As usual all speech in italics is in the Old Tongue

Chapter CXXXII - The Eternal Queen

It took more than four days of walking to reach their destination. Egwene had offered to use a gateway, inverted of course, to speed things up after the first day, but the offer had been summarily rejected. Although it had taken some explanation to explain the concept of a gateway, their guide hadn't seemed surprised to find that she could channel. She and Jaer had agreed that it would be best to conceal his own ability. It would be a useful trick to have in reserve and they still didn't know how these people would react to a male channeler.

Their guide was a large man, by the unimpressive standards of the Red Rocks Tribe, with ragged, black hair, a surly face and an even more surly demeanour. He had little interest in talking to them, beyond occasional grunts, even though Egwene suspected he could speak the Old Tongue better than most of those poverty-stricken individuals. It made the slow, difficult journey all the more frustrating when she and Jaer couldn't extract any more information about the Land of Madmen from him. Of course, to make things worse, the two of them had to be careful what they said to each other too. While the people here seemed not to understand the Common Tongue, Egwene wasn't foolish enough to assume that that was the case for all of them. On some level she still found it difficult to believe that anyone would be unable to speak the Common Tongue, or at least anyone from her time.

While the journey was hard, at least she hadn't skimped on Taija's exercises. If she had, Egwene suspected that Jaer would have had to have carried her after the first day. The bloody man probably could have too. As it was, while she was certainly not enjoying herself, her feet and body were tough enough that she could keep up. The food on the other hand… She was running out of supplies and seeing what their guide ate had her seriously considering running for home and then returning with fresh food, not that good food was in abundant supply in the Westlands either these days. Unfortunately doing so would risk their guide disappearing and having to start all over again with their mission.

On the fifth day their guide suddenly came to a halt at some unseen sign, looking around nervously. By then they had left the steaming, wet forest and seemed to be moving through rough foothills, adorned by sparse, unhealthy looking trees. It felt more like home, but even Jaer didn't seem to see what the guide saw. After a moment he gestured them on, but moving far more slowly and cautiously. It only took another few minutes before they came across a wooden column, driven into the earth with simple carvings on it. Simple, but horrible, carvings that seemed to resemble screaming faces. Some kind of deliberately unpleasant warning perhaps? However, what was more unpleasant was what was hanging off it. A pair of human heads, too small to be natural, but seemingly real in every detail. Jaer studied them impassively for a moment and Egwene copied him, not allowing any of her own disturbance to show on her face. It was an unpleasant sight, but she'd seen worse.

Their guide grimaced, looking around them nervously and then shook his head. "You go, there!" He pointed past the column further along the rough trail they'd been following.

"You haven't taken us to our destination, the agreement was that you take us to this greater tribe." Egwene spoke slowly and clearly to help him understand.

Whether the man understood or not she couldn't tell. Neither words nor gestures would make him take a step past that column, in fact he seemed to be edging away from it as they argued, looking like he wanted nothing more than to be heading back to his tribe.

In the end Jaer laid a hand on her arm. "He has incurred much toh, but there is no purpose in trying to teach honour to one who has none. We are wasting time."

After a moment Egwene nodded. "You're right." She turned to the guide. "Very well, thank you for your help, you may go." There was no point in being impolite.

Once the man had scurried away the two of them took a few minutes to rest and recheck the various webs covering their abilities before they proceeded past the grisly marker.

=======

"So you wanted to see me?" Rand had been surprised when he'd had the message from Taija. Despite her reassuring words, after the way Lews Therin had spoken to her, he'd half thought she'd not want to see him ever again. Of course that was foolish of him, if she was devoted to anything, it was her duty.

That and banging bad boys.

For Light's sake, not now! He wished Lews Therin would simply disappear. She never shirked her duty, but also she'd never failed to do her best to support him when he needed it.

"Yes, since our last conversation I've been thinking and starting to work on some webs that might tie in with seals for the Bore. I've made some progress, but really it's all guess work. I think I need to speak to Lews Therin some more and possibly also to do some channeling with you. I've been sitting with Tel while he talks me through the wards that Lews Therin mentioned." Rand braced himself for the explosion of anger at Tel's name. "However, while Tel knows more about making wards than I do, he's a long way from a true master."

Of course she goes to the traitor. Does the airheaded idiot not understand the concept of operational security? Does she think this is all a game subordinated to her desire to open her legs for her lover?

"Taija… perhaps if you could not mention Tel? It tends to… set off Lews Therin and if you want this to be productive that will make things difficult."

Taija looked at him blankly for a second. "No."

"No?" In his surprise he just repeated the word.

Blinded by a handsome man. Probably a virgin before she met him, too busy doing science and then suddenly, boom! A hot celebrity to steal what little real world sense she had.

