By the eighth day of their journey, the geography shifted. The rugged, snow-choked cliffs of the high peaks leveled out into rolling foothills clad in dense cedar and silver birch. The midday air warmed pleasantly, carrying the crisp scent of blooming mountain heather carried upon a cool, dry breeze.
Rune now rode with far greater stability, her knees gripping the saddle leather instinctively, though she still preferred to dismount and walk alongside Aran when the road permitted. For days, a dam had been holding back an ocean of questions behind her lips. Aran was an enigma. He possessed no formal titles, wore no lordly colors, yet carried himself like a veteran commander. He understood the nature of channeling with terrifying intimacy, guiding her through mental exercises with a precision that even experienced Aes Sedai or Damane handlers could not match—yet he could not weave a single spark himself, nor did he possess the gift.
Finally, the dam broke.
"Master Aran?" she asked, leading Vani by the bridle as they strode side by side down an open stretch of sunlit path.
"Hmm?" Aran didn't break stride, his eyes scanning the tree lines with habitual vigilance.
"Where do you actually come from?" Rune blurted out, her curiosity overcoming her deference. "You teach me about the flow of energy, about centering the mind and breaking mental blocks, yet you cannot sense the power at all. The Sul'dam train for decades under imperial masters and still know less of the mind's inner mechanics than you do. How?"
Aran offered a faint, wry smile, keeping his eyes on the horizon. "Curiosity is a sharp tool, Rune. Be careful not to cut yourself on it."
"And you look young," she pressed on, emboldened by the easy afternoon silence. "In your twenties, perhaps. But when you speak of battles, of borders, of ancient ruins... you sound as though you've lived through three lifetimes. And that sword on your hip. Anyone who knows steel would look at you and wonder who you really are."
Aran was quiet for a long moment, listening to the soft trill of mountain birds among the pines. He adjusted his traveling pack slightly.
"I was raised far from here," he said softly, weaving a tale that danced between forgotten truths and necessary omissions. "In the bitter north, in lands where the frost never truly leaves the stone—what the old world once called the edges of the Blight. I am older than my face suggests; thirty years have taught me more than most see in sixty. As for the power... you do not need to command a river to understand how water carves stone. The principles of focus, oneness, and intent are universal. A swordsman must achieve unity with his blade exactly as a channeler must achieve unity with the source. Long ago, during the cataclysmic wars of the legends—when the Dragon walked and the shadows assaulted the world—the masters of the sword and the masters of the power were often the same. The techniques were shared before the world shattered and forgot."
Rune listened in spellbound silence, trying to imagine the frozen horrors of the northern wastes and the ancient legends he spoke of with such casual familiarity.
"If the mental focus is truly the same," she began, her brow furrowing, "why do you insist I train with the bow and the blade? If I can achieve that unity with the One Power, shouldn't that be enough to defend myself out here?"
"Power is merely a mechanism, Rune," Aran answered, his voice dropping into a sober, quiet cadence. "A weave of fire or a yard of tempered steel—neither means a thing without the stomach to use it when the moment demands. Those who rely purely on the Power often fall into a dangerous trap: they believe themselves elevated above the mud and the blood of the world. Violence becomes an abstraction to them."
He reached down, lightly resting his palm against the leather-wrapped pommel of his sword.
"A blade grounds you. It teaches you the terrible, physical weight of taking a life. You feel the resistance of bone, the warmth of the blood. If you only ever strike from afar with invisible forces, you distance yourself from the true cost of death. I teach you the bow and the sword so that you never forget what it means to cross that line. A warrior who loses respect for the lives she takes will eventually lose her own humanity."
Before Rune could ask another question, a sharp, ragged scream shattered the tranquillity of the forest.
Both of them froze instantly.
A few hundred yards ahead, where the high road curved around a sheer outcropping of grey limestone, a chorus of violent shouts erupted, followed by the sickening crunch of splintering wood and the frantic whinny of a terrified horse.
"Stay behind me, keep low," Aran instructed in a calm whisper, his easy demeanor vanishing in an instant.
