Egwene listened intently. It fascinated her, hinting at things she had never suspected were possible, but beyond that she had no intention of ending up scrubbing pots. It did not seem fair, somehow. Whatever Rand and Mat and the others faced in Rhuidean, they were not going to be sent off to scrub pots. And I agreed to it! It just was not fair. But then, she doubted they could get any more out of Rhuidean than she would from these women.

CHAPTER 24

Rhuidean

The smooth pebble in Mat’s mouth was not making moisture anymore, and had not been for some time. Spitting it out, he squatted beside Rand and stared at the billowing gray wall maybe thirty paces in front of them. Fog. He hoped at least it was cooler in there than out here. And some water would be appreciated. His lips were cracking. He pulled the scarf from around his head and wiped his face, but there was not much sweat to dampen the cloth. Not much sweat remained in him to come out. A place to sit down. His feet felt like cooked sausages inside his boots; he felt pretty well cooked all over, for that matter. The fog stretched left and right better than a mile and bulked over his head like a towering cliff. A cliff of thick mist in the middle of a barren blistered valley. There had to be water in there.

Why doesn’t it burn off? He did not like that part of it. Fooling with the Power had brought him here, and now it seemed he had to fool with it again. Light, I want free of the Power and Aes Sedai. Burn me, I do! Anything not to think of stepping into that fog, for just a minute more. “That was Egwene’s Aiel friend I saw running,” he croaked. Running! In this heat. Just thinking of it made his feet hurt worse. “Aviendha. Whatever her name is.”

“If you say so,” Rand said, studying the fog. He sounded as if he had a mouthful of dust, his face was sunburned, and he wavered unsteadily in his crouch. “But what would she be doing down here? And naked?”

Mat let it go. Rand had not seen her—he had hardly taken his eyes off the roiling mist since starting down the mountain—and he did not believe Mat had seen her either. Running like a madwoman and keeping wide of the two of them. Heading for this strange fog, it had seemed to him. Rand appeared no more eager to step into that than he was. He wondered whether he looked as bad as Rand did. Touching his cheek, he winced. He expected he did.

“Are we going to stay out here all night? This valley is pretty deep. It’ll be dark down here in another couple of hours. Might be cooler then, but I don’t think I would like to meet whatever runs around this place in the night. Lions, probably. I’ve heard there are lions in the Waste.”

“Are you sure you want to do this, Mat? You heard what the Wise Ones said. You can die in there, or go mad. You can make it back to the tents. You left waterbottles and a waterbag on Pips’s saddle.”

He wished Rand had not reminded him. Best not to think about water. “Burn me, no, I don’t want to. I have to. What about you? Isn’t being the bloody Dragon Reborn enough for you? Do you have to be a flaming Aiel clan chief, too? Why are you here?”

“I have to be, Mat. I have to be.” Resignation came through the parch in his voice, but something else, too. A hint of eagerness. The man really was mad; he wanted to do this.

“Rand, maybe that’s the answer they give everybody. Those snake people, I mean. Go to Rhuidean. Maybe we don’t have to be here at all.” He did not believe it, but with that fog staring him in the face … .

Rand turned his head to look at him, not speaking. Finally he said, “They never mentioned Rhuidean to me, Mat.”

“Oh, burn me,” he muttered. Somehow or other he meant to find a way back through that twisted doorway in Tear. Absently he pulled the gold Tar Valon mark from his coat pocket, rolled it across the backs of his fingers and thrust it back. Those snaky folk were going to give him a few more answers whether they wanted to or not. Somehow.

Without another word, Rand rose and started toward the fog in an unsteady stride, his eyes fixed straight ahead. Mat hurried after him. Burn me. Burn me. I do not want to do this.

Rand plunged right into the dense mist, but Mat hesitated a moment before following. It had to be the Power maintaining the fog, after all, with its edge boiling so but never advancing or retreating an inch. The bloody Power, and no bloody choice. That first step was a blessed relief, cool and damp; he opened his mouth to let the mist moisten his tongue. Three steps more and he began to worry. Beyond the tip of his nose was only featureless gray. He could not make out even a shadow that could be Rand.

