The Great Hunt

35 (Leafy Tree) Stedding Tsofu

The river hills on which the city of Cairhien stood gave way to flatter lands and forests when Rand and the others had ridden half a day, the Shienarans still with their armor on the packhorses. There were no roads where they went, only a scattering of cart tracks, and few farms or villages. Verin pressed for speed, and Ingtar — grumbling constantly that they were letting themselves be tricked, that Fain would never have told them where he was really going, yet grumbling at the same time about riding in the opposite direction from Toman Head, as if part of him believed and Toman Head were not months away except by the way they took — Ingtar obliged her. The Gray Owl banner flew on the wind of their passage.

Rand rode with grim determination, avoiding conversation with Verin. He had this thing to do — this duty, Ingtar would have called it — and then he could be free of Aes Sedai once and for all. Perrin seemed to share something of his mood, staring straight ahead at nothing as they rode. When they finally stopped for the night at the edge of a forest, with full dark almost on them, Perrin asked Loial questions about the stedding. Trollocs would not enter a stedding; would wolves? Loial replied shortly that it was only creatures of the Shadow that were reluctant to enter stedding. And Aes Sedai, of course, since they could not touch the True Source inside a stedding, or channel the One Power. The Ogier himself appeared the most reluctant of all to go to Stedding Tsofu. Mat was the only one who seemed eager, almost desperately so. His skin looked as if he had not seen the sun in a year, and his cheeks had begun to go hollow, though he said he felt ready to run a footrace. Verin put her hands on him for Healing before he rolled into his blankets, and again before they mounted their horses in the morning, but it made no difference in how he looked. Even Hurin frowned when he looked at Mat.

The sun stood high on the second day when Verin suddenly sat up straight in her saddle and looked around. Beside her, Ingtar gave a start.

Rand could not see anything different about the forest now surrounding them. The undergrowth was not too thick; they had found an easy way under the canopy of oak and hickory, blackgum and beech, pierced here and there by a tall pine or leatherleaf, or the white slash of a paperbark. But as he followed them, he suddenly felt a chill pass through him, as though he had leaped into a Waterwood pond in winter. It flashed through him and was gone, leaving behind a feeling of refreshment. And there was a dull and distant sense of loss, too, though he could not imagine of what.

Every rider, as he reached that point, gave a jerk or made some exclamation. Hurin’s mouth dropped open, and Uno whispered, “Bloody, flaming …” Then he shook his head as if he could not think of anything else to say. There was a look of recognition in Perrin’s yellow eyes.

Loial took a deep, slow breath and let it out. “It feels … good … to be back in a stedding,”

Frowning, Rand looked around. He had expected a stedding to be somehow different, but except for that one chill, the forest was the same as what they had been riding through all day. There was the sudden sense of being rested, of course. Then an Ogier stepped out from behind an oak.

She was shorter than Loial — which meant she stood head and shoulders taller than Rand — but with the same broad nose and big eyes, the same wide mouth and tufted ears. Her eyebrows were not so long as Loial’s, though, and her features seemed delicate beside his, the tufts on her ears finer. She wore a long green dress and a green cloak embroidered with flowers, and carried a bunch of silverbell blossoms as if she had been gathering them. She looked at them calmly, waiting.

Loial scrambled down from his tall horse and bowed hastily. Rand and the others did the same, if not so quickly as Loial; even Verin inclined her head. Loial gave their names formally, but he did not mention the name of his stedding.

For a moment the Ogier girl — Rand was sure she was no older than Loial — studied them, then smiled. “Be welcome to Stedding Tsofu.” Her voice was a lighter version of Loial’s, too; the softer rumble of a smaller bumblebee. “I am Erith, daughter of Iva daughter of Alar. Be welcome. We have had so few human visitors since the stonemasons left Cairhien, and now so many at once. Why, we even had some of the Traveling People, though, of course, they left when the… Oh, I talk too much. I will take you to the Elders. Only …” She searched among them for the one in charge, and settled finally on Verin. “Aes Sedai, you have so many men with you, and armed. Could you please leave some of them Outside? Forgive me, but it is always unsettling to have very many armed humans in the stedding at once.”

“Of course, Erith,” Verin said. “Ingtar, will you see to it?”

Ingtar gave orders to Uno, and so it was that he and Hurin were the only Shienarans to follow Erith deeper into the stedding.

Leading his horse like the others, Rand looked up as Loial came closer, with many glances at Erith up ahead with Verin and Ingtar. Hurin walked midway between, staring around in amazement, though Rand was not sure at what exactly. Loial bent to speak quietly. “Is she not beautiful, Rand? And her voice sings.”