Light would the man never stop?!

"No. Tel is the second most knowledgeable man on the side of the Light and the other one doesn't have a body, he's someone I depend on both to run the Hall of Servants and for my sanity."

Weak, just weak.

"I understand that," Rand held his hands up placatingly. "Lews Therin though…"

If she wasn't weak, if she truly believed in her principles, she'd have killed him herself.

"I don't care about Lews Therin. He's a dead man, a voice in your head. If I start to accept his position, that Tel can't be mentioned, what then? Next Tel can't be trusted at our side and we lose one of the most valuable fighters on the side of the Light. Then what? Tel needs to pay for his crimes and he's hunted down and executed? Not that you'd need to, the idiot would go along with it. So I'm nipping this in the bud right now. If I want to talk about Tel I will talk about Tel."

He should be executed, she's right about that.

"Taija, I think you're being a bit irrational."

She blinked a couple of times and then sighed. "Yes, maybe. But can you say to me he isn't telling you right now that Tel should be executed."

"No one is executing Tel! Light burn me, I even like the man!"

Taija met his eyes for a second and then looked down awkwardly. "Sorry Rand. I know. It's just with what Lews Therin said last time and well, you know, everything… I said I don't care about Lews Therin, and I don't, but I do care about you. So let's make this voice in your head work for your benefit rather than just sit there insulting me."

I do not think she understands the meaning of lonely. She has her pet Forsaken, she has friends. All I have is a barbarian peasant boy who wants me gone.

Perhaps he'd be less keen to see Lews Therin gone if the man wasn't so thoroughly unpleasant. "Alright, I think I can show you the webs that Lews Therin used to seal the Bore. He's been talking me through them when he's been feeling more useful and he can correct anything I get wrong."

Taija nodded. "Alright, we may need to link at some point, but for now if you can spin them and describe them, Lews Therin can help you with the technical language, then I'll feel them out. I suppose once I've got something figured out I'll have to teach it to you, I think it'll need to be done in a link and frankly I don't have the right Talents to do your part, while given how ridiculously able you seem to be with the Power, I suspect you'll have little problem with mine."

You're mad to trust her, but then it was my idea to go to her with this. In the end we are all mad. Ironic really.

=======

Egwene and Jaer had been walking for around two hours when, in a low voice, he muttered to her, "Do not look, but we are being followed."

Egwene resisted the urge to glance around her, instead spinning a couple of inverted webs and holding them ready. "How many?"

"At least three. For now I do not believe they are seeking to attack us, merely to watch."

"Very well, let's just keep going then. We can pretend we haven't seen them."

They walked on for another hour, keeping to the same direction and rough trail that they had started on. As Egwene looked around her, she started to see small signs of inhabitance, although everything seemed long abandoned. That pile of rocks might have once been a cottage. The way that the hillside seemed to have vaguely defined steps suggested it had once been farmed. Yet there was no sign of human life now and in places the landscape was scarred as if burnt. Was this the result of the madmen that the Sea Folk spoke of? With the cleansing no further men should have been going mad, but who knew how many there already were here and any recovery would take time.

Their silent shadows continued to follow them, although to Egwene's disgust she could not detect any sign of them. As the day drew on, her urge to simply turn and confront them grew stronger, but then, ahead in the distance, she saw smoke rising from something. Perhaps it was their destination? Another tribal encampment? Or, optimism reared its head, maybe a village or even a town? She gave Jaer a nudge and he nodded, although she could tell he was distracted, presumably by their unseen followers.

The sight of the smoke put a small spring into Egwene's step and her pace improved. Perhaps they would even be able to reach it before nightfall. Her mind was drawn away from their followers and the soreness of her feet by fantasies of what they might find at the end of the day.

That was why it was a shock for her when Jaer suddenly put his arm out in front of her, bringing her to a half as effectively as a steel bar. Ahead of them three young men rose out of the undergrowth, crude spears of sharp stone tied to lengths of wood clutched tightly in their hands and hostility in their eyes. She hadn't even seen them! If Jaer hadn't been there…

These men looked larger, healthier than those that she had seen in the Red Rocks Tribe. They were also better dressed. Still poorly clad by the standards of the Westlands, their clothes appeared to be made of leather and wool, but at least maintained their decency and offered some protection.

The man at the front seemed to be the leader. He took a step forward hefting his spear threateningly and shouted something at them in the locals' incomprehensible tongue.

Egwene prepared to bind the men in air, conscious of the others who had been following them too, but held her hands out, palms open, giving no sign of her preparation to fight. "Hello, we are coming in peace and wish to speak to your leader."

To her mild surprise some of the tension left the men. "Ah you from Paral? I have think clothes wrong, maybe other tribe want war."

