“Can't you just take advice?” she said irritably. She kicked at a stone and watched it roll down the slope.

Perrin did not like jumping to conclusions — it was one of the reasons some people thought him slowwitted — but he totaled up a number of things Min had said in the last few days and came to a startling conclusion. He stopped dead, hunting for words. “Uh... Min, you know I like you. I like you, but... Uh ... you sort of remind me of my sisters. I mean, you...” The flow stumbled to a halt as she raised her head to look at him, eyebrows arched. She wore a small smile.

“Why, Perrin, you must know that I love you.” She stood there, watching his mouth work, then spoke slowly and carefully. “Like a brother, you great woodenheaded lummox! The arrogance of men never ceases to amaze me. You all think everything has to do with you, and every woman has to desire you.”

Perrin felt his face growing hot. “I never... I didn't...” He cleared his throat. “What did you see about a woman?”

“Just take my advice,” she said, and started down toward the stream again, walking fast. “If you forget all the rest,” she called over her shoulder, “heed that!”

He frowned after her — for once his thoughts seemed to arrange themselves quickly — then caught up in two strides. “It's Rand, isn't it?”

She made a sound in her throat and gave him a sidelong look. She did not slow down, though. “Maybe you aren't so boneheaded after all,” she muttered. After a moment she added, as if to herself, “I'm bound to him as surely as a stave is bound to the barrel. But I can't see if he'll ever love me in return. And I am not the only one.”

“Does Egwene know?” he asked. Rand and Egwene had been all but promised since childhood. Everything but kneeling in front of the Women's Circle of the village to speak the betrothal. He was not sure how far they had drifted from that, if at all.

“She knows,” Min said curtly. “Much good it does either of us.”

“What about Rand? Does he know?”

“Oh, of course,” she said bitterly. “I told him, didn't I? 'Rand, I did a viewing of you, and it seems I have to fall in love with you. I have to share you, too, and I don't much like that, but there it is.' You're a woodenheaded wonder after all, Perrin Aybara.” She dashed a hand across her eyes angrily. “If I could be with him, I know I could help. Somehow. Light, if he dies, I don't know if I can stand it.”

Perrin shrugged uncomfortably. “Listen, Min. I'll do what I can to help him.” However much that is. “I promise you that. It really is best for you to go to Tar Valon. You'll be safe there.”

“Safe?” She tasted the word as if wondering what it meant. “You think Tar Valon is safe?”

“If there's no safety in Tar Valon, there's no safety anywhere.”

She sniffed loudly, and in silence they went to join those preparing to leave.

Chapter 7

(Flame of Tar Valon)

The Way Out of the Mountains

The way down out of the mountains was hard, but the lower they went, the less Perrin needed his furlined cloak. Hour by hour, they rode out of the tailings of winter and into the first days of spring. The last remnants of snow vanished, and grasses and wildflowers — white maiden's hope and pink jump up — began to cover the high meadows they crossed. Trees appeared more often, with more leaves, and grasslarks and robins sang in the branches. And there were wolves. Never in sight — not even Lan mentioned seeing one — but Perrin knew. He kept his mind firmly closed to them, yet now and again a featherlight tickle at the back of his mind reminded him they were there.

Lan spent most of his time scouting their path on his black warhorse, Mandarb, following Rand's tracks as the rest of them followed the signs the Warder left for them. An arrow of stones laid out on the ground, or one lightly scratched in the rock wall of a forking pass. Turn this way. Cross that saddlepass. Take this switchback, this deer trail, this way through the trees and down along a narrow stream, even though there is nothing to indicate anyone has ever gone that way before. Nothing but Lan's signs. A tuft of grass or weeds tied one way to say bear left, another for bear right. A bent branch. A pile of pebbles for a rough climb ahead, two leaves caught on a thorn for a steep descent. The Warder had a hundred signs, it seemed to Perrin, and Moiraine knew them all. Lan rarely came back except when they made camp, to confer with Moiraine quietly, away from the fire. When the sun rose, most often he was hours gone already.

Moiraine was always first into the saddle after him, while the eastern sky was just turning pink. The Aes Sedai would not have climbed down from Aldieb, her white mare, until full dark or later, except that Lan refused to track further once the light began to fail.

“We'll go even slower if a horse breaks a leg,” the Warder would tell Moiraine when she complained.

Her reply was always very much the same. “If you cannot move any faster than this, perhaps I should send you off to Myrelle before you get any older. Well, perhaps that can wait, but you must move us faster.”

She half sounded as if the threat were irritated truth, half as if she were making a joke. There was something of a threat in it, or maybe a warning, Perrin was sure, from the way Lan's mouth tightened even when she smiled afterwards and reached up to pat his shoulder soothingly.

“Who is Myrelle?” Perrin asked suspiciously, the first time it happened. Loial shook his head, murmuring something about unpleasant things happening to those who pried into Aes Sedai affairs. The Ogier's hairyfetlocked horse was as tall and heavy as a Dhurran stallion, but with Loial's long legs dangling to either side, the animal looked undersized, like a large pony.

Moiraine gave an amused, secretive smile. “Just a Green sister. Someone to whom Lan must one day deliver a package for safekeeping.”

“No day soon,” Lan said, and surprisingly, there was open anger in his voice. “Never, if I can help it. You will outlive me long, Moiraine Aes Sedai!”

She has too many secrets, Perrin thought, but asked no more about a subject that could crack the Warder's iron selfcontrol.

The Aes Sedai had a blanketwrapped bundle tied behind her saddle: the Dragon banner. Perrin was uneasy about having it with them, but Moiraine had neither asked his opinion nor listened when he offered it. Not that anyone was likely to recognize it if they saw it, yet he hoped she was as good at keeping secrets from other people as she was