The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time #4)

The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time #4) Page 76

The darkhaired man straightened in his saddle, plainly disappointed. Rhodric suspected he had wanted Aiel help in killing Aes Sedai. “The Spine of the World,” Garam said brusquely. “It has another name. Some call it the Dragonwall.”

“A fitting name,” Jeordam replied.

Rhodric stared at the towering mountains in the distance. A fitting name for Aiel. Their own secret name, told to no one, was People of the Dragon. He did not know why, only that it was not spoken aloud except when you received your spears. What lay beyond this Dragonwall? At least there would be people to fight. There always were. In the whole world there were only Aiel, Jenn, and enemies. Only that. Aiel, Jenn, and enemies.

Rand drew a deep breath that rasped as if he had not breathed for hours. Eyesplitting rings of light ran up the columns around him. The words still echoed in his mind. Aiel, Jenn, and enemies; that was the world. They had not been in the Waste, certainly. He had seen — lived — a time before the Aiel came to their Threefold Land.

He was nearer still to Muradin. The Aiel's eyes shifted uneasily, and he seemed to struggle against taking another step.

Rand moved forward.

Squatting easily on the whitecloaked hillside, Jeordam ignored the cold as he watched five people tramp toward him. Three cloaked men, two women in bulky dresses, making hard work of the snow. Winter should have been over long since, according to the old ones, but then they told stories of the seasons changing from what they had always been. They claimed the earth used to shake, too, and mountains rose or sank like the water in a summer pond when you threw a rock in. Jeordam did not believe it. He was eighteen, born in the tents, and this was the only life he had ever known. The snow, the tents, and the duty to protect.

He lowered his veil and stood slowly, leaning on his long spear so as not to frighten the wagon folk, but they stopped abruptly anyway, staring at the spear, at the bow slung across his back and the quiver at his waist. None appeared any older than himself. “You have need of us, Jenn?” he called.

“You name us that to mock us,” a tall, sharpnosed fellow shouted back, “but it is true. We are the only true Aiel. You have given up the Way.”

“That is a lie!” Jeordam snapped. “I have never held a sword!” He drew a deep breath to calm himself. He had not been put out here to grow angry with Jenn. “If you are lost, your wagons are that way.” He pointed southward with his spear.

One woman placed a hand on sharpnose's arm and spoke quietly. The others nodded, and finally sharpnose did, too, if reluctantly. She was pretty, with yellow wisps of hair escaping the dark shawl wrapped around her head. Facing Jeordam, she said, “We are not lost.” She peered at him suddenly, seeming to see him for the first time, and tightened her shawl around her.

He nodded; he had not thought they were. The Jenn usually managed to avoid anyone from the tents even when they needed help. The few who did not came only in desperation, for the help they could not find elsewhere. “Follow me.”

It was a mile across the hills to his father's tents, low shapes partially covered by the last snowfall, clinging to the slopes. His own people watched the new arrivals cautiously, but did not stop what they were doing, whether cooking or tending weapons or tossing snowballs with a child. He was proud of his sept, nearly two hundred people, largest of the ten camps scattered north of the wagons. The Jenn did not seem much impressed, though. It irritated him that there were so many more Jenn than Aiel.

Lewin came out of his tent, a tall, graying man with a hard face; Lewin never smiled, they said, and Jeordam had certainly never seen it. Maybe he had before Jeordam's mother died of a fever, but Jeordam did not believe it.

The yellowhaired woman — her name was Morin — told a story much as Jeordam had expected. The Jenn had traded with a village, a place with a log wall, and then men from the village had come in the night, taking back what had been traded for, taking more. The Jenn always thought they could trust people who lived in houses, always thought the Way would protect them. The dead were listed — fathers, a mother, firstbrothers. The captives — firstsisters, a sistermother, a daughter. That last surprised Jeordam; it was Morin who spoke bitterly of a fiveyearold daughter carried off to be raised by some other woman. Studying her more closely, he mentally added a few years to her age.

“We will bring them back,” Lewin promised. He took a bundle of spears handed to him and thrust them pointdown into the ground. “You may stay with us if you wish, so long as you are willing to defend yourselves and the rest of us. If you stay, you will never be allowed back among the wagons.” The sharpnosed fellow turned at that and hurried back the way they had come. Lewin went on; it was seldom that only one left at this point. “Those who wish to come with us to this village, take a spear. But remember, if you take the spear to use against men, you will have to stay with us.” His voice and eyes were stone. “You will be dead as far the Jenn are concerned.”

One of the remaining men hesitated, but each finally pulled a spear from the ground. So did Morin. Jeordam gaped at her, and even Lewin blinked.

“You do not have to take a spear just to stay,” Lewin told her, “or for us to bring back your people. Taking the spear means a willingness to fight, not just to defend yourself. You can put it down; there is no shame.”

“They have my daughter,” Morin said.

