The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  The chief of the Taardad looked at him calmly; his face could have been carved stone for all its expression. “Wait. Only that. Dhearic will bring them. Eventually.”

  White-haired Han, lying next to Rhuarc, twisted his mouth as if about to spit. His leathery face wore a sour look, as usual. “Dhearic has seen too many men and Maidens sit staring for days, then throw down their spears. Throw them down!”

  “And run away,” Bael added quietly. “I have seen them myself, among the Goshien, even from my own sept, running. And you, Han, among the Tomanelle. We all have. I do not think they know where they are running to, only what they are running from.”

  “Cowardly snakes,” Jheran barked. Gray streaked his light brown hair; there were no young men among Aiel clan chiefs. “Stinkadders, wriggling away from their own shadows.” A slight shift of his blue eyes toward the far side of the carpet made it clear he meant it for a description of the Goshien, not just those who had thrown down their spears.

  Bael made as if to rise, his face hardening further, if that was possible, but the man next to him put a quieting hand on his arm. Bruan, of the Nakai, was big enough and strong enough for two blacksmiths, but he had a placid nature that seemed odd for an Aiel. “All of us have seen men and Maidens run.” He sounded almost lazy, and his gray eyes looked so, yet Rand knew otherwise; even Rhuarc considered Bruan a deadly fighter and a devious tactician. Luckily, not even Rhuarc was stronger for Rand than Bruan. But he had come to follow He Who Comes With the Dawn; he did not know Rand al’Thor. “As you have, Jheran. You know how hard it was to face what they face. If you cannot name coward those who died because they could not face it, can you name coward those who run for the same reason?”

  “They should never have learned,” Han muttered, kneading his red-tasseled blue cushion like an enemy’s throat. “It was for those who could enter Rhuidean and live.”

  He spoke the words to no one in particular, but they had to be for Rand’s ears. It was Rand who had revealed to everyone what a man learned amid the glass columns in the plaza, revealed enough that the chiefs and Wise Ones could not turn aside when asked the rest. If there was an Aiel in the Waste who did not know the truth now, he had not spoken to anyone in a month.

  Far from the glorious heritage of battle most believed in, the Aiel had begun as helpless refugees from the Breaking of the World. Everyone who survived had been refugees then, of course, but the Aiel had never seen themselves as helpless. Worse, they had been followers of the Way of the Leaf, refusing to do violence even in defense of their lives. Aiel meant “dedicated” in the Old Tongue, and it had been to peace that they were dedicated. Those who called themselves Aiel today were the descendants of those who had broken a pledge of untold generations. Only one remnant of that belief remained: an Aiel would die before taking up a sword. They had always believed it a part of their pride, of their separateness from those who lived outside the Waste.

  He had heard Aiel say that they had committed some sin to be placed in the desolate Waste. Now they knew what it was. The men and women who had built Rhuidean and died here—those called the Jenn Aiel, the Clan That Was Not, on the few occasions they were spoken of—had been the ones who kept faith with the Aes Sedai of the time before the Breaking. It was hard to face the knowledge that what you had always believed was a lie.

  “It had to be told,” Rand said. They had a right to know. A man shouldn’t have to live a lie. Their own prophecy said I would break them. And I couldn’t have done differently. The past was past and done; he should be worrying about the future. Some of these men dislike me, and some hate me for not being born among them, but they follow. I need them all. “What of the Miagoma?”

  Erim, lying between Rhuarc and Han, shook his head. His once bright red hair was half white, but his green eyes were as strong as any younger man’s. His big hands, wide and long and hard, said his arms were as strong, too. “Timolan does not let his feet know which way he will jump until after he has leaped.”

  “When Timolan was young as a chief,” Jheran said, “he tried to unite the clans and failed. It will not sit well with him that at last one has come to succeed where he failed.”

  “He will come,” Rhuarc said. “Timolan never believed himself He Who Comes With the Dawn. And Janwin will bring the Shiande. But they will wait. They must settle matters in their own minds first.”

