Chapter 7: Where Spring Should Not Be

The spring’s sweet air changed in the green forest; it wasn’t wind. It was
more as if the sweetness soured, like honey gone hard, and the light dimmed
a hair though the sun was still bright.

After seeing the Eye of the World, everyone was tense, and the shift in the
forest had them all glancing around for the next danger.

A loud raspy voice spoke from the trees, and every hair on Rand’s body rose
at once. “I have found you.”

Rand froze, Ba’alzamon! Instead, two strange men stepped out of the
foliage, clearly not Ba’alzamon. One wore a cloak so faded it might have
been dark once, long ago. The other’s cloak was gray, and both looked
musty, old, wrong against the spring-bright world.

They were not Fades. The breeze stirred their cloaks. Lan shifted, sword half-
raised, and Rand saw his eyes flick toward Moiraine and then towards the
rest of them, calculating where to stand to shield one without abandoning
the other.

“Who are you?” Moiraine straightened and approached, putting her and Lan
between the two men and the rest of them. She demanded, “How did you
come here?”

One of the two laughed softly. “We had guidance,” the man said, and
pointed, not at Moiraine, not at Lan, but past them, his shriveled finger
aimed at Mat like an accusation.

Rand’s stomach turned to ice. The man pushed back his hood. If the Blight
had learned to wear a human face, it would have worn that one. Skin
stretched thin over bone, eyes sunk deep as tunnels, tufts of hair like old
straw. The other man pushed back his hood too, and Rand gawked. The
second face was not a face. It was a mask of black leather worked into the
shape of a young man laughing, frozen mid-mirth, eyes wide, mouth open in
joy that had curdled into madness. Egwene’s breath hitched, he found
himself scooping her behind him, standing in front of her.

“I am called Aginor,” the old one said, as if speaking of his name were a
privilege he granted them. “And this is Balthamel. Our long imprisonment
ground our bodies down, but not our will.”

The names landed like stones dropped into water. Rand had heard them in
stories by firelight, whispered like curses. The Forsaken. Aginor’s sunken
eyes slid across the group.
Egwene’s fingers tightened on his sleeve. “Rand,” she whispered.

Mat made a choked sound, then whispered, “Blood and bloody ashes.”

Hefting his axe, Perrin said, “You’re supposed to be bound!”

“A wolf brother. Curious, I would learn much by dissecting you.” Aginor’s

gaze flicked back to Rand, and the old man smiled with browned-yellow
teeth. “No need for the rest of you,” he said softly, fixing his gaze on Rand.
“You are the only one I really came for.”

The moment tensed, they were about to attack the Forsaken whether they’d
win or not.

Abruptly before them there was a strange swirl of black so deep that it would
eat starlight. The blackness winked out and remaining was a tall man,
though still shorter than Rand. Short copper hair, much duller than his own. A
trimmed beard with the most ridiculous long oiled mustache Rand had seen
in his travels yet. Broad and thick, wearing a high collared black cloak that
clasped on the far-right side, a silver sword pin and a gold-and-red Dragon
pin on the right side of his collar. Leather boots oiled so well they glistened in
the sun. Blue eyes, cool as a mountain spring.

“Masimon,” Aginor said, “you were always one for theatrical entrances.
Your… costume is fitting.”

A gasp, his own, and Rand heard Egwene’s breath hitch against him. Heard
Loial’s deep inhale. The grove stilled further around those words.

Masimon’s eyes held no warmth. “Aginor,” he said, and the name came out
like he had once spoken it in a classroom and had grown tired of the student
long before the lesson ended. “Balthamel.”

“My old master,” Aginor said dryly, his voice held awe. “You have returned to
us.”

The masked one did not speak. He did not need to. The way his body angled
—minutely—toward the trees said he had already begun leaving. Slowly.
Carefully. Like a man backing away from a sleeping boar. Masimon’s gaze slid
to him, and Balthamel stilled.

“Serve me,” Masimon said.

