“You needn’t think you’re amusing,” she glowered. Best to go on as she had begun. Better than backing and filling, giving him more reason to grin. “Will you help me?”
“How?” Making himself at home—well, they were his rooms—he tossed the tasseled spearhead on a small table with leopard-carved legs and shed his sword belt and coat. Somehow he was not sweating any more than the Aiel did. “The Wise Ones listen to me, but they only hear what they want to. I’ve come to recognize that flat-eyed look they get when they decide I’m talking nonsense, and instead of embarrassing me by saying so, or arguing about it, they’ll just ignore it.” He pulled one of the gilded chairs around to face her and sprawled in it, booted feet stretched in front of him. He managed to do even that with an air of arrogance. He definitely had too many people bowing to him.
“You do talk nonsense sometimes,” she muttered. For some reason, having no more time to think concentrated her thoughts. Adjusting her shawl carefully, she placed herself in front of him. “I know that you would like to hear from Elayne again.” Why did his face go all sad like that, and at the same time winter cold? Likely because he had not heard from Elayne in so long. “I doubt Sheriam has been giving the Wise Ones very many messages from her for you.” None, so far as she knew, though he had seldom been in Cairhien to receive any. “I’m the one Elayne will trust with that sort of missive. I can bring them to you, if you convince Amys that I’m strong enough to . . . to return to my studies.”
She wished she had not faltered, but he already knew too much about dreamwalking, if not Tel’aran’rhiod. Almost everything about dream-walking but the name was a close secret among the Wise Ones, particularly those who could dreamwalk. She had no right to give away their secrets.
“Will you tell me where Elayne is?” He might have been asking for a cup of tea.
She hesitated, but the agreement between her, Nynaeve and Elayne—Light, how long ago had they made it?—that agreement held. He was no longer the boy she had grown up with. He was a man full of himself, and whatever his tone, those steady eyes on her face demanded an answer. If Aes Sedai and Wise Ones struck sparks, Aes Sedai and he would strike a conflagration. There had to be a buffer between the two, and the only buffers available were the three of them. It had to be done, but she hoped they did not get burned up doing it. “I can’t tell you that, Rand. I have no right. It isn’t mine to tell.” And that was the truth, too. For that matter, it was not as if she could tell him where this Salidar was, beyond Altara, somewhere along the River Eldar.
He leaned forward intently. “I know she’s with Aes Sedai. You told me those Aes Sedai support me, or might. Are they afraid of me? I will take oath to stay away from them, if they are. Egwene, I mean to give Elayne the Lion Throne and the Sun Throne. She has claim to both; Cairhien will accept her as quickly as Andor does. I need her, Egwene.”
Egwene opened her mouth—and realized that she was about to tell him all she knew about Salidar. Barely in time she clamped her teeth shut so hard her jaws ached, and opened herself to saidar. The sweet feel of life, so strong it overwhelmed everything else, seemed to help; slowly the urge to talk began to ebb.
He sat back with a sigh, and she stared at him wide-eyed. It was one thing to know he was the strongest ta’veren since Artur Hawkwing, but quite something else to become caught up in it herself. It was all she could do not to hug herself and shiver.
“You won’t tell me,” he said. Not a question. Briskly he rubbed his forearms through his shirtsleeves, reminding her that she held saidar; close like this, he would be feeling it as a faint tingle. “Do you think I meant to force it out of you?” he snapped, suddenly angry. “Am I such a monster now that you need the Power to protect yourself from me?”
“I don’t need anything to protect me from you,” she said as calmly as she could. Her stomach was still turning over slowly. He was Rand, and he was a man who could channel. A part of her wanted to gibber and wail. She was ashamed of it, but that did not make it go away. Putting away saidar, she regretted a tinge of reluctance. Yet it did not matter; if it came to that sort of struggle, unless she managed to shield him he would handle her as easily as if they arm-wrestled. “Rand, I am sorry I can’t help you, but I cannot. Even so, I ask you again to help me. You know it would be helping yourself.”
His anger was swallowed by a maddening grin; it was frightening how quickly that could happen with him. “ ‘A cat for a hat, or a hat for a cat,’ ” he quoted.
But nothing for nothing, she finished mentally. She had heard Taren Ferry folk say that when she was a girl. “You put your cat in your hat and stuff it down your breeches, Rand al’Thor,” she told him coldly. She managed not to slam the door on her way out, but it was a near thing.
Striding away, she wondered what she was going to do. Somehow she had to convince the Wise Ones to let her back into Tel’aran’rhiod—legally, so to speak. Sooner or later he was going to encounter the Aes Sedai of Salidar, and it would help so much if she could talk to Elayne or Nynaeve again first. She was a little surprised that Salidar had not approached him already; what was holding Sheriam and the rest back? Nothing she could do about it, and they probably knew better than she.
One thing she was eager to tell Elayne. Rand needed her. He sounded as if he meant that more than anything he had ever said in his life. That should set to rest all her worries about whether he still loved her. No man could say he needed you that way unless he loved you.
For a few moments Rand sat staring at the door after it closed behind Egwene. She had changed so much from the girl he grew up with. In those Aiel clothes she managed a good imitation of a Wise One—except for the height, anyway; a short Wise One, with big dark eyes—but then, Egwene always did everything with her whole heart. She had stayed as cool as any Aes Sedai, seizing saidar when she thought he was threatening her. That was what he had to remember. Whatever clothes she wore, she wanted to be Aes Sedai, and she would keep Aes Sedai secrets even after he made it clear that he needed Elayne to insure peace in two nations. He had to think of her as Aes Sedai. It was saddening.
Wearily he got to his feet and donned his coat again. There were still the Cairhienin nobles to see, Colavaere and Maringil, Dobraine and the rest. And the Tairens; Meilan and Aracome and that lot would twitch if he gave the Cairhienin a moment more than they got. And the Wise Ones would want their turn at him, and Timolan and the rest of the clan chiefs here he had not met with yet today. Why had he ever wanted to leave Caemlyn? Well, talking with Herid had been pleasant; the questions he brought up were not, but it was nice to talk to someone who never remembered he was the Dragon Reborn. And he had found a little time without a coterie of Aiel surrounding him; he was g
