Lord of Chaos

by Robert Jordan

  The trouble could be summed up by that name. Three thousand years ago, near enough, there had been a city called Al’cair’rahienallen, built by Ogier. Today it was Cairhien, and the grove the Ogier builders planted to remind them of their stedding was part of an estate that had belonged to the same Barthanes whose palace now housed Rand’s school. Nobody but Ogier and maybe some Aes Sedai remembered Al’cair’rahienallen. Not even Cairhienin.

  Whatever Haman believed, much could change in three thousand years. Great Ogier-built cities had ceased to exist, some leaving not so much as a name behind. Great cities had risen that the Ogier had had no hand in. Amador, begun after the Trolloc Wars, was one, so Moiraine had told him, and Chachin in Kandor, and Shol Arbela in Arafel, and Fal Moran in Shienar. In Arad Doman, Bandar Eban had been built on the ruins of a city destroyed in the War of the Hundred Years, a city Moiraine knew three names for, each suspect, and itself built on the ruins of a nameless city that had vanished in the Trolloc Wars. Rand knew of a Waygate in Shienar, in the countryside near a moderate town that had kept part of the name of the huge city leveled by Trollocs, and another inside the Blight, in Shadow-murdered Malkier. Other places there had simply been change, or growth, as Haman himself had pointed out. The Waygate here in Caemlyn sat in a basement now. A well-guarded basement. Rand knew there was a Waygate in Tear, out in the great pastureland where the High Lords ran their famous horse herds. There should be one somewhere in the Mountains of Mist, where Manetheren had once stood, wherever that was. As far as stedding went, he knew where to find Stedding Tsofu. Moiraine had not considered stedding or Ogier a vital part of his education.

  “You don’t know where the stedding are?” Haman said incredulously when Rand finished explaining. “Is this Aiel humor? I have never understood Aiel humor.”

  “For Ogier,” Rand said gently, “it has been a long time since the Ways were made. For humans, it has been a very long time.”

  “But you do not even remember Mafal Dadaranell, or Ancohima, or Londaren Cor, or . . .?”

  Covril put a hand on Haman’s shoulder, but the pity in her eyes was directed at Rand. “He does not remember,” she said softly. “Their memories are gone.” She made it sound the greatest loss imaginable. Erith, hands clasped to her mouth, appeared ready to cry.

  Sulin returned, quite deliberately not running, followed by a fat cluster of gai’shain, their arms filled to overflowing with rolled maps of all sizes, some long enough to drag on the courtyard paving stones. One white-robed man carried an ivory-inlaid writing box. “I have set gai’shain looking for more,” she said stiffly, “and some of the wetlanders.”

  “Thank you,” he told her. A little of the tautness went from her face.

  Squatting down, he began spreading maps right there on the paving stones, sorting them. A number were of the city, and many of parts of Andor. He quickly found one showing the whole stretch of the Borderlands, and the Light knew what that was doing in Caemlyn. Some were old and tattered, showing borders that no longer applied, naming countries that had faded away hundreds of years before.

  Borders and names were enough to rank the maps by age. On the oldest, Hardan bordered Cairhien to the north; then Hardan was gone and Cairhien’s borders swept halfway to Shienar before creeping back as it became clear the Sun Throne simply could not hold on to that much land. Maredo stood between Tear and Illian, then Maredo was gone, and Tear and Illian’s borders met on the Plains of Maredo, slowly falling back for the same reasons as Cairhien’s. Caralain vanished, and Almoth, Mosara and Irenvelle, and others, sometimes absorbed by other nations, most often eventually becoming unclaimed land and wilderness. Those maps told a story of fading since Hawkwing’s empire crumbled, of humanity in slow retreat. A second Borderland map showed only Saldaea and part of Arafel, but it showed the Blightborder fifty miles farther north too. Humanity retreated, and the Shadow advanced.

  A bald, skinny man in ill-fitting Palace livery scurried into the courtyard with another armload, and Rand sighed and went on selecting and discarding.

