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The journey toward Falme was hotter, dustier, and longer than either of the two of them had anticipated. Lanfear had quite literally sent them to the edge of the world, ejecting them from the Ways with so much gusto that Moiraine suspected the distance was a prank. She was no stranger to Ogier maps, and she knew of at least two entrances that would have been closer and more convenient. Not that convenience mattered to the Daughter of the Night. They were lucky she had elected to keep them alive.
Lan trudged up ahead, clouds of reddish dust gathering at his heels. They had hoped to reach Falme before sunset, but the city’s walls and turrets did not appear any closer than when they had first set out. The ocean breezes had been traded in for a dry, unbearable heat the farther inland they walked. The coast was too exposed, and it was in their best interest to stay hidden, but Light, did she miss the coolness of the salty air on her face. Temperature usually didn’t affect her to this extent: years of training meant that she could withstand heat and cold equally well. After days without sleep, though, and the vertiginous episode that culminated in her reclamation of the Power as well as a—what was it, exactly? A schism?— between her and Siuan, she couldn’t walk straight. Let alone regulate her temperature.
Poor Lan was feeling its effects, too. Usually, he reaped the benefits of being tied to her mentally and physically, but she had nothing left to offer him, so he, too, trudged dizzily along, thirsty, muddy-brained, and bone-tired. She felt it all in her body, knowing he felt her exhaustion in his.
The sun was setting. It cast a fiery glow across the scrublands, painting the landscape a strange, rosy orange. Sun-baked sage shivered in the hot wind, and the gooseberries and the currants had shriveled into wrinkled husks. She picked one and tried it, making a face as its leathery skin slid down her throat. There was barely enough liquid inside of it to register as a refreshment.
Lan exclaimed from up ahead. “Moiraine! It’s freshwater!”
She hiked up her skirts and ran to him, feeling the heat and pain as she never had before her shield. She shook her head as though to scatter the thought. It was over, and Lan was here, and he had found them a place to rest just as he had done thousands of times before. The fire in her hips and her back would go away with time and rest. It had to.
They both abandoned their dignity and drank greedily, scooping great fistfuls of glacier water into their mouths, delighting in the cold trickles that made their way down their chins, throats, and chests. Moiraine’s lace shirt, damp and discoloured, was soon floating among the river grasses, and Lan, too, stripped off his heavy leather breastplate and his thick cotton shirt. The red dust that had settled into the fibers came off of it in great clouds. In her thin undershirt, Moiraine might have felt self-conscious with anyone else, but with Lan, she felt exactly as she always had. Naked without being laid bare. Vulnerable but not threatened, understood but not exposed. Except that her body felt different than it once had, and she was aware of it, and she knew he was, too. A hot blush rose to her cheeks, colouring her neck and her chest.
A pang of something echoed in her abdomen. Her blush deepened. Lan wanted to help, but she would rather he just left it alone.
“May I?” He shifted closer to her, and the stinging, pungent scent of a poultice wafted across her face. She wrinkled her nose, still refusing to look at him, and nodded. He rubbed it across her naked shoulders, massaging it into her skin, and worked downward, gently tugging her shirt down as he did so, so that he wouldn’t stain the fabric. When he got to the narrow blades of her hips, she stifled a soft whimper, which he pretended not to notice. His touch became even gentler in response. He finished with soft, bird-like strokes, knowing her muscles burned, knowing that she wouldn’t tell him if he was hurting her, relying on the bond alone to calibrate his pressure and his movements.
The poultice took effect almost immediately, and she could have cried with relief. Instead, she tugged her blue overcoat over her shoulders, thanking him with a curt nod.
He left her, then, and the dull sting of rejection rang in her ears and settled in her chest. She looked at him, willing him to look back, hoping that he might see the regret and shame in her eyes and that they might avoid having to put out in the open what she desperately did not want to expose. He carefully avoided her gaze, gathering dry brush, twigs, and seeds, and began digging a small pit in the sand.
Before long, the sun had set, and an icy chill came over the brush. A bonfire raged on the riverbank, and Lan toasted dandelion leaves, strips of rabbit, and gooseberries over the fragrant smoke. Every so often, he took sips of his homebrew, a strong honey-wine flavored with herbs. Moiraine sat just out of the reach of its warmth, teeth clenched together, shivering in her still-wet shirt.
She glanced again at Lan. Finally, he met her gaze. His voice was gentle where it should have been hard. “Are we going to talk?”
She looked down at her hands, mottled and blue as they were. The dry cold was no relief from the drier heat; it just made her feel feverish.
