(Thank you to
Sunny for beta-reading and editing this chapter. Thank you to
WrandmWaffles for suggestions. Thank you to TheBattleSage for edits.)
15 Aine, 997 NE
Shende Hold, Chareen Aiel, Aiel Waste
Despite the last fading touches of the day lingering in the west, the temperature was plunging. The night's bitter chill was upon me as I left Shende Hold proper and walked out onto the stony plain stretching out to the east of the Hold.
The shivers began almost before I set foot outside the grand roof of the Hold's main structure. I had toiled for hours in the smithy, and between the hard work and the blazing heat of the forge, I was slick with sweat. In the growing chill of an early spring night, out under the swelling moon, that perspiration sucked the heat from my skin and stiffened muscles already heavy with fatigue.
Shende Hold, built into the side of a cliff with well-mortared stones and thick adobe walls, was generally warm all year round, a luxury for a People who dwelt in a land that was by turns scorchingly hot and bitingly cold. Indeed, it was such a luxury that some of the elders of the Sept grumbled about it in their
oosquai. I could understand their point, even if I approached it from the other side; the third aspect of the Threefold Land was punishment, punishment for all who lived within it for ancient and unspecified crimes, and enduring the seasons in the hide and felt tents certainly sounded like a punishment to me.
Personally, I found it hard to believe that anybody could commit such a profound crime that a life of near-exposure was warranted. Not to mention that it was so much easier to weave, to carve, and to craft when one's hands weren't shaking with the cold.
The tents still had their uses, though. The Sept's highly mobile hunting and raiding parties still used the traditional tents as they ranged far from the Hold, for example. Likewise, the shepherds and the miners who spent weeks and months far from the Hold among the lower slopes of the Dragonwall carried their tents with them on their backs when they left the shelter of the cliffside. Indeed, even some of the families who dedicated themselves to the cultivation of the arid fields where the soils were firm enough and sufficiently rich to yield beans, maize, and squash spent months away from the Hold in small clusters of tents, returning to the rest of the Sept with the harvest.
And, of course, there were the sweat tents.
While rain was rare in the Threefold Land, the occasional storms that crossed the Dragonwall tended to be quite strong, capable of downpours that could ruin exposed mud bricks in minutes. Those storms necessitated measures to defend the Hold against the damp, and so the adobe walls of the Hold's exterior were proofed against water intrusion with plaster, the upkeep of which was always a high priority for the Sept.
Participating in the annual replastering was one of the great bonding rituals of the Sept. Chipping off the old layers of plaster and reapplying fresh stucco was one of the many tasks traditionally left to the Sept's children, and every year weeks would be dedicated to it. When the heart of summer came and even the nights were warm, the children of the Sept would wake up early and scramble to make as much progress before the dawn brought the full heat of the day. By the time the sun had set, the fresh plaster would be set dry and the walls ready for the second coat of the day.
All of the armoring plaster would do nothing to save the walls of our home if the wet came from within the Hold, though, which was why the Jarra Sept used the same sweat tents for hygiene purposes as the rest of the Aiel.
Sweat bathing had taken a great deal of getting used to, more than almost anything else in my third life. The Japanese of my first life had preferred the glories of the bath, the onsen a cultural staple expanded by technology and industry into the private home tub. My second life, spent in the institutional care of orphanages and the Army, had been one of practical showers, cold and quick and economical. In a way, steam bathing took elements from both.
It was a simple ritual. A pot full of stones, heated almost to a glow over a low and smokeless fire, sat in the middle of the tent, and water was ladled over them. Upon touching the rock, the water would instantly evaporate into clouds of steam, moisturizing the bathers, who would quickly rub soap, made from tallow and ash, into their hair and skin. Once soaped, the bathers would scrape the grimy mixture off, wiping the residue away with a rag.
Sweat bathing was markedly different from both of my previous lives in the practical absence of water from the ritual. It wasn't a difference that I disliked or felt strongly about, but, more than the cultural differences, the lack of easy availability to abundant water had required a shift in my sense of normalcy. In the Threefold Land, water was made precious by its scarcity, and revered and coveted for the same reason. Enough water to fill a tub in one place would be almost unimaginable.