  “They must settle He Who Comes With the Dawn being a wetlander,” Han barked. “I mean no offense, Car’a’carn.” There was no obsequiousness in his voice; a chief was not a king, and neither was the chief of chiefs. At best he was first among equals.

  “The Daryne and the Codarra will come eventually, as well, I think,” Bruan said calmly. And quickly, lest silence should grow to a reason for dancing the spears. First among equals at best. “They have lost more than any other clan to the bleakness.” That was what the Aiel had taken to calling the long period of staring before someone tried to run away from being Aiel. “For the moment, Mandelain and Indirian are concerned with holding their clans together, and both will want to see the Dragons on your arms for themselves, but they will come.”

  That left only one clan to be discussed, the one none of the chiefs wanted to mention. “What news of Couladin and the Shaido?” Rand asked.

  Silence answered him, broken only by the softly serene sounds of the harp in the background, each man waiting for another to speak, all coming as close as Aiel could to showing discomfort. Jheran frowned at his thumbnail, and Bruan toyed with one of the silvery tassels on his green cushion. Even Rhuarc studied the carpet.

  Graceful, white-robed men and women moved into the hush, pouring worked silver goblets of wine to set beside each man, bringing small silver plates with olives, rare in the Waste, and white ewe’s-milk cheese, and the pale, wrinkled nuts the Aiel called pecara. The Aiel faces looking out of those pale cowls had downcast eyes and an unfamiliar meekness on their features.

  Whether captured in battle or on a raid, the gai’shain were sworn to serve obediently for one year and a day, touching no weapon, doing no violence, at the end returning to their own clan and sept as if nothing had happened. A strange echo of the Way of the Leaf. Ji’e’toh, honor and obligation, required it, and breaking ji’e’toh was nearly the worst thing an Aiel could do. Perhaps the worst. It was possible that some of these men and women were serving their own clan chief, but neither would acknowledge it by the blink of an eye so long as the period of gai’shain held, not even for a son or daughter.

  It struck Rand suddenly that this was the real reason that some Aiel took what he had revealed so hard. To those, it must seem that their ancestors had sworn gai’shain, not only for themselves but for all succeeding generations. And those generations—all, down to the present day—had broken ji’e’toh by taking up the spear. Had the men in front of him ever worried along those lines? Ji’e’toh was very serious business to an Aiel.

  The gai’shain departed on soft slippered feet, barely making a sound. None of the clan chiefs touched their wine, or the food.

  “Is there any hope that Couladin will meet with me?” Rand knew there was not; he had stopped sending requests for a meeting once he learned Couladin was having the messengers skinned alive. But it was a way to start the others talking.

  Han snorted. “The only word we have had from him is that he means to flay you when next he sees you. Does that sound as if he will talk?”

  “Can I break the Shaido away from him?”

  “They follow him,” Rhuarc said. “He is not a chief at all, but they believe he is.” Couladin had never entered those glass columns; he might even still believe as he claimed, that everything Rand had said was a lie. “He says that he is the Car’a’carn, and they believe that as well. The Shaido Maidens who came, came for their society, and that because Far Dareis Mai carried your honor. None else will.”

  “We send scouts to watch them,” Bruan said, “and the Shaido kill them when they can—Couladin builds the makings of half a dozen
feuds—but so far he shows no signs of attacking us here. I have heard that he claims we have defiled Rhuidean, and that attacking us here would only deepen the desecration.”

  Erim grunted and shifted on his cushion. “He means there are enough spears here to kill every Shaido twice over and to spare.” He popped a piece of white cheese into his mouth, growling around it. “The Shaido were ever cowards and thieves.”

  “Honorless dogs,” Bael and Jheran said together, then stared at one another as though each thought the other had tricked him into something.

  “Honorless or not,” Bruan said quietly, “Couladin’s numbers are growing.” Calm as he sounded, he still took a deep drink from his goblet before going on. “You all know what I am speaking of. Some of those who run, after the bleakness, do not throw away their spears. Instead they join with their societies among the Shaido.”

  “No Tomanelle has ever broken clan,” Han barked.

