The Threads Burn

The Threads Burn

Rand stopped. A long scorch along the corridor wall marked where half a dozen costly tapestries had gone to ash. Flames licked upward on another; a number of inlaid chests and tables were only charred ruins. Not his work. Thirty paces further on, red-coated men in breastplates and helmets with barred face-guards lay contorted in death on the white floor-tiles, useless swords in hand. Not his work either. Rahvin had been wasteful of his own in attempting to reach Rand. He had been clever in his attacks, clever in his escapes, but from the moment he fled the throne-room he had not faced Rand for more than the instant it took to strike and flee. Rahvin was strong, perhaps as strong as Rand, and more knowledgeable, but Rand had the fat-little-man angreal in his pocket, and Rahvin had none.

The corridor was doubly familiar, once for having seen it before, once for having seen something similar.

I walked this way with Elayne and Gawyn the day I met Morgase. The thought slithered painfully along the boundaries of the Void. He was cold in there, without emotion. Saidin raged and burned, but he was icy calm.

And another thought, like a stab. She lay on a floor like this, her golden hair spread as though sleeping. Ilyena Sunhair. My Ilyena.

Elaida had been there that day, too. She Foretold the pain I'd bring. She knew the darkness in me. Some of it. Enough.

Ilyena, I did not know what I was doing. I was mad! 1 am mad. Oh. Ilyena!

Elaida knew - some - but she did not tell even all of that. Better if she had told

Oh, Light, is there no forgiveness? I did what I did in madness. Is there no mercy?

Gareth Bryne would have killed me, had he known. Morgase would have ordered my death. Morgase would be alive, perhaps. Elayne's mother alive. Aviendha alive. Mat. Moiraine. How many alive, if I had died?

I have earned my torment. I deserve the final death. Oh, Ilyena, I deserve death

I deserve death

Bootsteps behind him. He turned.

They came out of a broad crossing corridor not twenty paces from him, two dozen men in breastplates and helmets and the white-collared red coats of the Queen's Guards. Except that Andor had no queen now, and these men had not served her while she lived. A Myrddraal led them, pale eyeless face like something found under a rock, overlapping plates of black armor heightening the illusion of a serpent as it moved, black cloak hanging motionless however it moved. The look of the Eyeless was fear, but fear was a distant thing in the Void. They hesitated when they saw him; then the Halfman raised its black-bladed sword. Men who had not already drawn put hands to hilts.

Rand - he thought that was his name - channeled in a way he could not remember doing before.

Men and Myrddraal stiffened where they stood. White frost grew thick on them, frost that smoked as Mat's boots had smoked. The Myrddraal's upraised arm broke off with a loud crack. When it hit the floortiles, arm and sword shattered.

Rand could feel the cold - yes, that was his name; Rand - cold like a knife as he walked past and turned the way they had come. Cold, yet warmer than saidin.

A man and a woman crouched against the wall, servants liveried in red and white, short of their middle years and holding each other as though for protection. Seeing Rand - there was more to the name; not just Rand - the man started to rise from where he had huddled away from the Myrddraal-led band, but the woman hauled him back by his sleeve.

"Go in peace," Rand said, putting out a hand. Al'Thor. Yes, Rand al'Thor. "I'll not hurt you, but you could be hurt if you stay."

The woman's brown eyes rolled up in her head. She would have collapsed in a heap if the man had not caught her, and his narrow mouth was working rapidly, as if he was praying but could not get the words out.

Rand looked where the man was looking. His hand had stretched out of his coatsleeve far enough to bare the Dragon's golden maned head that was part of his skin. "I will not hurt you," he said, and walked on, leaving them there. He had Rahvin to corner yet. Rahvin to kill. And then?

No sound but the click of his boots on the tiles. And deep in his head, a faint voice murmuring mournfully of Ilyena and forgiveness. He strained to feel Rahvin channeling, to feel the man filled with the True Source. Nothing. Saidin seared his bones, froze his flesh, scoured his soul, but from without it was not easy to see until you were close. A lion in high grass, Asmodean had said once. A rabid lion. Should Asmodean count among those who should not have died? Or Lanfear? No. Not -

He had only a moment's warning to throw himself flat, a hair-thin slice of time between feeling flows suddenly woven and an arm-thick bar of white light, liquid fire, slicing through the wall, ripping across like a sword through where his chest had been. Where that bar slashed, on both sides of the hallways, wall and friezes, doors and tapestries ceased to exist. Severed wall-hangings and chunks of stone and plaster broken free rained to the floor.

So much for the Forsaken fearing to use balefire. Who had told him that? Moiraine. She surely had deserved to live.

Balefire leaped from his hands, a brilliant white shaft streaking toward where that other bar had originated. The other failed even as his punched through the wall, leaving a purple afterimage fanning across his vision. He released his own flow. Had he done it finally?

Scrambling to his feet, he channeled Air, slamming ruined doors open so hard that the remnants ripped from the hinges. Inside, the room was empty. A sitting room, with chairs arrayed before a great marble fireplace. His balefire had taken a bite out of one of the arches leading to a small courtyard with a fountain, and another from one of the fluted columns along the walk beyond.