“Rand?” The sound might as well not have come from his mouth; the murk seemed to swallow it before it reached his own ears. He was not even sure of his direction anymore, and he could always remember his way. Anything might be ahead of him. Or under his feet. He could not see his feet; the fog shrouded him completely below the waist. He picked up his pace regardless. And suddenly stepped out beside Rand into a peculiar shadowless light.

The fog made an enormous hollow dome hiding the sky, its bubbling inner surface glowing in a pale sharp blue. Rhuidean was not nearly so big as Tear or Caemlyn, but the empty streets were broad as any he had ever seen, with wide strips of bare dirt down their centers as if trees had grown there once, and great fountains with statues. Huge buildings flanked the streets, odd flat-sided palaces of marble and crystal and cut glass, ascending hundreds of feet in steps or sheer walls. There was not a small building to be seen, nothing that might have been a simple tavern or an inn or a stable. Only immense palaces, with gleaming columns fifty feet thick climbing a hundred paces in red or white or blue, and grand towers, fluted and spiraled, some piercing the glowing clouds above.

For all its grandeur, the city had never been finished. Many of those tremendous structures ended in the sawteeth of abandoned construction. Colored glass made images in some huge windows: serenely majestic men and women thirty feet tall or more, sunrises and starry night skies; others gaped emptily. Unfinished and long deserted. No water splashed in any fountain. Silence covered the city as completely as the dome of fog. The air was cooler than outside, but just as arid. Dust grated under foot on pale smooth paving stones.

Mat trotted to the nearest fountain anyway, just on the off chance, and leaned on the waist-high white rim. Three unclothed women, twice as tall as he and supporting an odd wide-mouthed fish over their heads, peered down into a wide dusty basin no dryer than his mouth.

“Of course,” Rand said behind him. “I should have thought of this before.”

Mat looked over his shoulder. “Thought of what?” Rand was staring at the fountain, shaking with silent laughter. “Get hold of yourself, Rand. You didn’t go crazy in the last minute. You should have thought of what?”

A hollow gurgling whipped Mat’s eyes back to the fountain. Abruptly water gushed out of the fish’s mouth, a stream as thick as his leg. He scrambled into the basin and ran to stand under the downpour, head back and mouth open. Cold sweet water, cold enough to make him shiver, sweeter than wine. It soaked his hair, his coat, his breeches. He drank until he thought he would drown, finally staggering over to lean panting against a woman’s stone leg.

Rand was still standing there staring at the fountain, face red and lips cracked, laughing softly. “No water, Mat. They said we couldn’t bring water, but they did not say anything about what was already here.”

“Rand? Aren’t you going to drink?”

Rand gave a start, then stepped into the now ankle-deep basin and splashed across to stand where Mat had been, drinking in the same way, eyes closed and face tilted up to let the water pour over him.

Mat watched worriedly. Not mad, exactly; not yet. But how long would Rand have stood there laughing while thirst turned his throat to stone if he had not spoken? Mat left him there and climbed out of the fountain. Some of the water drenching his clothes had seeped down into his boots. He ignored the squish he made at every step; he was not sure he could get his boots back on if he pulled them off. Besides, it felt good.

Peering at the city, he wondered what he was doing there. Those people had said he would di

e, otherwise, but was just being in Rhuidean enough? Do I have to do something? What?

The empty streets and half-finished palaces were shadowless in the pale azure light. A prickling grew between his shoulder blades. All those empty windows looking down on him, all those gap-toothed lines of forsaken stonework. Anything could be hiding in there, and in a place like this, anything could be … . Any bloody thing at all. He wished he still had his boot knives, at least. But those women, those Wise Ones, had stared at him as if they knew he was holding out on them. And they had channeled, one or all of them. It was not wise to step on the wrong side of women who could channel if you could avoid it. Burn me, if I could get shut of Aes Sedai, I’d never ask for another thing. Well, not for a good long while, anyway. Light, I wonder if anything is hiding in here.

