“Mistress al'Vere said you had finally gotten tired of your saddle,” Faile said, popping in through the door to the kitchen. Startlingly, she wore a long white apron like Marin's; her sleeves were pushed up above her elbows, and she had flour on her hands. As if just realizing it, she whipped the apron off, wiping her hands hastily, and laid it across the back of a chair. “I have never baked anything before,” she said, shoving her sleeves down as she joined him. “It is rather fun kneading dough. I might like to do it again someday.”
“If you don't bake,” he said, “where are we going to get bread? I don't intend to spend my whole life traveling, buying meals or eating what I can snare or fetch with bow or sling.”
She smiled as if he had said something very pleasing, though he could not for the life of him see what. “The cook will bake, of course. One of her helpers, really, I suppose, but the cook will oversee it.”
“The cook,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “Or one of her helpers. Of course. Why didn't I think of that?”
“What is the matter, Perrin? You look worried. I don't think the defenses could be any sounder without a fortress wall.”
“It isn't that. Faile, this Perrin Goldeneyes business is getting out of hand. I do not know who they think I am, but they keep asking me what to do, asking if it's all right, when they already know what has to be done, when they could figure it out with two minutes' thought.”
For a long moment she studied his face, those dark, tilted eyes thoughtful, then said, “How many years has it been since the Queen of Andor ruled here in fact?”
“The Queen of Andor? I don't really know. A hundred years, maybe. Two hundred. What does that have to do with anything?”
“These people do not remember how to deal with a queen — or a king. They are trying to puzzle it out. You must be patient with them.”
“A king?” he said weakly. He let his head drop down onto his arms on the table. “Oh, Light!”
Laughing softly, Faile ruffled his hair. “Well, perhaps not that. I doubt very much that Morgase would approve. A leader, at least. But she would very definitely approve a man who brought lands back to her that her throne has not controlled in a hundred years or more. She would surely make that man a lord. Perrin of House Aybara, Lord of the Two Rivers. It has a good sound.”
“We do not need any lords in the Two Rivers,” he growled at the oak tabletop. “Or kings, or queens. We are free men!”
“Free men can have a need to follow someone, too,” she said gently. “Most men want to believe in something larger than themselves, something wider than their own fields. That is why there are nations, Perrin, and peoples. Even Raen and Ila see themselves as part of something more than their own caravan. They have lost their wagons and most of their family and friends, but other Tuatha'an still seek the song, and they will again, too, because they belong to more than a few wagons.”
“Who owns these?” Aram asked suddenly.
Perrin raised his head. The young Tinker was on his feet, staring uneasily at the spears lining the walls. “They belong to anybody who wants one, Aram. Nobody is going to hurt you with any of them, believe me.” He was not sure if Aram did believe, not the way he began walking slowly around the room with his hands stuffed into his pockets, eyeing spears and halberds sideways.
Perrin was more than grateful to dig in when Marin brought him a plate of sliced roast goose, with turnips and peas and good crusty bread. At least, he would have dug in, if Faile had not tucked a flowerembroidered napkin under his chin and snatched the knife and fork out of his hands. She seemed to find it amusing to feed him the way Bode and Eldrin had been feeding Aram. The Cauthon girls giggled at him, and Natti and Marin wore little smiles, too. Perrin did not see what was so funny. He was willing to indulge Faile, though, even if he could have fed himself more easily. She kept making him stretch his neck to take what she had on the fork.
Aram's slow wandering took him around the room three times before he stopped at the foot of the stairs, staring at the barrel of illassorted swords. Then he reached out and pulled a sword from the cluster, hefting it awkwardly. The leatherwrapped hilt was long enough for both of his hands. “Can I use this one?” he asked.
Perrin nearly choked.
Alanna appeared at the head of the stairs, with Ila; the Tuatha'an woman looked weary, but the bruise was gone from her face. “. . . best thing is sleep,” the Aes Sedai was saying. “It is shock to his mind that troubles him most, and I cannot Heal that.”
Ila's eyes fell on her grandson, on what he held, and she screamed as if that blade had gone into her flesh. “No, Aram! Nooooo!” She almost fell in her haste to get down the stairs and flung herself on Aram, trying to pull his hands from the sword. “No, Aram,” she panted breathlessly. “You must not. Put it down. The Way of the Leaf. You must not! The Way of the Leaf! Please, Aram! Please!”
Aram danced with her, fending her off clumsily, trying to hold the sword away from her. “Why not?” he shouted angrily. “They killed Mother! I saw them! I might have saved her, if I had had a sword. I could have saved her!”
The words sliced at Perrin's chest. A Tinker with a sword seemed an unnatural thing, almost enough to make his hackles stand, but those words... . His mother. “Leave him alone,” he said, more roughly than he intended. “Any man has a right to defend himself, to defend his... He has a right.”
Aram pushed the sword toward Perrin. “Will you teach me how to use it?”
“I don't know how,” Perrin told him. “You can find someone, though.”