  Haman gravely examined the writing box that was held out to him by the gai’shain, then produced one almost as large, though quite plain, from a capacious coat pocket. The pen he took from it was polished wood, rather fatter than Rand’s thumb and long enough to look slender. It fit the Ogier’s sausage-thick fingers perfectly. He got down on hands and knees, crawling among the maps as Rand sorted, occasionally dipping his pen in the gai’shain’s inkpot, annotating in a handwriting that seemed too large until you realized that for him it was very small. Covril followed, peering over his shoulder even after he asked the second time whether she really thought he would make a mistake.

  It was an education for Rand, beginning with seven stedding scattered through the Borderlands. But then, Trollocs feared to enter a stedding, and even Myrddraal needed some great purpose to drive them into one. The Spine of the World, the Dragonwall, held thirteen, including one in Kinslayer’s Dagger, from Stedding Shangtai in the south to Stedding Qichen and Stedding Sanshen in the north, only a few miles apart.

  “The land truly changed in the Breaking of the World,” Haman explained when Rand commented. He continued marking briskly, though; briskly for an Ogier. “Dry land became sea and sea dry land, but the land folded as well. Sometimes what was far apart became close together, and what was close, far. Though of course, no one can say whether Qichen and Sanshen were far apart at all.”

  “You forgot Cantoine,” Covril announced, making another liveried servant drop his fresh armload of maps with a start.

  Haman gave her a look and lettered in the name just above the River Iralell, not far north of Haddon Mirk. In the strip west of the Dragonwall from the southern border of Shienar to the Sea of Storms, there were only four, all newfound as the Ogier considered it, meaning the youngest, Tsofu, had had Ogier back for six hundred years and none of the others for more than a thousand. Some of the locations were as big a surprise as the Borderlands, such as the Mountains of Mist, which had six, and the Shadow Coast. The Black Hills were included, and the forests above the River Ivo, and the mountains above the River Dhagon, just north of Arad Doman.

  Sadder was the list of stedding abandoned, given up because the numbers there had grown too few. The Spine of the World and the Mountains of Mist and the Shadow Coast were in that list too, and so was a stedding deep on Almoth Plain, near the great forest called the Paerish Swar, and one in the low mountains along the north of Toman Head, facing the Aryth Ocean. Perhaps saddest was the one marked on the very edge of the Blight in Arafel; Myrddraal might be reluctant to enter a stedding, but as the Blight marched south year by year, it swept over everything.

  Pausing, Haman said sadly, “Sherandu was swallowed by The Great Blight one thousand eight hundred forty-three years ago, and Chandar nine hundred sixty-eight.”

  “May their memories flourish and flower in the Light,” Covril and Erith murmured together.

  “I know of one you didn’t mark,” Rand said. Perrin had told him of sheltering in it once. He pulled out a map of Andor east of the River Arinelle and touched a spot well above the road from Caemlyn to Whitebridge. It was close enough.

  Haman grimaced, almost a snarl. “Where Hawkwing’s city was to be. That was never reclaimed. Several stedding were found and never reclaimed. We try to stay away from the lands of men as much as possible.” All of the marks were in rugged mountains, in places men found hard to enter, or in a few cases just far from any human habitation. Stedding Tsofu lay far closer than any other to where humans dwelled, and even then Rand knew it was a full day to the nearest village.

  “This would be a fine discussion another time,” Covril said, directing her words to Rand yet plainly meaning them for Haman, as her sidelong looks indicated, “but I want to make as far west as I can before nightfall.” Haman sighed heavily.

  “Surely you’ll stay here awhile,” Rand protested. “You must be exhausted, walking all the way from Cairhien.”

  “Women do not
become exhausted,” Haman said, “they only exhaust others. That is a very old saying among us.” Covril and Erith sniffed in harmony. Muttering to himself, Haman went on with his listing, but now it was cities that the Ogier had built, cities where the groves had been, each grove holding its Waygate to carry Ogier back and forth to the stedding without passing through the so-often troubled lands of men.