Silent as he was on his feet, she heard him shift and walk toward her. Staring into her lap, she shook her head. “Don’t, Lan.”
Another spike. It made her sick. She looked up and saw that he had situated himself at a distance. He, too, stared at some indeterminate point. A wool blanket lay between them. He would have draped it on her and hugged her tightly from behind, had tonight been like any other night. Had she simply asked him for what she needed, rather than allowing him to freeze with fear, straddling the gulf between her thoughts and her feelings. She shook her head. “It’s not what you think.”
His eyes were full of pain. “Then what is it, Moiraine?” He cast his gaze downward, fiddling with a sprig of rosemary. This was unusual. She had never known Lan to fiddle with anything. It was a new habit he had developed during their time apart, and it was a seismic reading of the anxiety that frothed within him. She had access to his psyche, now, and she could tell. He was in distress and it was her fault.
She gritted her teeth and sighed. Her words caught in her throat, and so she shook her head and tried to clear the obstruction, as though it were a physical and not a mental block. She tried again, opening her mouth, shutting it. She dug her nails into her palms and closed her eyes. He was going to give up on her. He was going to leave.
He came up behind her, shook out the blanket, and arranged it over her shoulders, pulling her thick hair out and fanning it over top. Straddling her and resting his chin on her shoulder, just as he had so many times before, he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed.
The gesture made fresh tears spring to her eyes. She let them fall, biting the inside of her cheek so that she wouldn’t start crying in earnest. Her throat throbbed and ached with effort. She hated crying, had always hated it, and she knew that if she started now, there would be no stopping the onslaught of fear and grief she felt lingering behind her eyelids. She wanted to be the one comforting Lan. Rather, she ended up being the one who always needed his comfort.
She took his hands in hers, wrapping his warm fingers in her cold ones. She sighed and let herself relax into his touch, knowing he could feel her breathing, willing herself to slow it down. Once she had collected herself, she turned to him. He didn’t let her go, but loosened his grip so that they could face one another. She was glad. He was holding her together. Just as he always had.
“Why are you here?” She blurted out her question before stopping to consider how to phrase it, or whether a softer delivery would be better received.
He looked back at her, shocked. “What do you mean?”
She untangled herself from his arms and sat opposite him, fixing him with her glare, the hard line of her mouth the only defense against her tears. “Why did you come back? What did I do deserve you, now or then?” She paused, drawing a shaky breath. She couldn’t look at him. She wondered if anything she was saying made sense, or if her erratic behavior was going to convince Lan to seek a Yellow Sister for medical aid.
Lan took her face in his hands. She blinked quickly, trying to dispel the tears, refusing to look up and meet his gaze. She knew that his warm, brown eyes would be soft, and that that would push her over the edge.
He knew better than to insist. Instead, he kissed her forehead, lined as it was with worry. He used his thumb to smooth over the creases, leaning back in to kiss the ones that were already ingrained. “Moiraine, you don’t need to torture yourself like this.” She could feel his uncertainty, his reluctance to hurt her.
“Just tell me.” She braced herself.
“Whether you intended it or not, I understood the truth of what you said to me.” He said simply. “You are an Aes Sedai. A servant to all. And I am here to serve you.”
She gaped at him, horrified. The next sentences came out in short, clipped bursts. “I don’t understand. Have you always felt this way? Have I made you feel this way?”
Lan shook his head. “No.”
“Then why…?”
He fixed her with a watery stare. “I told you: it took me a long time before I understood.”
Moiraine panicked. Her desperation made her sound strangled and wrong. “You misunderstood! Don't you realize?” She was crying now. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Lan. Please forgive me," she begged.
She heard his breath catch. She kissed his fingers and touched his hadori lightly with the tips of hers. Something had gone wrong between them, and she needed to fix it. The bond had never before seemed so limited, so stifling. Both of them were mired so deeply in confusion and despair, she couldn’t discern where hers ended and his began.
She brought their foreheads together. His sweet breath was warm on her chest. “Lan, you are everything to me. Everything. Do you remember when we met?” Her voice was heavy with tears. She felt him nodding. “I was just a child, and you were already a king. And you stayed with me even when I was scared out of my wits. When I felt so stupid, and so small. You’ve been my better half for all of these decades that we’ve spent together. I can’t—I can’t understand why you see yourself the way you do.” Her voice broke then, and she shuddered, willing herself to stay composed. She touched his face, running her thumb along his cheekbones.
He looked back at her and sighed. “Perhaps..." he trailed off and she nodded, willing him to continue. He tried again. "There are things that are in me, still, I think. Things that I need to do away with.”
