The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time 5)

Ignoring the chair, Rand sat down cross-legged, facing the Aiel. Outside of Rhuidean, the only chairs in the Waste were chief’s chairs, used only by the chief and only for three reasons: to be acclaimed as clan chief, to accept the submission of an enemy with honor, or to pass judgment. Taking the chair with these men now would imply that he meant to do one of those.

They wore the cadin’sor, coats and breeches in shades of brown and gray that would fade into the ground, and soft boots that laced to the knee. Even here, meeting with the man they had proclaimed the Car’a’carn, the chief of chiefs, each had a heavy-bladed knife at his belt and the gray-brown shoufa draped like a wide scarf around his neck; if any man covered his face with the black veil that was part of the shoufa, he would be ready to kill. It was not beyond possibility. These men had fought one another in a never-ending cycle of clan raids and battles and feuds. They watched him, waited for him, but an Aiel’s waiting always spoke of a readiness to move, suddenly and violently.

Bael, the tallest man Rand had ever seen, and Jheran, blade-slender and whip-quick, lay as far from one another as they could manage and still be on the carpet. There was blood feud between Bael’s Goshien and Jheran’s Shaarad, suppressed for He Who Comes With the Dawn but not forgotten. And perhaps the Peace of Rhuidean still held, despite all that had happened. Still, the tranquil sounds of the harp made a sharp contrast with the hard refusal of Bael and Jheran to look at one another. Six sets of eyes, blue or green or gray, in sun-dark faces; Aiel could make hawks look tame.

“What must I do to bring the Reyn to me?” he said. “You were sure they would come, Rhuarc.”

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.”