Dawn woke Rand with a start, the sullen sun pricking his eyelids as it peeked reluctantly over the treetops of the Blight. Even so early, heat covered the spoiled lands in a heavy blanket. He lay on his back with his head pillowed on his blanketroll, staring at the sky. It was still blue, the sky. Even here, that, at least, was untouched.
He was surprised to realize that he had slept. For a minute the dim memory of a conversation overheard seemed like part of some dream. Then he saw Nynaeve’s red-rimmed eyes; she had not slept, obviously. Lan’s face was harder than ever, as if he had resumed a mask and did not intend to let it slip again.
Egwene went over and crouched beside the Wisdom, her face concerned. He could not make out what they said. Egwene spoke, and Nynaeve shook her head. Egwene said something else, and the Wisdom waved her away dismissively. Instead of going, Egwene bent her head closer, and for a few minutes the two women talked even more softly, with Nynaeve still shaking her head. The Wisdom ended it with a laugh, hugging Egwene and, by her expression, making soothing talk. When Egwene stood, though, she glared at the Warder. Lan did not seem to notice; he did not look in Nynaeve’s direction at all.
Shaking his head, Rand gathered his things, and gave his hands and face and teeth a hasty wash with the little water Lan allowed for such things. He wondered if women had a way of reading men’s minds. It was an unsettling thought. All women are Aes Sedai. Telling himself he was letting the Blight get to him, he rinsed out his mouth and hurried to get the bay saddled.
It was more than a little disconcerting, having the campsite disappear before he reached the horses, but by the time his saddle girth was tight everything on the hill winked back into view. Everyone was hurrying.
The seven towers stood plain in the morning light, distant broken stumps, like huge, rough hills that merely hinted at grandeur gone. The hundred lakes were a smooth, unruffled blue. Nothing broke the surface this morning. When he looked at the lakes and the ruined towers, he could almost ignore the sickly things growing around the hill. Lan did not seem to be avoiding looking at the towers, any more than he seemed to be avoiding Nynaeve, but somehow he never did as he concentrated on getting them ready to go.
After the wicker panniers were fastened on the packhorse, after every scrap and smudge and track were gone and everyone else was mounted, the Aes Sedai stood in the middle of the hilltop with her eyes closed, not even seeming to breathe. Nothing happened that Rand could see, except that Nynaeve and Egwene shivered despite the heat and rubbed their arms briskly. Egwene’s hands suddenly froze on her arms, and she opened her mouth, staring at the Wisdom. Before she could speak, Nynaeve also ceased her rubbing and gave her a sharp look. The two women looked at one another, then Egwene nodded and grinned, and after a moment Nynaeve did, too, though her smile was only halfhearted.
Rand scrubbed his fingers through his hair, already more damp with sweat than with the water he had splashed in his face. He was sure there was something in the silent exchange that he should understand, but that feather-light brush across his mind vanished before he could grasp it.
“What are we waiting for?” Mat demanded, the low band of his scarf across his forehead. He had his bow across the pommel of his saddle with an arrow nocked, and his quiver pulled around on his belt for an easy reach.
Moiraine opened her eyes and started down the hill. “For me to remove the last vestige of what I did here last night. The residues would have dissipated on their own in a day, but I will not take any risk I can avoid now. We are too close, and the Shadow is too strong here. Lan?”
The Warder only waited for her to settle in Aldieb’s saddle before he led them north, toward the Mountains of Dhoom, looming in the near distance. Even under the sunrise the peaks rose black and lifeless, like jagged teeth. In a wall they stretched, east and west as far as the eye could see.
“Will we reach the Eye today, Moiraine Sedai?” Egwene asked.
The Aes Sedai gave Loial a sidelong look. “I hope that we will. When I found it before, it was just the other side of the mountains, at the foot of the high passes.”
“He says it moves,” Mat said, nodding at Loial. “What if it isn’t where you expect?”
“Then we will continue to hunt until we do find it. The Green Man senses need, and there can be no need greater than ours. Our need is the hope of the world.”
As the mountains drew closer, so did the true Blight. Where a leaf had been spotted black and mottled yellow before, now foliage fell wetly while he watched, breaking apart from the weight of its own corruption. The trees themselves were tortured, crippled things, twisted branches clawing at the sky as if begging mercy from some power that refused to hear. Ooze slid like pus from bark cracked and split. As if nothing truly solid was left to them, the trees seemed to tremble from the passage of the horses over the ground.
