(Thank you to Sunny, MetalDragon, and Teebs for editing and beta-reading this chapter. Congratulations to Teebs on finishing his WOT Quest, A New Player in the Game! I recommend it highly to any fans of WOT, along with its story-version branch.)

21 Amadine, 997 NE

Cold Rocks Hold, Taardad Aiel, Aiel Waste

There was no such thing as an unsolvable problem.

I had believed as much long before I was Taric; long before I was Tanya Degurechaff, even. For as long as I had been me, under any name and in any body, I had firmly believed that every problem had a solution. It had been an article of faith to me that sufficient intelligence, savvy, and social maneuvering could engineer an outcome agreeable to all reasonable people. Failing a compromise, I had been equally sure that carefully applied force and leveraged ruthlessness could inflict a lasting resolution on the unreasonable and the unheeding.

It was difficult to believe as much now, where I stood by my forge in the shoes of a freshly sparked male channeler.

In the shoes of a man who, if conventional wisdom was to be relied upon, was already dead and yet, like a barrel of toxic waste, remained a very real threat to everybody unfortunate enough to share his proximity.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage. It was unfair! I had worked so hard, planned out my course years in advance… And I had won! I had achieved my peaceful life, found a role that kept me far from violence while still garnering the respect and affection of all around me! I had won!

But, that had all been a lie, one that I had accepted as my own truth.

I had grown complacent.

I looked down at my hands, so strong and still so dextrous, flexing my fingers as I held them out before me. These hands could make wonders, tools and weapons of incredible quality and art that provoked awe, at least in the eyes of the uninitiated. Studded with callouses and marred by old burn scars, with old soot and coal dust ground into the palms, I knew every mark and curve of my hands, had shaped them in my forge just as I had molded iron and hammered steel.

I had known my hands.

I had thought I had known my hands.

All this time, while I labored and schemed and learned… Magic was in my bones all along, like a land mine waiting for an unwary foot. Two Wise Ones as ancestors… How could I have ever been so foolish to not anticipate as much?

Before me, Sorilea's face swam into focus above the coals. Leather and sinew, mummified by the unrelenting sun and wind, and eyes as hard as the bones of the Threefold Land. Eyes that had seen generations from cradle to grave. Eyes that had always seemed fixed upon me, even from my earliest days sitting at her feet and listening to the stories of our people.

I wondered how many sons and great-sons my Honored Ancestor had seen wake from the Dream while still drawing breath, how many she had sent to dance with Sightblinder. I wondered if she had always known what I had just discovered.

No, I realized, that couldn't be the case. If she had indeed known what lay ahead of me, Sorilea of the Chareen Aiel would never have sent me out of her sight. She would never have placed me as a burden upon the back of another.

But I could do nothing but wonder if, even now, back in Shende Hold, her eyes were fixed on Gharadin, still weighing and assessing and searching for whatever tells her old memories might reveal.

I can do nothing for him now, I acknowledged, striving to push the thought of my younger brother from my mind. Not for the moment, at least.

I can hardly do anything for myself, now.

A shiver passed through me. The stories Sorilea and the others had told of men who burnt with power had been vague on the details. Consequently, they were far more frightening and worrisome than any superbly illustrated tale could be. Still, a few particulars had slipped out from under the cloak of ambiguity.

"They rotted while they yet lived, and all in their path festered at their passage…"

I shuddered again. What was I supposed to do?

Ji'e'toh.

When I had first been reborn among the Aiel, born to Ayesha and Leiran as Taric of Shende Hold, I had latched onto Ji'e'toh as an easily understandable guide to the Aiel, a method to quantify correct behavior and make amends for failures.

But, after years living as Taric, after growing up boy and man in my family's room within the adobe and stone walls of Shende Hold and the open-walled smithy of Salin the smith, I had… I had embraced the Aiel. Embraced being Aiel, with all that entailed. Had embraced Ji'e'toh without ever deciding as much. There had been no need to decide; to live by what I knew to be correct and by what I knew to be my obligation had been as natural as breathing.

After all, what adult required anybody else to tell them their duty? To be an adult was to know one's duty, to understand honor and to accept obligation. It had all been so beautifully simple at its root, though the application of that simple principle to daily life was an endless and complex dance.

