Archive of Our Own ^beta

The sick and dead alike lay in the streets. A great hole gapes where there was once a village green, bodies piled up inside.

“Black Fever,” Moiraine announces, after placing her hand on one man’s forehead to delve him.

Lan jolts. “Black Fever? In the Two Rivers? In this day and Age?” He takes Moiraine’s elbow and pulls her away from the man.

She frowns, and brushes his hand away. “Yes.”

“We should go, then.” Aes Sedai can’t really get sick, but who knows if that applies to a disease as old and obscure as this one? It killed over a tenth of the world’s population once, supposedly. There are no sisters nearby who could heal Moiraine if she caught it. It’s not a risk worth taking.

But there is grim determination in the bond, and Lan already knows that all attempts to convince Moiraine will be futile.

“Nonsense,” she says, briskly. “This could mean something, Lan. Ta’veren swirl the Pattern in interesting ways. Come.”

They leave their horses tied up outside the village inn, then track down the Wisdom in her cottage. The woman has deep shadows under her eyes. Moaning patients are curled up on surfaces all around her home.

“I am a healer of sorts myself,” Moiraine tells the Wisdom, shifting her hand so that her serpent ring catches the firelight. “Perhaps there is something I could do to help?”

A little girl who must be an apprentice scowls at them from the kitchen doorway, but the Wisdom seems grateful for the offer. She scrawls down a list of sick families who live too far away for her to visit.

Moiraine cannot heal the disease entirely—even with her Talent, and slowly burgeoning skill in the One Power, this is something better-suited to one of her Yellow sisters—but she is capable of alleviating the symptoms greatly. They visit twelve different families, none with children the right age, and do what they can to help, before they reach the al’Thor sheep farm.

There’s a freshly-dug grave around the back of the small house. Inside, a man on his deathbed rocks a baby.

When he sees Lan and Moiraine, the man struggles to his feet. He grips the baby tightly. “You can’t have him,” he says. There is desperation there. A father’s love. Deliriously, he continues, “I couldn’t just leave a child… The slope of the mountain, crying in the snow…”

Lan and Moiraine exchange a meaningful look.

“I am not here to hurt him,” Moiraine promises. “You have my word. I cannot lie.”

The man stays back, clutching the child. Sweat beads his forehead. His breath whistles in his chest. He does not have long left in this world.

They could cut him down now, a small mercy, and simply take the baby. It would not be honourable, but this mission has not always allowed for honour. Lan would do it, if Moiraine asked him to.

But Moiraine does not ask. She sits down in a chair, meeting the man’s feverish gaze, and tells him the entire story, starting with a prophecy told in Tamra Ospenya’s study and ending in a bloody confrontation at the Aesdaishar Palace. Lan isn’t sure how much of it the man truly understands, but the gentle rise and fall of Moiraine’s voice seems to soothe him at least. There are already Darkfriends and Shadowspawn searching for this boy, she says, but if he lets her, she will do everything in her power to protect him.

Eventually, the man becomes too weak to stand, and then to sit. He no longer fights as Lan scoops the baby out of his trembling arms.

“Rand, Rand…” he mutters hoarsely. “I knew you’d take it to your heart, Kari. Yes, lass. Rand is a good name. A good name.”

Moiraine cannot heal Tam al’Thor. He is too far gone. But she and Lan make him comfortable, and sit by his side with the baby as he dies. When it is done, Lan digs a grave. Then, at Moiraine’s prompting, he digs a second smaller one beside it, so that people will not wonder about the baby later.

They leave as twilight falls, the boychild who will save the world strapped to Lan’s back.

Moiraine holds it for the first time later that night, while Lan sets up the tent, and examines its features by the firelight.

The baby looks like a baby. It has a scattering of feathery red hair, tiny hands that grab at stray curls hanging loose around Moiraine’s shoulders and tug on them hard enough to make her wince.

“Rand,” she murmurs, and the baby only blinks up at her stupidly, not yet aware of its own name. It’s not what she would have chosen to call the Dragon Reborn, were it left up to her.

She could give it a new name, something with real meaning. She turns a few options over in her head. But then she thinks of the dying sheep farmer’s face when he spoke of his son, and knows that she cannot take that away from him. Rand will have to do. Rand al’Thor.

At the next possible opportunity, she thrusts the child back into Lan’s arms. It fusses for a moment, then calms as Lan offers it a piece of cloth dipped in sheep’s milk to suck on.

“We’ll have to find a wet nurse,” he says. “Milk won’t travel well, in this weather.”

“A wet nurse?” Moiraine repeats, dazedly. Fatigue from the long day has set in, a headache building behind her eyes, and not for the first time in the last few months, she is feeling entirely overwhelmed.

“Unless…” Lan glances down at her chest.

She shudders, fighting back a wave of repulsion. On the list of all the things she is willing to do for the Dragon Reborn, that one is very near the bottom. “Certainly not. We will find a wet nurse in Baerlon.”