Aginor laughed, a wet, dry sound that grated on Rand’s ears. “You give
orders?” He tilted his head, eyes narrowing. “To us? After all this time?”
Masimon did not move. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. “I will
ask once more,” Masimon said. “Will you serve me again?”

Aginor’s withered lips peeled back. “Serve?” He sounded almost amused.

“The Great Lord—”

Masimon’s gaze sharpened, and Aginor’s mouth snapped shut as if the words
had been struck from him. Rand swore he felt… He wasn’t sure what he felt.
Slinking backward, Balthamel pretended as if he weren’t still creeping away.
Rand had to close his jaw, this was stranger than the legends of Masimon
he’d heard, the children’s rhyme they’d chanted to scare each other with:

Don’t look down the Mirror-Well,

don’t speak soft, don’t promise bells.
One breath taken, two breaths due,
Masimon’s bargain comes for you.

A pause. A heartbeat. Two. Aginor’s eyes darted to the jeweled gauntlet, and
greed flickered there. Then he smiled. “Will you give me a new body?”
Aginor’s voice cracked on the last word, the hunger beneath showed. “A real
one.”

Rand did not understand the question fully, but he understood the
desperation under it. He understood the way Aginor’s gaze took in his own
parchment skin as if it were a prison.

Masimon shook his head once. “No. That isn’t possible.” No embellishment.
No apology.

Aginor’s eyes shifted from disappointment to rage, “Then you have nothing,”
he hissed.

Moiraine watched, Rand saw, but said nothing, absorbing the two figures of
dark legend converse with each other. Would she channel at either man? Lan
moved half an inch, sword overhead, blade angling.

Balthamel, quiet as rot, Rand would laugh if the situation weren’t so serious,
continued to tip-toe backwards as if a boy watching his parents argue,
deciding the safest path was away.

Aginor lifted a hand, and Rand felt something claw at him, reaching for his
skin, his bones, his soul. Quickly, it was gone.

Masimon’s right hand rose. “Come now old friend. I have a Sa’angreal.”
“Of course,” Aginor said as if it were over. “Well played, old master.”

A tiny needle-sized lance of white light so bright the world seemed to split
around it. It left purple after-images in Rand’s eyes. It lanced through Aginor
like the Creator’s judgment, thin as a hair, fierce as the sun. Aginor did not
scream. He simply vanished in a blink of impossible light. Balthamel jerked,
half-turning, and the same sun-white line snapped out again, neat, merciless,
taking him as he tried to slide away. The half-rotted man was gone as if it
had never existed.

Silence crashed down, the entire clearing quiet.

Mat was the first to make a thin, strangled sound. “Light,” he whispered.
“He… he just—burn me—he just—”

Loial stared with round eyes. “That was… balefire,” the Ogier breathed, as if
saying the word too loudly might summon it again.

Moiraine’s gaze was fixed on Masimon’s right hand. “You burnt their
threads,” she said softly.

Masimon’s expression did not change, Rand guessed his accent was Tairen,
“They needed killing,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Rand’s mouth was dry, like singed cloth near a fire. Moiraine moved first. Not
quickly, she did nothing quickly when she did not have to, but with that
smooth, inevitable certainty she carried the way other women carried
baskets. She stepped into the space between Masimon and the rest of them,
small and straight-backed, the very picture of calm.

Lan’s blade came up a hair, as if pulled by a string, and Moiraine lifted one
hand without looking. Lan stilled, he always did.

Loial swallowed so loudly Rand heard it. “Balefire burns a thread out of the
Pattern,” the Ogier managed, ears twitching. “That is why it is forbidden.”

“Forbidden,” Masimon repeated, and there was a curl of humor at the corner
of his mouth. “By whom?”

“By any who are not mad,” Moiraine replied, each word laid down with care.
“And some who are.”

Rand could not look away from Masimon’s right hand, the black-metal
gauntlet with the ruby set in it like a watching eye. He could feel it now, a
power old and sure of itself, it called to Rand.
Moiraine’s gaze rested on the hand just long enough to tell Rand she had not
missed it. She missed nothing.

