What is dead may never die

Potential Spoilers Below

“Mat opened his mouth to say it was enough, then hesitated as he noticed that the mayor was talking quietly with a group of men. There were six of them, their vests drab and ragged, their black hair unkempt.

One was gesturing toward Mat and holding what looked to be a sheet of paper in his hand. Barlden shook his head, but the man with the paper gestured more insistently.

“Here now,” Mat said softly. “What’s this?”

“Mat, the sun . . .” Talmanes said.

The mayor pointed sharply, and the ragged men sidled away. The men who had brought the food were crowding around the dimming street, keeping to the center of it. Most were looking toward the horizon.

“Mayor,” Mat called. “That’s good enough. Make the throw!”

Barlden hesitated, glancing at him, then looked down at the dice in his hand almost as if he’d forgotten them. The men around him nodded anxiously, and so he raised his hand in a fist, rattling the dice. The mayor looked across the street to meet Mat’s eyes, then threw the dice onto the ground between them. They seemed too loud, a tiny rattling thunderstorm, like bones cracking against one another.

Mat held his breath. It had been a long while since he’d had reason to worry about a toss of the dice. He leaned down, watching the white cubes tumble against the dirt. How would his luck react to someone else throwing?

The dice came to a stop. A pair of fours. An outright winning throw. Mat released a long, relieved breath, though he felt a trickle of sweat down his temple.

“Mat . . .” Talmanes said softly, making him look up. The men standing on the road didn’t look so pleased. Several of them cheered in excitement until their friends explained that a winning throw from the mayor meant that Mat would take the prize. The crowd grew tense. Mat met Barlden’s eyes.

“Go,” the burly man said, gesturing in disgust toward Mat and turning away. “Take your spoils and leave this place. Never return.”

“Well,” Mat said, relaxing. “Thank you kindly for the game, then. We—”

“GO!” the mayor bellowed. He looked at the last slivers of sunlight on the horizon, then cursed and began waving for the men to enter The Tipsy Gelding. Some lingered, glancing at Mat with shock or hostility, but the mayor’s urgings soon bullied them into the low-roofed inn. He pulled the door shut and left Mat, Talmanes and the two soldiers standing alone on the street.

It suddenly seemed eerily quiet. There wasn’t a villager on the street. Shouldn’t there be some noise from inside the tavern, at least? Some clinking of mugs, some grumbling about the lost wager?

“Well,” Mat said, voice echoing against silent housefronts, “I guess that’s that.” He walked over to Pips, calming the horse, who had begun to shuffle nervously. “Now, see, I told you, Talmanes. Nothing to be worried about at all.”

And that’s when the screaming began.”

Note: Mat and his group had to fight and kill to make their way out of the town only to return the following day.  (I recommend that you read it)

“What is dead may never die,”

“Mat shook his head slowly. “No. Burn me, they’ve still got my gold. Come on, let’s see what he has to say.”

“It started several months back,” the mayor said, standing beside the window. They were in a neat—yet simple—sitting room in his manor. The curtains and carpet were of a soft pale green, almost the color of oxeye leaves, with light tan wood paneling. The mayor’s wife had brought tea made from dried sweetberries. Mat hadn’t chosen to drink any, and he had made certain to lean against the wall near the street door. His spear rested beside him.

Barlden’s wife was a short, brown-haired woman, faintly pudgy, with a motherly air. She returned from the kitchen, carrying a bowl of honey for the tea, then hesitated as she saw Mat leaning by the wall. She eyed the spear, then put the bowl on the table and retreated.”

“What happened?” Mat asked, glancing at Thom, who had also declined a seat. The old gleeman stood with arms crossed beside the door from the kitchens. He nodded to Mat; the woman wasn’t listening at the door. He’d make a motion if he heard someone approach.

“We aren’t sure if it was something we did, or just a cruel curse by the Dark One himself,” the mayor said. “It was a normal day, early this year, just before the Feast of Abram. Nothing really special about it that I can remember. The weather had broken by then, though the snows hadn’t come yet. A lot of us went about our normal activities the next morning, thinking nothing of it.

Representation of the Dark One

“The oddities were small, you see. A broken door here, a rip in someone’s clothing they didn’t remember. And the nightmares. We all shared them, nightmares of death and killing. A few of the women started talking, and they realized that they couldn’t remember turning in the previous evening. They could remember waking, safe and comfortable in their beds, but only a few remembered actually getting into bed. Those who could remember had gone to sleep early, before sunset. For the rest of us, the late evening was just a blur.”