But now… That natural understanding was upended, the dance disrupted. There was not only obligation now, but obligations in plural, and standing in the forge still dripping with thick sweat, still staring down at the black spearhead my hands and my song had forged, I could not find my sense of honor.

Think. Deep breaths, in and out, like the bellows. Stoke the coals of your mind. Think.

I had toh. Not because I had done anything dishonorable, but simply as a factor of who I was, and what I had been born with. I had been born with magic, that much was clear, but I had also been born with the perspective of two previous lives' worth of experience. That knowledge had given me advantages, but in the same way that a strong man had a duty to work harder and be more productive than a weak man, that perspective had also thrust a greater obligation upon me.

The Aiel culture was, as I had known for years, a death cult. No Aiel feared death, because the Aiel were primed from the cradle to embrace their own extinguishment. They toiled for a master that they did not know to avenge sins so ancient that all memory of the particulars had slipped far away, with the ultimate goal being the forging of an entire civilization into a weapon meant to be used up and discarded in a great final battle.

My people deserved better than that. I knew as much, just as I knew that I had a duty to save them from themselves. I was a smith, and I knew the hardest blades were also the most brittle.

Toh.

Now, I was a threat to everybody around me, through no desire of my own. My own inherited gift, my blood and my bone, betrayed me and betrayed everybody around me. This was profoundly wrong, not just on the level that any unwarranted threat against others was unacceptable, but because of my calling as a smith. A smith held weapons against none save for Shadowspawn; that was my role. For a smith to present a threat to others, to sept and to clan and to family…

Toh.

Slowly, my breathing slowed, my panic calmed. It was easier now, to think about all of this, once it was all reduced down to matters of honor and obligation and duty.

There was no such thing as a problem without a solution.

I did not want to wake from the Dream. I had so much left to live for, to learn, to enjoy.

I would not succumb. I would not bow. I would not be ground below the turning of the Wheel.

Fate was not immutable.

Fists clenched, then released.

I had toh to meet, and I would not discharge it if I remained here.

My Tinker-made traveling pack weighed heavy on my shoulders as I slipped below Neiralla's roof, muttering an apology as I stepped over the threshold uninvited and unwelcomed.

It was a minor violation, all other things considered, but honor was honor and duty was duty.

I had toh.

Soon, my scarce personal effects were stowed away in the pack, between the forge-tools that were my livelihood and my badge as a smith. The small bundle of clothes and the few precious papers covered with Lea's writing, practice material for her efforts to teach me how to read, were almost lost among whetstones, tongs and tinsnips, each carefully wrapped and strapped into its proper place within my pack.

Were that I also so neatly arrayed in my own proper place, I thought, glancing around the cool interior of Neiralla's house.

It had not been home, but it had been a roof over my head and a comforting conversation around the night's waning fire.

From that central firepit, I retrieved a smudgy lump. Flaking ash fell away from unconsumed anthracite. Neiralla had no paper below her roof, nor any ink.

I needed neither to put Lea's gift to good use.

Coal would suffice, to say goodbye.

Mistress of the roof above my head and widow of my forge-brother Jhoran, I greet you.

I have toh. Indeed, I leave your roof encumbered with many obligations left unfulfilled, both to the Aiel and to you. I shame myself with this act, but act I must. I am breaking my oath to you. Greater toh takes precedence over the lesser, and to remain would incur still greater shame.

If it is ever within my power, I will discharge my toh to you.

Taric, son of Leiran and Ayesha, of no sept and of no clan.

Pack upon my shoulders and soot upon my hands, I left my letters behind me, scrawled across the smoothly planed stone of Neiralla's floor. When she returned from the dyepots this evening to stoke the fire anew and set to work preparing the evening meal, my words would greet her.

I would already be long gone.

Wire-Armed Garlvan was breathing as deeply and as steadily as his pumping bellows above his anvil, hammer rising and falling with almost mechanical precision.

He was, I noted, churning out masonry nails, ideal for reinforcing the construction of the freestanding buildings outside of the sheltering bowl containing Cold Rocks Hold.

Livestock had to shelter somewhere, after all, once the biting winter winds came.

"I see you, Garlvan!" I called out over the ringing hammer. "Let your hammer rest; I must speak with you!"