  Caemlyn he marked, of course, and Tar Valon, Tear and Illian, Cairhien and Maradon and Ebou Dar. That was the end as far as cities that still existed were concerned, and Ebou Dar he wrote as Barashta. Perhaps Barashta belonged with the others, in a way, with the dots made in places where the maps showed nothing but a village if that. Mafal Dadaranell, Ancohima, and Londaren Cor, of course, and Manetheren. Aren Mador, Aridhol, Shaemal, Deranbar, Braem, Condaris, Hai Ecorimon, Iman . . . As that list grew, Rand began to see damp spots on each map when Haman was done. It took him a moment to realize that the Ogier Elder was weeping silently, letting the tears fall as he marked cities dead and forgotten. Perhaps he wept for the people, perhaps for the memories. The one thing Rand could be sure of was that it was not for the cities themselves, not for the lost works of Ogier masons. To the Ogier, stonework was only something they had picked up during the Exile, and what work in stone could compare with the majesty of trees?

  One of those names more than tugged at Rand’s memories, and its location as well, east of Baerlon, several days above Whitebridge on the Arinelle. “There was a grove here?” he said, fingering the mark.

  “At Aridhol?” Haman said. “Yes. Yes, there was. A sad business, that.”

  Rand did not raise his head. “In Shadar Logoth,” he corrected. “A very sad business. Could you — would you — show me that Waygate if I took you there?”

  Chapter 21

  To Shadar Logoth

  * * *

  Take us there?” Covril said, frowning formidably at the map in Rand’s hands. “It will carry us well out of our way, if I remember where the Two Rivers is correctly. I will not waste another day finding Loial.” Erith nodded firmly.

  Haman, cheeks still damp with tears, shook his head for their haste but said, “I cannot allow it. Aridhol — Shadar Logoth, as you rightly name it now — is no place for someone as young as Erith. In good truth, it is no place for anyone.”

  Letting the map fall. Rand stood up. He knew Shadar Logoth better than he wanted to. “You will lose no time. In fact, you’ll gain. I will take you there by Traveling, by a gateway; you will be most of the way to the Two Rivers today. We’ll not be long. I know you can lead me right to the Waygate.” Ogier could sense Waygates, if they were not too far.

  This necessitated another conference beyond the fountain, one Erith demanded to be part of. Rand caught only snatches, yet it was plain that Haman, shaking his great head doggedly, opposed the plan while Covril, ears so stiff it seemed she was trying for every inch of height, insisted on it. At first Covril frowned at Erith as much as at Haman; whatever the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law among Ogier, she clearly thought the younger woman had no business in this. It did not take her long to change her mind, though. The Ogier women flanked Haman, hammering at him relentlessly.

  “ . . . too dangerous. Much too dangerous,” came like distant thunder from Haman.

  “ . . . almost there today. . . . ” A slighter thunder from Covril.

  “ . . . he has been Outside too long already . . . ” An almost silvery peal from Erith.

  “ . . . haste makes for waste . . . “

  “ . . . my Loial . . . “

  “ . . . my Loial . . . “

  “ . . . Mashadar beneath our feet . . . “

  “ . . . my Loial . . . “

  “ . . . my Loial . . . “

  “ . . . as an Elder . . . “

  “ . . . my Loial . . . “

  “ . . . my Loial . . . .”

  Haman came back to Rand tugging at his coat as though it had been ripped half off, followed by the women. Covril maintained a smoother face than Erith, who fought to suppress a smile, but their tufted ears were at the same jaunty angle, somehow conveying satisfaction.

  “We have decided,” Haman said stiffly, “to accept your offer. Let this ridiculous gallivanting be done with so I can return to my classes. And to the Stump. Um. Um. There is much to be said about you before the Stump.”

  Rand did not care whether Haman told the Stump he was a bully. Ogier held themselves apart from men except for repairing their old stonework, and it was unlikely they would influence any human one way or another about him. “Good,” he said. “I will send someone to fetch your belongings from your inn.”

  “We have everything right here.” Covril went back around to the other side of the fountain, bent, and straightened with two bundles that had been hidden behind the basin. Either would have made a heavy load for a man. She handed one to Erith and slipped a strap tied to the other over her head so it slanted across her chest, holding the bundle against her back.

