What would happen to them if Rand died? Dared she try to claim them? Dared she wait for someone else to?

CHAPTER 18

Perrin ran through the darkness. Trails of watery mist brushed his face and condensed in his beard. His mind was foggy, distant. Where was he going? What was he doing? Why was he running?

He roared and charged, ripping through the veiled darkness and bursting into open air. He took a deep breath and landed on the top of a steep hill covered with short, patchy grass, with a ring of trees at its base. The sky rumbled and churned with clouds, like a boiling pot of tar.

He was in the wolf dream. His body slumbered in the real world, on this hilltop, with Faile. He smiled, breathing deeply. His problems had not diminished. In fact, with the Whitecloak ultimatum, they seemed magnified. But all was well with Faile. That simple fact changed so much. With her at his side, he could do anything.

He leaped down from the hillside and crossed the open area where his army camped. They had been here long enough that signs had appeared in the wolf dream. Tents reflected the waking world, though their flaps were in a different position each time he looked at them. Cook-fire pits in the ground, ruts in the pathways, occasional bits of refuse or discarded tools. These would pop into existence, then vanish.

He moved quickly through the camp, each step taking him ten paces. Once he might have found the lack of people in the camp eerie, but he was accustomed to the wolf dream now. This was natural.

Perrin approached the statue at the side of the camp, then looked up at the age-pocked stone, overgrown with lichen of black, orange and green. The statue must have been posed oddly, if it had fallen in such a way. It almost looked as if it had been created this way—an enormous arm bursting from the loam.

Perrin turned to the southeast, toward where the Whitecloak camp would be found. He had to deal with them. He was increasingly certain—confident, even—that he could not continue until he had confronted these shadows from the past.

There was one way to deal with them for certain. A careful trap using the Asha'man and Wise Ones, and Perrin could hit the Children so hard that they shattered. He could maybe even destroy them permanently as a group.

He had the means, the opportunity, and the motivation. No more fear in the land, no more Whitecloak mock trials. He leaped forward, soaring thirty feet and falling lightly to the ground. Then he took off, running southeast along the road.

He found the Whitecloak camp in a forested hollow, thousands of white tents set up in tight rings. The tents of some ten thousand Children, along with another ten thousand mercenaries and other soldiers. Balwer estimated that this was the bulk of the remaining Children, though he had been unclear on how he'd gotten that knowledge. Hopefully the dusty man's hatred of the Whitecloaks wasn't clouding his judgment.

Perrin moved among the tents, looking to see if he could discover anything that Elyas and the Aiel had not. It was unlikely, but he figured it was worth an attempt, while he was here. Besides, he wanted to see the place with his own eyes. He lifted flaps, moved between groupings of tents, inspecting the place and getting a feel for it and its occupants. The camp was arranged in a very orderly manner. The insides were less stable than the tents themselves, but what he saw was also kept orderly.

The Whitecloaks liked things neat, tidy and carefully folded. And they liked to pretend the entire world could be polished up and cleaned the same way, people defined and explained in one or two words.

Perrin shook his head, making his way to the Lord Captain Commander's tent. The organization of the tents led him to it easily, at the center ring, It wasn't much larger than the other tents, and Perrin ducked inside, trying to see if he could find anything of use. It was furnished simply, with a bed—that was in a different position each time Perrin looked at it, along with a table holding objects that vanished and appeared at random.

Perrin stepped up to it, picking up something that appeared there. A signet ring. He didn't recognize the signet, a winged dagger, but memorized it just before the ring vanished from his fingers, too transient to stay long in the wolf dream. Though he'd met with the Whitecloak leader, and corresponded with the man, he didn't know much about the man's past. Perhaps this would help.

He searched through the tent a while longer, finding nothing of use, then went to the large tent where Gaul had explained that many of the captives were being kept. Here, he saw Master Gill's hat appear for a moment, then vanish.

Satisfied, Perrin walked back out of the tent. As he did so, he found something bothering him. Shouldn't he have tried something like this when Faile was kidnapped? He'd sent numerous scouts to Maiden. Light he'd had to restrain himself from marching off to find Faile on his own. But he'd never tried visiting the place in the wolf dream.

Perhaps it would have been useless. But he hadn't considered the possibility, and that troubled him.

He froze, passing a cart parked beside one of the Whitecloak tents. The back was open, and a grizzled silver wolf lay there, watching him.

"I do let my attention grow too narrow, Hopper," Perrin said. "When I get consumed by a goal, it can make me careless. That can be dangerous. As in battle, when concentrating on the adversary in front of you can expose you to the archer on the side."

Hopper cracked his mouth open, smiling after the way of wolves. He hopped from the cart. Perrin could sense other wolves nearby—the others of the pack he had run with before. Oak Dancer, Sparks and Boundless.

"All right," he said to Hopper. "I'm ready to learn."

Hopper sat down on his haunches, regarding Perrin. Follow, the wolf sent.

Then vanished.

Perrin cursed, looking about. Where had the wolf gone? He moved through the camp, searching, but couldn't sense Hopper anywhere. He reached out with his mind. Nothing.

Young Bull. Suddenly Hopper was behind him. Follow. He vanished again.

Perrin growled, then moved about the camp in a flash. When he didn't find the wolf, he shifted to the field of grain where he'd met Hopper last time. The wolf wasn't there. Perrin stood among the blowing grain, frustrated.

Hopper found him a few minutes later. The wolf smelled dissatisfied. Follow! he sent.

"I don't know how," Perrin said. "Hopper, I don't know where you're going."

The wolf sat down. He sent an image of a wolf pup, joining others of the pack. The pup watched his elders and did what they did.

"I'm not a wolf, Hopper," Perrin said. "I don't learn the way you do. You must explain to me what you want me to do."

Follow here. The wolf sent an image of, oddly, Emond's Field. Then he Perrin followed, appearing on a familiar green. A group of buildings lined it, which felt wrong. Emond's Field should have been a little village, not a town with a stone wall and a road running past the mayor's inn, paved with stones. Much had changed in the short time he had been away.

"Why have we come here?" Perrin asked. Disturbingly, the wolfhead banner still flew on the pole above the green. It could have been a trick of the wolf dream, but he doubted it. He knew all too well how eagerly the people of the Two Rivers flew the standard of "Perrin Goldeneyes."

Men are strange, Hopper sent.

Perrin turned to the old wolf.

Men think strange thoughts, Hopper said. We do not try to understand them. Why does the stag flee, the sparrow fly, the tree grow? They do. That is all.