Towers of Midnight (Page 143)

She sat down cross-legged between two of the great tree’s roots. The soft wind was soothing, the air dry and familiar, the dusty scent of the Three-fold Land reminding her of her childhood.

Her trip through the columns had certainly been immersive. She had expected to see the origins of the Aiel, perhaps witness the day when they had—as a people—decided to take up the spears and fight. She’d anticipated a noble decision, where honor overcame the inferior lifestyle dictated by the Way of the Leaf.

She had been surprised to see how mundane—almost accidental—the true event had been. No grand decision; only a man who had been unwilling to let his family be murdered. There was honor in wanting to defend others, but he had not approached his decision with honor.

She rested her head back against the trunk of the tree. The Aiel did deserve their punishment in the Three-fold Land, and they did have toh—as a people—to the Aes Sedai. She had seen everything she had expected. But many of the things she had been hoping to learn had been absent. Aiel would continue to visit this place for centuries, as they had for centuries. And each of them would learn something that was now common knowledge.

That bothered her deeply.

She looked upward, watching branches quiver in the breeze, several leaves falling and drifting down toward her. One passed her face, brushing her cheek before alighting on her shawl.

Passing through the glass columns was no longer a challenge. Originally, this ter’angreal had provided a test. Could the potential leader face and accept the Aiel’s darkest secret? As a Maiden, Aviendha had been tested in body and strength. Becoming a Wise One tested a person emotionally and mentally. Rhuidean was to be the capstone of that process, the final test of mental endurance. But that test was gone now.

More and more, she was coming to believe that tradition for the sake of tradition was foolishness. Good traditions—strong, Aiel traditions—taught the ways of ji’e’toh, methods of survival.

Aviendha sighed, standing. The forest of columns looked like the strange lines of frozen water she had seen during winter in the wetlands. Icicles, Elayne had called them. These grew up from the ground, pointing toward the sky, things of beauty and Power. It was sad to witness their lapse into irrelevance.

Something occurred to her. Before she had left Caemlyn, she and Elayne had made a remarkable discovery. Aviendha had manifested a Talent in the One Power: the ability to identify ter’angreal. Could she determine, exactly, what the glass pillars did? They couldn’t have been created specifically for the Aiel, could they? Most things of great Power like this hailed from very ancient days. The pillars would have been created during the Age of Legends, then adapted to the purpose of showing the Aiel their true past.

There was so much they didn’t know about ter’angreal. Had the ancient Aes Sedai really understood them, the same way Aviendha understood exactly how a bow or spear worked? Or had they themselves been mystified by the things they created? The One Power was so wondrous, so mysterious, that even working practiced weaves often made Aviendha feel like a child.

She stepped up to the nearest glass pillar, careful not to pass inside the ring. If she touched one of the rods, perhaps her Talent would let her read something about them. It was dangerous to experiment with ter’angreal, but she had already passed their challenge and was unscathed.

Hesitantly, she reached out and laid fingers on the slick, glassy surface. It was about a foot thick. She closed her eyes, trying to read the pillar’s function.

She sensed the powerful aura of the pillar. It was far more potent than any of the ter’angreal she had handled with Elayne. Indeed, the pillars seemed…alive, somehow. It was almost as if she could sense an awareness from them.

That gave her a chill. Was she touching the pillar, or was it touching her?

She tried to read ter’angreal as she had done before, but this one was vast. Incomprehensible, like the One Power itself. She inhaled sharply, disoriented by the weight of what she felt. It was as if she had suddenly fallen into a deep, dark pit.

She snapped her eyes open, pulling her hand away, palm quivering. This was beyond her. She was an insect, trying to grasp the size and mass of a mountain. She took a breath to steady herself, then shook her head. There was nothing more to be done here.

She turned from the glass pillars and took a step.

She was Malidra, eighteen but scrawny enough to appear much younger. She crawled in the darkness. Careful. Quiet. It was dangerous to get this close to the Lightmakers. Hunger drove her forward. It always did.

The night was cold, the landscape barren. Malidra had heard stories of a place beyond the distant mountains, where the land was green and food grew everywhere. She didn’t believe those lies. The mountains were just lines in the sky, jagged teeth. Who could climb something so tall?

Maybe the Lightmakers could. They did come from that direction, usually. Their camp was ahead of her, glowing in the darkness. That glow was too steady to be fire. It came from the balls they carried with them. She inched closer, crouching, bare feet and hands dusty. There were a few men and women of the Folk with her. Grimy faces, stringy hair. Ragged beards on the men.

A mishmash of clothing. Tattered trousers, garments that might once have been shirts. Anything to keep the sun off during the day, because the sun could kill. And did. Malidra was the last of four sisters, two dead by the sun and hunger, one dead from the bite of a snake.

But Malidra survived. Anxiously, she survived. The best way was to follow the Lightmakers. It was dangerous, but her mind barely noticed danger anymore. That was what happened when virtually anything could kill you.

