He complied slowly, still half lost in Dapple’s message, until Nynaeve gasped. Startled, he stared at her, then at his own bare chest. It was a mass of color, the newer, purple blotches overlaying older ones faded into shades of brown and yellow. Only thick slabs of muscle earned by hours at Master Luhhan’s forge had saved him from broken ribs. With his mind filled by the wolves, he had managed to forget the pain, but he was reminded of it now, and it came back gladly. Involuntarily he took a deep breath, and clamped his lips on a groan.
“How could he have disliked you so much?” Nynaeve asked wonderingly.
I killed two men. Aloud, he said, “I don’t know.”
She rummaged in her bag, and he flinched when she began spreading a greasy ointment over his bruises. “Ground ivy, five-finger, and sunburst root,” she said.
It was hot and cold at the same time, making him shiver while he broke into a sweat, but he did not protest. He had had experience of Nynaeve’s ointments and poultices before. As her fingers gently rubbed the mixture in, the heat and cold vanished, taking the pain with them. The purple splotches faded to brown, and the brown and yellow paled, some disappearing altogether. Experimentally, he took a deep breath; there was barely a twinge.
“You look surprised,” Nynaeve said. She looked a little surprised herself, and strangely frightened. “Next time, you can go to her.”
“Not surprised,” he said soothingly, “just glad.” Sometimes Nynaeve’s ointments worked fast and sometimes slow, but they always worked. “What. . . what happened to Rand and Mat?”
Nynaeve began stuffing her vials and pots back into her bag, jamming each one in as if she were thrusting it through a barrier. “ She says they’re all right. She says we’ll find them. In Caemlyn, she says. She says it’s too important for us not to, Whatever that means. She says a great many things.”
Perrin grinned in spite of himself. Whatever else had changed, the Wisdom was still herself, and she and the Aes Sedai were still far from fast friends.
Abruptly Nynaeve stiffened, staring at his face. Dropping her bag, she pressed the backs of her hands to his cheeks and forehead. He tried to pull back, but she caught his head in both hands and thumbed back his eyelids, peering into his eyes and muttering to herself. Despite her small size she held his face easily; it was never easy to get away from Nynaeve when she did not want you to.
“I don’t understand,” she said finally, releasing him and settling back to sit on her heels. “If it was yelloweye fever, you wouldn’t be able to stand. But you don’t have any fever, and the whites of your eyes aren’t yellowed, just the irises.”
“Yellow?” Moiraine said, and Perrin and Nynaeve both jumped where they sat. The Aes Sedai’s approach had been utterly silent. Egwene was asleep by the fire, wrapped in her cloaks, Perrin saw. His own eyelids wanted to slide closed.
“It isn’t anything,” he said, but Moiraine put a hand under his chin and turned his face up so she could peer into his eyes the way Nynaeve had. He jerked away, prickling. The two women were handling him as if he were a child. “I said it isn’t anything.”
“There was no foretelling this.” Moiraine spoke as if to herself. Her eyes seemed to look at something beyond him. “Something ordained to be woven, or a change in the Pattern? If a change, by what hand? The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. It must be that.”
“Do you know what it is?” Nynaeve asked reluctantly, then hesitated. “Can you do something for him? Your Healing?” The request for aid, the admission that she could do nothing, came out of her as if dragged.
Perrin glared at both the women. “If you’re going to talk about me, talk to me. I’m sitting right here.” Neither looked at him.
“Healing?” Moiraine smiled. “Healing can do nothing about this. It is not an illness, and it will not. . . .” She hesitated briefly. She did glance at Perrin, then, a quick look that regretted many things. The look did not include him, though, and he muttered sourly as she turned back to Nynaeve. “I was going to say it will not harm him, but who can say what the end will be? At least I can say it will not harm him directly.”
Nynaeve stood, dusting off her knees, and confronted the Aes Sedai eye to eye. “That’s not good enough. If there’s something wrong with—”
“What is, is. What is woven already is past changing.” Moiraine turned away abruptly. “We must sleep while we can and leave at first light. If the Dark One’s hand
grows too strong. . . . We must reach Caemlyn quickly.”
Angrily, Nynaeve snatched up her bag and stalked off before Perrin could speak. He started to growl an oath, but a thought hit him like a blow and he sat there gaping silently. Moiraine knew. The Aes Sedai knew about the wolves. And she thought it could be the Dark One’s doing. A shiver ran through him. Hastily he shrugged back into his shirt, tucking it in awkwardly, and pulled his coat and cloak back on. The clothing did not help very much; he felt chilled right down to his bones, his marrow like frozen jelly.
Lan dropped to the ground cross-legged, tossing back his cloak. Perrin was glad of that. It was unpleasant, looking at the Warder and having his eyes slide past.
For a long moment they simply stared at one another. The hard planes of the Warder’s face were unreadable, but in his eyes Perrin thought he saw . . . something. Sympathy? Curiosity? Both?
“You know?” he said, and Lan nodded.
“I know some, not all. Did it just come to you, or did you meet a guide, an intermediary?”
“There was a man,” Perrin said slowly. He knows, but does he think the same as Moiraine? “He said his name was Elyas. Elyas Machera.” Lan drew a deep breath, and Perrin looked at him sharply. “You know him?”
“I knew him. He taught me much, about the Blight, and about this.” Lan touched his sword hilt. “He was a Warder, before . . . before what happened. The Red Ajah. . . .” He glanced to where Moiraine was, lying before the fire.
It was the first time Perrin could remember any uncertainty in the Warder. At Shadar Logoth Lan had been sure and strong, and when he was facing Fades and Trollocs. He was not afraid now—Perrin was convinced of that—but he was wary, as if he might say too much. As if what he said could be dangerous.
“I’ve heard of the Red Ajah,” he told Lan.
“And most of what you’ve heard is wrong, no doubt. You must understand, there are . . . factions within Tar Valon. Some would fight the Dark One one way, some another. The goal is the same, but the differences . . . the differences can mean lives changed, or ended. The lives of men or nations. He is well, Elyas?”