Among the Tuatha'an

Among the Tuatha'an

A gathering of wagons came in sight, a little off to the south, like small houses on wheels, tall wooden boxes, painted and lacquered in violent shades of red and blue and green and yellow, all standing in a large, rough circle around a few broad-limbed oak trees. The music came from there. Perrin had heard there were Tinkers, Traveling People, in the Two Rivers, but he had not seen them until now. Hobbled horses cropped the long grass nearby.

"I will sleep elsewhere," Gaul said stiffly when he saw Perrin meant to go to the wagons, and loped away without another word.

Bain and Chiad spoke softly yet urgently to Faile. Perrin caught enough to know they were trying to convince her to spend the night with them in some snug thicket and not with "the Lost Ones." They sounded appalled at the idea of speaking to the Tinkers, much less eating or sleeping with them. Faile's hand tightened on his leg as she refused, quietly, firmly. The two Maidens frowned at each other, blue eyes meeting gray with a deep measure of concern, but before the Traveling People's wagons came much closer, they trotted away after Gaul. They seemed to have recovered some of their spirits, though. Perrin heard Chiad suggesting they induce Gaul to play some game called Maidens' Kiss. They were both laughing as they passed out of his earshot.

Men and women were working in the camp, sewing, mending harness, cooking, washing clothes and children, levering a wagon up to replace a wheel. Other children ran playing, or danced to the tunes of half a dozen men playing fiddle or flute. From oldest to youngest, the Tinkers wore clothes even more colorful than their wagons, in eye-wrenching combinations that had to have been chosen blindly. No sane man would have worn anything near those hues, and not many women.

As the ragtag party approached the wagons, silence fell, people stopping where they were to watch with worried expressions, women clutching infants and children running to hide behind adults, peering around a leg or hiding their faces in skirts. A wiry man, gray-haired and short, stepped forward and bowed gravely, both hands pressed to his chest. He wore a bright blue, high-collared coat and baggy trousers of a green that almost seemed to glow tucked into kneeboots. "You are welcome to our fires. Do you know the song?"

For a moment, trying not to hunch around the arrow in him, Perrin could only stare. He knew this man, the Mahdi, or Seeker, of this band. What chance? he wondered. Of all the Tinkers in the world, what chance it should be folk I know? Coincidences made him uneasy; when the Pattern produced coincidence, the Wheel seemed to be forcing events. I'm beginning to sound like a bloody Aes Sedai. He could not manage the bow, but he remembered the ritual. "Your welcome warms my spirit, Raen, as your fires warm the flesh, but I do not know the song." Faile and Ihvon gave him startled looks, but no more than did the Two Rivers men. Judging by the mutters he heard from Ban and Tell and others, he had just given them something else to talk about.

"Then we seek still," the wiry man intoned. "As it was, so shall it be, if we but remember, seek, and find." Grimacing, he surveyed the bloody faces confronting him, his eyes flinching away from the weapons. The Traveling People would not touch anything they considered a weapon, "You are welcome to our fires. There will be hot water, and bandages and poultices. You know my name," he added, looking at Perrin searchingly. "Of course. Your eyes."

Raen's wife had come to his side as he spoke, a plump woman, gray-haired but smooth-cheeked, a head taller than her husband. Her red blouse and bright yellow skirt and green-fringed shawl jarred the eye, but she had a motherly manner. "Perrin Aybara!" she said. "I thought I knew your face. Is Elyas with you?"

Perrin shook his head. "I have not seen him in a long time, Ila."

"He leads a life of violence," Raen said sadly. "As you do. A violent life is stained even if long."

"Do not try to bring him to the Way of the Leaf standing here, Raen," Ila said briskly, but not unkindly. "He is hurt. They all are."

"What am I thinking of?" Raen muttered. Raising his voice, he called, "Come, people. Come and help. They are hurt. Come and help."

Men and women gathered quickly, murmuring their sympathy as they helped injured men down from their horses, guiding men toward their wagons, carrying them when necessary. Wil and a few of the others looked concerned over being separated, but Perrin was not. Violence was the farthest thing from the Tuatha'an. They would not raise a hand against anyone, even to defend their own lives.

Perrin found he had to accept Ihvon's assistance to dismount. Climbing down sent jolts of pain radiating out from his side. "Raen," he said, a touch breathless, "you shouldn't be out here. We fought Trollocs not five miles from this spot. Take your people to Emond's Field. They will be safe there."