They moved quickly and silently off the roadway, using the dense pine thickets and granite boulders for cover. Creeping to the edge of the limestone bluff, they peered down at the scene below.
A fine, lacquer-trimmed travelling carriage lay half-tilted into the ditch, its front axle broken. A team of two horses lay dead in their traces, bristling with black-fletched arrows. Nearby, four guardsmen lay sprawled in the mud in pools of cooling crimson, their swords drawn but useless against what had clearly been a swift, coordinated ambush. From inside the shattered carriage, the terrified, muffled shrieks of a noblewoman echoed out.
Prowling around the carriage were five men dressed in boiled leathers and stained furs—brigands, their faces grimy and hardened by violence. Two were violently hauling at the locked carriage door, battering the wood with the butts of their axes while hurling crude threats at the passenger within. Two others were tearing open travelling chests strapped to the luggage rack, tossing fine linens and silver plate into the dirt with raucous laughter.
A few paces back, looking at the cart attached to the carriage, standing elevated on a flat boulder overlooking the kill zone, stood the fifth man. He held a recurve bow at half-draw, an arrow nocked, his cold gaze scanning the tree line for any late-arriving witnesses.
Aran crouched beside Rune, his voice barely a breath against the wind. "Look closely, Rune. What do you see?"
Rune forced her breathing to remain shallow, swallowing the knot of panic that had risen into her throat. She forced her mind into the calm stillness they had practised by the fire every evening. Her eyes swept the carnage, noticing the bodies, the discarded blades, and then the dark shaft protruding cleanly through the throat of the wagon driver slumped against the box. Her gaze traced the angle backwards, locking onto the boulder.
"The archer," she whispered. "He took out the driver and the guards before they could even draw their steel. If anyone charges, he will skewer them before they cover ten paces."
Aran gave a brief, approving nod. "Good. First rule of engagement: identify the greatest threat and neutralise the long-range advantage. If we rush them, that bowman pins us down. We divide their attention."
He reached toward his pack on Vani, pulling out the short hunting bow and a quiver of practice arrows he had procured for her in Vaelen.
"Take your position behind that deadfall," Aran commanded quietly. "You take the archer. Try not to use the power. If you unleash the One Power here, any sul'dam patrol and any damane seeker nearby will descend upon this road. Use your bow. Once the ranged threat is subdued, we will see how much of your footwork you remember in close combat."
"Me?" Rune's eyes widened slightly. "Master, I've only hit straw targets for the past week!"
"Straw does not shoot back, but the mechanics remain identical," Aran said, unfastening the clasp of his cloak and laying it aside. "Center yourself. Flame and void. I will draw their eyes. When his back turns to you, loose."
Before Rune could reply, Aran stood up fully, stepped brazenly out from behind the cover of the boulders, and strolled directly down the center of the open highway.
To Rune's utter disbelief, he did not draw his sword. Instead, he clasped his hands behind his back and shouted in a cheerful, resonant voice that echoed across the stone canyon:
"Pardon me, goodmen! Might I trouble you for a brief moment of your attention?"
The effect was instantaneous.
The two bandits tearing at the carriage door snapped their heads around, cursed, and drew broad-bladed cutlasses. The scavengers dropping the silver plates froze, reaching for their spears. On the boulder, the archer whipped his bow around, drawing the cord to his ear and aiming directly at Aran's chest.
"Stop right there, traveller!" the archer barked, his face twisting in malice. "Turn your boots around and walk the other way if you value your miserable life!"
Aran slowed his pace slightly, though he did not stop, ambling forward as though enjoying a pleasant stroll through a palace garden.
"Oh, good sir, I assure you, I value my life immensely," Aran replied with an easy, disarming smile. "My name is Aran Valeris, and it is a distinct pleasure to make your acquaintance. But you see, my dear mother was an exceptionally righteous woman. She always taught me that the world is a fragile balance of good and ill. If something foul is transpiring directly before your eyes, it is a man's sacred duty to counter-balance the scales."