Malidra passed a bush, watching the Lightmaker guards. Two sentries, carrying their long, rodlike weapons. Malidra had found one on a dead man once, but she hadn’t been able to make it do anything. The Lightmakers had magics, the same magics that created their food and their lights. Magics that kept them warm in the bitter cold at night.

The two men wore strange clothing. Trousers that fit too well, coats covered with pockets and glistening bits of metal. Both had hats, though one wore his back, held around his neck by a thin leather strap. The men chatted. They didn’t have beards like the Folk did. Their hair was darker.

One of the other Folk got too close, and Malidra hissed at her. The woman shot back a glare, but moved away. Malidra stayed at the edge of the light. The Lightmakers wouldn’t see her. Their strange glowing orbs ruined their night vision.

She rounded their massive wagon. There were no horses. Only the wagon, large enough to house a dozen people. It moved magically during the daylight, rolling on wheels nearly as wide as Malidra was tall. She had heard—in the hushed, broken communication of Folk—that in the east, the Lightmakers were creating a massive roadway. It would pass directly through the Waste. It was made by laying down strange pieces of metal. They were too big to pry up, though Jorshem had shown her a large nail he had found. He used it to scrape meat off bones.

It had been quite a while since she had eaten well—not since they’d managed to kill that merchant in his sleep two years ago. She could still remember that feast, digging into his stores, eating until her stomach ached. Such an odd feeling. Wondrous and painful.

Most Lightmakers were too careful for her to kill them in their sleep. She didn’t dare face them when they were awake. They could make one such as her vanish with a stare.

Nervously, trailed by a couple of other Folk, she rounded the wagon and approached it from the back. Sure enough, here the Lightmakers had tossed some of the leavings from their earlier meal. She scuttled forward and began to dig through the trash. There were some cuttings of meat, strips of fat. She snatched these up eagerly—holding them close before the others could see—and stuffed them into her mouth. She felt dirt grind against her teeth, but meat was food. She hurriedly picked through the waste some more.

A bright light shone on her. She froze, hand halfway to her mouth. The other two Folk screamed, scrambling away. She tried to do likewise but tripped. There was a hiss of sound—one of the Lightmaker weapons—and something popped against her back. It felt like she’d been hit with a small rock.

She collapsed, the pain sudden and sharp. The light faded slightly. She blinked, eyes adjusting even as she felt her life seeping out and around her hands.

“I told you,” a voice said. Two shadows moved in front of the light. She had to run! She tried to rise, but only managed to thrash weakly.

“Blood and char, Flern,” a second voice said. A silhouette knelt beside her. “Poor thing. Almost a child. She wasn’t doing any harm.”

Flern snorted. “No harm? I’ve seen these creatures try to slit a sleeping man’s throat. All for his trash. Bloody pests.”

The other shadow looked at her, and she caught sight of a grim face. Twinkling eyes. Like stars. The man sighed, rising. “Next time we bury the trash.” He retreated back toward the light.

The second man, Flern, stood watching her. Was that her blood? All over her hands, warm, like water that had been sitting in the sun for too long?

Death did not surprise her. In a way, she’d been expecting it for most of her eighteen years.

“Bloody Aiel,” Flern said as her sight faded.

Aviendha’s foot hit the flagstone in Rhuidean’s square, and she blinked in shock. The sun had changed in the sky above. Hours had passed.

What had happened? The vision had been so real, like her viewings of the early days of her people. But she could make no sense of it. Had she gone even farther back into history? That seemed like the Age of Legends. The strange machines, clothing, and weapons. But that had been the Three-fold Land.

She could remember distinctly being Malidra. She could remember years of hunger, of scavenging, of hatred—and fear—of the Lightmakers. She remembered her death. The terror, trapped and bleeding. That warm blood on her hands….

She raised a hand to her head, sick and unsettled. Not by the death. Everyone woke from the dream, and while she did not welcome it, she would not fear it. No, the horrible thing about the vision had been the complete lack of honor she’d seen. Killing men in the night for their food? Scavenging for half-chewed meat in the dirt? Wearing scraps? She’d been more an animal than a person!

Better to die. Surely the Aiel couldn’t have come from roots like those, long ago. The Aiel in the Age of Legends had been peaceful servants, respected. How could they have started as scavengers?

Perhaps this was merely one tiny group of Aiel. Or maybe the man had been mistaken. There was little way to tell from this single vision. Why had she been shown it?

She took a hesitant step away from the glass columns, and nothing happened. No further visions. Disturbed, she began to walk from the plaza.

Then she slowed.

Hesitantly she turned back. The columns stood in the dimming light, quiet and alone, seeming to buzz with an unseen energy.

Was there more?

That one vision seemed so disconnected from the others she’d seen. If she passed into the columns’ midst again, would she repeat what she’d been given before? Or…had she, perhaps, changed something with her Talent?

In the centuries since Rhuidean’s founding, those columns had shown the Aiel what they needed to know about themselves. The Aes Sedai had set that up, hadn’t they? Or had they simply placed the ter’angreal and allowed it to do what it pleased, knowing it would grant wisdom?