“Will we be staying in Baerlon, or will the woman travel with us to Tar Valon?”

Moiraine frowns. Neither option sounds ideal.

The boychild will have to go to the White Tower eventually, of course. He will have to be taught all that is necessary for him to win the Final Battle. Caged until then, if he becomes dangerous, or the madness starts to take him.

But he is not a danger yet. And Moiraine does not trust Sierin Sedai, who has set the Red Ajah loose upon the world to gentle at will.

“We will stay in Baerlon, for now,” she decides. Then she glances down at the contentedly suckling baby, trying to recall old knowledge about foals from when she was a young girl hanging around the royal stables. “How much longer will he be needing milk, do you think?”

Lan shrugs. “A year?”

“A year?” It seems like entirely too long to stay in one place. What will she say, if another sister passes through town and sees her with a baby?

“Well, he’ll need to grow teeth first, won’t he?” But even Lan sounds uncertain now. There is not exactly a wealth of childcare knowledge between them. In all the research they have done along this journey, it had not seemed particularly pertinent; it had not occurred to Moiraine that she might be tasked with rearing the child, once she found him. Perhaps there will be something of it in the library in Baerlon, if there is one.

She sighs wearily. “I will write to Siuan.”

The fever that haunted the Two Rivers has not spread so far as Baerlon. There, they find another Wisdom. This time, Moiraine hides her serpent ring and slips into the now-familiar role of Lady Alys. It is easy to find an explanation that dances around the First Oath: the baby is an orphan, taken in as her ward, and does the Wisdom have any advice?

The Wisdom clucks disapprovingly at the idea of a man slinging a baby around on his back, on a horse no less; her Ladyship should be wearing the baby close to her chest, so that it can be soothed by the sound of her heartbeat. The way they have swaddled him, too, is apparently all wrong. The Wisdom offers to take him off their hands, says she knows a few experienced families who might be willing to raise the poor little orphan as their own.

Moiraine steps in front of the boychild protectively, and only then does the Wisdom warm to her.

They are given the name of a wet nurse, and then a list of instructions detailing how to look after a baby, which is so long Moiraine has to pull out her little black notebook to start taking notes. Babies are useless, it turns out, they cannot do anything for themselves.

So, for the first several months, there is a small, fiendishly expensive room at a reputable inn, two beds and a borrowed cradle, and a local woman who comes several times a day to feed the baby. She eyes Lan and Moiraine’s separate beds curiously, but knows better than to pry, and patiently explains when they have further questions about the boy’s development.

Siuan visits, once.

“Look at you,” she says admiringly as Moiraine carries the boy on her hip, face softening at the sight even though neither of them have ever given even a passing thought to children. “You’ll become a goodwife yet.”

Moiraine scowls at her. The baby chews on its own fist and drools all over the front of her dress. “Do not patronise me.”

“Hush, pufferfish, retract your spikes.” Siuan rubs a hand in soft circles over Moiraine’s back. The baby’s eyes follow her curiously. “He’s certainly strongly ta’veren," she offers. "It almost hurts to look at. He burns like the sun.”

“Born of an Aielmaiden on the slopes of Dragonmount, of the ancient blood raised by the old blood. It has to be him, does it not?”

There is desperation in Moiraine’s voice. If it isn’t him, what have the last few months even been for? It would be a waste of the worst kind.

“It must be,” Siuan agrees, just as fervently, laying all their hopes on a child who only just learned to support his own head

The boy hits all the milestones.

He grows his first milk teeth (and spends many sleepless nights making sure everyone in a nearby vicinity is aware of it, in spite of the small bursts of healing Moiraine offers to soothe the pain in his gums) and is weaned slowly to soaked bread and rice and chicken. He babbles, then grasps certain words. Lan. Doggy. More. Mo.

“Moiraine,” Moiraine always corrects the boy, slowly and intently, when he looks up at her with wide eyes and cries Mo-Mo-Mo.

“You can’t expect him to say all of that,” Lan says, bemused. He often finds himself bemused while watching Moiraine interact with the boychild. “It’s a mouthful even for an adult.”

Moiraine only glares at him.

(The worry, of course, is that Mo-Mo-Mo is only a letter away from Ma-Ma-Ma, closer than it is to Moiraine. And Moiraine is not his mother. She will never be his mother. This is only temporary. He is the property of the White Tower).

Soon the boy is sitting, then crawling, then walking. Suddenly, he is harder to keep track of than ever before, and there is a brief period when the two of them seriously consider leashing him. Perhaps they would have, if they were not still staying in town and sure to be heavily judged by everyone around them.

As soon as the boy has taken his first steps, Moiraine has him sitting in a saddle. Rand kicks his feet happily and grasps at Arrow’s mane with small fingers.