“A male Sa’angreal,” she said softly, almost to herself. The word sounded like
a prayer and a curse together.

Masimon did not deny it, or boast. He only inclined his head, acknowledging
a point in a game. “One of several.”

Moiraine’s eyes hardened. “Will you kill us?”

Masimon’s attention slid to Rand, he felt it like a touch of cold water on the
spine. Snorting, Masimon chuckled as he said, “We wouldn’t be talking if I
intended to.”

Moiraine’s mouth tightened. “That answer is a hedge.”

“It is the truth, Moiraine Sedai” Masimon replied, as if that settled it. “And
you will get used to uncomfortable truths if you intend to keep Rand alive.”

Lan’s voice cut in, flat as steel. “How, do you know his name?”

Masimon’s eyes flicked once to Lan, no fear there, not even respect.
Calculation, like a man noting the weight of a hammer. “Lan, I also know
what he is.”

Rand’s stomach twisted, the ancient forsaken knew all their names. How. He
heard himself speak without meaning to, “Then say it, say what I am.”

Silence, sudden and thick. Egwene’s fingers tightened on his sleeve hard
enough to hurt. He could feel her trembling and hated that he could not stop
it.

Moiraine answered instead, as if she had been waiting for Rand to give her
the opening. “The Dragon Reborn,” she said, and her calm did not crack. But
Rand saw a tiny pulse in her throat, and that was enough to make his skin
prickle.

Masimon did not flinch. “Yes.”

Mat made a strangled noise. “Burn me,” he muttered.

Moiraine’s gaze stayed on Masimon like a hawk’s on a rabbit. “You are called
Forsaken in the Tower’s oldest books. Your name is inked beside atrocities
and warnings. You arrive here, here, at the Eye, wearing a lord’s outfit and
you cut two Forsaken out of the Pattern as if you were trimming
candlewicks.”

“I have never claimed the Light,” Masimon replied, and his voice was calm
enough to be insulting. “I’m saving the world from the Dark One.”

Moiraine took a breath, and Rand saw her do something she only did when
she was forcing herself not to strike: she arranged her face into serenity, like
setting a veil in place. “Pray then, please do tell us why you are here now,”
she said. “And do not tell me ‘timing.’”

Masimon’s gaze drifted past them, to the trees that ringed the clearing. The
air had begun to smell better already, as if the two Forsaken never really
were.

“I am here,” Masimon said at last, “because the Bore was Drilled in spite of
my best efforts to stop it.”

Rand blinked. The words did not fit together. Bore. Drilled. Those were words
from Thom’s stories, from gleemen, elders, and Loial’s careful lectures. Not
words a man should say with a flat certainty, as if he had watched it happen.

Moiraine’s voice was very quiet. “The end of the Age of Legends.”

Masimon nodded once. “And before the War of Power there was a war of
arguments.” His gaze roved over them before settling back on Moiraine. “If
you want a neat story, Aes Sedai, you will be disappointed. I Rebelled against
the Hall of Servants well over a century before the world burned. I broke
laws. I killed men and women. I did it because I knew what they were doing
would end with the Dark One’s prison cracked open like an egg.”

“You expect me to believe you rebelled to stop the Dark One?” Lan said,
disbelief edged with contempt.

Masimon’s gaze flicked to him, annoyed. “I expect you to keep breathing.

Belief is optional. At worst, I suppose you could call me a Criminal.”

Moiraine did not give Lan time to answer. “And you never swore to the Dark
One,” she probed.

“I never swore,” Masimon said, and this time there was something like old,
restrained disgust in it. “That is the point, I Rebelled before the Shadow
existed.”

“The First Darkness,” Loial said, comprehending as the rest of them did. “You
started a war before the Shadow was even a concept.”
Rand swore Masimon almost growled, “Do not call me that. The ‘Crimson
Scholar’ will suffice. I was saving the world.”

