The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time, #3)

by Robert Jordan

Back when she had been sure she could trust Anaiya, back before she had left the Tower, before she learned the reality of the Black Ajah, a little cautious questioning of the Aes Sedai—done, oh, so carefully, so Anaiya would think it no more than the curiosity she showed about other things—had revealed that a Dreamer’s dreams about ta’veren were almost always significant, and the more strongly ta’veren, the more “almost always” became “certainly.”

But Mat and Perrin were ta’veren, too, and she had also dreamed of them. Odd dreams, even more difficult to understand than the dreams of Rand. Perrin with a falcon on his shoulder, and Perrin with a hawk. Only the hawk held a leash in her talons—Egwene was somehow convinced both hawk and falcon were female—and the hawk was trying to fasten it around Perrin’s neck.

Those about Mat had been even nastier. Mat, placing his own left eye on a balance scale. Mat, hanging by his neck from a tree limb. There had been a dream of Mat and Seanchan, too, but she was willing to dismiss that as a nightmare. It had to have been just a nightmare. Just like the one about Mat speaking the Old Tongue. That had to come from what she had heard during his Healing.

she had to learn if she was to get back at Moiraine; hating Moiraine for what she had done to Egwene and the other Emond’s Fielders, pulling their lives apart and manipulating them all for Aes Sedai purposes, was nearly all that kept her going.

“I sent no message, Daughter. The things Liandrin and the others left were searched thoroughly, and burned after nothing was found. No one would use Black Ajah leavings. As for Else Grinwell. . . . I remember the girl. She could have learned, had she applied herself, but all she wanted was to smile at the men at the Warders’ practice yard. Else Grinwell was put on a trading vessel and sent back to her mother ten days ago.”

It's a trap!

With Callandor in your hands, child, you could level a city at one blow. If you die keeping that out of the Black Ajah’s hands—you, and Egwene, and Elayne, all three—you’ll have done a service to the whole world, and cheap at the price.”

The Amyrlin’s murmur was bitter with memory. “Yet they hold one of the most powerful focuses of the Power the world has ever seen, inside their precious Stone. It is my belief that is why they have collected so many ter’angreal—and indeed, anything to do with the Power—over the years, as if by doing so they can diminish the existence of the thing they cannot rid themselves of, the thing that reminds them of their own doom every time they enter the Heart of the Stone. Their fortress that has broken a hundred armies will fall as one of the signs the Dragon is Reborn. Not even the only sign; just one.

He had always won more than he lost, as far as he could remember, and there had been times with Hurin, and in Shienar, when six or eight tosses in a row won for him. Tonight, every toss won. Every toss.

“No street thieves or strong-arms in Tar Valon, either, boy. When the guards take a footpad—not that many try that game here; the word spreads—but when they do, they haul him to the Tower, and whatever it is the Aes Sedai do to him, the fellow leaves Tar Valon the next day as wide-eyed as a goosed girl. I understand they’re even harder on women caught thieving. No, the only way you’ll have your money stolen here is somebody selling you polished brass for gold or using shaved dice. There are no footpads.”

Greymen everywhere

Not her. Shadowspawn with her face. Least of them all would Min hurt me. He could not understand why he thought that, but he was sure it was true.

And with the sword would come Selene. Callandor. That was always in his dreams. Always. And taunting faces. Hands, pushing Egwene, and Nynaeve, and Elayne into cages, snaring them in nets, hurting them. Why should he weep more for Elayne than for the other two?

“The Creator is good, Perrin. The Father of Lies is evil. The Pattern of Age, the Age Lace itself, is neither. The Pattern is what is. The Wheel of Time weaves all lives into the Pattern, all actions. A pattern that is all one color is no pattern. For the Pattern of an Age, good and ill are the warp and the woof.”

“Tear?” The Aiel sounded surprised. “Why . . . ? But it must be. Prophecy says when the Stone of Tear falls, we will leave the Three-fold Land at last.” That was the Aiel name for the Waste. “It says we will be changed, and find again what was ours, and was lost.”