  Bruan looked past Rhuarc and Erim at the Tomanelle chief and said deliberately, “It has happened in every clan.” Without waiting for another challenge to his word, he settled back on his cushion. “It cannot be called breaking clan. They join their societies. Like the Shaido Maidens who have come to their Roof here.”

  There were a few mutters, but no one disputed him this time. The rules governing Aiel warrior societies were complex, and in some ways their members felt as closely bound to society as to clan. For instance, members of the same society would not fight each other even if their clans were in blood feud. Some men would not marry a woman too closely related to a member of their own society, just as if that made her their own close blood kin. The ways of Far Dareis Mai, the Maidens of the Spear, Rand did not even want to think about.

  “I need to know what Couladin intends,” he told them. Couladin was a bull with a bee in his ear; he might charge in any direction. Rand hesitated. “Would it violate honor to send people to join their societies among the Shaido?” He did not need to describe what he meant any further. To a man, they stiffened where they lay, even Rhuarc, eyes cold enough to banish the heat from the room.

  “To spy in that manner”—Erim twisted his mouth around “spy” as if the word tasted foul—“would be like spying on your own sept. No one of honor would do such a thing.”

  Rand refrained from asking whether they might find someone with a slightly less prickly honor. The Aiel sense of humor was a strange thing, often cruel, but about some matters they had none at all.

  To change the subject, he asked, “Is there any word from across the Dragonwall?” He knew the answer; that sort of news spread quickly even among as many Aiel as were gathered around Rhuidean.

  “None worth the telling,” Rhuarc replied. “With the troubles among the treekillers, few peddlers come into the Three-fold Land.” That was the Aiel name for the Waste; a punishment for their sin, a testing ground for their courage, an anvil to shape them. “Treekillers” was what they called Cairhienin. “The Dragon banner still flies over the Stone of Tear. Tairens have moved north into Cairhien as you ordered, to distribute food among the treekillers. Nothing more.”

  “You should have let the treekillers starve,” Bael muttered, and Jheran closed his mouth with a snap. Rand suspected he had been about to say much the same.

  “Treekillers are fit for nothing except to be killed or sold as animals in Shara,” Erim said grimly. Those were two of the things Aiel did to those who came into the Waste uninvited; only gleeman, peddlers, and Tinkers had safe passage, though Aiel avoided the Tinkers as if they carried fever. Shara was the name of the lands beyond the Waste; not even the Aiel knew much about them.

  From the corner of his eye, Rand saw two women standing expectantly just inside the tall, arched doorway. Someone had hung strings of colored beads there, red and blue, to replace the missing doors. One of the women was Moiraine. For a moment he considered making them wait; Moiraine had that irritatingly commanding look on her face, clearly expecting them to break off everything for her. Only, there was really nothing left to discuss, and he could tell from the men’s eyes that they did not want to make conversation. Not so soon after speaking of the bleakness, and the Shaido.

  Sighing, he stood, and the clan chiefs imitated him. All except Han were as tall as he or taller. Where Rand had grown up, Han would have been considered of average height or better; among Aiel, he was accounted short. “You know what must be done. Bring in the rest of the clans, and keep an eye on the Shaido.” He paused a moment, then added, “It will end well. As well for the Aiel as I can manage.”

  “The prophecy said you would break us,” Han said sourly, “and you have made a good beginning. But we will follow you. Till shade is gone,” he recited, “till water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the Last Day.” Sightblinder was one of the Aiel names for the Dark One.

  There was nothing for Rand except to make the proper response. Once he had not known it. “By my honor and the Light, my life will be a dagger for Sightblinder’s heart.”

  “Until the Last Day,” the Aiel finished, “to Shayol Ghul itself.” The harper played on pacifically.

  The chiefs filed out past the two women, eyeing Moiraine respectfully. There was nothing of fear in them. Rand wished he could be as sure of himself. Moiraine had too many plans for him, too many ways of pulling strings he did not know she had tied to him.

