Meise began to sniffle, but neither of them had the will or strength to carry her. About an hour away from the outlander camp, her husband found a hollow in a rock shelf. They settled in, not making a fire. There was nothing to burn.

Norlesh wanted to cry. But…feeling anything seemed difficult. “I’m so hungry,” she whispered.

“I will trap something in the morning,” her husband said, staring up at the stars.

“We haven’t caught anything in days,” she said.

He didn’t reply.

“What are we going to do?” she whispered. “We haven’t been able to keep a home for our people since my greatmother Tava’s day. If we gather, they attack us. If we wander the Waste, we die off. They won’t trade with us. They won’t let us cross the mountains. What are we going to do?”

His response was to lie down, turning away from her.

Her tears did come then, quiet, weak. They rolled down her cheeks as she undid her shirt to nurse Garlvan, though she had no suck for him.

He didn’t move. He didn’t latch on. She lifted his small form and realized that he was no longer breathing. Somewhere along the walk to the hollow, he had died without her realizing it.

The most frightening part was how difficult she found it to summon any sorrow at the death.

Aviendha’s foot hit the flagstones. Around her, the forest of glass columns shimmered with prismatic color. It was like standing in the middle of an Illuminator’s firework. The sun was high in the sky, cloud cover remarkably gone.

She wanted to leave the square forever. She had been prepared for the knowledge that the Aiel had once followed the Way of the Leaf. That knowledge wasn’t very disturbing. They would soon fulfill their toh.

But this? These scattered and broken wretches? People who didn’t stand up for themselves, who begged, who didn’t know how to survive off the land? To know that these were her ancestors was a shame she nearly could not bear. It was good that Rand al’Thor had not revealed this past to the Aiel.

Could she flee? Run from the plaza and see no more? If it grew any worse, the shame would overwhelm her. Unfortunately, she knew that there was only one way out, now that she’d begun.

Gritting her teeth, she took a step forward.

She was Tava, fourteen years old and screaming in the night as she ran from her burning house. The entire valley—really a canyon, with steep sides—was in flames. Every building in the fledgling hold had been set afire. Nightmarish creatures, with sinuous necks and wide wings, flapped in the night above, bearing riders with bows, spears, and strange new weapons that made a hissing sound when they fired.

Tava cried, searching for her family, but the hold was a mass of chaos and confusion. Some few Aiel warriors resisted, but anyone who raised a spear fell moments later, killed by arrow or by one of the invisible shots from the new weapons.