Moiraine’s eyes narrowed. “A man can tell the truth and still lead you into a
noose.”

Masimon’s mouth quirked. “Now that is the sound of an Aes Sedai of this
age.”

“I am Aes Sedai,” Moiraine snapped, and then smoothed it away so fast

Rand wondered if he had imagined the sharpness.

Masimon tipped his head, conceding nothing. “Good. Then you understand
this; I am also a High Lord of Tear.”

Perrin made a startled sound. “You’re a what?”

Mat barked a laugh that turned into a cough. “Oh, that’s just fine then. Light,
I feel better.”

Moiraine’s stare could have frozen a river. “Tear,” she said. “Where
channeling is illegal. Where peasants burn ‘witches’. You would bring him,
there?” She did not point at Rand, but felt the word him land like a hand
closing around his throat.

Masimon’s gaze slid to Rand again, as if checking whether Rand understood

the trap. “I would bring him somewhere he can be trained,” Masimon said.
“Where he can be protected. Godan, in eastern Tear at my estate.”

“And you want me to smile and ‘thank you’,” Moiraine said, and her tone was
almost conversational.

Masimon’s eyes flicked over her face with a practised, merciless appraisal.
“Yes, I do. Rand,” now considering him, “I will train you in Saidin. I have
additional Second Age channelers and ter’angreal to remove the taint as it
accumulates in you.” Moving his gaze, he opened his hand imploring the rest
of them, “Egwene, Nynaeve, think of the chance to learn from the best
channelers of the Second Age. Loial, think of what you could write hearing
our accounts of the Second Age. Perrin, we do have some guidance for you
as a Wolf Brother. Mat, with us you will be healed, properly.”

Behind Rand, Egwene gripped him tight, trembling. Nynaeve pulled at her
braid, “Am I a pony to be won at the fair?”
Rand’s heart hammered. He could feel Moiraine’s anger like heat off a forge,
held inside her as she said, “You presume much.”

Lan shifted, just that, a single shift of weight, and Rand realized the Warder
was about to lead the charge against Masimon.

Before the fight could start, the trees moved. The branches bent by a large
and gentle Someshta who stepped out, saying, “Peace, dear friends. Peace.”

The Green Man had aged fast during their brief time at the Eye, leaves
already browning and bark beginning to fall off. His eyes, those enormous
hazel eyes, lifted, and when they found Masimon, his mouth split in a slow,
strange smile.

“Masimon, old friend,” Someshta said, “the purest heart.”

Rand felt Egwene’s breath catch with his again. Loial’s ears stood straight
up. Masimon went very still, chin trembling a few moments, gaze tentative
but averted.

“Someshta,” Masimon said, the tone yearning, hopeful.

The Green Man’s smile deepened, and for one impossible moment Rand
thought, light help me, that Masimon would run up and hug Someshta.

“You have come at last,” Someshta said, and his eyes shone with something
too gentle for the Forsaken. “I wondered… when you would.”

Moiraine’s gaze flicked, sharp as a knife. Rand saw her take in that single
exchange, store it, and set it beside every old scrap of lore she had collected.

The light dimmed. Not the sun, Rand could still see it through the leaves of
the forest but the meaning of light. As if someone had reached into the air
and pinched the wick.

A harsh voice boomed above the clearing, “RAND.”

Ba’alzamon. The foliage of the forest browned, and Someshta groaned falling
over, losing his leaves, now brown, as the voice was killing him.

“COME TO ME RAND,” Ba’alzamon bellowed, as if watching from above,

“FACE YOUR FATE, DRAGON.”

“Rand al’Thor,” Masimon said firmly. Rand flinched at his name, spoken here,
in this place, from this man. Masimon strode right past Moiraine and Lan,
clasping Rand on the shoulders, his voice pitched low only for him. “Listen to
me, go in the cave. In a moment you will see a line, like light, like a rope. It
will call you. You must take it.”

