The Warder was silent for a time. “The answer to that, blacksmith,” he said grimly at last, “may be more than you or I, either one, want to know. I hope the answer does not kill us all. You three get what sleep you can. I doubt we will stay the night in Illian, and I fear we have hard riding ahead.”
“What are you going to do?” Perrin asked.
“I am going after Moiraine. To tell her about the Darkhound. She can’t be angry with me for following for that, not when she would not know it was there until it took her throat.”
The first big drops of rain splatted on the paving stones as they went back inside. Bili had removed the last of the dead Gray Men and was sweeping up the sawdust where they had bled. The dark-eyed girl was singing a sad song about a boy leaving his love. Mistress Luhhan would have enjoyed it greatly.
Lan ran ahead of them, across the common room and up the stairs, and by the time Perrin reached the second floor, the Warder was already starting back down, buckling his sword belt on, color-shifting cloak hanging over his arm as if he hardly cared who saw it.
“If he is wearing that in a city. . . .” Loial’s shaggy hair almost brushed the ceiling as he shook his head. “I do not know if I can sleep, but I will try. Dreams will be more pleasant than staying awake.”
Not always, Loial, Perrin thought as the Ogier went on down the hall.
Zarine seemed to want to stay with him, but he told her to go to sleep and firmly shut the slatted door in her face. He stared at his own bed reluctantly as he stripped down to his underbreeches.
“I have to find out,” he sighed, and crawled onto the bed. Rain drummed down outside, and thunder boomed. The breeze across his bed carried some of the rain’s coolness, but he did not think he would need any of the blankets at the foot of the mattress. His last thought before sleep claimed him was that he had forgotten to light a candle again, though the room was dark. Careless. Mustn’t be careless. Carelessness ruins the work.
Dreams tumbled through his head. Darkhounds chasing him; he never saw them, but he could hear their howling. Fades, and Gray Men. A tall, slender man flashed into them again and again, in richly embroidered coat and boots with gold fringe; most of the time he held what seemed to be a sword, shining like the sun, and laughed triumphantly. Sometimes the man sat on a throne, and kings and queens groveled before him. These felt strange, as if they were not really his dreams at all.
Then the dreams changed, and he knew he was in the wolf dream he sought. This time he had hoped for it.
He stood atop a high, flat-topped stone spire, the wind ruffling his hair, bringing a thousand dry scents and a faint hint of water hidden in the far distance. For an instant he thought he had the form of a wolf, and fumbled at his own body to make sure what he saw was really him. He wore his own coat and breeches and boots; he held his bow, and his quiver hung at his side. The axe was not there.
“Hopper! Hopper, where are you?” The wolf did not come.
Rugged mountains surrounded him, and other tall spires separated by arid flats and jumbled ridges, and sometimes a large plateau rising with sheer sides. Things grew, but nothing lush. Tough, short grass. Bushes wiry and covered with thorn, and other things that even seemed to have thorns on their fat leaves. Scattered, stunted trees, twisted by the wind. Yet wolves could find hunting even in this land.
As he peered at this rough land, a circle of darkness suddenly blanked out a part of the mountains; he could not have said whether the darkness was right in front of his face or halfway to the mountains, but he seemed to be seeing through it, and beyond. Mat, rattling a dice cup. His opponent stared at Mat with eyes of fire. Mat did not seem to see the man, but Perrin knew him.
“Mat!” he shouted. “It’s Ba’alzamon! Light, Mat, you’re dicing with Ba’alzamon!”
Mat made his toss, and as the dice spun, the vision faded, and the dark place was dry mountains again.
“Hopper!” Perrin turned slowly, looking in every direction. He even looked up in the sky—He can fly, now—where clouds promised a rain the ground far below the spire top would drink up as soon as it fell. “Hopper!”
A darkness formed among the clouds, a hole into somewhere else. Egwene and Nynaeve and Elayne stood looking at a huge metal cage, with a raised door held on a heavy spring. They stepped in and reached up together to loose the catch. The barred door snapped down behind them. A woman with her hair all in braids laughed at them, and another woman all in white laughed at her. The hole in the sky closed, and there were only clouds.
“Hopper, where are you?” he called. “I need you! Hopper!”
And the grizzled wolf was there, alighting on the spire top as if he had leaped from somewhere higher.
Dangerous. You have been warned, Young Bull. Too young. Too new yet.
“I need to know, Hopper. You said there were things I must see. I need to see more, know more.” He hesitated, thinking of Mat, of Egwene and Nynaeve and Elayne. “The strange things I see here. Are they real?” Hopper’s sending seemed slow, as if it were so simple the wolf could not understand the need to explain it, or how to. Finally, though, something came.
What is real is not real. What is not real is real. Flesh is a dream, and dreams have flesh.
“That doesn’t tell me anything, Hopper. I do not understand.” The wolf looked at him, as if he had said he did not understand that water was wet. “You said I had to see something, and you showed me Ba’alzamon, and Lanfear.”
Heartfang. Moonhunter.
“Why did you show me, Hopper? Why did I have to see them?”
The Last Hunt comes. Sadness filled the sending, and a sense of inevitability. What will be must be.
“I do not understand! The Last Hunt? What Last Hunt? Hopper, Gray Men came to kill me tonight.”
The Notdead hunt you?