Egwene was about to ask what Paral was and then thought better of it. She glanced at Jaer and he muttered, "Perhaps it is their word for aes sedai."

That made sense and might explain why they became less hostile. She wouldn't lie to them, but if it allowed her to speak to their leaders then she wouldn't reject the opportunity that was presented to her. "Thank you, we want no harm. We have just come to talk. Can you take us to your leader?"

The man nodded and lowered his spear completely, his action swiftly mirrored by the others. "Yes. I take. You meet Eternal Queen. She speak to you of real world."

Well, that seemed positive. "Thank you, we look forward to meeting your queen." Eternal queen was an interesting title. Presumably she wasn't in fact eternal, but perhaps a strong channeler. To normal people, particularly ones that seemed as uneducated and deprived as these people, she might seem to be eternal. For a moment Egwene's eye caught a strange bird far away as it flitted across the distant sky before disappearing behind a hill.

======

Rand sat surrounded by papers, he'd spent most of the day chewing over his meeting with Taija. The lack of progress on the webs she wanted to spin with him and the constant stream of insults from Lews Therin was more than frustrating. He tried reading through yet another depressing report. Increasing numbers of raids all along the Blight. Food supplies failing, grain rotting in sacks. Refugees starting to move south and also people arming themselves and marching for the north. More of these bubbles of evil spreading around. He didn't know how long it would be until the Last Battle, but the signs were increasingly clear and, if he was honest with himself, he could feel it in his bones. The end was coming. He didn't want to die, not really. But he knew his duty, he would go to his death with his head held high.

Light save me from mawkish teenagers. I am the one that should be embracing death boy, not you. You will go and see the Light blasted woman again. Tell her I will apologise, if I must. She can go on about the traitor as much as she wishes. After all I have done I might deserve the fate of being stuck in your head, but Light damn me if I have to put up with your self-pity too. Burn the prophecies.

=====

While Egwene didn't feel like she and Jaer were being treated like prisoners, they certainly weren't quite at the level of honoured guests either. They'd slept in a small, dilapidated village the night before, the source of the smoke she'd seen, under the watchful escort of Nagrun, the leader of the locals who'd intercepted them. They'd even been provided with a meagre, unpleasant meal, although it was no worse than the inhabitants of the village seemed to be eating. After they'd eaten they'd been ignored, although there were always a few men with spears hanging around nearby.

Now they were walking once again, down a better maintained trail. Nagrun and his men didn't seem inclined to conversation, instead answering most questions with some variation of the 'the queen will tell you what you need to know'. It was deeply frustrating and, while he didn't show it on his face, Egwene could also feel Jaer become increasingly irritated as he walked beside her.

It took the best part of a day before they reached another village, this one somewhat larger, but equally ramshackle. At least the people there weren't living in crude tents, but rather crude huts.

"Eternal queen here." Nagrun sounded proud. "She speak to you, judge you." Egwene frowned at the last two words and exchanged a glance with Jaer. There'd been no talk of judgment before then. After a moment she embraced saidar, her concealing webs preventing any channelers from detecting it. She was sure Jaer had done the same.

"I look forward to it," she lied, "please, lead on."

Nagrun led them to a larger building, almost a hall. It was poorly built from rough logs with what seemed to be dried mud filling the gaps, but was still the closest thing Egwene had seen to civilisation since she'd come to this place. Two men stood guard outside it, dressed in the same low-quality leather and wool that seemed to be popular here. Nevertheless, her eyes followed Jaer's to their belts. He really was a perceptive man. Both men had knives thrust through them, black handled with large, dark, steel blades that looked to be of excellent quality. It contrasted with the stone-tipped spears of Nagrun and his men. A good sign perhaps, that these people did have blacksmiths. She had been becoming increasingly worried that they were so backwards that, even if they were willing, they would be useless for the Last Battle.

It was darker inside the building. Guttering torches provided some light, but nevertheless it was hard to see clearly and Egwene found herself blinking against the smokey air to try to see what was more than a few paces ahead of her. Nagrun gestured at them to stop and took a few steps forward before bowing low and launching into a long speech in his own tongue to some unseen person. Egwene caught the word Paral a few times, but the rest was as incomprehensible as ever.

After Nagrun stopped speaking there was no answer for a second and then, suddenly, the torches extinguished plunging the room into darkness. A moment later light appeared all around them, bright balls of light hovering under the ceiling. The Power, but she'd felt nothing. So was it saidin? She glanced at Jaer and he gave her a tiny nod.

