Only trees that kept leaf or needle through the winter had any green about them. Not that he expected them, really not this spring. No birds sang in the forest, no squirrels chittered from a branch. The soft creak of the axle sounded loud by comparison. The wind howled when it rose, but aside from that, quiet lay heavy on the land. He felt a little foolish about wanting to reassure himself that Tam was still there, but it was that kind of day. Trying to hold the cloak one-handed did not do much good anyway he had his bow in the other, an arrow nocked and ready to draw.Īs a particularly strong blast tugged the cloak out of his hand, he glanced at his father over the back of the shaggy brown mare.

Half the time when he tried to tug the cloak back around him it caught on the quiver swinging at his hip. He wished his coat were heavier, or that he had worn an extra shirt. Gusts plastered Rand al’Thor’s cloak to his back, whipped the earth-colored wool around his legs, then streamed it out behind him. For all that spring should have come a good month since, the wind carried an icy chill as if it would rather bear snow. Down it flailed into the Two Rivers, into the tangled forest called the Westwood, and beat at two men walking with a cart and horse down the rock-strewn track called the Quarry Road. But it was a beginning.īorn below the ever cloud-capped peaks that gave the mountains their name, the wind blew east, out across the Sand Hills, once the shore of a great ocean, before the Breaking of the World. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend.

Wheel of time book eye of the world