Chapter 51: A Fair Judgement Is Served

The winter sky held the brittle temper of wrought iron. The air Aviendha breathed was cold enough to scald her lungs, fogging the air in a warm miasma as she exhaled. The Wise One paid either little mind. That did not mean she was unaware of them, nor of a hundred other minutiae. No Aiel woman worth her salt would. Attention to the little things was often the difference between life and death.

She walked among the tents of her people, a gigantic, nameless hold sprawling across the wide valley-bed, a grassless plain bordered by gentle hillocks whose treeless scree slopes afforded some shelter from Borderland storm winds.

Spear-brothers and Maidens made way before her purposeful stride, her halt gait – the mark of an old wound taken in battle – no cause for shame. Each step she took on the unforgiving ground was another reminder of what had passed and where she was. Exactly where she needed to be.

The tamped ceramic underfoot could never be mistaken for the shifting sands of the Three-Fold Land. Malkier might be a sterile place, but it was still the Wetlands, its dense clay soil heavily impregnated with water, and the muddy creek below brimming. An unimaginable surfeit of riches to one born in the arid peaks of the Nine Valleys. Enough water to sustain an entire clan and its herds.

The tent-city was in the process of being disassembled, an army of gai'shain, children and folk too old to meaningfully wield a spear stripping down tents, rolling the goatskin tent-covers into tightly-packed bundles, securing bales of tent-poles with leather thongs for easy transportation.

The people laboured at their tasks with a quiet, resigned stoicism which made a marked contrast to the usual good-humoured banter of working folk engaged in a pleasant and undemanding task. Most of the equipment would have to be carried by hand, Aviendha knew. There were all too few pack-animals. That should not matter.

Despite the formidable logistics of uprooting an entire clan, they would not be going far. A journey of a single day, for the most part, but Aviendha felt a wrench in her heart, knowing that the Gateways that would open to disparate locations in the Three-Fold Land and to Shienar, Kandor and Arafel, as well as within the walls of the Seven Towers here in Malkier would once again sunder her clan to the four winds, the septs relocating to safety.

An abiding sadness. They would withdraw deep into the desert, forsaking old fastnesses such as Cold Rocks Hold, whose location was compromised, known to the Seanchan and the Sharans.

The Aiel put little trust in the false security of walls. Their best defence was the uncharted tracts of the open desert. The surest buckler the hearts of brave men.

It would mainly be the young and the old and infirm that would be leaving, along with a leavening of the algai'd'siswai for protection. Malkier had been kind to the Taardad, in the intervening twenty years after the holocaust of Tarmon Gai'don, and their numbers had increased.

The clan had sent fifteen thousand spears with Rand to Al'cair Dal, pending his election as Car'a'carn, and a full fifty thousand warriorsto the Last Battle. In the current crisis, the Taardad could afford to send five thousand hale fighters to protect the refugees – mostly inexperienced younglings – leaving some thirty-five thousand veteran spears to stand against the wrath of the Seanchan, together with four hundred Wise Ones.

Aviendha's eye caught an elderly gai'shain sitting cross-legged upon the ground, a picture of stillness contrasting the efficient work going on about him.

The Wise One frowned, taking a closer look at the white-robed man. There was a pile of sand at his left hand and at his right, and the fellow was transferring the sand, grain by grain, to the heap on the right. Useless labour. Shaming labour, as the man's sun-whetted face attested.

"Who set you to this task, and why?" Aviendha demanded of him. Light, but this was no time for such foolishness! Her ire was principally reserved for those who had put him to the work, whatever fault the gai'shain had committed. Either put the man in the black of a da'tsang if his transgression was great, or give him a strapping for lesser errata! "Tell me. Exactly. In the very words they used."

