Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time 6)

She offered them tea, with a casual comment that they could discuss how to hearten the people about the weather. That hit too close to home, after the last few minutes, and they nearly tripped over themselves regretting duties that would not allow them to stay.

Thoughtfully, she watched them go, Milla drawing up the rear as usual, a child tagging after older sisters. It might be possible to have a few quiet words with some of the Women’s Circle in Taren Ferry. Each village needed a strong mayor and a strong Wisdom to stand up for their interests. Quiet, careful words. When Perrin had discovered she had been talking to the men in Taren Ferry before the election for mayor — if a man had good wits and was strong for her and Perrin, why should the men who were going to vote not know that she and Perrin returned that support? — when he found out . . . He was a gentle man, slow to anger, but just to be safe she had barricaded herself in their bedroom until he cooled down. Which had not happened until she promised not to “interfere” again in any mayoral election, in the open or behind his back. That last had been most unfair of him. It was most inconvenient, too. But it had not occurred to him to mention Women’s Circle voting. Well, what he did not know would do him a great deal of good. And Taren Ferry, too.

Thinking of him made her remember her promise to herself. The feathered fan picked up speed. Today had not been the worst for nonsense, and not even the worst with the Wisdoms — there had been no questions about when Lord Perrin could expect an heir, the Light be blessed! — but maybe the unrelenting heat had finally screwed her irritation to the sticking place. Perrin would do his duty, or . . .

Thunder rolled over the manor, and lightning lit the windows. Hope swelled inside her. If rain had come . . .

She ran silently on slippered feet, searching out Perrin. She wanted to share the rain with him. And she still intended a few firm words. More than a few, if necessary.

Perrin was where she expected, all the way up on the third floor, on the roofed porch at the front, a curly-haired man in a plain brown coat, with heavy shoulders and arms. Broad back to her, he was leaning against one of the porch columns. Staring down at the ground to one side of the manor, not up at the sky. Faile stopped in the doorway.

Thunder boomed again, and lightning sheeted blue across the sky. Heat lightning, in a cloudless sky. Not a herald of rain. No rain to break heat. No snow to follow. Sweat beaded on her face, but she shivered.

“The audience is over?” Perrin said, and she jumped. He had not raised his head. It was difficult sometimes to remember how sensitive his hearing was. Or he could have smelled her; she hoped it was the perfume, not the sweat.

“I half thought I’d find you with Gwil or Hal.” That was one of his worst faults; she tried to train servants, and to him they were men to laugh with and have a mug of ale. At least he did not have a roving eye, as so many men did. He never realized Calle Coplin had taken service in the manor because she hoped to do more for Lord Perrin than make his bed. He had not even noticed when Faile chased Calle out with a stick of kindling.

Moving up beside him, she saw what he was watching. Two men, stripped to the waist, working with wooden practice swords below. Tam al’Thor was a solid, graying man, Aram slender and young. Aram was learning fast. Very fast. Tam had been a soldier, and a blademaster, but Aram was pressing him hard.

Automatically her eyes went to the tents clustered in a stone-fenced field half a mile toward the Westwood. The rest of the Tinkers were camped amid half-finished wagons like small houses on wheels. Of course, they no longer acknowledged Aram as one of them, not since he had picked up that sword. The Tuatha’an never did violence, not for any reason. She wondered whether they would go as they planned, when the wagons the Trollocs had burned were replaced. After gathering in all those who had hidden in the thickets, they yet numbered little more than a hundred. Probably they would, leaving Aram behind of his own choice. No Tuatha’an had ever settled in one place that she had ever heard.

But then, people in the Two Rivers used to say nothing there ever changed, yet a great deal had since the Trollocs. Emond’s Field, just a hundred paces south of the manor, was larger than she had first seen, all the burned houses rebuilt and new going up. Some in brick, another new thing. And some with tile roofs. At the rate new dwellings were being erected, the manor would be in the village soon. There was talk of a wall, in case the Trollocs returned. Change. A handful of children were following Loial’s great height along one of the village streets. Only a few months since the sight of the Ogier, with his tufted ears and broad nose almost as wide as his face, half again as tall as a man, had drawn every child in the village in gaping wonder, and their mothers in a terror to protect them. Now mothers sent their children for Loial to read to them. The outlanders in their strangely cut coats and dresses, dotted among Emond’s Fielders, stood out almost as much as Loial, but no one looked at them twice, or at the village’s three Aiel, strange, tall folk in browns and grays. Until a few weeks ago there had been two Aes Sedai here, as well, and even they had gotten no more than respectful bows and curtsies. Change. The two flagpoles not far from the Winespring, on the Green, were visible over the rooftops, one bearing the red-bordered red wolf’s head that had become Perrin’s sigil, the other the crimson eagle in flight that marked Manetheren. Manetheren had vanished in the Trolloc Wars, some two thousand years ago, but this land had been part of it, and the Two Rivers flew that flag almost by acclamation. Change, and they had no notion how large it was, how inexorable it was. But Perrin would see them through it to whatever came beyond. With her help, he would.

“I used to hunt rabbits with Gwil,” Perrin said. “He’s only a few years older than me, and he used to take me hunting sometimes.”

