Rand had heard all that before; it seemed he had heard all Asmodean had to say of the Forsaken fifty times already. So often that at moments it seemed he had always known what the man was telling him. Some of it he almost wished he had never learned — what Semirhage found amusing, for instance — and some made no sense. Demandred had gone over to the Shadow because he envied Lews Therin Telamon? Rand could not imagine envying someone enough to do anything because of it, and surely not that. Asmodean claimed it had been the thought of immortality, of endless Ages of music, that seduced him; he claimed to have been a noted composer of music, before. Senseless. Yet in that mass of often bloodchilling knowledge might lie keys to surviving Tarmon Gai'don. Whatever he told Moiraine, he knew he would have to face them then, if not before. Emptying the goblet, he set it on the floor tiles. Wine would not wash out facts.
The bead curtain rattled, and he looked over his shoulder as gai'shain entered, whiterobed and silent. While some began gathering up the food and drink that had been laid out for him and the chiefs, another, a man, carried a large silver tray to the table. On it were covered dishes, a silver cup, and two large, greenstriped pottery pitchers. One would hold wine, the other water. A gai'shain woman brought in a gilded lamp, already lit, and set it beside the tray. Through the windows, the sky was beginning to take on the yellowred of sunset; in the brief time between baking and freezing, the air actually felt comfortable.
Rand stood as the gai'shain departed, but did not follow immediately. “What do you think of my chances when the Last Battle comes, Natael?”
Asmodean hesitated in pulling redandblue striped wool blankets from behind his cushions and looked up at him, head tilted in that sideways manner of his. “You found... something... in the square the day we met here.”
“Forget that,” Rand said harshly. There had been two, not one. “I destroyed it, in any case.” He thought Asmodean's shoulders slumped a trifle.
“Then the — Dark One — will consume you alive. As for me, I intend to open my veins the hour I know he is free. If I get the chance. A quick death is better than what I'll find elsewhere.” He tossed the blankets aside and sat staring glumly at nothing. “Better than going mad, certainly. I'm as subject to that as you, now. You broke the bonds that protected me.” There was no bitterness in his voice; only hopelessness.
“What if there was another way to shield against the taint?” Rand demanded. “What if it could be removed somehow? Would you still kill yourself then?”
Asmodean's barked laugh was utterly acid. “The Shadow take me, you must be beginning to think you really are the bloody Creator! We are dead. Both of us. Dead! Are you too blind with pride to see it? Or just too thickwitted, you hopeless shepherd?”
Rand refused to be drawn. “Then why not go ahead and end it?” he asked in a tight voice. I wasn't too blind to see what you and Lanfear were up to. I wasn't too thickwitted to fool her and trap you. “If there's no hope, no chance, not the smallest shred... then why are you still alive?”
Still not looking at him, Asmodean rubbed the side of his nose. “I once saw a man hanging from a cliff,” he said slowly. “The brink was crumbling under his fingers, and the only thing near enough to grasp was a tuft of grass, a few long blades with roots barely clinging to the rock. The only chance he had of climbing back up on the cliff. So he grabbed it.” His abrupt chuckle held no mirth. “He had to know it would pull free.”
“Did you save him?” Rand asked, but Asmodean did not answer.
As Rand started for the doorway, the sounds of “The March of Death” began again behind him.
The strings of beads fell together behind him, and the five Maidens who had been waiting in the wide, empty hall flowed easily to their feet from where they had been squatting on the pale blue tiles. They were all but one tall for women, though not for Aiel women. Their leader, Adelin, lacked little more than a hand of being able to look him in the eyes. The exception, a fiery redhead named Enaila, was no taller than Egwene, and extremely touchy about being so short. Like the clan chiefs', their eyes were all blue or gray or green, and their hair, light brown or yellow or red, was cut short except for a tail at the nape of the neck. Full quivers balanced the longbladed knives at their belts, and they wore cased horn bows on their backs. Each carried three or four short, longbladed spears and a round, bullhide buckler. Aiel women who did not want hearth and children had their own warrior society, Far Dareis Mai, the Maidens of the Spear.
He acknowledged them with a small bow, which made them smile; it was not an Aiel custom, at least not the way he had been taught to do it. “I see you, Adelin,” he said. “Where is Joinde? I thought she was with you earlier. Has she taken ill?”
“I see you, Rand al'Thor,” she replied. Her pale yellow hair seemed paler framing her sundark face, which had a fine white scar across one cheek. “In a way she has. She had been talking to herself all day, and not an hour ago, she went off to lay a bridal wreath at the feet of Garan, of the Jhirad Goshien.” Some of the others shook their heads; marrying meant giving up the spear. “Tomorrow is his last day as her gai'shain. Joinde is Black Rock Shaarad,” she added significantly. It was significant; marriages came frequently with men or women taken gai'shain, but very seldom between clans with blood feud, even blood feud in abeyance.
“It is an illness that spreads,” Enaila said heatedly. Her voice was usually as hot as her hair. “One or two Maidens make their bridal wreaths every day since we came to Rhuidean.”
Rand nodded with what he hoped they took for sympathy. It was his fault. If he told them, he wondered how many would still risk staying near him. All, probably; honor would hold them, and they had no more fear than the clan chiefs. At least it was only marriages, so far; even Maidens would think marrying better than what some had experienced. Maybe they would. “I will be ready to go in a moment,” he told them.
“We will wait with patience,” Adelin said. It hardly seemed patience; standing there, they all appeared poised on the edge of sudden movement.
It really did take him only a moment to do what he wanted, weave flows of Spirit and Fire into a box around the room and tie them so the weave held on its own. Anyone could go in or out — except a man who could channel. For himself or Asmodean walking through that doorway would be like walking through a wall of solid flame. He had discovered the weave — and that Asmodean, blocked, was too weak to channel through it — by accident. No one was likely to question the doings of a gleeman, but if someone did, Jasin Natael had simply chosen to sleep as far from Aiel as he could manage in Rhuidean. That was a choice that Hadnan Kadere's drivers and guards, at least, could sympathize with. And this way Rand knew exactly where the man was of a night. The Maide