"If it please the Wise One," the gai'shain spoke, mildly enough, raising his eyes to the Wise One, addressing her with a look that lay somewhere between meek and strained. A familiar face, Aviendha noted with surprise – the Shaido, Muradin. "The warrior who took this one's oath – Jarrad – set me to this chore. A punishment for being 'a Shaido dogrobber who spilt my tea', or so he said." Muradin informed her, tightness in his eyes more voluble than words, expressing his discomfort at repeating the slight upon his clan.

Aviendha felt a trace of sympathy for him. There were those who found a gai'shain's meekness a hard yoke to bear. She herself would have been one such, she feared, during her days as a Maiden of the Spear. Happily, such a thing had never come to pass.

"Spilling a man's tea," Aviendha mused, her face inscrutably opaque, "is a quite regrettable waste of water. Don't do it again. As for the other thing, being born a Shaido is a misfortune, perhaps, but a cause for punishment it is not.

Tell this Jarrad," she instructed Muradin, tightly, "to come and see me – Aviendha, Wise One of the Nine Valleys sept – at his earliest convenience. And to bring a stout stick with him, for his enlightenment. As for you, Muradin, there will be time later for sifting sand, if it please the Light. For now, make yourself useful, and help pack these tents."

Aviendha watched Muradin conceal a radiant smile under a gai'shain's dutiful placidity, like a Wetland merchant pocketing a gold coin. "At once, Wise One. Gratitude!"

She turned to him, with just a hint of frown. "Are you still here, gai'shain? Hop to it!"


Aviendha turned away – five minutes of a Wise One's time was precious, and she had spent too long already on the matter, though there was an undeniable pleasure to be found in putting an irksome matter, however small, to rights – and set off once again, rushing but not running. Wise Ones didn't run. Irritation inside kept her like a kettle on the boil.

A myriad of matters required her attention. She needed to liase with Wise Ones from the Miadi and Four Stones septs regarding a location for temporary holds in the Three-Fold Lands – water being at a premium in the former's traditional lands. Aviendha hoped that the Four Stones might be induced to allocate them a suitable tract on a temporary basis. It wasn't a given, by any means – the kind of flashpoint that could spark a blood-feud if it wasn't handled with sensitivity.

Then she needed to meet Faile ni'Bashere ti Aybara in her capacity as Queen of Saldea. A woman of uncommon courage and a rare temper to match it. Aviendha needed to remind her – tactfully, of course – of her commitment to the Dragon's Peace. Ten thousand Saldean lancers would come in handy in the dance of spears…

If that wasn't enough, Shaiel had chosen now, of all times, to play truant. When she caught up with her daughter, they were going to be having words….!

Overlaying it all, grief restrained. A goad to her spirit, and a weight breaking her back. Aviendha acknowledged it, without being ruled by it. There would be a time to mourn Elayne, but not yet.

The part of her that was ji demanded vengeance. A claim upon her barely restrained by her toh, a duty written into her bones. As it should be. Aviendha knew her place, the thing a Wetland soldier might call keeping his watch and warrant. She was there, at her post, doing what needed to be done. Keeping faith. The women who came before, from Shadar Nor on, would expect no less of her.


Aviendha ducked under the awning of the large sweat-tent which was the principal place where Wise Ones conducted business. Taking precedence over all these other claims upon her time, she had to meet with the Wise Ones and clan chiefs of the other major clans. But before that, there was another matter that required her attention first.

Her eyes adjusting to the gloom within the large marquee, Aviendha flashed the other woman a harried smile as she divested herself of her clothing with the quick, efficient movements of unselfconscious habituation.

Hagal was a small woman, a little dumpy, in her late middle years. Ordinary in almost every way, except for the warm, grandmotherly wistfulness in her eyes, the crinkle of laughter-lines written into her testament to a life spent in good-humoured service to others. Aviendha knew the Chareen Wise One only in passing, but liked her well from what little she did know. A great pity, then, the younger woman mused, sadly.

