Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time 13)

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?

Aviendha listened to the tree's leaves rustle. Those pillars were a challenge, as sure as an enemy warrior with his spear in hand. If she passed into their midst again, she might never come out; nobody visited this ter'angreal a second time. It was forbidden. One trip through the rings, one through the columns.

But she had come seeking knowledge. She would not leave without it. She turned and taking a deep breath walked up to the pillars. Then took a step.

She was Norlesh. She held her youngest child close to her bosom. A dry wind tugged at her shawl. Her baby, Garlvan, started to whimper, but she quieted him as her husband spoke with the outlanders.

An outlander village stood in the near distance, built of shacks against the foothills of the mountains. They wore dyed clothing and strangely cut trousers with buttoning shirts. They had come for the ore. How could rocks be so valuable that they would live on this side of the mountains, away from their fabled land of water and food? Away from their buildings where light shone without candles and their carts that moved without horses?

Her shawl slipped and she pulled it up. She needed a new one; this one was ragged, and she didn't have any more thtead left for patching. Garlvan whimpered in her arms, and her only other living child Meise held to her skirts. Meise hadn't spoken for months, now. Not since her older brother had died from exposure.

"Please," said her husband Metalan to the outlanders. There were three of them, two men and a woman, all wearing trousers. Rugged folk, not like the other foreigners, with their delicate features and too-fine silks. Illuminated Ones, those others sometimes called themselves. These three were more ordinary.

"Please," Metalan repeated. "My family . . ."

He was a good man. Or he had been once, back when he'd been strong and fit. Now he seemed a shell of that man, his cheeks sunken. His once-vibrant blue eyes stared absently much of the time. Haunted. That look came from watching three of his children die in eighteen months' time. Though Metalan was a head taller than any of the outlanders, he seemed to grovel before them.

The lead outlander a man with a bushy beard and wide, honest eyes shook his head. He returned to Metalan the sack full of stones. "The Raven Empress, may she always draw breath, forbids it. No trading with Aiel. We could be stripped of our charter for talking to you."

"We have no food," Metalan said. "My children are starving. These stones contain ore. I know that it is the type for which you search. I spent weeks gathering it. Give us a bit of food. Something. Please."

"Sorry, friend," the lead outlandet said. "It isn't worth trouble with the Ravens. Go on your way. We don't want an incident." Several outlanders approached from behind, one carrying an axe, two others with hiss-staves.

Het husband slumped. Days of travel, weeks of searching for the stones. For nothing. He turned and walked back to her. In the distance, the sun was setting. Once he reached her, she and Meise joined him, walking away from the outlander camp.

Meise began to sniffle, but neither of them had the will or strength to carry het. About an hour away from the outlander camp, her husband found a hollow in a rock shelf. They settled in, not making a fire. There was nothing to burn.

Norlesh wanted to cry. But . . . feeling anything seemed difficult. "I'm so hungry," she whispered.

"I will trap something in the morning," her husband said, staring up at the stars.

"We haven't caught anything in days," she said. He didn't reply.

"What are we going to do?" she whispered. "We haven't been able to keep a home for our people since my greatmother Tava's day. If we gather, they attack us. If we wander the Waste, we die off. They won't trade with us. They won't let us cross the mountains. What are we going to do?"

His response was to lie down, turning away from her.

Her tears did come then, quiet, weak. They rolled down her cheeks as she undid her shirt to nurse Garlvan, though she had no suck for him.

He didn't move. He didn't latch on. She lifted his small form and realized that he was no longer breathing. Somewhere along the walk to the hollow, he had died without her realizing it.

The most frightening part was how difficult she found it to summon any sorrow at the death.

Aviendha's foot hit the flagstones. Around her, the forest of glass columns shimmered with prismatic color. It was like standing in the middle of an Illuminator's firework. The sun was high in the sky, cloud cover remarkably gone.

She wanted to leave the square forever. She had been prepared for the knowledge that the Aiel had once followed the Way of the Leaf. That knowledge wasn't very disturbing. They would soon fulfill their toh.