Rhuidean

Rhuidean

The smooth pebble in Mat's mouth was not making moisture anymore, and had not been for some time. Spitting it out, he squatted beside Rand and stared at the billowing gray wall maybe thirty paces in front of them. Fog. He hoped at least it was cooler in there than out here. And some water would be appreciated. His lips were cracking. He pulled the scarf from around his head and wiped his face, but there was not much sweat to dampen the cloth. Not much sweat remained in him to come out. A place to sit down. His feet felt like cooked sausages inside his boots; he felt pretty well cooked all over, for that matter. The fog stretched left and right better than a mile and bulked over his head like a towering cliff. A cliff of thick mist in the middle of a barren blistered valley. There had to be water in there.

Why doesn't it burn off? He did not like that part of it. Fooling with the Power had brought him here, and now it seemed he had to fool with it again. Light, I want free of the Power and Aes Sedai. Burn me, I do! Anything not to think of stepping into that fog, for just a minute more. "That was Egwene's Aiel friend I saw running," he croaked. Running! In this heat. Just thinking of it made his feet hurt worse. "Aviendha. Whatever her name is."

"If you say so," Rand said, studying the fog. He sounded as if he had a mouthful of dust, his face was sunburned, and he wavered unsteadily in his crouch. "But what would she be doing down here? And naked?"

Mat let it go. Rand had not seen her - he had hardly taken his eyes off the roiling mist since starting down the mountain - and he did not believe Mat had seen her either. Running like a madwoman and keeping wide of the two of them. Heading for this strange fog, it had seemed to him. Rand appeared no more eager to step into that than he was. He wondered whether he looked as bad as Rand did. Touching his cheek, he winced. He expected he did.

"Are we going to stay out here all night? This valley is pretty deep. It'll be dark down here in another couple of hours. Might be cooler then, but I don't think I would like to meet whatever runs around this place in the night. Lions, probably. I've heard there are lions in the Waste."

"Are you sure you want to do this, Mat? You heard what the Wise Ones said. You can die in there, or go mad. You can make it back to the tents. You left water bottles and a waterbag on Pips's saddle."

He wished Rand had not reminded him. Best not to think about water. "Burn me, no, I 11211u2016l don't want to. I have to. What about you? Isn't being the bloody Dragon Reborn enough for you? Do you have to be a flaming Aiel clan chief, too? Why are you here?"

"I have to be, Mat. I have to be." Resignation came through the parch in his voice, but something else, too. A hint of eagerness. The man really was mad; he wanted to do this.

"Rand, maybe that's the answer they give everybody. Those snake people, I mean. Go to Rhuidean. Maybe we don't have to be here at all." He did not believe it, but with that fog staring him in the face...

Rand turned his head to look at him, not speaking. Finally he said, "They never mentioned Rhuidean to me, Mat."

"Oh, burn me," he muttered. Somehow or other he meant to find a way back through that twisted doorway in Tear. Absently he pulled the gold Tar Valon mark from his coat pocket, rolled it across the backs of his fingers and thrust it back. Those snaky folk were going to give him a few more answers whether they wanted to or not. Somehow.

Without another word, Rand rose and started toward the fog in an unsteady stride, his eyes fixed straight ahead. Mat hurried after him. Burn me. Burn me. I do not want to do this.

Rand plunged right into the dense mist, but Mat hesitated a moment before following. It had to be the Power maintaining the fog, after all, with its edge boiling so but never advancing or retreating an inch. The bloody Power, and no bloody choice. That first step was a blessed relief, cool and damp; he opened his mouth to let the mist moisten his tongue. Three steps more and he began to worry. Beyond the tip of his nose was only featureless gray. He could not make out even a shadow that could be Rand.

"Rand?" The sound might as well not have come from his mouth; the murk seemed to swallow it before it reached his own ears. He was not even sure of his direction anymore, and he could always remember his way. Anything might be ahead of him. Or under his feet. He could not see his feet; the fog shrouded him completely below the waist. He picked up his pace regardless. And suddenly stepped out beside Rand into a peculiar shadowless light.

