There is a saying in Shienar: duty is heavier than a mountain. My father used to tell me that even a grown man is little more than a mewling infant until he knows what that saying means, what it truly means.

I wish I didn't know what it means.

* * *

Retrospectively, I can honestly say that I had no idea what I was getting into.

It was not yet dawn when Kristal came to me. I awoke with a start at a light touch on my shoulder and sat up, squinting in the darkness. My hand instinctively reached for the dagger I always keep nearby when I sleep. It is an unnecessary nervous habit here in the Tower, one that some of the other trainees sneer at, but when one grows up in Fal Dara, one learns soon enough that even the most foolish habits can sometimes save your life. Living a soft life in Tar Valon may have changed me, but not that much. Never that much.

While having a woman wake me up in the middle of the night would not have been such a great surprise to me once upon a time in Shienar, it certainly hasn't happened here in the White Tower. Even if a Tower girl fancied me that much, it would take a brave individual indeed to defy the curfew and sneak into the barracks at night. That sort of thing just does not happen here, and the punishments for misconduct are severe enough to discourage even casual interest. For a moment, I was disoriented, utterly confused. And then she spoke to me.

"Quiet. Do not wake the other Manshima", I heard Kristal's familiar voice, soft as a feather in the darkness. She was kneeling by my bunk, right next to me. I stopped searching for my weapon immediately and shook my head instead to wake up. After more than five years in the Tower and far past the rookie phase, I'm no longer accustomed to being shaken awake by anyone in the small hours of morning, so this had better be important. In the next instant, I realised how stupid that thought was. I had no idea how, or why, my aunt had sneaked into the Manshima barracks in the middle of the night, but she would never have done anything of the kind unless it was a matter of life and death. Something so urgent it could not wait until morning.

A horrible fear hit me. "Is it father? Mother? The girls?" I whispered frantically, not caring if she heard that I was panicking. Between one heartbeat and the next, I was suddenly as awake as could be. Had something happened to my parents or sisters? My mother had never been very strong, what if she had been taken by fever? Had my father fallen in battle? Had there been a trolloc raid to Fal Dara? Had something happened to Silvana or Kristina? A thousand terrible possibilities bombarded me until I was all but paralysed by my own fears.

"No. It is… it is my Warder. Something has happened to Harken. And I am leaving", she spoke quietly, her voice almost inaudible. A wave of relief that my family was safe broke over me, but as the fear left me I realised that everything was not well with my aunt. There was a strange, breathless twist in her voice. If I hadn't known better, I would have said that she sounded afraid.

Now, my aunt is never afraid. I have known her all my life, and I have never seen her back away from danger. She has fought Shadowspawn in the Blight, saved my father from certain death in the hands of trollocs. She holds my father and, let's face it, my sisters and me and anyone she has ever taken a shine to in an iron grip of love. She may be small and look fragile, but I know that woman to be harder than steel when she needs to be. And that is the very reason why her words made me go cold all over.

Harken. There was something wrong with Harken, that much I had grasped. I knew my aunt's Wolfkin Warder, of course. The first time I ever saw him, I was a child and he was a Manshima like I am now, accompanying my aunt on that very same rescue mission that nearly ended with my father in a trolloc cooking pot. I don't think Harken would remember that meeting. I was barely nine years old at the time, after all, and there wasn't much leisure to exchange any pleasantries as my father's life was at stake. I remember that he ruffled my hair and complimented my manners, though. His eyes scared the living daylights out of me the first time I saw them gleam golden in the shadows, but after that first scare I quickly came to realise that his strange eyes did not negate the fact that he was a kind, decent, sophisticated man who was already utterly devoted to my aunt even though he wasn't her Warder yet. The matter must have been in the air, however, because I learned years afterwards that they bonded right after returning to Tar Valon from that journey. As I understand it, the two of them had been friends since Kristal's novice days, and I remember there was already a kind of familiarity in the way they worked together, talked to each other, moved as one. I remember he never let her out of his sight, not for one moment. He must have known my aunt extremely well to have had the sense to keep sharp watch over her.

When I came to the Tower to train some ten years later, I sought Harken's company right away. He was a familiar face in the midst of strangers, and he knew so much. It was a great pity that he had to leave just a few months after my arrival to the Tower. I remember there being quite a lot of speculation about his leaving, mostly because aunt Kristal, who was the Mistress of Novices at the time, stayed in the Tower and Harken went off by himself. Some kind of a personal journey it was, I think, although I never learned the details. It had something to do with his family, or so I heard. Kristal never spoke a word to me about it and I knew better than to ask.

I hadn't heard anything from Harken since, and neither had anybody else until now, it seemed. I wondered if it was the Warder bond that had provided Kristal with this insight that he was in trouble. And some insight it must have been. It suddenly hit me that she had said she was leaving.

"Now wait just a moment", I said in astonishment, still struggling to clear the sleep from my eyes. "Leaving where? Surely this can wait until morning!"

"Hush, please do not shout. And no. It cannot wait. I do not have an instant to lose", she said and stood up abruptly. I could hear someone stirring in his sleep a little way off. People were going to start waking up if we kept talking much longer.

"Hold on. I'll get dressed. You are not going anywhere without some kind of an explanation", I told her. She hesitated for a moment but finally sighed and discreetly turned her back so I could get up and dress myself in some semblance of privacy. I pulled on the first pair of breeches and the first shirt I lay my hand on and followed Kristal outside on bare feet.

"Now please explain", I said. She looked me straight in the eyes, and if I had felt cold before, it was nothing compared to the chill the look on her face sent through me. Kristal wasn't afraid. She was terrified, all but paralysed with fear. I could almost smell the terror rolling off her in waves.

"There is nothing to explain. I do not know what has happened to him", she told me calmly as a true Aes Sedai, but her voice was crisp with anxiety. "I woke up screaming not half an hour ago. The bond is… Our bond is… He is…" She could not find words for whatever it was she was trying to say, and that scared me most of all. Kristal was never at a loss for words.

