Despite herself, her eyes were drawn back to the mouth of the pass. The row of stakes was still there, just visible, stretching from steep mountain slope to steep mountain slope except where Aiel had kicked some of them down. Couladin had left another message, men and women impaled across their path, standing there seven days dead. The tall gray walls of Selean clung to the hills at the right of the pass, nothing showing above them. Moiraine said it had held only a shadow of its one-time glory, yet it had still been a considerable town, much larger than Taien; no more remained of it, however. No survivors, either — except whoever the Shaido had carried off — although here some had probably run for places they thought safe. There had been farms on these hills; most of eastern Cairhien had been abandoned after the Aiel War, but a town needed farms for food. Now soot-streaked chimneys thrust up from blackened stone farmhouse walls; here a few charred rafters remained above a stone barn, there barn and farmhouse had collapsed from the heat. The hill where she sat Mist's saddle had been sheep pasture; near the fence at the foot of the hill, flies still buzzed over the refuse of butchering. Not an animal remained in any pasture, not a chicken scratching in a barnyard. The crop fields were burned stubble.
Couladin and the Shaido were Aiel. But so were Aviendha, and Bair and Amys and Melaine, and Rhuarc, who said she reminded him of one of his daughters. They had been disgusted at the impalements, yet even they seemed to think it little more than the treekillers deserved. Perhaps the only way to truly know the Aiel was to be born Aiel.
Casting a last glance at the destroyed town, she rode slowly down to the rough stone fence and let herself out at the gate, leaning down to refasten the rawhide thong out of habit. The irony was that Moiraine had said that Selean might actually go over to Couladin. In the shifting currents of Daes Dae'mar, in balancing an Aiel invader against a man who had sent Tairens into Cairhien, for whatever reason, the decision could have tipped either way, had Couladin given them a chance to choose.
She rode along the broad road until she caught up with Rand, in his red coat today, and joined Aviendha and Amys and thirty or more Wise Ones she barely knew besides the other two dreamwalkers, all following at a short distance. Mat, with his hat and his black-hafted spear, and Jasin Natael, leather-cased harp slung on his back and crimson banner rippling in the breeze, were riding, but hurrying Aiel passed the party by on both sides, because Rand led his dapple stallion, talking with the clan chiefs. Skirts or no skirts, the Wise Ones would have made a good job of keeping up with the passing columns if they were not sticking to Rand like pine sap. They barely glanced at Egwene, their eyes and ears focused on him and the six chiefs.
"…and whoever comes through after Timolan," Rand was saying in a firm voice, "has to be told the same thing." Stone Dogs left to watch at Taien had returned to report the Miagoma entering the pass a day behind. "I've come to stop Couladin despoiling this land, not to loot it."
"A hard message," Bael said, "for us as well, if you mean we cannot take the fifth." Han and the rest, even Rhuarc, nodded.
"The fifth, I give you." Rand did not raise his voice, yet suddenly his words were driven nails. "But no part of that is to be food. We will live on what can be found wild or hunted or bought — if there is anyone with food to sell — until I can have the Tairens increase what they're bringing up from Tear. If any man takes a penny more than the fifth, or a loaf of bread without payment, if he burns so much as a hut because it belongs to a treekiller, or kills a man who is not trying to kill him, that man will I hang, whoever he is."
"Dark to tell the clans this," Dhearic said, almost as stony. "I came to follow He Who Comes With the Dawn, not to coddle oathbreakers." Bael and Jheran opened their mouths as if to agree, but each saw the other and snapped his teeth shut again.
"Mark what I said, Dhearic," Rand said. "I came to save this land, not ruin it further. What I say stands for every clan, including the Miagoma and any more who follow. Every clan. You mark me well." This time no one spoke, and he swung back into Jeade'en's saddle, letting the stallion walk on among the chiefs. Those Aiel faces showed no expression.