“Look as if they want to grab us,” Mat said nervously. Nynaeve gave him an exasperated, scornful look, and he added fiercely, “Well, they do look it.”
“And some of them do want it,” the Aes Sedai said. Her eyes over her shoulder were harder than Lan’s for an instant. “But they want no part of what I am, and my presence protects you.”
Mat laughed uneasily, as if he thought it a joke on her part.
Rand was not so sure. This was the Blight, after all. But trees don’t move. Why would a tree grab a man, even if it could? We’re imagining things, and she’s just trying to keep us alert.
Abruptly he stared off to his left, into the forest. That tree, not twenty paces away, had trembled, and it was none of his imagination. He could not say what kind it was, or had been, so gnarled and tormented was its shape. As he watched, the tree suddenly whipped back and forth again, then bent down, flailing at the ground. Something screamed, shrill and piercing. The tree sprang back straight; its limbs entwined around a dark mass that writhed and spat and screamed.
He swallowed hard and tried to edge Red away, but trees stood on every side, and trembled. The bay rolled his eyes, whites showing all the way around. Rand found himself in a solid knot of horseflesh as everyone else tried to do the same as he.
“Keep moving,” Lan commanded, drawing his sword. The Warder wore steel-backed gauntlets now, and his gray-green scale tunic. “Stay with Moiraine Sedai.” He pulled Mandarb around, not toward the tree and its prey, but in the other direction. With his color-shifting cloak, he was swallowed by the Blight before the black stallion was out of sight.
“Close,” Moiraine urged. She did not slow her white mare, but she motioned the others to huddle nearer to her. “Stay as close as you can.”
A roar sprang up from the direction the Warder had gone. It beat at the air, and the trees quivered from it, and when it faded away, it seemed to echo still. Again the roar came, filled with rage and death.
“Lan,” Nynaeve said. “He—”
The awful sound cut her off, but there was a new note in it. Fear. Abruptly it was gone.
“Lan can look after himself,” Moiraine said. “Ride, Wisdom.”
From out of the trees the Warder appeared, holding his sword well clear of himself and his mount. Black blood stained the blade, and steam rose from it. Carefully, Lan wiped the blade clean with a cloth he took from his saddlebags, examining the steel to make sure he had gotten every spot. When he dropped the cloth, it fell apart before it reached the ground, even the fragments dissolving.
Silently a massive body leaped out of the trees at them. The Warder spun Mandarb, but even as the warhorse reared, ready to strike with steelshod hooves, Mat’s arrow flashed, piercing the one eye in a head that seemed mostly mouth and teeth. Kicking and screaming, the thing fell, one bound short of them. Rand stared as they hurried past. Stiff hair like long bristles covered it, and it had too many legs, joining a body as big as a bear at odd angles. Some of them at least, those coming out of its back, had to be useless for walking, but the finger-long claws at their ends tore the earth in its death agony.
“Good shooting, sheepherder.” Lan’s eyes had already forgotten what was dying behind them, and were searching the forest.
Moiraine shook her head. “It should not have been willing to come so close to one who touches the True Source.”
“Agelmar said the Blight stirs,” Lan said. “Perhaps the Blight also knows a Web is forming in the Pattern.”
“Hurry.” Moiraine dug her heels into Aldieb’s flanks. “We must get over the high passes quickly.”
But even as she spoke the Blight rose against them. Trees whipped in, reaching for them, not caring if Moiraine touched the True Source or not.
Rand’s sword was in his hand; he did not remember unsheathing it. He struck out again and again, the heron-mark blade slicing through corrupted limbs. Hungry branches jerked back severed, writhing stumps—he almost thought he heard them scream—but always more came, wriggling like snakes, attempting to snare his arms, his waist, his neck. Teeth bared in a rictus snarl, he sought the void, and found it in the stony, stubborn soil of the Two Rivers. “Manetheren!” He screamed back at the trees till his throat ached. The heron-mark steel flashed in the strengthless sunlight. “Manetheren! Manetheren!”
Standing in his stirrups, Mat sent arrow after arrow flashing into the forest, striking at deformed shapes that snarled and gnashed uncounted teeth on the shafts that killed them, bit at the clawed forms fighting to get over them, to reach the mounted figures. Mat, too, was lost to the present. “Carai an Caldazar!” he shouted as he drew fletchings to cheek and loosed. “Carai an Ellisande! Al Ellisande! Mordero daghain pas duente cuebiyar! Al Ellisande!”
