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Authors: Robert Jordan

BOOK: Shadow Rising, The
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When he turned, he was alone in front of the big five-sided doorway.
Burn me, I wish they wouldn’t do that.
Taking a deep breath, he walked through.
It was another white-floored star-shaped chamber, not so large as the one—or ones—with columns. An eight-pointed star with a glassy black pedestal standing in each point, like a two-span slice out of one of those columns. Glowing yellow strips ran up the sharp edges of room and pedestals. The unpleasant smell was stronger here; he recognized it now. The smell of a wild animal’s lair. He hardly noticed it, though, because the chamber was empty except for him.
Turning slowly, he frowned at the pedestals. Surely someone should be up on them, whoever was supposed to answer his questions. He was being cheated. If he could come here, he should be able to get answers.
Suddenly he spun in a circle, searching not the pedestals but the smooth gray walls. The doorway was gone; there was no way out.
Yet before he completed a second turn there was someone standing on each pedestal, people like his guide, but dressed differently. Four were men, the others women, their stiff hair rising in a crest before spilling down their
backs. All wore long white skirts that hid their feet. The women had on white blouses that fell below their hips, with high lace necks and pale ruffles at their wrists. The men wore even more straps than the guide, wider and studded with gold. Each harness supported a pair of bare-bladed knives on the wearer’s chest. Bronze blades, Mat judged from the color, but he would have given all the gold in his possession for just one of them.
“Speak,” one of the women said in that growling voice. “By the ancient treaty, here is agreement made. What is your need? Speak.”
Mat hesitated. That was not what the snaky people had said. They were all staring at him like foxes staring at dinner. “Who is the Daughter of the Nine Moons and why do I have to marry her?” He hoped they would count that as one question.
No one answered. None of them spoke. They just continued to stare at him with those big pale eyes.
“You are supposed to answer,” he said. Silence. “Burn your bones to ash, answer me! Who is the Daughter of the Nine Moons and why do I have to marry her? How will I die and live again? What does it mean that I have to give up half the light of the world? Those are my three questions. Say something!”
Dead silence. He could hear himself breathing, hear the blood throbbing in his ears.
“I have no intention of marrying. And I have no intention of dying, either, whether I am supposed to live again or not. I walk around with holes in my memory, holes in my life, and you stare at me like idiots. If I had my way, I would want those holes filled, but at least answers to my questions might fill some in my future. You have to answer—!”
“Done,” one of the men growled, and Mat blinked.
Done? What was done? What did he mean? “Burn your eyes,” he muttered. “Burn your souls! You are as bad as Aes Sedai. Well, I want a way to be free of Aes Sedai and the Power, and I want to be away from you and back to Rhuidean, if you will not answer me. Open up a door, and let me—”
“Done,” another man said, and one of the women echoed, “Done.”
Mat scanned the walls, then glared, turning to take them all in, standing up there on their pedestals staring down at him. “Done? What is done? I see no door. You lying goat-fathered—”
“Fool,” a woman said in a whispered growl, and others repeated it. Fool. Fool. Fool.
“Wise to ask leavetaking, when you set no price, no terms.”
“Yet fool not to first agree on price.”
“We will set the price.”
They spoke so quickly he could not tell which said what.
“What was asked will be given.”
“The price will be paid.”
“Burn you,” he shouted, “what are you talking—”
Utter darkness closed around him. There was something around his throat. He could not breathe. Air. He could not … .
The Road to the Spear
N
ot hesitating at the first row of columns, Rand made himself walk in among them. There could be no turning back now, no looking back.
Light, what is supposed to happen in here? What does it really do?
Clear as the finest glass, perhaps a foot thick and standing three paces or more apart, the columns were a forest of dazzling light filled with cascading ripples and glares and odd rainbows. The air was cooler here, enough to make him wish he had a coat, but the same gritty dust covered the smooth white stone under his boots. Not a breeze stirred, yet something made each hair on his body shift, even under his shirt.
Ahead and to the right he could just see another man, in the grays and browns of Aiel, stiff and statue-still in the changing lights. That must be Muradin, Couladin’s brother. Stiff and still;
something
was happening. Strangely, considering the brilliance, Rand could make out the Aiel’s face clearly. Eyes wide and staring, face tight, mouth quivering on the brink of a snarl. Whatever he was seeing, he did not like it. But Muradin had survived that far, at least. If he could do it, Rand could. The man was six or seven paces ahead of him at best. Wondering why he and Mat had not seen Muradin go in, he took another step.
 
