Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time 13)

Perrin exhaled slowly. Sweat dripped from his brow. He reached up to wipe it away, then willed the sweat away instead.

Hopper vanished, and Perrin followed, finding himself on the same rooftop as before. He sat down. Merely thinking of that shadow made him shiver. "It felt so real," he said. "A piece of me knew it was a nightmare. I couldn't help but try to fight, or try to run. When I did either, it grew stronger, didn't it? Because I accepted it was real?"

Yes. You must not believe what you see.

Perrin nodded. "There was a woman in there. Part of the dream? She wasn't real either?" Yes.

"Maybe she was the one who dreamed it," Perrin said. "The one having the original nightmare, caught up in it and trapped here in the World of Dreams."

Men who dream do not stay here long, Hopper sent. To him, that was the end of the discussion. You were strong, Young Bull. You did well. He smelled proud.

"It helped when she called the thing the Dragon Reborn. That showed it wasn't real. Helped me believe it wasn't."

You did well, foolish cub, Hopper repeated. Perhaps you can learn.

"Only if I keep practicing. We need to do that again. Can you find another?"

Yes, Hopper sent. There are always nightmares when your kind is near. Always. The wolf turned northward again, however. Perrin had thought that the thing that had been distracting him earlier was the dreams, but it didn't seem to have been the case.

"What is up there?" Perrin asked. "What is it you keep looking toward?"

It comes, Hopper sent.

"What?"

The Last Hunt. It begins. Or it does not.

Perrin frowned, standing. "You mean . . . right now?"

The decision will be made. Soon.

"What decision?" Hopper's sendings were confusing, and he couldn't

decipher them. Light and darkness, a void and fire, a coldness and a terrible, terrible heat. Mixed with wolves howling, calling, lending strength. Come. Hopper stood, looking to the northeast.

Hopper vanished. Perrin shifted after him, appearing low down on the slopes of the Dragonmount, beside an outcropping of stone.

"Light," Perrin said softly, looking up in awe. The storm that had been brewing for months had come to a head. A massive black thunderhead dominated the sky, covering the top of the mountain. It spun slowly in the air, an enormous vortex of blackness, emitting bolts of lightning that connected to the clouds above. In other parts of the wolf dream the clouds were tempestuous, yet distant. This felt immediate.

This was . . . the focus of something. Perrin could feel it. Often, the wolf dream reflected things in the real world in strange or unexpected ways.

Hopper stood on the outcropping. Perrin could feel wolves all across the slopes of Dragonmount. In even greater numbers than he'd felt here recently.

They wait, Hopper said. The Last Hunt comes.

As Perrin reached out, he found that other packs were coming, still distant but moving toward Dragonmount. Perrin looked upward at the monstrous peak. The tomb of the Dragon, Lews Therin. It was a monument to his madness, to both his failure and his success. His pride and his self-sacrifice.

"The wolves," Perrin said. "They gather for the Last Hunt?" Yes. If it occurs.

Perrin turned back to Hopper. "You said that it would. 'The Last Hunt comes,' you said."

A choice must be made, Young Bull. One path leads to the Last Hunt. "And the other?" Perrin asked.

Hopper didn't respond immediately. He turned toward Dragonmount.

The other path does not lead to the Last Hunt. "Yes, but what does it lead to?" To nothing.

Perrin opened his mouth to press further, but then the weight of Hopper's sending hit him. "Nothing" to the wolf meant a vacant den, all of the pups taken by trappers. A night sky empty of stars. The moon fading. The smell of old blood, dry, stale and flaked away.