“Farmboy! Perhaps I will call myself Faile. My father used to call me that, when I was little. It means ‘falcon.’ ” He stiffened and almost missed the first step of the ladder. Coincidence.

Min's prophecy for Perrin

suddenly there was a woman with him, clad all in white and silver. Shock hit Perrin. He could never forget a woman so beautiful. She was the woman from his dream, the one who had urged him to glory. An ornate silver throne appeared behind her, and she sat, carefully arranging her silken skirts. “You make free use of my domain,” she said.

Selena is darkfriend

“I serve,” she said quickly. “I have served the Lord of the Twilight long. Long did I lie imprisoned for my service, in an endless, dreamless sleep. Only Gray Men and Myrddraal are denied dreams. Even Trollocs can dream. Dreams were always mine, to use and walk. Now I am free again, and I will use what is mine.” “What is yours,” Ba’alzamon said. The blackness swirling ’round him seemed mirthful. “You always thought yourself greater than you were, Lanfear.”

Selena is Lanfear

sword, could hardly make out that it was him at all. Rand threatened in a dozen ways, none of them the least bit real. In one dream he had been on a huge stones board, the black and white stones as big as boulders, and him dodging the monstrous hands that moved them and seemed to try to crush him under them. It could have meant something. It very probably did, but beyond the fact that Rand was in danger from someone, or two someones—she thought that much was clear—beyond that, she simply did not know.

She had dreamed of Perrin with a wolf, and with a falcon, and a hawk—and the falcon and the hawk fighting—of Perrin running from someone deadly, and Perrin stepping willingly over the edge of a towering cliff while saying, “It must be done. I must learn to fly before I reach the bottom.” There had been one dream of an Aiel, and she thought that had to do with Perrin, too, but she was not sure. And a dream of Min, springing a steel trap but somehow walking through it without so much as seeing it.

There had been dreams of Mat, too. Of Mat with dice spinning ’round him—she felt she knew where that one came from—of Mat being followed by a man who was not there—she still did not understand that; there was a man following, or maybe more than one, but in some way there was no one there—of Mat riding desperately toward something unseen in the distance that he had to reach, and Mat with a woman who seemed to be tossing fireworks about. An Illuminator, she assumed, but that made no more sense than anything else.

“Except that now the Wise Ones say he is to be found here, beyond the Dragonwall. ‘Blood of our blood mixed with the old blood, raised by an ancient blood not ours.’ I do not understand it, but the Wise Ones spoke in such a way as to leave no doubts.”

“It does not sound like Morgase,” Thom said after a time, half to himself. His bushy eyebrows were pulled down like a white arrow pointing to his nose. “What does not sound like her?” Mat asked absently. “Stopping the crossings. Sending people back. She always had a temper like lightning, but she always had a soft heart, too, for anyone poor or hungry.” He shook his head.

Darkfriend replaced her?

“Why did they want to kill you?” Mat asked. “He said something about secrets.” “The secrets,” Thom said in very nearly his performing voice, “of making fireworks, unless I miss my guess. You are an Illuminator, are you not?”

Just like Egwene's dream about Mat

“I was an Illuminator,” Aludra said stiffly, “but this great pig Tammuz, he ruined a performance for the King of Cairhien, and nearly he destroyed the chapter house, too. But me, I was Mistress of the Chapter House, so it was me that the Guild held responsible.”

Has to be from book one or two when Rand blew it all up

“It seems you have found Min’s falcon, ta’veren. I have tried to discourage her, but it appears she will perch on your shoulder whatever I do. The Pattern weaves a future for you, it seems. Yet remember this. If I must, I will snip your thread from the Pattern. And if the girl endangers what must be, you will share her fate.”

Egwene and Nynaeve and Elayne stood looking at a huge metal cage, with a raised door held on a heavy spring. They stepped in and reached up together to loose the catch. The barred door snapped down behind them. A woman with her hair all in braids laughed at them, and another woman all in white laughed at her.

Before he could find words, the door crashed back against the wall, and Moiraine stood in the doorway, her face as pale and grim as death. “Your wolf dreams tell as truly as a Dreamer’s, Perrin. The Forsaken are loose, and one of them rules in Illian.”