"But you are speaking already," Garlvan pointed out, an easy smile already twitching at the corners of his broad, mobile mouth.

Regardless, he set the hammer aside and strode out of the forge towards me, long limbs bare under the sun as he had surrendered his shirt in the forge's heat.

The smile faded as Garlvan neared and found no reciprocation, eyes roving over my blank face and down the straps of my pack.

"I see you, Taric," he said at last, stopping before me. His voice was neutral, with only the slightest brush of curiosity for inflection. "I see you as you were when you came before me, freshly arrived at Cold Rocks Hold."

"In appearance," I conceded, nodding. "Were that it so otherwise."

Garlvan said nothing. His dark eyes, blue like the oceans my own eyes had never seen, met my own, patient and waiting.

"I have toh."

The words hung in the air between us, strikingly mundane as all the most important words always seem to be.

How many times a day are those words uttered between Aiel? I wondered, imagining exchanges all across the length and breadth of the Threefold Land. A simple phrase, worn almost smooth by the passage of many fingers, but the bedrock of our shared cultural code. A simple admittance of obligation, be it ever so great or ever so trifling. However many times they slip our tongues each day, the import never diminishes.

"You have toh," Garlvan acknowledged, a long breath's hold in the time between us. "What now, Taric, Leiran's son?"

"I go to meet my toh," I replied. "In leaving, I am placing a burden upon your shoulders."

"You are," Garlvan agreed. "You are a good worker, Taric, and a good smith. When Jhoran awoke at last from the Dream, it was difficult to carry even a portion of his responsibilities as well as my own. With your absence, I will do my utmost to reshoulder that burden."

"And in doing so, you will see less of your daughter's smile, nor be at your wife's side to support her," I concluded, nodding my understanding. "To you as well, Garlvan, I have toh."

"You have toh," Garlvan agreed again, "in so far as you feel obligated."

"That is the root of toh."

Garlvan did not disagree.

…This should have been Gharadin, I thought, meeting Garlvan's implacable eyes. I should be saying this farewell to my brother, not just my forge-brother.

But Gharadin was not here, and the farewell I wished to exchange was sticking behind my teeth. Everything felt awkward, uncomfortable. Nothing had changed, except for me.

I was out of place.

"Farewell, Garlvan," I said, taking a step back. Whatever I had come here for, I was not finding it. "I leave now, brother. May your hands never weaken or your eyes dim."

"...May the fires of the forge burn bright and steady for you, brother," Garlvan solemnly replied, hands folding before him into a mute expression of distress. "And… When you have met your toh and know yourself again… I will be waiting."

I found Lea out under the sun, on the threshold of a house of pain.

There were no screams; we were trained from an early age not to scream with pain, but rather to remain silent for as long as we could. When pain could not be denied and silence broke, we were to laugh and to joke, and to give voice to our pain in mockery against our enemy.

All an outgrowth of the ideal that Aiel should go to dance with Sightblinder with laughter in our voice and defiance in our hearts.

When I was a child, young enough that I had only just begun to learn the ways of my people, I had witnessed an execution at Shende Hold. By and large, the Aiel were an orderly people, lawful without any need for a formal code of laws. Still, though, the Aiel were ultimately people. Human as they were, the occasional crime was still committed, though nobody referred to it as such, and so due correction was administered.

In this case, the patient had been a murderer, a Dancer whose thirst for oosquai had proven too deep one night. While deep in his cups with his friends, harsh words had been exchanged and the man, a member of Sovin Nai, the Knife Hands, had put his society's art of unarmed combat to use and crushed an erstwhile friend's windpipe.

The next morning, in the presence of all who dwelt under Shende Hold's roof, the man's society brothers in the small chapter of Sovin Nai present at Shende Hold had avenged his dishonor over the course of five hours.

The murderer had played his part well. Arriving to the appointed place on the stony flat outside of the Hold's roof under his own power, arms unbound and head held high, the murderer had stripped himself and handed his cadin'sor to the wife of the man he had killed before laying himself flat upon the stone.

He had jerked when the heated coals first touched his skin, but the murderer had quickly amended his performance by making jokes at his own expense, and at the expense of his tormentors, his society brothers and the brother of the slain man. They had laughed with him and had smiled at his words, exchanging banter for banter as they commended his spirit.