He fell silent. Mat glanced at Thom, who did not respond. Mat could see in those blue eyes of his that he was memorizing the tale. He’d better get it right if he puts me in any ballads, Mat thought, folding his arms. And he’d better include my hat. This is a good bloody hat.”

Mat

“I was in the pastures that night,” the mayor continued. “I was helping old man Garken with a broken strip of fencing. And then . . . nothing. A fuzzing. I awoke the next morning in my own bed, next to my wife. We felt tired, as if we hadn’t slept well.” He stopped, then more softly, he added, “And I had the nightmares. They’re vague, and they fade. But I can remember one vivid image. Old man Garken, dead at my feet. Killed as if by a wild beast.”

Barlden stood next to a window in the eastern wall, opposite Mat, staring out. “But I went to see Garken the next day, and he was fine. We finished fixing the fence. It wasn’t until I got back to town that I heard the chattering. The shared nightmares, the missing hours just after sunset. We gathered, talking it through, and then it happened again. The sun set, and when it rose I woke up in bed again, tired, mind full of nightmares.” He shivered, then walked over to the table and poured himself a cup of tea.

“We don’t know what happens at night,” the mayor said, stirring in a spoonful of honey.

“You don’t know?” Mat demanded. “I can bloody tell you what happens at night. You—”

“We don’t know what happens,” the mayor interrupted, looking up sharply. “And have no care to know.”

“But—”

“We have no need to know, outlander,” the mayor said harshly. “We want to live our lives as best we can. Many of us turn in early, lying down before sunset. There are no holes in our memories that way. We go to bed, we wake up in that same bed. There are nightmares, perhaps some damage to the house, but nothing that can’t be fixed. Others prefer to visit a tavern and drink to the setting of the sun. There’s a blessing in that, I suppose. Drink all you want, and you never have to worry about getting home. You always wake safe and sound in bed.”

“You can’t avoid this entirely,” Thom said softly. “You can’t pretend nothing is different.”

“We don’t.” Barlden took a drink of tea. “We have the rules. Rules that you ignored. No fires lit after sunset—we can’t have a blaze starting in the night, without anyone to fight it. And we forbid outsiders inside the town after sunset. We learned that lesson quickly. The first people trapped here after nightfall were relatives of Sammrie the cooper. We found blood on the walls of his home the next morning. But his sister and her family were safely asleep in the beds he’d given them.” The mayor paused. “Now they have the same nightmares we do.”

“So just leave,” Mat said. “Leave this bloody place and go somewhere else!”

“We’ve tried,” the mayor said. “We always wake up back here, no matter how far we go. Some have tried ending their lives. We buried the bodies. They woke up the next morning in their beds.”

The room fell silent.

“Blood and bloody ashes,” Mat whispered. He felt chilled.

“You survived the night,” the mayor said, stirring his tea again. “I assumed that you hadn’t, after seeing that bloodstain. We were curious to see where you’d wake up. Most of the rooms in the inns are permanently taken by travelers who are now, for better or worse, part of our village. We aren’t able to choose where someone awakens. It just happens. An empty bed gets a new occupant, and from then on they wake up there each morning.

“Anyway, when I heard you talking to one another about what you’d seen, I realized that you must have escaped. You remember the night too vividly. Anyone who . . . joins us simply has the nightmares. Count yourselves lucky. I suggest you move on and forget Hinderstap.”

“We have Aes Sedai with us,” Thom said. “They might be able to do something to help you. We could tell the White Tower, have them send—”

Aes Sedai

The White Tower

“No!” Barlden said sharply. “Our lives aren’t so bad, now that we know how to deal with our situation. We don’t want Aes Sedai eyes on us.” He turned away. “We nearly turned your group away flat. We do that, sometimes, if we sense that the travelers won’t obey our rules. But you had Aes Sedai with you. They ask questions, they get curious. We worried that if we turned you away, they’d get suspicious and force entrance.”

“Forcing them to leave at sunset made them even more curious,” Mat said. “And having their bathing attendants bloody try to kill them isn’t a good way to keep the secret either.”

The mayor looked wan. “Some wished . . . well, that you’d be trapped here. They thought that if Aes Sedai were bound here, they’d find a way out for all of us. We don’t all agree. Either way, it’s our problem. Please, just. . . . Just go.”