Mat snickered, but when Loial looked at him questioningly, he said, “Very pretty, Loial. A little tall for my taste, you understand, but very pretty, I’m sure.”

Loial frowned uncertainly, but nodded. “Yes, she is.” His expression lightened. “It does feel good to be back in a stedding. Not that the Longing was taking me, you understand.”

“The Longing?” Perrin said. “I do not understand, Loial.”

“We Ogier are bound to the stedding, Perrin. It is said that before the Breaking of the World, we could go where we wished for as long as we wished, like you humans, but that changed with the Breaking. Ogier were scattered like every other people, and they could not find any of the stedding again. Everything was moved, everything changed. Mountains, rivers, even the seas.”

“Everybody knows about the Breaking,” Mat said impatiently. “What does it have to do with this — this Longing?”

“It was during the Exile, while we wandered lost, that the Longing first came on us. The desire to know the stedding once more, to know our homes again. Many died of it.” Loial shook his head sadly. “More died than lived. When we finally began to find the stedding again, one at a time, in the years of the Covenant of the Ten Nations, it seemed we had defeated the Longing at last, but it had changed us, put seeds in us. Now, if an Ogier is Outside too long, the Longing comes again; he begins to weaken, and he dies if he does not return.”

“Do you need to stay here awhile?” Rand asked anxiously. “There’s no need to kill yourself to go with us.”

“I will know it when it comes.” Loial laughed. “It will be long before it is strong enough to cause harm to me. Why, Dalar spent ten years among the Sea Folk without ever seeing a stedding, and she came safely home.”

An Ogier woman appeared out of the trees, pausing a moment to speak with Erith and Verin. She looked Ingtar up and down and seemed to dismiss him, which made him blink. Her eyes swept across Loial, flicked over Hurin and the Emond’s Fielders, before she went off into the forest again; Loial seemed to be trying to hide behind his horse. “Besides,” he said, peering cautiously across his saddle after her, “it is a dull life in the stedding compared to traveling with three ta’veren.”

“If you are going to start that again,” Mat muttered, and Loial spoke up quickly. “Three friends, then. You are my friends, I hope.”

“I am,” Rand said simply, and Perrin nodded.

Mat laughed. “How could I not be friends with somebody who dices so badly?” He threw up his hands when Rand and Perrin looked at him. “Oh, all right. I like you, Loial. You’re my friend. Just don’t go on about … Aaah! Sometimes you’re as bad to be around as Rand.” His voice sank to a mutter. “At least we’re safe here in a stedding.”

Rand grimaced. He knew what Mat meant. Here in a stedding, where I can’t channel.

Perrin punched Mat’s shoulder, but looked sorry that he had when Mat grimaced at him with that gaunt face.

It was the music Rand became aware of first, unseen flutes and fiddles in a jolly tune that floated through the trees, and deep voices singing and laughing.

Almost at the same moment he realized that the huge shape he was seeing through the trees was itself a tree, with a ridged, buttressed trunk that must have been twenty paces thick. Gaping, he followed it up with his eyes, up through the forest canopy, to branches spreading like the top of a gigantic mushroom a good hundred paces above the ground. And beyond it were taller still.

“Burn me,” Mat breathed. “You could build ten houses from just one of those. Fifty houses.”

“Cut down a Great Tree?” Loial sounded scandalized, and more than a little angry. His ears were stiff and still, his long eyebrows down on his cheeks. “We never cut down one of the Great Trees, not unless it dies, and they almost never do. Few survived the Breaking, but some of the largest were seedlings during the Age of Legends.”

“I’m sorry,” Mat said. “I was just saying how big they are. I won’t hurt your trees.” Loial nodded, seeming mollified.

More Ogier appeared now, walking among the trees. Most seemed intent on whatever they were about; though all looked at the newcomers, and even gave a friendly nod or a small bow, none stopped or spoke. They had a curious way of moving, in some manner blending a careful deliberateness with an almost childlike carefree joyfulness. They knew and liked who and what they were and where they were, and they seemed at peace with themselves and everything around them. Rand found himself envying them.

Few of the Ogier men were any taller than Loial, but it was easy to pick out the older men; one and all they wore mustaches as long as their dangling eyebrows and narrow beards under their chins. All of the younger were smooth-shaven, like Loial. Many of the men were in their shirtsleeves, and carried shovels and mattocks or saws and buckets of pitch; the others wore plain coats that buttoned to the neck and flared about their knees like kilts. The women seemed to favor embroidered flowers, and many wore flowers in their hair, too. The embroidery was limited to the cloaks of the younger women; the older women’s dresses were embroidered, as well, and some women with gray hair had flowers and vines from neck to hem. A handful of the Ogier, women and girls for the most part, did seem to take special notice of Loial; he walked staring straight ahead, ears twitching more wildly the further they went.

