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The first days in Falme drifted by in a hot haze of unreality for Moiraine. Rand seemed even less lucid. The dagger wound in his side had been shoddily Healed, and by the time she got to it, the dagger’s evil was snaking through his skin. He slept now. She hoped that he did not dream.
At times she herself dreamed, though she kept herself warded, a web of spirit shielding her from prying. In all probability, Lanfear could break her delicate edifice of protection if she wanted to. She avoided them all—the children, the public—for a time, no more than a few days. It was an indulgence, and one she felt guilty for partaking in, but it was necessary. She did not know what to do next, and seeing any of them again, after that first fevered reunion, would force the issue. Instead she cloistered herself. Densely woven blankets, cups of tea, and thick walls became her entire world. Lan left to fetch her scrolls and codices and news, and she pored over them with a vigor that had evaded her at Verin’s house.
While her strength had returned along with the One Power, firm answers continued to evade her. The moment was delicate. The Dragon had declared himself, or she had declared him, and his next move would show the world what kind of Dragon he would be. Two potential directions presented himself, an allied nation waiting at the end of each path, but she liked neither choice. Nets of possible ill-effects stretched out from both. And then there was a final possibility which she regretted even more, both because it was the one she wanted and because it was the one she feared. “The Wheel weaves, regardless of the cost,” she muttered and slumped back down into the bed cushions under her books.
On the fourth day, Lan reported that Rand had risen. “Fetch him for me. We must talk,” she told him. She leafed through her pages of notes, picking out one section of prophecy and setting it atop the stack, ready to show him. She waited as minutes passed. The sun moved across the papers, too harsh to look at. Perhaps his injuries made him slow.
Lan rapped softly at the door and entered. “He will not come. He is with Nynaeve.”
Was his face apologetic? It made no difference. She shook her head when he made to follow her, picked up two papers, and quartered them before stowing them in her waistband.
“You will know if I require you,” she said before closing the heavy wooden door. She did not need him to trail down these hot and arid corridors like a chasing breeze. She did not want to know whether he would take her side or Nynaeve’s or Rand’s when it came to argument, and come to argument it would.
She knocked once but entered Nynaeve’s room without waiting for a reply. Inside, red-tinted light streamed through the stained glass window. It colored their faces eerily, Rand’s paler and harder than it had been when they had parted, Nynaeve’s more clouded. The two sat around her writing table bent in conference over a map—probably a Seanchan invasion plan, useless now.
Both startled and rose when she stepped into the room. He was dressed for travel even though his shirt hung poorly over the bandages which still wrapped his waist. Nynaeve scurried to stand between them.
“Where will you go now?” she asked the boy without preamble. She strode past Nynaeve and over to the map, spreading her hands across the continent from the Aryth Ocean to the Dragonwall. Had the Seanchan’s schemes stretched so far? she wondered errantly.
“If I tell you, will you follow me? It isn’t safe for you to remain with me.” He stumbled as he settled back down at the table, a little wince causing him to lean harder on the chair back than he should have.
“I do not think it would be wise for you to venture forth without someone who can offer reliable Healing,” she said.
Nynaeve scoffed and remained standing.
“Your considerable abilities aside, Nynaeve, you are spoken for.” Moiraine tried to sound conciliatory, but she heard the words come out frigid. “You will need to return to the White Tower. The Light will need you trained before we face the true Last Battle.”
“I am not returning just so that they can use me.”
“Then return so that he can!” She gestured at Rand across the table. “You gave your word to Ryma Sedai to report back to the White Tower about Liandrin, if I hear it right. Someone will need to. You have a name, which is more than we—”
Nynaeve whirled. “So Liandrin is not alone?”
Moiraine inhaled sharply. “I do not know who among my sisters, or how many, work with Liandrin. What you have, the name of a known member of the Black Ajah who still lives, is more than I ever managed. Perhaps they grow careless.”
“Liandrin was careless,” Nynaeve muttered.