Rahvin had not gone that way, though, and he had not died in that blast of balefire. A residue hung in the air, a fading remnant of woven saidin. Rand recognized it. Different from the gateway he had made to Skim to Caemlyn, or the one to Travel - he knew now that was what he had done - into the throne room. But he had seen one like this in Tear, had made one himself.

He wove another now. A gateway, an opening at least, a hole in reality. It was not blackness on the other side. In fact, if he had not known the way was there, if he could not have seen the weave of it, he might not have known. There before him were the same arches opening onto the same courtyard and fountain, the same columned walk. For an instant the neatly rounded holes his balefire had made in arch and column wavered, filled, then were holes again. Wherever that gateway led, it was to somewhere else, a reflection of the Royal palace as once it had been a reflection of the Stone of Tear. Vaguely he regretted not talking to Asmodean about it while he had the chance, but he had never been able to speak 212v214c of that day to anyone. It did not matter. On that day he had carried Callandor, but the angreal in his pocket had already proved enough to harry Rahvin.

Stepping through quickly, he loosed the weave and hurried away across the courtyard as the gateway vanished. Rahvin would have felt that gate if he was close enough and trying. The fat little stone man did not mean he could stand and wait to be attacked.

No sign of life, except for himself and one fly. That was the way it had been in Tear, too. Stand-lamps in the hallways stood unlit, with pale wicks that had never seen a flame, yet even in what should have been the dimmest hall there was light, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere. Sometimes those lamps moved, too, and other things as well. Between one glance and the next a tall lamp might have moved a foot, a vase in a niche an inch. Little things, as if someone had shifted them in the time his eyes were away. Wherever this was, it was a strange place.

It came to him, as he trotted along another colonnade, sensing for Rahvin, that he had not heard the voice crying over Ilyena since he channeled balefire. Perhaps he had somehow chased Lews Therin out of his head.

Good. He stopped at the edge of one of the palace gardens. The roses and whitestar bushes looked as drought bedraggled as they would have in the real palace. On some of the white spires rising above the rooftops, the White Lion banner rippled, but which spire could change in the blink of an eye. Good, if I don't have to share my head with -

He felt odd. Insubstantial. He raised his arm, and stared. He could see the garden through coatsleeve and arm as through a mist. A mist that was thinning. When he glanced down, he could see the walk's paving stones through himself.

No! It was not his thought. An image began to coalesce. A tall, dark-eyed man with a worry-creased face and more white in his hair than brown. I am Lews Ther-

I am Rand al'Thor, Rand broke in. He did not know what was happening, but the faint Dragon was beginning to fade from the misty arm held in front of his face. The arm began to look darker, the fingers on his hand longer. I am me. That echoed in the Void. I am Rand al'Thor.

He fought to picture himself in his own mind, struggled to make the image of what he saw in the mirror every day shaving, what he saw in a stand-mirror dressing. It was a frantic fight. He had never really looked at himself. The two images waxed and waned, the older dark-eyed man and the younger with blue-gray eyes. Slowly the younger image firmed, the older faded. Slowly his arm grew more solid. His arm, with the Dragon twined around it and the heron branded into his palm. There had been times he hated those marks, but now, even enclosed within the emotionless Void, he almost grinned to see them.

Why had Lews Therin tried to take him over? To make him into Lews Therin. He was sure that was who that dark-eyed man with the suffering face had been. Why now? Because he could in this place, whatever it was? Wait. It had been Lews Therin who shouted that adamant "no." Not an attack by Lews Therin. By Rahvin, and not using the Power. If the man had been able to do this back in Caemlyn, the real Caemlyn, he would have. It had to be some ability he had gained here. And if Rahvin had gained it, perhaps he had too. The image of himself had been what held him, brought him back.

He focused on the nearest rosebush, a thing a span high, and imagined it growing thin, foggy. Obediently, it melted away to nothing, but as soon as the picture in his mind was nothing, the rosebush was suddenly back, just as it had been.

Rand nodded coldly. It had limits, then. There were always limits and rules, and he did not know them here. But he knew the Power, as much as Asmodean had taught him and he had taught himself, and saidin was still in him, all the sweetness of life, all the corruption of death. Rahvin had to have seen him to attack. With the Power you had to see something to affect it, or know exactly where it was in relation to you down to a hair. Perhaps it was different here, but he did not think so. He almost wished Lews Therin had not gone silent again. The man might know this place and its rules.

Balconies and windows overlooked the garden, in some places four stories high. Rahvin had tried to unmake him. He drew on the raging torrent of saidin through the angreal. Lightnings flashed from the sky, a hundred forking silver bolts, more, stabbing at every window, every balcony. Thunder filled the garden, erupting chunks of stone. The air itself crackled, and the hair on his arms and chest tried to stand under his shirt. Even the hair on his head began to lift. He let the lightnings die. Here and there bits of shattered stone window frame and balcony broke loose, the crash of their fall muted by the echoes of thunder still ringing in his ears.