Rand swallowed. His tongue felt like wool. “What?”

“You will want to let go,” Masimon said, and there was genuine concern in his
eyes. “Do not surrender. Wrestle it at first, then ride it like a horse.”

Rand stared at him, trying to make sense. “Why me?”

“Because if you do not learn this now, you won’t live long enough to learn it
later.” Masimon said, and the admission came out like swallowing a thorn.

“Return to me, Rand,” Egwene begged.

“I will,” Rand vowed.

Rand wanted to grab Egwene, to pull at Lan, hurl Moiraine and Nynaeve over
thier horses, toss to haul Perrin, Mat and Loial by their coats and run. But
there was nowhere to run to. The Blight waited on one side, the white arch
and the Eye on the other, and something worse than either was in the air
now, something watching.

Cackling laughter of Ba’alzamon howled across the forest, browning more

leaves across the trees.

Someshta sagged into the ground, saying, “You must go.”

Rand’s breath came in ragged bursts. He ran because if he didn’t run, he

would fall. He ran into the stone corridor towards the white light, the pull
dragging him down and down as if the world had become a hill and he had
been set rolling. The air grew colder, cleaner, sharper. Then he was at the
Eye of the World. The pool waited, still as glass.

The Eye of the World shimmered faintly, like sunlight on spider silk. It called
to him. Not in words. For an instant nothing happened. Then, everything. It
was not a flood. It was an ocean poured through a tin cup. It was warmth,
radiant clean power of raw sunlight, the heartbeat of the world. Wrestle it,
then ride it, Masimon’s voice said in his head. The power surged, and the
world fell away like a shed cloak.

Stone steps rose out of blackness, crude and uneven, floating in nothing.
Rand’s boots hit one, then another, and he realized he was running again,
racing upward as if chased by the Blight itself. He was climbing up the
ethereal stairway. The cord of light pushed into him, feeding him, filling him.
If he tried to hold it, it would split him like a log.
Ahead, at the top of the steps, a doorway of red light appeared, pulsing like a
wound. Beyond it, shadows moved. Ba’alzamon waited. Rand burst through,
and the world changed. He stood on a plain under a black sky. The air tasted
of ash. Far away, fires burned like red eyes on the horizon. A wind moaned
across dead ground, carrying the stink of blood and fear.

Trollocs.

Tens of thousands of them, a sea of twisting horns and snarling muzzles,

surging toward a line of men in armor, Shienarans, Rand realized, banners
snapping. He saw Fal Dara’s black hawk banner, bright against the dark.
Tarwin’s Gap. Rand’s breath caught. How?

Ba’alzamon’s laughter whispered behind him. “Do you see?” the dark voice
murmured. “This is what you bring. This is what you are.”

Rand tried to turn. Tried to find the voice. He couldn’t. The power in him was
too vast, too urgent. It wanted out. It wanted to do. Rand flung the power
forward like a man throwing a bucket of water on a fire. Light erupted.

Not light the way lanterns gave light, but a tearing brightness that split the
sky. It lanced down into the Trolloc horde, and Rand saw thousands burn, saw
thousands more vanish in flashes as if they had never been. The ground
shook. The air cracked, a storm rolled in, thunder booming, lightning
crackling. He did not know what he was doing and could not stop.

The Shienaran line surged, men shouting, charging into the sudden gaps.
The Trollocs broke like wood under an axe.

Rand’s stomach heaved. He turned away, choking on the sight of death done
by his hand. The world wavered, the plain folded like cloth. He was back on
the stone steps, running again, the cord of light in his hands like a living
thing. He could feel it thinning, straining, as if the Eye itself were emptying.

Ba’alzamon’s voice drifted to him, amused. “You have much power, Aginor
always was greedy,” it murmured. “He reached too far. He thought to drink
an ocean and burned for it instead.”

Rand’s blood ran cold. Aginor. Masimon killed him with that Balefire.