Even after I had internalized the sense of value that the Aiel put upon water, it had still felt strange to rely on steam for bathing.
The other Aiel traditions when it came to the sweat tent were much less strange to me. Aiel bathed in the nude and in groups of mixed gender and age, and tended to sit around for long periods of time in the sweat tent exchanging gossip and chatter. In fact, the communal sweat tents were an important social hub in Aiel life; as all Aiel of every Society, trade, and gender used the same tents, it represented an opportunity to interact with a broader variety of conversational partner than the family, the Society, or the work unit. Besides, the steam seemed to somehow soften the usual Aiel stoicism, opening even the least talkative elder's mouth along with their pores. Jokes were common, as was something clearly recognizable as flirting between the unmarried, the young, and the widowed.
In my first years at Shende Hold, I had felt a great deal of nostalgia to the childhood of my first life when I had gone to the baths in the company of Ayesha my mother and Leiran my father. Those memories of my earliest years were badly faded with the passage of time, but I could still dimly recall visits to
onsens with my father and mother, of sharing the family baths and of listening to my mother and father laugh as they darted from the showers to the warmth of the bath.
Of course, matters weren't so simple once I grew older and no longer bathed solely with my family. Once my eighth birthday had passed, my father encouraged me to bathe with the other children, which was my first introduction to the full complexities of social bathing. The chief difference was that the youngest or the lowest ranked person in attendance was tasked with sprinkling more water from the kettle on the heated stones in the central pot whenever the steam began to thin, instead of my father handling the ladle as he had when I bathed with my family. The unfortunate junior was also tasked with refreshing the stones in the central pot with newly heated rocks from the smoldering fires outside the tents.
At the very least, I thought with a hint of smugness as I picked my way across the rocky ground,
I won't need to worry about that any more. As a recognized smith, I won't need to fetch rocks or water unless everybody else in the tent is a Wise One or a chief!
The low-slung hide tents were clustered around the communal well on the stony ground extending around the cliff face Shende Hold was built under. Not purpose-built for sweat bathing, the tents were identical to those used by the hunting parties; stitched animal hides spread over a framework of yucca stems bound with fiber cord and, without dirt to drive the poles into, anchored against weighty stones. All of the flaps bar one were tightly laced to keep the steam in, and unlike the hunting tents a pelt had been slung over the smokehole at the top of the tent.
My teeth began to chatter just as I reached the ring of steam tents, and only by drawing deeply on my fortitude could I resist the urge to dart between the flaps of the closest tent like a
sorda squeezing into the crack between two loose stones. Instead, I forced myself to pause outside the ring and to take a deep breath, standing completely still in my sweat-stained
cadin'sor as I regained my demeanor. I was a man now, recognized by my teacher and thus accepted by the sept, and I would not be driven from the cold like a steer fleeing the herder's goad.
I endured the heat all day, I told myself resolutely,
so I can endure a bit of cold as well without running like a child. If I want to be respected for my work, I must demonstrate respectability at all times.
Once I was my own master once more, I stepped over to the nearest tent and began to strip, again resisting the urge to rush as the cold rushed in to steal the meager heat my jacket and trousers had preserved. The flat wind-worn surface of the stone was smooth under my feet as I neatly folded my clothes and piled them atop my soft, knee-high boots.
Tomorrow is Laundry Day, I decided, wrinkling my nose at the unmistakable scents of rendered goat grease, smoke, and exertion rising from my mottled clothes.
Hopefully Mother allows me into the room tonight with that stench.
For a moment, I was tempted to work the worst of the grime out of my clothes with the bar of tallow soap I had brought with me when I had left for the forge this morning, but the prospect of walking back to the Hold after I left the steam tent in wet clothes dissuaded me. Instead, with the leather pouch containing my soap and a drying cloth in my hands, I lifted the tent flap to the smallest degree I could manage and slipped inside.