Gaping holes peered down now where windows had. They looked like sockets in some monstrous skull, the ruined balconies like a dozen splintered mouths. If Rahvin had been at any of them, he was surely dead. Rand would not believe it until he saw the corpse. He wanted to see Rahvin dead.

Wearing a snarl he did not know was there, he stalked back into the palace. He had wanted to see Rahvin die.

Nynaeve hurled herself flat and scrambled along the hall floor as something slashed through the nearest wall. Moghedien slithered as fast as she, but if the woman had not, she would have hauled her by the a'dam. Had that been Rand, or Rahvin? She had seen bars of white fire, liquid light, like that in Tanchico, and she had no wish to be anywhere near one again. She did not know what it was, and she did not want to know. I want to Heal, burn both of these fool men, not learn a fancy way to kill!

She levered herself up to a crouch, peered back the way they had come. Nothing. An empty palace hallway. With a ten-foot long gash through both walls, as neat as any stoneworker could have done, and bits of tapestry lying on the floor. No sign of either man. She had not had a glimpse of either so far. Only their handiwork. Sometimes that handiwork had almost been her. A good thing that she could draw on Moghedien's anger, filter it out of the terror clawing to escape and let it seep into her. Her own was a pitiful thing that would scarcely have allowed her to sense the True Source, much less channel the flow of Spirit that kept her in Tel'aran'rhiod.

Moghedien was hunched over on her knees, dry retching. Nynaeve's mouth tightened. The woman had tried to remove the a'dam again. Her cooperation had faded quickly when they discovered Rand and Rahvin actually here in Tel'aran'rhiod. Well, trying to unfasten that collar when it was around your neck was its own punishment. At least Moghedien did not have anything left in her stomach this time.

"Please." Moghedien caught at Nynaeve's skirt. "I tell you, we must get away." Stark panic made her voice painful. Moghedien's clawing terror mirrored itself on her face. "They are here in the flesh. The flesh!"

"Be quiet," Nynaeve said absently. "Unless you've lied to me, that is an advantage. For me." The other woman claimed that being in the World of Dreams physically limited your control of the Dream. Or rather, she admitted it, after letting a bit of the knowledge slip. She had admitted, too, that Rahvin did not know Tel'aran'rhiod as well as she. Nynaeve hoped that meant he did not know it as well as she did. That he knew more than Rand, she did not doubt. That wool-headed man! Whatever his reason for coming after Rahvin, he should never have let the man lead him here, where he did not know the rules, where thoughts could kill.

"Why will you not understand what I tell you? Even if they had only dreamed themselves here, either would be stronger than we. Here in the flesh, they could crush us without blinking. In the flesh they can draw saidin more deeply than we can draw saidar dreaming."

"We are linked." Still not paying attention, Nynaeve gave her braid a sharp pull. No way to tell which direction they had gone. And no warning of anything until she saw them. Somehow it still seemed unfair that they could channel without her being able to see or feel the flows. A stand-lamp that had been sliced in two was suddenly whole again, then not, just as quickly. That white fire must be incredibly powerful. Tel'aran'rhiod usually healed itself rapidly whatever you did to it.

"You brainless fool," Moghedien sobbed, shaking Nynaeve's skirt with both hands as if wanting to shake Nynaeve. "It does not matter how brave you are. We are linked, but you contribute nothing the way you are. Not a shred. It is my strength, and your madness. They are here in the flesh, not dreaming! They are using things you have never dreamed of! They will destroy us if we stay!"

"Keep your voice down," Nynaeve snapped. "Do you want to bring one of them down on us?" She looked both ways hurriedly, but the hallway was still empty. Had that been footsteps, boots? Rand or Rahvin? One had to be approached as carefully as the other. A man in a fight for his life could strike out before he saw they were friends. Well, that she was, anyway.

"We must go," Moghedien insisted, but she did lower her voice. She got to her feet, sullen defiance twisting her mouth. Fear and anger writhed inside her, first one stronger, then the other. "Why should I help you any further? This is madness!"

"Would you rather feel the nettles again?"

Moghedien flinched, yet her dark eyes remained stubborn. "You think I will let them kill me rather than be hurt by you? You are mad. I will not stir from this spot until you are ready to take us away from here."

Nynaeve jerked her braid again. If Moghedien refused to walk, she would have to drag her. Not a very quick way to search, with what seemed miles of palace corridors yet to go. She should have been harsher when the woman first tried balking. In Nynaeve's place, Moghedien would have killed without hesitation, or, if she thought the other useful, woven the trick of taking someone's will, making them worship her... Nynaeve had tasted that once, in Tanchico, and even had she known how it was done, she did not think she could do it to somebody else. She despised this woman, hated her with all her being. But even if she had not needed her, she could not have killed her just standing there. The trouble was, she was afraid that Moghedien knew that too, now.

Still, a Wisdom headed the Women's Circle - even if the Circle did not always agree - and the Women's Circle dealt out punishments to women who broke the law or offended custom too deeply, and to men, too, for some transgressions. She might not have Moghedien's stomach for killing, for crushing people's minds, but...

