Chapter 35: Blood of the Dragon
The caldera of the desert floor was never still. Sorilea closed her eyes, gratefully. To an Aiel, the Three-Fold Land was a living being, his sands shifting, groaning, murmuring. Quickened by the unblinking iris of the sun. Always thirsty. Always hungry.
The bleached whiteness of the sand, piling in drifts, in billows, encroaching, even into the streets of holy Rhuidean. Sorilea felt its caress on her cheek, dry particulate borne on a sighing, soughing breeze, and the old woman adjusted her shoufa perfunctorily, covering her mouth to keep the dust out. The fine sand would find its way into the folds of her cadin'sor, under her cowling kafiya into her thinning hair, regardless. The land was part of her, and she of it. Some day – some day soon – she would return to it. The dream would end.
The thin air of the Waste shaded into a translucent pallor at the asymptote of the horizon, a desiccated cyan. A storm long-passed banded the eastern margins the pink of an Andoran rose wine. The sun, crouched in ambush behind the skyline, cast a pillar of fire into the sky, testament to the bitter cold, to infinitesimal crystals of ice, perfect diamonds that would never be spilled upon the arid tracts of the Three-Fold Land.
And there was Rhuidean, the hidden heart of her people. Rising from the desert floor, white and pure and sharp as milled salt. There was joy in the morning. It was pristine. As if there had never been another day. When a woman tired of seeing the sun rise, she was tired of life.
Dust devils danced their gyre. In Aiel lore, they were the formless shades of those not strong enough to survive the trials of the Three-Fold Land. Restless, formless, without memory. They had not woken from the dream. Instead, they had lost everything, even the semblance of themselves.
This was not a kind place. It was a proving-ground. A trial within a trial. And it was a gift to the Aiel people. A shaping-stone to make them. A testing-ground to prove their worth. And a punishment for their sin.
Sorilea had walked the weirding-paths of the great ter'angreal of Rhuidean, living both past and future lives. Nothing she had seen in either fork of the road had changed her purpose. Visiting the past had quickened her appreciation of the great sin her people had committed. And the revenant of the future, the threat hanging over the Aiel nation, did not daunt her either. It imbued her with purpose. The dream would end for her, soon, and she was not a wetlander to cling to life past vigour and purpose, fearing Death. But in this, she was once again the young Maiden she had once been, her spears in her hand, the taste of her own blood in her mouth a bitter goad, impelling her to action. Death was nothing, but toh was all!
Her gaze alighted on her companion. Shaiel was a young ridgecat of a girl, who fairly bristled with pride. Well. Pride was the province of youth. Pride could lend you strength, but it could lead you into folly. And foolishness got you killed. The young woman could not have been unaware of Sorilea's gaze, as she incrementally drew herself upright with a pointed sniff, the tilt of her chin suggesting diffidence, even disdain for the older woman.
In my day, they called it 'dumb insolence', Sorilea thought to herself, wryly. Nothing that couldn't be cured with a little discipline. As she yet lived, it was still her day!
Sorilea had little time for a girl's megrims, and yet, for once she was inclined to give Shaiel a little latitude. It was a hard thing for any woman to bend her neck to duty. Harder still to face that duty under the duress of prophecy.
It had been Foretold that the Aiel people would endure as long as the Tree of Life stood. The Aiel had endured what they must, in knowledge and in blood, as the Prophecy of Rhuidean had foretold:
He shall spill out the blood of those who call themselves Aiel as water on sand, and he shall break them as dried twigs, yet a remnant of a remnant shall he save, and they shall live.
Yet that price alone did not guarantee their survival as a people. Not now the Car'a'carn had woken from the Dream.
But Avendesora was dead. Burned from the Pattern by a madwoman. A thing almost beyond belief. A senseless act. When the Cairhienin king, in his hubris, had hewn down the sapling of the Tree of Life, Avendoraldera,bestowed upon them, the clans had poured over the Spine of the World like maddened cafar-wasps whose hive had been destroyed. The world was not wide enough to hide Laman from the consequence of his sin. A toh meted in blood. And yet, Laman's sin had a certain justification, perverse as it was. The man Laman Damodred intended the hallowed body of Avendoraldera as a fane to his overweening pride. A throne.
Pride.
And yet.
Laman's offense was a terrible one, granted, deserving of a thousand deaths, but at its kernel was the grotesque water-bloated ignorance of the Wetlands. He had looked at a living creature, a representation of life itself, and seen mere lumber.
What the woman had done was infinitely worse. If pressed, Sorilea would have said such wanton violence was a man's work. It wasn't that women were incapable of evil. And yet, women brought forth life. Quickened. Gave birth. Knew the cost of bringing life into this world.
She had acted with open eyes, this bare-faced killer. There was no purpose to her actions except malice for malice's sake. Sorilea had lived long enough to acquire a little wisdom. One thing she had learned was that some evil passed understanding. There was no why.
Oh, but if I had her under my knife!
