Tents dotted the landscape, like the tops of mushrooms. Aiel tents were plentiful, and between them cook fires glowed in the mist. This camp had been here long enough to manifest in the wolf dream, though tent flaps changed places and bedrolls vanished, flickering in the insubstantial way of this place.
Perrin led Gaul between the neat rows of tents and horseless horse pickets. They both froze as they heard a sound. Someone muttering. Perrin used the trick he’d seen Lanfear use, creating a pocket of. . . something around himself that was invisible, but which stopped sound. It was strange, but he did it by creating a barrier with no air in it. Why would that make the sound stop?
He and Gaul crept forward to the canvas of a tent. That of the man Rodel Ituralde, one of the great captains, judging by the banner. Inside, a woman in trousers picked through documents on a table. They kept vanishing in her fingers.
Perrin didn’t recognize her, though she was painfully homely. That certainly wasn’t what he’d have expected from one of the Forsaken; not that large forehead, bulbous nose, uneven eyes or thinning hair. He didn’t recognize her curses, though he grasped the meaning from her tone.
Gaul looked at him, and Perrin reached for his hammer, but hesitated. Attacking Slayer was one thing, but one of the Forsaken? He was confident of his ability to resist weaves here in the wolf dream. But still . . .
The woman cursed again as the paper she was reading vanished. Then she looked up.
Perrin’s reaction was immediate. He created a paper-thin wall between her and him, her side painted with an exact replica of the landscape behind him, his side transparent. She looked right at him, but didn’t see him, and turned away.
Beside him, Gaul let out a very soft breath of relief. How did I do that? Perrin thought. It wasn’t something he had practiced; it had merely seemed right.
Heartseeker—this had to be she—waved her fingers, and the tent split in half above her, the canvas flaps hanging down. She rose through the air, moving toward the black tempest above.
Perrin whispered to Gaul, “Wait here and watch for danger.”
Gaul nodded. Perrin cautiously followed Heartseeker, lifting himself into the air with a thought. He tried to form another wall between himself and her, but it was too difficult to keep the right image displayed while moving. Instead, he kept his distance and put a blank brownish-green wall between him and the Forsaken, hoping that if she happened to glance down, she’d pass over the small oddity.
She began to move more quickly, and Perrin forced himself to keep up.
He glanced down, and was rewarded with the stomach-churning sight of Merrilor’s landscape dwindling below. Then it grew dark and vanished into blackness.
They didn’t pass through the clouds. As the ground faded away, so did the clouds, and they entered someplace black. Pinpricks of light appeared all around Perrin. The woman above stopped and hung in the air for a few moments before streaking away to the right.
Perrin followed again, coloring himself—his skin, his clothing, everything—black to hide. The woman approached one of the pinpricks of light until it expanded and dominated the sky in front of her.
Heartseeker reached her hands forward and pressed them against the light. She was muttering to herself. Feeling he needed to hear what she was saying, Perrin dared move closer, though he suspected that the pounding of his heart was so loud it would give him away.
“ . . .take it from me?” she said. “You think I care? Give me a face of broken stone. What do I care? That’s not me. I will have your place, Moridin. It will be mine. This face will just make them underestimate me. Burn you.” Perrin frowned. He couldn’t make much sense of what she was saying. “Go ahead and throw your armies at them, you fools,” she continued to herself. “I’ll have the greater victory. An insect can have a thousand legs, but only one head. Destroy the head, and the day is yours. All you’re doing is cutting off the legs, stupid fool. Stupid, arrogant, insufferable fool. I’ll have what is due me, I’ll . . .”
She hesitated, then pivoted. Perrin, spooked, immediately sent himself back to the ground. It worked, thankfully—he hadn’t known if it would, up in that place of lights. Gaul jumped, and Perrin took a deep breath. “Let’s—”
A ball of blazing fire crashed into the ground beside him. Perrin cursed and rolled, cooling himself with a gust of wind, imagining his hammer up into his hand.
Heartseeker dropped to the ground in a wave of energy, power rippling around her. “Who are you?” she demanded. “Where are you? I—”
She focused suddenly on Perrin, seeing him completely for the first time, the blackness having faded from his clothing. “You!” she screeched. “You are to blame for this!”
She raised her hands; her eyes almost seemed to glow with hatred. Perrin could smell the emotion in spite of the blowing wind. She released a white-hot bar of light, but Perrin bent it around himself.
The woman started. They always did that. Didn’t they realize that nothing was real here except what you thought to be real? Perrin vanished, appearing behind her, raising his hammer. Then he hesitated. A woman?
She spun about, screaming and ripping the earth beneath him. He jumped up into the sky, and the air around him tried to seize him—but he did what he’d done before, creating a wall of nothingness. There was no air to grab him. Holding his breath, he vanished and appeared back on the ground, summoning banks of earth in front of him to block the balls of fire that hurtled his way.
“I want you dead!” the woman screamed. “You should be dead. My plans were perfect!”
Perrin vanished, leaving behind a statue of himself. He appeared beside the tent, where Gaul watched carefully, spear raised. Perrin put a wall between them and the woman, coloring it to hide them, and made a barrier to block the sound.
“She can’t hear us now,” Perrin said.
“You are strong here,” Gaul said thoughtfully. “Very strong. Do the Wise Ones know of this?”
“I’m still a pup compared to them,” Perrin said.
“Perhaps,” Gaul said. “I have not seen them, and they do not speak of this place to men.” He shook his head. “Much honor, Perrin Aybara. You have much honor.”
“I should have just struck her down,” Perrin said as Heartseeker destroyed the statue of him, then stepped up to it, looking confused. She turned about, searching frantically.
“Yes,” Gaul agreed. “A warrior who will not strike a Maiden is a warrior who refuses her honor. Of course, the greater honor for you . . ”
Would be to take her captive. Could he do it? Perrin took a breath, then sent himself behind her, imagining vines reaching around her to hold her in place. The woman howled curses at him, slicing the vines with unseen blades. She reached her hand toward Perrin, and he shifted to the side.
His feet crunched on bits of frost on the ground that he hadn’t noticed, and she immediately spun on him and released another weave of balefire. Clever, Perrin thought, barely managing to bend the light away. It struck the hillside behind, drilling a hole straight through it.
Heartseeker continued the weave, snarling, hideous face distorted. The weave bent back toward Perrin, and he gritted his teeth, keeping it at bay. She was strong. She pushed hard, but finally, she released it, panting. “How . . . how can you possibly . . .”
Perrin filled her mouth with forkroot. It was difficult to do; changing anything directly about a person was always harder. However, this was much easier than trying to transform her into an animal or the like. She raised a hand to her mouth, eyes adopting a look of panic. She began to spit and hack, then desperately opened a gateway beside her.
Perrin growled, imagining ropes reaching for her, but she destroyed them with a weave of Fire—she must have gotten the forkroot out. She hurled herself through the gateway, and he shifted himself to be right in front of it, preparing to leap through. He froze when he saw her entering the middle of an enormous army of Trollocs and Fades at night. Many faced the gateway, eager.