The fog made an enormous hollow dome hiding the sky, its bubbling inner surface glowing in a pale sharp blue. Rhuidean was not nearly so big as Tear or Caemlyn, but the empty streets were broad as any he had ever seen, with wide strips of bare dirt down their centers as if trees had grown there once, and great fountains with statues. Huge buildings flanked the streets, odd flat-sided palaces of marble and crystal and cut glass, ascending hundreds of feet in steps or sheer walls. There was not a small building to be seen, nothing that might have been a. simple tavern or an inn or a stable. Only immense palaces, with gleaming columns fifty feet thick climbing a hundred paces in red or white or blue, and grand towers, fluted and spiraled, some piercing the glowing clouds above.

For all its grandeur, the city had never been finished. Many of those tremendous structures ended in the sawteeth of abandoned construction. Colored glass made images in some huge windows: serenely majestic men and women thirty feet tall or more, sunrises and starry night skies; others gaped emptily. Unfinished and long deserted. No water splashed in any fountain. Silence covered the city as completely as the dome of fog. The air was cooler than outside, but just as arid. Dust grated under foot on pale smooth paving stones.

Mat trotted to the nearest fountain anyway, just on the off chance, and leaned on the waist high white rim. Three unclothed women, twice as tall as he and supporting an odd wide-mouthed fish over their heads, peered down into a wide dusty basin no dryer than his mouth.

"Of course," Rand said behind him. "I should have thought of this before."

Mat looked over his shoulder. "Thought of what?" Rand was staring at the fountain, shaking with silent laughter. "Get hold of yourself, Rand. You didn't go crazy in the last minute. You should have thought of what?"

A hollow gurgling whipped Mat's eyes back to the fountain. Abruptly water gushed out of the fish's mouth, a stream as thick as his leg. He scrambled into the basin and ran to stand under the downpour, head back and mouth open. Cold sweet water, cold enough to make him shiver, sweeter than wine. It soaked his hair, his coat, his breeches. He drank until he thought he would drown, finally staggering over to lean panting against a woman's stone leg.

Rand was still standing there staring at the fountain, face red and lips cracked, laughing softly. "No water, Mat. They said we couldn't bring water, but they did not say anything about what was already here."

"Rand? Aren't you going to drink?"

Rand gave a start, then stepped into the now ankle deep basin and splashed across to stand where Mat had been, drinking in the same way, eyes closed and face tilted up to let the water pour over him.

Mat watched worriedly. Not mad, exactly; not yet. But how long would Rand have stood there laughing while thirst turned his throat to stone if he had not spoken? Mat left him there and climbed out of the fountain. Some of the water drenching his clothes had seeped down into his boots. He ignored the squish he made at every step; he was not sure he could get his boots back on if he pulled them off. Besides, it felt good.

Peering at the city, he wondered what he was doing there. Those people had said he would die, otherwise, but was just being in Rhuidean enough? Do I have to do something? What?

The empty streets and half-finished palaces were shadowless in the pale azure light. A prickling grew between his shoulder blades. All those empty windows looking down on him, all those gap-toothed lines of forsaken stonework. Anything could be hiding in there, and in a place like this, anything could be... Any bloody thing at all. He wished he still had his boot knives, at least. But those women, those Wise Ones, had stared at him as if they knew he was holding out on them. And they had channeled, one or all of them. It was not wise to step on the wrong side of women who could channel if you could avoid it. Burn me, if I could get shut of Aes Sedai, I'd never ask for another thing. Well, not for a good long while, anyway. Light, I wonder if anything is hiding in here.

"The heart has to be that way, Mat." Rand was climbing out of the basin, dripping wet.

"The heart?"

"The Wise Ones said I had to go to the heart. They must mean the center of the city." Rand looked back at the fountain and suddenly the flow dwindled to a trickle, then ceased. "There's an ocean of good water down there. Deep. So deep I nearly didn't find it. If I could bring it up... No need to waste it, though. We can get another good drink when it's time to leave."

Mat shifted his feet uncomfortably. Fool! Where did you think it came from? Of course he bloody channeled. Did you think it just started flowing again after the Light knows how long? "Center of the city. Of course. Lead on."

They kept to the middle of the wide street, walking along the edge of the bare strips of dirt, past more dry fountains, some with only the stone basin and a marble base where the statues should have been. Nothing was broken in the city, only... incomplete. The palaces loomed to either side like cliffs. There had to be things inside. Furniture, maybe, if it had not rotted. Maybe gold. Knives. Knives would not rust away in this dry air no matter how long they had been there.

