Chapter 48

Near Avendesora

Aviendha took one final step and was out of the forest of glass pillars. She took a deep breath, then glanced back at the path she had taken.

The central plaza of Rhuidean was an awe-inspiring sight. Smooth white flagstones carpeted the entire square save for the absolute center. There stood an enormous tree, branches spread wide like arms reaching to embrace the sun. The massive tree had a perfection she could not explain. It had a natural symmetry—no missing branches, no gaping holes in its leafy upper reaches. It was particularly impressive since, when she’d last seen it, it had been blackened and burned.

In a world where other plants were dying without explanation, this one healed and flourished faster than ever should have been possible. Its leaves rustled soothingly in the wind, and its gnarled roots poked through the ground like the aged fingers of a wise elder. The tree made her want to sit and bask in the simple peace of the moment.

It was as if this tree were the ideal, the one after which all other trees were patterned. In legend it was called Avendesora. The Tree of Life.

To the side sat the glass columns. There were dozens of them, perhaps hundreds, forming concentric rings. Spindly and thin, they reached high into the sky. As purely—even superlatively—natural as Avendesora was, these columns were equally unnatural. They were so thin and tall, logic said that the first gust of wind should have toppled them. It wasn’t that they were aberrant, merely artificial.

When she had first entered days before, there had been gai’shain in white carefully picking up fallen leaves and twigs. They had retreated as soon as they had seen her. Was she the first to go through the glass pillars since Rhuidean’s transformation? Her own clan had sent no one, and she was certain she would have heard of it if the others had.

That left only the Shaido, but they had rejected Rand’s claims about the Aiel past. Aviendha suspected that if any Shaido had come, they would not have been able to bear what was shown here. They would have passed into the center of the glass columns and never returned.

That had not been the case for Aviendha. She had survived. Indeed, everything she’d seen had been expected. Almost disappointingly so.

She sighed, walking over to Avendesora’s trunk, then looking up through its web of branches.

Once, this plaza had been cluttered with other ter’angreal; this was where Rand had first discovered the access keys he had used to cleanse saidin. That wealth of ter’angreal was gone now; Moiraine had claimed many pieces for the White Tower, and the Aiel who lived here must have taken the others away. That left only the tree, the columns and the three rings that women went through on their first trip here, the trip that made them apprentice Wise Ones.