“Blood and char, Flern,” a second voice said. A silhouette knelt beside her. “Poor thing. Almost a child. She wasn’t doing any harm.”

Flern snorted. “No harm? I’ve seen these creatures try to slit a sleeping man’s throat. All for his trash. Bloody pests.”

The other shadow looked at her, and she caught sight of a grim face. Twinkling eyes. Like stars. The man sighed, rising. “Next time we bury the trash.” He retreated back toward the light.

The second man, Flern, stood watching her. Was that her blood? All over her hands, warm, like water that had been sitting in the sun for too long?

Death did not surprise her. In a way, she’d been expecting it for most of her eighteen years.

“Bloody Aiel,” Flern said as her sight faded.

Aviendha’s foot hit the flagstone in Rhuidean’s square, and she blinked in shock. The sun had changed in the sky above. Hours had passed.

What had happened? The vision had been so real, like her viewings of the early days of her people. But she could make no sense of it. Had she gone even farther back into history? That seemed like the Age of Legends. The strange machines, clothing, and weapons. But that had been the Three-fold Land.

She could remember distinctly being Malidra. She could remember years of hunger, of scavenging, of hatred—and fear—of the Lightmakers. She remembered her death. The terror, trapped and bleeding. That warm blood on her hands….

She raised a hand to her head, sick and unsettled. Not by the death. Everyone woke from the dream, and while she did not welcome it, she would not fear it. No, the horrible thing about the vision had been the complete lack of honor she’d seen. Killing men in the night for their food? Scavenging for half-chewed meat in the dirt? Wearing scraps? She’d been more an animal than a person!

Better to die. Surely the Aiel couldn’t have come from roots like those, long ago. The Aiel in the Age of Legends had been peaceful servants, respected. How could they have started as scavengers?

Perhaps this was merely one tiny group of Aiel. Or maybe the man had been mistaken. There was little way to tell from this single vision. Why had she been shown it?

She took a hesitant step away from the glass columns, and nothing happened. No further visions. Disturbed, she began to walk from the plaza.

Then she slowed.

Hesitantly she turned back. The columns stood in the dimming light, quiet and alone, seeming to buzz with an unseen energy.

Was there more?

That one vision seemed so disconnected from the others she’d seen. If she passed into the columns’ midst again, would she repeat what she’d been given before? Or…had she, perhaps, changed something with her Talent?

In the centuries since Rhuidean’s founding, those columns had shown the Aiel what they needed to know about themselves. The Aes Sedai had set that up, hadn’t they? Or had they simply placed the ter’angreal and allowed it to do what it pleased, knowing it would grant wisdom?