Crossroads of Twilight

Soon, though, he was riding west beneath a gray cloudy sky, along a snowy road with the high-wheeled carts trundling along in a line after him and early-morning shadows stretching ahead. Stayer tugged at the reins, wanting to run, but Perrin held him to a steady walk, no faster than the carthorses could manage. Galle

Wil and the two fools carrying the Wolfhead and the Red Ea­gle joined the Mayener ba

The low rolling hills did not really allow a very long view, but it was farm country, with sturdy thatch-roofed stone houses and barns scattered among the fields, and nothing of wildness about it anywhere. Even most of the small thickets clinging to the slopes were coppiced for firewood. But it struck Perrin suddenly that the snow on the road ahead of him was not fresh; yet the only tracks were those made by Galle

An exclamation from one of the Aes Sedai made him look over his shoulder, and he followed Masuri’s pointing finger north to a shape flying through the air. It might have been taken for a large bat at first glance, sweeping eastward on long ribbed wings, a strange bat with a long neck and a long thin tail trailing behind. Galle

“Seanchan,” Berelain breathed, both her voice and the smell of her worried.

Perrin twisted in his saddle to watch the thing’s flight until the glare of the sunrise made him turn away. “Nothing to do with us,” he said. If Neald had made a mistake, he would strangle the man.

CHAPTER 26

In So Habor

As it happened, Neald, who had had to remain to hold the gateway open till Kireyin and the Ghealdanin were through, had placed the hole in the air very close to where he aimed. He and Kireyin caught up at a gallop just as Perrin topped a rise and drew rein with the town of So Habor in front of him, on the other side of a small river crossed by a pair of arching timber bridges. Perrin was no soldier, but he knew right away why Masema had left this place alone. Hard against the river, the town had two massive stone walls dotted with towers around it, the i

“Well, it’s glad I am to see people on the walls over there,” Neald said. “I was begi

“As long as they’re alive enough to sell grain,” Kireyin mur­mured in his nasal, bored voice. Unbuckling his silvery, white-plumed helmet, he lifted it down to the tall pommel of his saddle. His eyes swept past Perrin and paused briefly on Berelain before he twisted around to address the Aes Sedai in the same weary tone. “Are we going to sit here, or go down?” Berelain arched an eye­brow at him, a dangerous look, as a man with any brains would see. Kireyin did not see.

Perrin’s hackles were still trying to stand, the more so since seeing the town. Maybe it was just the part of him that was wolf, disliking walls. But he did not think so. The people atop the walls pointed toward them, and some held looking glasses. Those, at least, would be able to make out the ba

Berelain and A

Galle

Perrin could not shake his uneasiness as they drew nearer the town. The horses’ hooves clattered hollowly on the southernmost bridge, a wide structure that rose high enough above the swift-flowing river to let a barge like those tied to the wharf pass easily underneath on sweeps. Neither of the broad bluff-bowed craft had any provision for stepping a mast. One of those barges had settled deep in the water, slanting against taut mooring ropes, and the other somehow looked abandoned, too. A rank, sour smell in the air made him rub at his nose. No one else seemed to notice.