Raen hesitated - and seemed surprised at it - before shaking his head. "Even if I wished to, the people would not want it, Perrin. We try not to camp very close to even the smallest village, and not only because the villagers may falsely accuse us of stealing whatever they have lost or of trying to convince their children to find the Way. Where men have built ten houses together, there is the potential for violence. Since the Breaking the Tuatha'an have known this. Safety lies in our wagons, and in always moving, always seeking the song." A plaintive expression came over his face. "Everywhere we hear news of violence, Perrin. Not just here in your Two Rivers. There is a feel in the world of change, of destruction. Surely we must find the song soon. Else I do not believe it will ever be."

"You will find the song," Perrin said quietly. Maybe they abhorred violence too much for a ta'veren to overcome; maybe even a ta'veren could not fight the Way of the Leaf. It had seemed attractive to him once, too. "I truly hope that you will."

"What will be, will be," Raen said. "All things die in their time. Perhaps even the song." Ila put a comforting arm around her husband, though her eyes were as troubled as his.

"Come," she said, trying to hide her ill ease, "we must get you inside. Men will talk if their coats are afire." To Faile, she said, "You are quite beautiful; child. Perhaps you should beware of Perrin. I never see him but in the company of beautiful girls." Faile gave Perrin a flat, considering look, then tried to gloss it over quickly.

He made it as far as Raen's wagon - yellow trimmed in red, with red and yellow spokes in tall, red-rimmed wheels, and red and yellow trunks lashed to the outside, standing beside a cook fire in the middle of the camp - but when he put his foot on the first of the wooden steps at the back, his knees gave way. Ihvon and Raen more than half-carried him inside, followed hurriedly by Faile and Ila, and laid him on the bed built into the front of the wagon, with just room to get by to the sliding door leading to the driver's seat.

It truly was like a little house, even to pale pink curtains at the two small windows on either side. He lay there staring at the ceiling. Here, too, the Tinkers made use of their colors; the ceiling was lacquered sky blue, the high cabinets green and yellow. Faile unfastened his belt and took away his axe and quiver while Ila rummaged in one of the cabinets. Perrin could not seem to rouse any interest in what they were doing.

"Anyone can be surprised," Ihvon said. "Learn from it, but do not take it too much to heart. Not even Artur Hawkwing won every battle."

"Artur Hawkwing." Perrin tried to laugh, but it turned into a groan. "Yes," he managed. "I am certainly not Artur Hawkwing, am I?"

Ila frowned at the Warder - or at his sword, rather; she seemed to find that even worse than Perrin's axe - and came to the bed with a wad of folded bandages. Once she had pulled Perrin's shirt away from the arrow stub, she winced. "I do not think I am competent to remove this. It is bedded deep."

"Barbed," Ihvon said in a conversational tone. "Trollocs do not use bows very often, but when they do the arrows are barbed."

"Out," the plump woman said firmly, rounding on him. "And you as well, Raen. Tending the sick is no business of men. Why don't you go see if Moshea has that wheel on his wagon yet?"

"A good idea," Raen said. "We may want to move tomorrow. There has been hard traveling this last year," he confided to Perrin. "All the way to Cairhien, then back again to Ghealdan, then up into Andor. Tomorrow, I think."

When the red door shut behind him and Ihvon, Ila turned to Faile worriedly. "If it is barbed, I do not think I can remove it at all. I will try if I must, but if there is anyone nearby who knows more of such things..."

"There is someone in Emond's Field," Faile assured her. "But is it safe to leave it in him until tomorrow?"

"Safer than me cutting, perhaps. I can mix something for him to drink for the pain, and blend a poultice against infection."

Glaring at the two women, Perrin said, "Hello? Do you remember me? I am right here. Stop trying to talk over my head."

They looked at him for a moment.

"Keep him still," Ila told Faile. "It is all right to let him talk, but do not allow him to move about. He may injure himself more."

"I will see to it," Faile replied.

Perrin gritted his teeth and did his best to help in getting his coat and shirt off, but they had to do most of the work. He felt as weak as the worst wrought iron, ready to bend to any pressure. Four inches of thumb-thick arrow stuck out almost atop his last rib, rising from a puckered gash thick with dried blood. They pushed his head down on a pillow, for some reason not wanting him to look at it. Faile washed the wound while Ila prepared her salve with a stone mortar and pestle - plain smooth gray stone, the first things he had seen in the Tinker camp that were not brightly colored. They mounded the salve around the arrow and wrapped him with bandages to hold it.