The light revealed two men standing at the far end of the room one on each side of a woman who was sat on what must be intended to be a throne, raised above the floor by a small dias. She was tall, with straight brown hair and a scar across her cheek. Her face stayed expressionless as she looked the two of them over. The woman's clothes seemed to be simple grey wool, with decorative patterns in bright colours interwoven through the grey, by far the finest clothing Egwene had seen among these people. It contrasted with the two men, who were clad entirely in strangely coloured green and brown cloth in odd, seemingly random patterns. Perhaps it was symbolic of something?

"So, Nagrun tells me you say you are from Paral?" The Queen, for that was who she must have been, spoke the Old tongue smoothly. Egwene was reasonably sure even from that brief sentence that the woman spoke the language better than she did.

She quickly gathered herself and bowed low, followed a moment later by Jaer. "I presume you are the Eternal Queen of these lands?" Now that she was in a room with her, she could feel that the woman could channel. Strongly, even more so than Nynaeve in fact. "We thank you for granting us an audience. We have come far to see you."

For a moment the Queen didn't react to her words. Then her eyes narrowed. "You speak the Common Tongue strangely, not as well as I would expect, although better than the people of the Wastelands. When did you come here?" It seemed a bit unfair that the Queen was criticising Egwene's accent, her own was certainly stranger, the way she clipped her words was reminiscent of Taija's accent, while the rhythm with which she spoke was closer to Tel, but at the same time it was just different to any Egwene had heard before, including Taija and Tel's.

"We came around one week before." Perhaps best not to mention the Red Rocks Tribe given how afraid they had seemed of these people. "It was a long journey, but we're pleased to have finally found a leader of these lands. There are many important things that we hoped to discuss."

The Queen seemed to ignore Egwene's words, instead glancing at the two men. "It has been over a century for me. What say you?"

The shorter of the two of them spoke. A squat man, he might have been handsome once, but his face was marred by vicious burns and his one good eye regarded them with hostility. "My love, their clothes are wrong. So is her accent."

The Queen nodded, ignoring Egwene as she started to speak. "Your majesty…" Instead she looked to the taller man. His features were fine, with black hair hanging long around an almost elfin face. His right eye twitched at seemingly random intervals.

"I have never seen a man with red hair in Paral." He paused, "nor anywhere else for that matter."

"Your majesty, we have come a long way with a vitally important message to bring to your and your people."

Egwene stopped speaking when the Queen held up her hand. "You are not from Paral, it is obvious. Do you deny that you lied to Nagrun?"

Egwene suppressed a wince. "We never claimed to be from Paral, we had thought that was his word for aes sedai and did not have the knowledge to correct him." A half truth perhaps, but close enough.

"So you came here under a veil of deception?"

"No your majesty, we…" Egwene could feel the situation was getting away from her.

"You thought, or maybe think, to pretend to come from a long dead institution," what was an institution? "An institution that destroyed the world out of its own lust for power before it went into the night, yet you claim no deception?"

"No, we…"

"We have already met one such as yourself, although his lies were better. We did not allow him to lead us to doom and we shall make sure of you too."

The Queen stood, the light of saidar springing up around her and a shield flying at Jaer. Egwene drew fully on her angreal and sliced the Queen's shield and then felt something unseen, saidin, slamming into her connection to saidar, rapidly cutting into it. Franticly she sliced the unseen web, starting to move and spinning her own attack. Jaer had already leapt forward, pulling a spear from his back and flinging it at one of the men.

Egwene's own attacks slammed into unmoving barriers of invisible saidin and brightly spun saidar. Were the men just as powerful as the Queen? She needed room to maneuver if she was going to fight. She sliced a series of webs that came at her even as Jaer danced closer to the men, presumably fighting his own battle with saidin. She was faster than them, more skilled. She could tell that already, but so grossly outmatched in raw power that there was no chance of survival unless she could get room to move. She wouldn't be captured. Not again!

With a snarl the burnt man gestured and Jaer went flying through the air before impacting with a wall with a thump. He didn't get up. Egwene returned his snarl and focused her webs on him, inverted air slipped round his ankle and then she ripped the wall behind him apart showering him with splinters of wood. One down! Only the moment of focus on him had left her vulnerable. Overpowered webs battered at her. Crude, but so strong she could barely cut them. She needed space! Egwene began to spin an inverted gateway only for a shield to slide between her and the Power. A moment later she was trussed up in air. Unable to move.

The Queen glanced at the burnt man, lying bleeding on the floor. Concern briefly disrupting the uncaring mask of her face. "Alstan, help Kylan. As for you." She turned her attention to Egwene, who found herself hauled through the air to hover in front of the her. "I do not know what kind of game you are playing, but you were foolish to allow yourself to be captured. You clearly know much, so you will live a little longer. Long enough to tell me what you and your man know. Then, you will die. I expect by then you will thank me for finally allowing you to die." As Egwene struggled frantically against the web of air surrounding her the Queen spun earth, fire and spirit and Egwene's world went black.