Chapter 12

Communication Breakdown

The tracks faded away often enough, but the trail we were on was clearly used on a semi-regular basis. It was still slow going as Sheraine rarely accepted any help, even as we had to negotiate tree roots poking out from the earth and small but steep drops where stones had been hammered into the dirt to form rough steps.

"So our ambushers seemed to have shouted something when you announced you were an Aes Sedai," I said.

"Yes, Breaker," Sheraine said through gritted teeth as I helped her down. "They are not the first to blame us all for the Breaking."

"I can see the logic, but I was more interested in the fact that they understood you. And that we could understand them."

Gemiad carefully followed Sheraine down the three makeshift steps. "Why should we not? We're all human."

"Because these people have had no contact with the rest of the world for thousands of years. And if they are as hostile towards each other, this continent should be host to a thousand different languages that shouldn't even resemble what is spoken in the rest of the world."

"Explain that," Sheraine commanded.

"Right, so reality has to be maintained," I said. I'd been speculating on this before, but at Falme, I'd gotten confirmation. "This is done through Celestial Engines that keep aspects going, so there's a Celestial Engine that keeps the sun going, that makes sure that things fall down rather than going any other direction, colors, sound, mountains, seas, all of it. The Wheel is another Celestial Engine. It maintains the Pattern."

"You suggest that the Wheel is just one of many?" Sheraine sounded doubtful.

I nodded. "It's an important one, clearly. Might even be the primary one maintaining this world, but my concern is with language. Normally, languages diverge and change over time. If you have two groups not interact too much, then their descendants will have a hard time understanding each other after as little as a generation or two. But here, in this world, everybody is speaking the same language. Even in this continent, that's been isolated for thousands of years, they're speaking the same language."

"And why is that a bad thing?" Gemiad asked. "I can't imagine how difficult travel would be if people from every nation spoke their own language. How could we have warned the people of Almoth Plain if they couldn't understand us?"

"Because, if Master Shen is right, it suggests something in our world is broken," Sheraine said. "That the Dark One's corruption extends beyond saidin." She looked more troubled now than skeptical.

I grimaced. "Doesn't have to be the Dark One. Probably isn't it. The Celestial Engines are mostly in their own little world. Someone from outside might have broken one down for resources or just spite. Now, obviously, language as a concept still exists. Celestial Engines can take on the work of other Engines should those stop working, but usually in some diminished capacity."

Sheraine had to turn so that she could step over another root with great care. "Is there a way to confirm this?"

I let out a breath. "The only way I can think of is for me to find out where this particular Celestial Engine is and go to its physical location. If it is damaged, with the right resources, I could repair it. It wouldn't be easy, but not like-" No, that couldn't be it. Could it?

"What?" Gemiad asked when my silence stretched on.

I grimaced. "It's just that I think I'm the only one in the world that could fix something like this. And I don't know what pulled me to this world now of all times and places. But someone, something, did."

And probably had done more than that. It had made me a godbound, one who had the exact means to affect such repairs: Dragon, so that I was powerful enough to make a journey through the shattered Heavens; Freedom, so that I could create a path to wherever I needed to go; and Artifice, so that I could repair what had been broken.

It answered the why but not the who. Who or what had brought me to this place? The Wheel, the Pattern it created, or the Creator, or some aspect of her that I'd seen hints of in the books? Or was I on the wrong track and seeing purpose where there was only blind chance?

"The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills," Sheraine said. "But we should focus on our present problem. Unless you've reconsidered, and we can leave?"

"We still need food," I said.

"And if they will not trade for it but instead try to kill us? Will you then use that as an excuse to kill them instead and take whatever they have?"

Gemiad frowned. "What are you accusing Ron of?"

"It's not an accusation, but I would like to hear from Ron himself," Sheraine said, looking at me as she rested her left hand on a tree for added support. "He has been overly fond of not sharing his plans with us, and I have not said much about it. But now, I insist."

I let out a long breath. "It's kind of you to think that I have plans. I don't, not really," I hastened to add. "The plan I had was getting the information I was after, which I did at Ebou Dar. Right now, I'm improvising because all I have about this place is the information I shared with you. Second-hand stories of the Sea People that might be a couple of centuries out of date. But I'm not intending to kill anybody. If it does come down to violence, I'll retreat. We're not that desperate for food, and I do have some emergency measures I could use to obtain them. They would be peaceful ones," I assured her.