The steps trembled beneath his feet, and for an instant Rand saw them
crack, saw darkness yawning between stones as if the path itself was
breaking.
Ba’alzamon’s laughter from above deepened. “You feel it, don’t you? The
power.”

The white cord coming out of Rand blazed, growing hotter, thinner, more
desperate. At the top of the steps, Ba’alzamon stood waiting, black cloak
stirring in a wind that did not touch Rand’s face.

“You are mine,” Ba’alzamon said softly. “Kneel, Lews Therin.”

Rand recoiled as if struck. “Never.”

“Of course you will,” Ba’alzamon murmured, and his eyes, those burning
eyes, seemed to fill the sky. “You always will.”

They argued, Ba’alzamon bragging about his vast powers, influence over the
world. How people would use Rand.

This let Rand notice behind Ba’alzamon was massive black cord connected,
larger than him, yet, the presence of Ba’alzamon made the black cord small.
Rand’s knees wanted to buckle. Not from fear. From a weight pressing down
on his soul, ancient and intimate, like a hand that had held him as a child
and now held him as prey.

In that crushing moment, Rand thought of Egwene’s hand on his sleeve. He

thought of her smile. He thought of the words he had spoken with his voice
shaking and her eyes bright.

I will.

A vow was a small thing against a Forsaken. Rand screamed in defiance. He

threw everything he had through the cord, not to hold, not to keep, but to
burn through. White light surged.

Ba’alzamon raised a hand and the light struck him. For an instant Rand saw
Ba’alzamon’s face clearly, the pale skin, the mouth twisting, the eyes flaring
brighter. He saw something like surprise there, and something like pain.
Ba’alzamon’s scream echoed across the emptiness, and Rand felt the black
cord snap like a rope cut by an axe.

The power vanished. The world vanished with it. Rand fell not through
darkness, but into himself. He hit the stone ground hard enough to jar his
teeth, breath exploding out of him. The empty pool of the Eye of the World,
lay next to him, gone still silent. His arms shook. For a heartbeat he lay
there, staring up at the crystals that glittered like dead stars, trying to
remember how to breathe.
Rand woke as if someone had poured sand into his mouth and then baked it
there. For a moment he lay with his cheek on cold stone, blinking at glittering
points overhead that might have been crystals or might have been stars. His
arms felt too heavy to belong to him. His skin prickled as if he had slept too
close to a fire, yet he shivered.

Voices drifted in and out of his hearing, muffled, like talk in another room.

“…not yours to take,” Moiraine was saying, calm as ever, but Rand had
learned that her voice could cut.

A deeper voice answered, too level for the words. “And yet I will have it.”

Rand tried to push himself up. His elbow skidded on damp rock. Someone
caught his shoulder.

Egwene knelt beside him, her braid slipped loose, strands clinging to her
cheek. Her eyes were too bright, and she was breathing too fast, but her
hands were steady as she helped him sit. She looked him over the way
Nynaeve looked over a child with a fever, and Rand had the odd thought that
Egwene was trying on that kind of strength and not quite fitting into it yet.

“You’re awake,” she whispered.

It was not relief, exactly. Relief would have softened her. This was a
checkmark against panic. Rand worked his jaw, moving his tongue through
his teeth and swallowed. It hurt. “How long?”

Egwene shook her head. “Not long.”

“I asked—”

Nynaeve’s shadow fell across them, braid swinging like a whip. She crouched
on Rand’s other side and put her fingers under his jaw as if he were five
again. Rand flinched, and she glared at him as if he had insulted her. “Sit
still,” she snapped. “You look like a sheep that’s been struck on the head.
Light, boy, what did you do?”

Rand did not have an answer that could be said out loud. The memory of
that black sky and the pressure on his soul was still lodged behind his eyes.
He closed his hands and felt them tremble.
Lan sat a few paces away against the white stone arch, one knee drawn up,
one hand braced on the ground. His face was pale beneath the tan, and his
mouth was set in a line that did not bend for pain. His sword lay within arm’s
reach, and his eyes were on the Moiraine and Masimon’s discussion.