Moghedien opened her mouth, and Nynaeve filled it with a gag of Air. Or rather she made Moghedien do it; with the a'dam linking them, it was like channeling herself, but Moghedien knew it was her own abilities being used like a tool in Nynaeve's hand. Dark eyes glittered indignantly as Moghedien's own flows snared her arms to her sides and pulled her skirts tight around her ankles. For the rest, Nynaeve used the a'dam, just as with the nettles, creating the sensations she wanted the other woman to feel. Not the reality; the feel of reality.

Moghedien stiffened in her bonds as a leather strap seemed to strike her bottom. That was what it would feel like to her. Outrage and humiliation rolled through the leash. And contempt. Compared to her elaborate ways of hurting people, this seemed suitable for a child.

"When you are ready to cooperate again," Nynaeve said, "just nod." This could not take long. She could not just stand there while Rand and Rahvin tried to kill one another. If the wrong one died because she avoided danger by letting Moghedien keep her there...

Nynaeve remembered a day when she was sixteen, just after she had been judged old enough to put her hair in a braid. She had stolen a plum pudding from Corin Ayellin on a dare from Nela Thane and walked out the kitchen door right into Mistress Ayellin. Adding the aftermath, sending it along the leash in a lump, made Moghedien's eyes pop.

Grimly, Nynaeve did it again. She won't stop me short! Again. I will help Rand whatever she thinks! Again. Even if it kills us! Again. Oh, Light, she could be right; Rand could kill us both before he knows it's me. Again. Light, I hate being afraid! Again. I hate her! Again. I hate her! Again.

Abruptly she realized Moghedien was jerking frantically in her bonds, nodding her head so violently it seemed about to come off. For a moment, Nynaeve gaped at the other woman's tear-streaked face, then stopped what she was doing and hurriedly unraveled the flows of Air. Light, what had she done? She was not Moghedien. "I take it you won't give me any more trouble?"

"They will kill us," the other woman mumbled faintly, and nearly unintelligibly through her sobs, but at the same time she nodded a hurried acquiescence.

Deliberately, Nynaeve hardened herself. Moghedien deserved everything she had gotten and much, much more. In the Tower, one of the Forsaken would have been stilled and executed as soon as the trial could be concluded, and little evidence needed beside who she was. "Good. Now we -"

Thunder shook the entire palace, or something very much like thunder, except that the walls rattled and dust rose off the floor. Nynaeve half fell into Moghedien, and they danced trying to keep their feet. Before the upheaval had faded completely, it was replaced by a roar like some monstrous fire racing up a chimney the size of a mountain. That lasted only a moment. The silence after seemed deeper than before. No. There were boots. A man running. The sound echoed down the hallway. From the north.

Nynaeve pushed the other woman away. "Come on."

Moghedien whimpered, but did not resist being pulled down the hall. Her eyes were huge, though, and her breath came too fast. Nynaeve thought it was a good thing she had Moghedien along, and not just for access to the One Power. After all her years hiding in shadows, the Spider was such a coward she almost made Nynaeve feel brave by comparison. Almost. It was only anger at her own fear that made her able to hold on to that one flow of Spirit that kept her in Tel'aran'rhiod, now. Moghedien was stark terror to her bones.

Pulling Moghedien behind her by the gleaming leash, Nynaeve quickened her step. Chasing the fading sound of those other steps.

Rand stepped into the round courtyard warily. Half of the white-paved circle cut into the structure rising three stories behind him; the other half was bounded by a stone semicircle atop pale columns five paces high, sticking out into yet another garden, shaded gravel walks beneath low spreading trees. Marble benches surrounded a pool with lily-pads. And fish, gold and white and red.

Suddenly the benches shifted, flowed, changed into faceless man-shapes, still as white and hard-looking as the stone. He had already learned the difficulty of changing something that Rahvin had altered. Lightning danced from his fingertips, shattering stone men to shards.

The air became water. Choking, Rand struggled to swim toward the columns; he could see the garden beyond. There must be some kind of barrier to stop all the water pouring out. Before he could channel, gold and red and white shapes were darting around him, larger than the fish in the pool had been. And with teeth. They ripped at him; blood curled up in red mist. Instinctively he flailed at the fish with his hands, but the cold part of him, deep in the Void, channeled. Balefire flared, at the barrier if there was one, at any place Rahvin might be to see this courtyard. The water roiled, throwing him around violently, as it rushed in to fill the empty tunnels carved by balefire. Flickers of gold and white and red darted at him, adding new threads of crimson to the water. Tossed about, he could not see to aim his wild bolts; they flashed in every direction. No breath left. He tried to think of air, or the water being air.

Suddenly it was. He dropped hard to the paving stones among small fish flopping about, rolled over and pushed himself up. It was all air again; even his clothes were dry. The stone ring flickered between standing untouched and lying in ruins with half the columns down. Some of the trees lay tangled atop their own stumps, then stood whole, then were fallen again. The palace behind him had holes punched in white walls, even one through a high gilded dome above, and gashes slashed across windows, some with pierce-work stone screens. The damage all flickered, vanishing and reappearing. Not the slow, sometime shifts of before, but constant. Damage, then none, then some, then none, then all again.