"He needs me desperately. I must leave at once. I want you to seek an audience with the Amyrlin Seat in the morning, Krion. Take my signet, it should get you to see the Keeper", she took the ring from her belt pouch and firmly pressed it into my hand. "Tell them that an emergency has come up and I had to leave. They will have to find someone else to be the Mistress of Novices at least temporarily. I have left a note addressed to my Sitter in my chambers; please make sure that it is delivered to Iris."

That was probably the moment when my life took a sudden turn for the worse. Later, I wondered on countless occasions what would have happened if I had told her that yes, I would do the things she was asking of me. Every time, however, such speculation has ended in exactly the same way. Things might have gone differently, had I been the obedient nephew, but somehow I don't think they would have turned out any better. I don't see any way they could have. Besides, the Shienaran code regarding family and duty doesn't leave much room for speculation. In my family, abandoning others to the mercy of their fate is not an option. I never really had any choice in the matter.

"You will have to ask someone else to do your explaining for you", I told her. "I'm coming with you."

There was some squabbling, of course. My aunt has never been one to give in easily, or change her plans just because someone disagrees with them. This time, however, she gave in so quickly that it frightened me even more. Perhaps she, too, understood that leaving the protection of the White Tower alone, upset and with no-one to watch her back was a very bad idea. I wasn't a Warder, but even a newly raised Manshima was another sharp pair of eyes on the dangerous road. Besides, I knew her. I was family. Shaken by fear and anxiety as she was, I still do not think Kristal would have allowed anyone but a family member to accompany her. This matter was too personal and too close to the heart, as I soon came to understand.

The sun still had not risen when my aunt and I rode over the bridge at a gallop and left Tar Valon behind without so much as a word to anyone. There wasn't time; Kristal was frantic to be on her way. Whatever she had written to her Sitter would just have to do.

"Kristal, where are we going?" I finally thought to ask her as we raced through the sleepy village of Alindaer and turned south towards Caemlyn.

"Ghealdan", she replied curtly. "I think Harken has gone wolf."

I wish I had understood what she meant.

* * *

I do not have much to say about the weeks that followed. It was a very quiet, uneventful, uneasy journey. I think both of us lived in a state of barely concealed terror from the moment the Shining Walls disappeared from sight. Whatever my opinion about Tower training, the place had come to signify a certain kind of sanctuary to me over the years, and leaving the protection of those walls to rush into something utterly unknown did not brighten my mood at all. I suppose I could have asked Kristal to tell me everything at that point, but she seemed too troubled for words, and I didn't want to push. It is very bad form to distract someone when they're thinking, besides, and I could tell that Kristal's head was just buzzing with thoughts. Fortunately, I have always valued silence over chatter and therefore didn't get overly concerned just because my aunt could go through several days preoccupied to the point of unresponsiveness, without saying a single word to me.

Oh, blast it. Of course I was concerned. I was bloody panicking. While it's one thing to say that I don't need to talk to be comfortable with people, the same doesn't apply to Kristal and never has. Peace, Aes Sedai she may be but she is still a woman and loves to gossip just like the rest of them. Kristal can chatter like a magpie when she's happy, I know this for a fact because whenever she'd come to visit with our family, her bright voice would be heard in the house non-stop until it was time to leave and, I've got to say this, several hours after that. I've always been of the opinion that once Kristal's voice sets up shop in someone's head, it has to be evicted with force or the echoes will never grow silent. It's that kind of a voice. Pretty, yes, but bloody persistent. Sometimes I wonder how it ever came to be that Harken, a quiet and pensive loner, ended up with my aunt, and how he tolerated her endless commentary so well. The things we do for those we love never cease to amaze me.

So yes, seeing her become monosyllabic overnight made me frantic with worry. Eventually I tried to break the silence, which, I admit, is very uncharacteristic for me but a fair indication of how concerned I was. I care a great deal for Kristal, and she is family, so I had to do something. However, my attempts to cheer her up and bring her back to the world of the living were a disaster. She'd just smile in a vague kind of way, pat my hand or my shoulder or whatever part of my anatomy she could reach, and tell me kindly but clearly to carry on. It was as if she didn't even see me!

So, as a consequence of my aunt not speaking to me, I spent most of the journey thinking. I suppose you could say that it was a great opportunity for personal reflection, but I have to say that weeks and weeks of thinking about the same bloody things gets tedious fairly quickly, even for someone like me. I did try to contemplate sophisticated questions of philosophy, the writings of famous poets and songwriters, but after a while my mind kept turning back to the same things that had been bothering me lately. The limitations of the human mind kept playing their bloody sarcastic joke on me over and over again, and I wasn't happy to realise that my life was revolving around two basic problems that had nothing whatsoever to do with a higher state of mind. Women being the first, and my training in the Tower the second.

I received a letter from Fal Moran, from my father's eldest sister, Aleisa, about a year ago. I was surprised to hear from her since we have never been that close, but when I read what she had to say, I understood instantly. She had written to tell me that her foster daughter, Saya, was dead. That Saya had died giving birth to her third son. That Saya's husband was devastated. That… she was sorry to have to tell her nephew this, but that she had thought Krion needed to know. That Krion would want to know.

The death of a loved one is always a terrible blow, but in some ways this was worse. Saya, raven-haired, blue-eyed Saya, had been so special to me. She, who was the first woman ever to take me to her bed, she whom I had loved with such scorching devotion that I thought I would die from it, she who had used to shake me awake in the middle of the night just because she wanted a kiss, had been so very special. At the age of seventeen I had been sure that I would marry her. The memory of the day when she told me that she cared about me but was going to accept an offer of marriage from another man still burns brightly in my head. My world came crashing down around me that day. Less than a year after that, I was on my way to the White Tower and Saya was the radiant bride of a bloody captain of the King's guard from Fal Moran. I thought I would choke on my jealousy. I wanted revenge, I wanted justice, I wanted someone to tell me I could still win her back. I considered myself unfairly exiled. I had Malkieri blood, for the Light's sake, I had prospects in Shienar and I had been wronged! I was furious at my parents for sending me away, when all I really wanted was to make Saya happy. It took me a long time to admit that she was happy, that the man she had chosen over me was better for her than I could ever have been.