She tilted her head, worry creasing her brow. Lan’s upbringing had been even lonelier and more loveless than hers. “Will you let me help?”
He leaned forward, then, wrapping her in his arms once more. She stifled a gasp. “Perhaps we can help each other.”
She buried her head in the crook of his neck and nodded.
***
That night, they sat together, sharing a wool blanket and Lan’s flask, enjoying the feeling of its buttery fire in their throats. Moiraine had taken more than her fair share of the brew. She could feel it burning in her lower belly and in her thighs, and she hiccupped every so often in between bites of smoked rabbit.
Lan had grown quiet once more. He poked and prodded at the coals, chalky black kindling sutured with threads of orange and gold. The fire crackled and smoldered, sending showers of golden sparks into the air.
Moiraine hiccupped once again. “What is it?” She tried to be subtle, but indignation laced her voice.
Her Warder looked away, avoiding her questioning gaze.
The homebrew made her brave. She got up on her hands and knees, crawling to him in a decidedly undignified manner. It might have retroactively gotten her shawl taken away, had any of her Sisters been around to see it. No one was here but Lan, though, and she trusted him more than anyone. She found her way to him and sat up against his legs, tipping her face toward his.
He laughed at her. “I’m not sharing my wine with you again.”
She frowned. It was too good to be taken away from her so soon. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He looked at her and sighed. “Something is still bothering me. You wanted to know why I thought so little of myself. I have the same question for you.”
Moiraine felt instantly sober. She cast her eyes down, humiliation tinging her cheeks. She tried out a couple of answers—I don’t know, I don’t want to talk about it—and found that the First Oath stymied her attempts to evade his question.
“Do we really have to talk about this now?” She pleaded. Things were almost normal between them. A campfire and dinner under a dark velvet sky, punctured with thousands of stars. It was almost like it had been before. She found herself gripping the feeling as tightly as she could, knowing that in her effort, her happiness would slip from her fingers like so many grains of sand.
Lan’s gaze bored into the side of her face. She glanced at him and he nodded. It was almost imperceptible, but to her, it was a lifeline.
“I am so scared that I have spent my whole life hurting you,” she admitted quietly. The words were out before she could think about them, and she couldn’t take them back. “I decided you would be my Warder, and in doing so, I prevented you from having a normal life. A love and a family of your own. I forced you to take on this mission, to roam the world with me, losing your humanity in bits and pieces.” She choked on the last word, spitting it out with venom and force.
Lan gripped her hand tightly. He was thinking furiously, and she could feel the turmoil under his skin. She started to cry, not only for what she had done to Lan, for everything she had asked him to give up, but for herself, too. And for every decision she had had to make that had hurt another person.
Again, she felt Lan’s lips on her hair, his thumb brushing her cheeks where her tears had fallen. He took her and hugged her tightly, the way she needed to be hugged when everything felt like it was going to fall apart. No one had ever hugged her that way before Siuan, and Lan, too, had known intuitively that she needed it the very first time she had cried in front of him. “You are my family, Moiraine. I don’t want or need anything else. You are not alone in this. I support everything that you do, and if anything ever happened to you, I would finish it on your behalf. That is my choice.”
Moiraine shuddered and gasped. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Lan. I’m going to get those children killed.” Splaying her worst fears about herself on the sand in front of them, vomiting up what she had been too scared to say, all these years; it felt reckless and satisfying.
Lan shook his head. “The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, Moiraine. Isn’t that what you always say? None of this is your fault. All you can do is keep trying.” He rocked her and kissed her hair. “It’s not your fault, and you are not alone," he promised. "I’m here. I will always come back to you.”
She almost laughed through her tears. Leave it to her Warder to use her own words against her. She shook in his arms, trying to calm herself, trying desperately to stop the flow of tears that wouldn’t dry, no matter how badly she wanted to keep them at bay. Lan rubbed her back, gently and slowly, easing the pain that tore across her back and shoulders.
Finally, she gave in. She settled into his chest and let herself cry, knowing that he was going to keep her intact. Knowing that she would do the same for him. Tomorrow, they would get up and continue on, the air between them finally clear. Tonight, though, she would remain in his arms. Safe. Loved. As she had always been. And they would sleep side by side, enveloped in the wool blanket they so often shared on nights like this. The fire warmed them both. Crickets and the rush of wind in the grass lulled them to sleep. It was as sweet a symphony as anything she had heard in concert halls. She could feel Lan’s breath growing slower and deeper. Before he fell asleep, he took her hand, and she smiled.