Wincing, he pressed his hand to his side, to the old, half-healed wound. It stung as if his exertions had nearly torn it open. He stung all over, from a dozen or more bleeding bites. That had not changed. The bloody rips in his coat and breeches were still there! Had he managed to change the water back to air? Or had one of his frenzied bolts of balefire driven Rahvin off, or even killed him? It did not matter, unless it was the last.

Wiping blood out of his eyes, he studied the windows and balconies around the garden, the colonnade high on the far side. Or rather, he started to, but something else caught his eye. Below the colonnade, he could just make out the fading remnants of a weave. From there he could tell it was a gateway, but to see what kind and where it led, he had to be closer. Leaping over a jumble of worked stone that vanished while he was above it, he darted across the garden, dodging around trees fallen on the walkway. That residue was almost gone; he had to get close enough before it vanished completely.

Abruptly he fell, gravel scraping his palms as he caught himself. He could not see anything that might have tripped him. He felt woozy, almost as if he had been hit on the head. He tried to scramble to his feet, to reach that residue. And realized his body was writhing. Long hair covered his hands; his fingers seemed to be shrinking, drawing back into his hands. They were almost paws. A trap. Rahvin had not fled. The gateway had been a trap, and he had walked into it.

Desperation clung to the Void as he struggled to cling to himself. His hands. They were hands. Almost hands. He forced himself up. His legs seemed to bend wrong. The True Source receded; the Void shrank. Streaks of panic flared beyond the emotionless emptiness. Whatever Rahvin was trying to change him to, it could not channel. Saidin slipping away, thinning, thin even pulled through the angreal. The surrounding balconies stared down at him, empty, and the colonnade. Rahvin had to be at one of those stone-screened windows, but which? He had no strength for a hundred lightning bolts this time. One burst. He could manage that. If he did it quickly. Which window? He fought to be himself, fought to draw saidin into him, welcomed every stain of the taint as evidence that he still held the Power. Staggering in a crooked circle, searching vainly, he roared Rahvin's name. It sounded like a beast's roar.

Pulling Moghedien behind her, Nynaeve rounded the corner. Ahead of her, a man vanished around the next turning, the sound of his boots echoing behind. She did not know how long she had been following those boots. Sometimes they had gone silent, and she had had to wait for them to start again to gain a direction. Sometimes when they stopped things happened; she had not seen any of it, but once the palace had rung like a struck bell, and another time the hair on her head had tried to stand up as the air seemed to crackle, and another... It did not matter. This was the first time she had caught a glimpse of the man who wore those boots. She did not think it was Rand in that black coat. The height was right, but he was too large, too heavy in the chest.

She was running before she knew it. Her stout shoes had long since become velvet slippers for silence. If she could hear him, he could hear her. Moghedien's frenzied panting was louder than their footfalls.

Nynaeve reached the turn and stopped, peeking cautiously around the corner. She held saidar - through Moghedien, but it was hers - ready to channel. There was no need. The hallway was empty. A door stood far down a wall with windows filled with arabesque-pierced stone, but she did not think he could have reached that. Nearer, another corridor ran off to the right. She hurried to that, looked warily again. Empty. But a staircase spiraled upward just beyond where the hallways met.

For a moment she hesitated. He had been hurrying somewhere. This corridor led back the way they had come. Would he have been running to go back? Up then.

Drawing Moghedien behind her, she climbed the steps slowly, straining to hear anything except the Forsaken's nearly hysterical breath and the blood pounding in her own ears. If she found herself face to face with him... She knew he was there already, somewhere ahead. Surprise had to be on her side.

At the first landing, she paused. The hallways here mirrored those below. They were just as empty, too, just as silent. Had he gone on up?

The stair quivered faintly beneath her feet as if the palace had been struck by a huge battering ram, then another. Again, as a bar of white fire punched through the top of one of the stone-screened windows, skewed wildly upward at an angle, then winked out as it started to slice into the ceiling.

Nynaeve swallowed, blinking in a vain effort to rid herself of the pale violet fan that hung across her vision in memory of the thing. That had to be Rand, trying to strike at Rahvin. If she was too close to him, Rand might catch her by accident. If he was flailing like that - it had had the look of flailing to her - he could catch her anywhere without knowing it.

The quivers had ceased. Moghedien's eyes shone with terror. By what Nynaeve felt through the a'dam, it was a wonder the woman was not writhing on the floor, shrieking and frothing at the mouth. Nynaeve felt a little like shrieking herself. She made herself put her foot on the next step. Up was as good a way as any. The second step was almost as hard. Slowly, though. No need to come on him too suddenly. Surprise had to be on his part. Moghedien followed like a whipped dog, shivering.