Like an earthquake, the shock of the news had passed through the Aiel. There was incomprehension. Anxiety. Fear. A numbing grief. There was mounting anger, directionless at present, expressing itself in internecine fighting, the renewing of old feuds and hostilities. The pain the Aiel felt was deeply personal.
When the perpetrator was identified, the people would declare to the world the wrong they had suffered with unveiled faces as they sought redress – and the Creator have mercy on any who came between the Aiel and their vengeance then! But for now, it was a secret, jealously guarded, a taboo subject rarely discussed openly among the algai'd'siswai around their fires, in the sweat-tents. Amongst the Wise Ones and the clan chiefs, however, there was no subject more pressing.
There was something, some indefinable quality in Shaiel's stance, the set of her shoulders, the readiness of her hands that radiated tension and a pain denied, something deeper than a girl's resentment. And yet, it was hard for Sorilea to bite her knife as the younger woman met her gaze right pertly, those malachite eyes arch, challenging under thunderhead eyebrows.
Her mother's eyes, Sorilea reflected. Standing this close to Shaiel was uncomfortable, the nimbus of the young woman's ara'i bristling up against her. The daughter of the Car'a'carn, her ability to channel was innate, and she held the Power constantly, even while sleeping. Disquieting.
The road into Rhuidean was a snake sloughing a skin of sand. The two women reached the first outcropping buildings in tandem as the corona of the sun breached the eastern skyline, stippling the empty desert behind them with their long and slender shadows. Sorilea was conscious of the effort expended to match the rangy strides of Aviendha's daughter, the prickle of fatigue in her limbs. Well.
Old age comes to us all. If we are lucky.
The streets were empty. Watchful. They continued in silence, cloth-wrapped feet mute upon the stone between the façade of white limestone. Shaiel had not spoken a word to Sorilea since they had broken their fast, a Gateway-jump and hundreds of leagues away in distant Malkier. Fine by her. Sorilea was not in the habit of making idle conversation. That said, the girl had better respond promptly and with courtesy when Sorilea had something to say, if she knew what was good for her!
The road ahead split around the keel of a tall building topped with a spear-blade which pierced the dawn sky. The left-hand fork, presently obscured by buildings, led onto the central plaza where Avendesora stood.
Where Avendesora had stood.
Sorilea turned to Shaiel. "Prepare yourself."
The central square looked as though an angry giant had punched the ground in his wrath, throwing up concentric levees of earth propagating from the central point of impact. The huge stone flags that had paved the plaza followed the upheaval of the terrain as best they could, many cracking and splitting to reveal the soil beneath. At the epicentre stood all that remained of the Tree of Life.
Hessalam had done her work well. The fires that had engulfed Avendesora had consumed her utterly, branch and leaf, leaving a truncated and riven stump, like a jagged fang protruding from a deep crater gouged by the chora itself as it fought valiantly for its life.
The scorched wood was black as tar, the deep taproots of the tree exposed, a palsied hand clenched in its thrawn death-rictus. The profane reek of seared timber impregnated the air. The fires had burned white-hot for a full day, despite the desperate efforts of the Aiel of Rhuidean to quench them.
Shaiel folded around the anguish she felt in the pit of her stomach, falling to her knees, hands groping blindly, grubbing in the dirt. The ruddy porphry of her unbound hair fell about her face, tears starting in her eyes. The taste of soot upon her tongue made her gag. Dimly, she was aware of Sorilea's hand upon her shoulder, bird-boned kindling wrapped in parchment, pressing with surprising strength. Offering a comfort Shaiel couldn't accept. This was a loss she wanted – needed – to feel.
Anger rose within her, a fire of white ashes burning in her belly. She surged to her feet galvanically, a graceful woman made ungainly, clumsy in her fury. Began running headlong to where the great tree had fallen. She stumbled mid-flight when a broken flagstone turned under her foot, and nearly fell, arresting the tumble with antelope-like agility. She could hear Sorilea's cries vainly pursuing her as she outstripped even the old woman's words.
She checked at the ragged lip of the crater, where the broken ground fell away precipitously before her, before scrambling down like a mountain-goat, careless of the stones she dislodged at her passing.
The broken plinth of Avendesora reared up before her, and Shaiel scampered between two massive bulwarks of charcoal-black timber to throw herself prostrate, a supplicant at the foot of the Tree of Life, pressing her bare face, the palms of her hands against the cracked, fissured and blackened surface. She could hear herself keening, a wordless ululation that must be scraping her throat raw. Heard Sorilea cursing like a Stone Dog as she too tried to find a way down into the pit. None of that mattered. The Power rushed through her and without premeditation she reached out, Delving into the charred hulk of the Tree of Life. ..
She was burning! Shaiel recoiled under the assault upon her senses, a plethora of images and feelings – so different, so alien –rendered through her human sensory apparatus. Unquantifiable. The pain was immense. Immeasurable.