It hurt, learning that she had died, but in some way it was also a relief. I hated myself for admitting it but could not deny the truth of it. In a way I had still been bound to Saya even though she had chosen another. Now that she was gone, I could perhaps find someone else to fill the void she had created in my heart.

Which brought me straight to another problem. During the past few months, I had started to develop certain troublesome feelings for someone who was not only blissfully unaware of them but would also have bitten my head off, had she known about them. Or so I suspected. Merietta el'Andel, an Accepted of the White Tower, was not exactly the kind of girl to allow herself to be courted by just anyone, much less someone like me, but I could not help admiring her all the same. People would have laughed, had they known. Everyone else in the Tower seemed to think ill of her. In their eyes, Merietta was a gangly, ungracious, impertinent, stuck-up bitch with a vile temper. To me, however, she was a queen. The sight of her flashing green eyes and fiery red hair always made my mouth go dry with admiration, and Light if she couldn't argue! Speaking with her was always like a duel to the death, and usually she was winning the fight before it had even started properly. How could anyone not admire her?

Had she not been an Accepted, I might have told her how wonderful I found her, but her rank was a problem I could not find a way to overcome. I kept my silence. She was already bound to the Tower, and the rumours all said that if anyone had been marked for the Red Ajah from birth, it was her. I had to admit that it was probably true. And I could see that the inevitable choice would alienate her from me for good, even if she knew how I felt about her, even if she chose to return those feelings. Merietta had enough ambition and arrogance for a dozen women, that much was certain, and as a sister of the Red Ajah she would have no time for men, no time for any man. Bloody ashes, I was half convinced that she wasn't interested in pursuing a relationship with any man as it was! And the chances of her fancying a Manshima who was a head shorter than she were pretty much non-existent. I had to face the facts and admit that I never had a chance with her. She had never let it show in any way that she wanted a lover, and if she chose the Reds when the time came, she wouldn't be needing a Warder either. It was a lose-lose situation for me, and that particular insight frustrated me more than anything in a very long time.

The thought of Merietta never needing a Warder made me think about another great dilemma in my life. I had been in the Tower for a long time, and although master al'Thorn had finally raised me to Manshima, I still wasn't sure if I had earned it. Peace, after five years of training, I was half convinced that I was in the wrong place. I was sent to the Tower because I had turned reckless because of Saya and my mother and father thought it was the best thing to do under the circumstances, not because I had a burning desire to be a Warder. I did hold such hopes once, as a small child, and especially after seeing how much my aunt valued Harken, but those hopes were pretty much dashed when I realised I wasn't going to grow up tall and strong like him. Light, who would ever want me to be their Gaidin anyway, a small and lanky babyface with the power of intimidation of a wet towel! I know I'm good at keeping my mouth shut and taking care of horses and discussing philosophy, but that isn't what the average Aes Sedai wants from a Warder, now is it? As far as weapons go, I may be a superb archer and have a fair skill with daggers, but give me a heavy sword and I'm as likely to cut off my own leg than hit the enemy. The Warders in the Tower keep telling me that I'll do just fine, that I'll grow stronger with time and practice, but still the very thought of me as a Gaidin is frankly depressing. To be honest, I have never had that much interest in getting myself bonded to an Aes Sedai, but for some reason it bothers me to think that I might not be good enough to even be considered for it.

Thinking about Saya and Merietta and my general failure to be a top-class trainee did nothing to lighten my mood as Kristal and I made our way towards Ghealdan. She wouldn't talk, and I wouldn't talk. All in all, it was probably the most depressing month in my life so far. Light, what I wouldn't give to have kept it that way.

I was so bloody innocent, and I had seen nothing yet.

* * *

We were fast approaching the Ghealdanin border, when Kristal suddenly reined in her mare and raised her hand to tell me that she wanted to stop. I obliged, but my surprise must have been rather obvious. We had travelled as fast as we could, and now that Ghealdan was right in front of us, NOW she wanted to stop?

"We need to set up camp. It is getting late, and I have no wish to cross the border in the dark", Kristal said, and I found myself wondering if she was leaving something unsaid. What did she really mean? We had been crossing borders night and day until now, and she had never done this before. I could feel that she was uneasy, but that was no great news on this journey.

I obeyed without question. There were a great many questions I would have liked answered, but this was hardly the time. Night was falling, and the tents were not going to put themselves up. Kristal occupied herself with the horses while I made a fire and raised a tent for her, deciding to sleep under the stars myself.

I was preparing a stew for us and watching Kristal fuss over a burr in Snow's tail when the howling started. Her head snapped around to the direction of the mournful sound and I saw her go absolutely rigid. She stood there for a long time, quiet and pale as the full moon that had risen while we were setting up camp.

I did not understand. We had heard wolves a number of times during our journey, and she had never paid much attention to their howls. Now, however, she looked tense and somehow… expectant. After a while, however, she turned back to the horses with a barely audible sigh and resumed her task. I was puzzled and suddenly too frustrated to hold my silence. She had offered little explanation of the reason we were here in the middle of nowhere, and although reasons are often irrelevant with family matters, I was getting sorely tired of it.

"Kristal, don't you think it's high time you told me why we're here", I said.

She glanced at me with an unreadable expression on her face. I half hoped she'd go back to being herself and snap at me, but she just looked at me. "I thought I told you the night we left", she said quietly. "Harken needs me. I fear he has gone wolf, and he needs me desperately."

"Yes, I remember you telling me that, but I still don't understand what's going on. Gone wolf? What is that supposed to mean? I know Harken is Wolfkin, but…"

"Something happened to him the night we left. I do not know what, but I have… a suspicion or two. Something horrible. The wolf in him is taking over, Krion."