As Nynaeve climbed, she embraced saidar as fully as she could, as much as Moghedien could handle, to the point where the sweetness of it became almost a pain. That was the warning. More, and she would approach the point where it was more than she could take in, the point where she would still herself, burn the ability to channel right out of herself. Or perhaps out of Moghedien, under the circumstances. Or both of them. Any way at all, it would be disaster now. She held that point though, the... life... filling her a needle's light pressure just short of breaking skin. It was as much as she could have embraced had she been channeling on her own. She and Moghedien were much the same strength in the Power; Tanchico had proved that. Was it enough? Moghedien insisted the men were stronger. Rahvin, at least - Moghedien knew him - and it did not seem likely Rand could have survived this long unless he was just as strong. It was not fair that men should have the muscles and greater strength in the Power too. The Aes Sedai in the Tower had always said they had been equal. It just was not -

She was babbling. Taking a deep breath, she drew Moghedien behind her off the staircase. This was as high as it went.

This hall was empty. She went to where it met the crossing corridor, peeked. And there he was. A tall black-clad man, large, with wings of white in his dark hair, peering through the curving slots of one of the stone window-screens at something below. There was sweat and effort on his face, but he seemed to be smiling. A handsome face, as handsome as Galad's, but she felt no quickening of her breath for this one.

Whatever he was staring at - Rand perhaps? - had his full attention, but Nynaeve gave him no chance to notice her. It might be Rand down there. She could not tell whether Rahvin was channeling or not. She filled the corridor around him with fire from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, pouring into it all of saidar she held, fire so hot the stone itself smoked. The heat made her flinch back.

Rahvin screamed in the middle of the flame - it was one flame - and staggered away from her, back to where the hallway became a columned walk. A heartbeat, less, while she still flinched, and he stood, inside the flame but surrounded by clear air. Every scrap of saidar she could channel was going into that inferno, but he held it at bay. She could see him through the fire; it gave everything a red cast, but she could see. Smoke rose from his charred coat. His face was a seared ruin, one eye milky white. But both eyes were malevolent as he turned them on her.

No emotion reached her along the a'dam's leash, only leaden dullness. Nynaeve's stomach fluttered. Moghedien had given up. Given up because death was there for them.

Fire thrust through the carved window-screens above Rand, fingers of it filling every hole, dancing toward the colonnade. As it did, the struggle within him ceased abruptly. He was himself so suddenly it was almost a shock. He had been drawing desperately at saidin, trying to hold onto some of it. Now it rushed into him, an avalanche of fire and ice that made his knees buckle, made the Void tremble with pain that shaved at it like a lathe.

And Rahvin stumbled backwards out onto the colonnade, face turned to something inside. Rahvin wreathed in fire, yet somehow standing as though untouched. If untouched now, it had not been so before. Only the size of the figure, the impossibility of it being anyone else, told Rand it was him. The Forsaken was a figure of char and cracked red flesh that would have strained any Healer to mend. The agony of it must have been overwhelming. Except that Rahvin would be inside the Void within that burned remnant of a man, wrapped in emptiness where the body's pain was distant and saidin close at hand.

Saidin raged inside Rand, and he loosed it all. Not to Heal.

"Rahvin!" he screamed, and balefire flew from his hands, molten light thicker than a man, driven by all the Power he could draw.

It struck the Forsaken, and Rahvin ceased to exist. The Darkhounds in Rhuidean had become motes before they vanished, whatever kind of life they had had struggling to continue, or the Pattern struggling to maintain itself even for them. Before this, Rahvin simply... ceased.

Rand let the balefire die, pushed saidin away a little. Trying to blink away the purple afterimage, he stared up at the wide hole in the marble balustrade, the remains of one column a fang above it, stared at the matching hole in the palace roofs They did not flicker, as if what he had done was too strong even for this place to mend. After everything, it seemed almost too easy. Perhaps there was something up there to convince him Rahvin was really dead. He ran toward a door.

Frantically, Nynaeve threw everything into trying to close the flame tight around Rahvin once more. The thought came that she should have used lightning. She was going to die. Those horrible eyes had fixed on Moghedien, not her, but she was going to die too.

Liquid fire sliced up into the colonnade, so hot it made the fire she had made seem cool. Shock made her release her weaving, and she flung up a hand to protect her face, yet before it had raised halfway, the liquid fire was gone. So was Rahvin. She did not believe he had escaped. There had been an instant, so brief she could almost have imagined it, when that white bar touched him and he became... mist. Just an instant. She could have imagined. But she did not believe so. She drew a shuddering breath.

Moghedien had her face in her hands, weeping, trembling. The one emotion Nynaeve sensed through the a'dam was relief so powerful it drowned anything else.

Hurried boots grated on the stairs below.

Nynaeve spun, took a step toward the spiral staircase. She was surprised to realize she was drinking deeply of saidar, holding herself ready.

That surprise faded when Rand climbed into sight. He was not as she remembered. His features were the same, but his face was hard. Blue ice made his eyes. The bloody rips in his coat and breeches, the blood on his face, seemed to suit that face.

The way he looked, she would not be surprised if he killed Moghedien on the spot the instant he discovered who she was. Nynaeve had uses for her yet. He would recognize an a'dam. Without another thought she changed it, let the leash vanish, leaving only the silver bracelet on her wrist and the collar on Moghedien. A moment of panic when she comprehended what she had done, then a sigh as she realized that she still felt the other woman. It worked exactly as Elayne had said it would. Perhaps he had not seen. She was between him and Moghedien; the leash had trailed behind her.

