Mat did not look pleased at the news.
Rhuarc led the way straight to the widest fissure in the sheer stone wall, ten or twelve paces across at the broadest, and shadowed by the height of its sheer sides as it wove deeper and deeper, dark and even cool beneath a ribbon of sky. It felt odd to be in so much shade. The Aiels’ wordless shouts swelled, magnified between the gray-brown walls; when they suddenly ceased, the silence, broken only by the clatter of mules’ hooves and the creak of wagon wheels far behind, seemed very loud.
They rounded another curve, and the fissure opened abruptly into a wide canyon, long and almost straight. From every side, shrill ululating cries broke from hundreds of women’s mouths. A thick crowd lined the way, women in bulky skirts, shawls wrapped about their heads, and men wearing grayish brown coats and breeches, the cadin’sor, and Maidens of the Spear, too, waving their arms in welcome, beating on pots or whatever could make a noise.
Rand gaped, and not just for the pandemonium. The canyon walls were green, in narrow terraces climbing halfway up both sides. Not all were really terraces, he realized. Small, flat-roofed houses of gray stone or yellow clay seemed to be stacked practically atop one another, in clusters with paths winding between, and every roof a garden of beans and squashes, peppers and melons and plants he did not know. Chickens ran loose, redder than those he knew, and some strange sort of fowl, larger and speckled gray. Children, most garbed like their elders, and white-robed gai’shain moved among the rows with big clay pitchers, apparently watering individual plants. The Aiel did not have cities, he had always been told, but this was certainly a fair-sized town at least, if as odd a one as he had ever seen. The din was too great for him to ask any of the questions that popped into his head—such as, what were those round fruits, too red and shiny for apples, growing on low, pale-leaved bushes, or those straight, broad-leafed stalks lined with long, fat, yellow-tasseled sprouts? He had been too long a farmer not to wonder.
Rhuarc and Heirn slowed, and so did Couladin, but only to a quick walk, thrusting their spears through the bow-case harnesses on their backs. Amys ran on ahead, laughing like a girl, while the men continued their steady advance along the crowd-lined canyon floor, the cries of the hold’s women vibrating in the air and nearly overshadowing the clanging of pots. Rand followed, as Aviendha had told him to. Mat looked as if he wanted to turn around and ride right back out again.
At the far end of the canyon, the wall leaned inward, making a deep, dark pocket. The sun never reached to the back of it, so Aviendha had said, and the rocks there, always cool, gave the hold its name. In front of the shadows, Amys stood with another woman atop a wide gray boulder, its top smoothed for a platform.
The second woman, slender in her bulky skirts, scarf-bound yellow hair spilling below her waist and touched with white from her temples, appeared older than Amys though certainly more than handsome, with a few fine wrinkles at the corners of her gray eyes. She was dressed the same as Amys, a plain brown shawl over her shoulders, her necklaces and bracelets of gold and carved ivory no finer or richer, but this was Lian, the roofmistress of Cold Rocks Hold.
The wavering, high-pitched cries dwindled away to nothing as Rhuarc halted before the boulder, a step closer than Heirn and Couladin. “I ask leave enter your hold, roofmistress,” he announced in a loud, carrying tone.
“You have my leave, clan chief,” the yellow-haired woman replied formally, and just as loudly. Smiling, she added in a much warmer voice, “Shade of my heart, you will always have my leave.”
“I give thanks, roofmistress of my heart.” That did not sound particularly formal, either.
Heirn stepped forward. “Roofmistress, I ask leave to come beneath your roof.”
“You have my leave, Heirn,” Lian told the stocky man. “Beneath my roof, there is water and shade for you. The Jindo sept is always welcome here.”
“I give thanks, roofmistress.” Heirn clapped Rhuarc on the shoulder and left to rejoin his people; Aiel ceremony was short, it seemed, and to the point.
Swaggering, Couladin joined Rhuarc. “I ask leave to enter your hold, roofmistress.”
Lian blinked, frowning at him. A murmur rose behind Rand, an astonished buzz from hundreds of throats. A sudden feel of danger hung in the air. Mat certainly felt it, too, fingering his spear and half-turning to see what the mass of Aiel was doing.
“What is the matter?” Rand asked quietly over his shoulder. “Why doesn’t she say something?”
