The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time, #4)

by Robert Jordan

Moiraine took a sip of wine. “The Old Tongue is often difficult to translate.” Egwene stared at her. The Old Tongue? What about the rings, the ter’angreal? But Moiraine went blithely on. “Tel’aran’rhiod means the World of Dreams, or perhaps the Unseen World. Neither is really exact; it is more complex than that. Aan’allein. One Man, but also The Man Who Is an Entire People, and two or three other ways to translate it as well. And the words we have taken for common use, and never think of their meanings in the Old Tongue. Warders are called ‘Gaidin,’ which was ‘brothers to battle.’ Aes Sedai meant ‘servant of all.’ And ‘Aiel.’ ‘Dedicated,’ in the Old Tongue. Stronger than that; it implies an oath written into your bones. I have often wondered what the Aiel are dedicated to.” The Wise Ones’ faces had gone to iron, but Moiraine continued. “And ‘Jenn Aiel.’ ‘The true dedicated,’ but again stronger. Perhaps ‘the only true dedicated.’ The only true Aiel?” She looked at them questioningly, just as if they did not suddenly have eyes of stone. None of them spoke.

Life is uncertainty and struggle, choice and change; one who knew how her life was woven into the Pattern as well as she knew how a thread was laid into a carpet would have the life of an animal. If she did not go mad. Humankind is made for uncertainty, struggle, choice and change.”

“Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.”

Most avoided the Jenn as they avoided the accursed Lost Ones, who wandered searching for the songs they claimed would bring back lost days.

“East,” Garam said when he had his horse under control again. “Across the Spine of the World.” He gestured to the mountains that stabbed the sky.

“The Spine of the World,” Garam said brusquely. “It has another name. Some call it the Dragonwall.”

In the whole world there were only Aiel, Jenn and enemies. Only that. Aiel, Jenn and enemies.

My greatfather used to tell me stories he heard as a boy, stories of when we lived in safety and people came to hear us sing. We mean to find a place where we can be safe, and sing again.” “Sing?” Adan scoffed. “I have heard those old stories, too, that Aiel singing was a wondrous thing, but you know those old songs no more than I do. The songs are gone, and the old days are gone. We will not give up our duty to the Aes Sedai to chase after what is lost forever.” “Some of us will, Adan.” The others behind Sulwin nodded. “We mean to find that safe place. And the songs, too. We will!”

“Keep the Covenant, Jonai. If the Da’shain lose everything else, see they keep the Way of the Leaf. Promise me.” “Of course, Aes Sedai,” he said, shocked. The Covenant was the Aiel, and the Aiel were the Covenant; to abandon the Way would be to abandon what they were.

Rand kept his pace to Mat’s, which was slow at first, hobbling along using the odd spear as a walking staff. He paused once to look at the two figurines of a man and a woman holding crystal spheres, but he left them there. Not yet. Not for a long time yet, if he was lucky.

He could not help thinking that traveling the Ways was slack-witted folly, but when need called, what was foolish changed.

When you choose the fight, Bain had said, you must take the consequences, win or lose.

If you plan for the worst, all surprises are pleasant.”

It was another complication he could do without, on top of the Children of the Light.

If the Whitecloaks hunted for Aybaras, they were easy to find. They were his responsibility, not this Slayer. He could only do so much. Protect his family, and Faile. That was first. Then came the village, and the wolves, and this Slayer last. One man could not manage everything.

Had I been there, I could have defended him, and myself, with the Power. But I cannot use it for revenge. The Oaths do not permit it. The Children are very nearly as vile as men can be, short of Darkfriends, but they are not Darkfriends, and for that reason they are safe from the Power except in self-defense. Stretch that as far as we can, it will only stretch so far.”

“An Aes Sedai’s gift always has a hook in it,” the old saying went.

“They should stop hoping and do something.”

“Don’t let it eat you inside, boy,” Abell said softly. “Hate can grow till it burns everything else out of you.” “Nothing is eating me,” Perrin told them in a level voice. “I just mean to do what needs doing.” He ran a thumb along the edge of his axe. What needed doing.

A village always knew who its own undesirables were; they were always ready to cleanse themselves, with a little encouragement, and any Darkfriends were certain to be swept up with the others the people wanted gone. But not here. The black scrawl of a sharp fang on a door might as well be new whitewash for all of its real effect.

“Even if all it means is having to tug your forelock to every Whitecloak who comes along, do you want to live that way? Your children? You’re at the mercy of the Trollocs, the mercy of the Whitecloaks, and the mercy of anybody with a grudge. As long as one has a hold on you, all three do. You’re hiding in the cellar, hoping one rabid dog will protect you from another, hoping the rats don’t sneak out in the dark and bite you.”

You have altered the course events would have followed in the Two Rivers without you. With a few words spoken in … irritation? Ta’veren truly do pull other people’s lives into their own pattern.

Rand shook his head. Moiraine sometimes talked of the complexity of Age Lace, the Pattern of an Age, woven by the Wheel of Time from the thread of human lives. If the ancestors of the Cairhienin had not allowed the Aiel to have water three thousand years ago, then Cairhien would never have been given the right to use the Silk Path across the Waste, with a cutting from Avendesora for a pledge. No pledge, and King Laman would have had no Tree to cut down; there would have been no Aiel War; and he could not have been born on the side of Dragonmount to be carried off and raised in the Two Rivers. How many more points like that had there been, where a single decision one way or another affected the weave of the Pattern for thousands of years? A thousand times a thousand tiny branching points, a thousand times that many, all twitching the Pattern into a different design. He himself was a walking branching point, and maybe Mat and Perrin, too. What they did or did not do would send ripples ahead through the years, through the Ages.

