Well, I’d be more than uneasy if Whitecloaks had been acting like that in Emond’s Field. “Simion, has another stranger passed through here in the last day or two? A young man, tall, with gray eyes and reddish hair? He might have played the flute for a meal or a bed.”
“I remember him, good master,” Simion said, still shifting the candlestick. “Came yesterday morning, early. Looked hungry, he did. He played the flute for all the weddings, yesterday. Good-looking young fellow. Some of the women eyed him, at first, but. . . .” He paused, looking at Perrin sideways. “Is he a friend of yours, good master?”
“I know him,” Perrin said. “Why?”
Simion hesitated. “No reason, good master. He was an odd fellow, that’s all. He talked to himself, sometimes, and sometimes he laughed when nobody had said anything. Slept in this very room, last night, or part of it. Woke us all in the middle of the night, yelling. It was just a nightmare, but he wouldn’t stay any longer. Master Harod didn’t make much effort to talk him into it, after all that noise.” Simion paused again. “He said something strange when he left.”
“What?” Perrin demanded.
“He said somebody was after him. He said. . . .” The chinless man swallowed and went on more slowly. “Said they’d kill him if he didn’t go. ‘One of us has to die, and I mean it to be him.’ His very words.”
“He did not mean us,” Loial rumbled. “We are his friends.”
“Of course, good—uh—good Ogier. Of course, he didn’t mean you. I—uh—I don’t mean to say anything about a friend of yours, but I—uh—I think he’s sick. In the head, you know.”
“We will take care of him,” Perrin said. “That’s why we’re following him. Which way did he go?”
“I knew it,” Simion said, bouncing on his toes. “I knew she could help as soon as I saw you. Which way? East, good master. East, like the Dark One himself was on his heels. Do you think she’ll help me? Help my brother, that is? Noam’s bad sick, and Mother Roon says she can’t do anything.”
Perrin kept his face expressionless, and bought a little time to think by propping his bow in the corner and setting his blanketroll and saddlebags on one of the beds. The problem was that thinking did not help much. He looked at Loial, but found no help there; consternation had the Ogier’s ears drooping and his long eyebrows hanging down on his cheeks. “What makes you think she can help your brother?” Stupid question! The right question is, what does he mean to do about it?
“Why, I traveled to Jehannah, once, good master, and I saw two . . . two women like her. I couldn’t mistake her after that.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s said they can raise the dead, good master.”
“Who else knows this?” Perrin asked sharply, and at the same time Loial said, “If your brother is dead, there is nothing anyone can do.”
The frog-faced man looked from one to the other of them anxiously, and his words came in a babble. “No one knows but me, good master. Noam isn’t dead, good Ogier, only sick. I swear nobody else could recognize her. Even Master Harod’s never been more than twenty miles from here in his life. He’s so bad sick. I’d ask her myself, only my knees’d be shaking so hard she couldn’t hear me talk. What if she took offense and called down lightning on me? And what if I’d been wrong? It isn’t the kind of thing you accuse a woman of without. . . . I mean . . . uh. . . .” He raised his hands, half in pleading, half as if to defend himself.
“I can make no promises,” Perrin said, “but I’ll speak to her. Loial, why don’t you keep Simion company till I’ve spoken to Moiraine?”
“Of course,” the Ogier boomed. Simion gave a start when Loial’s hand swallowed his shoulder. “He will show me my room, and we will talk. Tell me, Simion, what do you know of trees?”
“T-t-trees, g-good Ogier?”
Perrin did not wait any longer. He hurried back down the dark hall and knocked on Moiraine’s door, barely waiting for her peremptory “Come!” before pushing in.
Half a dozen candles showed that the Leap’s best room was none too good, though the one bed had four tall posts supporting a canopy, and the mattress looked less full of lumps than Perrin’s. There was a scrap of carpet on the floor, and two cushioned chairs instead of stools. Other than that, it looked no different from his room. Moiraine and Lan stood in front of the cold hearth as if they had been discussing something, and the Aes Sedai did not look pleased at being interrupted. The Warder’s face was as imperturbable as a carving.
“Rand’s been here, all right,” Perrin started off. “That fellow Simion remembers him.” Moiraine hissed through her teeth.
“You were told to keep your mouth shut,” Lan growled.
Perrin squared his feet to face the Warder. That was easier than facing Moiraine’s glare. “How could we find out whether he had been here without asking questions? Tell me that. He left last night, if you are interested, heading east. And he was carrying on about somebody following him, t
rying to kill him.”
“East.” Moiraine nodded. The utter calm of her voice was at odds with her disapproving eyes. “That is good to know, though it had to be so if he is going to Tear. But I was fairly certain he had been here even before I heard about the Whitecloaks, and they made it a certainty. Rand is almost surely right about one thing, Perrin. I cannot believe we are the only ones trying to find him. And if they find out about us, they may well try to stop us. We have enough to contend with trying to catch up to Rand without that. You must learn to hold your tongue until I tell you to speak.”
“The Whitecloaks?” Perrin said incredulously. Hold my tongue? Burn me, if I will! “How could they tell you—? Rand’s madness. It is catching?”
“Not his madness,” Moiraine said, “if he is far enough gone yet to be called mad. Perrin, he is more strongly ta’veren than anyone since the Age of Legends. Yesterday, in this village, the Pattern . . . moved, shaped itself around him like clay shaped on a mold. The weddings, the Whitecloaks, these were enough to say Rand had been here, for anyone who knew to listen.”
Perrin drew a long breath. “And this is what we’ll find everywhere he’s been? Light, if there are Shadowspawn after him, they can track him as easily as we can.”
“Perhaps,” Moiraine said. “Perhaps not. No one knows anything about ta’veren as strong as Rand.” For just a moment she sounded vexed at not knowing. “Artur Hawkwing was the most strongly ta’veren of whom any writings remain. And Hawkwing was in no way as strong as Rand.”
“It is said,” Lan put in, “that there were times when people in the same room with Hawkwing spoke truth when they meant to lie, made decisions they had not even known they were contemplating. Times when every toss of the dice, every turn of the cards, went his way. But only times.”
“You mean you don’t know,” Perrin said. “He could leave a trail of weddings and Whitecloaks gone mad all the way to Tear.”