Tears rolled down Ila's contorted face. “The Trollocs took my daughter,” she sobbed, her entire body shaking, “and all my grandchildren but one, and now you take him. He is Lost, because of you, Perrin Aybara. You have become a wolf in your heart, and now you will make him one, too.” Turning, she stumbled back up the steps, still racked with sobs.
“I could have saved her!” Aram called after her. “Grandmother! I could have saved her!” She never looked back, and when she vanished around the corner, he slumped against the banister, weeping. “I could have saved her, grandmother. I could have...”
Perrin realized Bode was crying, too, with her face in her hands, and the other women were frowning at him as though he had done something wrong. No, not all of them. Alanna studied him from the head of the stairs with that unreadable Aes Sedai calm, and Faile's face was nearly as blank.
Wiping his mouth, he tossed the napkin on the table and got up. There was still time to tell Aram to put the sword back, to go ask Ila's pardon. Time to tell him... what? That maybe next time he would not be there to watch his loved ones die? That maybe he could just come back to find their graves?
He put a hand on Aram's shoulder, and the man flinched, hunching around the sword as if expecting him to take it. The Tinker's scent carried a wash of emotions, fear and hate and bonedeep sadness. Lost, Ila had called him. His eyes looked lost. “Wash your face, Aram. Then go find Tam al'Thor. Say I ask him to teach you the sword.”
Slowly the other man raised his face. “Thank you,” he stammered, scrubbing at the tears on his cheeks with his sleeve. “Thank you. I will never forget this. Never. I swear it.” Suddenly he hoisted the sword to kiss the straight blade; the hilt had a brass wolfhead for a pommel. “I swear. Is that not how it is done?”
“I suppose it is,” Perrin said sadly, wondering why he should feel sad. The Way of the Leaf was a fine belief, like a dream of peace, but like the dream it could not last where there was violence. He did not know of a place without that. A dream for some other man, some other time. Some other Age perhaps. “Go on, Aram. You have a lot to learn, and there may not be much time.” Still bubbling thanks, the Tinker did not wait to wash his tears away, but ran straight out of the inn, carrying the sword upright before him in both hands.
Conscious of Eldrin's scowl and Marin's fists on her hips and Natti's frown, not to mention Bode's weeping, Perrin walked back to his chair. Alanna had gone from her place at the top of the stairs. Faile watched him pick up his knife and fork. “You disapprove?” he said quietly. “A man has a right to defend himself, Faile. Even Aram. No one can make him follow the Way of the Leaf if he doesn't want to.”
“I do not like to see you in pain,” she said very softly.
His knife paused in cutting a piece of goose. Pain? That dream was not for him. “I am just tired,” he told her, and smiled. He did not think she believed him.
Before he had time to take a second mouthful, Bran stuck his head in at the front door. He wore his round steel cap again. “Riders coming from the north, Perrin. A lot of riders, I think it must be the Whitecloaks.”
Faile darted away as Perrin rose, and by the time he was outside on Stepper, with the Mayor muttering to himself about what he meant to say to the Whitecloaks, she came riding her black mare around the side of the inn. More people were running north than stayed at their tasks. Perrin was in no particular hurry. The Children of the Light might well be there to arrest him. They probably were. He did not mean to go along in chains, but he was not anxious to ask people to fight Whitecloaks for him. He followed behind Bran, joining the stream of men and women and children crossing the Wagon Bridge across the Winespring Water, Stepper's and Swallow's hooves clattering on the thick planks. A few tall willows grew here along the water. The bridge was where the North Road began, than ran to Watch Hill and beyond. Some of the distant smoke plumes had thinned to wisps as fires burned themselves out.
Where the road left the village, he found a pair of wagons blocking the road and men gathered behind pointed, slanting stakes with their bows and spears and such, smelling of excitement, murmuring to each other and all jammed together to watch what was coming down the road: a long double column of whitecloaked horsemen trailing a cloud of dust, conical helmets and burnished plateandmail shining in the afternoon sun, steeltipped lances all at the same angle. At their head rode a youngish man, stiffbacked and sternfaced, who looked vaguely familiar to Perrin. With the arrival of the Mayor, the murmurs hushed expectantly. Or maybe it was Perrin's arrival that quieted them.
Two hundred paces or so from the stakes, the sternfaced man raised a hand, and the column halted with sharp orders echoing down the files. He came on with just half a dozen Whitecloaks for company, running his eyes over the wagons and sharp stakes and the men behind. His manner would have named him a man of importance even without the knots of rank beneath the flaring sunburst on his cloak.
Luc had appeared from somewhere, resplendent on his shiny black stallion in rich red wool and golden embroidery. Perhaps it was natural enough that the Whitecloak officer chose to address himself to Luc, though his dark eyes continued to probe. “I am Dain Bornhald,” he announced, reining in, “Captain of the Children of the Light. You have done this for us? I have heard that Emond's Field is closed to the Children, yes? Truly a village of the Shadow if it is closed to the Chi
