“Ba'alzamon,” Rand said softly. An ancient name for the Dark One. In the Trolloc tongue, it meant Heart of the Dark. “And I must face him, Perrin.” His eyes closed in a grimace, half smile, half pain. “Light help me, half the time I want it to happen now, to be over and done with, and the other half... How many times can I manage to... Light, it pulls at me so. What if I can't... What if I...” The ground trembled.
“Rand?” Perrin said worriedly.
Rand shivered; despite the chill, there was sweat on his face. His eyes were still shut tight. “Oh, Light,” he groaned, “it pulls so.”
Suddenly the ground heaved beneath Perrin, and the valley echoed with a vast rumble. It seemed as if the ground was jerked out from under his feet. He fell — or the earth leaped up to meet him. The valley shook as though a vast hand had reached down from the sky to wrench it out of the land. He clung to the ground while it tried to bounce him like a ball. Pebbles in front of his eyes leaped and tumbled, and dust rose in waves.
“Rand!” His bellow was lost in the grumbling roar.
Rand stood with his head thrown back, his eyes still shut tight. He did not seem to feel the thrashing of the ground that had him now at one angle, now at another. His balance never shifted, no matter how he was tossed. Perrin could not be certain, being shaken as he was, but he thought Rand wore a sad smile. The trees flailed about, and the leatherleaf suddenly cracked in two, the greater part of its trunk crashing down not three paces from Rand. He noticed it no more than he noticed any of the rest.
Perrin struggled to fill his lungs. “Rand! For the love of the Light, Rand! Stop it!”
As abruptly as it had begun, it was done. A weakened branch cracked off of a stunted oak with a loud snap. Perrin got to his feet slowly, coughing. Dust hung in the air, sparkling motes in the rays of the setting sun.
Rand was staring at nothing, now, chest heaving as if he had run ten miles. This had never happened before, nor anything remotely like it.
“Rand,” Perrin said carefully, “what —?”
Rand still seemed to be looking into a far distance. “It is always there. Calling to me. Pulling at me. Saidin. The male half of the True Source. Sometimes I can't stop myself from reaching out for it.” He made a motion of plucking something out of the air, and transferred his stare to his closed fist. “I can feel the taint even before I touch it. The Dark One's taint, like a thin coat of vileness trying to hide the Light. It turns my stomach, but I cannot help myself. I cannot! Only sometimes, I reach out, and it's like trying to catch air.” His empty hand sprang open, and he gave a bitter laugh. “What if that happens when the Last Battle comes? What if I reach out and catch nothing?”
“Well, you caught something that time,” Perrin said hoarsely. “What were you doing?”
Rand looked around as if seeing things for the first time. The fallen leatherleaf, and the broken branches. There was, Perrin realized, surprisingly little damage. He had expected gaping rents in the earth. The wall of trees looked almost whole.
“I did not mean to do this. It was as if I tried to open a tap, and instead pulled the whole tap out of the barrel. It... filled me. I had to send it somewhere before it burned me up, but I... I did not mean this.”
Perrin shook his head. What use to tell him to try not to do it again? He barely knows more about what he's doing than I do. He contented himself with, “There are enough who want you dead — and the rest of us — without you doing the job for them.” Rand did not seem to be listening. “We had best get on back to the camp. It will be dark soon, and I don't know about you, but I am hungry.”
“What? Oh. You go on, Perrin. I will be along. I want to be alone again a while.”
Perrin hesitated, then turned reluctantly toward the crack in the valley wall. He stopped when Rand spoke again.
“Do you have dreams when you sleep? Good dreams?”
“Sometimes,” Perrin said warily. “I don't remember much of what I dream.” He had learned to set guards on his dreaming.
“They're always there, dreams,” Rand said, so softly Perrin barely heard. “Maybe they tell us things. True things.” He fell silent, brooding.
“Supper's waiting,” Perrin said, but Rand was deep in his own thoughts. Finally Perrin turned and left him standing there.
Chapter 3
(Serpent and Wheel)
News from the Plain
Darkness shrouded part of the crack, for in one place the tremors had collapsed a part of the wall against the other side, high up. He stared up at the blackness warily before hurrying underneath, but the slab of stone seemed to be solidly wedged in place. The itch had returned to the back of his head, stronger than before. No, burn me! No! It went away.
When he came out above the camp, the bowl was filled with odd shadows from the sinking sun. Moiraine was standing outside her hut, peering up at the crack. He stopped short. She was a slender, darkhaired woman no taller than his shoulder, and pretty, with the ageless quality of all Aes Sedai who had worked with the One Power for a time. He could not put any age at all to her, with her face too smooth for many years and her dark eyes to wise for youth. Her dress of deep blue silk was disarrayed and dusty, and wisps stuck out in her usually wellordered hair. A smudge of dust lay across her face.
He dropped his eyes. She knew about him — she and Lan alone, of those in the camp — and he did not like the knowing in her face when she looked into his eyes. Yellow eyes. Someday, perhaps, he could bring himself to ask her what she knew. An Aes Sedai must know more of it than he did. But this was not the time. There never seemed to be a time. “He... He didn't mean... It was an accident.”
“An accident,” she said in a flat voice, then shook her head and vanished back inside the hut. The door banged shut a little loudly.
Perrin drew a deep breath and continued on down toward the cook fires. There would be another argument between Rand and the Aes Sedai, in the morning if not tonight.
Half a dozen trees lay toppled on the slopes of the bowl, roots ripped out of the earth in arcs of soil. A trail of scrapes and churned ground led down to the streamside and a boulder that had not been there before. One of the huts up the opposite slope had collapsed in the tremors, and most of the Shienarans were gathered around it, rebuilding it. Loial was with them. The Ogier could pick up a log it would take four men to lift. Uno's curses