“He has changed, though,” Siuan said thoughtfully. “You said so yourself.”
“Yes,” Nynaeve said. “The Aiel say he’s embraced death.”
“I’ve heard that from them, too,” Egwene said. “But I looked into his eyes, and something else has changed, something inexplicable. The man I saw…”
“He didn’t seem like one to destroy Natrin’s Barrow?” Siuan shivered as she thought of that.
“The man I saw wouldn’t need to destroy such a place,” Egwene said. “Those inside would just follow him. Bend to his wishes. Because he was.”
The three fell silent.
Egwene shook her head and took a sip of her soup. She paused, then smiled. “Well, I see the soup is good. Perhaps things aren’t as bad as I thought.”
“The ingredients came from Caemlyn,” Nynaeve noted. “I overheard the serving girls talking.”
“Oh.”
More silence.
“Mother,” Siuan said, speaking carefully. “The women are still worried about the deaths in the Tower.”
“I agree, Mother,” Nynaeve said. “Sisters stare at one another with distrust. It worries me.”
“You both should have seen it before,” Egwene said. “During Elaida’s reign.”
“If it was worse than this,” Nynaeve said, “I’m glad that I didn’t.” She glanced down at her Great Serpent ring. She did that a lot, recently. As a fisher with a new boat often glanced toward the docks and smiled. For all her complaints that she was Aes Sedai, and for all the fact that she’d been wearing that ring for a long time now, she was obviously satisfied to have passed the testing and taken the oaths.
“It was terrible,” Egwene said. “And I don’t intend to let it go back to that. Siuan, the plan must be put into motion.”
Siuan grimaced. “I’ve been teaching the others. But I don’t think this is a good idea, Mother. They’re barely trained.”
“What’s this?” Nynaeve asked.
“Aes Sedai,” Egwene said. “Carefully chosen and given dream ter’angreal. Siuan is showing them how Tel’aran’rhiod works.”
“Mother, that place is dangerous.”
Egwene took another sip of soup. “I believe I know that better than most. But it is necessary; we must lure the killers into a confrontation. I’ll arrange for a ‘secret’ meeting among my most loyal Aes Sedai, in the World of Dreams, and perhaps lay clues that other people of importance will be attending. Siuan, you’ve contacted the Windfinders?”
“Yes,” Siuan said. “Though they want to know what you’ll give them to agree to meet with you.”
“The loan of the dream ter’angreal will be enough,” Egwene said dryly. “Not everything has to be a bargain.”
“To them, it often does,” Nynaeve said. “But that’s beside the point. You’re bringing Windfinders to this meeting to lure Mesaana?”
“Not exactly,” Egwene said. “I’ll see the Windfinders at the same time, in a different place. And some Wise Ones as well. Enough to hint to Mesaana—assuming she’s got spies watching the other groups of women who can channel—that she really wants to spy on us in Tel’aran’rhiod that day.
“You and Siuan will hold a meeting in the Hall of the Tower, but it will be a decoy to draw Mesaana or her minions out of hiding. With wards—and some sisters watching from hidden places—we’ll be able to trap them. Siuan will send for me as soon as the trap is sprung.”
Nynaeve frowned. “It’s a good plan, save for one thing. I don’t like you being in danger, Mother. Let me lead this fight. I can manage it.”
Egwene studied Nynaeve, and Siuan saw some of the real Egwene. Thoughtful. Bold, but calculating. She also saw Egwene’s fatigue, the weight of responsibility. Siuan knew that feeling well.
“I’ll admit you have a valid concern,” Egwene said. “Ever since I let myself get captured by Elaida’s cronies outside of Tar Valon, I’ve wondered if I become too directly involved, too directly in danger.”
“Exactly,” Nynaeve said.
“However,” Egwene said, “the simple fact remains that I am the one among us who is most expert at Tel’aran’rhiod. You two are skilled, true, but I have more experience. In this case, I am not just the leader of the Aes Sedai, I am a tool that the White Tower must use.” She hesitated. “I dreamed this, Nynaeve. If we do not defeat Mesaana here, all could be lost. All will be lost. It is not a time to hold back any of our tools, no matter how valuable.”
Nynaeve reached for her braid, but it now came only to her shoulders. She gritted her teeth at that. “You might have a point. But I don’t like it.”
“The Aiel dreamwalkers,” Siuan said. “Mother, you said you’ll be meeting with them. Might they be willing to help? I’d feel much better about having you fight if I knew they were around to keep an eye on you.”
“Yes,” Egwene said. “A good suggestion. I will contact them before we meet and make the request, just in case.”
“Mother,” Nynaeve said. “Perhaps Rand—”
“This is a matter of the Tower, Nynaeve,” Egwene said. “We will manage it.”
“Very well.”