After the furnace dryness of the forge and the desiccating cold of evening in the Threefold Land, the sudden wet heat of the sweat tent was like a physical blow and I moaned in involuntary relief at the feeling of moisture settling over parched skin. The sudden warmth, felt everywhere but the soles of my feet, was also just as welcome as it was shocking in its intensity, and I quickly stepped forwards onto the rugs of knotted fiber to escape the cold of the stone, ignoring the chuckles of those already in the tent.
The tent was full of bathers, with at least twenty Aiel crammed around the wide central pot and its load of hot stones. Two of the nearest budged aside to clear a place for me in the ring and I gratefully dropped down and sat cross-legged in the newly opened space.
"I see you, Taric," said Rokka, the woman seated to my left, greeting me as she handed over a
staera, a thin bronze disc used to scrape away the sweat-loosened dirt. Her hair was a deep red, like the embers of a banked forge, remarkably dark for an Aiel and darker still in the heavy dampness of the sweat tent. "Did Salin finally free you from your labors?"
"My labors freed me from the forge tonight, Rokka, daughter of Janani," I replied, adding after a pause, "Salin only recognized and gave voice to what my hands had already wrought."
"Did he now?" The rumbled question came from Kinhuin, a spear of the
Seia Doon, Black Eyes, who put his skilled hands to work weaving baskets for transport and storage from the fibrous roots of the yucca. My mother's roof was the home to several storage baskets he had woven, all decorated with simple geometric patterns picked out in green and yellow ochre. "Well done, Taric, son of Leiran. I see you truly and greet you, man of my Sept."
As he spoke, Kinhuin stretched out and picked up the water gourd and the ladle from their resting places by the kettle of heated rocks. Without looking away from me, he poured a measure of water into the ladle, which he tilted and moved in a slow circular pattern over the central pot. Fresh clouds of steam hissed up from the sullen stones, almost concealing Kinhuin's tanned face and green eyes from view.
"I greet you, Kinhuin, man of my Sept," I replied, tilting my head in quiet gratitude for the
ji he offered me. My father's age, Kinhuin was respected and respectable, a man who had danced the spears with the Goshien and Shaarad Aiel on many raids. By tending to the steam when I, a much younger man, sat at the kettle, he signaled his public recognition of my new status. "And I thank you for the steam. It has been a long day; the succor is welcome."
"A long day in a long week, yes?" asked Rokka sympathetically, patting my bicep and grinning as the worn muscle twitched under her fingers. "We all have heard the clanging from the forge; now that your hammer is completed, how will the quiet of the night be broken?" Her turquoise eyes scrunched mischievously. "Perhaps you would like to disturb the Hold's slumber with a different pounding tonight? I think I would make a more desirable partner than Salin, should you beg shelter below my roof. Come," she said, flipping her hair back over her shoulder, "let your forge grow cold and tend to
my embers instead."
"Prettier than Salin, perhaps," I said, making a deliberate show of running my eyes up and down the sitting form of the woman a year my senior, smiling as I returned the joke, "but I fear you would be far less enduring. Old he may be, but Salin can keep going for hours, shaping iron in the fire's heart with shaft in hand."
"Ah, I would not have to endure long tonight, I suspect," Rokka replied, talking over the slight chuckle that rose from the rest of the circle of watching Aiel, their eyes fixed on the byplay as they ran
staera over shoulders and chests and down arms, flicking the discs periodically to clear away the grime. Two women who I knew to be Maidens were smiling broadly, their fingers dancing as they communicated in their Society's secret language. "After all, you shake like a baby goat just sitting at the fire. But," she smiled, letting the joke end, "you have spent all week cooped up in the forge, so let me tell you of all that has happened in the Hold."
As Rokka held forth, relaying a week's worth of gossip with the help and contributions of the rest sitting around the circle, I sat back and cleaned myself, rubbing the shard of soap I had brought with me into my hair as I tried to free myself from the lingering scent of smoke. As conversations about the various happenings spiraled out, I sat silently, content just to listen and to feel like a member of the community, a member of the Sept and of the Clan. While none of my family were here in this particular tent, I was still surrounded by family, in a way.
