#king aemon

weep for them. weep for manetheren. weep for what is lost forever.

"From the city of Manetheren, Eldrene organized the flight of her people into the deepest forests and the fastness of the mountains. "But some did not flee. [...] No one made that journey who did not know that they would never return. But it was their land. It had been their fathers', and it would be their children's, and they went to pay the price of it. Not a step of ground was given up until it was soaked in blood, but at last the army of Manetheren was driven back, to here, this place you now call Emond's Field. And here the Trolloc hordes surrounded them." [...] No man or woman who had stood beneath the banner of the Red Eagle at the day's dawning still lived when night fell. The sword that could not be broken had been shattered. "In the Mountains of Mist, alone in the emptied city of Manetheren, Eldrene felt Aemon die, and her heart died with him. And where her heart had been was left only a thirst for vengeance, vengeance for her love, vengeance for her people and her land. Driven by grief she reached out to the True Source, and hurled the One Power at the Trolloc army. And there the Dreadlords died wherever they stood, whether in their secret councils or exhorting their soldiers. [...] Until, at last, no one of them remained in the lands of Manetheren. They were dispersed like dust before the whirlwind. […] "But the price was high for Manetheren. Eldrene had drawn to herself more of the One Power than any human could ever hope to wield unaided. As the enemy generals died, so did she die, and the fires that consumed her consumed the empty city of Manetheren, even the stones of it, down to the living rock of the mountains. Yet the people had been saved. "Nothing was left of their farms, their villages, or their great city. Some would say there was nothing left for them, nothing but to flee to other lands, where they could begin anew. They did not say so. They had paid such a price in blood and hope for their land as had never been paid before, and now they were bound to that soil by ties stronger than steel. Other wars would wrack them in years to come, until at last their corner of the world was forgotten and at last they had forgotten wars and the ways of war. Never again did Manetheren rise. Its soaring spires and splashing fountains became as a dream that slowly faded from the minds of its people. But they, and their children, and their children's children, held the land that was theirs. They held it when the long centuries had washed the why of it from their memories. They held it until today, there is you. Weep for Manetheren. Weep for what is lost forever." - Moiraine Damodred, the Eye of the World, excerpted from chapter nine.