Egwene drew breath. Those men were all old enough to be his father and more, leaders of their people as surely as kings for all they disclaimed it, hardened leaders in battle. It seemed only yesterday that he had been a boy in more than age, a youth who asked and hoped rather than commanded and expected to be obeyed. He was changing faster than she could keep up with now. A good thing, if he kept these men from doing to other cities what Couladin had done to Taien and Selean. She told herself that. She only wished he could do it without showing more arrogance every day. How soon before he expected her to obey him as Moiraine did? Or all Aes Sedai? She hoped it was only arrogance.
Wanting to talk, she kicked a foot free of its stirrup and held a hand down for Aviendha, but the Aiel woman shook her head. She really did not like to ride. And maybe all those Wise Ones striding in a pack made her reluctant, too. Some of them would not have ridden had both their legs been broken. With a sigh, Egwene climbed down, leading Mist by the reins, settling her skirts a little grumpily. The soft, knee-high Aiel boots she wore looked comfortable and were, but not for walking very far on that hard, uneven pavement.
"He truly is in command," she said.
Aviendha barely shifted her eyes from Rand's back. "I do not know him. I cannot know him. Look at the thing he carries."
She meant the sword, of course. Rand did not precisely carry it; it hung at the pommel of his saddle, in a plain scabbard of brown boar-hide, the long hilt covered in the same leather, rising as high as his waist. He had had hilt and scabbard made by a man from Taien, on the journey through the pass. Egwene wondered why, when he could channel a sword of fire, and do other things that made swords seem toys. "You did give it to him, Aviendha."
Her friend scowled. "He tries to make me accept the hilt, too. He used it; it is his. Used it in front of me, as if to mock me with a sword in his hand."
"You are not angry about the sword." She did not think Aviendha was; she had not said a word about it, that night in Rand's tent. "You are still upset over how he spoke to you, and I do understand. I know he is sorry. He sometimes speaks without thinking, but if you would only let him apologize —"
"I do not want his apologies," Aviendha muttered. "I do not want… I can bear this no more. I cannot sleep in his tent any longer." Suddenly she took Egwene's arm, and if Egwene had not known better, she would have thought her on the brink of tears. "You must speak to them for me. To Amys and Bair and Melaine. They will listen to you. You are Aes Sedai. They must let me return to their tents. They must!"
"Who must do what?" Sorilea said, dropping back from the others to walk alongside them. The Wise One of Shende Hold had thin white hair and a face like leather drawn tight over her skull. And clear green eyes that could knock a horse down at ten paces. That was the way she normally looked at anyone. When Sorilea was angry, other Wise Ones sat quietly and clan chiefs made excuses to leave.
Melaine and another Wise One, a graying Black Water Nakai, started to join them too, until Sorilea turned those eyes on them. "If you were not so busy thinking of that new husband, Melaine, you would know Amys wants to talk with you. You, also, Aerin." Melaine flushed bright red, and scurried back to the others, but the older woman got there first. Sorilea watched them go, then put her full attention on Aviendha. "Now we can have a quiet talk. So you do not want to do something. Something you were told to do, of course. And you think this child Aes Sedai can get you out of doing it."
"Sorilea, I —" Aviendha got no further.
"In my day, girls jumped when a Wise One said jump, and continued jumping until they were told to stop. As I am still alive, it is still my day. Need I make myself clearer?"
Aviendha took a deep breath. "No, Sorilea," she said meekly.
The old woman's eyes came to rest on Egwene. "And you? Do you think you are going to beg her off?"
"No, Sorilea." Egwene felt as though she should curtsy.
"Good," Sonlea said, not sounding satisfied, just as if it was what she had expected. It almost certainly was. "Now I can speak to you of what I really want to know. I hear the Car'a'carn has given you an interest gift like no other ever heard of, rubies and moonstones."
Aviendha jumped as if a mouse had run up her leg. Well, she probably would not, but it was the way Egwene would have jumped in that circumstance. The Aiel explained about Laman's sword and the scabbard so hastily that her words tripped over one another.
Sorilea shifted her shawl, muttering about girls touching swords, even wrapped in blankets, and about having a sharp word with "young Bair." "So he has not captured your eye. A pity. It would bind him to us; he sees too many people as his, now." For a moment she eyed Aviendha up and down. "I will have Feran look at you. His greatfather is my sister-son. You have other duties to the people than learning to be a Wise One. Those hips were made for babes."