  The two women came in as soon as the chiefs were gone, Moiraine as cool and elegant as ever. A small, pretty woman, with or without those Aes Sedai features he could never put an age to, she had abandoned the damp, cooling cloth for her temples. In its place, a small blue stone hung suspended on her forehead from a fine golden chain in her dark hair. It would not have mattered if she had kept it; nothing could diminish her queenly carriage. She usually seemed to own a foot more height than she actually had, and her eyes were all confidence and command.

  The other woman was taller, though still short of his shoulder, and young, not ageless. Egwene, whom he had grown up with. Now, except for her big dark eyes, she could almost have passed as an Aiel woman, and not only for her tanned face and hands. She wore a full Aiel skirt of brown wool and a loose white blouse of a plant fiber called algode. Algode was softer than even the finest-woven wool; it would do very well for trade, if he ever convinced the Aiel. A gray shawl hung around Egwene’s shoulders, and a folded gray scarf made a wide band to hold back the dark hair that fell below her shoulders. Unlike most Aielwomen, she wore only one bracelet, ivory carved into a circle of flames, and a single necklace of gold and ivory beads. And one more thing. A Great Serpent ring on her left hand.

  Egwene had been studying with some of the Aiel Wise Ones—exactly what, Rand did not know, though he more than suspected something to do with dreams; Egwene and the Aielwomen were closemouthed—but she had studied in the White Tower, too. She was one of the Accepted, on the way to becoming Aes Sedai. And passing herself off, here and in Tear at least, as full Aes Sedai already. Sometimes he teased her about that; she did not take his japes very well, though.

  “The wagons will be ready to leave for Tar Valon soon,” Moiraine said. Her voice was musical, crystalline.

  “Send a strong guard,” Rand said, “or Kadere may not take them where you want.” He turned for the windows again, wanting to look out and think, about Kadere. “You’ve not needed me to hold your hand or give you permission before.”

  Abruptly something seemed to strike him across the shoulders, for all the world like a thick hickory stick; only the slight feel of goose bumps on his skin, not likely in this heat, told him that one of the women had channeled.

  Spinning back to face them, he reached out to saidin, filled himself with the One Power. The Power felt like life itself swelling inside him, as if he were ten times, a hundred times as alive; the Dark One’s taint filled him, too, death and corruption, like maggots crawling in his mouth. It was a torrent that threatened to sweep him away, a raging flood he
had to fight every moment. He was almost used to it now, and at the same time he would never be used to it. He wanted to hold on to the sweetness of saidin forever, and he wanted to vomit. And all the while the deluge tried to scour him to the bone and burn his bones to ash.

  The taint would drive him mad eventually, if the Power did not kill him first; it was a race between the two. Madness had been the fate of every man who had channeled since the Breaking of the World began, since that day when Lews Therin Telamon, the Dragon, and his Hundred Companions had sealed up the Dark One’s prison at Shayol Ghul. The last backblast from that sealing had tainted the male half of the True Source, and men who could channel, madmen who could channel, had torn the world apart.

  He filled himself with the Power. . . . And he could not tell which woman had done it. They both looked at him as if butter would not melt in their mouths, each with an eyebrow arched almost identically in slightly amused questioning. Either or both could be embracing the female half of the Source right that instant, and he would never know.

  Of course, a stick across the shoulders was not Moiraine’s way; she found other means of chastising, more subtle, usually more painful in the end. Yet even sure that it must have been Egwene, he did nothing. Proof. Thought slid along the outside of the Void; he floated within, in emptiness, thought and emotion, even his anger, distant. I will do nothing without proof. I will not be goaded, this time. She was not the Egwene he had grown up with; she had become part of the Tower since Moiraine sent her there. Moiraine again. Always Moiraine. Sometimes he wished he were rid of Moiraine. Only sometimes?

  He concentrated on her. “What do you want of me?” His voice sounded flat and cold to his own ears. The Power stormed inside him. Egwene had told him that for a woman, touching saidar, the female half of the Source, was an embrace; for a man, always, it was a war without mercy. “And don’t mention wagons again, little sister. I usually find out what you mean to do long after it is done.”