There could be a bloody Myrddraal in there for all you know. Light, why did I have to think of that? If only he had thought to bring a quarterstaff with him when he left the Stone. Maybe he could have convinced the Wise Ones it was a walking staff. No use thinking of it, now. A tree would do, if he had a way to cut a good branch and trim it. If, again. He wondered whether whoever built this city had managed to grow any trees. He had worked on his father's farm too long not to know good dirt when he saw it. These long ribbons of exposed soil were poor, no good for growing anything besides weeds, and not many of those. None, now.

After they had walked a mile, the street suddenly ended at a great plaza, perhaps as far across as they had walked and surrounded by those palaces of marble and crystal. Startlingly, a tree stood in the huge square, a good hundred feet tall and spreading its thick, leafy limbs over a hide of dusty white paving stones, near what appeared to be concentric rings of clear, glittering glass columns, thin as needles compared to their height, nearly as much as the tree's. He would have wondered how a tree could grow here, without sunlight, if he had not been too busy staring at the astounding jumble filling the rest of the square.

A clear lane led from each street Mat could see, straight to the columned rings, but in the spaces between, statues stood haphazardly, life-sized down to half that, in stone or crystal or metal, set right down on the pavement. All among them were... He did not know what to call them, at first. A flat silvery ring, ten feet across and thin as a blade. A tapering crystal plinth a pace tall that might have held one of the smaller statues. A shiny black metal spire, narrow as a spear and no longer, yet standing on end as if rooted. Hundreds of things, maybe thousands, in every shape imaginable, every material imaginable, dotting the huge plaza with no more than a dozen feet between any two.

It was the black metal spear, so unnaturally erect, that suddenly told him what they must be. Ter'angreal. Some sort of things to do with the Power, anyway. Some of them had to be. That twisted stone doorway in the Stone's Great Holding had resisted falling over, too.

He was ready to turn around and go back right then, but Rand continued on, barely looking at what lined his way. Once Rand paused, staring down at two figurines that hardly seemed to deserve a place with the other things. Two statuettes maybe a foot tall, a man and a woman, each holding a crystal sphere aloft in one hand. He half bent as if to touch them, but straightened so quickly it could almost have been Mat's imagination.

After a minute, Mat followed, hurrying to catch up. The closer they came to the scintillating rings of columns, the more he tensed. Those things all around them had to do with the Power, and so did the columns. He just knew it. Those impossibly tall thin shafts sparkled in the bluish light, dazzling the eye. All they said was I had to come here. Well, I'm here. They didn't say anything about the bloody Power.

Rand stopped so suddenly that Mat went three strides nearer the columned rings before realizing it. Rand was staring at the tree, Mat saw. The tree. Mat found himself moving toward it as if drawn. No tree had those trefoil leaves. No tree but one; a tree of legend.

"Avendesora," Rand said softly. "The Tree of Life. It's here."

Under the spreading branches, Mat leaped to catch one of those leaves; his outstretched fingers fell a good pace short of the lowest. He satisfied himself with walking deeper beneath that leafy roof and leaning back against the thick bole. After a moment he slid down to sit against it. The old stories were true. He felt.... Contentment. Peace. Well being. Even his feet did not bother him much.

Rand sat down cross-legged nearby. "I can believe the stories. Ghoetam, sitting beneath Avendesora for forty years to gain wisdom. Right now, I can believe."

Mat let his head fall back against the trunk. "I don't know that I'd trust birds to bring me food, though. You'd have to get up sometime." But an hour or so would not be bad. Even all day. "It doesn't make sense anyway. What kind of food could birds bring in here? What birds?"

"Maybe Rhuidean wasn't always like this, Mat. Maybe... I don't know. Maybe Avendesora was somewhere else, then."

"Somewhere else," Mat murmured. "I would not mind being somewhere else." It feels... good... though.

"Somewhere else?" Rand twisted around to look at the tall thin columns, shining so close. "Duty is heavier than a mountain," he sighed.

That was part of a saying he had picked up in the Borderlands. "Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain." It sounded like pure foolishness to Mat, but Rand was getting up. Mat copied him reluctantly. "What do you think we'll find in there?"

