Chapter 3

Perrin emerges from the cracked mountainside into a camp marked by toppled trees, a shifted boulder, and a collapsed hut, evidence of Rand’s earlier loss of control. He avoids Moiraine’s knowing gaze and finds Min struggling with stew, bruised and angry at being jostled. Perrin urges Min to leave for safety, but she refuses, reflecting on fate and unexpected love, then pointedly asks whether Perrin longs for home.

Moiraine joins them, composed and precise, and reports that Leya split her scalp during the tremors but has been Healed. Min, troubled, admits she saw Leya’s bloody death and fears being wrong for the first time; Moiraine suggests the vision may yet come to pass on Leya’s journey back. Perrin recoils at Moiraine’s detached fatalism but says nothing.

Lan, Uno, and Loial arrive. Moiraine relays Leya’s broader news: chaos on Almoth Plain, Hunters seeking the Horn, and an unusual Whitecloak deployment of about five thousand. Strangely, the Children proclaim peacekeeping and avoid confronting Dragonsworn in parties larger than fifty, allowing them to slip away. Lan suspects a Whitecloak plot; Moiraine cautions against assuming safety as Taraboners and Domani still kill Dragonsworn.

Moiraine adds a darker report: three tall, light-eyed young men have been murdered—one poisoned, two knifed—by killers who approached unseen. Lan names the Soulless, terrifying assassins who go unnoticed until too late. The camp grows uneasy. Moiraine refuses lethal wards but sets concealment, arguing hiding is wisest and that dual wardings are impossible. She keeps Lan in camp, sensing a night of waiting, and orders heightened vigilance.

As darkness deepens, Perrin arranges his watch, unsettled by the news and Moiraine’s calm. He withdraws to his hut, lays out his weapons, and, shivering against the cold to avoid deep sleep and its dreams, finally drifts off as an ominous sense of waiting hangs over the camp.