To Jeordam's shock, Lewin barely paused before nodding. “There is a first time for all things. For all things. So be it.” He began tapping men on the shoulder, walking through the camps, naming them to visit this logwalled village. Jeordam was the first tapped; his father had always chosen him first since the day he was old enough to carry a spear. He would have had it no other way.

Morin was having problems with the spear, the haft tangling in her long skirts.

“You do not have to go,” Jeordam told her. “No woman ever has before. We will bring your daughter to you.”

“I mean to bring Kirin out of there myself,” she said fiercely. “You will not stop me.” A stubborn woman.

“In that case, you must dress like this.” He gestured to his own graybrown coat and breeches. “You cannot walk cross country in the night in a dress.” He took the spear away from her before she could react. “The spear is not easily learned.” The two men who had come with her, awkwardly receiving instruction and nearly falling over their own feet, were proof of that. He found a hatchet and chopped a pace from the spear shaft, leaving four feet, counting nearly a foot of steel point. “Stab with it. No more than that. Just stab. The haft is used for blocking, too, but I will find you something to use as a shield in your other hand.”

She looked at him strangely. “How old are you?” she asked, even more oddly. He told her, and she only nodded thoughtfully.

After a moment, he said, “Is one of those men your husband?” They were still tripping over their spears.

“My husband mourns Kirin already. He cares more for the trees than his own daughter.”

“The trees?”

“The Trees of Life.” When he still looked at her blankly, she shook her head. “Three little trees planted in barrels. They care for them almost as well as they do for themselves. When they find a place of safety, they mean to plant them; they say the old days will return, then. They. I said they. Very well. I am not Jenn anymore.” She hefted the shortened spear. “This is my husband now.” Eyeing him closely, she asked, “If someone stole your child, would you talk of the Way of the Leaf and suffering sent to test us?” He shook his head, and she said, “I thought not. You will make a fine father. Teach me to use this spear.”

An odd woman, but pretty. He took the spear back and began to show her, working out what he was doing while he did. With the short haft, it was quick and agile.

Morin was watching him with that strange smile, but the spear had caught him up. “I saw your face in the dream,” she said softly, but he did not really hear. With a spear like this, he could be quicker than a man with a sword. In his mind's eye he could see the Aiel defeating all the men with swords. No one would stand against them. No one.

Lights flashed through the glass columns, halfblinding Rand. Muradin was only a pace or two ahead, staring straight in front of him, teeth bared, snarling silently. The columns were taking them back, into the time lost history of the Aiel. Rand's feet moved of their own accord. Forward. And back in time.

Lewin adjusted the dustveil across his face and peered down into the small camp where the coals of a dying fire still glowed beneath an iron cookpot. The wind brought him a smell of half burned stew. Mounds of blankets surrounded the coals in the moonlight. There were no horses in sight. He wished he had brought some water, but only the children were allowed water except with meals. He vaguely remembered a time when there had been more water, when the days were not so hot and dusty and the wind had not blown all the time. Night was only a small relief, trading a dull, fiery red sun for cold. He wrapped himself tighter in the cape of wild goatskins he used for a blanket.

His companions scrambled closer, bundled as he was, kicking rocks and muttering until he was sure they would wake the men below. He did not complain; he was no more used to this than they. Dustveils hid their faces, but he could make out who was who. Luca, with his shoulders half again as wide as anyone else's; he liked to play tricks. Gearan, lanky as a stork and the best runner among the wagons. Charlin and Alijha, alike as reflections except for Charlin's habit of tilting his head when he was worried, as he was now; their sister Colline was down in that camp. And Maigran, Lewin's sister.

When the girls' gathering bags were found on ground torn by a struggle, everyone else was ready to mourn and go on as they had done so many times before. Even Lewin's greatfather. If Adan had known what the five of them planned, he would have stopped them. All Adan did now was mutter about keeping faith with the Aes Sedai Lewin had never seen, that and try to keep the Aiel alive. The Aiel as a people, but not any one given Aiel. Not even Maigran.

“They are four,” Lewin whispered. “The girls are this side of the fire. I will wake them — quietly — and we will sneak them away while the men sleep.” His friends looked at each other, nodded. He supposed they should have made a plan before this, but all they had been able to think of was coming to get the girls, and how to leave the wagons without being seen. He had not been certain they could follow these men, or find them before they reached the village they came from, a collection of rough huts where the Aiel had been driven away with stones and sticks. There would be nothing to be done if the takers got that far.

“What if they do wake?” Gearan asked.

“I will not leave Colline,” Charlin snapped, right on top of his brother's quieter “We are taking them back, Gearan.”

“We are,” Lewin agreed. Luca poked Gearan's ribs, and Gearan nodded.

Making their way down in the darkness was no easy task. Drought dried twigs snapped under their feet; rocks and pebbles showered down the dry slope ahead of them. The harder Lewin tried to move silently, the more noise he seemed to make. Luca fell into a thornbush that cracked loudly, but managed to extract himself with no more than heavy breathing. Charlin slipped, and slid halfway to the bottom