The Eye of the World (57 page)

Swinging his legs up, he hooked one knee over the thick line that ran from the mast to the bow, then caught it in the crook of his elbow and let
go with his hands. Slowly, then with increasing speed, he slid down. Just short of the bow he dropped to his feet on the deck right in front of Mat, took one step to catch his balance, and turned to face the boat with arms spread wide, the way Thom did after a tumbling trick.

Scattered clapping rose from the crew, but he was looking down at Mat in surprise, and at what Mat held, hidden from everyone else by his body. A curved dagger with a gold scabbard worked in strange symbols. Fine gold wire wrapped the hilt, which was capped by a ruby as big as Rand’s thumbnail, and the quillons were golden-scaled serpents baring their fangs.

Mat continued to slide the dagger in and out of its sheath for a moment. Still playing with the dagger he raised his head slowly; his eyes had a faraway look. Suddenly they focused on Rand, and he gave a start and stuffed the dagger under his coat.

Rand squatted on his heels, with his arms crossed on his knees. “Where did you get that?” Mat said nothing, looking quickly to see if anyone else was close by. They were alone, for a wonder. “You didn’t take it from Shadar Logoth, did you?”

Mat stared at him. “It’s your fault. Yours and Perrin’s. The two of you pulled me away from the treasure, and I had it in my hand. Mordeth didn’t give it to me. I took it, so Moiraine’s warnings about his gifts don’t count. You won’t tell anybody, Rand. They might try to steal it.”

“I won’t tell anybody,” Rand said. “I think Captain Domon is honest, but I wouldn’t put anything past the rest of them, especially Gelb.”

“Not anybody,” Mat insisted. “Not Domon, not Thom, not anybody. We’re the only two left from Emond’s Field, Rand. We can’t afford to trust anybody else.”

“They’re alive, Mat. Egwene, and Perrin. I know they’re alive.” Mat looked ashamed. “I’ll keep your secret, though. Just the two of us. At least we don’t have to worry about money now. We can sell it for enough to travel to Tar Valon like kings.”

“Of course,” Mat said after a minute. “If we have to. Just don’t tell anybody until I say so.”

“I said I wouldn’t. Listen, have you had any more dreams since we came on the boat? Like in Baerlon? This is the first chance I’ve had to ask without six people listening.”

Mat turned his head away, giving him a sidelong look. “Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe? Either you have or you haven’t.”

“All right, all right, I have. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it. It doesn’t do any good.”

Before either of them could say more Thom came striding up the deck, his cloak over his arm. The wind whipped his white hair about, and his long mustaches seemed to bristle. “I managed to convince the captain you aren’t crazy,” he announced, “that it was part of your training.” He caught hold of the forestay and shook it. “That fool stunt of yours, sliding down the rope, helped, but you are lucky you didn’t break your fool neck.”

Rand’s eyes went to the forestay and followed it up to the top of the mast, and as they did his mouth dropped open. He
had
slid down that. And he had been sitting on top of. . . .

Suddenly he could see himself up there, arms and legs spread wide. He sat down hard, and barely caught himself short of ending up flat on his back. Thom was looking at him thoughtfully.

“I didn’t know you had such a good head for heights, lad. We might be able to play in Illian, or Ebou Dar, or even Tear. People in the big cities in the south like tightrope walkers and slackwire artists.”

“We’re going to—” At the last minute Rand remembered to look around for anyone close enough to overhear. Several of the crew were watching them, including Gelb, glaring as usual, but none could hear what he was saying. “To Tar Valon,” he finished. Mat shrugged as if it were all the same to him where they went.

“At the moment, lad,” Thom said, settling down beside them, “but tomorrow . . . who knows? That’s the way with a gleeman’s life.” He took a handful of colored balls from one of his wide sleeves. “Since I have you down out of the air, we’ll work on the triple crossover.”

Rand’s gaze drifted to the top of the mast, and he shivered.
What’s happening to me? Light, what?
He had to find out. He had to get to Tar Valon before he really did go mad.

Bela walked along placidly under the weak sun as if the three wolves trotting not far off were only village dogs, but the way she rolled her eyes at them from time to time, showing white all the way around, indicated she felt nothing of the sort. Egwene, on the mare’s back, was just as bad. She watched the wolves constantly from the corner of her eye, and sometimes she twisted in the saddle to look around. Perrin was sure she was hunting for the rest of the pack, though she denied it angrily when he suggested as much, denied being afraid of the wolves that paced them, denied worrying about the rest of the pack or what it was up to. She denied, and went right on looking, tight-eyed and wetting her lips uneasily.

The rest of the pack was far distant; he could have told her that.
What good, even if she believed me? Especially if she did
. He was of no mind to open that basket of snakes until he had to. He did not want to think about
how
he knew. The fur-clad man loped ahead of them, sometimes looking almost like a wolf himself, and he never looked around when Dapple, Hopper, and Wind appeared, but he knew, too.

The Emond’s Fielders had wakened at dawn that first morning to find Elyas cooking more rabbit and watching them over his full beard without much expression. Except for Dapple, Hopper, and Wind, no wolves were to be seen. In the pale, early daylight, deep shade still lingered under the big oak, and the bare trees beyond looked like fingers stripped to the bone.

“They’re around,” Elyas answered when Egwene asked where the rest of the pack had gone. “Close enough to help, if need be. Far enough off to avoid any human trouble we get into. Sooner or later there’s always trouble when there’s two humans together. If we need them, they’ll be there.”