Brisk and straight to the point, but I still didn't understand. "So what's the problem? I thought it happened all the time to those who can speak with wolves. He told me about the wolf dream once and said that he always had a wolf's form there. He said the wolves called him 'Griever', but…"

That's when her control snapped. "You idiot! Griever has nothing to do with it! Griever and Harken are two facets of the same being, the same mind! When I said the wolf is taking over, I meant that it is taking over!" Light, but she sounded frightened. "Something bad has happened, something so bad that he has stepped over the line. The beast is taking control! He is slipping from me, Krion, he is losing his mind! The bond is incoherent! It is all chaos and fury and fear, and it is getting worse by the day", she nearly screamed at me, a fair indication of the state she was in. I felt my mouth go dry just listening to her. Harken, losing his mind? No wonder she was frantic with worry.

I thought I finally had the meat of it, but Light, was I wrong. I still hadn't fully understood what she had told me.

* * *

The next day we came to the farm, or what was left of it.

Harken never spoke of his home in so many words, but I had been under the impression that his family had owned quite an expanse of land once upon a time, and Harken had even held a title of some sort. Once upon a time meaning the time before his eyes turned from blue to gold, that is, and the time before the Children of the Light named him Darkfriend and an abomination. Things might have been different if his family had lived somewhere else, but one cannot expect things to go smoothly with Whitecloaks for neighbours. The way I understood it, superstition and a little help from the other side of the Amadician border made sure that Harken had no choice but to leave Ghealdan just ahead of the angry mob. And the head of the household a fugitive on the run, the family's estates quickly shrivelled up to nothing but a small patch of land and the house in which his mother and sister lived.

Now there was nothing left.

There was ash and dust everywhere. My eyes stung from it and I coughed. I could see a few hastily dug, unadorned graves by a great evergreen that had somehow escaped the worst of the destruction. I have seen a few Borderlander villages after trolloc raids, but in some ways this was even worse. The shreds of white-and-gold cloth lying abandoned on the ground spoke clearly enough for those who knew the history of that place. No crazed Shadowspawn could be blamed for this, no natural disaster would have destroyed the farm so thoroughly. People had done this to other people. The little farm had literally been annihilated, not a single man, beast or building had been spared. Everything was scorched, razed to the ground. I could only surmise that people from the neighbouring farms had come here and buried the dead once the righteous zealots who were accountable for this were gone.

Kristal's face was as grey as everything else in that place, and even though she hadn't said a word, her cheeks were wet with tears. She looked thoroughly sick and I could not help but worry. I had no idea what to do. I didn't even know if there was anything that could be done.

"He saw this happen", she finally said in a strangled whisper. "I am sure he saw this happen. Oh blessed Light have mercy."

"Someone's coming", I told her, my hands reaching for my daggers instinctively. This was not a place to inspire confidence in anyone. "It's a Whitecloak patrol", I could make out their banner after a few moments. The nauseated expression on Kristal's face changed into something much more frightening as she, too, noticed the golden sunburst banner approach the destroyed farm from a distance. She, for one, had no illusions about what had happened in this place.

"Murderers. Filthy scum of mankind. Servants of Shai'tan, you will pay for this!" Kristal snarled with such rage in her voice that I almost took a step back. This wasn't like her at all.

"We can't stay here. Kristal, we must go, they are too many!" I shouted, and not waiting to see if she obeyed or not, I went straight to her, scooped her up despite her furious protests and pushed her on Ice's back with force, grabbed the mare's reins and mounted my own horse in one leap. I have no idea what would have happened if I hadn't reacted the way I did, with gut instinct, but I suspect that our journey would have ended there.

I could hear shouting as we galloped away from there, but at that point, neither of us had any interest in what the Whitecloaks had to say.

* * *

The days after we found Harken's home farm in ruins and his family dead were very quiet. I wasn't sure what to expect and Kristal wasn't volunteering any details, so I could really do nothing except follow her lead and keep my eyes open. It seemed to me that she knew in some vague manner where we should go. Like a hound following an old scent, she would sometimes turn this way and that, almost as if she were feeling the wind, but she led us west in an almost straight line for three days and I did my best to keep up. I suppose the Warder bond was providing her with an insight once more and did not question her further. That bond has always been a mystery both unnerving and fascinating to me, but during that journey I learned a lot more about it than I really wanted to. First of all, it is definitely true that the bond forms a link between the Aes Sedai and her Warder, a link that allows each partner to feel the presence, as well as the rough whereabouts, of the other.

This, as we soon came to see, worked for us but also against us.

On the third day Kristal told me that she was indeed tracking Harken with the help of the bond they shared. "I have kept the bond muffled as much as possible, ever since that night", she glanced at me furtively as we made camp at the end of the third day. I could have sworn that she sounded a little bit ashamed about muffling the bond, whatever that meant. She certainly fiddled with her cup more than was necessary, which was a solid clue that she was very nervous. "But I had no choice. The raw emotions that come to me through the bond are getting… wilder, more distracting every day. I am getting… not visions exactly, but odd feelings and yearnings. It is getting worse and worse now that he is so close. I dare not allow the full force of his chaos inside my head, the possible consequences are too terrible to even think about. But I can feel him, he is very, very close and getting closer. I think…"

But whatever it was that she thought, I never got the chance to find out. At that moment, the howl went up all around us in the forest, and we both shot up from our seats in shock. Our horses screamed and reared. I groped for my bow, but by the time I had nocked my first arrow, the sound had died down and the forest was eerily quiet once more. Our camp, however, was anything but quiet. Snow was prancing and whickering, ears laid back and tail swishing, and Ice shied away from me with a shrill whinny of fear when I tried to calm her.

"What…" I muttered in confusion and fright. I could feel my hands trembling. Those wolves had been very, very close and now… it was as if they had never been there at all.

"Harken", Kristal was standing stock still and listening to voices only she could hear. "He is almost on top of us. Harken!" she called into the surrounding darkness. "Harken, I am here! Please come to me! Please!"