Aviendha stumbled over an upraised paving stone and just caught herself short of falling. "I… I will think on him, when there is time," she said breathlessly. "I have much to learn yet, of being a Wise One, and Feran is Seia Doon, and the Black Eyes have vowed not to sleep beneath roof or tent until Couladin is dead." Couladin was Seia Doon.
The leathery-faced Wise One nodded as though everything had been settled. "You, young Aes Sedai. You know the Car'a'carn well, it is said. Will he do as he has threatened? Hang even a clan chief?"
"I think… maybe… that he will." More quickly, Egwene added, "But I am sure he can be brought to see reason." She was not sure of any such thing, or even that it was reason — what he had said sounded only just — but justice would do him no good if he found the others turning against him as well as the Shaido.
Sorilea glanced at her in surprise, then turned a gaze on the chiefs around Rand's horse that should have knocked the lot of them flat. "You mistake me. He must show that mangy pack of wolves that he is the chief wolf. A chief must be harder than other men, young Aes Sedai, and the Car'a'carn harder than other chiefs. Every day a few more men, and even Maidens, are taken by the bleakness, but they are the soft outer bark of the ironwood. What remains is the hard inner core, and he must be hard to lead them." Egwene noticed that she did not include herself or the other Wise Ones among those who would be led. Muttering to herself about "mangy wolves," Sorilea strode ahead, and soon had all the Wise Ones listening as they walked. Whatever she was saying, it did not carry.
"Who is this Feran?" Egwene asked. "I've never heard you speak of him. What does he look like?"
Frowning at Sorilea's back, more than half hidden by the women clustered around her, Aviendha spoke absently. "He looks much like Rhuarc, only younger, taller and more handsome, with much redder hair. For over a year he has been trying to attract Enaila's interest, but I think she will teach him to sing before she gives up the spear."
"I don't understand. Do you mean to share him with Enaila?" It still felt odd, speaking so casually of that.
Aviendha stumbled again, and stared at her. "Share him? I want no part of him. His face is beautiful, but he laughs like a braying mule and picks at his ears."
"But from the way you talked to Sorilea, I thought you… liked him. Why didn't you tell her what you just told me?"
The other woman's low laugh sounded pained. "Egwene, if she thought I was trying to balk in this, she would make the bridal wreath herself and drag both Feran and me by the neck to be wed. Have you ever seen anyone say 'no' to Sorilea? Could you?"
Egwene opened her mouth to say that of course she could, and promptly closed it again. Making Nynaeve step back was one thing, and trying the same with Sorilea quite another. It would be like standing in the path of a landslide and telling it to stop.
To change the subject, she said, "I will speak to Amys and the others for you." Not that she really thought it would do much good now. The right time had been before it began. At least Aviendha saw the impropriety of the situation finally. Perhaps… "If we go to them together, I am sure they will listen."
"No, Egwene. I must obey the Wise Ones. Ji'e'toh requires it." Just as if she had not been asking for intercession a moment earlier. Just as if she had not all but begged the Wise Ones not to make her sleep in Rand's tent. "But why is my duty to the people never what I wish? Why must it be what I would rather die before doing?"
"Aviendha, no one is going to make you marry, or have babies. Not even Sorilea." Egwene wished she had sounded a bit less limp on that last.
"You do not understand," the other woman said softly, "and I cannot explain it to you." She gathered her shawl around her and would not speak of it further. She was willing to discuss their lessons, or whether Couladin would turn and give battle, or how marriage had affected Melaine — who seemed to have to work at being prickly now — or anything at all except what it was that she could not, or would not, explain.