Rand was startled to see an Ogier apparently walking up out of the ground, out of one of the grassy, wildflower-covered mounds that lay scattered all among the trees here. Then he saw windows in the mounds, and an Ogier woman standing at one apparently rolling a piecrust, and realized he was looking at Ogier houses. The window frames were stone, but they not only seemed natural formations, they appeared to have been sculpted by wind and water over generations.

The Great Trees, with their massive trunks and spreading roots as thick as horses, needed a great deal of room between them, but several grew right in the town. Dirt ramps took the paths over the roots. In fact, aside from the pathways, the only way to tell town from forest at a glance was a large open space in the center of the town, around what could only be the stump of one of the Great Trees. Nearly a hundred paces across, its surface was polished as smooth as any floor, and there were steps built up to it at several places. Rand was imagining how tall that tree had been when Erith spoke loudly enough for them all to hear.

“Here come our other guests.”

Three human women came walking around the side of the huge stump. The youngest was carrying a wooden bowl.

“Aiel,” Ingtar said. “Maidens of the Spear. As well I did leave Masema with the others.” Yet he stepped away from Verin and Erith, and reached over his shoulder to loosen his sword in its scabbard.

Rand studied the Aiel with an uneasy curiosity. They were what too many people had tired to tell him he was. Two of the women were mature, the other little more than a girl, but all three were tall for women. Their short-cut hair ranged from a reddish brown to almost golden, with a narrow, shoulder-length tail left long at the back. They wore loose breeches tucked into soft boots, and all their clothes were some shade of brown or gray or green; he thought the garments would fade into rock or woods almost as well as a Warder’s cloak. Short bows poked over their shoulders, quivers and long knives hung at their belts, and each carried a small, round shield of hide and a cluster of spears with short shafts and long points. Even the youngest moved with a grace that suggested she knew how to use the weapons she carried.

Abruptly the women became aware of the other humans; they seemed as startled at being startled as they did at the sight of Rand and the others, but they moved like lightning. The youngest one shouted, “Shienarans!” and turned to set the bowl carefully behind her. The other two quickly lifted brown cloths from around their shoulders, wrapping them around their heads instead. The older women were raising black veils across their faces, hiding everything but their eyes, and the youngest straightened to imitate them. Crouching low, they advanced at a deliberate pace, shields held forward with their clusters of spears, except for the one each woman held ready in her other hand.

Ingtar’s sword came out of its sheath. “Stand clear, Aes Sedai. Erith, stand clear.” Hurin snatched out his sword-breaker, wavered between cudgel and sword for his other hand; after another glance at the Aiel’s spears, he chose the sword.

“You must not,” the Ogier girl protested. Wringing her hands, she turned from Ingtar to the Aiel and back. “You must not.”

Rand realized the heron-mark blade was in his hands. Perrin had his axe half out of the loop at his belt and was hesitating, shaking his head.

“Are you two crazy?” Mat demanded. His bow still slanted across his back. “I don’t care if they are Aiel, they’re women.”

“Stop this!” Verin demanded. “Stop this immediately!” The Aiel never broke stride, and the Aes Sedai clenched her fists in frustration.

Mat moved back to put a foot in his stirrup. “I’m leaving,” he announced. “You hear me? I’m not staying to let them stick those things in me, and I am not going to shoot a woman!”

“The Pact!” Loial was shouting. “Remember the Pact!” It had no more effect than the continued pleas from Verin and Erith.

Rand noticed that both the Aes Sedai and the Ogier girl were keeping well out of the Aiel’s way. He wondered if Mat had the right idea. He was not sure he could hurt a woman even if she was trying to kill him. What decided him was the thought that even if he did manage to reach Red’s saddle, the Aiel were now no more than thirty paces away. He suspected those short spears could be thrown that far. As the women came closer, still crouching; spears ready, he stopped worrying about not hurting them and began worrying about how to stop them from hurting him.

Nervously, he sought the void, and it came. And the distant thought floated outside it that it was only the void. The glow of saidin was not there. The emptiness was more empty than he ever remembered, vaster, like a hunger great enough to consume him. A hunger for more; there was supposed to be something more.

Abruptly an Ogier strode in between the two groups, his narrow beard quivering. “What is the meaning of this? Put up your weapons.” He sounded scandalized. “For you” — his glare took in Ingtar and Hurin, Rand and Perrin, and did not spare Mat for all his empty hands—“there is some excuse, but for you—” He rounded on the Aiel women, who had stopped their advance. “Have you forgotten the Pact?”

