Light, Perrin thought. That's not far from here. Or at least not far from where his body slumbered in the real world. Jarra was in Ghealdan. An odd coincidence.
With a ta'veren nearby, there are no coincidences.
He frowned, rising and scanning the landscape. Moiraine had told Perrin there was nothing human left inside of Noam. That was what awaited a wolfbrother if he let himself be completely consumed by the wolf.
"I must learn to control this, or I must banish the wolf from me," Perrin said. "There is no time left for compromise, Hopper."
Hopper smelled dissatisfied. He didn't like what he'd called a human tendency to wish to control things.
Come, Hopper sent, standing up in the grass. Hunt.
Come learn, Hopper sent, frustrated. The Last Hunt comes.
Hopper's sendings included the image of a young pup making his first
kill. That and a worry for the future a normally unwolflike attribute. The Last Hunt brought change.
Perrin hesitated. In a previous visit to the wolf dream, Perrin had demanded that Hopper train him to master the place. Very inappropriate for a young wolf a kind of challenge to the elder's seniority but this was a response. Hopper had come to teach, but he would do it as a wolf taught.
"I'm sorry," Perrin said. "I will hunt with you but I must not lose myself."
These things you think, Hopper sent, displeased. How can you think such images of nothing? The response was accompanied by images of blankness an empty sky, a den with nobody in it, a barren field. You are Young Bull. You will always be Young Bull. How can you lose Young Bull? Look down, and you will see his paws beneath. Bite, and his teeth will kill. There is no losing this.
"It is a thing of humans."
The same empty words over and over, Hopper sent.
Perrin took a deep breath, sucking in and releasing the too-wet air. "Very well," he said, hammer and knife appearing in his hands. "Let's go."
You hunt game with your hooves? An image of a bull ignoring its horns and trying to leap onto the back of a deer and stomp it to the ground.
"You're right." Perrin was suddenly holding a good Two Rivers longbow. He wasn't as good a shot as Jondyn Barran or Rand, but he could hold his own.
Hopper sent a bull spitting at a deer. Perrin growled, sending back a wolf's claws shooting from its paws and striking a deer at a distance, but this only seemed to amuse Hopper further. Despite his annoyance, Perrin had to admit that it was a rather ridiculous image.
The wolf sent the image to the others, causing them to howl in amusement, though most of them seemed to prefer the bull jumping up and down on the deer. Perrin growled, chasing after Hopper toward the distant woods, where the other wolves waited.
As he ran, the grasses seemed to grow more dense. They held him back, like snarled forest undergrowth. Hopper soon outpaced him.
Run, Young Bull!
I'm trying, Perrin sent back.
Not as you have before!
Perrin continued to push his way through the grass. This strange place, this wonderful world where wolves ran, could be intoxicating. And dangerous. Hopper had warned Perrin of that more than once.
Dangers for tomorrow. Ignore them for now, Hopper sent, growing more distant. Worry is for two-legs.
I can't ignore my problems! Perrin thought back. Yet you often do, Hopper sent.
It struck true more true, perhaps, than the wolf knew. Perrin burst into a clearing and pulled to a halt. There, lying on the ground, were the three chunks of metal he'd forged in his earlier dream. The large lump the size of two fists, the flattened rod, the thin rectangle. The rectangle glowed faintly yellow-red, singeing the short grass around it.
The lumps vanished immediately, though the simmering rectangle left a burned spot. Perrin looked up, searching for the wolves. Ahead of him, in the sky above the trees ahead, a large hole of blackness opened up. He could not tell how far it was away, and it seemed to dominate all he could see while being distant at the same time.
Mat stood there. He was fighting against himself, a dozen different men wearing his face, all dressed in different types of fine clothing. Mat spun his spear, and never saw the shadowy figure creeping behind him, bearing a bloody knife.
"Mat!" Perrin cried, but he knew it was meaningless. This thing he was seeing, it was some kind of dream or vision of the future. It had been some time since he'd seen one of these. He'd almost begun to think they would stop coming.