Something tickled the back of Perrin’s mind as he ripped free a bite of roast rabbit. A direction, vaguely sensed.
Of course! That’s where they
. . . . The hot juices in his mouth abruptly lost all taste. He picked at the tubers Elyas had cooked in the coals—they tasted something like turnips—but his appetite was gone.

When they had started out Egwene insisted that everyone take a turn riding, and Perrin did not even bother to argue.

“First turn is yours,” he told her.

She nodded. “And then you, Elyas.”

“My own legs are good enough for me,” Elyas said. He looked at Bela, and the mare rolled her eyes as if he were one of the wolves. “Besides, I don’t think she wants me riding her.”

“That’s nonsense,” Egwene replied firmly. “There is no point in being stubborn about it. The sensible thing is for everybody to ride sometimes. According to you we have a long way still to go.”

“I said no, girl.”

She took a deep breath, and Perrin was wondering if she would succeed in bullying Elyas the way she did him, when he realized she was standing there with her mouth open, not saying a word. Elyas was looking at her, just looking, with those yellow wolf’s eyes. Egwene stepped back from the raw-boned man, and licked her lips, and stepped back again. Before Elyas turned away, she had backed all the way to Bela and scrambled up onto the mare’s back. As the man turned to lead them south, Perrin thought his grin was a good deal like a wolf’s, too.

For three days they traveled in that manner, walking and riding south and east all day, stopping only when twilight thickened. Elyas seemed to scorn the haste of city men, but he did not believe in wasting time when there was somewhere to go.

The three wolves were seldom seen. Each night they came to the fire for a time, and sometimes in the day they showed themselves briefly, appearing close at hand when least expected and vanishing in the same manner. Perrin knew they were out there, though, and where. He knew when they were scouting the path ahead and when they were watching the backtrail. He knew when they left the pack’s usual hunting grounds, and Dapple sent the pack back to wait for her. Sometimes the three that remained
faded from his mind, but long before they were close enough to see again, he was aware of them returning. Even when the trees dwindled to wide-scattered groves separated by great swathes of winter-dead grass, they were as ghosts when they did not want to be seen, but he could have pointed a finger straight at them at any time. He did not know how he knew, and he tried to convince himself that it was just his imagination playing tricks, but it did no good. Just as Elyas knew, he knew.

He tried not thinking about wolves, but they crept into his thoughts all the same. He had not dreamed about Ba’alzamon since meeting Elyas and the wolves. His dreams, as much as he remembered of them on waking, were of everyday things, just as he might have dreamed at home . . . before Baerlon . . . before Winternight. Normal dreams—with one addition. In every dream he remembered there was a point where he straightened from Master Luhhan’s forge to wipe the sweat from his face, or turned from dancing with the village girls on the Green, or lifted his head from a book in front of the fireplace, and whether he was outside or under a roof, there was a wolf close to hand. Always the wolf’s back was to him, and always he knew—in the dreams it seemed the normal course of things, even at Alsbet Luhhan’s dinner table—that the wolf’s yellow eyes were watching for what might come, guarding against what might come. Only when he was awake did the dreams seem strange.

Three days they journeyed, with Dapple, Hopper, and Wind bringing them rabbits and squirrels, and Elyas pointing out plants, few of which Perrin recognized, as good to eat. Once a rabbit burst out almost from under Bela’s hooves; before Perrin could get a stone in his sling, Elyas skewered it with his long knife at twenty paces. Another time Elyas brought down a fat pheasant, on the wing, with his bow. They ate far better than they had when on their own, but Perrin would as soon have gone back on short rations if it had meant different company. He was not sure how Egwene felt, but he would have been willing to go hungry if he could do it without the wolves. Three days, into the afternoon.

A stand of trees lay ahead, larger than most they had seen, a good four miles across. The sun sat low in the western sky, pushing slanted shadows off to their right, and the wind was picking up. Perrin felt the wolves give over quartering behind them and start forward, not hurrying. They had smelled and seen nothing dangerous. Egwene was taking her turn on Bela. It was time to start looking for a camp for the night, and the big copse would serve the purpose well.

As they came close to the trees, three mastiffs burst from cover, broad-muzzled
dogs as tall as the wolves and even heavier, teeth bared in loud, rumbling snarls. They stopped short as soon as they were in the open, but no more than thirty feet separated them from the three people, and their dark eyes kindled with a killing light.

Bela, already on edge from the wolves, whinnied and almost unseated Egwene, but Perrin had his sling whirling around his head in an instant. No need to use the axe on dogs; a stone in the ribs would send the worst dog running.

Elyas waved a hand at him without taking his eyes from the stiff-legged dogs. “Hssst! None of that now!”

Perrin gave him a puzzled frown, but let the sling slow its spin and finally fall to his side. Egwene managed to get Bela under control; she and the mare both watched the dogs warily.

The mastiffs’ hackles stood stiff, and their ears were laid back, and their growls sounded like earthquakes. Abruptly Elyas raised one finger shoulder high and whistled, a long, shrill whistle that rose higher and higher and did not end. The growls cut off raggedly. The dogs stepped back, whining and turning their heads as if they wanted to go but were held. Their eyes remained locked to Elyas’s finger.

Slowly Elyas lowered his hand, and the pitch of his whistle lowered with it. The dogs followed, until they lay flat on the ground, tongues lolling from their mouths. Three tails wagged.