Masimon stood there, back to Rand, wiping his hands on a cloth that came
away damp and dark. His black cloak hung askew by an invisible breeze not
in the Eye. Even from this distance Rand could see the ruby set in that
strange black gauntlet on his right hand, a red eye in the sun.

Moiraine faced him across the ruined flowers, small and straight-backed,
hands folded as if they were discussing the price of silk instead of the end of
the world.

Loial hovered on the far side of the room, ears twitching, his huge hands
clasped together until his knuckles went pale, hunched over. Perrin stood off
to one side with his axe held low, as if he had forgotten he was holding it but
could not quite bring himself to let it go. Mat sat on a the edge of the former
Eye, hunched forward, elbows on knees, staring at the ground as if he might
fall into it.

Rand followed Mat’s gaze. An ornately gold and silver worked chest sat in the
middle of the former Eye of the World. A heavy red cloth sat beside the
beautiful chest. And a gleaming golden Horn—

The Horn now hung in the air. Not thrown, not held. Suspended, a handspan
above the empty, turning slowly as if the world itself could not decide which
way it ought to face.

Light guide me Rand thought, that’s—

“Put the Horn of Valere down,” Moiraine’s voice carried, still smooth.

Masimon did not look at her. “No.”

“Are you a child?” said Moiraine, exasperated.

Masimon’s head tipped a fraction, as if she were the child insisting the sun
ought to rise in the west. “The Horn is not going to Lord Agelmar, he’ll lose it
to Darkfriend traitors and,” Masimon visibly rolled his eyes, “we’ll all be ‘so
surprised’.”

Rand felt it then. Saidin. His stomach clenched, but he didn’t understand it at
all yet. He only felt the presence, like a storm held just beyond a door.

Moiraine’s chin lifted. “That Horn does not belong to you.”

Masimon turned. His eyes were as cool as the spring water looked, and twice
as dangerous. “Might makes right in times like these,” he said casually.

“Spoken like a thief,” Nynaeve muttered.

Masimon’s gaze slid, not to Nynaeve, but to Rand. Measuring. Remembering.

Rand’s throat tightened. He pushed himself to his feet.

Egwene rose with him, too quickly, as if she could block arrows with her
body. “Rand—”

Rand set his hand gently on her wrist and moved it aside. Not rough. Just
firm enough that she felt it.

“I need air,” he said.

Moiraine’s head turned at his voice. Her eyes flicked to him, one glance that
took in his pallor, his unsteady stance, the way he held himself as if the
ground might tilt.

“Rand,” she said, and there was something in his name that made it sound
like a net being cast.

Masimon’s mouth tightened, as if he had expected the moment and disliked

it anyway. Rand took one step backward.

Moiraine moved, not fast. “We must speak.”

“We will,” Masimon said, almost pleasantly. “All of you. But not here.”

A circular inky blackness opened in front of the all them. Rand’s heart
thudded. Tear. Godan. Training. Refuge. The walls were closing in. Two voices,
both certain, both sure they were the only safe path.

Rand backed another step.

Lan’s eyes flicked to him. Just once. The Warder did not move, but Rand felt
the shift in him all the same: a man readying to spring.

Rand turned and sprinted. Every few strides he expected Moiraine or

Masimon to use the One Power and yank him back. He did not plan it. His
legs simply moved, as if flight had been waiting inside him all along. He
darted past the corridor mouth and into the trees, boots slipping on damp
moss, branches whipping his coat. Behind him someone shouted his name—
Egwene, high and raw—and Nynaeve’s voice cracked like a whip.
“Rand!”

He did not stop. Rand grabbed Bela running away to the east, away from
everything.

“Rand!” More voices shouted after him.

Rand kept running and didn’t stop, another old children’s rhyme repeated in
his mind.

If shadows lean the wrong-way round,

Masimon’s footsteps make no sound,
He’ll offer bread, he’ll offer wealth,
And teach you how to choose your death.