The bandits exchanged baffled, wary looks. The archer's brow furrowed, his fingers tightening on the bowstring. "What in the bloody hell are you babbling about—?"
"So you see, good sirs," Aran continued, raising an empty right hand in a polite salute, "it is truly nothing personal. I am simply abiding by my mother's excellent teachings."
"Kill this lunatic!" the archer snarled, his jaw clenching as he prepared to release the shaft.
From the shadows of the pine grove, Rune took a deep, shuddering breath. The frantic racing of her heart subsided into the cold, empty stillness of the void. She drew the bowstring smoothly to the corner of her jaw, aligned the iron tip with the archer's exposed flank, and let fly.
The arrow cut through the mountain air with a sharp thrum, taking the archer cleanly through the jugular. It punched through gristle and tendon with a wet, hollow crack. He never finished his war cry; thick crimson spilt from his parted jaws like an overturned pitcher, drowning his breath in a red cascade as he dropped his weapon, tumbled off the rock shelf, and pitched forward into the dirt.
For a single fraction of a heartbeat, the clearing suspended itself in horror. The bandit company's focus fractured, their heads snapping toward the falling bowman—and in that fractured instant, Aran became a storm.
The lazy, amiable traveler vanished. He closed the distance across the stone-strewn road not with the wild scramble of a brawler, but with a terrifying, liquid grace. His blade left the scabbard in a silver blur, humming as it caught the crisp afternoon light. In one unbroken, fluid circle of steel, he passed between the two front marauders. There was no struggle, no clash of parrying iron; merely the whistle of parting air and two wet thuds as both heads left their shoulders simultaneously, spraying hot arterial mist into the dry pines.
"Rune!" Aran called out over the ringing silence of his strike, his voice crisp and cutting through the mountain air. "Flank the right! Let us see your form!"
Drawing her short steel blade, Rune felt no fear, only the clear, unyielding momentum of the training carved into her muscles over eight long days on the road. She vaulted over the fallen timber and charged into the clearing.
The two surviving brigands froze in paralyzed stupefaction, splattered by their companions' gore, their wits utterly shattered by the sheer speed of the slaughter.
Aran vaulted off the stones, his boots striking the ground beside the carriage with lethal precision. The nearer bandit swung his cutlass in a desperate, panicked slash, but Aran didn't even raise his edge. He stepped inside the arc, thrusting his heavy scabbard forward like a battering ram. The metal tip crushed directly into the man's knee with a sickening snap of splintering bone. The brigand collapsed, clutching his shattered limb, shrieking in agony.
The fourth man turned on his heel to flee, sprinting toward the thick birch woods.
He never made the treeline. Behind him, Rune emerged from the deadfall. In her urgency, the training with bow and blade slipped; the unseen current of the One Power surged through her veins, answering the instinctive flare of her will. Invisible threads caught the fleeing man around his waist and ankles, tearing him off his feet and hurling him ten feet into the air. His wild shriek was cut short as Rune severed the weave, letting gravity claim him; he plummeted headfirst onto the jagged granite outcrop below, his skull cracking open with finality.
Quiet descended upon the highway, broken only by the whimpering sobs of the wounded man writhing in the dust.
"Please... please, spare me... let me go..." the bandit wept, dragging himself backward by his elbows, his ruined leg trailing uselessly behind him.
Aran walked toward him without haste, wiping the crimson from his blade with a handful of dry moss before sliding it home into its sheath. From his belt, he drew a slender hunting dagger, kneeling beside the weeping outlaw with a cold, almost sorrowful serenity.
"Ah, my friend," Aran murmured softly, his hand settling firmly over the man's trembling shoulder. "If you are willing to take a life upon the open road, you should know that death comes for all men in turn. There is no escape from the balance."
Without a flicker of malice or anger, the knife slid steadily into the bandit's throat. The man convulsed once, his bloody hands clawing weakly at the road gravel, and then went entirely limp.
As the dying rattles faded into the sighing wind of the pine woods, the heavy silence broke with the scrape of wood on iron, and an old man's voice came from inside.