Hagal rubbed her hands together briskly, eagerly, as Aviendha sat down. The older woman had a sparrow-like impatience to her, her hallmark. An impatience to get on with the task at hand, all too aware of how brief, how fleeting life was. She gave Aviendha a sidelong look – she really was birdlike – inclining her head towards the younger woman inquisitively before favouring her with a warm smile, steepling her hands in front of her to arrest their fidgety motion.

Hagal's shrewd gaze never left her face, giving Aviendha her full attention. A teacher with a student. A counsellor with a patient. Talk to me, those faded blue eyes urged. Lay your burdens down.

Aviendha's fixed smile slipped just a hair.

"Tea?" the older woman chirped, shading a sympathetic half-smile. The gai'shain was half-way to Aviendha before she had even finished nodding, the white-cowled woman briskly efficient, handing the younger woman a cup, as Hagal deftly plucked the other cup from the tray with her right hand, not waiting upon the gai'shain.

Aviendha snagged a couple of brown sugar-cubes from the saucer – she had a sweet tooth yet – and ground the lump against the bottom of her cup with her spoon before taking a tentative sip. She barely tasted the tea – some Seanchan confection, a stew of flavours, strongly spiced, steeped in hot milk. Not to her taste. She preferred the stuff from the Sharan trade convoys, tart bitter blends, not this unfamiliar, cloying richness.


Hessalam watched Aviendha sip the tea as they shared a moment of companionable silence. In the intimate setting, the younger woman displayed an endearing, artless lack of grace, her long-limbed frame angular, all elbows and knees. She took a measured sip of her own, the smoky chai perfectly potable. A passable blend.

It was interesting to see what had endured from the Age of Legends, from an anthropological standpoint. What things had flourished, and what stagnated since the Breaking. The world had moved on, changing for the worse for the most part. These people could not cultivate a decent wine if their lives depended upon it, but their tea and kaf were more than passable. Yet her own time, the epoch of civilization – for all its vaunted art and sculpture – could not boast any beauty to rival peerless Aviendha.

She drank in her beloved as they talked briefly of things inconsequential to her, but of great moment to Aviendha. The comings and goings amongst these savages and the other nations, their preparations for imminent flight, and battle.

Hessalam was well-prepared for Aviendha's questions. The dead Hagal, under the duress of Compulsion, had been instructive, and Hessalam had learned the rest of what she required from other Wise Ones, and from keeping her ears and eyes open. There were no secrets for one such as her, used as she was to the dissembling ways of Ishamael, Sermirhage and Rahvin, and the cold-eyed, closed-mouthed Demandred. Compared to the Chosen, the taciturn Aiel were an open book.

"And what of Sorah? Is she ready to be tested, or does she need more time?"

Aviendha's question threw Graendal momentarily – they had just finished discussing handling Faile Aybara. Why discuss the raising of apprentices?

It wasn't just the nature of the question that had jolted her. It was the offhanded manner with which it had been asked. Apparent unconcern in a naïve attempt to mask the fact that – for whatever reason – this query held some deeper import to Aviendha.

Hessalam recovered after the briefest hesitation, covering the pause by taking a fortifying gulp of tea hot enough to scald. "Who? Oh yes, the matter had slipped my mind entirely. But with all due respect, this is hardly the time to discuss a Testing, Aviendha…"

"No, it is not," replied Aviendha. There was unguarded fury blazing in her eyes. A wildfire, finding dry kindling in a sudden blaze. "But then, what woman would forget the name of her own daughter, however briefly? Not to mention the fact that the girl is but newly 'prenticed, far from ready to assume the mantle of a Wise One.

A Wise One of the experience of Hagal would not make such mistakes. But then, you are not Hagal … are you?" Aviendha accused, springing to her feet, fists clenched by her sides angrily.

Hessalam affected consternation, inflecting her voice with all the hurt and indignation of the unjustly aggrieved as she set her cup down with a bang on the small table beside her. "My dear girl, I haven't the faintest clue what you're talking about, but if you imagine for one moment I'm going to stand for your baseless insinuations, impugning my honour, you've another think coming…!"

