"I don't understand it," Mat grumbled as they came near the line of men shearing. "Sometimes the Mayor knows what I'm doing as soon as I do it. My mother does it, too. But how?"
"The Women's Circle probably tells your mother," Dav muttered. "They see everything. And the Mayor's the Mayor." The other boys nodded glumly.
Ahead of them Egwene saw her father, a round man with thinning gray hair, his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows, a pipe in his teeth, and a set of shears in his hand. And ten paces off from the sheep shearers, watching the boys approach, stood Mistress Cauthon, Mat's mother, flanked by her two daughters, Bodewhin and Erdman. Natti Cauthon was a calm, collected woman, as she would have to be with a son like Mat, and at the moment she wore a contented smile. Bodewhin and Eldrin wore almost identical smiles, and they watched Mat twice as hard as his mother did. Bode was not quite old enough to carry water, yet, and it would be two years before Eldrin could. Rand and the
others must be blind! Egwene thought. Anyone with eyes could see how Mistress Cauthon always knew.
Mistress Cauthon and her daughters slipped away into the crowd as the boys approached Egwene's father. None of the boys appeared to notice her. They all had eyes for no one but Egwene's father. All but Mat looked wary; he wore a big grin that made him look guilty of something, for sure. Rand's father glanced up from the sheep he was bent over, and caught Rand's eye with a smile that made Rand, at least, seem less like a heron ready to take flight
Egwene began offering water to the men shearing with her father, all of them on the Village Council. Well, Master Cole appeared to be taking a nap with his back against a waist-high stone thrusting out of the ground. He was as old as the Wisdom, maybe older, though he still had all of his hair, white as it was. But the others were shearing, the fleece falling away from the sheep in thick white sheets. Master Buie, the thatcher, a gnarled man but spry, muttered under his breath as he worked, and the others did two sheep to his one, but everyone else seemed caught up in the work. When a man was done, he let the sheep go to be gathered up by waiting boys and herded away while another was brought to him. Egwene went slowly, to have an excuse to linger. She was not really slacking; she just wanted to know what was going to happen.
Her father studied the boys for a moment, pursing his lips, then said, "Well, lads, I know you've been working hard." Mat gave Rand a startled look, and Pen-in shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. Rand just nodded, but uncertainly. "So I thought it might be time for that story I promised you," her father finished. Egwene grinned. Her father told the best stories.
Mat straightened up. "I want a story with adventures." The look he shot at Rand this time was defiant.
"I want Aes Se" and Warders," Dav said hurriedly.
"I want Trollocs," Mat added, "and... and ... and a false Dragon!"
Dav opened his mouth, and closed it again without saying anything. He glared at Mat, though. There was no way for him to top a false Dragon, and he knew it.
Egwene's father chuckled. "I'm no gleeman, lads. I don't know any stories like that. Tam? Would you like to give it a try?"
Egwene blinked. Why would Rand's father know stories like that if her father did not? Master al'Thor had been chosen to the Council to speak for the farmers around Emond's Field, but as far she knew, all he had ever done was farm sheep and tabac like anyone else.
Master al'Thor looked troubled, and Egwene began to hope he did not know any stories like that. -She did not want anyone to show up her father. Of course, she liked Rand's father, so she did not want him embarrassed, either. He was a sturdy man with gray flecks in his hair, a quiet man, and just about everybody liked him.
Master al'Thor finished shearing his sheep, and as he was brought another, he exchanged smiles with Rand. "As it happens," he said, "I do know a story something like that. I'll ten you about the real Dragon, not a false one."
Master Buie straightened from his half-shorn sheep so fast that the animal nearly got away from him. His eyes narrowed, though they were always pretty narrow. "We'll have none of that, Tam al'Thor," he growled in his scratchy voice. "That's nothing fit for decent ears to hear."
"Be easy, Cenn," Egwene's father said soothingly. "It's only a story." But he glanced toward Rand's father, and plainly he was not quite as certain as he sounded.
"Some stories shouldn't be told," Master Buie insisted. "Some stories shouldn't be known! It isn't decent, I say. I don't like it. If they need to hear about wars, give them something about the War of the Hundred Years, or Trolloc Wars. That'll give them Aes Sedai and Trollocs, if you have to talk about such things. Or the Aiel War." For a moment, Egwene thought Master al'Thor's face changed. For an instant he seemed harder. Hard enough to make the merchants' guards look soft. She was imagining a lot of things, today. She did not usually allow her imagination to run away with her this way.
Master Cole's eyes popped open. "It's just a story he'll be telling them, Cenn. Just a story, man." His eyes drifted shut again. You could never tell when Master Cole was really napping.