"I think I have to go on alone from here," Rand said slowly.

"What do you mean?" Mat demanded. "I've come this far, haven't I? I am not going to turn tail now." Wouldn't I just like to, though!

"It isn't that, Mat. If you go in there, you come out a clan chief, or you die. Or come out mad. I don't believe there's any other choice. Unless maybe the Wise Ones go in there."

Mat hesitated. To die and live again. That was what they had said. He had no intention of trying to be an Aiel clan chief, though; the Aiel would probably stick spears through him. "We'll leave it to luck," he said, pulling the Tar Valon mark from his pocket. "Getting to be my lucky coin. Flame, I go in with you; head, I stay out." He flipped the gold coin quickly, before Rand could object.

Somehow he missed grabbing it; the mark careened off his fingertips, clinked to the pavement, bounced twice... And landed on edge.

He glared at Rand accusingly. "Do you do this sort of thing on purpose? Can't you control it?"

"No." The coin fell over, showing an ageless woman's face surrounded by stars. "It looks like you stay out here, Mat."

"Did you just... ?" He wished Rand would not channel around him. "Oh, burn me, if you want me to stay out here, I'll stay." Snatching the coin up, he stuffed it back into his pocket. "Listen, you go in, do whatever it is you have to, and get back out. I want to leave this place, and I am not going to stand here forever twiddling my thumbs waiting for you. And you needn't think I'll come in after you, either, so you had best be careful."

"I wouldn't think that of you, Mat," Rand said.

Mat stared at him suspiciously. What was he grinning at? "So long as you understand I won't. Aaah, go on and be a bloody Aiel chief. You have the face for it."

"Don't come in there, Mat. Whatever happens, don't." He waited until Mat nodded before turning away.

Mat stood, watching him walk in among the glittering columns. In the shifting dazzle he seemed to vanish almost immediately. A trick of the eye, Mat told himself. That was all it was. A bloody trick of the eye.

He started around the array, keeping well back, peering in an effort to spot Rand again. "You look out what you're bloody doing," he shouted. "You leave me alone in the Waste with Moiraine and the bloody Aiel, and I'll strangle you, Dragon Reborn or no!" After a minute, he added, "I'm not coming in there after you if you get yourself in trouble! You hear me?" There was no answer. If he's not out of there in an hour.... "He's mad just going in there," he muttered. "Well, I'll not be the one to pull his bacon off the coals. He's the one who can channel. If he's put his head in a hornets' nest, he can bloody channel his way out of it." I'll give him an hour. And then he would leave, whether Rand was back or not. Just turn around and leave. Just go. That was what he would do. He would.

The way those thin shafts of glass caught the bluish light, refracting and reflecting, merely looking too hard was enough to give him a headache. He turned away, wandering back the way he had come, uneasily eyeing the ter'angreal - or whatever they were - filling the plaza. What was he doing there? Why?

Suddenly he stopped dead, staring at one of those strange objects. A large doorframe of polished redstone, twisted in some way he could not quite catch so his eye seemed to slip trying to follow it around. Slowly he made his way to it, between glittering faceted spires as tall as his head and low golden frames filled with what appeared to be sheets of glass, barely noticing them, never taking his eyes off the doorway.

It was the same. The same polished redstone, the same size, the same eye wrenching corners. Along each upright ran three lines of triangles, points down. Had the one in Tear had those? He could not remember; he had not been trying to remember all the details last time. It was the same; it had to be. Maybe he could not step through the other again, but this one... ? Another chance to get at those snake people, make them answer a few more questions.

Squinting against the glitters, he peered back toward the columns. An hour, he had given Rand. In an hour, he could be through this thing and back with time to spare. Maybe it would not even work for him, since he had used its twin. They are the same. Then again, maybe it would. It just meant rubbing up against the Power one more time.

"Light," he muttered. "Ter'angreal. Portal Stones. Rhuidean. What difference can one more time make?"

He stepped through. Through a wall of blinding white light, through a roar so vast it annihilated sound.

Blinking, he looked around and bit back the vilest oath he knew. Wherever this was, it was not where he had gone before.

