Rand frowned; he was the one they all said was supposed to go mad, but Mat was the one who seemed on the edge of it now.
Egwene blinked at Mat worriedly, but it was Rand she leaned toward. “Rand, Verin Sedai told me a little about Portal Stones. She told me about the … journey you took. Do you really mean to do this?”
“It’s what I have to do, Egwene.” He had to move quickly, and there was no quicker way than Portal Stones. Remnants of an Age older than the Age of Legends; even Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends had not understood them, it seemed. But there was no quicker way. If it worked the way he hoped.
Moiraine had listened to the exchange patiently. Especially to Mat’s part of it, though Rand could not see why. Now she said, “Verin also told me of your journey using Portal Stones. That was only a few people and horses, not hundreds, and if you did not almost kill everyone as Mat says, it yet sounded an experience no one would wish to repeat. Nor did it turn out as you expected. It also required a great deal of the Power; almost enough to kill you at least, Verin said. Even if you leave most of the Aiel behind, do you dare risk the attempt?”
“I have to,” he said, feeling at his belt pouch, at the small hard shape behind the letters, but she went right on as if he had not spoken.
“Are you even certain there is a Portal Stone in the Waste? Verin certainly knows more of them than I, but I have never heard of one. If there is, will it place us any closer to Rhuidean than we are right now?”
“Some six hundred or so years ago,” he told her, “a peddler tried to get a look at Rhuidean.” Another time it would have been a pleasure to be able to lecture her for a change. Not today. There was too much he did not know. “This fellow apparently didn’t see anything of it; he claimed to have seen a golden city up in the clouds, drifting over the mountains.”
“There are no cities in the Waste,” Lan said, “in the clouds or on the ground. I’ve fought the Aiel. They have no cities.”
Egwene nodded. “Aviendha told me she had never seen a city until she left the Waste.”
“Maybe so,” Rand said. “But the peddler also saw something sticking out of the side of one of those mountains. A Portal Stone. He described it perfectly. There isn’t anything else like a Portal Stone. When I described one to the chief librarian in the Stone …” Without naming what he was after, he did not add. “ … he recognized it, even if he didn’t know what it was, enough to show me four on an old map of Tear—”
“Four?” Moiraine sounded startled. “All in Tear? Portal Stones are not so common as that.”
“Four,” Rand said definitely. The bony old librarian had been certain, even digging out a tattered yellowed manuscript telling of efforts to move the “unknown artifacts of an earlier Age” to the Great Holding. Every attempt had failed, and the Tairens had finally given up. That was confirmation to Rand; Portal Stones resisted being moved. “One lies not an hour’s ride from where we are,” he continued. “The Aiel allowed the peddler to leave, since he was a peddler. With one of his mules and as much water as he could carry on his back. Somehow he made it as far as a stedding in the Spine of the World, where he met a man named Soran Milo, who was writing a book called The Killers of the Black Veil. The librarian brought me a battered copy when I asked for books on the Aiel. Milo apparently based it all on Aiel who came to trade at the stedding, and he got almost everything wrong anyway, according to Rhuarc, but a Portal Stone can’t be anything but a Portal Stone.” He had examined other maps and manuscripts, dozens of them, supposedly studying Tear and its history, learning the land; no one could have had a clue what he intended before a few minutes ago.
Moiraine sniffed, and her white mare, Aldieb, frisked a few steps, picking up her irritation. “A supposed story told by a supposed peddler who claimed to have seen a golden city floating in the clouds. Has Rhuarc seen this Portal Stone? He has actually been to Rhiudean. Even if this peddler did go into the Waste, and did see a Portal Stone, it could have been anywhere. A man telling a story usually tries to better what really happened. A city floating in the clouds?”
“How do you know it doesn’t?” he said. Rhuarc had been willing to laugh at all the wrong things Milo had written about Aiel, but he had not been very forthcoming about Rhuidean. No, more than that; or less, rather. The Aielman had refused even to comment on the parts of the book supposedly about Rhuidean. Rhuidean, in the lands of the Jenn Aiel, the clan which is not; that was almost the extent of what Rhuarc would say about it. Rhuidean was not to be spoken of.