"Enough!" Aviendha shouted. "Enough already! Enough lies!" She jabbed a finger at Hessalam. "Too long have you dogged my steps. Too long have I felt your gaze soiling me, as if you imagined we were pillow-friends. I see all!

But you made a big mistake. Letting me come close enough to sense the ability in you." For the first time, Hessalam's motherly mask slipped a little, showing Aviendha an unwelcome glimpse of the covetousness and calculation beneath as the Forsaken sought to comprehend her meaning. "Not all Wise Ones channel, Shadowrunner. Not all Aiel who channel are Wise Ones. Hagal was one of the few amongst us who could not. She was not born with the ability.

But you aren't just an ordinary Darkfriend, are you?" Aviendha continued, in a more measured tone. "You are her, aren't you? The woman I fought at Shayol Ghul. The Shadow-Weaver who was caught in her own web. One of the Shadowsouled. Graendal." Aviendha spat her name in her face with revulsion. "One whose true face is as ugly as her sins. The time of reckoning has come for the lives you have marred. The people you have slain. For Rhuarc and so many others. Put off this visage you have appropriated, the likeness of a good and decent woman, and face me."

Slowly, Hessalam uncoiled, rising to her feet with the lazy assurance of a basking cobra opening her hood. Vaunting in who and what she was. "Very well, Aviendha. The time for deception is past. Once, indeed, I bore the name Graendal. Now, I am known as Hessalam."

The woman seemed to increase in malice to Aviendha's gaze, to cast a long finger of shadow over Aviendha that chilled her heart. "I am Unforgiveness itself to my enemies. But I hope to show a different heart to those I claim in love, body and soul." Hessalam's smile was a thing of unclean hunger. "You will come with me, to learn my love."

Aviendha shook off her fear and disgust. Her voice was cold as she answered the Forsaken. "I think not, Hessalam. Try and seize the One Power, unclean one. There was forkroot in your tea. A simple thing. But effective. Perhaps you can feel it at work in your numbed limbs already, your brain fogging as the herb does its work."

The only answer the Shadowsouled offered was a chilling smile that sent shivers down the Aiel woman's spine. Aviendha froze like a rabbit, caught in a hungry ridgecat's gaze as the air around the Forsaken appeared to blaze with the solar flare of Hessalam embracing saidar. A vast strength, eclipsing Aviendha's own.

At the same time, the Wise One became uncomfortably aware of lethargy stealing over her, sapping her will even as it drained the strength from her limbs. She staggered, dizzied, the light appearing to wax and wane, as she sought to fight the intoxication, her fingers scrabbling for the belt-knife at her side. She felt she was drowning, her heavy limbs finding the resistance of quicksand.

Graendal's strong fingers arrested her sluggish attempts to draw steel. Clutching her wrist with a surprising strength, a steel fist in a velvet glove.

"Easy, my love," Hessalam crooned. "Gently now, my dove." Aviendha found herself as helpless as a babe in arms, unable to resist as the Shadowsouled plucked her knife from her side, tossing it aside with a sniff of distaste.

"You won't need these trifles" Graendal told her, with a terrible assurance, as Aviendha's knees buckled. The Forsaken caught Aviendha as she sagged into her arms with an almost solicitous care, lowering her to the ground.

With an effort, Aviendha sluggishly turned her head, eyes finding the blank countenance of the gai'shain. Watching this obscenity unfold, wordless and still. Obvious, now, to her even with forkroot fogging her mind.

Hessalam confirmed her worst fears. "Your gai'shain told me all I needed to know, given the proper inducement. A touch of Compulsion to make her divulge your rather .. transparent .. attempt at entrapment. A dab more to make her switch your cup for mine. And so, here we are." Graendal's twisted smile encompassed her satisfaction for a trick well played, seasoned with a moué of pity for Aviendha's failed gambit.

"You do not," Aviendha forced out, her tongue thick with intoxication, "know as much as you think, da'tsang." There was a cat's viciousness in her green jade eyes now, Hessalam saw, with sudden unease. And triumph.