"Raen and I will sleep beneath the wagon tonight," the Tuatha'an woman said at last, wiping her hands. Frowning at the arrow stub sticking up from his bandages, she shook her head. "Once I thought he might eventually find the Way of the Leaf. He was a gentle boy, I think."

"The Way of the Leaf is not for everyone," Faile said gently, but Ila shook her head again.

"It is for everyone," she replied just as gently, and a touch sadly, "if they only knew it."

She left then, and Faile sat on the edge of the bed blotting his face with a folded cloth. He seemed to be sweating a great deal for some reason.

"I blundered," he said after a time. "No, that is too soft. I don't know the right word."

"You did not blunder," she said firmly. "You did what seemed fitting at the time. It was fitting; I cannot imagine how they got behind us. Gaul is not one to make a mistake about where his enemies are. Ihvon was right, Perrin. Anyone can find circumstances that have changed when he did not know. You held everyone together. You brought us out."

He shook his head hard and made his side hurt worse. "Ihvon brought us out. What I did was get twenty-seven men killed," he said bitterly, trying to sit up to face her. "Some of them were my friends, Faile. And I got them killed."

Faile threw her weight on his shoulders to push him back down. It was a measure of his weakness, how easily she held him. "There will be time enough for that in the morning," she said firmly, peering down into his face, "when we have to put you back on your horse. Ihvon did not bring us out; I do not think he cared particularly if anyone but you and he did get out. Those men would have scattered in every direction if not for you, and then we'd all have been hunted down. They would not have held together for Ihvon, a stranger. As for your friends -" Sighing, she sat back down again. "Perrin, my father says a general can take care of the living or weep for the dead, but he cannot do both."

"I am not a general, Faile. I am a fool of a blacksmith who thought he could use other people to help him get justice, or maybe revenge. I still want it, but I don't want to use anyone else for it any longer."

"Do you think the Trollocs will go away because you decide your motives are not pure enough?" The heat in her voice made him raise his head, but she pushed it back to the pillow almost roughly. "Are they any less vile? Do you need a purer reason to fight them than what they are? Another thing my father says. The worst sin a general can commit, worse than blundering, worse than losing, worse than anything, is to desert the men who depend on him."

A tap came at the door, and a slender, handsome young Tinker in a red-and-green striped coat put his head in. He flashed a smile at Faile, all white teeth and oozing charm, before looking at Perrin. "Grandfather said it was you. I thought this was where Egwene said she came from." He frowned suddenly, disapprovingly. "Your eyes. I see you have followed Elyas after all, to run with the wolves. I was sure you would never find the Way of the Leaf."

Perrin knew him; Aram, Raen and Ila's grandson. He did not like him; he smiled like Wil "Go away, Aram. I am tired."

"Is Egwene with you?"

"Egwene's Aes Sedai now, Aram," he growled, "and she would rip your heart out with the One Power if you asked her to dance. Go away!"

Aram blinked, and hastily shut the door. With himself outside.

Perrin let his head fall back. "He smiles too much," he muttered. "I cannot abide a man who smiles too much." Faile made a choking noise, and he looked at her suspiciously. She was biting her underlip.

"I have something in my throat," she said in a strangled voice, getting up hastily. She hurried to the wide shelf below the foot of the bed where Ila had prepared her poultice and stood with her back to him, pouring water from a green-and-red pitcher into a blue-and-yellow mug. "Would you like something to drink, too? Ila left this powder, for the pain. It will help you sleep."

"I don't want any powder," he said. "Faile, who is your father?"

Her back went very stiff. After a moment she turned with the mug in both hands and an unreadable look in her tilted eyes. Another minute passed before she said, "My father is Davram of House Bashere, Lord of Bashere, Tyr and Sidona, Guardian of the Blightborder, Defender of the Heartland, Marshal-General to Queen Tenobia of Saldaea. And her uncle."

"Light! What was all that about him being a wood merchant, or a fur dealer? I seem to remember him dealing in ice peppers once, too."