Getting something like the Word of Journey or Wealth to just miracle it up. Or see if Artifice couldn't be stretched to cover the act of cooking with either a Gift or just a Miracle. Or free us all of hunger with a Freedom Gift. A Miracle wouldn't last long enough.

Without warning, my foot broke through what I'd thought had been a smattering of fallen twigs and leaves. Instead, it had been camouflage for a small pit trap. It wasn't deep, but there were sharpened bamboo stakes on the bottom, and my boot offered little protection. "Motherfuuuuuh!"

I hopped on one foot, two broken pieces of bamboo still sticking into my foot. "I'm rethinking the plan," I hissed. "There might be some slight murder. Blood and ashes!"

"Hold still," Sheraine said. "No, better you come here." She looked around. "There is no telling if there are other traps. And keep your voice down, traps like these could mean their camp is nearby."

I winced and again when I pulled the bamboo pieces out and limped over to her. "It's not too bad. I'm quite tough, just not impervious." I didn't have hit points like in the game, but I had gotten tougher since Falme. Even tougher, I should say. There wasn't much blood, but there was a stab of pain every time I put my weight on the injured foot.

"I'm not that talented at Healing, but this doesn't look too bad," Sheraine said, one hand on my arm. "Brace yourself."

I felt her power flowing into me, but it wouldn't work without my own Effort to fuel it. I still had near full reserves and this injury was annoying, if not life threatening, so I fed it some of my Effort and I felt the injury healing about halfway. The downside of being a Godbound, mortal healing was far less effective.

Sheraine frowned. "Strange. I know that Healing is easier on someone if she embraces the Source herself, but even then there's a reaction. And that should have healed you fully, not just partly." She eyed the broken bamboo stakes I'd pulled out.

"It wasn't the injury, it's me," I told her as I fixed my socks and boots. "Healing through the One Power isn't powerful enough to fully restore me." I studied the path ahead, it curved away to the right after about five meters and I saw nothing else. But standing here, I could smell a hint of smoke on the wind whenever it picked up. Their camp couldn't be too far now.

"Then we need to rethink this plan," Sheraine said. "We don't know how many people are there, but we're both injured now. From everything I've heard and seen, such weakness will invite another attack."

I nodded. "So how about I transform back to my dragon form, and we drop in from the sky?"

Gemiad spoke up. "Won't they think they're being attacked by a monster?"

"Maybe, but it worked with the Aiel."

"The Aiel are familiar with Shadowspawn, they have to be. But this far from the Blight, these people have no idea what Shadowspawn are," Sheraine mused. "They may just run. And if they attack, you can just leave, right?"

"Depends on if they have just the one channeler." I shrugged. "More than one? I could get seriously injured if I just tried to fly away."

"Very well, let's try that then. You may carry us to their camp," Sheraine said.

I considered once more making my case for why I should make contact alone. But both looked determined and I had no fresh arguments that didn't make a case for just heading back to the Albatross. So I let out a breath and slipped out of my disguise.

In a few seconds, I towered above the women, my head poking out of the foliage, giving me a view of the tree tops. I scooped both up carefully. "Hold on." With a leap and a mighty snap of my wings, I ascended.

I spiraled up, one eye on the sprawling jungle below. It only took three full circles before I spotted a gap in the canopy that had a faint stream of smoke rising out of it. "There," I said, gesturing with my snout. "Let's drop in on them."

I turned in that direction, but even as I approached, I still gained altitude until I was right above them. I didn't recognize the couple of people I saw down there, tending to another lying on the ground. No tents or other signs of a camp, probably just a place to stop and recover then.

"And now enters the dragon, yes."

Gemiad looked up. "What did you say?"

"Ah, just getting myself in the right mindset," I said, thankful they couldn't see me blush in this form. "Hold on," I repeated before I tucked my wings in and surrendered to gravity.

The wind whipped around us and I felt both women tighten their hold on my fingers as we accelerated. But we weren't that high up, by the time they realized what was happening I was already landing with the grace of a cat.

"Light!" Someone exclaimed as they suddenly found ten tons of dragon in their midst.

"Greetings," I said, my head sweeping around to note where everyone was. Seven people, four men and three women. All adults, none older than forty or fifty, if I had to guess. All of them looked wiry, not a lot of fat to go around but clearly fit all the same. This wasn't a tribe or a family. This was an expedition.