“The heart has to be that way, Mat.” Rand was climbing out of the basin, dripping wet.

“The heart?”

“The Wise Ones said I had to go to the heart. They must mean the center of the city.” Rand looked back at the fountain and suddenly the flow dwindled to a trickle, then ceased. “There’s an ocean of good water down there. Deep. So deep I nearly didn’t find it. If I could bring it up … . No need to waste it, though. We can get another good drink when it’s time to leave.”

Mat shifted his feet uncomfortably. Fool! Where did you think it came from? Of course he bloody channeled. Did you think it just started flowing again after the Light knows how long? “Center of the city. Of course. Lead on.”

They kept to the middle of the wide street, walking along the edge of the bare strips of dirt, past more dry fountains, some with only the stone basin and a marble base where the statues should have been. Nothing was broken in the city, only … incomplete. The palaces loomed to either side like cliffs. There had to be things inside. Furniture, maybe, if it had not rotted. Maybe gold. Knives. Knives would not rust away in this dry air no matter how long they had been there.

There could be a bloody Myrddraal in there for all you know. Light, why did I have to think of that? If only he had thought to bring a quarterstaff with him when he left the Stone. Maybe he could have convinced the Wise Ones it was a walking staff. No use thinking of it, now. A tree would do, if he had a way to cut a good branch and trim it. If, again. He wondered whether whoever built this city had managed to grow any trees. He had worked on his father’s farm too long not to know good dirt when he saw it. These long ribbons of exposed soil were poor, no good for growing anything besides weeds, and not many of those. None, now.

After they had walked a mile, the street suddenly ended at a great plaza, perhaps as far across as they had walked and surrounded by those palaces of marble and crystal. Startlingly, a tree stood in the huge square, a good hundred feet tall and spreading its thick, leafy limbs over a hide of dusty white paving stones, near what appeared to be concentric rings of clear, glittering glass columns, thin as needles compared to their height, nearly as much as the tree’s. He would have wondered how a tree could grow here, without sunlight, if he had not been too busy staring at the astounding jumble filling the rest of the square.

A clear lane led from each street Mat could see, straight to the columned rings, but in the spaces between, statues stood haphazardly, life-sized down to half that, in stone or crystal or metal, set right down on the pavement. All among them were … . He did not know what to call them, at first. A flat silvery ring, ten feet across and thin as a blade. A tapering crystal plinth a pace tall that might have held one of the smaller statues. A shiny black metal spire, narrow as a spear and no longer, yet standing on end as if rooted. Hundreds of things, maybe thousands, in every shape imaginable, every material imaginable, dotting the huge plaza with no more than a dozen feet between any two.

It was the black metal spear, so unnaturally erect, that suddenly told him what they must be. Ter’angreal. Some sort of things to do with the Power, anyway. Some of them had to be. That twisted stone doorway in the Stone’s Great Holding had resisted falling over, too.

He was ready to turn around and go back right then, but Rand continued on, barely looking at what lined his way. Once Rand paused, staring down at two figurines that hardly seemed to deserve a place with the other things. Two statuettes maybe a foot tall, a man and a woman, each holding a crystal sphere aloft in one hand. He half-bent as if to touch them, but straightened so quickly it could almost have been Mat’s imagination.

After a minute, Mat followed, hurrying to catch up. The closer they came to the scintillating rings of columns, the more he tensed. Those things all around them had to do with the Power, and so did the columns. He just knew it. Those impossibly tall thin shafts sparkled in the bluish light, dazzling the eye. All they said was I had to come here. Well, I’m here. They didn’t say anything about the bloody Power.

Rand stopped so suddenly that Mat went three strides nearer the columned rings before realizing it. Rand was staring at the tree, Mat saw. The tree. Mat found himself moving toward it as if drawn. No tree had those trefoil leaves. No tree but one; a tree of legend.

“Avendesora,” Rand said softly. “The Tree of Life. It’s here.”