They were still laughing when they drew their knives.

The murderer had laughed too, as words fell away, falling into himself as he laughed and laughed. Each cheery gale had seemed higher pitched, shriller, almost but not quite verging into screams.

When at last the condemned man fell silent, those in attendance agreed that he had earned much ji. The wife of the murdered man stood to accept that the guilt of the act was paid, and accepted as collateral for her dead husband's absence eight sheep from Sovin Nai's flock.

The ritual of retribution had been observed; the social wound healed.

Yet, as I had stood watching all of this, I had noted most closely the actions of Parrag, Sept Chief of the Jarra, and Sorilea. While all of the audience had stood watchful and silent through the proceedings, Parrag and Sorilea had never once smiled nor softened their iron-hard expressions. Sorilea had pronounced the man's guilt the night before and Parrag had stood beside the chapter leader of the Sovin Nai when the man declared the punishment his society would inflict upon its wayward brother, but neither had spoken apart from that.

Ultimately, Sorilea had broken her silence regarding the murderer to say the same words over his grave as she had said over the grave of his victim.

Neither she nor Parrag had attended the wakes of either dead man.

Now, gusts of hearty laughter, barely forced, echoed from the open door of the house Lea squatted before. Hunkering down, I joined her in the dust.

"I see you, Lea," I greeted, dropping down onto my haunches next to her. "What are you doing out here?"

"I see you, Taric," she replied shortly, her face locked up in a grimace. "I am avoiding the smell. Malan was bitten by a lizard two days ago, while out with the flocks. By the time he arrived at the Hold this morning, the wound had already gone sour."

Another bout of almost uncontrolled laughing punctuated her words, and I winced with sympathetic pain. If the wound had gone sour to the extent that Lea had to get some fresh air, it was almost certainly necrotic.

I could not imagine what debridement must feel like when done with a heated knife and with only a few mouthfuls of oosquai to numb the pain.

"Would you walk with me?" I asked, jerking my head towards the rim of the mesa. "The air will certainly be fresher up there."

Lea did not require a second invitation, almost bouncing to her feet in her eagerness to be away from the house. "I am already doing very little to assist my mother in this matter," she said, scooting out past the domestic garden and into the terrace path. "I doubt that I shall be greatly missed. Let us go quickly, so that I will be back before my presence is required."

A frown began to crease my brow; for all that Lea was not a Wise One, helping the sick and the wounded was the duty of all members of the sept and all residents of the hold. For her to forsake her place of duty to enjoy the day…

The invitation was mine, I reminded myself, and were today like any other day, I would still be at my forge at this very moment, instead of sneaking about like a fugitive. I have no grounds to criticize Lea.

Besides, knowledge of Ji'e'toh can only come from within. Her toh is not mine to set, though I may owe her toh before today is done…

"By the way, Taric," Lea said, turning in a swirl of skirts and hair as red as the surrounding stone of the mesa, "why are you wearing your pack? And why do you clink with every move?"

Vainly, I had hoped that she would not notice that I was prepared to leave, at least not until we were atop the mesa. It had been a stupid, silly hope, not something I had wished for consciously, but…

"I shall tell you when we reach the mesa-top," I half-sighed, meeting Lea's suddenly worried eyes with a tight-lipped smile. "I would prefer to speak to you alone about this."

Something set behind her brow.

"As you say, Taric," Lea agreed, head bobbing. "It would be best to discuss such matters in private."

Her tone was interested, engaged, but… firm. Firm in a manner that was distinctly Lea, but also a sure sign that she had decided upon her course in some decision.

It did not fit an invitation to a simple, quiet chat.

But perhaps it suits a woman who already knows that she is bidding farewell to a guest, and thus is nearly free from the burden of hospitality.

Thoughts swirling, I followed a pace behind Lea as we made our way up to the lip of the mesa, past row upon terraced row of dwellings and patchwork gardens, green against gray and red. I could not help but wonder, now that my time here at Cold Rocks Hold was coming to a close, how much of the relationships I had felt slowly coalesce around me had solely been the product of that hospitality, or perhaps of the social bonds connecting a craftsman and his community.

All of that was moot now, of course. All of the goodwill I had built up, the skills I had cultivated, were meaningless now.