Nobody wore much, loin cloths and the women had loose vests. But all had broad leather belts, either around their waists or like a bandoleer across their chest that held tools and knives made of bone, wood, and flint. The belts were worked with elaborate, personalized decorations. Not one was alike.

Two of the people standing guard at the edge of the little clearing I recognized. "I have questions and you have answers."

One man shook his head, opened them again, then closed them as he muttered something to himself. "Not real, not real, can't be real."

"Snap out of it, Moren!" the woman tending the injured yelled. "It's real!"

I had started to get a little optimistic as nobody had either run or attacked me, but that's when I realized I smelled not only flowers, but three sources. And the woman yelling at me pointed her her hand at me as fire gathered in her palm.

I spread my arms, exposing my chest and getting Gemiad and Sheraine out of the line of fire. Pun intended.

The ball of flame flew through the air a moment later and splashed uselessly against my chest. I didn't even feel it. "Fighting fire with fire only works if you have the hotter fire," I said. "Now, are you done?"

The others were readying their spears, but they were eyeing their exit as well. This wasn't going so well. And the male channeler was still having a breakdown. He shook his head. "No, no. I'm not going to let you. I won't listen!"

The smell of ash and ozone was back and getting stronger. I didn't like how the female channeler now looked afraid of her friend. "Enough of this," I said. "Free your mind!"

Free of taint!

I shaped my will like a net and filled it with effort before I threw it not at the man, but through him. There was resistance, a moment of push and pull, then a scream like rusty nails scraping over bones and a darkness seemed to be pulled out behind the man before fading away. The male channeler dropped to his knees like a puppet with their strings cut, the smell of saidin winking out.

The world darkened for a moment, the temperature dropping to freezing, eyes darker than black opening in shadows hungry as mouths. In a blink the world was back.

Everyone else had frozen, only to look at me after a few seconds. "Yes, I've freed him of the Dark One's corruption. No, it's not permanent. No more permanent than when you wash the mud away. Now," I said, looking down on the female channeler. "Will you answer my questions or do I need to do a few more impossible things?"

"You say that," the channeler said, "but why should we believe?" Her belt had a series of knots on her belt, not one the same and all of them connected.

The man who had helped her tend to their injured comrade hissed at her. "Eala, don't speak to it!" I noted he had a hatchet fastened to his belt. It was old and more iron than steel, but someone in this continent still knew the secrets of the forge.

I snorted. "If you want to be rid of me, answer our questions. Neither you nor I want to be here when whatever servant the Dark One will send arrives."

"The Dark One?" The female channeler asked, then she frowned. "Our questions." That's when she caught sight of Gemiad and Sheraine. I decided to put them down so they could stand on their own two feet again. An immediate escape didn't seem in the cards and if talks did break down, I had more options with my hands free.

"Yes," Sheraine said. "I don't know how much your people remember of the Age of Legends, but the Dark One stirs again. It seems Tarmon Gai'don is approaching."

Eala's sunburned face turned pale. "The Last Battle."

"More lies," her skeptic friend snarled. "Why believe this Breaker? We know what her kind did in the Age Before. The Dark One is gone."

I couldn't help it, I laughed. "Then tell me what we all just experienced? You felt it, the world fading away as something from beyond Creation turned its attention on us. And while you all may have been spared, the Dark One's monsters still survive and kill in the lands across the ocean." I pointed north. "Every year people get eaten by Trollocks. Tell them their loved ones weren't really killed."

"Words," the man muttered as he got up, one hand on his hatchet.

"Pah, I don't care whether you believe me or not. Instead, I will offer you a deal. Tell us of these lands, of your neighbors, and I will give you these." One moment my hand held nothing. Then I closed it for a moment, and when I opened it again, there were four hatchets of gleaming steel and polished oak.

"Tell them, Eala," another man said, the male channeler. There was a sharpness in Moren's eyes that hadn't been there before, but he had to use one hand to push himself off the ground and back onto his feet. "I feel like I've woken up from a nightmare. There is a light in my thoughts where they'd been growing darker every day. For this gift, I'll tell him everything he wants if you won't."

Eala stared into Moren's eyes for several seconds. I started to wonder if I should look away and give them some privacy, but then she nodded. "Very well. No, say nothing, Yashu. You want our words in exchange for four axes? Very well, we'll answer four questions. And then you leave our lands, or this ground will taste blood again."