But there was no reply, no indication that anyone, anywhere, had heard her. After a moment she sat down slowly and buried her face in her hands. "He is going away from us. Fast. I could use the bond to compel him to come to me, but I dare not. I just dare not. There is no telling what kind of an explosion that might provoke, and he is so far gone… So far gone… Oh Light, he is running away from me. Slipping away from me. We need to find him quickly or I will lose him for good." Her voice was shaking. Had I not known better, I would have said that she was in tears.

"Don't worry. If he's so close, we can catch up with him soon enough. We'll find him tomorrow, and then… then we'll go back to Tar Valon, all three of us, and everything will be well", I tried to sound cheerful. From the look in her eyes, I could tell Kristal was thinking about getting her horse and riding after Harken right then, but I strongly disagreed with her. It was dark, and getting cold, and we were in dire need of a warm meal and a few hours of sleep. Harken could wait for one more day. Kristal might be able to feel which way her Gaidin had gone, but I had no wish whatsoever to stumble around in the dark in a forest full of wolves and the Light only knew what else. Peace, how that awful howling had frightened me. I really didn't want to run after the creatures responsible for that scare in the dark, in a region completely unknown to me.

I sometimes wonder if it would have made any difference, had we saddled our horses and ridden him down that night. The thought has given me more than my fair share of troubled dreams, and I know Kristal cannot stop wondering either.

You see, we did not catch up with Harken the next day. Or the next, or the next, or the day after that. The bond works both ways, after all, and it soon became clear that Harken had no wish to be caught. He was always just one step ahead of us, using the bond to avoid us as Kristal was using it to find him. I could tell that it was doing horrible things to my aunt, finding that her Warder was purposefully evading her every attempt to locate him. I, for my part, did not understand. Why would he do such a thing? From what I remembered, Kristal and Harken had always been a close-knit couple with few secrets, if any, between them. Why would he hurt her like this, on purpose? If he wanted her to go away, he could just have come to us and told her as much. He could have come to us and asked her to release him from the bond, if that was what he was after. Or so I thought. I could only reach one conclusion, and it was that Harken did not want my aunt to see him at all. Under normal circumstances she would certainly have taken the hint, but this situation was as far removed from normal as I had ever seen, and she was getting desperate.

That curious game of cat and mouse continued for weeks. We'd try everything from travelling night and day to making mad dashes to the direction Kristal pointed to, and still he kept dodging us. We must have covered every inch of that Light-forsaken country a dozen times during those weeks, but he was always just a little ahead of us, just out of sight, just a bit farther. Sometimes I wasn't entirely sure who was hunting whom, for it was not one time, or two, that we were scared witless by that eerie howl that could start right in front of us, or behind us, the wolves just out of sight but way too close for comfort. Since that journey, I have broken in cold sweat every time I have heard a wolf howl, and there is nothing I can do about it.

It took a long time for Kristal to admit defeat, but finally she did.

"This is getting us nowhere", she stated the obvious after our last attempt to outlast her Warder. "He is near, and still not near enough. Every day just pulls him farther away from me. We cannot wear him down like this. We must outwit him, and we must do it quickly or there will be no Harken left to save."

There it was again, and I still did not understand the full meaning of her fears!

"I…" she suddenly winced, as if someone had slapped her across the face. "He is hurt. Oh Light, he is in agony. Someone is hurting him!" She looked at me, her brown eyes enormous in her pale face. "Someone has caught him!"

* * *

The village was altogether too close to the Amadician border for my comfort, but Kristal led us straight to it. It was not much of a settlement, just a dozen or so small stone buildings huddled around a central square hardly even worth the name. It was a simple place, but I got a foreboding feeling just looking at it. I could hear doors and shutters being closed as we approached the houses.

Again, I should have paid closer attention to Kristal as we approached the village, to the way her face slowly lost all expression, to the way Ice's steps slowed and slowed until the mare was nearly standing still. I rode on confidently, wondering a little at the suspicious, nearly hostile looks the villagers were giving us but blaming them on the fact that we were strangers, and Ghealdanin village folk have never been fond of strangers. But then we reached the central square.

There are sights that no man, woman or child should ever have to see, and the central square of that nameless little village definitely qualified as one such. There was blood everywhere, blood and other things I do not even want to think about, trophies taken from the two mutilated wolves hanging from the branches of a large tree at the very centre of that square. Hanging by their necks, as I saw. Peace, but it was as bad as the sight of a Borderlander village after a particularly vile trolloc raid, and my stomach heaved violently when I looked at it.

"What in the name of Light has happened here?" I gulped in a voice that was, even to my ears, horrified and more than a little angry. I have always had much respect for wolves and a great fondness for animals of all shapes and sizes, and the sight of the poor butchered creatures sickened me. Being scared of howls in the dark is one thing, but I never ever wanted to see them end this way.

Kristal was quiet as death, pale as new snow. She said nothing at all.

"Away with you! Strangers won't find welcome here!" a thin, balding man in a badly fitting brown doublet approached us, two others flanking him. All were armed, so I immediately went for my daggers, but Kristal raised a hand to stop me.

"The blessings of the Light upon you", she told them coolly, riding forward and lowering her hood to reveal her ageless Aes Sedai face. There were gasps as they recognised her for what she was and, after a few nervous moments, some clumsy attempts at bowing and curtsying. Whispers of "Aes Sedai" and "White Tower" could be heard everywhere. Soon what seemed like the entire village had gathered around us like country bumpkins staring at a gleeman or, as I uneasily had to admit, like a bunch of children looking to be comforted by an adult.

Fear. I suddenly realised the village was rank with fear.

"Aes Sedai, please forgive my rudeness", the thin, previously so arrogant man bowed and scraped his way to Kristal's stirrup. He was suddenly all nerves and no backbone at all, and this had to be one of the village elders, for the Light's sake. The other villagers were even worse, staring at us wide-eyed as if the grace of the Creator had suddenly appeared amongst them.