“He asked as if he were a clan chief,” Aviendha whispered disbelievingly. “The man is a fool. He must be mad! If she refuses him, it will mean trouble with the Shaido, and she may, for such an insult. Not blood feud—he is not their clan chief, however swollen his head—but trouble.” Between one breath and the next her voice sharpened. “You did not listen, did you? You did not listen! She could have refused permission even to Rhuarc, and he would have had to leave. It would break the clan, but it is in her power. She can refuse even He Who Comes With the Dawn, Rand al’Thor. Women are not powerless among us, not like your wetlander women who must be queens or nobles or else dance for a man if they wish to eat!”
He shook his head slightly. Every time he was on the point of berating himself for how little he had learned about the Aiel, Aviendha reminded him how little she knew about anyone not Aiel. “Someday I would like to introduce you to the Women’s Circle in Emond’s Field. It will be … interesting … to hear you explain to them how powerless they are.” He felt her shifting against his back, trying to get a good look at his face, and carefully kept his expression smooth. “Maybe they’ll explain a few things to you, too.”
“You have my leave,” Lian began—Couladin smiled, swelling up where he stood—“to step beneath my roof. Water and shade will be found for you.” Soft gasps from hundreds of mouths made quite a loud sound.
The fire-haired man quivered as if struck, face red with rage. He did not seem to know what to do. He took a challenging step forward, staring up at Lian and Amys, clutching his own forearms as though to keep his hands from his spears, then whirled and strode back toward the gathering, glaring this way and that, daring anyone to speak. Finally he stopped not far from where he had begun, staring at Rand. Coals could not have been hotter than his blue eyes.
“As one friendless and alone,” Aviendha whispered. “She has welcomed him as a beggar. The gravest insult to him, and none to the Shaido.” Suddenly she fisted Rand so hard in the ribs that he grunted. “Move, wetlander. You hold such honor as I have left in your hands; all will know I have taught you! Move!”
Swinging a leg over, he slid from Jeade’en’s back and strode up beside Rhuarc. I am not Aiel, he thought. I do not understand them, and I cannot let myself come to like them too much. I cannot.
None of the other men had done so, but he bowed to Lian; that was how he had been brought up. “Roofmistress, I ask leave to come beneath your roof.” He heard Aviendha’s breath catch. He had been supposed to say the other thing, what Rhuarc had. The clan chief’s eyes narrowed worriedly, watching his wife, and Couladin’s flushed face twisted in a scornful smile. The soft murmurs from the crowd sounded puzzled.
The roofmistress stared at Rand even harder than she had at Couladin, taking him in from hair to boots and back again, the shoufa lying on the shoulders of a red coat that would surely never be worn by an Aiel. She looked questioningly at Amys, who nodded.
“Such modesty,” Lian said slowly, “is becoming in a man. Men seldom know where to find it.” Spreading her dark skirts, she curtsied, awkwardly—it was not a thing Aielwomen did—but still a curtsy, in return of his bow. “The Car’a’carn has leave to enter my hold. For the chief of chiefs, there is ever water and shade at Cold Rocks.”
Another great ululation rose from the women in the crowd, but whether for him or for the ceremony, Rand did not know. Couladin paused to stare implacable hatred at him, then stalked off, brushing roughly past Aviendha as she slid ungracefully from the dapple stallion. He melded quickl
y into the dispersing crowd.
Mat slowed in the act of dismounting to stare after the man. “Watch your back with that one, Rand,” he said quietly. “I mean it.”
“Everybody tells me that,” Rand said. The peddlers were already setting up to trade in the center of the canyon, and at the entrance, Moiraine and the rest of the Wise Ones’ company were arriving to a few shouts and the drumming of pots, but nothing like the cries that had welcomed Rhuarc. “He isn’t who I have to worry about.” His dangers were not Aiel. Moiraine to one side and Lanfear to the other. How could I have more danger than that? It was nearly enough to make him laugh.
Amys and Lian had climbed down, and to Rand’s surprise, Rhuarc put an arm around each of them. They were both tall, as most Aielwomen seemed to be, but neither came higher than the clan chief’s shoulder. “You have met my wife Amys,” he said to Rand. “Now you must meet my wife Lian.”
Rand realized his mouth was hanging open and closed it quickly. After Aviendha had told him the roofmistress of Cold Rocks was Rhuarc’s wife and named Lian, he was sure he had misunderstood back at Chaendaer, all that “shade of my heart” between the man and Amys. He had had other things on his mind then anyway. But this … .