“Morgase has a new advisor,” Thom said in a dry voice. “Gareth Bryne did not like him, so Bryne has been retired to his estate to watch his sheep grow wool.

Forsaken one

“Are there none but fools in the world, now?” the deep voice said harshly. “Do you think I could move in Tear without him knowing? I do not mean to fight him, not now, not yet. Bring me the girl’s head, Comar. Bring me all three heads, or you will pray for me to take yours!” “Yes, Great Master. It shall be as you say. Yes. Yes.”

Seems the forsaken ones compete

Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this. Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.

“It’s the luck,” Mat mumbled. “I’ve figured it out. The dice. My luck works best when things are . . . random. Like dice. Not much good for cards. No good at stones. Too much pattern. It has to be random. Even finding Comar. I’d stopped visiting every inn. I walked into that one by chance. Thom, if I am going to find Egwene and the others in time, I have to look without any pattern.”

“One of the Forsaken is in Tear. The High Lord Samon is Be’lal.” Perrin shivered.

“Even the Forsaken cannot stand up to balefire,” she said.

In A Study of the War of the Shadow, Moilin daughter of Hamada daughter of Juendan called Be’lal the Netweaver, but I do not know why. She mentioned him playing a game of stones with Lews Therin and winning, and that he always boasted of it.”

Perrin peered up at Loial’s face, and suddenly remembered the old stories that claimed Ogier were implacable enemies. Loial’s ears had laid back along the sides of his head, and his broad face was as hard as an anvil. “Loial, I am going to try to help Faile. But I will be helpless myself while I do. Will you guard my back?” Loial raised those huge hands that held books so carefully, and his thick fingers curled as if to crush stone. “None will pass me while I live, Perrin. Not Myrddraal or the Dark One himself.” He said it like a simple statement of fact.

Love protective Loial

He looked down at his curly-haired legs, his wide paws. He was an even larger wolf than Hopper. You are here too strongly! Every sending carried shock. You will die, Young Bull! If I do not free the falcon, I do not care, brother. Then we hunt, brother. Noses to the wind, the two wolves ran across the plain, seeking the falcon.

So money

I have done it, he thought. I have killed Ba’alzamon, killed Shai’tan! I have won the Last Battle! Light, I AM the Dragon Reborn! The breaker of nations, the Breaker of the World. No! I will END the breaking, end the killing! I will MAKE it end!

He pushed back the sleeves of his coat and shirt together to reveal his left forearm, the skin much paler than that of his hands and face. Etched into the skin as if part of it, wrapped twice around, marched the same gold-and-scarlet form as rippled on the banner above the Stone. The Aiel let his sleeve fall with a sigh. “It is a name not spoken except among the clan chiefs and the Wise Ones. We are. . . .” He cleared his throat again, unable to say it here. “The Aiel are the People of the Dragon.” Moiraine spoke quietly,

Verin showed me a page from an old book that mentioned Ba’alzamon and Ishamael together. It was almost High Chant and very nearly incomprehensible, but I remember something about ‘a name hidden behind a name.’ Maybe Ba’alzamon was Ishamael.” “Perhaps,” Moiraine said. “Perhaps it was Ishamael. But if it was, at least nine of the thirteen still live.

One of the tall, paired doors pushed open while he was trying to think of something to say, and a tall young woman of regal bearing entered the room, wearing a coronet with a golden hawk in flight above her brows.

“I am Berelain, First of Mayene.”

Perrin's Hawk

“The Dragon! Al’Thor! The Dragon! Al’Thor! The Dragon! Al’Thor! The Dragon!” And it was written that no hand but his should wield the Sword held in the Stone, but he did draw it out, like fire in his hand, and his glory did burn the world. Thus did it begin. Thus do we sing his Rebirth. Thus do we sing the beginning. —from Do’in Toldara te, Songs of the Last Age, Quarto Nine: The Legend of the Dragon. Composed by Boanne, Songmistress at Taralan, the Fourth Age.