“Is that safe, good master? He’s my brother, but he bit Mother Roon when she tried to help, and he . . . he killed a cow. With his teeth,” he finished faintly.

“Moiraine,” Perrin said, “the man is dangerous.”

“All men are dangerous,” she replied in a cool voice. “Now be quiet.” She opened the door and went in. Perrin held his breath.

At her first step, Noam’s lips peeled back from his teeth, and he began to growl, a rumble that deepened till his whole body quivered. Moiraine ignored it. Still growling, Noam wriggled backwards in the straw as she came closer to him, until he had backed himself into a corner. Or she had backed him.

Slowly, calmly, the Aes Sedai knelt and took his head between her hands. Noam’s growl heightened to a snarl, then tailed off in a whimper before Perrin could move. For a long moment Moiraine held Noam’s head, then just as calmly released it and rose. Perrin’s throat tightened as she turned her back on Noam and walked out of the cage, but the man only stared after her. She pushed the slatted door to, slipped the lock back through the hasp, not bothering to snap it shut—and Noam hurled himself snarling against the wooden bars. He bit at them, and battered them with his shoulders, tried to force his head between them, all the while snarling and snapping.

Moiraine brushed straw from her skirt with a steady hand and no expression.

“You do take chances,” Perrin breathed. She looked at him—a steady, knowing gaze—and he dropped his eyes. His yellow eyes.

Simion was staring at his brother. “Can you help him, good mistress?” he asked hoarsely.

“I am sorry, Simion,” she said.

“Can’t you do anything, good mistress? Something? One of those”—his voice fell to a whisper—“Aes Sedai things?”

“Healing is not a simple matter, Simion, and it comes from within as much as from the Healer. There is nothing here that remembers being Noam, nothing that remembers being a man. There are no maps remaining to show him the path back, and nothing left to take that path. Noam is gone, Simion.”

“He—he just used to talk funny, good mistress, when he’d had too much to drink. He just. . . .” Simion scrubbed a hand across his eyes and blinked. “Thank you, good mistress. I know you’d have done something if you could.” She put a hand on his shoulder, murmured comforting words, and then she was gone from the shed.

Perrin knew he should follow her, but the man—what had once been a man—snapping at the wooden bars, held him. He took a quick step and surprised himself by removing the dangling lock from the hasp. The lock was a good one, the work of a master smith.

“Good master?”