After all, I thought as the low fire that burned below the second, smaller heating kettle cast our shadows on the tent's hide walls,
what else could they be to me but family? After seventeen years among them, first as a boy and now as a man, all of that time spent learning their ways and joining in on the labor projects necessary for the continued survival of the Hold, I am one of them. And yet, they all still think only of waking from their so-called Dream, which is our shared life…
The thought soured my jubilant mood. I had taken a major step forward towards my own private goal today, earning myself the recognition of manhood and smithship in one blow. So long as the Shadowspawn did not surge across the Threefold Land all the way to the domain of the Chareen Aiel, I would never be expected to fight, nor would I be deliberately targeted by any Aiel.
But what is the point of finding a place of safety to myself in the culture of the People, if the Aiel remain wedded to their fatalistic mission? How do I dissuade them from following the path of prophecy when there is a solid chance that the prophecy has legitimate grounding? I have known the endless recurrence myself, the Wheel that Sorilea spoke so often about. There is something beyond it that interferes, that forces events along certain paths of causality. I vowed to break my own cycle even if it meant breaking the Wheel… But can my people, honed, tested, and punished for a millenia, do likewise?
"Thank you, Rokka," I said, passing the
staera back over as I slowly levered myself up from my position around the fire. "I must return to my mother's roof and ask her permission to enter before she goes to sleep tonight."
"Ah, yes," Rokka nodded understandingly. "You are a man now, no longer a boy. And," the teasing smile blossomed anew across the wiry woman's face, with perhaps a hint of something else within, "if she denies you shade and salt beneath her roof… Come to me. I shall not make you ask more than once for both."
"I will keep your offer in mind, Rokka, daughter of Sagrala," I replied, toweling myself off as I prepared to face the night's cold once more. "But I hope I have held my mother's favor sufficiently that I shall not be left to make a bed by the forge, not on my first night of manhood at least. Good night and deep sleep to you."
Outside, the crisp air welcomed me with an icy embrace, and I dressed rapidly in my stinking clothing to ward it off. Putting on my filthy
cadin'sor after cleaning my body was unpleasant, but walking back to the distant warmth of Shende Hold an hour after the sun had set would be even moreso.
Clean clothes are waiting at home, I told myself as I strode across the flat, rocky ground between the circle of sweat tents and Shende Hold,
and… yes, yes it is still home, even if I do have to ask my mother for permission to enter. Until she says otherwise, it is home.
After the blazing heat of the forge and the soaking heat of the sweat tent, the moonlit chill was quite enjoyable, if only as a contrast against the swelter of the day. Still, I couldn't help but speed up slightly as I approached the entrance to the Hold, brushing aside the thick hanging rug that served as a door. The residual heat of sun-warmed brick reached up to engulf me, but I didn't set foot inside yet. Instead, I turned to Rheaba, first wife of Parrag and Roofmistress of Shende Hold.
"I see you, Rheaba, Roofmistress of Shende Hold," I began, nodding to the slender woman, whose long blonde hair was graying rapidly by the year, "and I ask leave to come beneath your roof."
"Do you now, Taric, son of Leiran?" Rheaba peered at me from her nest of wrinkles. She had the severe misfortune to suffer the premature loss of her sight. Though she could barely see past the length of an arm these days, her mind remained as quick and agile as it had been back when she taught the children of Shende Hold how to cut and skive leather for use in boots, telling us stories of the Sept's history as we worked. "So, Salin has given you his nod, has he? Then come in, man of my Sept; there will always be water and shade for you here."
With a deep, respectful nod, I set foot once more under Shende Hold and relaxed, luxuriating in the warmth as I took a moment to shake the stiffness from my shoulders. Then, with a parting nod to Rheaba, who must have caught the motion because she returned the gesture, I began to tread the familiar path back to the room that was my mother's roof to repeat the ritual.
When I arrived at the entrance to the room where I had dwelled for the past seventeen years with Leiran, my father, and Ayesha, my mother, and for the past fifteen years with Gharadin, my younger brother, I found the door rug hanging in place. No doubt the smoke hole was likewise all but closed, keeping the heat of the low-burning fire inside while still permitting adequate ventilation.