Shaiel relived the assault, the limbic system of the great tree visualising the square through the propagation of sound waves. She was blind, and yet she could see the hideous old woman's face, contorted with spite and anger as if she was tracing its contours with the palms of her hands. The pain she endured was more than a single person could bear. Avendesora was – had been – something far greater and more unknowable than a single entity. It was a taproot of consciousness, with a symbiotic link to the Aiel people.
Shaiel screamed as she relived the gai'shain throwing themselves into the fires in a vain attempt to extinguish the flames. She was them. She was the dying chora. She was a child, walking the deserted halls of the chora's mind, the dead wood impregnated with the fading residue of the Tree of Life's memories.
Shaiel could feel how Avendesora had died, its presence retreating inch by inch and cell by cell under the hellish blast of fire, finding senescence as it grudgingly ceded the troves of memory to the flames. Three thousand years of experience, the lives of hundreds of thousands. The charred coals retained lingering impressions only, steeped in flames and torment, that would swiftly fade before being lost to the world forever.
Shaiel, desperate, sought the trace of life, though she no longer believed she would find any within the chora's shattered heart. At the least, she could bear witness to Avendesora's passing.
There! A bud, a flowering. A stirring, the faintest emanation deep within. Without thought, Shaiel began to draw upon the Power with all her strength. Hawsers of saidar, braiding together kaleidoscopically. A flower of a thousand petals.
Healing an animal or a plant – anything non-human – was held to be an impossibility, Shaiel knew. Dangerous to the channeller, too. The thought was an abstraction, a distraction. She trusted her instincts. She might not be the most powerful channeller in history, but her relationship with saidar – one she shared with her brothers and sister – was unprecedented in its intimacy. And yet this task was beyond even her strength. It was like trying to Heal multiple people at once. Another impossibility.
She reached out, desperate in her need, seeking another locus of energy. Her ara'i swelled like a soap bubble, flexing and stretching painfully, as it sought amongst the detritus of Rhuidean for something she could use. An angreal, a Well, anything. This place had once been a repository for objects of the Power. Perhaps some had been overlooked.
Ah… there was something…She felt a static-electricity shock as she tried to draw though an object. A ter'angreal, useless to her.
And then her aura brushed against something she could draw upon. Negligible, barely a teacup's worth beside the torrent of saidar she was already using. But something. She reached out through it, finding an unexpected resistance, breaking through the rind to the sweet fruit of the Power underneath.
This angreal was unbuffered, and Shaiel drew upon it with a last flexing of her will. The web she was weaving – a hundred carpets-worth – snapped into place and, gasping with exertion, the young prodigy released both the weave and saidar.
With an ominous creaking groan, the bole of Avendesora fissured, ruptured, cracking open, and Shaiel was forced to adroitly leap aside to avoid being crushed under one of the massive pieces as it toppled. Her heart lurched with hope, and with dread. Then with radiant joy as she saw a green shoot, a germ of life growing in the charred heartwood of Avendesora.
Trembling with numinous awe, Shaiel reached out, and Delved. The seedling was strong and vital. Like a lusty babe in arms. And like a newborn child, it had no memories. There was life. But there was also loss.
Shaiel's joy was tempered with an abiding sorrow.
As one awakening from a dream, Shaiel slowly rose to her feet, and turned to address Sorilea. The old woman looked as dazed as Shaiel felt. But as she became aware of Shaiel, Sorilea instinctively sank into a fighter's crouch, fingers darting towards her belt-knife with Maiden-trained reflexes. The Wise One looked angry. Teeth bared. And scared. Shaiel had though nothing could frighten that old buzzard.
Scared? Sorilea?
Sorilea's rheumy eyes stared accusingly into her own. "What did you do to me?" she demanded of Shaiel, voice unsteady, fricative. Shaiel just looked at her, nonplussed. Why, I did nothing..
Understanding, when it came, was fully-formed. Avendesora. Searching for other sources of power… Light! The 'object of Power' that she had found in her desperation to Heal the Tree of Life was no Well, sa'angreal or angreal. It was Sorilea herself.
But that's impossible! Everyone knows you cannot force another woman to Link against her will! That was one of the basic precepts of forming Circles.
Except… Except that it was demonstrably false. The a'dam, the Domination Band, could be used to force Linking. It was obvious, when one thought about it. Except that most decent people didn't want to spend time thinking about such distasteful topics.
What she had done was evil. A violation. Shaiel looked at Sorilea, who was shaking her head slowly, as if in denial of what had just happened. "Stay away from me.." the Wise One mumbled. She looked withered. Desiccated. A husk. There was a cringing whine in Sorilea's voice that cut Shaiel to the quick. Oh, Light. Light forgive me. What have I done? She started forward, to offer.. what? Comfort? Apology. The wordless plea in Sorilea's eye stayed her.
Drawing in upon herself, the Wise One turned away from Shaiel, and shambled, reeling away, pursued by Shaiel's desperate words.
"Sorilea? Wise One? I didn't mean to do it…. Come back. Please!"
The wind hollowed out her words. Cast them back upon Shaiel from the walls of shaped stone. Scattered them like chaff upon the desert.