“I do not care if she smelled of the Essence of Dawn,” Faile said darkly. “That one is not interested in hunting a bear, however fine his hide would look stretched on a wall. She hunts the sun.”
He frowned at her. “The sun? A bear? What are you talking about?”
“You go on by yourself. I think I will go to my bed after all.”
“If that's what you want,” he said slowly, “but I thought you were as eager to find out what happened as I am.”
“I think not. I'll not pretend I am eager to meet the... Rand... not after avoiding it until now. And now I am especially not eager. No doubt the two of you will have a fine talk without me. Especially if there's wine.”
“You don't make any sense,” he muttered, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “If you want to go to bed, then fine, but I wish you would say something I understand.”
For a long moment she studied his face, then suddenly bit her lip. He thought she was trying not to laugh. “Oh, Perrin, sometimes I believe it is your innocence I enjoy most of all.” Sure enough, traces of laughter silvered her voice. “You go on to... to your friend and tell me of it in the morning. As much as you want to.” She pulled his head down to brush his lips with a kiss and, as quick as the kiss, ran back down the hallway.
Shaking his head, he watched until she turned in to the stairs with no sign of Torean. Sometimes it was as if she spoke another language. He headed toward the lights.
The anteroom was a round chamber fifty paces or more across. A hundred gilded lamps hung on golden chains from its high ceiling. Polished redstone columns made an inner ring, and the floor appeared to be one huge slab of black marble, streaked with gold. It had been the anteroom of the king's chambers, in the days when Tear had kings, before Artur Hawkwing put everything from the Spine of the World to the Aryth Ocean under one king. The Tairen kings had not returned when Hawkwing's empire collapsed, and for a thousand years the only inhabitants of these apartments had been mice tracking through dust. No High Lord had ever had enough power to dare claim them for his own.
A ring of fifty Defenders stood rigidly in the middle of the room, breastplates and rimmed helmets gleaming, spears all slanted at exactly the same angle. Facing every direction as they did, they were supposed to keep all intruders from the current lord of the Stone. Their commander, a captain distinguished by two short white plumes on his helmet, held himself only a trifle less stiffly. He posed with one hand on his sword hilt and the other on his hip, selfimportant with his duty. They all smelled of fear and uncertainty, like men who lived under a crumbling cliff and had almost managed to convince themselves it would never fall. Or at least not tonight. Not in the next hour.
Perrin walked on by them, his bootheels making echoes. The officer started toward him, then hesitated when Perrin did not stop to be challenged. He knew who Perrin was, of course; at least, he knew as much as any Tairen knew. Traveling companion of Aes Sedai, friend of the Lord Dragon. Not a man to be interfered with by a mere officer of the Defenders of the Stone. There was his apparent task of guarding the Lord Dragon's rest, of course, but though he probably did not admit it even to himself, the officer had to know that he and his brave show of polished armor were simply that. The real guards were those Perrin met when he strode beyond the columns and approached the doors to Rand's chambers.
They had been sitting so still behind the columns that they seemed to fade into the stone, though their coats and breeches — in shades of gray and brown, made to hide them in the Waste — stood out here as soon as they moved. Six Maidens of the Spear, Aiel women who had chosen a warrior's life over the hearth, flowed between him and the doors on soft, laced boots that reached their knees. They were tall for women, the tallest barely a hand shorter than he, sundarkened, with shortcropped hair, yellow or red or something in between. Two held curved horn bows with arrows nocked, if not drawn. The others carried small hide bucklers and three or four short spears each — short, but with spearheads long enough to stick through a man's body with inches to spare.
“I do not think I can let you go in,” a woman with flamecolored hair said, smiling slightly to take the sting out of the words. Aiel did not go about grinning as much as other folk, or show a great deal of any outward emotion for that matter. “I think he does not want to see anyone tonight.”
“I am going in, Bain.” Ignoring her spears, he took her by the upper arms. That was when it became impossible to ignore the spears, since she had managed to get a spearpoint hard against the side of his throat. For that matter, a somewhat blonder woman named Chiad suddenly had one of her spears at the other side, as if the two were intended to meet somewhere in the middle of his neck. The other women only watched, confident that Bain and Chiad could handle whatever had to be done. Still, he did his best. “I don't have time to argue with you. Not that you listen to people who argue with you, as I remember. I am going in.” As gently as he could, he picked Bain up and set her out of his way:
Chiad's spear only needed her to breathe on it to draw blood, but after one startled widening of dark blue eyes, Bain abruptly took hers away and grinned. “Would you like to learn a game called Maidens' Kiss, Perrin? You might play well, I think. At the very least you would learn something.” One of the others laughed aloud. Chiad's spearpoint left his neck.
He took a deep breath, hoping they would not notice it was his first since the spears touched him. They had not veiled their faces — their shoufa lay coiled around their necks like dark scarves — but he did not know if Aiel had to do so before they killed, only that veiling meant they were ready to.