In the stories, when somebody fulfilled a prophecy, everyone cried “Behold!” or some such, and that was that except for dealing with the villains. Real life did not seem to work that way.

They said Janduin claimed this man looked like Shaiel, and he would not raise his spear when the man ran him through.”

Elayne did not look worried, or not about that, at any rate. “He is what he is, Egwene. A king, or a general, cannot always afford to see people. When a ruler has to do what is right for a nation, there are times when some will be hurt by what is best for the whole. Rand is a king, Egwene, even if without a nation unless you count Tear, and if he won’t do anything that will hurt anyone, he will end by hurting everyone.”

The only one he could really trust was himself. When the boar breaks cover, there’s only you and your spear.

I bring enemies with me, Rhuarc. Remember that. Wherever I am, my enemies are never far.”

“They are still alive,” Rand said, and Mat realized he had seen them, too. “That is always important, Mat, who stays alive. It’s like dice. You can’t win if you can’t play, and you can’t play if you are dead. Who can say what game the peddlers play?”

Sul’dam controlled damane, women who could channel, by means of a’dam. It was damane who could channel, not sul’dam. But an a’dam could only control a woman who could channel. No other woman, and not a man—young men with that ability were executed, of course—only a woman who could channel. A woman who had that ability and was collared could not move more than a few steps without her bracelet on the wrist of a sul’dam to complete the link.

“There are no safe places any longer. You can run like a rabbit, but you cannot hide. Is it not better to do what you can to fight back like a man?”

“Perrin, my father says a general can take care of the living or weep for the dead, but he cannot do both.”

Another thing my father says. The worst sin a general can commit, worse than blundering, worse than losing, worse than anything, is to desert the men who depend on him.”

“Faile, who is your father?” Her back went very stiff. After a moment she turned with the mug in both hands and an unreadable look in her tilted eyes. Another minute passed before she said, “My father is Davram of House Bashere, Lord of Bashere, Tyr and Sidona, Guardian of the Blightborder, Defender of the Heartland, Marshal-General to Queen Tenobia of Saldaea. And her uncle.”

Sometimes silence was the wiser course.

“The Way of the Leaf is not only to do no violence,” Ila said gently, “but to accept what comes. The leaf falls in its proper time, uncomplaining. The Light will keep us safe for our time.”

About his own supposed adventures, he said, “Mainly I’ve just tried to keep from having my head split open. That’s what adventures are, that and finding a place to sleep for the night, and something to eat. You go hungry a lot having adventures, and sleep cold or wet or both.”

“Free men can have a need to follow someone, too,” she said gently. “Most men want to believe in something larger than themselves, something wider than their own fields. That is why there are nations, Perrin, and peoples. Even Raen and Ila see themselves as part of something more than their own caravan. They have lost their wagons and most of their family and friends, but other Tuatha’an still seek the song, and they will again, too, because they belong to more than a few wagons.”

That was what had her flapping like a fisher-bird whose catch had been stolen.

“If I cannot enter her dream, can I bring her into the World of Dreams? I need some way to talk to her.” “We would not teach you that if we knew how,” Amys said, hitching her shawl angrily. “It is an evil thing you ask, Nynaeve Sedai.” “She would be as helpless here as you in her dream.” Bair’s thin voice sounded like an iron rod. “It has been handed down among dreamwalkers since the first that no one must ever be brought into the dream. It is said that that was the way of the Shadow in the last days of the Age of Legends.”

“When one of us sees you next, we’ll have laid them by the heels and stuffed them all in sacks to cart to the Tower for trial.”

“I am Birgitte,” the woman said, leaning on her bow. “At least, that is the name you would know. And the lesson might have been yours, here as surely as in the Three-fold Land. I remember the lives I have lived as if they were books well-read, the longer gone dimmer than the nearer, but I remember well when I fought at Lews Therin’s side. I will never forget Moghedien’s face, any more than I will forget the face of Asmodean, the man you almost disturbed at Rhuidean.”

“Dead? Those of us who are bound to the Wheel are not dead as others are dead. Where better for us to wait until the Wheel weaves us out in new lives than in the World of Dreams?” Birgitte laughed suddenly. “I begin to talk as if I were a philosopher. In almost every life I can remember I was born a simple girl who took up the bow. I am an archer, no more.”

I cannot touch the world of flesh unless the Horn calls me again. Or else the Wheel weaves me out. If it did this moment, you would find only an infant mewling at her mother’s breast.

“When the Horn calls us, we will fight. When the Wheel weaves us, we will fight. Not until then!”

You have no society, but your mother was a Maiden. The yellow-haired woman and the other nine had not looked at Aviendha, a few steps away in the entry hall to Lian’s roof; they had not looked intently. For countless years Maidens who would not give up the spear have given their babes for the Wise Ones to hand to other women, none knowing where the child went or even whether boy or girl. Now a Maiden’s son has come back to us, and we know him. We will go to Alcair Dal for your honor, son of Shaiel, a Maiden of the Chumai Taardad.