Robert Jordan - The Shadow Rising

"Even the Shaido will not bother Aes Sedai," Amys told him, "any more than they will bother Bair or Melaine or myself. Some things are beyond even Shaido."

"Just be on your guard!" He had not meant to be that sharp. Even Rhuarc stared at him. They did not understand, and he dared not tell them. Not yet. Who would spring their trap first? He had to risk them as well as himself.

"What about me, Rand?" Mat said suddenly, rolling a gold coin across the fingers of one hand as though unaware of it. "You have any objections to my going with you?"

"Do you want to? I thought you'd stay with the peddlers."

Mat frowned at the wagons below, looked to the Shaido lined before the mountain gap. "I don't think it will be so easy to get out of here if you get yourself killed. Burn me if you don't stick me in the rendering kettle one way or… Dovienya," he muttered — Rand had heard him say that before; Lan said it meant "luck" in the Old Tongue — and flipped the gold coin into the air. When he tried to snatch it back, it bounced off his fingertips and fell to the ground. Somehow, improbably, the coin landed on edge, rolling downhill, bounding across cracks in the baked clay, glittering in the sunlight, all the way down to the wagons, where it finally fell over. "Burn me, Rand," he growled, "I wish you wouldn't do that!"

Isendre picked up the coin and stood fingering it, peering up at the hilltop. The others stared, too; Kadere, and Keille, and Natael.

"You can come," Rand said. "Rhuarc, isn't it about time?"

The clan chief glanced over his shoulder. "Yes. Just about…" Behind him, pipes began playing a slow dancing tune. "…now."

Singing rose to the pipes. Aiel boys stopped singing when they reached manhood, except for certain occasions. Only in battle songs and laments for the dead did an Aielman sing once he had taken up the spear. There were surely Maidens' voices in that chanted harmony of parts, but deep male voices swallowed them.

Half a mile to right and left Taardad appeared, running in time to their song in two wide columns, spears ready, faces veiled, seemingly endless columns rolling toward the mountains.

In the clan camps and in the fair, Aiel stared in amazement; something in the way they held themselves told Rand they were silent. Some of the wagon drivers stood as if stunned; others let their mules run loose and dove under their wagons. And Keille and Isendre, Kadere and Natael, watched Rand.

"Shall we go?" He did not wait for Rhuarc's nod to heel Jeade'en to a walk down the hill, Adelin and the other Maidens falling in around him. Mat hesitated a moment before booting Pips to follow, but Rhuarc and the Taardad sept chiefs, each with his ten, stepped off with the dapple. Once, halfway to the fair tents, Rand looked back to the hilltop. Moiraine and Egwene sitting their horses with Lan. Aviendha standing with the three Wise Ones. All watching him. He had almost forgotten what it was like not to have people watching him.

As he rode abreast of the fair, a delegation came out, ten or a dozen women in skirts and blouses and much gold and silver and ivory, as many men in the grays and browns of the cadin'sor but unarmed save for a belt knife, and that usually smaller than the heavy-bladed weapon Rhuarc wore. Still, they took a position that forced Rand and the others to halt, and appeared to ignore the veiled Taardad streaming by to east and west.

"I did not expect this of you, Rhuarc," a heavyset, gray-haired man said. He was not fat — Rand had not seen a fat Aiel — his heaviness was muscle. "Even from the Shaido it was a surprise, but you!"

"Times change, Mandhuin," the clan chief replied. "How long have the Shaido been here?"

"They arrived just at sunrise. Why they traveled in the night, who can say?" Mandhuin frowned slightly at Rand, tilted his head toward Mat. "Strange times indeed, Rhuarc."

"Who is here besides the Shaido?" Rhuarc asked.

"We Goshien arrived first. Then the Shaarad." The heavy man grimaced over his blood enemies' name, without stopping his study of the two wetlanders. "The Chareen and the Tomanelle came later. And last the Shaido, as I said. Sevanna convinced the chiefs to go in only a short time ago. Bael saw no reason to meet today, nor did some of the others."

A broad-faced woman in her middle years, with hair yellower than Adelin's, put fists on her hips in a rattle of ivory and gold bracelets. She wore as many, and as many necklaces, as Amys and her sister-wife combined. "We hear He Who Comes With the Dawn has come out of Rhuidean, Rhuarc." She was frowning at Rand and Mat. The entire delegation was. "We hear that the Car'a'carn will be announced today. Before all of the clans arrive."

"Then someone spoke you a prophecy," Rand said. He touched the dapple's flanks with his heels; the delegation moved out of his way.

"Dovienya," Mat murmured. "Mia dovienya nesodhin soende." Whatever it meant, it sounded a fervent wish.

The Taardad columns had come up on either side of the Shaido and turned to face them across a few hundred paces, still veiled, still singing. They made no move that could be considered threatening, really, only stood there, fifteen or twenty times the Shaido numbers, and sang, voices thundering in chanting harmony.

Riding closer to the black-veiled Shaido, Rand saw Rhuarc lift a hand to his own veil. "No, Rhuarc. We are not here to fight them." He meant that he hoped it would not come to that, but the Aielman took it differently.

"You are right, Rand al'Thor. No honor to the Shaido." Leaving his veil hanging, Rhuarc raised his voice. "No honor to the Shaido!"

Rand did not turn his head to look, but he had the feeling black veils were being lowered behind him.

"Oh, blood and ashes!" Mat muttered. "Blood and bloody ashes!"

The lines of Shaido shifted uneasily. Whatever Couladin or Sevanna had told them, they could count. To dance the spears with Rhuarc and those with him was one thing, even if it went against all custom; to face enough Taardad to sweep them away like an avalanche was something else. Slowly they parted, moving back to let Rand ride through, stepping back to make a wide path.

Rand heaved a sigh of relief. Adelin and the other Maidens, at least, walked looking straight ahead, as though the Shaido did not exist.

The chant faded to a murmur behind them as they passed into the wide, steep-walled gorge, deep and shadowed as it wound into the mountains. For minutes the loudest sounds were the clatter of hooves on stone, the whisper of soft Aiel boots. Abruptly the passage gave way to Alcair Dal.

Rand could see why the canyon had been called a bowl, though there was nothing golden about it. Almost perfectly round, its gray wall sloped all the way around except at the far end, where it curled inward like a breaking wave. Clusters of Aiel dotted the slopes, heads and faces bare, many more clusters than there were clans. The Taardad who had come with the sept chiefs peeled away toward one or another of those. According to Rhuarc, grouping by society rather than clan was an aid to keeping peace. Only his Red Shields and the Maidens continued on with Rand and the Taardad chiefs.