Do what? If you listen to what she says—”

Rand gave him no chance to say they would sit there forever. “Moiraine says! Moiraine says!” Rand jerked erect, squeezing his head between his hands. “Moiraine has something to say about everything! Moiraine says I mustn’t go to the men who are dying in my name. Moiraine says I’ll know what to do next because the Pattern will force me to it. Moiraine says! But she never says how I’ll know. Oh, no! She doesn’t know that.” His hands fell to his sides, and he turned toward Perrin, head tilted and eyes narrowed. “Sometimes I feel as if Moiraine is putting me through my paces like a fancy Tairen stallion doing his steps. Do you ever feel that?”

Perrin scrubbed a hand through his shaggy hair. “I. . . . Whatever is pushing us, or pulling us, I know who the enemy is, Rand.”