The twisted doorway stood in the middle of a huge chamber that appeared to be star-shaped, as near as he could make out through a forest of thick columns, each deeply fluted with eight ridges, the sharp edges yellow and glowing softly for light. Glossy black except for the glowing bits, they rose from a dull white floor into murky gloom far overhead where even the yellow stripes faded away. The columns and floor almost looked to be glass, but when he bent to rub a hand across the floor, it felt like stone. Dusty stone. He wiped his hand on his coat. The air had a musty smell, and his own footprints were the only marks in the dust. No one had been here in a very long time.

Disappointed, he turned back to the ter'angreal.

"A very long time."

Mat spun back, snatching at his coatsleeve for a knife that was lying back on the mountainside. The man standing among the columns looked nothing at all like the snaky folk. He made Mat regret giving up those last blades to the Wise Ones.The fellow was tall, taller than an Aiel, and sinewy, but with shoulders too wide for his narrow waist, and skin as white as the finest paper. Pale leather straps studded with silver crisscrossed his arms and bare chest, and a black kilt hung to his knees. His eyes were too big and almost colorless, set deep in a narrow jawed face. His short cut, palely reddish hair stood up like a brush, and his ears, lying flat against his head, had a hint of a point at the top. He leaned toward Mat, inhaling, opening his mouth to pull in more air, flashing sharp teeth. The impression he gave was of a fox about to leap on a cornered chicken.

"A very long time," he said, straightening. His voice was rough, almost a growl. "Do you abide by the treaties and agreements? Do you carry iron, or instruments of music, or devices for making light?"

"I have none of those things," Mat replied slowly. This was not the same place, but this fellow asked the same questions. And he behaved the same, with all that smelling. Rummaging through my bloody experiences, is he? Well, let him. Maybe he'll jog some loose so I can remember them, too. He wondered if he was speaking the Old Tongue again. It was uncomfortable, not knowing, not being able to tell. "If you can take me to where I can get a few questions answered, lead the way. If not, I will be going, with apologies for bothering you."

"No!" Those big colorless eyes blinked in agitation; "You must not go. Come. I will take you where you may find what you need. Come." He backed away, gesturing with both hands. "Come."

Glancing at the ter'angreal, Mat followed. He wished the man had not grinned at him just then. Maybe he meant to be reassuring, but those teeth... Mat decided he would never give up all of his knives again, not for Wise Ones or the Amyrlin Seat herself.

The large five-sided doorway looked more like a tunnel mouth, for the corridor beyond was exactly the same size and shape, with those softly glowing yellow strips running along the bends, edging floor and ceiling. It seemed to stretch ahead forever, fading into a murky distance, broken at intervals by more of the great five-sided doorways. The kilted man did not turn to lead until they were both in the hallway, and even then he kept glancing over a wide shoulder as if to make certain Mat was still there. The air was no longer musty; instead it held a faint hint of something unpleasant, something tickling familiarity but not strong enough to recognize.

At the first of the doorways, Mat glanced through in passing, and sighed. Beyond star-shaped black columns, a twisted red stone doorway stood on a dull glassy white floor where dust showed the marks of one set of boots coming from the ter'angreal, led toward the corridor by the prints of narrow bare feet. He looked over his shoulder. Instead of ending fifty paces back in another chamber like this, the hallway ran back as far as he could see, a mirror image of what lay ahead. His guide gave him a sharp-toothed smile; the fellow looked hungry.

He knew he should have expected something of the sort after what he had seen on the other side of the doorway in the Stone. Those spires moving from where they should be to where they could not, logically. If spires, why not rooms. I should have stayed out there waiting for Rand, is what I should have done. I should have done a lot of things. At least he would have no trouble finding the ter'angreal again, if all of the doorways ahead were the same.

He peered into the next and saw black columns, the redstone ter'angreal, his footprints and his guide's in the dust. When the narrow jawed man looked over his shoulder again, Mat gave him a toothy grin. "Never think you have caught a babe in your snare. If you try to cheat me, I will have your hide for a saddlecloth."

The fellow started, pale eyes widening, then shrugged and adjusted the silver studded straps across his chest; his mocking smile seemed tailored to draw attention to what he was doing. Suddenly Mat found himself wondering where that pale leather came from. Surely not... Oh, Light, I think it is. He managed to stop himself from swallowing, but only just. "Lead, you son of a goat. Your hide is not worth silver studding. Take me where I want to go."