"It's just that terrible things have passed here, terrible things, and wolves and wolf-demons all over the place stealing us blind and killing cattle left and right", the man continued. Kristal arched a brow at that. "You honour us by your presence, you and your Warder, the Creator has surely sent you here to help us", the man bowed to me as well. I could do nothing but stare. Wolf-demons? Help with what? I, a Warder?

Kristal winced but did not correct the man's mistake. Neither did I, for that matter. Let them think I was her Warder. If things got bad here, and judging by how edgy these people were it was a definite possibility, it might just give us the extra leverage that got us out of here alive. I could not even begin to imagine what had happened here, why those poor beasts had been killed so brutally. I observed the people around us quietly. They looked scared, every last one of them, scared and desperate for someone to tell them that things would turn out just fine.

"Please, Aes Sedai, we're just simple village folk, and this is surely a matter for your White Tower. The Children..." he swallowed nervously, "The Children of the Light already dealt with the thieving wolves", the man indicated the two corpses, "but wolf-demons... Aes Sedai, please. We're just simple village folk."

One look at Kristal confirmed my suspicions. She knew exactly what was going on here. I went cold all over before she even opened her mouth.

"You have caught a man", it emerged as a statement rather than a question, but the thin man nodded nervously.

"He got caught in one of our wolf traps not two hours ago, just like those wolves did yesterday", he pointed at the dead wolves again. "We locked him up, and it took four of our strongest men to do it. He's no man, he's a beast that can't even talk. Just snarls and howls and snaps like a wild thing. Spawn of the Dark One, he is, with the yellow eyes of a demon."

Yellow eyes? Oh, bloody ashes.

"Take me to him immediately", said Kristal in a tone that I knew all too well. One did not disobey that tone. Apparently the thin man understood as much.

"Will you deal with him? Please?" he fawned at her, but it was obvious that he was frantic to hear her say yes.

"I shall. Take me to him. Now."

"Bless you, Aes Sedai, bless you and your Warder", the man was beside himself with relief and so, it seemed, were the other villagers, who quickly made way for us as the man led us to a building that looked to me no different than all the other bleak stone houses these people had made their homes in. Once inside, however, I could see that this building was a stable of sorts, or at least it had the looks of having been one. The air was heavy with the warm smell of horses, but there were no animals there, and the reason for the empty stalls was soon all too obvious. Kristal's eyes were immediately drawn to the last stall of the line, the only one with a closed and bolted door. The thin man pointed to it and quickly withdrew outside, closing the door behind him. He obviously had no wish to see this. Nobody else even tried to enter the building after us. I found it rather disgusting, to be honest. Having allowed those poor wolves to be butchered, these people had no right to be squeamish about anything.

"Krion, you stay back", Kristal told me quite calmly, yet I can only imagine the emotional turmoil she must have felt. After months of searching and chasing in vain… It was almost too sudden, too unexpected, and definitely a touch humiliating to find that these country bumpkins had captured our prey when we had been scouring the countryside for ages to no avail.

"You wish. I'm not letting you go there alone", I muttered darkly. Frankly, I had no idea what to expect, but I did know that there were risks involved. And I would be a poor Shienaran indeed to allow anything to happen to the woman I had promised to protect. I may be a cynical bastard at times when it comes down to women and the reasons they do things, but I am nevertheless a Shienaran man and would gladly give my life to save a woman, and consider it a good bargain to boot. Annoying as they sometimes can be, women are precious. They represent life, and life is what a Borderlander values above all else. There was no way I was going to allow Kristal to go into danger without me.

I wish there was an easy way to describe what we found inside that stall, but even after two years, I'm still made speechless by the memory of that sight. You had to have been there to really understand. And Light above, be glad that you weren't there, be mighty glad if you don't understand. Believe me. Like I said, there are things nobody should ever have to see. And the worst, the very worst of it was that I remembered what he had been like before.

You see, I knew Harken, or at least I thought I did. It wouldn't have been quite so bad if I had never laid eyes on him before that day, never spoken to him, never heard his quiet voice. I might have been able to depersonalise the entire affair, take it much less personally. Dear Light, I cannot even begin to imagine what Kristal must have felt, seeing her beloved bondmate reduced to something less than human.

This 'going wolf' business Kristal had tried to tell me about had not really registered. Not enough, anyway. My expectations as to what we were going to find were so far removed from the truth that the shock nearly made me pass out when I finally did see him. I remembered my aunt's Warder as a tall, lean man with neatly trimmed shoulder-length hair nearly as blonde as my own, a man with the kind of quiet dignity that many try to imitate but few can ever master. He was a decent, kind-hearted, civilised man to whom life had just dealt a poorer hand than what he deserved. And perhaps that was the reason why he was so devoted to my aunt, the first woman in the Tower to have approached him with curiosity rather than fear or mistrust. He was a man of honour, a man who could be trusted, a man who deserved much better, and I think Kristal had tried to give him that. I had idolised him, and my aunt loved him. Light above, he should not have ended that way!

If the thing we found lying in the farthest corner of that stall was some twisted joke of the Creator, I remain to this day extremely unamused. He was all skin and bones, dressed in filthy rags that failed to cover the multitude of scars decorating his skin. His hair might have been blonde, but it was impossible to tell under all that filth and blood. And I finally realised that the small sound I had been hearing ever since we had stepped inside the building was a tiny, continuous growl and that it was coming from him. A pair of gleaming yellow eyes watched me angrily, suspiciously, like some wild thing behind bars, and I almost took a step back under that baleful glare. This was a trapped beast, not the man I remembered. He tried to crawl away from us as we stepped inside the stall, but the yelp of pain that came when he tried to move was proof enough that the men who had dragged him down here had not been gentle. I could see his leg was broken.