The Aes Sedai was not best pleased with his flippant remark, but he did not care. She had kept too many secrets herself, made him follow her on blind trust too often. Let it be her turn. She had to learn that he was not a puppet. I’ll take her advice when I think it’s right, but I won’t dance on Tar Valon’s strings again. He would die on his own terms.
Egwene moved her gray horse closer, riding almost knee-to-knee with him. “Rand, do you really mean to risk our lives on a … a chance? Rhuarc did not tell you anything, did he? When I ask Aviendha about Rhuidean, she shuts up tight as a hickory nut.” Mat looked sick.
Rand kept his face still, not letting his flash of shame show. He had not meant to frighten his friends. “There is a Portal Stone there,” he maintained. He rubbed the hard shape in his pouch again. This had to work.
The librarian’s maps had been old, but in a way that was a help. The grasslands they rode now had been forest when those maps were drawn, but few trees remained, far-scattered scraggly copses of white oak and pine and maidenhair, tall solitary trees he did not recognize, with gnarled spindly trunks. He could make out the shape of the land easily, hills shrouded mainly in high grass now.
On the maps two tall bent ridges, one close behind the other, had pointed to the cluster of round hills where the Portal Stone was. If the maps had been well made. If the librarian really had recognized his description, and the green diamond mark actually meant ancient ruins as he claimed. Why would he lie? I’m getting too suspicious. No, I have to be suspicious. As trusting as a viper, and as cold. He did not like it, though.
To the north he could just make out hills with no trees at all, speckled with moving shapes that must be horses. The High Lords’ herds, grazing across the site of the old Ogier grove. He hoped Perrin and Loial had gotten away safely. Help them, Perrin, he thought. Help them somehow, because I can’t.
The Ogier grove meant the folded ridges must be close, and soon he spotted them a little to the south, like two arrows one
inside the other, a few trees along the top making a thin line against the sky. Beyond, low round hills like grass-covered bubbles ran into one another. More hills than on the old map. Too many, for all the patch encompassed less than a square mile. If they did not correspond to the map, which one held the Portal Stone on its side?
“The Aiel have numbers,” Lan said quietly, “and sharp eyes.”
With a nod of gratitude, Rand reined Jeade’en in, falling back to put the problem before Rhuarc. He only described the Portal Stone, not saying what it was; there would be time enough for that when it was found. He was good at keeping secrets now. Rhuarc probably had no idea what a Portal Stone was, anyway. Few did except for Aes Sedai. He had not known until someone told him.
Striding along beside the dapple stallion, the Aielman frowned slightly—as much as a worried grimace from most other men—then nodded. “We can find this thing.” He raised his voice. “Aethan Dor! Far Alda-zar Din! Duadhe Mahdi’in! Far Dareis Mai! Seia Doon! Sha’mad Conde!”
As he called out, members of the named warrior societies trotted forward, until a good quarter of the Aiel clustered around him and Rand. Red Shields. Brothers of the Eagle. Water Seekers. Maidens of the Spear. Black Eyes. Thunder Walkers.
Rand picked out Egwene’s friend, Aviendha, a tall, pretty woman with a haughty unsmiling stare. Maidens had guarded his door, but he did not think he had seen her before the Aiel gathered to leave the Stone. She looked back at him, proud as a green-eyed hawk, then tossed her head and turned her attention to the clan chief.
Well, I wanted to be ordinary again, he thought, a touch ruefully. The Aiel certainly gave him that. They offered even the clan chief only a respectful hearing, without any of the elaborate deference a lord would exact, and obedience that seemed between equals. He could hardly expect more for himself.
Rhuarc gave instructions in few words, and the listening Aiel fanned out ahead into the patch of hills, running easily, some veiling themselves just in case. The rest waited, standing or squatting beside the loaded pack mules.
They represented almost every clan—except the Jenn Aiel, of course; Rand could not get it straight whether the Jenn really existed or not, since the way the Aiel mentioned them, which they seldom did, it could be either way—including some clans that had blood feuds, and others that often fought each other. He had learned that much about them. Not for the first time, he wondered what had held them together so far. Was it just their prophecies of the Stone falling, and the search for He Who Comes With the Dawn?