“Both of them?” Mat spluttered. “Light! Two! Oh, burn me! He’s the luckiest man in the world or the biggest fool since creation!”
“I had thought,” Rhuarc said, frowning, “that Aviendha was teaching you our customs. She leaves out much, it appears.”
Leaning to look around her husband—their husband—Lian raised an eyebrow at Amys, who said dryly, “She seemed ideal to tell him what he needs to know. Something to keep her from trying to run back to the Maidens whenever our backs were turned, too. Now it seems I must have a long talk with her in a quiet place. No doubt she has been teaching him Maiden handtalk, or how to milk a gara.”
Flushing slightly, Aviendha tossed her head irritably; her dark reddish hair had grown over her ears, long enough to sway in a fringe below her head scarf. “There were more important matters to speak of than marriages. Anyway, the man does not listen.”
“She has been a good teacher,” Rand put in quickly. “I have learned a great deal about your customs, and the Three-fold Land, from her.” Handtalk? “Any mistakes I make are mine, not hers.” How did you milk a venomous two-foot lizard? Why? “She has been a good teacher, and I’d like to keep her as such, if that is all right.” Why in the Light did I say that? The woman could be pleasant enough sometimes, when she forget herself, anyway; the rest of the time she was a burr under his coat. Yet at least he knew who the Wise Ones had set to watch him as long as she was there.
Amys studied him, those clear blue eyes as sharp as an Aes Sedai’s. But then, she could channel; her face merely looked younger than it should, not ageless, but maybe she was as much Aes Sedai as an Aes Sedai. “That sounds a fine arrangement to me,” she said. Aviendha opened her mouth, all bristling indignation—and closed it again, sullenly, when the Wise One shifted that stare to her. Perhaps the woman had thought her time with him was done, now that they had reached Cold Rocks.
“You must be tired after your journey,” Lian said to Rand, her gray eyes motherly, “and hungry as well. Come.” Her warm smile included Mat, who was hanging back and beginning to look to the peddlers’ wagons. “Come beneath my roof.”
Fetching his saddlebags, Rand left Jeade’en to the care of a gai’shain woman, who took Pips as well. Mat gave the wagons a final stare before tossing his saddlebags over his shoulder and following.
Lian’s roof, her house, sat on the highest level on the west side, with the steep canyon wall rising a good hundred paces above. Dwelling of the clan chief and roofmistress or no, from the outside it appeared to be a modest rectangle of large yellow-clay bricks with narrow, glassless windows covered by plain white curtains, a vegetable garden on its flat roof and another in front on a small terrace separated from the house by a narrow path paved with flat gray stones. Big enough for two rooms, maybe. Except perhaps for the square bronze gong hanging beside the door, it looked much like the other structures Rand could see, and from that vantage point the entire length of the valley was laid out below him. A small, simple house. Inside, it was something else.
The brick part was one large room, floored with reddish brown tiles, but it was only part. Carved into the stone behind were more rooms, high-ceilinged and surprisingly cool, with wide, arched doorways and silver lamps giving off a scent that hinted of green places. Rand saw only one chair, tall-backed and lacquered red and gold, with a look of not much use; the chief’s chair, Aviendha called it. There was little more wood to be seen, beyond a few polished or lacquered boxes and chests, and low reading stands holding open books; the reader would need to lie on the floor. Intricately woven carpets covered the floors, and bright rugs in layers; he recognized some patterns from Tear and Cairhien and Andor, even Illian and Tarabon, while other designs were unfamiliar, broad jagged stripes and no two colors alike, or linked hollow squares in grays and browns and blacks. In sharp contrast to the harsh sameness outside this valley, there was vivid color everywhere, wall hangings he was sure had come from the other side of the Spine of the World—perhaps in the same way wall hangings had left the Stone of Tear—and cushions of all sizes and hues, often tasseled or fringed or both in silk of red or gold. Here and there, in niches carved into the walls, stood a thin porcelain vase or a silver bowl or an ivory carving, often of some strange animal or other. So these were the “caves” the Tairens spoke of. It could have had the garishness of Tear—or the Tinkers—but instead it seemed dignified, formal and informal at the same time.
