A Memory of Light

A weave thumped against the room, a ripple in the earth, and the strained roof finally gave out. Earth poured down atop them, and all went black.

CHAPTER 5

To Require a Boon

Rand al’Thor awoke and drew in a deep breath. He slipped from the blankets in his tent, leaving Aviendha slumbering there, and threw on a robe. The air smelled wet.

He was reminded, in passing, of mornings during his youth, rising before dawn to milk the cow, which would need milking twice a day. Eyes closed, he remembered the sounds of Tam-already up-cutting new fence posts in the barn. Remembering the chilly air, stomping his feet into his boots, washing his face with water left to warm beside the stove.

On any morning, a farmer could open his door and look out on a world that was still new. Crisp frost. The first, tentative calls of birds. Sunlight breaking the horizon, like the morning yawn of the world.

Rand stepped up to the flaps of his tent and drew them back, nodding to Katerin, a short, golden-haired Maiden who was on guard. He looked out on a world that was far from new. This world was old and tired, like a peddler who had been to the Spine of the World and back on foot. Tents crowded the Field of Merrilor, cook fires trailing pillars of smoke toward the still-dark morning sky.

Everywhere, men worked. Soldiers oiled armor. Smiths sharpened spearheads. Women prepared feathers for fletching arrows. Breakfasts were served from meal wagons to men who should have slept better than they had. Everyone knew these were their last moments before the storm arrived.

Rand closed his eyes. He could feel it, the land itself, like a faint Warder bond. Beneath his feet, grubs crawled through the soil. The roots of the grasses continued to spread, ever so slowly, seeking nutrients. The skeletal trees were not dead, for water seeped through them. They slumbered. Bluebirds clustered in a nearby tree. They did not call out with the arrival of dawn. They huddled together, as if for warmth.

The land still lived. It lived like a man clinging to the edge of a cliff by his fingertips.

Rand opened his eyes. “Have my clerks returned from Tear?”

“Yes, Rand al’Thor,” said Katerin.

Send word to the other rulers,” Rand said. “I will meet with them in one hour at the center of the field where I commanded no tents be placed.”

Katerin went off to relay his command, leaving three other Maidens nearby to guard. Rand let the tent flaps close in front of him and turned around, then jumped as he found Aviendha-as bare as the day she’d been born- standing in the tent.

It is very difficult to sneak up on you, Rand al’Thor,” she announced with a smile. “The bond gives you too much of an advantage. I have to move very slowly, like a lizard at midnight, so that your sense of where I am does not change too quickly.”

Light, Aviendha! Why do you need to sneak up on me in the first place?”

“For this,” she said, then jumped forward, snatching his head and kissing him, her body pressed against his.

He relaxed, letting the kiss linger. “Unsurprisingly,” he mumbled around her lips, this is much more fun now that I don’t have to worry about freezing my bits off while doing it.”

Aviendha pulled back. “You should not speak of that event, Rand al’Thor.”

“But-”

“My toh is paid, and I am now first-sister to Elayne. Do not remind me of a shame that is forgotten.”

Shame? Why would she be ashamed of that when just now. . He shook his head. He could hear the land breathing, could sense a beetle on a leaf half a league away, but sometimes he could not fathom Aiel. Or maybe it was just women.

In this case, it was probably both.

Aviendha hesitated beside the tent’s barrel of fresh water. “I suppose that we will not have time for a bath.”

“Oh, you like baths now?”

“I have accepted them as a part of life,” she said. “If I am going to live in the wetlands, then I will adopt some wetlander customs. When they are not foolish.” Her tone indicated that most of them were.

“What’s wrong?” Rand asked, stepping up to her.

“Wrong?”

“Something bothers you, Aviendha. I can see it in you, feel it in you.” She looked him over with a critical eye. Light, but she was beautiful. “You were much easier to manage before you received the ancient wisdom of your former self, Rand al’Thor.”

“I was?” he asked, smiling. “You didn’t act that way at the time.”

“That was when I was as a new child, inexperienced in Rand al’Thor’s boundless capacity to be frustrating.” She dipped her hands into the water and washed her face. “It is well; if I had known some of what was to come with you, I might have put on the white and never removed it.”

He smiled, then channeled, weaving Water and drawing the liquid from the barrel in a stream. Aviendha stepped back, watching with curiosity.

“You no longer seem bothered by the idea of a man channeling,” he noted as he fanned the water out into the air and heated it with a thread of Fire.

“There is no longer a reason to be bothered. If I were to be uncomfortable with you channeling, I would be behaving like a man refusing to forget a woman’s shame after her toh has been met.” She eyed him.

“I can’t imagine anyone being that crass,” he said, tossing aside his robe and stepping up to her. “Here. This is a relic from that ancient wisdom’ you apparently find so frustrating.”

He brought the water in, warmed perfectly, and shattered it into a thick misting spray that wove about them in a rush. Aviendha gasped, clutching his arm. She might be growing more comfortable with wetlander ways, but water still made her both uncomfortable and reverent.

Rand snatched some soap with Air and shaved it into part of the mix of water, sending a spinning whirl of bubbles around them, swirling up their bodies and pulling their hair into the air, twisting Aviendha’s about like a column before dropping it back lightly to her shoulders.

He used another wave of warm water to remove the soap, then pulled most of the wetness away, leaving them damp but not soaked. He dumped the water back into the barrel and, with a hint of reluctance, released saidin.

Aviendha was panting. “That. . That was completely crackbrained and irresponsible.”

“Thank you,” he said, fetching a towel and tossing it to her. “You would consider most of what we did during the Age of Legends to be crackbrained and irresponsible. That was a different time, Aviendha. There were many more channelers, and we were trained from a young age. We didn’t need to know things like warfare, or how to kill. We had eliminated pain, hunger, suffering, war. Instead, we used the One Power for things that might seem common.”

“You’d only assumed that you’d eliminated war,” Aviendha said with a sniff. “You were wrong. Your ignorance left you weak.”

“It did. I can’t decide if I would have changed things, though. There were many good years. Good decades, good centuries. We believed we were living in paradise. Perhaps that was our downfall. We wanted our lives to be perfect, so we ignored imperfections. Problems were magnified through inattention, and war might have become inevitable if the Bore hadn’t ever been made.” He toweled himself dry.

“Rand,” Aviendha said, stepping up to him. “Today, I will require a boon.” She laid her hand on his arm. The