Lea's hair, as red as the walls of the mesa protecting her native hold, caught in the dancing breeze and flapped out behind her like a flag, smacking me in the face with its soft weight and sneaking a few strands between my parted lips. Immediately, the urge to spit the strands out dragged me away from my thoughts, though I pushed off the urge without issue.

Wasting water was appalling, particularly over such a small matter.

Wiping my hand over my mouth, I lengthened my stride so I could walk side by side with Lea. She glanced over at me, eyes still hooded with concern and distracted, perhaps still back in the house with the injured man, but still with enough interest and connection to smile at me. A small thing, but enough to convey a greeting, and reassurance.

That reassurance lasted until we reached the brim of the mesa, sunbaked and, even with the wind, almost unbearably hot. In the searing light of day, the windworn rock made familiar by so many evening walks was strange and unwelcoming.

As if the stone itself is rejecting me. As if the land and the Hold both reject the poison in my bones.

"Great holds of the people they burnt and thousands they slew, but the greatest wounds were inflicted upon the land itself…"

"So, Taric," Lea spoke, turning on me with a Dancer's grace, "will you tell me now why you carry your tools upon your back? Will you," she reached out, and a hand, callused with work but slender and quick, brushed my chest, "tell me why every part of you save your tongue has already told me farewell?"

"I…"

The words were caught behind my teeth again, like loose cotton fibers wet and sticking and glued against the roof of my mouth. What could I say? How could I possibly admit to what I had discovered, that I was damned to blight everybody around me so long as I lived and that I didn't want to die?

I looked into those pale jade eyes and found the cool distance I had dreaded, that I had fully expected. I also found… understanding. Something that left me feeling naked in a way that the steam tents never could.

There were no words to admit the greater shame, that I refused to die for honor, that I refused to throw myself into a hopeless battle again, even though I had apparently been fighting an equally hopeless battle ever since I had been pushed off that long-ago station platform, if not even longer than that.

Like a coward, I confessed my lesser shame to those piercing eyes.

"I can channel," I said, simply and to the point. Blunt, as Aiel were. Blunt, as I so often was not. "I have toh."

Revulsion. Disgust. Horror. Most of all, pity.

All of these and more were in Lea's face.

She did not step away though, nor did her hand move from my chest.

Suicidally brave. An Aiel to the core.

And yet, I do not want to die. Does that make me not an Aiel? Is Taric truly so shallow? Was I ever sincere when I called the Aiel my people?

If magic was within my bones, the poisoned gift of Being X outliving Tanya Degurechaff… What else could be down in my subconscious, waiting to wake up? Was I ever who I thought I was?

I saw in Lea's face nothing of the Aiel stoicism, only a spasm of emotions, raw in their intensity and nude in their honesty.

I saw no hatred, though. I had expected none; it would be like hating a rabid dog. Pointless.

Like a lizard skittering away under stone, the welter of emotions vanished almost before I could parse it, perhaps before I could fully mark it for all of its character and nuance. Instead, I saw a face I recognized, though it was not Lea's.

It was not the face of the girl who I had exchanged barbs with in a forge I had called my own, almost meaning it. Not the girl who I had clumsily gifted a library to, and who had refined my hammer-handed gesture into deft maneuver. Not the girl who had patiently taught me how to read again, and who had unlocked the gates of literacy for me once more.

I saw Amys. I saw Lian. More than anything else, I saw my great-greatmother, my Honored Ancestor.

Sorilea.

The face of a Wise One, jade-eyed and freckled, confronted me, Lea's necklace of Treekiller gold glittering at her throat and her band of turquoise and amber crowning her brow like a diadem.

"Very well," stated Lea, no hint of doubt entering her voice. Perhaps because there could be no doubt in the face of such claims. "When this became known to you, did you harm anybody or cause harm to befall anybody?"

"No," I replied, and barely swallowed the appellation "Wise One" that sprang automatically to my tongue. "It was… Not more than two hours ago, when I was at my forge, something… Something touched me."

I had not meant for that mewling note to enter my voice, nor the way my voice had broken at the admittance. I had tried for Aiel resolve and found only horror and an undeniable, perverse, filthy pleasure when I remembered the ecstasy of that first instant.

