Crossroads of Twilight

Her people had maintained their distance, but Aram had ridden a short way toward Perrin and Berelain and was leaning forward to peer at them through the shadowed trees. The Wise Ones were standing to one side talking among themselves, seemingly unaware that they were over their ankles in snow or that the cold breezes had picked up enough to flap the dangling ends of their shawls. Every so often one or another of the three looked Perrin and Berelain’s way, too. Notions of privacy never kept a Wise One from sticking her nose wherever she wanted. They were like Aes Sedai that way. Masuri and A

“We’ve given tongues enough to wag over,” he said. Not that they needed any more than they had. Hooking the basket’s hoop-handles over his pommel, he heeled Stepper’s flanks. It could hardly be disloyal just to eat a bird.

Berelain did not follow immediately, yet before he reached Aram, she caught up and slowed her bay beside him. “I’ll find out what A

They stopped laughing when Perrin showed them the tracks in the stone slab.

CHAPTER 7

Blacksmith’s Puzzle

When the laughter cut off, Aram put on a smug grin, and with none of the fear scent he had given off ear­lier. Anyone would have thought he had already seen the tracks himself and knew everything there was to know. No one paid any mind to his smirk, however, or to much of anything except the huge dog tracks impressed in stone, even Perrin’s expla­nation that the Darkhounds were long gone. Of course, he could not tell them how he knew that, yet no one seemed to notice the lack. One of the sharply slanting bars of early morning light was falling directly on the gray slab, illuminating it clearly. Stepper had grown accustomed to the fading burnt-sulphur smell – at least he only snorted and laid back his ears – but the other horses shied at the tilted stone. None of the humans except Perrin could detect that smell, and most growled over their mounts’ fractious behavior and peered at the oddly marked stone as if it were a curiosity dis­played by a traveling show.

Berelain’s plump maid screamed when she saw the tracks, and swayed on the point of falling off her round-bellied, nervously dancing mare, but Berelain merely asked A

Masuri dismounted, too, but no sooner was she on the ground than she paused with her dapples reins in one gloved hand, look­ing uncertainly toward the three sun-dark Aiel women. A few of the Mayener soldiers muttered uneasily at that, yet they should have been used to it by now. A

Finally, Nevarin nodded. And gave a warm and approving smile. Perrin had never before seen a smile out of her. Nevarin did not walk around scowling, but she usually seemed to be searching for someone to upbraid.

Not until that nod did Masuri hand her reins up to one of the soldiers. Her Warder was nowhere to be seen, and that had to be the Wise Ones’ doing. Rovair usually stuck to her like a burr. Lift­ing her divided skirts, she waded through the snow, deeper the closer to the stone she came, and began passing her hands above the footprints, obviously cha

“Fireside stories walking,” Galle

A stir rippled through the mounted lancers, as though they had not really believed their own eyes until their commander gave confirmation, and some of them began to smell of uneasy fear, as if expecting Darkhounds to leap out of the shadows. Perrin could not pick out individuals among so many with any ease, but the jittery rankness was strong enough that it had to come from more than a few.

Galle