Chapter 24
(Rising Sun)
A Message Sent
The land changed as the sun began to sink. The hills grew lower, the thickets larger. Often the toppled stone fences of what had been fields had become mounds sprouting wild hedges, or ran through long stands of oak and leatherleaf and hickory, pine and paperbark and trees Egwene did not know. The few farmhouses had no roofs, and trees ten or fifteen paces high grew in them here, little woods enclosed inside the stone walls, complete with twittering birds and black-tailed squirrels. The occasional rivulet caused as much talk among the Aiel as the small forests did, and the grass. They had heard tales of the wetlands, read of them in books bought from merchants and peddlers like Hadnan Kadere, but few had actually seen them since the hunt for Laman. They adapted quickly, though; the gray-brown of the tents blended well with dead leaves under the trees and with the dying grass and weeds. The camp spread over miles, marked by thousands of small cook-fires in the golden dusk.
Egwene was more than happy to crawl into her tent once the gai'shain had it up. Inside the lamps were lit and a small fire burned in the firepit. Unlacing her soft boots, she tugged them off and her woolen stockings as well, and sprawled on the bright layered rugs, wriggling her toes. She wished she had a basin of water to soak her feet. She could not pretend to be as hardy as the Aiel, but she was growing soft if a few hours of walking made her feet feel twice their size. Of course, water would be no problem here. Or it should not be — she remembered that shrunken stream — but surely she could even have a proper bath again.
Cowinde, meek and silent in her white robes, brought her supper, some of that pale flat bread made from zemai flour and in a red-striped bowl, a thick stew that she ate mechanically, though she felt more tired than hungry. She recognized the dried peppers and beans, but did not ask what the dark meat was. Rabbit, she told herself firmly, and hoped that it was. The Aiel ate things that would put more curl in her hair than Elayne had. She was willing to bet that Rand could not even look at what he was eating. Men were always picky eaters.
Once done with the stew, she stretched out near an ornately worked silver lamp that had a polished silver disc to reflect and increase its light. She had felt a little guilty once she realized that most of the Aiel had no light at night but their fires; few had brought lamps or oil except the Wise Ones and the chiefs of clans and septs. But there was no point to sitting in the dim illumination of the firepit when she could have proper light. That reminded her: the nights here would not be so drastic a contrast with the days as in the Waste; the tent was already beginning to feel uncomfortably warm.
She channeled briefly, flows of Air to smother the fire, and dug into her saddlebags for the worn leather-bound book that she had borrowed from Aviendha. It was a small fat volume with crowded lines of small print, hard to read except in good light, but easily portable. The Flame, the Blade and the Heart, it was called, a collection of tales about Birgitte and Gaidal Cain, Anselan and Barashelle, Rogosh Eagle-eye and Dunsinin, and a dozen more. Aviendha claimed that she liked it for the adventures and battles, and maybe she did, but every last st
ory told of the love of a man and a woman, too. Egwene was willing to admit that that was what she liked, the sometimes stormy, sometimes tender threads of undying love. To herself she would admit it, anyway. It was hardly the sort of enjoyment a woman with any pretensions to sense at all could confess publicly.
In truth she did not feel like reading any more than she had felt like eating — all she really wanted to do was bathe and sleep, and she might be willing to forgo bathing — but tonight she and Amys were to meet Nynaeve in Tel'aran'rhiod. It would not be night yet wherever Nynaeve was, on her way to Ghealdan, and that meant remaining awake.
Elayne had made the menagerie sound quite exciting, at their last meeting, though Egwene hardly thought that Galad's presence was reason enough to go haring off like that. Nynaeve and Elayne had simply grown to like adventure, in her opinion. It was too bad about Siuan; they needed a firm hand to settle them down. Odd that she should think of Nynaeve so; Nynaeve had always been the one with the firm hand. But since that episode in the Tower of Tel'aran'rhiod, Nynaeve had become less and less someone she had to struggle against.
Guiltily, she realized as she turned a page that she was looking forward to seeing Nynaeve tonight. Not because Nynaeve was a friend, but because she wanted to see if the effects had lingered. If Nynaeve tugged at her braid, she would arch a cool eyebrow at her, and… Light, I hope it's held. If she lets out about that jaunt, Amys and Bair and Melaine will take turns skinning me, if they don't just tell me to go.
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