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

by Robert Jordan

“Min, maybe you had better go. First thing in the morning. I have some silver I can let you have, and I’m sure Moiraine would give you enough to take passage with a merchant’s train out of Ghealdan. You could be back in Baerlon before you know it.” She looked at him until he began to wonder if he had said something wrong. Finally, she said, “That is very sweet of you, Perrin. But, no.” “I thought you wanted to go. You’re always carrying on about having to stay here.” “I knew an old Illianer woman; once,” she said slowly. “When she was young, her mother arranged a marriage for her with a man she had never even met. They do that down in Illian, sometimes. She said she spent the first five years raging against him, and the next five scheming to make his life miserable without his knowing who was to blame. It was only years later, she said, when he died, that she realized he really had been the love of her life.” “I don’t see what that has to do with this.” Her look said he obviously was not trying to understand, and her voice became overly patient. “Just because fate has chosen something for you instead of you choosing it for yourself doesn’t mean it has to be bad. Even if it’s something you are sure you would never have chosen in a hundred years. ‘Better ten days of love than years of regretting,’ ” she quoted. “I understand that even less,” he told her. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.” She hung the spoon on a tall forked stick stuck in the ground, then surpris...