He barely glanced at Moghedien. "I thought about those flames, coming up here. I thought it might have been you or... Where is this? Is this where you meet Egwene?"

Looking up at him, Nynaeve tried not to swallow. So cold, that face. "Rand, the Wise Ones say what you've done, what you are doing, is dangerous, even evil. They say you lose something of yourself if you come here in the flesh, some part of what makes you human."

"Do the Wise Ones know everything?" He brushed past her and stood staring at the colonnade. "I used to think Aes Sedai knew everything. It doesn't matter. I don't know how human the Dragon Reborn can afford to be."

"Rand, I..." She did not know what to say. "Here, let me Heal you at least."

He held still for her to reach up and take his head in her hands. For her part, she had to suppress a wince. His fresh wounds were not serious, only numerous - what could have bitten him; she was sure most of these were bites - but the old wound, that half-healed, never-healing wound in his side, that was a sinkhole of darkness, a well filled with what she thought the taint of saidin must be like. She channeled the complex flows, Air and Water, Spirit, even Fire and Earth in small amounts, that made up Healing. He did not roar and flail about. He did not even blink. He shivered. That was all. Then he took her wrists and brought her hands down from his face. She was not reluctant. His new injuries were gone, every bite and scrape and bruise, but not the old wound. Nothing had changed about that. Anything short of death should be capable of being Healed, even that. Anything!

"Is he dead?" he asked quietly. "Did you see him die?"

"He's dead, Rand. I saw."

He nodded. "But there are others still, aren't there? Other... Chosen."

Nynaeve felt a stabbing sliver of fear from Moghedien, but she did not glance back. "Rand, you must go. Rahvin is dead, and this place is dangerous for you as you are. You must go, and not come back here in the body."

"I will go."

He did nothing that she could see or feel - of course, she could not - but for a moment she thought the hallway behind him had... turned in some way. But it did not look any different. Except... She blinked. There was no half-gone column in the colonnade beyond him, no hole in the stone railing.

He went on as if nothing had happened. "Tell Elayne... Ask her not to hate me. Ask her..." Pain twisted his face. For a moment she saw the boy she had known, looking as though something precious was being ripped away from him. She reached out to comfort him, and he stepped back, his face stone again, and bleak. "Lan was right. Tell Elayne to forget me, Nynaeve. Tell her I've found something else to love, and there's no room left for her. He wanted me to tell you the same thing. Lan has found someone else, too. He said for you to forget him. Better never to have been born than to love us." He stepped back again, three long steps, the hall seemed to turn dizzyingly with him in it - or part of the hall did - and he was gone.

Nynaeve stared at where he had been, and not at the fitfully flickering reappearance of the damage to the colonnade. Lan had told him to say that?

"A... remarkable man," Moghedien said softly. "A very, very dangerous man."

Nynaeve stared at her. Something new was coming through the bracelet to her. Fear was still there, but muted by... Expectation might have been the best way to describe it.

"I have been helpful, have I not?" Moghedien said. "Rahvin dead, Rand al'Thor saved. None of it would have been possible without me."

Nynaeve understood now. Hope more than expectation. Sooner or later Nynaeve would have to wake. The a'dam would vanish. Moghedien was trying to remind her of her aid - as if it had not had to be wrenched out of her - just in case Nynaeve might be steeling herself to kill before she went. "It is time for me to go, too," Nynaeve said. Moghedien's face did not alter, but fear strengthened and so did hope. A large silver cup appeared in Nynaeve's hand, apparently filled with tea. "Drink this."

Moghedien edged back. "What -?"

"Not poison. I could kill you easily enough without, if that was my aim. After all, what happens to you here is real in the waking world, too." Hope much stronger than fear now. "It will make you sleep. A deep sleep; too deep to touch Tel'aran'rhiod. It's called forkroot."

Moghedien took the cup slowly. "So I cannot follow you? I will not argue." She tipped back her head and swallowed until the cup was empty.

Nynaeve watched her. That much should put her down quickly. Yet a cruel streak made her speak. She knew it was cruel and did not care. Moghedien should not have any quiet rest at all. "You knew Birgitte was not dead." Moghedien's gaze narrowed slightly. "You knew who Faolain is." The other woman's eyes tried to widen, but she was already drowsy. Nynaeve could feel the forkroot's effects spreading. She concentrated on Moghedien, held there in Tel'aran'rhiod. No easy sleep for one of the Forsaken. "And you knew who Siuan is, that she used to be the Amyrlin Seat. I've never mentioned that in Tel'aran'rhiod. Never. I'll see you very shortly. In Salidar."

Moghedien's eyes rolled up her head. Nynaeve was not sure whether it was the forkroot or a faint, but it did not matter. She released the other woman, and Moghedien winked out. The silver collar rang as it hit the floortiles. Elayne would be happy about that, at least.

Nynaeve stepped out of the Dream.

