CHAPTER 14
Doses of Forkroot
“Light . . . ” Perrin whispered to Gaul, looking across the landscape.
“It’s dying.”
The boiling, thrashing, churning black sky of the wolf dream was nothing new, but the storm that the sky had been foreshadowing for months had finally arrived. Wind blew in enormous gusts, moving this way, then that, in unnatural patterns. Perrin closed his cloak, then strengthened it with a thought, imagining the ties holding it to be fixed strongly in place.
A little bubble of calmness extended out from him, deflecting the worst of the winds. It was easier than he anticipated, as if he’d reached for a heavy piece of oak and found it as light as pine.
The landscape seemed less real than it usually did. The raging winds actually smoothed out hills, like erosion at high speed. In other places, the land swelled up, forming ripples of rock and new hillsides. Chunks of earth sprayed into the air, shattering. The land itself was coming apart.
He grabbed Gaul’s shoulder and shifted the two of them away from the place. It was too close to Rand, Perrin suspected. Indeed, as they appeared on the familiar plain to the south—the place where he’d hunted with Hopper—they found the storm less powerful.
They stowed their heavy packs, laden with food and water, in a thicket of bushes. Perrin didn’t know if they could survive on food or water found in the dream, but he didn’t want to have to find out. They should have enough here for a week or so, and as long as they had a gateway waiting for them, he felt comfortable—or, at least, satisfied—with the risks he was taking here.
The landscape here wasn’t coming apart in the same way as it had been near Shayol Ghul. However, if he watched a section long enough, he could catch bits of . . . well, everything being pulled up in the winds. Stalks of dead grain, fragments of tree trunks, gobs of mud and slivers of rock—all were slowly being pulled toward those gluttonous black clouds. After the way of the wolf dream, when he looked back, things that had been broken apart would often be whole again. He understood. This place was being consumed, slowly, as was the waking world. Here, it was simply easier to see.
The winds whipped at them, but weren’t so strong that he had to keep them at bay. They felt like the winds at the beginning of a storm, right before the rain and lightning. The heralds of oncoming destruction.
Gaul had pulled the shoufa over his face, and looked about suspiciously. His clothing had changed in shade to match the grasses.
“You have to be very careful here, Gaul,” Perrin said. “Your idle thoughts can become reality.”
Gaul nodded, then hesitantly unveiled his face. “I will listen and do as instructed.”
It was encouraging that Gaul’s clothing didn’t change too much as they walked through the field. “Just try to keep your mind clear,” Perrin said. “Free of thought. Act by instinct and follow my lead.”
“I will hunt like the gara,” Gaul said, nodding. “My spear is yours, Perrin Aybara.”
Perrin walked through the field, worried that Gaul would accidentally send himself somewhere by thinking of it. The man barely suffered any effects of the wolf dream, however. His clothing would change a little if he was startled, his veil snapping into place without him reaching for it, but that seemed to be the extent of it.
“All right,” Perrin said. “I’m going to take us to the Black Tower. We hunt a dangerous prey, a man named Slayer. You remember Lord Luc?”
“The lopinginny?” Gaul said.
Perrin frowned.
“It is a type of bird,” Gaul said. “From the Three-fold Land. I did not see this man often, but he seemed to be the type who talked big, but was inwardly a coward.”
“Well, that was a front,” Perrin said. “And either way, he is a very different person in the dream—here, he is a predator named Slayer who hunts wolves and men. He’s powerful. If he decides to kill you, he can appear behind you in an eyeblink and imagine you captured by vines and unable to move. You’ll be trapped as he slits your throat.”
Gaul laughed.
“That’s funny?” Perrin asked.
“You act as if it is something new,” Gaul explained. “Yet in the first dream, wherever I go, I am surrounded by women and men who could tie me in air with a thought and kill me at any time. I am accustomed to being powerless around some, Perrin Aybara. It is the way of the world in all things.”
“Still,” Perrin said sternly, “if we find Slayer—he’s a square-faced fellow, with eyes that don’t seem totally alive, and he dresses in dark leather—I want you to stay away from him. Let me fight him.”
“But—”
“You said you’d obey, Gaul,” Perrin said. “This is important. He took Hopper; I won’t have him taking you as well. You don’t fight Slayer.”
“Very well,” Gaul said. “I give my oath on it. I will not dance the spears with this man unless you order it.”
Perrin sighed, imagining Gaul standing with his spears put away, letting Slayer kill him because of this oath. Light, but Aiel could be prickly. “You can fight him if he attacks you,” Perrin said, “but only as a means of escape. Don’t hunt him, and if I’m fighting him, stay out of the way. Understand?” Gaul nodded. Perrin put a hand on the Aiel’s shoulder, then shifted them in the direction of the Black Tower. Perrin had never been there before, so he had to guess and try to find it. The first shift was off, taking them to a section of Andor where grass-covered hills seemed to dance in the churning winds. Perrin would have preferred to just leap from hilltop to hilltop, but he didn’t think Gaul was ready for that. He used shifting instead.
After four or five tries, Perrin took them to a place where he spotted a translucent, faintly purple dome rising in the distance.
“What is it?” Gaul asked.
“Our goal,” Perrin said. “That is the thing keeping Grady and Neald from creating gateways to the Black Tower.”
“Just as we were afflicted in Ghealdan.”
“Yes.” Seeing that dome brought back memories, vivid ones, of wolves dying. Perrin suppressed them. Memories like that could lead to idle thoughts, here. He allowed himself a burning anger deep within, like the warmth of his hammer, but that was all.
“Let’s go,” Perrin said, shifting them down in front of the dome. It looked like glass. “Pull me free if I collapse,” he said to Gaul, then stepped into the barrier.
It felt as if he’d hit something incredibly cold. It sucked away his strength.
He stumbled, but kept his mind on his goal. Slayer. Killer of wolves. Hopper’s murderer.
Perrin straightened as his strength returned. This was easier than it had been last time; being in the wolf dream in the flesh did make him stronger. He didn’t have to worry about pulling himself into the dream too strongly, and leaving his body to die in the real world.
He moved slowly through the barrier, as if through water, and stepped out onto the other side. Behind, Gaul reached out with a curious expression on his face, then tapped the dome wall with his index finger.
Gaul immediately dropped to the ground, going limp like a doll. His spears and arrows tumbled away from his body, and he lay perfectly still, his chest not rising. Perrin reached through—his arm slow—and seized Gaul by the leg to pull him through.
Once on the other side, Gaul gasped, then rolled over, groaning. He sat up, holding his head. Perrin quietly fetched the man’s arrows and spears for him.
“This is going to be a good experience for building our ji,” Gaul said. He stood up and rubbed his arm where he’d hit the ground. “The Wise Ones call coming to this place as we do evil? It seems to me they would enjoy bringing men here to teach them.”