Kristal rushed straight to him without a word, and that might have been the last thing she ever did if I hadn't grabbed her and pushed her behind me. Hurt or not, Harken leaped from the corner with a horrible snarl, looking for all the world as if he was going to go for my throat. His eyes were wide, unseeing, completely crazed, and I had the horrible feeling that he was reacting to what he smelled rather than what he saw. Like a beast, a wild thing acting on instinct.

I kicked him, and kicked hard. I'm not proud of what I did, but that was my body's instant reaction to the threat, and I honestly don't know what else I could have done. The kick sent him sprawling to the floor, and although he growled and curled up, he didn't try to jump us again.

"Harken", Kristal whispered, seeking support from the wall, from me, from anything at all. I had never seen her look so pale or so worn. "Oh dear Creator, please do not do this to me. Anything but this."

Harken turned his yellow gaze to Kristal, and the growling stopped immediately. And started again, and stopped. He bared his teeth, but shook his head as if wanting to clear it. And then he did something unthinkable. He whined. He opened his mouth as if trying to speak, then whined again. "Harken", his own name was almost unrecognisable when he uttered it. It was so different from the soft, rational voice I remembered that I first had trouble accepting that it had come from his mouth. Oh, Light. Finally, finally I understood what Kristal had been trying to tell me. Harken had been fighting for his very existence, fighting the beast that was devouring everything that was human in him. Peace, if we could have reached him sooner we might have had a fighting chance. Harken had been alone with his beast for too long, though, and from the looks of it, he was losing the battle. I watched him struggle to find words, growl, whine and growl a moment longer and realised that I had been wrong. He had already lost the battle.

I swear I felt something break in Kristal that moment, something precious, some priceless thing that, once lost, could never be restored. The faint glimmer of hope in her eyes that I had been watching for the entire journey to Ghealdan vanished, winking out like the last light of day as she looked down at him. Until that moment, I hadn't truly realised how much she must have loved him. All those long nights she had spent awake, staring at the fire without saying anything, she must have nurtured that faint hope and kept it burning. Now it was gone, every last bit of it, and to me she suddenly looked like a lost child trying to walk on slippery ice, falling every time she tried to get up. She just stood there looking at him, indescribable longing plain on her delicate face. The sight of her, helpless against a power she could neither fight nor escape, broke my heart as surely as her own had shattered to little pieces. All of a sudden, my own grievances and so-called losses seemed irrelevant, foolish, and utterly devoid of any meaning. This unbelievably brave little woman was changing my view of such things without doing or saying anything. Just that look on her face was enough.

"Kristal", I tried.

"Please go away. Leave us", she said in a small, hopeless voice. I don't think she even saw me. I hesitated but finally nodded my consent and retreated to the stall door. I would give her what privacy I could, but I was not going to leave her alone with that thing… with him.

He lay there, spent and broken but still alive, if you could call that existence 'life' with any justification. The moment when he opened his blood-stained mouth and spoke is frozen in my memory. "Kristal", he said, his voice raw and harsh as if he had not used it for the longest time. And my aunt was suddenly alive again. She let out a little wordless scream and threw herself down on her knees next to him. I choked at the sight of her gathering him close, so very gently. I could see she was crying, but her voice was as clear as ever as she repeated his name quietly over and over again and smoothed his bloody and matted hair away from his face. He spoke again, whispering so quietly that I could not hear his words. It did not really matter, I told myself. This was a moment I had no right to witness, a moment for the bonded. A moment for two special people who, I was beginning to understand, had loved each other for years in a way I could not fathom. I had been fighting back tears for some time already, but I finally had to turn away and wipe my eyes when she bent over him so that the veil of her silky blonde hair hid them from view and I heard her sobbing quietly. I could not stand to witness that much pain any longer.

What in the name of Light had I been expecting, coming here? That we'd track down Harken and take him back with us, just like that? Even after we had crossed the border to this Light-forsaken country and the problems had started piling up, I had somehow supposed that everything would turn out all right once we found the man. What had I been thinking? That we'd simply talk some sense into him and ride back to Tar Valon happily to pick up the pieces of our respective lives? Oh, dear Creator. Could I possibly have been any more naive than that? I had insisted on joining Kristal on this journey and talked mightily about duty and family, but all the while I had expected that getting back her Gaidin would be some simple thing to be accomplished in a matter of days. I felt like screaming my heart out. My aunt was on her knees, weeping like a child and holding a broken man who was only a shadow of the dashing Warder I remembered. This was not a reunion. This was a wake.

The world had gone quiet. The only sound I could hear was his hoarse voice, whispering something that was meant to my aunt's ears alone, and her quiet sobs. The moment seemed to drag on forever, an eternal torment that gave me more than enough time to curse myself to the darkest hole of the Pit of Doom. How could I have been so blind? Why hadn't I paid closer attention to Harken all those years ago when he told me about his gift and the dangers that came with it? Kristal had known, she had even tried to tell me, and still I had failed to understand what was at stake here. Harken wasn't coming back with us. I did not know what had brought him back to Kristal, unless it was the bond they shared and her proximity, but I knew with heavy certainty that it could not last. His identity was almost gone, destroyed. He was truly better off dead.

I lost track of time for a while as I desperately tried not to hear the deafening sound of a lifetime of hopes and dreams shattering there right next to me. Finally, though, I could not help hearing. Perhaps Harken's voice gained more strength as he spoke, but I suddenly found I could hear what he was saying. I bit down on my lip, hard, to keep from sobbing. I could taste my own blood.

"My brave one", he was saying. "This is no life. I am turning into a beast, a mindless thing. Even you cannot keep the madness from returning."

"No! I can hold it at bay!" she replied fiercely, but her proud head bent down in grief when he lifted his hand with painful slowness to brush her cheek tenderly.

"Always my brave one", he sighed. His voice was tired, so very tired. "But there are things you cannot change. I died the night the Whitecloaks burned my mother and sister alive. The beast… it claimed me. It will not stay away. And I will not risk hurting you or the boy. I will not!" For a moment, there was something of Harken's old spirit in the broken man lying on the floor with his head in Kristal's lap.