Rand trotted along the corridors of the palace. There seemed to be less damage than he remembered, but he did not really look. He strode out into the great courtyard at the front of the palace. Blasts of Air knocked the tall gates half off their hinges. Beyond lay a huge oval plaza, and what he had been searching for. Trollocs and Myrddraal. Rahvin was dead, and the other Forsaken were elsewhere, but there were Trollocs and Myrddraal to kill in Caemlyn.

They were fighting, a milling mass of hundreds, perhaps thousands, surrounding something he could not see through their black-mailed numbers, as tall as a Myrddraal on its horse. Just barely he could make out his crimson banner deep in their midst. Some swung round to face the palace as the gates were hurled asunder.

Yet Rand stopped dead. Balls of fire rolled through the packed black-mailed mass, and burning Trollocs lay everywhere. It could not be.

Not daring to hope or think, he channeled. Shafts of balefire leaped from his hands as fast as he could weave them, narrower than his little finger, precise and cut off as soon as they struck. They, were much less powerful than the one he had used against Rahvin at the end, than any he had used against Rahvin, but he could not risk one slicing through to those trapped in the center of all those Trollocs. It made little difference. The first-struck Myrddraal seemed to reverse colors, become a white-clad black shape, then it was drifting motes that vanished as its horse fled madly. Trollocs, Myrddraal, every one that turned toward him went the same, and then he began carving into the backs of those still facing the other way, so a continuous haze of sparkling dust seemed to fill the air, renewed as it evaporated.

They could not stand against that. Bestial cries of rage turned to howls of fear, and they fled in every direction except toward him. He saw one Myrddraal try to turn them and be trampled under, rider and horse, but the rest spurred their animals away.

Rand let them go. He was busy staring at the veiled Aiel bursting out of their encirclement with spears and heavy-bladed knives. It was one of them carrying the banner; Aiel did not carry banners, but this one, a bit of red headband showing beneath his shoufa, did. There were battles going on down some of the streets leading from the plaza, too. Aiel against Trollocs. Townsfolk against Trollocs. Even armored men in the uniform of the Queen's Guards against Trollocs. Apparently some who were willing to kill a queen could not stomach Trollocs. Rand only barely noticed, though. He was searching through the Aiel.

There. A woman in a white blouse, one hand holding up her bulky skirts as she slashed at a fleeing Trolloc with a short knife; an instant later flames enveloped the bear-snouted figure.

"Aviendha!" Rand did not know he was running until he shouted. "Aviendha!"

And there was Mat, coat torn and blood on his sword-blade spearpoint, leaning on the black shaft watching the Trollocs flee; content to let someone else do the fighting now that that was possible. And Asmodean, sword held awkwardly and trying to look every way at once in case any Trolloc decided to turn back. Rand could sense saidin in him, though weakly; he did not think much of Asmodean's fighting had been with that blade.

Balefire. Balefire that burned a thread out of the Pattern. The stronger that balefire was, the further back that burning went. And whatever that person had done no longer had happened. He did not care if his blast at Rahvin had unraveled half the Pattern. Not if this was the result.

He became aware of tears on his cheeks, and let saidin and the Void go. He wanted to feel this. "Aviendha!" Snatching her up, he whirled her around, with her staring down at him as if he had gone mad. He did not want to put her down, but he did. So he could hug Mat. Or try to.

Mat fended him off. "What's the matter with you? You'd think you thought we were dead. Not that we weren't, almost. Being a general has to be safer than this!"

"You're alive." Rand laughed. He brushed back Aviendha's hair; she had lost her headscarf, and it hung loose around her neck. "I'm happy you're alive. That's all."

He took in the plaza again, and his joy faded. Nothing could extinguish it, but the bodies lying in heaps where the Aiel had made their stand lessened it. Too many of them were not big enough to be men. There was Lamelle, veil gone and half her throat as well; she would never make him soup again. Pevin, both hands clutching the wrist-thick shaft of the Trolloc spear through his chest and the first expression on his face Rand had ever seen. Surprise. Balefire had cheated death for his friends, but not for others. Too many. Too many Maidens.

Take what you can have. Rejoice in what you can save, and do not mourn your losses too long. It was not his thought, but he took it. It seemed a good way to avoid going mad before the taint on saidin drove him to it.

"Where did you go?" Aviendha demanded. Not angrily. If anything, she looked relieved. "One second you were there, the next you were gone."

"I had to kill Rahvin," he said quietly. She opened her mouth, but he put his fingers over it to silence her, then gently pushed her away. Take what you can have. "Leave it at that. He's dead."

Bael came limping up, shoufa still around his head but veil hanging down his chest. There was blood on his thigh, and on the point of his one remaining spear as well. "The Nightrunners and Shadowtwisted are running, Car'a'carn. Some of the wetlanders have joined the dance against them. Even some of the armored men, though they danced against us at first." Sulin was behind him, unveiled, a nasty red gash across her cheek.

"Hunt them down however long it takes," Rand said. He began walking, not sure where as long as it was away from Aviendha. "I don't want them loose on the countryside. Keep an eye on the Guards. I'll find out later which of them were Rahvin's men and which..." He walked on, talking and not looking back. Take what you can have.