Perrin also stood in his stirrups, silent and grim. He had taken the lead, and his axe hewed a path through forest and foul flesh alike, whichever came before him. Flailing trees and howling things shied from the stocky axeman, shying as much from the fierce golden eyes as from the whistling axe. He forced his horse forward, step by determined step.
Fireballs streaked from Moiraine’s hands, and where they struck, a writhing tree became a torch, a toothed shape shrieked and beat with human hands, rent its own flaming flesh with fierce claws until it died.
Again and again the Warder took Mandarb into the trees, his blade and gauntlets dripping with blood that bubbled and steamed. When he came back now, more often than not there were gashes in his armor, bleeding gashes in his flesh, and his warhorse stumbled and bled, too. Each time the Aes Sedai paused to lay her hands on the wounds, and when she took them away, only the blood was left on unmarked flesh.
“I light signal fires for the Halfmen,” she said bitterly. “Press on. Press on!” They made their way one slow pace at a time.
If the trees had not struck into the mass of attacking flesh as much as at the humans, if the creatures, no two alike, had not fought the trees and one another as much as to reach them, Rand was sure they would have been overwhelmed. He was not certain it would not happen still. Then a fluting cry arose behind them. Distant and thin, it cut through the snarling from the denizens of the Blight around them.
In an instant the snarling ceased, as if it had been sliced off with a knife. The attacking shapes froze; the trees went still. As suddenly as the things with legs had appeared, they melted away, vanishing into the twisted forest.
The reedy shrill came again, like a cracked shepherd’s pipes, and was answered in kind by a chorus. Half a dozen, singing among themselves, far behind.
“Worms,” Lan said grimly, bringing a moan from Loial. “They’ve given us a respite, if we have time to use it.” His eyes were measuring the distance yet to the mountains. “Few things in the Blight will face a Worm, can it be avoided.” He dug his heels into Mandarb’s flanks. “Ride!” The whole party plunged after him, through a Blight that suddenly seemed truly dead, except for the piping behind.
“They were scared off by worms?” Mat said incredulously. He was bouncing in his saddle, trying to sling his bow across his back.
“A Worm”—there was a sharp difference in the way the Warder said it from the way Mat had—“can kill a Fade, if the Fade hasn’t the Dark One’s own luck with it. We have an entire pack on our trail. Ride! Ride!” The dark peaks were closer now. An hour, Rand estimated, at the pace the Warder was setting.
“Won’t the Worms follow us into the mountains?” Egwene asked breathlessly, and Lan gave a sharp laugh.
“They won’t. Worms are afraid of what lives in the high passes.” Loial moaned again.
Rand wished the Ogier would stop doing that. He was well aware that Loial knew more about the Blight than any of them except Lan, even if it was from reading books in the safety of a stedding. But why does he have to keep reminding me that there’s worse yet than we’ve seen?
The Blight flowed past, weeds and grasses splashing rotten under galloping hooves. Trees of the kinds that had earlier attacked did not so much as twitch even when they rode directly under the twisted branches. The Mountains of Dhoom filled the sky ahead, black and bleak, and almost near enough to touch, it seemed. The piping came both sharp and clear, and there were squishing sounds behind them, louder than the things crushed under hooves. Too loud, as if half-decayed trees were being crushed by huge bodies slithering over them. Too near. Rand looked over his shoulder. Back there treetops whipped and went down like grass. The land began sloping upward, toward the mountains, tilting enough so that he knew they were climbing.
“We are not going to make it,” Lan announced. He did not slow Mandarb’s gallop, but his sword was suddenly in his hand again. “Watch yourself in the high passes, Moiraine, and you’ll get through.”
“No, Lan!” Nynaeve called.
“Be quiet, girl! Lan, even you cannot stop a Wormpack. I will not have it. I will need you for the Eye.”
“Arrows,” Mat called breathlessly.
“The Worms wouldn’t even feel them,” the Warder shouted. “They must be cut to pieces. Don’t feel much but hunger. Sometimes fear.”