It took her a moment to remember what he was talking about. “Gwil is trying to learn how to be a footman. You don’t help him when you invite him to go smoke his pipe with you in the stables and talk horses.” She took a deep slow breath. This would not be easy. “You have a duty to these people, Perrin. However hard it is, however much you want not to, you have to do your duty.”

“I know,” he said softly. “I can feel him tugging at me.”

His voice was so strange that she reached up to grip his short beard and make him look down at her. His golden eyes, still as strange and mysterious to her as ever, looked sad. “What do you mean? You might think fondly of Gwil, but he — ”

“It’s Rand, Faile. He needs me.”

The knot inside her that s

he had been trying to deny clenched even tighter. She had convinced herself this danger had gone with the Aes Sedai. Foolish, that. She was married to a ta’veren, a man fated to bend lives around him into the shape the Pattern required, and he had grown up with two more ta’veren, one the Dragon Reborn himself. It was a part of him she had to share. She did not like sharing even a hair, but there it was. “What are you going to do?”

“Go to him.” His gaze shifted for a moment, and her eyes followed. Against the wall leaned a blacksmith’s heavy hammer and an axe with a wicked half-moon blade and a haft a pace long. “I couldn’t . . . ” His voice was almost a whisper. “I couldn’t find how to tell you. I’ll go tonight, when everyone’s asleep. I don’t think there’s much time, and it could be a long way. Master al’Thor and Master Cauthon will help you with the mayors, if you need it. I spoke to them.” He tried to make his voice lighter, a pitiful effort. “You shouldn’t have any trouble with the Wisdoms anyway. Funny; when I was a boy the Wisdoms always seemed so fearsome, but they’re really easy as long as you’re firm.”

Faile compressed her lips. So he had spoken to Tam al’Thor and Abell Cauthon, had he, but not to her? And the Wisdoms! She would like to make him wear her skin for a day and see how easy the Wisdoms were. “We can’t leave as quickly as that. It will take time to organize a proper entourage.”

Perrin’s eyes narrowed. “We? You’re not going! It will be —!” He coughed, went on in a milder tone. “It will be best if one of us stays here. If the lord goes off, the lady should remain to take care of things. That makes sense. More refugees every day. All those disputes to be settled. If you go, too, it’ll be worse than the Trollocs around here.”

How could he think she would not notice such a clumsy recovery? He had been going to say it would be dangerous. How could his wanting to keep her out of danger always make her feel so warm inside at the same time it made her so angry? “We will do what you think best,” she said mildly, and he blinked suspiciously, scratched his beard, then nodded.

Now it was only necessary to make him see what really was best. At least he had not said right out she could not go. Once he dug in his heels, she could as easily shift a grain barn with her hands as shift him, but with care it could be avoided. Usually.

Abruptly she threw her arms around him and buried her face against his broad chest. His strong hands smoothed her hair softly; he probably thought she was worried about him leaving. Well, she was, in a way. Just not about him leaving without her; he had not yet learned what it meant to have a Saldaean wife. They had been getting on so well away from Rand al’Thor. Why did the Dragon Reborn need Perrin now, so strongly that Perrin could feel it across however many hundred leagues lay between them? Why was time so short? Why? Perrin’s shirt clung to his sweaty chest, and the unnatural heat sent more sliding down her face, but Faile shivered.

One hand on his sword hilt, Gawyn Trakand bounced a small rock on his palm as he made another circuit of his men, checking their positions around the tree-topped hill. A dry hot wind carrying dust across the rolling brown grasslands fluttered the plain green cloak hanging down his back. Nothing to be seen but dead grass, scattered thickets and a dotting of mostly withered bushes. There was too much front to cover with the men he had if it came to a fight here. He had grouped them in clusters of five swordsmen afoot, with bowmen fifty paces back up the hill. Fifty more waited with lance and horse near the camp on the crest, to be committed where necessary. He hoped it would not be necessary today.

There had been fewer Younglings in the beginning, but their reputation brought recruits. The added numbers would be helpful; no recruit was allowed out of Tar Valon until he was up to standard. It was not that he expected fighting this day more than any other, but he had learned it came most often when unexpected. Only Aes Sedai would wait until the last minute to tell a man about a thing like what was to happen today.

“Is everything well?” he said, stopping beside a group of swordsmen. In spite of the heat, some wore their green cloaks so that Gawyn’s white charging boar showed, embroidered on the breast.

Jisao Hamora was the youngest, still with a boy’s grin, but he was also the only one of the five with the small silver tower on his collar, marking him a veteran of the fighting in the White Tower. He answered. “All is well, my Lord.”

The Younglings deserved their name. Gawyn himself, a few years past twenty, was among the oldest. It was a rule that they accepted none who had served in any army, or borne arms for any lord or lady, or even worked as a merchant’s guard. The first Younglings had gone to the Tower as boys and young men to be trained by the Warders, the finest swordsmen, the finest fighters, in the world, and they continued part of that tradition, at least, though Warders no longer trained them. Youth was no detriment. They had held a small ceremony only a week past for the first whiskers Benji Dalfor had ever shaved that were not fuzz, and he bore a scar across his cheek from the Tower fighting. The Aes Sedai had been too busy for Healing in the days right after Siuan Sanche was deposed as Amyrlin. She might still be Amyrlin if the Younglings had not faced many of their former teachers and bested them in the halls of the Tower.