 
He rode behind a set of eyes, feeling but not controlling a body. The owner of those eyes crouched easily among boulders on a barren mountainside,  beneath a sun-blasted sky, peering down at strange half-made stone structures—
No!
Less
than half-made. That’s Rhuidean, but without any fog, and only just begun
—peering down contemptuously. He was Mandein, young for a sept chief at forty. Separateness faded; acceptance came. He was Mandein.
“You must agree,” Sealdre said, but for the moment he ignored her.
The Jenn had made things to draw up water and spill it into great stone basins. He had fought battles over less water than one of those tanks held, with people walking by as though water was of no consequence. A strange forest of glass rose in the center of all their activity, glittering in the sun, and near it the tallest tree he had ever seen, at least three spans high. Their stone structures looked as if each was meant to contain an entire hold, an entire sept, when done. Madness. This Rhuidean could not be defended. Not that anyone would attack the Jenn, of course. Most avoided the Jenn as they avoided the accursed Lost Ones, who wandered searching for the songs they claimed would bring back lost days.
A procession snaked out of Rhuidean toward the mountain, a few dozen Jenn and two palanquins, each carried by eight men. There was enough wood in each of those palanquins for a dozen chief’s chairs. He had heard there were still Aes Sedai among the Jenn.
“You must agree to whatever they ask, husband,” Sealdre said.
He looked at her then, wanting for a moment to run his hands through her long golden hair, seeing the laughing girl who had laid the bridal wreath at his feet and asked him to marry her. She was serious now, though, intent and worried. “Will the others come?” he asked.
“Some. Most. I have talked to my sisters in the dream, and we have all dreamed the same dream. The chiefs who do not come, and those who do not agree … . Their septs will die, Mandein. Within three generations they will be dust, and their holds and cattle belong to other septs. Their names will be lost.”
He did not like her talking to the Wise Ones of other septs, even in dreams. But the Wise Ones dreamed true. When they knew, it was true. “Stay here,” he told her. “If I do not return, help our sons and daughters to hold the sept together.”
She touched his cheek. “I will, shade of my life. But remember. You must agree.”
Mandein motioned, and a hundred veiled shapes followed him down
the slope, ghosting from boulder to boulder, bows and spears ready, grays and browns blending with the barren land, vanishing even to his eyes. They were all men; he had left all the women of the sept who carried the spear with the men around Sealdre. If anything went wrong and she decided on something senseless to save him, the men would probably follow her in it; the women would see her back to the hold whatever she wanted, to protect the hold and the sept. He hoped they would. Sometimes they could be fiercer than any man, and more foolish.
The procession from Rhuidean had stopped on the cracked clay flat by the time he reached the lower slope. He motioned his men to ground and went on alone, lowering his veil. He was aware of other men moving out from the mountain to his right and left, coming across the baked ground from other directions. How many? Fifty? Maybe a hundred? Some faces he had expected to see were missing. Sealdre was right as usual; some had not listened to their Wise Ones’ dream. There were faces he had never seen before, and faces of men he had tried to kill, men who had tried to kill him. At least none were veiled. Killing in front of a Jenn was almost as bad as killing a Jenn. He hoped the others remembered that. Treachery from one, and the veils would be donned; the warriors each chief had brought would come down from the mountains, and this dry clay would be muddied with blood. He half-expected to feel a spear through his ribs any moment.
Even trying to watch a hundred possible sources of death, it was hard not to stare at the Aes Sedai as the bearers lowered their ornately carved chairs to the ground. Women with hair so white it almost seemed transparent. Ageless faces with skin that looked as if the wind might tear it. He had heard the years did not touch Aes Sedai. How old must these two be? What had they seen? Could they remember when his greatfather Comran first found Ogier
stedding
in the Dragonwall and began to trade with them? Or maybe even when Comran’s greatfather Rhodric led the Aiel to kill the men in iron shirts who had crossed the Dragonwall? The Aes Sedai turned their eyes on him—sharp blue and dark dark brown, the first dark eyes he had ever seen—and seemed to see inside his skull, inside his thoughts. He knew himself chosen out, and did not know why. With an effort he pulled away from those twin gazes, which knew him better than he knew himself.
A gaunt white-haired man, tall if stooped, came forward from the Jenn flanked by two graying women who might have been sisters, with the same deep-set green eyes and the same way of tilting their heads when
they looked at anything. The rest of the Jenn stared uneasily at the earth rather than at the Aiel, but not these three.
“I am Dermon,” the man said in a deep strong voice, his blue-eyed scrutiny as steady as any Aiel’s. “These are Mordaine and Narisse.” He gestured to the women beside him in turn. “We speak for Rhuidean, and the Jenn Aiel.”
A stir ran through the men around Mandein. Most of them liked the Jenn claiming to be Aiel no better than he did. “Why have you called us here?” he demanded, though it burned his tongue to admit being summoned.
Instead of answering, Dermon said, “Why do you not carry a sword?” That brought angry mutters.
“It is forbidden,” Mandein growled. “Even Jenn should know that.” He lifted his spears, touched the knife at his waist, the bow on his back. “These are weapons enough for a warrior.” The mutters became approving, including some from men who had sworn to kill him. They still would, given the chance, but they approved of what he had said. And they seemed content to let him talk, with those Aes Sedai watching.
“You do not know why,” Mordaine said, and Narisse added, “There is too much you do not know. Yet you must know.”
“What do you want?” Mandein demanded.
“You.” Dermon ran his eyes across the Aiel, making that one word fit them all. “Whoever would lead among you must come to Rhuidean and learn where we came from, and why you do not carry swords. Who cannot learn, will not live.”
“Your Wise Ones have spoken to you,” Mordaine said, “or you would not be here. You know the cost to those who refuse.”
Charendin pushed his way to the front, alternately glaring at Mandein and the Jenn. Mandein had put that long puckered scar down his face; they had nearly killed each other three times. “Just come to you?” Charendin said. “Whichever of us comes to you will lead the Aiel?”
“No.” The word came thin as a whisper, but strong enough to fill every ear. It came from the dark-eyed Aes Sedai sitting in her carved chair with a blanket across her legs as if she felt cold under the broiling sun. “That one will come later,” she said. “The stone that never falls will fall to announce his coming. Of the blood, but not raised by the blood, he will come from Rhuidean at dawn, and tie you together with bonds you cannot break. He will take you back, and he will destroy you.”
Some of the sept chiefs moved as if to leave, but none took more than
a few steps. Each had listened to the Wise One of his sept.
Agree, or we will be destroyed as if we never were. Agree, or we will destroy ourselves.
“This is some trick,” Charendin shouted. Under Aes Sedai stares he lowered his voice, but it held anger yet. “You mean to gain control of the septs. Aiel bend knee to no man or woman.” He jerked his head, avoiding the Aes Sedai’s eyes. “To no one,” he muttered.
“We seek no control,” Narisse told them.
“Our days dwindle,” Mordaine said. “A day will come when the Jenn are no more, and only you will remain to remember the Aiel. You must remain, or all is for nothing, and lost.”
The flatness of her voice, the calm sureness, silenced Charendin, but Mandein had one more question. “Why? If you know your doom, why do this?” He gestured toward the structures rising in the distance.
“It is our purpose,” Dermon replied calmly. “For long years we searched for this place, and now we prepare it, if not for the purpose we once thought. We do what we must, and keep faith.”
Mandein studied the man’s face. There was no fear in it. “You are Aiel,” he said, and when some of the other chiefs gasped, he raised his voice. “I will go to the Jenn Aiel.”
“You may not come to Rhuidean armed,” Dermon said.
Mandein laughed aloud at the temerity of the man. Asking an Aiel to go unarmed. Shedding his weapons, he stepped forward. “Take me to Rhuidean, Aiel. I will match your courage.”
 
