A clear lane led from each street Mat could see, straight to the columned rings, but in the spaces between, statues stood haphazardly, lifesized 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 crosslegged nearby. “I can believe the stories. Ghoetam, 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 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.
The way those thin shafts of glass caught the bluish light, refracting and reflecting, merely looking too hard was enough to give him a headache. He turned away, wandering back the way he had come, uneasily eyeing the ter'angreal — or whatever they were — filling the plaza. What was he doing there? Why?
Suddenly he stopped dead, staring at one of those strange objects. A large doorframe of polished redstone, twisted in some way he could not quite catch so his eye seemed to slip trying to follow it around. Slowly he made his way to it, between glittering faceted spires as tall as his head and low golden frames filled with what appeared to be sheets of glass, barely noticing them, never taking his eyes off the doorway.
It was the same. The same polished redstone, the same size, the same eye wrenching corners. Along each upright ran three lines of triangles, points down. Had the one in Tear had those? He could not remember; he had not been trying to remember all the details last time. It was the same; it had to be. Maybe he could not step through the other again, but this one... ? Another chance to get at those snake people, make them answer a few more questions.
Squinting against the glitters, he peered back toward the columns. An hour, he had given Rand. In an hour, he could be through this thing and back with time to spare. Maybe it would not even work for him, since he had used its twin. They are the same. Then again, maybe it would. It just meant rubbing up against the Power one more time.
“Light,” he muttered. “Ter'angreal. Portal Stones. Rhuidean. What difference can one more time make?”
He stepped through. Through a wall of blinding white light, through a roar so vast it annihilated sound.
Blinking, he looked around and bit back the vilest oath he knew. Wherever this was, it was not where he had gone before.
The twisted doorway stood in the middle of a huge chamber that appeared to be starshaped, as near as he could make out through a forest of thick columns, each deeply fluted with eight ridges, the sharp edges yellow and glowing softly for light. Glossy black except for the glowing bits, they rose from a dull white floor into murky gloom far overhead where even the yellow stripes faded away. The columns and floor almost looked to be glass, but when he bent to rub a hand across the floor, it felt like stone. Dusty stone. He wiped his hand on his coat. The air had a musty smell, and his own footprints were the only marks in the dust. No one had been here in a very long time.
Disappointed, he turned back to the ter'angreal.
“A very long time.”
Mat spun back, snatching at his coatsleeve for a knife that was lying back on the mountainside. The man standing among the columns looked nothing at all like the snaky folk. He made Mat regret giving up those last blades to the Wise Ones.The fellow was tall, taller than an Aiel, and sinewy, but with shoulders too wide for his narrow waist, and skin as white as the finest paper. Pale leather straps studded with silver crisscrossed his arms and bare chest, and a black kilt hung to his knees. His eyes were too big and almost colorless, set deep in a narrow jawed face. His short cut, palely reddish hair stood up like a brush, and his ears, lying flat against his head, had a hint of a point at the top. He leaned toward Mat, inhaling, opening his mouth to pull in more air, flashing sharp teeth. The impression he gave was of a fox about to leap on a cornered chicken.
“A very long time,” he said, straightening. His voice was rough, almost a growl. “Do you abide by the treaties and agreements? Do you carry iron, or instruments of music, or devices for making light?”
“I have none of those things,” Mat replied slowly. This was not the same place, but this fellow asked the same questions. And he behaved the same, with all that smelling. Rummaging through my bloody experiences, is he? Well, let him. Maybe he'll jog some loose so I can remember them, too. He wondered if he was speaking the Old Tongue again. It was uncomfortable, not knowing, not being able to tell. “If you can take me to where I can get a few questions answered, lead the way. If not, I will be going, with apologies for bothering you.”
“No!” Those big colorless eyes blinked in agitation; “You must not go. Come. I will take you where you may find what you need. Come.” He backed away, gesturing with both hands. “Come.”
Glancing at the ter'angreal, Mat followed. He wished the man had not grinned at him just then. Maybe he meant to be reassuring, but those teeth... Mat decided he would never give up all of his knives again, not for Wise Ones or the Amyrlin Seat herself.
The large fivesided doorway looked more like a tunnel mouth, for the corridor beyond was exactly the same size and shape, with those softly glowing yellow strips running along the bends, edging floor and ceiling. It seemed to stretch ahead forever, fading into a murky distance, broken at intervals by more of the great fivesided doorways. The kilted man did not turn to lead until they were both in the hallway, and even then he kept glancing over a wide shoulder as if to make certain Mat was still there. The air was no longer musty; instead it held a faint hint of something unpleasant, something tickling familiarity but not s