Well, that's inconvenient. Poking my head around the rug hanging over Shende Hold was only acceptable because of Rheaba's unfortunate eyesight issues, as well as the more public nature of the Hold. Doing the same with the entryway to a family's personal dwelling would be decidedly less appropriate.
No need to take on toh
on today of all days.
"Ayesha, daughter of Amaryn," I called out, pitching my voice low in the hopes of not waking up everybody in the rooms branching off from the same central hallway as my family's roof, "Roofmistress, I ask leave to come beneath your roof."
"Enter, Taric," an unexpected voice bid, issuing forth from behind the hanging rug. "Come in, Greatson, and find water and shade. We have much to discuss."
I hesitated for a moment. Was this some sort of elaborate trick to see if I would slip-up and break the strictures of
ji'e'toh on my first day of manhood? I was being told to enter, but not by the roofmistress…
But… Greatson? There are only two people alive who would call me that. Amaryn, my greatmother, and Sorilea, her greatmother. Neither hold my family's roof, but both are Wise Ones… And a Wise One is a Wise One, no matter where she sets foot.
And so I stooped and, pulling the door rug aside, set foot under my mother's roof without her blessing, pushing down the instinctive chill at the transgression. The part of me that had become Aiel over the last seventeen years sank, shamed with the knowledge that I bore
toh. It was unfortunate, but inevitable; defying a Wise One without reason would bring
toh as well, much more than my trespass.
Such were the ways of
Ji'e'toh, set to both guide and to test us. And if at times it was contradictory, seemingly without any right answer? Then the only correct answer was to shoulder one's shame like a man, without attempting to shift the blame.
In the end, we all were accountable to the Clan, to the Sept, to one another, and most of all, to ourselves. The only one who could truly
toh upon a man's shoulders was himself, just as how
ji could only come from others. For me, there was no excuse to violate the social contract; there hadn't been in either of my previous lives, and that held true now. The social morays of my first life, the military law of my second, and now the
Ji'e'toh of my third… There would be no excuses, including the excuse of following orders. Not for violating
Ji'e'toh. For that, there was no excuse.
Inside, I found my family seated on pillows around the central dining mat, the three that I had expected along with an unexpected addition. Sorilea, Wise One of the Jarra Sept of the Chareen Aiel, Wise One of Shende Hold, sat next to her great-greatdaughter, carefully peeling the skin from a
kardon fruit.
Unlike most evenings spent gathered together in this familiar room, the air crackled with tension, the silence ringing so much more loudly than the usual din of conversation. Ayesha, my mother, sat perfectly still, hands resting on the knees of her crossed legs, my younger brother Gharadin next to her. My younger brother, usually so garrulous, was silent. Leiran, my father, sat jaw-clenched on the white-haired elder's other side, his eyes fixed on me.
In the middle of it all, Sorilea gradually flayed away the fruit's skin, her hands still dextrous with the tiny bone-handled knife. Several more peels sat in a tidy pile on the mat before her, every scrap of meat picked cleanly away. While her fingers worked, ancient jade eyes held me in cool regard.
Immediately, before she could utter another word, I bowed my head almost to my chest, my hands held out with a fist pressed into a flattened hand in salute. "I see you, Honored Ancestor," I said, greeting her respectfully as I channeled two lifetime's worth of schmoozing experience.
"And I see you, Greatson," Sorilea replied, her voice completely untouched by age. "You give me much
ji. Far too much, now that you are a blacksmith."
"I give
ji as it is deserved, Honored Ancestor," I demurred as I rose from my bow, setting aside everything but the conversation at hand. Sorilea was old, but she was crafty as well. She was also someone I had conflicting feelings towards, as both the pillar of strength supporting the entirety of the Sept and the conductor of its endless death-march. Regardless of whatever else she was, she was a formidable presence. "Wisdom demands respect, a Wise One twice that, and my greatmother's greatmother twice that."