With a snarl, the man hurried on, stiff-backed. Mat did not care if the fellow was offended. He did wish he had just one knife, though. I'll be burned if I'll let some fox-faced goat brain make a harness out of my hide.

There was no way of telling how long they walked. The corridor never changed, with its bent walls and its glowing yellow strips. Every doorway showed the identical chamber, ter'angreal, footprints and all. The sameness made time slip into formlessness. Mat worried about how long he had been there. Surely longer than the hour he had given himself. His clothes were only damp now; his boots no longer made squishing noises. But he walked, staring at his guide's back, and walked.

Suddenly the corridor ended ahead in another doorway. Mat blinked. He could have sworn that a moment before the hall had stretched on as far as he could see. But he had been watching the sharp-toothed fellow more than what lay ahead. He looked back, and nearly swore. The corridor ran back until the glowing yellow strips seemed to come together in a point. And there was not an opening to be seen anywhere along it.

When he turned, he was alone in front of the big five-sided doorway. Burn me, I wish they wouldn't do that. Taking a deep breath, he walked through.

It was another white-floored star-shaped chamber, not so large as the one - or ones - with columns. An eight-pointed star with a glassy black pedestal standing in each point, like a two span slice out of one of those columns. Glowing yellow strips ran up the sharp edges of room and pedestals. The unpleasant smell was stronger here; he recognized it now. The smell of a wild animal's lair. He hardly noticed it, though, because the chamber was empty except for him.

Turning slowly, he frowned at the pedestals. Surely someone should be up on them, whoever was supposed to answer his questions. He was being cheated. If he could come here, he should be able to get answers.

Suddenly he spun in a circle, searching not the pedestals but the smooth gray walls. The doorway was gone; there was no way out.

Yet before he completed a second turn there was someone standing on each pedestal, people like his guide, but dressed differently. Four were men, the others women, their stiff hair rising in a crest before spilling down their backs. All wore long white skirts that hid their feet. The women had on white blouses that fell below their hips, with high lace necks and pale ruffles at their wrists. The men wore even more straps than the guide, wider and studded with gold. Each harness supported a pair of bare bladed knives on the wearer's chest. Bronze blades, Mat judged from the color, but he would have given all the gold in his possession for just one of them.

"Speak," one of the women said in that growling voice. "By the ancient treaty, here is agreement made. What is your need? Speak."

Mat hesitated. That was not what the snaky people had said. They were all staring at him like foxes staring at dinner. "Who is the Daughter of the Nine Moons and why do I have to marry her?" He hoped they would count that as one question.

No one answered. None of them spoke. They just continued to stare at him with those big pale eyes.

"You are supposed to answer," he said. Silence. "Burn your bones to ash, answer me! Who is the Daughter of the Nine Moons and why do I have to marry her? How will I die and live again? What does it mean that I have to give up half the light of the world? Those are my three questions. Say something!"

Dead silence. He could hear himself breathing, hear the blood throbbing in his ears.

"I have no intention of marrying. And I have no intention of dying, either, whether I am supposed to live again or not. I walk around with holes in my memory, holes in my life, and you stare at me like idiots. If I had my way, I would want those holes filled, but at least answers to my questions might fill some in my future. You have to answer-!"

"Done," one of the men growled, and Mat blinked.

Done? What was done? What did he mean? "Burn your eyes," he muttered. "Burn your souls! You are as bad as Aes Sedai. Well, I want a way to be free of Aes Sedai and the Power, and I want to be away from you and back to Rhuidean, if you will not answer me. Open up a door, and let me -"

"Done," another man said, and one of the women echoed, "Done."

Mat scanned the walls, then glared, turning to take them all in, standing up there on their pedestals staring down at him. "Done? What is done? I see no door. You lying goat-fathered -"

"Fool," a woman said in a whispered growl, and others repeated it. Fool. Fool. Fool.

"Wise to ask leavetaking, when you set no price, no terms."

"Yet fool not to first agree on price."

"We will set the price."

They spoke so quickly he could not tell which said what.

"What was asked will be given."

"The price will be paid."

"Burn you," he shouted, "what are you talking "

Utter darkness closed around him. There was something around his throat. He could not breathe. Air. He could not....