"It was not a lie," she said sharply, then in a weaker voice, "Just not... the whole truth. My father's estates do produce lumber and fine woods, and ice peppers, and furs, and more besides. And his stewards sell them for him, so he does trade in them. In a way."

"Why couldn't you just tell me? Hiding things. Lying. You're a lady!" He frowned at her accusingly. He had not expected this. A small merchant for a father, a former soldier, maybe, but not this. "Light, what are you doing running around as a Hunter of the Horn? Don't tell me the Lord of Bashere and all that just sent you off to find adventure."

Still holding the cup, she came back to sit beside him. For some reason she seemed very intent on his face. "My two older brothers died, Perrin, one fighting Trollocs, the other in a fall from his horse hunting. That made me the eldest, and it meant I had to study account books and trading. While my younger brothers learned to be soldiers, while they were being readied for adventures, I had to learn how to manage the estates! It is the eldest's duty. Duty! It is dull, dry and boring. Buried in paper and clerks.

"When Father took Maedin with him to the Blightborder - he's two years younger than I - that was more than I could stand. Girls are not taught the sword, or war, in Saldaea, but father had named an old soldier from his first command as my footman, and Eran was always more than happy to teach me to use knives and fight with my hands. I think it amused him. In any case, when Father took Maedin with him, the news had arrived calling the Great Hunt of the Horn, so I... left. I wrote Mother a letter explaining, and I... left. And I reached Illian in time to take the oath of a Hunter..." Picking up the cloth, she patted at the sweat on his face again. "You really should sleep if you can."

"I suppose you are the Lady Bashere or some such?" he said. "How did you ever come to like a common blacksmith?"

"The word is 'love,' Perrin Aybara." The firmness of her voice was at sharp odds with the gentle way that the cloth moved on his face. "And you are not such a common blacksmith, I think." The cloth paused. "Perrin, what did that fellow mean about running with wolves? Raen mentioned this Elyas, too."

For a moment he was frozen, unbreathing. Yet he had just berated her for keeping secrets from him. It was what he got for being hasty and angry. Swing a hammer in haste, and you usually hit your own thumb. He exhaled slowly, and told her. How he had met Elyas Machera and learned he could talk to wolves. How his eyes had changed color, grown sharper, and his hearing and his sense of smell, like a wolf's. About the wolf dream. About what would happen to him, if he ever lost his hold on humanity. "It's so easy. Sometimes, especially in the dream, I forget I'm a man, not a wolf. If one of these times I don't remember quickly enough, if I lose hold, I'll be a wolf. In my head, at least. A sort of half-wrong image of a wolf. There won't be anything of me left." He stopped, waiting for her to flinch, to move away.

"If your ears are really that sharp," she said calmly, "I will have to watch what I say close to you."

He caught her hand to stop her patting. "Did you hear anything I said? What will your father and mother think, Faile? A half-wolf blacksmith. You're a lady! Light!"

"I heard every word. Father will approve. He has always said our family blood is growing too soft; not like it was in the old days. I know he thinks I am terribly soft." She gave him a smile fierce enough for any wolf. "Of course, Mother always wanted me to marry a king who splits Trollocs in two with one stroke of his sword. I suppose your axe will suffice, but could you tell her you are the king of the wolves? I don't think anyone will come forward to dispute your claim to that throne. In truth, the splitting of Trollocs will probably do for Mother, but I truly think she would like the other."

"Light!" he said hoarsely. She sounded almost serious. No, she did sound serious. If she was even half serious, he was not sure the Trollocs might not be better than meeting her parents.

"Here," she said, holding the mug of water to his lips. "You sound as though your throat is dry."

Swallowing, he spluttered at the bitter taste. She had stirred in Ila's powder! He tried to stop, but she filled his mouth, and it was a matter of swallow or choke. By the time he could push the mug away, she had emptied half of it into him. Why did medicine always taste so vile? He suspected women did it on purpose. He would have bet that whatever they took for themselves did not taste that way. "I told you I did not want any of that. Gaaah!"

"Did you? I must not have heard. But whether you did or not, you need sleep." She stroked his curly hair. "Sleep, my Perrin."

He tried to tell her he had indeed told her so, and she had heard it, but the words seemed to tangle around his tongue. His eyes wanted to slide shut. In fact, he could not keep them open. The last thing he heard was her soft murmurs.

"Sleep, my wolf king. Sleep."