"I see the ringing of iron has yet to drive your wits from your head, oh Greatson," came the dry reply, but I caught just a slight twinkle of amusement in the old woman's eyes. In appealing to
Ji'e'toh and to filial respect, I had rendered my petty disagreement with her unassailable without undermining the rules that bound us both to our roles. It was a small skirmish, but so had her demand that I enter under my mother's roof without her permission. Unlike the last, this round had unquestionably been my victory.
I had shown myself uncowed before her will and her reputation, yet still showed proper deference to the unspoken strictures of
Ji'e'toh.
"Come, Taric," Sorilea beckoned towards the last available cushion placed around the dining mat, "come and join us. Tonight, I am your greatmother, so cease standing around like a concussed goat. Prove you haven't left your wits in the forge and enjoy the sweet
kardon I brought to share."
Before that hammer of matriarchal authority, I stooped and reached for a
kardon before kneeling down on the indicated cushion. Resting on my knees, I methodically sliced the tips off either end of the fruit and began to cut away the waxy skin, revealing the juicy, mouthwateringly delicious fruit within.
Kardon was a rare treat and one that I had come to love, as it was one of the few sweet things in the Threefold Land. The spines had to be scorched away before the skin could even be peeled, but a properly cooked
kardon was almost syrupy sweet, a vision after a diet of beans and peppers and squash occasionally accompanied by meat.
The Wise One allowed me to enjoy two of the fruits before speaking again. "I come to congratulate you, Taric, son of Ayesha. After a mere four years, Salin has acknowledged you. You have accomplished that which takes most men seven years in half the time."
"I thank you, Honored Ancestor," I murmured, busying my knife with a third fruit, which I passed to Gharadin once the warty green skin fully gave way. "Salin has honored me greatly with his teachings and with his time."
"He has," Sorilea agreed, her weathered head nodding as she popped another
kardon, the exposed flesh of the fruit a purple-red pulp, between her teeth. "Do you feel worthy of this honor, young Taric? You are a smith now, and a man full grown, though you have only seen your seventeenth nameday."
"A smith I am," I agreed, turning my knife over in my fingers as I locked eyes with Sorilea again, ignoring the unlovely sucking sound Gharadin made as he all but inhaled his fruit, "recognized for the temper of my steel and the finished works of my hands. Whether I feel worthy of this honor is meaningless; it is mine, as my name is mine. But…" I continued, the words brimming on my tongue as I spoke to the living heart of the Aiel, "I say this, that so long as men sleep in the Dream, it is up to them to test and to expand the boundaries of our shared vision. The Dream shall only cease to grow when we cease to press forwards and become content.
"As for myself," I inclined my head respectfully, speaking not as a dreamer in the old sense but as a dreamer of the Aiel, one engaged with the world and its practicalities, "I am certain of my abilities to smith spearheads and arrowheads, knives and pots and tools and a hundred other things. And," I added with a grin, taking Sorilea at her word that she was here tonight as my greatmother, "I am fully confident in my ability to mend pots, Honored Ancestor, so my mother's roof will never again be forced to wait for a peddler's visit for repairs."
That won me a thin smile and an approving nod. "Well said, Greatson," Sorilea replied, an approving note in her voice, "and I commend you for your certainty. Others may heap praise upon your shoulders, but only you will know the true extent of your skills and your capability."
"Thank you, Greatmother," I said, relief washing over me when her smile lingered. "I am certain of my skills, yet I cannot claim the same about my capacity. I have much left to learn."
"Oh?" Her smile widened slightly. "Already you would seek to expand the boundaries of your Dream, I see. Perhaps that would be for the best… Salin certainly anticipates regaining the fullness of his forge again, though perhaps he could be convinced to take another student, and you would have the opportunity to explore as all young men yearn to do and to expand your skills…"
"As you say, Wise One," I replied cautiously, feeling the jaws of a trap closing around my legs.
"Perhaps," said Sorilea, with a tone that left no room for doubt, "but as your greatmother, Taric, I want only that you find a forge where you can practice your trade and sharpen your skill, as a whetstone sharpens a spear. Of late, I have heard that a forge in Cold Rocks Hold has grown dark, as one of the two smiths in residence among the Nine Valleys Sept of the Taardad Aiel has woken from the Dream." While the smile lingered on Sorilea's face, it had grown implacably firm. "As your greatmother's greatmother, I am certain that Roofmistress Lian would welcome you below her roof, should you ask. She is all too eager to see that forge alit once more."