“Fine.” Mat stood up straight and picked up his spear. “But first, tell me where these came from.” He pulled the paper from his pocket, the one that bore a drawing of his face.

Barlden glanced at it. “You’ll find those spread around the nearby villages,” he said. “Someone’s looking for you. As I told Ledron last night, I’m not in the business of selling out guests. I wasn’t about to kidnap you and risk keeping you here overnight just for some reward.”

“Who’s looking for me?” Mat repeated.

“About twenty leagues to the northeast, there’s a small town called Trustair. Rumor says that if you want a little coin, you can bring news about a man who looks like the one in this picture, or the other one. Visit an inn in Trustair called The Shaken Fist to find the one looking for you.”

“Other picture?” Mat asked, frowning.

“Yes. A burly fellow with a beard. A note at the bottom says he has golden eyes.”

Mat glanced at Thom, who’d raised a bushy eyebrow.

“Blood and bloody ashes,” Mat muttered and pulled the side of his hat down. Who was looking for him and Perrin, and what did they want? “We’ll be going, I suppose,” he said. He glanced at Barlden. Poor fellow. That went for the entire village. But what was Mat to do about it? There were fights you could win, and others you just had to leave for someone else.

“They paid the iron price”

“Your gold is on the wagon outside,” the mayor said. “We didn’t take any from your winnings.

The food is there too.” He met Mat’s eyes. “We hold to our word, here. Other things are out of our control, particularly for those who don’t listen to the rules. But we aren’t going to rob a man just because he’s an outsider.”

“Mighty tolerant of you,” Mat said flatly, pulling open the door. “Have a good day, then, and when night comes, try not to kill anyone I wouldn’t kill. Thom, you coming?”

The gleeman joined him, limping slightly from his old wound. Mat glanced back at Barlden, who stood with sleeves rolled up in the center of the room, looking down at his teacup. He seemed like he was wishing that cup held something a little stronger.

“Poor fellow,” Mat said, then stepped out into the morning light after Thom and pulled the door shut behind him.

“I assume we’re going after that person spreading around pictures of you?” Thom asked.

“Right as Light, we are,” Mat said, tying his ashandarei to Pips’ saddle. “It’s on the way to Four Kings anyway. I’ll lead your horse if you can drive the wagon.”

Mat holding his ashandarei

Thom nodded. He was studying the mayor’s home.

“What?” Mat asked.

“Nothing, lad,” the gleeman said. “It’s just . . . well, it’s a sad tale. Something’s wrong in the world. There’s a snag in the Pattern here. The town unravels at night, and then the world tries to reset it each morning to make things right again.”

“Well, they should be more forthcoming,” Mat said. The villagers had pulled the food-filled wagon up while Mat and Thom had been chatting with the mayor. It was hitched to two strong draft horses, tan of coloring and wide of hoof.

“More forthcoming?” Thom asked. “How? The mayor is right, they did try to warn us.”

Mat grunted, walking over to open the chest and check on his gold. It was there, as the mayor had said. “I don’t know,” he said. “They could put up a warning sign or something. Hello. Welcome to Hinderstap. We will murder you in the night and eat your bloody face if you stay past sunset. Try the pies. Martna Baily makes them fresh daily.”

Thom didn’t chuckle. “Poor taste, lad. There’s too much tragedy in this town for levity.”

“Funny,” Mat said. He counted out about as much gold as he figured would be a good price for the food and the wagon. Then, after a moment, he added ten more silver crowns. He set all of this in a pile on the mayor’s doorstep, then closed the chest. “The more tragic things get, the more I feel like laughing.”

“Are we really going to take this wagon?”

“We need the food,” Mat said, lashing the chest to the back of the wagon. Several large wheels of white cheese and a half dozen legs of mutton lay prominently alongside the casks of ale. The food smelled good, and his stomach rumbled. “I won it fair.” He glanced at the villagers passing on the street. When he’d first seen them the day before, he’d thought the slowness of their pace was due to the lazy nature of the mountain villagers. Now it struck him that there was another reason entirely.

He turned back to his work, checking the horses’ harness. “And I don’t feel a bit bad taking the wagon and horses. I doubt these villagers are going to be doing much traveling in the future. . . .”

“but rises again, harder and stronger.”