Moiraine pressed on, “You have a duty to the Tower, to Egwene, to yourself, to inform the Amyrlin of Liandrin’s transgressions. It must be you, because I cannot.” She was prouder than she should have been by how evenly she had said it.
Nynaeve folded her arms beneath her breasts. “I will go to fulfill my word to Ryma Sedai, but not for the sake of the White Tower or for the sake of your Amyrlin, and you do not have my word that I will remain.”
“The Tower and the Amyrlin fight for the Light,” Moiraine said. “Liandrin is an aberration. She may not be a lone exception, but—”
“How sure are you?” Rand interrupted.
“How sure am I of what?” Moiraine said, growing heated.
“Your Amyrlin shielded me and then imprisoned me. Your sisters helped her do it. How sure are you that the Tower fights for the Light?” Oddly, curiosity lurked behind his insolent countenance.
“I am as sure that Siuan Sanche opposes the Dark One as I am that Lan does,” Moiraine said, a dart chosen specifically to strike at Nynaeve, even though it struck at Moiraine as well, though for a different reason. She would have preferred to have this entire conference with Rand without the girl. It was far easier to deal with the Dragon when he was alone, but keeping Nynaeve on the right track was important as well. “As it happens, Lan will want to see you if you plan to depart soon. He is in my rooms. Go to him. I will appreciate you letting Rand and I use yours for a bit longer.” A balm to salve the dart wound, as she had intended it, but Nynaeve did not accept it.
“I want to hear what you say to him,” Nynaeve said bitterly.
“As you say,” Moiraine replied, turning to Rand as if the girl had indeed departed. Nynaeve would make her job harder, but forcing the issue by sending her away would make Rand hostile. She flicked her hands and a ward against eavesdropping wrapped around the room. Even though Nynaeve could likely see, she held saidar for a second longer than she needed it to, letting it course through her. The power buoyed her until she could set her face back to stillness as she finally released it.
“Rand, your concern for your friends headed for Tar Valon is admirable, but more at issue is where you will go.” She placed two fingers on the map. “You must choose between Tear or Illian. Both offer you a chance to gain a nation who will follow you, as well as certain opportunities for expansion. We cannot stay here. Toman Head is an unsuitable foothold, claimed as it is by two nations and held by neither. You need a seat of power, an army. I had hoped that the White Tower might be that for you, but recent events show me that it will not, at least not yet. But you need a position of strength.”
“Thank you for your counsel, Moiraine. You may go,” he said. He studied the map and did not meet her eyes.
She did not move. Her fingers remained on the paper, daggers pointing at the two coastal cities. “I let you leave last time. I did not follow, not for months, not until I knew that it would be far worse if I did not. I will not do so again.”
“You orchestrated my every move like a puppet master planning a show, and I didn’t even realize I was the puppet until you were back again. I won’t do that again either.”
“I did not manage to plan your every move.” She left the rest unspoken, betting that Rand had not told his former Wisdom about Lanfear. She doubted that he had told anyone at all; she certainly had not. Enough damage had been done when Siuan had seen.
“Whose idea was the Dragon Banner?” Rand asked, confirming her suspicions. He would not name Lanfear while Nynaeve listened. She could use this if things turned truly dire, though so could he.
Moiraine watched him until he was forced to meet her eyes. “The weave was my own.”
He did not answer her in a show of restraint she would not have believed he possessed. Perhaps he could grow to be formidable in time.
“You must be cautious, Rand. There are things from which I cannot protect you.”
Still he did not speak.
“Rand,” she said gently—or she thought it was gentle, “have you learned something since your injury which gives you pause?”
That broke through his attempted walls. “You don’t know everything, Moiraine!” He flinched as he straightened to loom above her. “And other people can have their reasons for not sharing.”
“Not everyone who seeks your favor acts in your interest, Rand,” Moiraine stated blandly.
He scoffed. “I am going with them. With Nynaeve. Egwene. You’ll follow me anyway, so there it is.”