The women uncovered their heads and faces so hastily that it seemed they were trying to pretend they had never been covered. The girl’s face was bright red, and the other women looked abashed. One of the older women, the one with the reddish hair, said, “Forgive us, Treebrother. We remember the Pact, and we would not have bared steel, but we are in the land of the Treekillers, where every hand is against us, and we saw armed men.” Her eyes were gray, Rand saw, like his own.

“You are in a stedding, Rhian,” the Ogier said gently. “Everyone is safe in the stedding, little sister. There is no fighting here, and no hand raised against another.” She nodded, ashamed, and the Ogier looked at Ingtar and the others.

Ingtar sheathed his sword, and Rand did the same, though not so quickly as Hurin, who looked almost as embarrassed as the Aiel. Perrin had never gotten his axe all the way out. As he took hand from hilt, Rand let the void go, too, and shivered. The void went, but it left behind a slowly fading echo of the emptiness all through him, and a desire for something to fill it.

The Ogier turned to Verin and bowed. “Aes Sedai, I am Juin, son of Lacel son of Laud. I have come to take you to the Elders. They would know why an Aes Sedai comes among us, with armed men and one of our own youths.” Loial hunched his shoulders as if trying to disappear.

Verin gave the Aiel a regretful look, as if she wanted to talk with them, then motioned Juin to lead, and he took her away without another word or even the first look at Loial.

For a few moments, Rand and the others stood facing the three Aiel women uneasily. At least, Rand knew he was uneasy. Ingtar seemed steady as a stone, with no more expression than one. The Aiel might have unveiled their faces, but they still had spears in their hands, and they studied the four men as though trying to see inside them. Rand in particular received increasingly angry looks. He heard the youngest woman mutter, “He is wearing a sword,” in tones of mingled horror and contempt. Then the three were leaving, stopping to retrieve the wooden bowl and looking over their shoulders at Rand and the others until they vanished among the trees.

“Maidens of the Spear,” Ingtar muttered. “I never thought they’d stop once they veiled their faces. Certainly not for a few words.” He looked at Rand and his two friends. “You should see a charge by Red Shields, or Stone Dogs. As easy to stop as an avalanche.”

“They would not break the Pact once it was recalled to them,” Erith said, smiling. “They came for sung wood.” A note of pride entered her voice. “We have two Treesingers in Stedding Tsofu. They are rare, now. I have heard that Stedding Shangtai has a young Treesinger who is very talented, but we have two.” Loial blushed, but she did not appear to notice. “If you will come with me, I will show you where you may wait until the Elders have spoken.”

As they followed her, Perrin murmured, “Sung wood, my left foot. Those Aiel are searching for He Who Comes With the Dawn.”

And Mat added dryly, “They’re looking for you, Rand.”

“For me! That is crazy. What makes you think—”

He cut off as Erith showed them down the steps of a wildflower-covered house apparently set aside for human guests. The rooms were twenty paces from stone wall to stone wall, with painted ceilings a good two spans above the floor, but the Ogier had done their best making something that would be comfortable for humans. Even so, the furniture was a little too large for comfort, the chairs tall enough to lift a man’s heels off the floor, the table higher than Rand’s waist. Hurin, at least, could have walked erect into the stone fireplace, which seemed to have been worn by water rather than made by hands. Erith eyed Loial doubtfully, but he waved away her concern and pulled one of the chairs into the corner least easily seen from the door.

As soon as the Ogier girl left, Rand got Mat and Perrin over to one side. “What do you mean they’re looking for me? Why? For what reason? They looked right at me, and went away.”

“They looked at you,” Mat said with a grin, “like you hadn’t bathed in a month, and had doused yourself with sheepdip besides.” His grin faded. “But they could be looking for you. We met another Aiel.”

Rand listened in growing amazement to their tale of the meeting in Kinslayer’s Dagger. Mat told most of it, with Perrin putting in a correcting word now and again when he embellished too much. Mat made a great show of how dangerous the Aielman had been, and how close the meeting had come to a fight.

“And since you’re the only Aiel we know,” he finished, “well, it could be you. Ingtar says Aiel never live outside the Waste, so you must be the only one.”

“I don’t think that’s funny, Mat,” Rand growled. “I am not an Aiel.” The Amyrlin said you are. Ingtar thinks you are. Tam said … He was sick, fevered. They had severed the roots he had thought he had, the Aes Sedai and Tam between them, though Tam had been too sick to know what he was saying. They had cut him loose to tumble before the wind, then offered him something new to hold on to. False Dragon. Aiel. He could not claim those for roots. He would not. “Maybe I don’t belong to anyone. But the Two Rivers is the only home I know.”