I looked at my own companions, who nodded. "Very well, my first question then. Do you know the location of a pillar with symbols on it, sitting in a stone bowl with seven colored steps leading down to it? It looks like this," I said, creating a small model of the Portal Stone by molding the dirt.

But it was the intake of breath coming from my left that gave me my answer. That man had been silent so far, hiding in my shadow with his spear at the ready, but there was no hiding the recognition in his eyes as he stared at my model.

"Tell me, where did you see this?"

His eyes sought Eala as he remained quiet, his shoulders only losing tension when she gave a single, sharp nod. "There is something like that, something made from the before that even one of the mad ones couldn't destroy. It's to the south," he said, pointing. "More than three days' walk once you cross the Red River. But none of us have touched it, that would signal the Bloodhawks we seek their total destruction."

"The Bloodhawks?" Gemiad asked.

"A tribe that claims lands beyond the Ancestor Stone," Eala said. "When they take prisoners, they never return."

"They eat them," Yash, the man with the iron hatchet, said. "That's what I heard. They dip their feathers in your blood, that's why they're red, and then they eat you."

"Blood doesn't work as a dye," Eala said, making a chopping motion. Then she turned to me. "That was your second question, two more, and then you leave our lands."

"Well, since you want us to leave your lands," I said, idly scratching a couple of disarrayed scales. "How about you tell us what you know about the lay of the land? Is it just more jungle to the south? What tribes other than you and the Bloodhawks are there?"

"To reach the Ancestor Stone," Moren said, "you'll have to cross the Sleeping Giant. Though getting through the mountain pass won't be much trouble for your flying boat."

"Ah, you saw that?"

He shrugged. "How could we miss it?" Moren proceeded to sketch out a rough outline of the land beyond what they claimed, apparently, more tribes named after animals but also people calling themselves the Smoke Mirrors, the Golden Dawn, and a couple of other more poetic titles.

The landmarks he gave were mostly mountains and rivers, all of them on the edge of their territory or well inside the lands claimed by their neighbors.

"And do these people also let men like you walk around without restraint?" Sheraine asked.

"What is that supposed to mean? Aes Sedai," Eala added.

Sheraine glanced around, though her expression didn't move a millimeter. "You know what Moren is. Today, you were fortunate. Next time, and there will be a next time, he'll go mad fully and kill everyone he knows and loves. That is men's fate since the Breaking. Don't you know how to gentle a male channeler?"

Eala held up a hand to stifle the grumbling rising up from the others, and stepped forward. "And what person would trust a murderer at their back? Because yes, I do know how to cut someone off from the Wellspring forever. And I also know that very few are strong enough to survive that for long. We are one people, woman, you may not understand that but we do not turn on each other."

"And I know a time will come that my power turns on me and there is no other choice but to kill me," Moren said. He made a respectful gesture towards Eala. "That is why my honored ancestor is with me."

"Honored ancestor?" Gemiad looked between them, and now that I looked closer myself, there was a resemblance.

Eala huffed. "The boy is one of my great-great-grandsons. I've served as one of the Stalking Panthers' Light Weaver for two hundred and fifty two summers." She shook her head. "We know the danger, Aes Sedai, which is why we don't train the boys that can learn, only those with the fire already lit. Enough that they aren't a danger, enough that they'll only channel when in dire need. And when their end comes, we honor their sacrifice for our people. We don't call them dogs."

"An unfortunate word," I said, before Sheraine could do so. "And it doesn't reflect quite what Sheraine's people do. They hold themselves responsible to ensure no male channeler goes insane, but they are few and there are many millions of people they serve. But when they find them, they take them to their tower, confirm he is a channeler, and cut him off. Then they give him food and shelter for as long as he lives, which can be years. They don't treat them as dogs."

Let's not mention the Vileness here, or False Dragons.

"I'll still have to tell my Sisters that there are men here which channel openly," Sheraine said. "But I truly don't know what they'll do. This land is very far and with the Last Battle on the horizon, we simply don't have the people to send."

"We won't let outsiders take any of our people," Eala said. "Mad, or not. Now, those were your four questions. Hand over what you promised and leave."

"Of course," I said, dropping the four hatchets. "However, before we leave, could I interest you in some pots and knives in exchange for some food?" I gave them a grin. "As you can imagine, I have quite the appetite."