“Now,” Egwene continued, “we need to figure out how to spread the right rumors so that Mesaana won’t be able to resist coming to listen…”
Perrin hit the nightmare running. The air bent around him, and the city houses—this time of the Cairhienin flat-topped variety—disappeared. The road became soft beneath his feet, like mud, then turned to liquid.
He splashed in the ocean. Water again? he thought with annoyance.
Deep red lightning crashed in the sky, throwing waves of bloody light across the sea. Each burst revealed shadowed creatures lurking beneath the waves. Massive things, evil and sinuous in the spasming red lightning.
People clung to the wreckage of what had once been a ship, screaming in terror and crying out for loved ones. Men on broken boards, women trying to hold their babies above the water as towering waves broke over them, dead bodies bobbing like sacks of grain.
The things beneath the waves struck, snatching people from the surface and dragging them into the depths with splashes of fins and sparkling, razor-sharp teeth. The water was soon bubbling red that didn’t come from the lightning.
Whoever had dreamed this particular nightmare had a singularly twisted imagination.
Perrin refused to let himself be drawn in. He squelched his fear, and did not swim for one of those planks. It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real.
Despite his understanding, part of him knew that he was going to die in these waters. These terrible, bloody waters. The moans of the others assaulted him, and he yearned to try to help them. They weren’t real, he knew. Just figments. But it was hard.
Perrin began to rise from the water, the waves turning back into ground. But then he cried out as something brushed his leg. Lightning crashed, breaking the air. A woman beside him slipped beneath the waves, tugged by unseen jaws. Panicked, Perrin was suddenly back in the water, there in a heartbeat, floating in a completely different place, one arm slung over a piece of wreckage.
This happened sometimes. If he wavered for a moment—if he let himself see the nightmare as real—it would pull him in and actually move him, fitting him into its terrible mosaic. Something moved in the water nearby, and he splashed away with a start. One of the surging waves raised him into the air.
It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real.
The waters were so cold. Something touched his leg again, and he screamed, then choked off as he gulped in a mouthful of salty water.
IT ISN’T REAL!
He was in Cairhien, leagues from the ocean. This was a street. Hard stones beneath. The smell of baked bread coming from a nearby bakery. The street lined with small, thin-trunked ash trees.
With a bellowing scream, he clung to this knowledge as the people around him held to their flotsam. Perrin knotted his hands into fists, focusing on reality.
There were cobblestones under his feet. Not waves. Not water. Not teeth and fins. Slowly, he rose from the ocean again. He stepped out of it and set his foot on the surface, feeling solid stone beneath his boot. The other foot followed. He found himself on a small, floating circle of stones.
Something enormous surged from the waters to his left, a massive beast part fish and part monster, with a maw so wide that a man could walk into it standing upright. The teeth were as large as Perrin’s hand, and they glittered, dripping blood.
It was not real.
The creature exploded into mist. The spray hit Perrin, then dried immediately. Around him, the nightmare bent, a bubble of reality pressing out from him. Dark air, cold waves, screaming people ran together like wet paint.
There was no lightning—he did not see it light his eyelids. There was no thunder. He could not hear it crashing. There were no waves, not in the middle of landlocked Cairhien.
Perrin snapped his eyes open, and the entire nightmare broke apart, vanishing like a film of frost exposed to the spring sunlight. The buildings reappeared, the street returned, the waves retreated. The sky returned to the boiling black tempest. Lightning that was bright and white flashed in its depths, but there was no thunder.
Hopper sat on the street a short distance away. Perrin walked over to the wolf. He could have jumped there immediately, of course, but he didn’t like the idea of doing everything easily. That would bite at him when he returned to the real world.
You grow strong, Young Bull, Hopper sent approvingly.
“I still take too long,” Perrin said, glancing over his shoulder. “Every time I enter, it takes me a few minutes to regain control. I need to be faster. In a battle with Slayer, a few minutes might as well be an eternity.”
He will not be so strong as these.
“He’ll still be strong enough,” Perrin said. “He’s had years to learn to control the wolf dream. I only just started.”
Hopper laughed. Young Bull, you started the first time you came here.
“Yes, but I just started training a few weeks back.”
Hopper continued laughing. He was right, in a way. Perrin had spent two years preparing, visiting the wolf dream at night. But he still needed to learn as much as he could. In a way, he was glad for the delay before the trial.
But he could not delay too long. The Last Hunt was upon them. Many of the wolves were running to the north; Perrin could feel them passing. Running for the Blight, for the Borderlands. They were moving both in the real world and in the wolf dream, but those here did not shift there directly. They ran, as packs.
He could tell that Hopper longed to join them. However, he remained behind, as did some others.
“Come on,” Perrin said. “Let’s find another nightmare.”
The Rose March was in bloom.
That was incredible. Few other plants had bloomed in this terrible summer, and those that did had wilted. But the Rose March was blooming, and fiercely, hundreds of red explosions twisting around the garden framework. Voracious insects buzzed from flower to flower, as if every bee in the city had come here to feed.