  “If Loial were here,” Erith explained, donning her bundle, “we would be ready to start back to Stedding Tsofu without delay. If not, we would be ready to go on. Without delay.”

  “Actually, it was the beds,” Haman confided, holding his hands to indicate a size to fit a human child. “Once every inn Outside had two or three Ogier rooms, but they seem very hard to find now. It is difficult to understand.” He glanced at the marked maps and sighed. “It was difficult to understand.”

  Waiting just long enough for Haman to fetch his own bundle, Rand seized saidin and opened a gateway right there beside the fountain, a hole in the air that showed a ruined, weed-filled street and collapsing buildings.

  “Rand al’Thor.” Sulin almost strolled into the courtyard, just ahead of a cluster of map-laden servants and gai’shain. Liah and Cassin were with her, pretending to be just as casual. “You asked for more maps.” Sulin’s glance at the gateway was barely short of accusing.

  “I can protect myself better there than you can,” Rand told her coldly. He did not intend it to be cold, but wrapped in the Void, he could not make his voice anything but cold and distant, “There is nothing your spears can fight, and some things they can’t.”

  Sulin still wore a good deal of her earlier stiffness. “All the more reason for us to be there.”

  That could not possibly make sense to anyone not Aiel, but . . . “I will not argue it,” he said. She would try to follow, if he refused; she would summon Maidens who would try to leap through even if he was closing the gateway. “I expect you have the rest of today’s guard just inside. Whistle them up. But everyone is to stay close to me and touch nothing. Be quick about it. I want this done with.” His memories of Shadar Logoth were not pleasant.

  “I sent them away as you insisted,” Sulin said disgustedly. “Give me a slow count of one hundred.”

  “Ten.”

  “Fifty.”

  Rand nodded, and her fingers flashed. Jalani darted away inside, and Sulin’s hands flickered again. Three gai’shain women dropped their armloads of maps, looking startled — Aiel never looked that surprised — gathered long white robes and vanished back into the Palace in different directions, but quickly as they moved, Sulin was ahead of them.

  As Rand reached twenty, Aiel began bounding into the courtyard, hurtling though windows, leaping down from balconies. He almost lost the count. Every one was veiled, and only some Maidens. They stared about in confusion when they found only Rand and three Ogier, who blinked at them curiously. Some lowered their veils. The Palace servants huddled together.

  The flow continued even after Sulin returned, unveiled, dead on the count of fifty, the courtyard filling with Aiel. Quickly it became clear that she had spread the word the Car’a’carn was in danger, the only way she felt she could gather enough spears in the time allotted. A little sour grumping passed among the men, but most decided it was a fine joke, some chuckling or rattling spears on bucklers. None left, though; they looked at the gateway and settle
d on their haunches to see what was happening.

  Ears sharpened with the Power, Rand heard a Maiden named Nandera, sinewy yet still handsome despite more gray than yellow in her hair, whisper to Sulin. “You spoke to gai’shain as Far Dareis Mai.”

  Sulin’s blue eyes met Nandera’s green levelly. “I did. We will deal with it when Rand al’Thor is safe today.”

  “When he is safe,” Nandera agreed.

  Sulin chose out twenty Maidens quickly, some who had been part of the guard that morning and some not, but when Urien began picking Red Shields, men from other societies insisted they should be included. That city through the gateway looked a place where enemies might be found, and the Car’a’carn must be protected. If the truth be told, no Aiel turned away from a possible fight, and the younger they were, the more likely to try to find one. Another argument almost started when Rand said the men could not number more than the Maidens — that would dishonor Far Dareis Mai, since he had given them his honor to carry — and the Maidens not more than Sulin had already chosen. He truly was taking them where no battle skills could protect them, and every one who came with him was one more he would have to watch out for. That he did not explain; no telling whose honor he would step on if he did.

  “Remember,” he said once they were sorted out, “touch nothing. Take nothing, not even a sip of water. And stay in sight always; don’t go inside any building for any reason.” Haman and Covril nodded vigorously, which seemed to impress the Aiel more than Rand’s words. So long as they were impressed.