Ah, I thought,
and there it is. Shende Hold doesn't really need two fully qualified smiths, especially when the presence of the surplus smith would make it all but impossible for the current smith to take more students. Even though I still have much to learn, Salin's time would be better spent instructing a fresh boy on the basics of smithwork. So, I am to be sent away.
Another thought crowded in on the first.
Did my early graduation truly come as a surprise to Sorilea? Considering how it seems as if the preparations were already laid out before she arrived this evening, I doubt it... But what does that mean? To think that Salin would recognize me as a fellow smith if the Wise Ones ask is absurd, as is the idea that they would ask as such. On the other hand, as Rokka clearly indicated, the fact that I was building my tools is common knowledge around the hold.
The Wise One must have simply had confidence in my abilities. Confidence enough to decide where I would be put.
Such confidence, I decided, was a mixed blessing indeed.
"Cold Rocks Hold…" I rolled the name over in my mouth, trying to decide how I felt about the idea of dwelling in the stronghold of the Taardad Aiel and perhaps the single largest hold in the Waste. Cold Rocks Hold stood leagues to the north of the Chareen, north of the empty city of Rhuidean, where those who would be clan chiefs or Wise Ones went to be tested. As far as clan politics went, I didn't remember there being much bad blood between the Taardad and the Chareen; the Taardad tended to fight the Shaido and the Nakai, though they had made peace with the latter in the previous generation, while we tended to dance the spears with the Shaarad and the Goshien.
As far as prospective assignments went, there were far worse, I decided.
Working among the Shaido, for example, would almost certainly be unpleasant, treacherous bastards that they are.
"Of course," Sorilea continued, relentless as the summer sun beating down upon the mesas and sandy plains of the Threefold Land, "you will have to earn your rights to the forge and its tools. You will likely have to accept reduced payments during that time, as the cost of the tools and materials are repaid to Lian's roof. But I am certain that she will accept your hard and dutiful work as adequate payment, and she knows better than to permit any of mine to starve or be cheated. Once the debt is paid and the tools and forge yours, you will stand equal to Garlvan, the smith still living among the Nine Valleys Sept."
"I understand, Greatmother," I replied, bowing my head again. It wasn't an ideal assignment, considering how I would be starting off indebted, but there would clearly be room to grow. I was still hesitant to leave Shende Hold, though. The hold had been my home for seventeen years, after all, and I still had much to learn from Salin. I was especially uneasy about leaving my home unarmed save for a hunting bow; a smith would not be deliberately targeted, but carrying a spear might lead jumpy Taardad clansmen to attack first before noticing that I wore the
cadin'sor after the manner of a craftsman, rather than as a member of a warrior Society. "I thank you for sharing this information and your wisdom with me. I will think further upon it."
"As you shall, Taric," nodded Sorilea, "as you shall. Think also upon the fact that Lea, youngest daughter of Amys, sister-wife of Lian, and Rhuarc, Chief of the Taardad Aiel, is still unmarried though her nineteenth nameday will soon pass. I have heard that no man is courting her, so I doubt she will be laying any bridal wreaths at the doors of bachelors any time soon."
And Amys is a Wise One, isn't she? The daughter of a Wise One and of a clan chief, marrying the greatson of two Wise Ones... Or perhaps, at least making a show of pursuing that daughter? The Wise Ones always scheme; that is part of their role as the hands that freely reach across clan borders to guide all the Aiel. Guessing at the point of this particular scheme is beyond me, but my role here is clear.
"...Thank you, Grandmother, for your advice," I said, tilting my head in understanding. Her message was received. My grandmother had let me know about a valuable opportunity I could avail myself of; the Wise One would order me to take up my hammer and go live among the Taardad, should extra motivation prove necessary. "And thank you, Wise One, for your knowledge. Before the sun touches Shende Hold again, I will leave for Cold Rocks Hold."