Moiraine narrowed her eyes, considering. Accompanying the girls to Tar Valon was an admirable act of loyalty to his friends, but Rand al’Thor the Dragon Reborn needed to be above sentiment now. There was something he was not telling her, and she was nearly certain that Lanfear was at the heart of it. “Why do you want to go to Tar Valon? That is not to say that I disapprove fully, not yet, but was it one of the others’ ideas or your own?”
Nynaeve cut in from across the room, “He came to me for help with the journey to Tar Valon.”
Moiraine raised an eyebrow toward Rand. She was at the whim of a boy whom she herself had helped to elevate, and now she had to follow where he led if she wanted to maintain some modicum of control, to serve as a bulwark against the—admittedly attractive—Shadow. It would have galled had she been less desperate to see him to the Last Battle without losing him to madness or to Lanfear. She smoothed her skirt to keep from seething. The weave of it was too loose, and her ring caught in it, ruining the effect.
“If I am to be the Dragon, the Aes Sedai are meant to bow to me,” Rand said.
She only nodded and flattened one of the papers at her waist on the table over the map. It was the one she had hoped not to use, the one that pointed not to Tear or to Illian, but to Tar Valon. She had always hated this scrap of the Prophecies of the Dragon for what it implied, but she needed it now.
He glanced at it for a second and intoned, “The unstained tower, broken, bends knee to the forgotten sign.” He brushed at the paper, and it dropped to the tiled floor. “I don’t need this. I know them myself now.”
Prophecy, then, not Lanfear. Something like relief flooded her, although a sliver of skepticism remained. “How did you learn this?”
“You are not the only one who can consult the Prophecies of the Dragon.”
“A book, then. Nothing more?”
“A book,” he affirmed. “I'm supposed to fulfill the prophecies, aren’t I? You can’t be disappointed that I’m planning to do so. You seemed happy enough to see the one about Falme fulfilled.”
She doubted that he was telling the full truth, particularly since he could not have been reading any books during the days he was unconscious. But she dropped the subject as Nynaeve’s questioning mouth opened, and instead rushed to say, “It may be too soon for that particular prophecy. We cannot afford the White Tower as your enemy. If you go before you are ready—and you are not ready—we know that they will try to cage you again. I may not be able to help you next time. You know that I cannot accompany you, not into the White Tower.”
“I’m the declared Dragon now, thanks to you. I think they will find I am more difficult to contain than I was a week ago.”
“I pray for both your sake and theirs that that is true.” The tower broken, the prophecy said. Bending the knee. She looked at the boy before her. Her sisters would not bow to him, and, if she was honest with herself, she did not want them to. Prophecy rarely meant what one thought, or feared, that it did, she reminded herself. Still, what was the Tower if the Last Battle could not be won? A schoolyard for dreadlords?
“No one will expect me there,” he said, and he sounded earnest now. “What kind of fool goes back to his captors? But that is why I should go there. At the very least, it might be safer.”
“A fair point.” And it was, but it raised the question of whom she lured to the White Tower in pursuit of the Dragon if she let him go there. Was she bringing a Forsaken down upon Siuan during a time of probable weakness? And could she really think that Lanfear was not already there, praying upon the broken Amyrlin? Was she leading the Dragon to a den of Black Ajah? And could she trust the Red? No, and she never had been able to. There were too many unknowns in Tar Valon and too few sure allies. Even Siuan. Especially Siuan.
She folded her hands. “I ask one thing, Rand. Make no moves to contact the White Tower without my knowledge. The same will go for you three,” she said to Nynaeve. “There are currents you do not know. And if I say that you are not ready, heed me, and do not approach. Both of you. Nynaeve, your contribution will be crucial.”
They looked at each other. Rand looked ready to nod. Nynaeve remained aloof.
“This will be a harder path, more difficult than I had hoped. Siuan was to make the Tower ready for you. Now you must make yourself ready for it.”
She would follow the Dragon to disaster at the hands of her most hoped-for allies, or she would draw ruin down upon Siuan a second time under the guise of delivering vital news. If the Light had any mercy, there would be a sliver of time in which to explain, but she could not count on it. Rand al’Thor was her path now, chosen a hundred times before, and once more again tonight.