Aviendha listened to the tree’s leaves rustle. Those pillars were a challenge, as sure as an enemy warrior with his spear in hand. If she passed into their midst again, she might never come out; nobody visited this ter’angreal a second time. It was forbidden. One trip through the rings, one through the columns.

But she had come seeking knowledge. She would not leave without it. She turned and—taking a deep breath—walked up to the pillars.

Then took a step.

She was Norlesh. She held her youngest child close to her bosom. A dry wind tugged at her shawl. Her baby, Garlvan, started to whimper, but she quieted him as her husband spoke with the outlanders.

An outlander village stood in the near distance, built of shacks against the foothills of the mountains. They wore dyed clothing and strangely cut trousers with buttoning shirts. They had come for the ore. How could rocks be so valuable that they would live on this side of the mountains, away from their fabled land of water and food? Away from their buildings where light shone without candles and their carts that moved without horses?

Her shawl slipped and she pulled it up. She needed a new one; this one was ragged, and she didn’t have any more thread left for patching. Garlvan whimpered in her arms, and her only other living child—Meise—held to her skirts. Meise hadn’t spoken for months, now. Not since her older brother had died from exposure.

“Please,” said her husband—Metalan—to the outlanders. There were three of them, two men and a woman, all wearing trousers. Rugged folk, not like the other foreigners, with their delicate features and too-fine silks. Illuminated Ones, those others sometimes called themselves. These three were more ordinary.

“Please,” Metalan repeated. “My family…”

He was a good man. Or he had been once, back when he’d been strong and fit. Now he seemed a shell of that man, his cheeks sunken. His once-vibrant blue eyes stared absently much of the time. Haunted. That look came from watching three of his children die in eighteen months’ time. Though Metalan was a head taller than any of the outlanders, he seemed to grovel before them.

The lead outlander—a man with a bushy beard and wide, honest eyes—shook his head. He returned to Metalan the sack full of stones. “The Raven Empress, may she always draw breath, forbids it. No trading with Aiel. We could be stripped of our charter for talking to you.”

“We have no food,” Metalan said. “My children are starving. These stones contain ore. I know that it is the type for which you search. I spent weeks gathering it. Give us a bit of food. Something. Please.”

“Sorry, friend,” the lead outlander said. “It isn’t worth trouble with the Ravens. Go on your way. We don’t want an incident.” Several outlanders approached from behind, one carrying an axe, two others with hiss-staves.

Her husband slumped. Days of travel, weeks of searching for the stones. For nothing. He turned and walked back to her. In the distance, the sun was setting. Once he reached her, she and Meise joined him, walking away from the outlander camp.