“That had dried out the Mora at Merrilor and let the Trollocs cross the river with ease. Grady could open that dam in a moment—a strike with the One Power would open it up and release the water from the canyon. So far, he hadn’t dared. Cauthon had ordered him not to attack, but beyond that, he’d never be able to defeat three strong Dreadlords on his own. They’d kill him and dam the river again.

Myrddraal leading Trollocs

He caressed his wife’s letter, then prepared himself. Cauthon had ordered him to make a gateway at dawn to that same village. Doing so would reveal Grady. He didn’t know the purpose of the order.

The basin below was filled with water, covering the bodies of the fallen.

I guess now will do as well as any time, Grady thought, taking a deep breath. Dawn should be almost here, though the cloud cover kept the land dark.

He’d follow his orders. Light burn him, but he would. But if Cauthon survived the battle downriver, he and Grady would have words. Stern ones. A man like Cauthon, born of ordinary folk, should have known better than to throw away lives.

He took another deep breath, then began to weave a gateway. He opened it at that village the people had come from yesterday. He didn’t know why he was to do this; the village had been depopulated to make up the group that had fought earlier. He doubted anybody remained. What had Mat called it? Hinderstap?

People roared through the gateway, yelling, holding aloft cleavers, pitchforks, rusty swords. With them came more soldiers of the Band, like the hundred who had fought here before. Except . . .

Except by the light of the Dreadlords’ fires, the faces of those soldiers were the same as the ones who had fought here before . . . fought here and died.

Grady gaped as he stood up in the darkness, watching those people attack. They were all the same. The same matrons, the same farrier's and blacksmiths, the very same people. He’d watched them die, and now they were back again.

The Trollocs probably couldn’t tell one human from another, but the Dreadlords saw it—and understood that these were the same people. Those three Dreadlords seemed stunned. One of the Dreadlords yelled out about the Dark Lord abandoning them. He started flinging weaves at the people.

Those people just charged on, heedless of the danger as many of their number were blown apart. They fell on the Dreadlords, hacking at them with farming implements and kitchen knives. By the time the Trollocs attacked, the Dreadlords were down. Now he could. . . .”

“Shaking off his stupor, Grady gathered his power and destroyed the dam blocking the canyon.

And in doing so, he released the river.”

Note: I shared this story to show you that these two stories (The Wheel of Time & A Song of Ice and Fire) share too many similarities to be coincidental.  Like I have said on numerous occasions they seem to be mirror worlds of each other.  Did the authors corroborate with each other on their books?  I don’t know?  This story to me is metaphorically the words of the Ironborn: “What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.”  In case you missed it the first time the towns people of Hinderstap died fighting the Dreadlords and Trollocs they ended up face down in the water similar to the way the priests of the Drowned God drown their followers.

“The Drowned God shall decide who sits the Seastone Chair,” the priest said. “Kneel, that I might bless you.” Lord Merlyn sank to his knees, and Aeron uncorked his skin and poured a stream of seawater on his bald pate. “Lord God who drowned for us, let Meldred your servant be born again from the sea. Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel.” Water ran down Merlyn’s fat cheeks to soak his beard and fox-fur mantle. “What is dead may never die,” Aeron finished, “but rises again, harder and stronger.” But when Merlyn rose, he told him, “Stay and listen, that you may spread god’s word.”

Aeron

“Three feet from the water’s edge the waves broke around a rounded granite boulder. It was there that Aeron Damphair stood, so all his school might see him, and hear the words he had to say.

“We were born from the sea, and to the sea we all return,” he began, as he had a hundred times before. “The Storm God in his wrath plucked Balon from his castle and cast him down, and now he feasts beneath the waves.” He raised his hands. “The iron king is dead! Yet a king will come again! For what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger!”

Balon

“A king shall rise!” the drowned men cried.

“He shall. He must. But who?” The Damphair listened a moment, but only the waves gave answer. “Who shall be our king?”

The drowned men began to slam their driftwood cudgels one against the other. “Damphair!” they cried. “Damphair King! Aeron King! Give us Damphair!”

Aeron shook his head. “If a father has two sons and gives to one an axe and to the other a net, which does he intend should be the warrior?”

“The axe is for the warrior,” Rus shouted back, “the net for a fisher of the seas.”

Comments encouraged.  Love to hear the ideas of others.  Most believe that since I present my idea’s as “fact like” I’m not open to change my viewpoints which is far from the truth.  I simply look at the information presented and go from there.  If you can shine a light on another way of thinking that opens the door to debate.