Just thinking about it, trying to hold the memory in my head… I feared it, for all that it meant, both that burst of inexplicable filth and the full knowledge that the fate I had outrun had found me again, but likewise I craved it. I had to have more of it.

Magic that I had said goodbye to so long ago had returned to me once more.

Perhaps I could fly again…?

It was a dirty thought, a shameful thought, and one that I was sure was stamped boldly across my face as I struggled to hold Lea's gaze.

"So," said Lea, "the only injured party here, the only wronged party here… is you, Taric. Of all the people of my Hold and of my sept… You alone have been hurt.

"Why, then, do you have toh?"

"I…" I had not expected this, had not looked for this. I could find nothing in her face as my eyes flicked from mouth to hand to eye and back to mouth, nothing to indicate what lay under that implacable facade. "I… have no sept," I denied, pushing back on her nonsensical words, heaving them away. "I have no clan. Those who have woken are beyond societies, beyond clans. Per the teachings of our people, of the Taardad and Goshien and all the Aiel, men who can channel have woken from the Dream in all ways but one, and must go north to seek that last waking."

But I do not want to wake from the Dream! I have so much left to live for, so much left to offer! What I could have accomplished! What I could have built for myself and for my family and for my people!

But I do not wish to harm them either. It would undermine all that I have done and all that I believe in. I will not be a burden nor a parasite.

But… I do not want to die.

"You have much to say," said Lea, "but I do not hear your words, Taric of Cold Rocks Hold, smith of spears and melter of coins. I hear only the words of others on your tongue. Is that all your honor is, the words of others repeated like a child? Speak for yourself, what wrong have you done?"

"I have done nothing!" Her hand was like a stone against my chest, and for all that I loomed above her, I felt like I could not have pushed it away, had I dared to raise a hand against the Wise One.

Amending my claim and lowering my tone when I realized I had all but yelled in Lea's face, I said, "I have wronged Neiralla by breaking faith with her and entering below her roof without permission, I have wronged Garlvan by placing the burden of my work upon his shoulders, and I have wronged Cold Rocks Hold by leaving that work undone, but for all of that, I have inflicted deliberate and lasting harm upon nobody and nothing."

Her cool silence and unblinking, weighing eyes pulled the words from me like new-drawn wire from a die.

"But…" I swallowed, throat thick and clotted, "I fear that if I remain, I will hurt somebody. I have been told that… That channeling brings madness, and that madness brings ruin. That once it has begun, it cannot be halted. That this is the reason that men who can channel go north, to spit into Sightblinder's eye.

"I will not do this. Will not prove a…" parasite "dishonorable guest by inflicting harm upon Cold Rocks Hold. I came under your mother's near-sister's roof as a guest. I will not stay as…"

"You will not stay," agreed Lea, and my heart sank when I heard the stoniness of her voice. Still lovely, but unspeakably solid. Whatever had briefly fluttered in my heart subsided.

"You will not say," Lea repeated, but continued, "because when you said that your affliction could harm those around you, you spoke truly. But, Taric, I ask you this: What toh does one with the fever bear? Do we shun the sick and demand they flee out into the Threefold Land, forever driven from our roof and our hold?"

"No," I answered, remembering the tale of how Jhoran had been woken, in his bed with his wife and his daughter at hand, helped in the search for an honorable way out. "There is no shame in sickness. There is only shame in the refusal to acknowledge affliction or in attempting to spread it to others."

"Finally," and Lea was there, peering out from behind the Wise One wearing her face, "proof that your wits have not fully deserted you, Taric. I am relieved."

"...I do not know what you want to hear from me," I confessed, confused at last by her strange whipsawing attitude. "I… I do not believe that I have done wrong by existing. Not truly. I… I cannot believe that. I have always labored to act in accordance with what I believe to be right. But I cannot overlook what I have learned about myself. It would not be right to do so."

"Do you remember what you told me, when I wondered if I should take up a spear and approach Far Dareis Mai?" asked Lea, and then answered for me, "You said that just by hearing me give voice to the idea, that I did not believe it to truly be my duty. I return those words to you. You know that seeking out Sightblinder to spit in his eye will not bring you ji."

She was correct, but at the same time, she was not.

I was not that honorable.

But, jerk my head as I tried, I could not just nod in mute acquiescence.

I was leaving my friend behind. I would not lie to her now.