“Another time, perhaps,” he said politely. They were all grinning as if Bain had said something amusing, and his not understanding was part of the humor. Thom was right. A man could go crazy trying to understand women, of any nation and any station in life; that was what Thom said.
As he reached for a door handle in the shape of a rearing golden lion, Bain added, “On your head be it. He has already chased out what most men would consider better company by far than you.”
Of course, he thought, pulling open the door, Berelain. She was coming from here. Tonight, everything is revolving around —
The First of Mayene vanished from his thoughts as he got a look into the room. Broken mirrors hung on the walls and broken glass covered the floor, along with shards of shattered porcelain and feathers from the slashed mattress. Open books lay tumbled among overturned chairs and benches. And Rand was sitting at the foot of his bed, slumped against one of the bedposts with eyes closed and hands limp atop Callandor, which lay across his knees. He looked as if he had taken a bath in blood.
“Get Moiraine!” Perrin snapped at the Aiel women. Was Rand still alive? If he was, he needed Aes Sedai Healing to stay that way. “Tell her to hurry!” He heard a gasp behind him, then soft boots running.
Rand lifted his head. His face was a smeared mask. “Shut the door.”
“Moiraine will be here soon, Rand. Rest easy. She will —”
“Shut the door, Perrin.”
Murmuring among themselves, the Aiel women frowned, but moved back. Perrin pulled the door to, cutting off a questioning shout from the whiteplumed officer.
Glass crunched under his boots as he crossed the carpet to Rand. Tearing a strip from a wildly sliced linen sheet, he wadded it against the wound in Rand's side. Rand's hands tightened on the transparent sword at the pressure, then relaxed. Blood soaked through almost immediately. Cuts and gashes covered him from the soles of his feet to his head; slivers of glass glittered in many of them. Perrin rolled his shoulders helplessly. He did not know what more to do, other than wait for Moiraine.
“What under the Light did you try to do, Rand? You look as though you tried to skin yourself. And you nearly killed me, as well.” For a moment he thought Rand was not going to answer.
“Not me,” Rand said finally, in a near whisper. “One of the Forsaken.”
Perrin tried to relax muscles he did not remember tensing. The effort was only partly successful. He had mentioned the Forsaken to Faile, not exactly casually, but by and large he had been trying not to think of what the Forsaken might do when they found out where Rand was. If one of them could bring down the Dragon Reborn, he or she would stand high above the others when the Dark One broke free. The Dark One free, and the Last Battle lost before it was fought.
“Are you sure?” he said, just as quietly.
“It had to be, Perrin. It had to be.”
“If one of them came after me as well as you... ? Where's Mat, Rand? If he was alive, and went through what I did, he'd be thinking what I did. That it was you. He'd be here by now to bless you out.”
“Or on a horse and halfway to the city gates.” Rand struggled to sit erect.
Drying blood smears cracked, and fresh trickles started on his chest and shoulders. “If he is dead, Perrin, you had best get as far from me as you can. I think you and Loial are right about that.” He paused, studying Perrin. “You and Mat must wish I had never been born. Or at least that you'd never seen me.”
There was no point in going to check; if anything had happened to Mat, it was over and done now. And he had a feeling that his makeshift bandage pressed against Rand's side might be what would keep him alive long enough for Moiraine to get there. “You don't seem to care if he has gone off. Burn me, he's important, too. What are you going to do if he's gone? Or dead, the Light send it not so.”
“What they least expect.” Rand's eyes looked like morning mist covering the dawn, bluegray with a feverish glow seeping through. His voice had a knife edge. “That is what I have to do in any case. What everyone least expects.”
Perrin took a slow breath. Rand had a right to taut nerves. It was not a sign of incipient madness. He had to stop watching for signs of madness. Those signs would come soon enough, and watching would do nothing but keep his stomach tied in knots. “What's that?” he asked quietly.
Rand closed his eyes. “I only know I have to catch them by surprise. Catch everyone by surprise,” he muttered fiercely.
One of the doors opened to admit a tall Aielman, his dark red hair touched with gray. Behind him the Tairen officer's plumes bobbed as he argued with the Maidens; he was still arguing when Bain pushed the door shut.
Rhuarc surveyed the room with sharp blue eyes, as if he suspected enemies hiding behind a drape or an overturned chair. The clan chief of the Taardad Aiel had no visible weapon except the heavybladed knife at his waist, but he carried authority and confidence like weapons, quietly, yet as surely as if they were sheathed alongside the knife. And his shoufa hung about his shoulders; no one who knew the slightest about Aiel took one for less than dangerous when he wore the means to veil his face.
“That Tairen fool outside sent word to his commander that something had happened in here,” Rhuarc said, “and rumors are already sprouting like corpse moss in a deep cave. Everything from the White Tower trying to kill you to the Last Battle fought here in this room.” Perrin opened his mouth; Rhuarc raised a forestalling hand. “I happened to meet Berelain, looking as if she had been told the day she would die, and she told me the truth of it. And it does look to be the truth, th