"You never heard, smelled or saw anything you did like, Cenn," Master al'Dai said. He was Bili's grandfather, a lean man with wispy white hair, and as old as Master Cole, if not older. He had to walk with a stick most of the time, but his eyes were
clear and sharp, and so was his mind. He was almost as quick with the wool-shears as Master al'Thor. "My advice to you, Cenn, is chew on your liver in silence and let Tam get on with it."
Master Buie subsided with a bad grace, muttering under his breath. Scowling at Rand's father, he bent back to his sheep. Egwene shook her head in surprise. She had often heard Master Buie telling people how important he was on the Council, and how all the other men always listened to him.
The boys moved closer to Master al'Thor and squatted on their heels in a semi-circle. Any story that caused an argument on the Council was sure to be of interest. Master al'Thor carried on with his shearing, but at a slower pace. He would not want to risk cutting the sheep with his attention divided.
"Ibis is just a story," he said, ignoring Master Buie's scowls, "because no one knows everything that happened. But it really did happen. You've heard of the Age of Legends?"
Some of the boys nodded, doubtfully. Egwene nodded, too, in spite of herself. She had heard grownups say, "Maybe in the Age of Legends," when they did not believe something had really happened or doubted a thing could be done. It was just another way saying, "When pigs had wings," though. At least, she had thought it was.
'Three thousand years ago and more, it was," Rand's father went on. "Mere were great cities full of buildings taller that the White Tower, and that's taller than anything but a mountain. Machines that used the One Power carried people across the ground faster than a horse can run, and some say machines carried people through the air, too. There was no sickness anywhere. No hunger. No war. And then the Dark One touched the World."
The boys jumped, and Elam actually fell over. He scrambled back up, blushing and tying to pretend he had not toppled at all. Egwene held her breath. The Dark One. Maybe it was because she had been thinking about him earlier, but he seemed particularly frightening now. She hoped that Master al'Thor would not actually name him. He wouldn't name the Dark One, she thought, but that did not stop her being afraid that he might.
Master al'Thor smiled at the boys to soften the shock of what he had said, but he went on. "The Age of Legends hadn't so much as the memory of war, so they say, but once the Dark One touched the world, they learned fast enough. This wasn't a war
like those you hear about when the merchants come for wool and tabac, between two nations. This war covered the whole world. The War of the Shadow, it came be called. Those who stood for the Light faced as many who stood for the Shadow, and besides Darkfriends beyond counting, there were armies of Myrddraal and Trollocs greater than anything the Blight spewed up during the Trolloc Wars. Aes Sedai went over to the Shadow, too. They were called the Forsaken."
Egwene shivered, and was glad to se
e some of the boys wrapping their arms around themselves. Mothers used the Forsaken to frighten their children when they were bad. If you keep lying, Semirhage will come and get you. Lanfear waits for children who steal. Egwene was glad her mother did not do that. Wait. The Forsaken had been Aes, Sedai? She hoped Master al'Thor did not say that too freely, or the Women's Circle would come calling on him. Anyway, some of the Forsaken were men, so he had to be wrong.
"You'll be expecting me to tell you about the glories of battle, but I won't." For a moment, he sounded grim, but only for a moment. "No one knows anything about those battles, except that they were huge. Maybe the Aes Sedai have some records, but if they do, they don't let anyone see them except other Aes Sedai. You've heard about the great battles during Artur Hawkwing's rise, and during the War of the Hundred Years? A hundred thousand men on each sides?" Eager nods answered him. From Egwene, too, though hers was not eager. All those men trying to kill one another did not excite her the way it did the boys. "Well," Master al'Thor went on, "those battles would have been counted small in the War of the Shadow. Whole cities were destroyed, razed to the ground. The countryside outside the cities fared as badly. Wherever a battle was fought, it left only devastation and rain behind. The war went on for years and years, all over the world. And slowly the Shadow began to win. The Light was pushed back and back, until it appeared certain the Shadow would conquer everything. Hope faded away like mist in the sun. But the Light had a leader who would never give up, a man called Lews Therin Telamon. The Dragon."
One of the boys gasped in surprise. Egwene was too busy goggling to see who. She forgot even to pretend that she was offering water. The Dragon was the man who had destroyed everything!
She did not know much about the Breaking of the World-well, almost nothing, in truth-but everybody knew that much. Surely he had fought for the Shadow!