Their voices grew soft again. Harken's tone changed from harsh to insistent, then sad, and finally bone-tired and pleading. And Kristal wept. In the end, she wept as if there was no strength left to her at all and held him close again, shaking her head slowly.

"Harken, come back with me. There must be a way… The Tower has many fine healers… Harken, please, I need you!"

"Please, my dear one. You must release me and put a stop to this. Please."

"I cannot", she sobbed, and then screamed, "I cannot! What you ask is impossible! How can you even ask this of me?"

"Please don't make me beg. I can't go on like this. Once the beast takes you, there's no coming back and you know it. One more slip and I might… You need to be brave for me this one more time. Please. If you ever loved me, please release me."

I could not take it any longer. "That's unfair. You cannot ask her to do that", I knelt down to look at him. His golden eyes bored into mine with intensity born out of sheer desperation. I could see he was dead serious about this, and terribly afraid of what he might be capable of if someone didn't stop him. In that one shared look, I think we learned a lot about each other. He knew, and I suddenly knew as well, that there was only one honourable way out of this. And we both knew that Kristal wasn't in any condition to take action. Asking her to raise a hand against Harken was cruel at best and torture at worst, and he never should have asked her. The bond they shared was the last anchor she had been clinging to. She couldn't be expected to let go of it just like that. She couldn't be the one to make that decision.

But I could.

I suddenly knew exactly what I had to do, what Harken was all but begging me to do. I felt like someone had just pushed me off a cliff. My hands were shaking so badly that it was a wonder the dagger I was holding didn't just clatter to the floor. Oh Light. What had I ever done to anyone to be forced into this situation? Why did it have to be me? Why couldn't there be someone else to take this responsibility from me?

But there was nobody else. I knew there wasn't, and I knew what had to be done.

"Krion?" I could see Harken's lips forming my name, but to tell you the truth, I could hear nothing but the thrumming of my own heart.

"I... I will", I swallowed painfully. I still get a lump in my throat every time I think of the gratitude in his eyes as he sighed, then nodded.

"Brave one", Harken closed his eyes gratefully, and I realised with a start that, for once, the endearment was meant for me and not for Kristal. I swallowed again, squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them again, found Harken's golden gaze fixed upon me. "Courage, lad", he said quietly, his soft voice drowning under the sobs of the little Blue who was holding him, seemingly oblivious to everything else but him.

I knew I had no choice. "May the mother welcome you home", I choked, and plunged the dagger into Harken's heart.

And then it happened. Kristal's hand suddenly darted to my arm just as I struck that one fatal blow. "Krion, don't!" she screamed in panic, as if she hadn't fully realised what I was going to do - what Harken had begged me to do - until that moment. I still hear that terrified scream every night in my dreams, over and over again. It crashes down on me like the wrath of the Creator, and there is no end to it.

Krion, don't! Krion, don't! Krion, don't!

But it was too late. I could only stare helplessly at the blood on my hands as Kristal came at me with fists and nails and teeth, utterly hysterical.

Curse you! Curse you! Curse you! Curse you…!

Harken's golden eyes glazed over, and the moment they did, Kristal froze and let out a wail that has haunted me ever since. She fell against me, drawing tiny panicked breaths that sounded like the whimpers of a small child. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry", I tried to tell her, holding her as gently as I could, but it was of no use. Kristal went limp and knew nothing more.

Oh, if she only knew how adeptly she cursed me that day. I AM cursed. I wake up every night, weeping without tears just as I did on that Light-forsaken day when I held my aunt in my arms and came to understand fully what I had done. I haven't been able to shed a single tear since, and the dreams that hunt me down every night force me to make that stab, to kill him, again and again, to hear her terrible grief again and again. And I don't think I have those dreams because I was forced to kill Harken, although that was bad enough. I knew it was the only right thing to do, though, and although the Light knows I never asked for that duty, it was given to me and I accepted it.

It is that awful wail, the testimonial to the terrible hurt I inflicted upon Kristal in doing the right thing, that I cannot bear. I did my duty, I did the right thing, and I killed two people in so doing. Dear Creator, make that three, for I truly don't know how much life is left in me. It is so different to kill in battle and to kill a helpless man, someone you care about, someone who is loved. No matter how good the reason is. Walking away from a battlefield and leaving others to deal with the destruction you've caused is also somewhat different from seeing the results of your actions every single day, keeping watch over the loved ones of those you have killed and never letting them out of your sight for fear they might do themselves harm. Kristal was like that for the first month after Harken's death, and for the entire journey from Ghealdan to Tar Valon she cried herself to sleep every night. I could do nothing to help her, she wouldn't and couldn't accept any comfort from me. She didn't curse me again; she couldn't even speak to me for the first few days. And when she finally had the strength to look me in the eyes again and talk to me, she never mentioned those events again in my presence.

Weeks after, she told me that I did the right thing and that it was exactly what Harken wanted. But to this day, she has never told me she has forgiven me for what I had to do. She is Aes Sedai. She cannot speak a word that is not true.

Doing my duty made me betray everything I held dear. How am I supposed to live with that knowledge? I may be close to finishing my training in the Tower, but how in the name of Light am I supposed to look forward to being a Warder, knowing that I have done grievous harm to one Aes Sedai already, a woman I promised to protect? Who would ever want me as a Warder anyway, after a failure like this? I have no right to call myself anyone's protector. Light, do I even have the right to call myself a Shienaran man after delivering such a terrible blow to a beloved kinswoman?

Well. Perhaps I do, at that. A childhood memory of something my father used to say comes to me suddenly, and it brings with it both sadness and a flicker of hope.

There is a saying in Shienar: duty is heavier than a mountain. My father used to tell me that even a grown man is little more than a mewling infant until he knows what that saying means, what it truly means. I fear that I have learned that lesson at a terrible price.

But I have learned it.

At least I hope so.

I just wish it didn't have to come with such a terrible price.