“If there’s no safety in Tar Valon, there’s no safety anywhere.”
She sniffed loudly, and in silence they went to join those preparing to leave.
CHAPTER
7
The Way Out of the Mountains
The way down out of the mountains was hard, but the lower they went, the less Perrin needed his fur-lined cloak. Hour by hour, they rode out of the tailings of winter and into the first days of spring. The last remnants of snow vanished, and grasses and wildflowers—white maiden’s hope and pink jump up—began to cover the high meadows they crossed. Trees appea
red more often, with more leaves, and grasslarks and robins sang in the branches. And there were wolves. Never in sight—not even Lan mentioned seeing one—but Perrin knew. He kept his mind firmly closed to them, yet now and again a feather-light tickle at the back of his mind reminded him they were there.
Lan spent most of his time scouting their path on his black warhorse, Mandarb, following Rand’s tracks as the rest of them followed the signs the Warder left for them. An arrow of stones laid out on the ground, or one lightly scratched in the rock wall of a forking pass. Turn this way. Cross that saddlepass. Take this switchback, this deer trail, this way through the trees and down along a narrow stream, even though there is nothing to indicate anyone has ever gone that way before. Nothing but Lan’s signs. A tuft of grass or weeds tied one way to say bear left, another for bear right. A bent branch. A pile of pebbles for a rough climb ahead, two leaves caught on a thorn for a steep descent. The Warder had a hundred signs, it seemed to Perrin, and Moiraine knew them all. Lan rarely came back except when they made camp, to confer with Moiraine quietly, away from the fire. When the sun rose, most often he was hours gone already.
Moiraine was always first into the saddle after him, while the eastern sky was just turning pink. The Aes Sedai would not have climbed down from Aldieb, her white mare, until full dark or later, except that Lan refused to track further once the light began to fail.
“We’ll go even slower if a horse breaks a leg,” the Warder would tell Moiraine when she complained.
Her reply was always very much the same. “If you cannot move any faster than this, perhaps I should send you off to Myrelle before you get any older. Well, perhaps that can wait, but you must move us faster.”
She half sounded as if the threat were irritated truth, half as if she were making a joke. There was something of a threat in it, or maybe a warning, Perrin was sure, from the way Lan’s mouth tightened even when she smiled afterwards and reached up to pat his shoulder soothingly.
“Who is Myrelle?” Perrin asked suspiciously, the first time it happened. Loial shook his head, murmuring something about unpleasant things happening to those who pried into Aes Sedai affairs. The Ogier’s hairy-fetlocked horse was as tall and heavy as a Dhurran stallion, but with Loial’s long legs dangling to either side, the animal looked undersized, like a large pony.
Moiraine gave an amused, secretive smile. “Just a Green sister. Someone to whom Lan must one day deliver a package for safekeeping.”
“No day soon,” Lan said, and surprisingly, there was open anger in his voice. “Never, if I can help it. You will outlive me long, Moiraine Aes Sedai!”
She has too many secrets, Perrin thought, but asked no more about a subject that could crack the Warder’s iron self-control.
The Aes Sedai had a blanket-wrapped bundle tied behind her saddle: the Dragon banner. Perrin was uneasy about having it with them, but Moiraine had neither asked his opinion nor listened when he offered it. Not that anyone was likely to recognize it if he saw it, yet he hoped she was as good at keeping secrets from other people as she was at keeping them from him.
In the beginning, at least, it was a boring journey. One cloud-capped mountain was very much like another, one pass little different from the next. Supper was usually rabbit, dropped by stones from Perrin’s sling. He did not have so many arrows as to risk shooting at rabbits in that rocky country. Breakfast was cold rabbit, more often than not, and the midday meal the same, eaten in the saddle.
Sometimes when they camped near a stream and there was still light enough to see, he and Loial caught mountain trout, lying on their bellies, hands elbow-deep in the cold water, tickling the green-backed fish out from under the rock ledges where they hid. Loial’s fingers, big as they were, were even more deft at it than Perrin’s.
Once, three days after setting out, Moiraine joined them, stretching herself out on the streamside and undoing rows of pearl buttons to roll up her sleeves as she asked how the thing was done. Perrin exchanged surprised looks with Loial. The Ogier shrugged.
“It is not that hard, really,” Perrin told her. “Just bring your hand up from behind the fish, and underneath, as if you’re trying to tickle its belly. Then you pull it out. It takes practice, though. You might not catch anything the first few times you try.”
“I tried for days before I ever caught anything,” Loial added. He was already easing his huge hands into the water, careful to keep his shadow from scaring the fish.
“As difficult as that?” Moiraine murmured. Her hands slipped into the water—and a moment later came out with a splash, holding a fat trout that thrashed the surface. She laughed with delight as she tossed it up onto the bank.
Perrin blinked at the big fish flopping in the fading sunlight. It must have weighed at least five pounds. “You were very lucky,” he said. “Trout that size don’t often shelter under a ledge this small. We’ll have to move upstream a bit. It will be dark before any of them settle under this ledge again.”
“Is that so?” Moiraine said. “You two go ahead. I think I will just try here again.”
Perrin hesitated a moment before moving up the bank to another overhang. She was up to something, but he could not imagine what. That troubled him. Belly down, and careful not to let his shadow fall on the water, he peered over the edge. Half a dozen slender shapes hung suspended in the water, barely moving a fin to hold their places. All of them together would not weigh as much as Moiraine’s fish, he decided with a sigh. If they were lucky, he and Loial might take two apiece, but the shadows of trees on the far bank already stretched across the water. Whatever they caught now would be it, and Loial’s appetite was big enough by itself to swallow those four and most of the bigger fish, too. Loial’s hands were already easing up behind one of the trout.
Before Perrin could even slide his hands into the water, Moiraine gave a shout. “Three should be enough, I think. The last two are bigger than the first.”
Perrin gave Loial a startled look. “She can’t have!”
The Ogier straightened, sending the small trout scattering. “She is Aes Sedai,” he said simply.
Sure enough, when they returned to Moiraine, three big trout lay on the bank. She was already buttoning her sleeves up again.