Free The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan

isn’t a shadow for a Myrddraal to hide in. It could not happen.”
    “Walls don’t stop a Fade,” Mat muttered. “Not when it wants to come in. I don’t know as laws and lamps will do any better.” He did not sound like someone who had half thought Fades were only gleemen’s tales less than half a year before. He had seen too much, too.
    “And there was the wind,” Rand added. His voice hardly shook as he told what had happened on the tower top. Perrin’s fists tightened until his knuckles cracked. “I just want to leave here,” Rand finished. “I want to go south. Somewhere away. Just somewhere away.”
    “But if the gates are barred,” Mat said, “how do we get out?”
    Rand stared at him. “We?” He had to go alone. It would be dangerous for anyone near him, eventually. He would be dangerous, and even Moiraine could not tell him how long he had. “Mat, you know you have to go to Tar Valon with Moiraine. She said that’s the only place you can be separated from that bloody dagger without dying. And you know what will happen if you keep it.”
    Mat touched his coat over the dagger, not seeming to realize what he was doing. “ ‘An Aes Sedai’s gift is bait for a fish,’ ” he quoted. “Well, maybe I don’t want to put the hook in my mouth. Maybe whatever she wants to do in Tar Valon is worse than if I don’t go at all. Maybe she’s lying. ‘The truth an Aes Sedai tells is never the truth you think it is.’ ”
    “You have any more old sayings you want to rid yourself of?” Rand asked. “ ‘A south wind brings a warm guest, a north wind an empty house’? ‘A pig painted gold is still a pig’? What about, ‘talk shears no sheep’? ‘A fool’s words are dust’?”
    “Easy, Rand,” Perrin said softly. “There is no need to be so rough.”
    “Isn’t there? Maybe I don’t want you two going with me, always hanging around, falling into trouble and expecting me to pull you out. You ever think of that? Burn me, did it ever occur to you I might be tired of always having you there whenever I turn around? Always there, and I’m tired of it.” The hurt on Perrin’s face cut him like a knife, but he pushed on relentlessly. “There are some here think I’m a lord. A lord. Maybe I like that. But look at you, dicing with stablehands. When I go, I go by myself. You two can go to Tar Valon or go hang yourselves, but I leave here alone.”
    Mat’s face had gone stiff, and he clutched the dagger through his coat till his knuckles were white. “If that is how you want it,” he said coldly. “I thought we were. . . . However you want it, al’Thor. But if I decide to leave at the same time you do, I’ll go, and you can stand clear of me.”
    “Nobody is going anywhere,” Perrin said, “if the gates are barred.” He was staring at the floor again. Laughter rolled from the gamblers against the wall as someone lost.
    “Go or stay,” Loial said, “together or apart, it doesn’t matter. You are all three ta’veren. Even I can see it, and I don’t have that Talent, just by what happens around you. And Moiraine Sedai says it, too.”
    Mat threw up his hands. “No more, Loial. I don’t want to hear about that anymore.”
    Loial shook his head. “Whether you hear it or not, it is still true. The Wheel of Time weaves the Pattern of the Age, using the lives of men for thread. And you three are ta’veren , centerpoints of the weaving.”
    “No more, Loial.”
    “For a time, the Wheel will bend the Pattern around you three, whatever you do. And whatever you do is more likely to be chosen by the Wheel than by you. Ta’veren pull history along behind them and shape the Pattern just by being, but the Wheel weaves ta’veren on a tighter line than other men. Wherever you go and whatever you do, until the Wheel chooses otherwise you will—”
    “No more!” Mat shouted. The men dicing looked around, and he glared at them until they bent back to their game.
    “I am sorry, Mat,”