 
Rand blinked in the flickering lights. He had
been
Mandein; he could still feel contempt for the Jenn fading into admiration. Were the Jenn Aiel, or were they not? They had looked the same, tall, with light-colored eyes in sun-darkened faces, dressed in the same clothes except for lacking veils. But there had not been a weapon among them save for simple belt knives, suitable for work. There was no such thing as an Aiel without weapons.
He was farther into the columns than a single step could account for, and closer to Muradin than he had been. The Aiel’s fixed stare had become a dire frown.
Gritty dust crunched under Rand’s boots as he stepped forward.
 
 
His name was Rhodric, and he was nearly twenty. The sun was a golden blister in the sky, but he kept his veil up and his eyes alert. His spears were
ready—one in his right hand, three held with his small bullhide buckler—and he was ready. Jeordam was down on the brown grass flat to the south of the hills, where most of the bushes were puny and withered. The old man’s hair was white, like that thing called snow the old ones talked of, but his eyes were sharp, and watching the welldiggers haul up filled water-bags would not occupy all of his attention.
Mountains rose to the north and east, the northern range tall and sharp and white-tipped but dwarfed by the eastern monsters. Those looked as if the world was trying to touch the heavens, and perhaps did. Maybe that white was snow? He would not find out. Faced with this, the Jenn must decide to turn east. They had trailed north along that mountainous wall for long months, painfully dragging their wagons behind them, trying to deny the Aiel that followed them. At least there had been water when they crossed a river, even if not much. It had been years since Rhodric had seen a river he could not wade across; most were only cracked dry clay away from the mountains. He hoped the rains would come again, and make things green once more. He remembered when the world was green.
He heard the horses before he saw them, three men riding across the brown hills in long leather shirts sewn all over with metal discs, two with lances. He knew the one on the lead, Garam, son of the chief of the town just out of sight back the way they came and not much older than himself. They were blind, these townsmen. They did not see the Aiel who stirred after they passed, then settled back to near invisibility in the sere land. Rhodric lowered his veil; there would be no killing unless the riders began it. He did not regret it—not exactly—but he could not make himself trust men who lived in houses and towns. There had been too many battles with that kind. The stories said it had always been so.

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