Under the spreading branches, Mat leaped to catch one of those leaves; his outstretched fingers fell a good pace short of the lowest. He satisfied himself with walking deeper beneath that leafy roof and leaning back against the thick bole. After a moment he slid down to sit against it. The old stories were true. He felt … . Contentment. Peace. Well-being. Even his feet did not bother him much.

Rand sat down cross-legged nearby. “I can believe the stories. Ghoe-tam, sitting beneath Avendesora for forty years to gain wisdom. Right now, I can believe.”

Mat let his head fall back against the trunk. “I don’t know that I’d trust birds to bring me food, though. You’d have to get up sometime.” But an hour or so would not be bad. Even all day. “It doesn’t make sense anyway. What kind of food could birds bring in here? What birds?”

“Maybe Rhuidean wasn’t always like this, Mat. Maybe … . I don’t know. Maybe Avendesora was somewhere else, then.”

“Somewhere else,” Mat murmured. “I would not mind being somewhere else.” It feels … good … though.

“Somewhere else?” Rand twisted around to look at the tall thin columns, shining so close. “Duty is heavier than a mountain,” he sighed.

That was part of a saying he had picked up in the Borderlands. “Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.” It sounded like pure foolishness to Mat, but Rand was getting up. Mat copied him reluctantly. “What do you think we’ll find in there?”

“I think I have to go on alone from here,” Rand said slowly.

“What do you mean?” Mat demanded. “I’ve come this far, haven’t I? I am not going to turn tail now.” Wouldn’t I just like to, though!

“It isn’t that, Mat. If you go in there, you come out a clan chief, or you die. Or come out mad. I don’t believe there’s any other choice. Unless maybe the Wise Ones go in there.”

Mat hesitated. To die and live again. That was what they had said. He had no intention of trying to be an Aiel clan chief, though; the Aiel would probably stick spears through him. “We’ll leave it to luck,” he said, pulling the Tar Valon mark from his pocket. “Getting to be my lucky coin. Flame, I go in with you; head, I stay out.” He flipped the gold coin quickly, before Rand could object.

Somehow he missed grabbing it; the mark careened off his fingertips, clinked to the pavement, bounced twice … . And landed on edge.

He glared at Rand accusingly. “Do you do this sort of thing on purpose? Can’t you control it?”

“No.” The coin fell over, showing an ageless woman’s face surrounded by stars. “It looks like you stay out here, Mat.”

“Did you just … ?” He wished Rand would not channel around him. “Oh, burn me, if you want me to stay out here, I’ll stay.” Snatching the coin up, he stuffed it back into his pocket. “Listen, you go in, do whatever it is you have to, and get back out

. I want to leave this place, and I am not going to stand here forever twiddling my thumbs waiting for you. And you needn’t think I’ll come in after you, either, so you had best be careful.”

“I wouldn’t think that of you, Mat,” Rand said.

Mat stared at him suspiciously. What was he grinning at? “So long as you understand I won’t. Aaah, go on and be a bloody Aiel chief. You have the face for it.”

“Don’t come in there, Mat. Whatever happens, don’t.” He waited until Mat nodded before turning away.

Mat stood, watching him walk in among the glittering columns. In the shifting dazzle he seemed to vanish almost immediately. A trick of the eye, Mat told himself. That was all it was. A bloody trick of the eye.

He started around the array, keeping well back, peering in in an effort to spot Rand again. “You look out what you’re bloody doing,” he shouted. “You leave me alone in the Waste with Moiraine and the bloody Aiel, and I’ll strangle you, Dragon Reborn or no!” After a minute, he added, “I’m not coming in there after you if you get yourself in trouble! You hear me?” There was no answer. If he’s not out of there in an hour … . “He’s mad just going in there,” he muttered. “Well, I’ll not be the one to pull his bacon off the coals. He’s the one who can channel. If he’s put his head in a hornets’ nest, he can bloody channel his way out of it.” I’ll give him an hour. And then he would leave, whether Rand was back or not. Just turn around and leave. Just go. That was what he would do. He would.