With a small grin for Aviendha to show her he had listened, Rand pulled a guest gift for Lian from his saddlebags, a finely worked golden lion. It had been looted from Tear and bought from a Jindo Water Seeker, but if he was ruler of Tear, maybe it was like stealing from himself. After a moment of hesitation, Mat produced a gift, too, a Tairen necklace of silver flowers, no doubt from the same source originally, and no doubt intended for Isendre.
“Exquisite,” Lian smiled, holding up the lion. “I have always had a taste for Tairen craftwork. Rhuarc brought me two pieces many years ago.” In a voice suitable for a goodwife reminiscing over some particularly fine sugarberries, she said to her husband, “You took them from the tent of a High Lord just before Laman was beheaded, did you not? A pity you did not reach Andor. I have always wanted a piece of Andoran silver. This necklace is beautiful, too, Mat Cauthon.”
Listening to her heap praise on both gifts, Rand masked his shock. For all her skirts and motherly eyes, she was as Aiel as any Maiden of the Spear.
By the time Lian finished, Moiraine and the other Wise Ones arrived with Lan and Egwene. The Warder’s sword drew a single disapproving glance, but the roofmistress welcomed him warmly after Bair called him Aan’allein. Yet that was nothing to her greeting for Egwene and Moiraine.
“You honor my roof, Aes Sedai.” The roofmistress’s tone made it sound an understatement; she came very close to bowing to them. “It is said that we served Aes Sedai before the Breaking of the World and failed them, and for that failure were sent here to the Three-fold Land. Your presence says that perhaps our sin was not beyond forgiving.” Of course. She had not been to Rhuidean; apparently the prohibition against speaking of what happened in Rhuidean with anyone who had not been there applied even between husband and wife. And between sister-wives, or whatever the relationship was between Amys and Lian.
Moiraine tried to give Lian a guest gift, too, tiny crystal-and-silver flasks of scent all the way from Arad Doman, but Lian spread her hands. “Your very presence is guest gift beyond value, Aes Sedai. To accept more would dishonor my roof, and me. I could not bear the shame.” She sounded entirely serious, and troubled that Moiraine might press the scent on her. It was an indication of the relative importance of the Car’a’carn and an Aes Sedai.
“As you wish,” Moiraine said, returning the flasks to her belt pouch. She was
icily serene in blue silk, her pale cloak thrown back. “Your Three-fold Land will surely see more Aes Sedai. We have never had reason to come, before.”
Amys did not look best pleased over that at all, and flame-haired Melaine stared at Moiraine like a green-eyed cat wondering if she should do something about a large dog that had wandered into her barnyard. Bair and Seana exchanged troubled glances, but nothing like the two who could channel.
A flurry of gai’shain—men and women alike graceful in cowled white robes, their downcast eyes seeming so strangely submissive in Aiel faces—took Moiraine and Egwene’s cloaks, brought damp towels for hands and faces, and tiny silver cups of water to be drunk formally, and finally a meal, served with silver bowls and trays fit for a palace yet eaten from pottery with a blue-striped glaze. Everyone ate lying on the floor, where white tiles had been set into the stone for a table, heads together, cushions under their chests, radiating out like spokes in a wheel while gai’shain slipped between to place dishes.
Mat struggled, shifting this way and that on his cushions, but Lan lounged as if he had always eaten that way, and Moiraine and Egwene looked almost as comfortable. No doubt they had had practice in the Wise Ones’ tents. Rand found it awkward, yet the food itself was peculiar enough to take most of his attention.
A dark, spicy stew of goat with chopped peppers was unfamiliar but hardly strange, and peas were peas anywhere, or squash. The same could not be said of the crumbly, coarse yellow bread, or long, bright red beans mixed in with the green, or a dish of bright yellow kernels and bits of pulpy red that Aviendha called zemai and t’mat, or a sweet, bulbous fruit with a tough greenish skin she said came from one of those leafless, spiny plants called kardon. It was all tasty, though.
He might have enjoyed the meal more if she had not lectured him on everything. Not sister-wives. That was left to Amys and Lian, lying on either side of Rhuarc and smiling at each other almost as much as at their husband. If they had both married him so as not to break up their friendship, it was plain they both loved him. Rand could not see Elayne and Min agreeing to such an agreement; he wondered why he had even thought of it. The sun must have cooked his brains.