“I didn’t mean anything,” Mat protested. “It’s just … Burn me, Ingtar says you are. Masema says you are. Urien could have been your cousin, and if Rhian put on a dress and said she was your aunt, you’d believe it yourself. Oh, all right. Don’t look at me like that, Perrin. If he wants to say he isn’t, all right. What difference does it make, anyway?” Perrin shook his head.

Ogier girls brought water and towels for washing faces and hands, and cheese and fruit and wine, with pewter goblets a little too large to be comfortable in the hand. Other Ogier women came, too, their dresses all embroidered. One by one they appeared, a dozen of them all told, to ask if the humans were comfortable, if they needed anything. Each turned her attentions to Loial just before she left. He gave his answers respectfully but in as few words as Rand had ever heard him use, standing with an Ogier-sized, wood-bound book clutched to his chest like a shield, and when they went, he huddled in his chair with the book held up in front of his face. The books in the house were one thing not sized for humans.

“Just smell this air, Lord Rand,” Hurin said, filling his lungs with a smile. His feet dangled from one of the chairs at the table; he swung them like a boy. “I never thought most places smelled bad, but this … Lord Rand, I don’t think there’s ever been any killing here. Not even any hurting, except by accident.”

“The stedding are supposed to be safe for everyone,” Rand said. He was watching Loial. “That’s what the stories say, anyway.” He swallowed a last bit of white cheese and went over to the Ogier. Mat followed with a goblet in his hand. “What’s the matter, Loial?” Rand said. “You’ve been as nervous as a cat in a dogyard ever since we came here.”

“It is nothing,” Loial said, giving the door an uneasy glance from the corner of his eye.

“Are you afraid they’ll find out you left Stedding Shangtai without permission from your Elders?”

Loial looked around wildly, the tufts on his ears vibrating. “Don’t say that,” he hissed. “Not where anyone can hear. If they found out …” With a heavy sigh, he slumped back, looking from Rand to Mat. “I don’t know how humans do it, but among Ogier … If a girl sees a boy she likes, she goes to her mother. Or sometimes the mother sees someone she thinks is suitable. In any case, if they agree, the girl’s mother goes to the boy’s mother, and the next thing the boy knows, his marriage is all arranged.”

“Doesn’t the boy have any say in it?” Mat asked incredulously.

“None. The women always say we would spend our lives married to the trees if it was left to us.” Loial shifted, grimacing. “Half of our marriages take place between stedding; groups of young Ogier visit from stedding to stedding so they can see, and be seen. If they discover I’m Outside without permission, the Elders will almost certainly decide I need a wife to settle me down. Before I know it, they’ll have sent a message to Stedding Shangtai, to my mother, and she will come here and have me married before she washes off the dust of her journey. She’s always said I am too hasty and need a wife. I think she was looking when I left. Whatever wife she chooses for me … well, any wife at all won’t let me go back Outside until I have gray in my beard. Wives always say no man should be allowed Outside until he’s settled enough to control his temper.”

Mat gave a guffaw loud enough to draw every head, but at Loial’s frantic gesture he spoke softly. “Among us, men do the choosing, and no wife can stop a man doing what he wants.”

Rand frowned, remembering how Egwene had begun following him around when they were both little. It was then that Mistress al’Vere had begun taking a special interest in him, more than in any of the other boys. Later, some girls would dance with him on feastdays and some would not, and those who would were always Egwene’s friends, while those who would not were girls Egwene did not like. He also seemed to remember Mistress al’Vere taking Tam aside — And she was muttering about Tam not having a wife for her to talk to! — and after that, Tam and everyone else had acted as if he and Egwene were promised, even though they had not knelt before the Women’s Circle to say the words. He had never thought about it this way before; things between Egwene and him had always just seemed to be the way they were, and that was that.

“I think we do it the same way,” he muttered, and when Mat laughed, he added, “Do you remember your father ever doing anything your mother really didn’t want him to?” Mat opened his mouth with a grin, then frowned thoughtfully and closed it again.

Juin came down the steps from outside. “If you please, will all of you come with me? The Elders would see you.” He did not look at Loial, but Loial still almost dropped the book.

“If the Elders try to make you stay,” Rand said, “we’ll say we need you to go with us.”

“I’ll bet it isn’t about you at all,” Mat said. “I’ll bet they are just going to say we can use the Waygate.” He shook himself, and his voice fell even lower. “We really have to do it, don’t we.” It was not a question.

“Stay and get married, or travel the Ways.” Loial grimaced ruefully. “Life is very unsettling with ta’veren for friends.”