Clinging to his saddle with a deathgrip, Rand shrugged, trying to loosen the tightness in his shoulders. His whole chest felt tight, until he could hardly breathe, and his skin stung in hot pinpricks. The Blight had turned to foothills. He could see the route they must climb once they reached the mountains, the twisting path and the high pass beyond, like an axe blow cleaving into the black stone. Light, what’s up ahead that can scare what’s behind? Light help me, I’ve never been so afraid. I don’t want to go any further. No further! Seeking the flame and the void, he railed at himself. Fool! You frightened, cowardly fool! You can’t stay here, and you can’t go back. Are you going to leave Egwene to face it alone? The void eluded him, forming, then shivering into a thousand points of light, re-forming and shattering again, each point burning into his bones until he quivered with the pain and thought he must burst open. Light help me, I can’t go on. Light help me!
He was gathering the bay’s reins to turn back, to face the Worms or anything rather than what lay ahead, when the nature of the land changed. Between one slope of a hill and the next, between crest and peak, the Blight was gone.
Green leaves covered peacefully spreading branches. Wildflowers made a carpet of bright patches in grasses stirred by a sweet spring breeze. Butterflies fluttered from blossom to blossom, with buzzing bees, and birds trilled their songs.
Gaping, he galloped on, until he suddenly realized that Moiraine and Lan and Loial had stopped, the others, too. Slowly he drew rein, his face frozen in astonishment. Egwene’s eyes were about to come out of her head, and Nynaeve’s jaw had dropped.
“We have reached safety,” Moiraine said. “This is the Green Man’s place, and the Eye of the World is here. Nothing of the Blight can enter here.”
“I thought it was on the other side of the mountains,” Rand mumbled. He could still see the peaks filling the northern horizon, and the high passes. “You said it was always beyond the passes.”
“This place,” said a deep voice from the trees, “is always where it is. All that changes is where those who need it are.”
A figure stepped out of the foliage, a man-shape as much bigger than Loial as the Ogier was bigger than Rand. A man-shape of woven vines and leaves, green and growing. His hair was grass, flowing to his shoulders; his eyes, huge hazelnuts; his fingernails, acorns. Green leaves made his tunic and trousers; seamless bark, his boots. Butterflies swirled around him, lighting on his fingers, his shoulders, his face. Only one thing spoiled the verdant perfection. A deep fissure ran up his cheek and temple across the top of his head, and in that the vines were brown and withered.
“The Green Man,” Egwene whispered, and the scarred face smiled. For a moment it seemed as if the birds sang louder.
“Of course I am. Who else would be here?” The hazelnut eyes regarded Loial. “It is good to see you, little brother. In the past, many of you came to visit me, but few of recent days.”
Loial scrambled down from his big horse and bowed formally. “You honor me, Treebrother. Tsingu ma choshih, T’ingshen.”
Smiling, the Green Man put an arm around the Ogier’s shoulders. Alongside Loial, he looked like a man beside a boy. “There is no honoring, little brother. We will sing Treesongs together, and remember the Great Trees, and the stedding, and hold the Longing at bay.” He studied the others, just now getting down from their horses, and his eyes lit on Perrin. “A Wolfbrother! Do the old times truly walk again then?”
Rand stared at Perrin. For his part, Perrin turned his horse so it was between him and the Green Man, and bent to check the girth. Rand was sure he just wanted to avoid the Green Man’s searching gaze. Suddenly the Green Man spoke to Rand.
“Strange clothes you wear, Child of the Dragon. Has the Wheel turned so far? Do the People of the Dragon return to the First Covenant? But you wear a sword. That is neither now nor then.”
Rand had to work moisture in his mouth before he could speak. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you mean?”
The Green Man touched the brown scar across his head. For a moment he seemed confused. “I . . . cannot say. My memories are torn and often fleeting, and much of what remains is like leaves visited by caterpillars. Yet, I am sure . . . No, it is gone. But you are welcome here. You, Moiraine Sedai, are more than a surprise. When this place was made, it was made so that none could find it twice. How have you come here?”
“Need,” Moiraine replied. “My need, the world’s need. Most of all is the world’s need. We have come to see the Eye of the World.”
The Green Man sighed, the wind sighing through thick-leafed branches. “Then it has come again. That memory remains whole. The Dark One stirs. I have feared it. Every turning of years, the Blight strives harder to come inside, and this turn the struggle to keep it out has been greater than ever since the beginning. Come, I will take you.”