"I do not want to die!" I burst out, and now shame washed over me, hot like the water ladled over the heated stones of the bath, wet and sticky and clinging in a manner unlike the scorching heat of the sun. Yet now that it was out, the words spilled fourth unbidden, uncontrolled, like the salt-stinking air rushing up from the fetid south in stormy whips to scourge the Threefold Land. "I am a smith! A maker and mender of things! What is the point of my sacrifice? What could I possibly do to help our people in my waking that thousands of men before me could not accomplish with theirs? I asked not for this power, only for the power of my hands and of my mind to make things that would help our people!"

Panting like a bull, I halted, caught again by pale jade.

"The truth at last, Taric." No give in her voice again, only hard duty. "No words of others, repeated without meaning. But truth at last."

"I…" have toh.

I swallowed the reflexive words, sensing how they would fall flat before her scorn.

As well they should, because… Because I had lost my honor. And without honor, how could one know what was right and what was wrong?

I have become a child again. I have lost mastery of myself.i

That was the cruelest cut, and the one that had lanced me the deepest in this whole benighted scenario. All my skills… All my honed self-control… All my carefully cultivated proficiencies, everything I had built for myself was like so much splintered kindling in the howling, hungering, insatiable flames of this new magic I found myself cursed with! Something that had been deeply buried within me had broken free, and there was nothing I could do to control it, to control myself.

I am broken.

"I… am not the man you think that I am," I said instead, as truthful as I could be, probing for what I could possibly say to mend what I had done. "I was never that man."

The return of my magic had nothing at all to do with that.

"You presume much, Taric of the Chareen Aiel," Lea hissed, angry for the first time in our conversation. "You presume to tell me of my thoughts, what I thought of you, what I saw in you?"

"I have toh," I said automatically, and found to my surprise that I meant it.

Ah, so perhaps I do still have something resembling honor after all.

"When I saw you, I never saw a Spear," said Lea, "nor did I come to your forge looking for one. Do you know what kind of man I saw in you, Taric? What your metal was, perhaps?" The way she emphasized that last sentence made it twist mockingly in my ears. Goading me.

"Yes," I shot back, angry now myself. "What did you see, Lea, daughter of Amys? Did you see a coward, perhaps? Someone unwilling to fulfill their duty?"

As unwilling to fulfill their duty as you?

"I saw someone with a passion to escape the path set before them equal to mine," answered Lea, and effortlessly killed my mounting head of desperate anger. "When I look upon you now, I see that nothing has changed."

"Then… what now?" I asked, lightheaded with emotion and heat. "Here I am, a man who can channel. What can I possibly do, Wise One's daughter, to escape my path?"

What can I do to unchain myself from this damned Wheel?

"You are sick," said Lea, "and this sickness is beyond the knowledge of the Wise Ones. If it could have been healed, it would have been long ago."

Her hand pulled away from my chest, leaving me almost dizzy in its absence, and slipped into the satchel she wore at her waist, strap looped over her opposite shoulder.

It emerged with a book, one whose title I recognized.

Men of Fire, Women of Air.

When I had seen Lea reading from it as she waited by her mother's door for me, I had asked her about its contents, and she had evaded my question.

Now, she pressed it into my chest, holding it in place until I realized what she wanted, and lifted my hands to fold over both the tome, and her hand. Holding both to my chest.

"You are sick," repeated Lea, "but you are of my people. My hold. So, it is my duty to care for you, you fool. What ails you is beyond the Wise Ones, but that does not mean you should flee to despair. It only means that we must seek out a cure from a source wiser than the Wise Ones.

"We must seek out the White Tower, and there, the Aes Sedai."

For a moment, my mind caught on that storybook name, the name of those who our ancestors had served, had supposedly failed. Had, according to the stories, failed so greatly that, even now, a hundred generations later, we atoned for their crimes in the hope that we could one day discharge the massive toh the Aiel labored under.

Then, I heard the rest of her sentence.

"We?" I almost squawked, incredulous. I met her eyes again and found nothing of the Wise One, the totem of carved jade and red sandstone like the mesa below our feet.

I found only green fire, gold-flecked and so thankfully familiar.

"We," confirmed Lea of the Nine Valleys Sept of the Taardad Aiel.