The Forsaken felt the glow of a dozen women seizing the Power, outside the tent, where they had stalked their dangerous prey on stealthy feet. No, not seizing. Unveiling.

The shield that cut Hessalam from the Source fell in that same frozen moment, like a surgeon's knife, keen and sure, wielded by such a strong hand that it severed the connection between her and saidar without even a faint tug of resistance. Thirteen. A prime Circle, led by a woman of experience to direct the flows.

Desperately, Graendal scrabbled at the transparent barrier that walled her off from the life-giving essence of the One Power.

Useless. She was as helpless as a microbe, trapped between a pair of microscope slides, her essence laid bare to the lens above. Without agency or strength. Still, Hessalam fought the rising tide of panic, fought to find some purchase on the slick meniscus of the shield. Hoping against hope for an unguarded moment from her captors. Anything…

Her eyes fell upon Aviendha in a wordless plea. The Aiel woman shook her head.

"Only a fool solely relies upon one plan," she told Hessalam. Aviendha raised her voice, to the Wise Ones outside authoritatively. "Bind her. And gag her."

Hessalam flinched as she was roughly seized in flows of Air that wrapped her from head to toe. A thick flow forced itself into her mouth, spreading to form a seal. Her breathing became anxious, shallow, through her nostrils. Helpless. The indignity was one thing, but it paled against the immediacy of Hessalam's fear, her heart beating as if it was trying to escape from her chest.

Aviendha was regaining her faculties, pushing herself unsteadily to her feet. Sadness was etched upon her fine features. "I should have foreseen that you would use Compulsion upon my gai'shain. That is my fault, for not considering you capable of any heinous act, even against those bonded to peace by honour."

The Wise One regarded her forbiddingly. "I think – I hope – that a Compulsion subtle enough to evade detection at close-quarters should prove insufficient to effect permanent damage upon this young woman's mind.

She will, however," continued Aviendha implacably, "be the last person to suffer from your malice. You are beyond honour. Void of any species of integrity." Aviendha pronounced, a judge passing sentence, voice ringing in declamation. "Too dangerous even to suffer the living death of a da'tsang's life.

Hessalam Treekiller, woman of no conscience, you shall be taken from here by Gateway to the deep desert of the Three-Fold Land, many days from any living thing.

There, you shall be stripped, and your clothing and all possessions – everything you have soiled with your touch – burned with the Power, and the ashes scattered. Then, you shall be stilled. Only then will you be abandoned until thirst claims the life from your body, and your body's polluted water is lost uselessly to the sands, where it will not grow a living thing."

No! Hessalam screamed within her mind, the gag of Air preventing her lips from even shaping the words she wanted to utter, as stone-eyed Wise Ones filed into the tent to take her into custody.

It was to her Beloved that Graendal's beseeching gaze turned in desperation at the last. Do not cast me out to die, alone, far from you. But Aviendha's face was set, the fabulous malachite striations of her eyes, so expressive, etched with a contempt and hatred as bitter as the metallic taste of blood in Hessalam's mouth. The burnt tang of copper, Aviendha's hair as she turned away in disgust, forsaking the Forsaken.

Act in haste, some long-forgotten voice mocked Hessalam, repent at leisure.

As the Gateway opened, radiating the heat of the desert into the cold recesses of the tent, the Forsaken knew with absolute certainty that she had come to the end of her path. Hessalam would end where she had been reforged, under the scalding sun that she feared above aught else.

There she would die by the inch. Racked on the amber embers of that glowing furnace. Cracking, blistering, peeling, being divested of all she was. Sloughing off all the trappings of consciousness until all that remained was animal anguish and mortal fear.

Repent at leisure.

Hessalam's last memory – long after she had forgotten even her own name – would not be the water she craved, but Aviendha's face. Observing her suffering with all the fascinated revulsion reserved for watching a wasp drown itself in honey.