What would happen to them if Rand died? Dared she try to claim them? Dared she wait for someone else to?

Chapter 18

The Strength of This Place

Perrin ran through the darkness. Trails of watery mist brushed his face and condensed in his beard. His mind was foggy, distant. Where was he going? What was he doing? Why was he running?

He roared and charged, ripping through the veiled darkness and bursting into open air. He took a deep breath and landed on the top of a steep hill covered with short, patchy grass, with a ring of trees at its base. The sky rumbled and churned with clouds, like a boiling pot of tar.

He was in the wolf dream. His body slumbered in the real world, on this hilltop, with Faile. He smiled, breathing deeply. His problems had not diminished. In fact, with the Whitecloak ultimatum, they seemed magnified. But all was well with Faile. That simple fact changed so much. With her at his side, he could do anything.

He leaped down from the hillside and crossed the open area where his army camped. They had been here long enough that signs had appeared in the wolf dream. Tents reflected the waking world, though their flaps were in a different position each time he looked at them. Cook-fire pits in the ground, ruts in the pathways, occasional bits of refuse or discarded tools. These would pop into existence, then vanish.

He moved quickly through the camp, each step taking him ten paces. Once he might have found the lack of people in the camp eerie, but he was accustomed to the wolf dream now. This was natural.

Perrin approached the statue at the side of the camp, then looked up at the age-pocked stone, overgrown with lichen of black, orange and green. The statue must have been posed oddly, if it had fallen in such a way. It almost looked as if it had been created this way—an enormous arm bursting from the loam.

Perrin turned to the southeast, toward where the Whitecloak camp would be found. He had to deal with them. He was increasingly certain—confident, even—that he could not continue until he had confronted these shadows from the past.

There was one way to deal with them for certain. A careful trap using the Asha’man and Wise Ones, and Perrin could hit the Children so hard that they shattered. He could maybe even destroy them permanently as a group.

He had the means, the opportunity, and the motivation. No more fear in the land, no more Whitecloak mock trials. He leaped forward, soaring thirty feet and falling lightly to the ground. Then he took off, running southeast along the road.

He found the Whitecloak camp in a forested hollow, thousands of white tents set up in tight rings. The tents of some ten thousand Children, along with another ten thousand mercenaries and other soldiers. Balwer estimated that this was the bulk of the remaining Children, though he had been unclear on how he’d gotten that knowledge. Hopefully the dusty man’s hatred of the Whitecloaks wasn’t clouding his judgment.