"As well I went after you," Lan said, and the Aes Sedai sniffed loudly.

"I could wish you were a woman, Gaidin. I would send you to the Tower as a novice to learn to obey!" He raised an eyebrow and touched the hilt of his sword, then swung into his saddle, and she sighed. "Perhaps it is as well you are disobedient. Sometimes it is well. Besides, I do not think Sheriam and Siuan Sanche together could teach you obedience."

"I do not understand," Perrin said. I seem to be saying that a great deal, and I'm tired of it. I want some answers I can understand. He pulled himself the rest of the way up so Moiraine would not be looking down at him; she had enough advantage without that. "If he did not send the Gray Men, who did? If a Myrddraal, or another Forsaken..." He stopped to swallow. ANOTHER Forsaken! Light! "If somebody else sent them, why did they not tell him? They're all Darkfriends, aren't they? And why me, Moiraine? Why me? Rand is the bloody Dragon Reborn!"

He heard the gasps from Zarine and Nieda, and only then realized what he had said. Moiraine's stare seemed to skin him like the sharpest steel. Hasty bloody tongue. When did I stop thinking before I speak? It seemed to him it had happened when he first felt Zarine's eyes watching him. She was watching him now, with her mouth hanging open.

"You are sealed to us, now," Moiraine told the bold-faced woman. "There is no turning back for you. Ever." Zarine looked as if she wanted to say something and was afraid to, but the Aes Sedai had already turned her attention elsewhere. "Nieda, flee Illian tonight. In this hour! And hold your tongue even better than you have held it all these years. There are those who would cut it out for what you could say, before I could even find you." Her hard tone left doubts as to exactly how she meant that, and Nieda nodded vigorously as if she had heard it both ways.

"As for you, Perrin." The white mare moved closer, and he leaned back from the Aes Sedai despite all he could do. "There are many threads woven in the Pattern, and some are as black as the Shadow itself. Take care one of them does not strangle you." Her heels touched Aldieb's flanks, and the mare darted into the rain, Mandarb following close behind.

Burn you, Moiraine, Perrin thought as he rode after them. Sometimes I do not know which side you are on. He glanced at Zarine, riding beside him as if she had been born in a saddle. And whose side are you on?

Rain kept people off the streets and canals, so no visible eyes watched them go, but it made the footing uncertain for the horses on the uneven paving stones. By the time they reached the Maredo Causeway, a wide road of packed dirt stretching north through the marsh, the downpour had begun to slacken. Thunder still boomed, but the lightning flashed far behind them, perhaps out to sea.

Perrin felt a bit of luck was coming their way. The rain had stayed long enough to hide their departure, but now it seemed they would have a clear night for riding. He said as much, but Lan shook his head.

"Darkhounds like clear, moonlit nights best, blacksmith, rain the least. A good thunderstorm can keep them away completely." As if his words had bidden it, the rain faded to a faint drizzle. Perrin heard Loial groan behind him.

Causeway and marsh ended together, some two miles or so from the city, but the road kept on, slowly bearing a little eastward. Cloud-dark evening faded into night, and the misting rain continued. Moiraine and Lan kept a steady, ground-eating pace. The horses' hooves splashed through puddles on the hard-packed dirt. The moon shone through gaps in the clouds. Low hills began to rise around them, and trees to appear more and more often. Perrin thought there must be forest ahead, but he was not sure how he liked the idea. Woods could hide them from pursuit; woods could let pursuit come close before they saw.

A thin howl rose far behind them. For a moment he thought it was a wolf; he surprised himself by nearly reaching out to the wolf before he could stop. The cry came again, and he knew it was no wolf. Others answered it, all miles behind, eerie wails holding blood and death, cries that spoke of nightmares. To his surprise, Lan and Moiraine slowed, the Aes Sedai studying the hills around them in the night.

"They are a long way," he said. "They'll not catch us if we keep on."

"The Darkhounds?" Zarine muttered. "Those are the Darkhounds? Are you sure it isn't the Wild Hunt, Aes Sedai?"

"But it is," Moiraine replied. "It is."

"You can never outrun the Darkhounds, blacksmith," Lan said, "not on the fastest horse. Always, you must face them and defeat them, or they will pull you down."

"I could have stayed in the stedding, you know," Loial said. "My mother would have had me married by now, but it would not have been a bad life. Plenty of books. I did not have to come Outside."

"There," Moiraine said, pointing to a tall, treeless mound well off to their right. There were no trees that Perrin could see for two hundred paces or more around it, either, and they were still sparse beyond that. "We must see them coming to have a chance."

The Darkhounds' dire cries rose again, closer, yet still far.

Lan quickened Mandarb's pace a little, now that Moiraine had chosen their ground. As they climbed, the horses' hooves clattered on rocks half-buried in the dirt and slicked by the drizzle. To Perrin's eyes, most of them had too many squared corners to be natural. At the top, they dismounted around what seemed to be a low, rounded boulder. The moon appeared through a gap in the clouds, and he found himself looking at a weathered stone face two paces long. A woman's face, he thought from the length of the hair. The rain made her seem to be weeping.

Moiraine dismounted and stood looking off in the direction of the howls. She was a shadowed, hooded shape, rain catching moonlight as it rolled down her oiled cloak.

Loial led his horse over to peer at the carving, then bent closer and felt the features. "I think she was an Ogier," he said at last. "But this is not an old stedding; I would feel it. We all would. And we would be safe from Shadowspawn."

"What are you two staring at?" Zarine squinted at the rock. 'What is it? Her? Who?"

"Many nations have risen and fallen since the Breaking," Moiraine said without turning, "some leaving no more than names on a yellowed page, or lines on a tattered map. Will we leave as much behind?" The blood-drenched howls rose again, still closer. Perrin tried to calculate their pace, and thought Lan had been right; the horses could not have outrun them, after all. They would not have long to wait.

"Ogier," Lan said, "you and the girl hold the horses." Zarine protested, but he rode straight over to her. "Your knives will not do much good here, girl." His sword blade gleamed in the moonlight as he drew it. "Even this is a last resort. It sounds like ten out there, not one. Your work is to keep the horses from running when they smell the Darkhounds. Even Mandarb does not like that smell."

If the Warder's sword was no good, then neither was the axe. Perrin felt something near to relief at that, even if they were Shadowspawn; he would not have to use the axe. He drew the length of his unstrung bow from under Stepper's saddle girths. "Maybe this will do some good."

"Try if you wish, blacksmith," Lan said. "They do not die easily. Perhaps you will kill one."

Perrin drew a fresh bowstring from his pouch, trying to shield it from the soft rain. The beeswax coating was thin, and not much protection against prolonged damp. Setting the bow slantwise between his legs, he bent it easily, fixing the loops of the bowstring into the horn nocks at the ends of the bow. When he straightened, he could see the Darkhounds.

They ran like horses at a gallop, and as he caught sight of them, they gathered speed. They were only ten large shapes running in the night, sweeping through the scattered trees, yet he pulled a broadhead arrow from his quiver, nocked it but did not draw. He had been far from the best bowman in Emond's Field, but among the younger men, only Rand had been better.