“Bad,” an Ogier woman replied. “The Blighted Lands have grown southward, and there are Myrddraal and Trollocs.”
“I thought they were all dead.” Not north, then. They could not turn north. South? The Sea of Jeren lay ten days south. Or did it, any longer? He was tired. So tired.
“You have come from the east?” another Ogier asked. He wiped his bowl with a heel of bread and gulped it down. “How is it to the east?”
“Bad,” Jonai replied. “Perhaps not so bad for you, though. Ten—no, twelve days ago, some people took a third of our horses before we could escape. We had to abandon wagons.” That pained him. Wagons left behind, and what was in them. The things the Aes Sedai had placed in Aiel charge, abandoned. That it was not the first time only made it worse. “Almost everyone we meet takes things, whatever they want. Perhaps they will not be so with Ogier, though.”
“Perhaps,” an Ogier woman said as if she did not believe it. Jonai was not certain he did either; there was no safe place. “Do you know where any of the stedding are?”
Jonai stared at her. “No. No, I do not. But surely you can find the stedding.”
“We have run so far, so long,” an Ogier back in the huddle said, and another added in a mournful rumble, “The land has changed so much.”
“I think we must find a stedding soon or die,” the first Ogier woman said. “I feel a ??? longing … in my bones. We must find a stedding. We must.”
“I cannot help you,” Jonai said sadly. He felt a tightness in his chest. The land changed beyond knowing, changing still so the plain traveled last year might be mountains this. The Blighted Lands growing. Myrddraal and Trollocs still alive. People stealing, people with faces like animals, people who did not recognize Da’shain or know them. He could barely breathe. The Ogier, lost. The Aiel, lost. Everything lost. The tightness broke in pain, and he sank to his knees, doubled over, clutching his chest. A fist held his heart, squeezing.
Adan knelt beside him worriedly. “Father, what is it? What is the matter? What can I do?”
Jonai managed to sieze his son’s frayed collar and pull his face close. “Take—the people—south.” He had to force the words out between spasms that seemed to be ripping his heart out.
“Father, you are the one who—”
“Listen. Listen! Take them—south. Take—the Aiel—to safety. Keep—the Covenant. Guard—what the Aes Sedai—gave us—until they—come for it. The Way—of the Leaf. You must—” He had tried. Solinda Sedai must understand that. He had tried. Alnora.
Alnora. The name faded, the pain in Rand’s chest loosened. No sense. It made no sense. How could these people be Aiel?
The columns flashed in blinding pulses. The air stirred, swirling.
Beside him, Muradin’s mouth stretched wide in an effort to scream. The Aiel clawed at his veil, clawed at his face, leaving deep bloody scratches.
Forward.
Jonai hurried down the empty streets, trying not to look at shattered buildings and dead chora trees. All dead. At least the last of the long abandoned jo-cars had been hauled away. Aftershocks still troubled the ground beneath his feet. He wore his work clothes, his cadin’sor, of course, though the work he had been given was nothing he had been trained for. He was sixty-three, in the prime of life, not yet old enough for gray hairs, but he felt a tired old man.
No one questioned his entering the Hall of the Servants; there was no one at the great columned entrance to question anyone, or give greeting. Plenty of people darted about inside, arms filled with papers or boxes, eyes anxious, but none so much as looked at him. There was a feel of panic about them, and it grew by increments every time the ground shook. Distressed, he crossed the anteroom and trotted up the broad stairs. Mud stained the silvery white elstone. No one could spare time. Perhaps no one cared.
There was no need to knock at the door he sought. Not one of the great gilded doors to an ingathering hall, but a door plain and unobtrusive. He slipped in quietly, though, and was glad he had. Half a dozen Aes Sedai stood around the long table, arguing, apparently not noticing when the building trembled. They were all women.
He shivered, wondering if men would ever stand in a meeting such as this again. When he saw what was on the table, the shiver became a shudder. A crystal sword—perhaps an object of the Power, perhaps only an ornament; he had no way of telling—held down the Dragon banner of Lews Therin Kinslayer, spread out like a tablecloth and spilling onto the floor. His heart clenched. What was that doing here? Why had it not been destroyed, and memory of the cursed man as well?
“What good is your Foretelling,” Oselle was almost shouting, “if you cannot tell us when?” Her long blac
k hair swayed as she shook with anger. “The world rests on this! The future! The Wheel itself!”
Dark-eyed Deindre faced her with a more usual calm. “I am not the Creator. I can only tell you what I Foretell.”
“Peace, sisters.” Solinda was the calmest of them all, her old-fashioned streith gown only a pale blue mist. The sun-red hair falling to her waist was nearly the color of his own. His greatfather had served her as a young man, but she looked younger than he; she was Aes Sedai. “The time for contention among ourselves is past. Jaric and Haindar will both be here by tomorrow.”
“Which means we cannot afford mistakes, Solinda.”
“We must know … .”
“Is there any chance of … ?”
Jonai stopped listening. They would see him when they were ready. He was not the only one in the room besides the Aes Sedai. Someshta sat against the wall near the door, a great shape seemingly woven of vines and leaves, his head a little above Jonai’s even so. A fissure of withered brown and charred black ran up the Nym’s face and furrowed the green grass of his hair, and when he looked at Jonai, his hazelnut eyes seemed troubled.
When Jonai nodded to him, he fingered the rift and frowned. “Do I know you?” he said softly.