"Lews Therm gathered men around him, the Hundred Companions, and a small army. Small as they counted such things then. Ten thousand men. Not a small army now, would you say?" The words seemed an invitation to laugh, but there was no laughter in Master al'Thor's quiet voice. He sounded almost as though he had been there. Egwene certainly did not laugh, and none of the boys did, either. She listened, and tried to remember to breathe. "With only a forlorn hope, Lews Therin attacked the valley of Thakan'dar, the heart of the Shadow itself. Trollocs in the hundreds of thousands fell on them, Trollocs and Myrddraal. Trollocs live to kill. A Trolloc can rip a man to pieces with its bare hands. Myrddraal are death. Aes Sedai fighting for the Shadow rained fire and lightning on Lews Therin and his men. The men following the Dragon did not die one by one, but ten at a time, or twenty, or fifty. Beneath a twisted sky, in a place where nothing grew or ever would again, they fought and died. But they did not retreat or give up. All the way to Shayol Ghul they fought, and if Thakan'dar is the heart of the Shadow, then Shayol Ghul is the heart of the heart. Every man in that army died, and most of the Hundred Companions, but at Shayol Ghul they sealed the Dark One back into the prison the Creator made for him, and the Forsaken with him. And the world was saved from the Dark One."
Silence fell. The boys stared at Master al'Thor with wide eyes. Shining eyes, as if they could see it all, the Trollocs and the Myrddraal and Shayol Ghul. Egwene shivered again. The Dark One and all the Forsaken are bound at Shayol Ghul, bound away from the world of men, she recited to herself. She could not remember the rest, but it helped. Only, if the Dragon had saved the world, how had he destroyed it?
Cenn Buie spat. He spat! Just like some merchant's smelly guard! She did not believe she would think of him as Master Buie again after today.
That broke the boys out of their reverie, of course. They tried to look anywhere but at the gnarled man.
Perrin scatched at his head. "Master al'Thor," he said slowly, "what does 'the Dragon' mean? If somebody's called the Lion, it means he's supposed to be like a lion. But what's a dragon?'
Egwene stared at him. She had never thought of that. Maybe Perrin was not as slow as he appeared.
"I don't know," Rand's father answered simply. "I don't think anyone does. Maybe not even the Aes Sedai." He let the sheep go that he been shearing, and motioned for another to be brought. Egwene realized that he had been done with it for some, time. He must not have wanted to interrupt his story.
Master Cole opened his eyes and grinned. "The Dragon. It surely sounds fierce, though, now doesn't it?" he said before letting his eyes drift shut again.
141 suppose it does at that," her father said. "But it all happened long ago and far away, and it doesn't have anything to do with us. Well, you've had your break and your story, lads. Back to work with you." As the boys began standing up reluctantly, he added, "There are plenty of lads here from the farms I don't think any of you know, yet. It's always good to know your neighbors, so you should acquaint yourselves with them. I don't want any of you working together today; you already know one another. Now, off with you."
The boys exchanged startled glances. Had they really thought he would let them go back to whatever mischief they had been planning? Mat and Dav looked especially glum as they walked away exchanging glances. She thought about following, but they were already splitting up, and she would have to trail after Rand to learn anything more. She grimaced. If he noticed, he might think she was goosebrained like Cilia Cole. Besides, there were those far-off lands. She did intend to see diem.
Abruptly she became aware of ravens, many more than there had been before, flapping out of the trees, flying away west, toward the Mountains of Mist. She shifted her shoulders. She felt as if someone were staring at her back. Someone, or ....
She did not want to turn around, but she did, raising her eyes to the trees behind the men shearing. Midway up a tall pine, a solitary raven stood on a branch. Staring at her. Right at her! She felt cold right down to her middle. The only thing she wanted to do was run. Instead, she made herself stare back, trying to copy Nynaeve's level look. After a moment the raven gave a harsh cry and threw itself off the branch, black wings carrying it west after the others.
Maybe I'm starting to get that look right, she thought, and then
felt silly. She had to stop letting her imagination get the better of her. It was just a bird. And she had important things to do, like being the best water-carrier ever. The best water-carrier ever would not be frightened of birds or anything else. Squaring her shoulders, she set out through the crowd again, watching for Berowyn. But this time, it was so she could offer Berowyn the dipper. If she could face down a raven, she could face down her sister. She hoped.
Egwene had to carry water again the next year, which was a great disappointment to her, but once again she tried to be the best. If you were going to do a thing, you might as well do the best you could. It must have worked, because the year after that she was allowed to help with the food, a year early! She set herself a new goal, then: to be allowed to braid her hair younger than anybody ever. She did not really think the Women's Circle would allow it, but a goal that was easy was no goal at all.
She stopped wanting to hear stories from the grownups, though she would have liked to hear a gleeman, but she still liked to read of distant lands with strange ways, and dreamed of seeing them. The boys stopped wanting stories, too. She did not think they even read very much. They all grew older, thinking their world would never change, and many of those stories faded to fond memories while others were forgotten, or half so. And if they learned that some of those stories really had been more than stories, well .... The War of the Shadow? The Breaking of the World? Lews Therin Telamon? How could it matter now? And what had really happened back then, anyway?
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