She cocked her head.

Ronam turned and looked out the open tent flaps, toward the green grass beyond. “My father called Rand al’Thor a clever man and great leader, but one who did not know what to do with the Aiel. I remember him saying that when the Car’a’carn was among us, he did not feel like one of us. As if we made him uncomfortable.” Ronam shook his head. “Everyone else was planned for, but the Aiel were left adrift.”

“Some say we should have returned to the Three-fold Land,” she said.

“No,” Ronam said. “No, that would have destroyed us. Our fathers knew nothing of steam horses or dragon tubes. Were the Aiel to return to the Waste, we would have become irrelevant. The world would pass us by, and we would vanish as a people.”

“But war?” Padra said. “Is it right?”

“I do not know,” Ronam said softly. “We are Aiel. It is what we know how to do.”

Padra nodded, feeling more certain.

The Aiel would go to war again. And there would be much honor in it.

Aviendha blinked. The sky was dark.

She was exhausted. Her mind was drained, her heart opened—as if bleeding out strength with every beat. She sat down in the midst of the dimming columns. Her…children. She remembered their faces from her first visit to Rhuidean. She had not seen this. Not that she remembered, at least.

“Is it destined?” she asked. “Can we change it?”

There was no answer, of course.

Her tears were dry. How did one react to seeing the utter destruction—no, the utter decay—of one’s people? Each step had seemed logical to the people who took it. But each had taken the Aiel toward their end.

Should anyone have to see such terrible visions? She wished she’d never stepped back into the forest of pillars. Was she to blame for what was to happen? It was her line that would doom her people.

This was not like the events she had seen when passing into the rings during her first visit to Rhuidean. Those had been possibilities. This day’s visions seemed more real. She felt almost certain that what she had experienced was not simply one of many possibilities. What she had seen would occur. Step by step, honor drained from her people. Step by step, the Aiel turned from proud to wretched.

There had to be more. Angry, she stood up and took another step. Nothing happened. She walked all the way to the edge of the pillars, then turned, furious.

“Show me more,” she demanded. “Show me what I did to cause this! It is my lineage that brought us ruin! What is my part in it?”

She walked into the pillars again.

Nothing. They seemed dead. She reached out and touched one, but there was no life. No hum, no sense of Power. She closed her eyes, squeezing one more tear from the corner of each eye. The tears trailed down her face, leaving a line of cold wetness on her cheeks.