“We will make a fine rider of you yet,” she promises him, and there is a rare warmth in her voice which she will later consider the start of the end.

These are Rand’s first memories: glimpses of green hills and forests, burbling streams, nights spent under the stars, the up-down rhythm of a horse and Lan or Moiraine’s steady presence against his back in the saddle. The scent of pine and sword oil and damp wool.

They never stay anywhere for very long, so far as Rand remembers. Never for as long as they travel in-between places. There is a long string of towns and inns. Lan shows him where they are on maps, patiently listening as Rand painstakingly runs his finger under the tiny printed names and sounds out G-R-A-F-E-N-D-A-L-E or I-N-I-S-H-L-I-N-N.

He learns which forest herbs make a stew taste better and which ones will make an enemy froth at the mouth and collapse in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. He lies side-by-side on riverbanks with Moiraine, sleeves rolled up to their elbows, and they pluck shiny wriggling fish from the water with their bare hands. Lan holds his arms steady and teaches him to shoot from a bow.

Nights, though, are Rand’s favourite.

Moiraine traces lines between constellations with her finger and tells Rand their names, Traveler, Serpent, Archer. She shows him how to navigate by the sky. If he asks very nicely, she tells Rand histories of long-gone lands, like Manetheren.

Lan’s stories are bloodier. They make Rand shiver with thrill. It takes much more than asking nicely, closer to begging, to hear those. They’re about the Blight and the Borderlands and the Wars, Trollocs and Myrddrhaal and Drakkar.

Sometimes, Lan’s stories give Rand nightmares, but that’s okay. In their shared tent, bracketed by Lan on one side and Moiraine on the other, the two greatest warriors in the world even with their armour cast off for bed, there is no place Rand ever feels safer.

Moiraine takes nightmares very seriously, and this too, is nice. Dreams can have great meaning, she says. She lets him sit in her lap, and strokes his hair, and listens intently as he describes everything in detail, and Rand feels like the most special boy in the world.

It’s different when they stay in towns. Not necessarily different-bad. There are nice parts; other children to play with; gleemen to listen to (though, Rand thinks loyally, none of their stories hold a candle to Lan or Moiraine’s); markets with lots of interesting new sights and smells to explore. But it’s not as nice as the time in the woods, where Rand has Lan and Moiraine all to himself, and can pretend that they are their own little family of three.

At inns Rand is Moiraine’s ward, usually. Ward, not to be confused with the much more exciting title Warder, which he is forbidden to mention out loud where others might hear.

A few times, someone thinks he is Lan’s squire, and he plays along because it’s good fun, and tries extra hard at fetching and carrying things for Lan, and Lan’s mouth turns up at the corners in an amused sort of expression, and he gives Rand shiny silver coins as a reward for doing a good job.

Other times, people assume he is Moiraine’s son, and even though he’s not supposed to, Rand likes this best of all.

“You already had a mother,” Moiraine reminds him often, in even tones. “Her name was Kari al’Thor and she loved you very much.”

But this is all Moiraine can tell him of Kari al’Thor, even less than she can of his father Tam, who was a sheep farmer and a soldier and probably almost as good a swordsman as Lan. It is not enough.

Sometimes, Rand sees real mothers around town. Goodwives in aprons with babies on their hips, who busily wipe away snot and tears, and kiss bruises better, and shout their children’s names in the streets.

Certainly, Moiraine is nothing like them. She is better.

Those poor other children, Rand thinks to himself, their mothers are nowhere near as clever or pretty or powerful or elegant as my Moiraine. (And, indeed, the children often look at Moiraine with wide-eyed awe when she sweeps past. Rand strides proudly beside her, Cat Walks The Courtyard like Lan taught him).

It is not perfect all the time, of course.

Some days are spent riding in miserable weather, wet and saddlesore.

There are times when he is sick and Moiraine will not heal him because his body needs to learn to defend itself. Lan paces the length of the room, the soft drumbeat of his steps reassuring as Rand fades in and out of sleep. “Mama,” he rasps miserably when he wakes with tear-filled eyes, wanting. Moiraine ignores him, expression completely impassive, until he wells up enough spit in his dry mouth to make out her whole name properly instead. Afterwards, she lays cool cloths on his forehead and hums lullabies, but he cannot ever quite bring himself to forgive her.

There are tantrums, arguments. Once, in a fit of temper, Rand smacks Moiraine. Moiraine smacks him right back, just as hard. They both stare at each other, shocked and angry, then spend two days stewing on opposite sides of the room as they nurse twin flushed cheeks. Rand burns red-hot, Moiraine ice-cold.

Finally, Lan sits him down and gives him a long lecture about how a man should not lift his hand against a woman.

“And have you told Moiraine that a woman should not lift her hand against a child?” Rand asks, sulkily.

Something that is almost amusement passes over Lan’s face. “I will,” he says, though they both know that, for one, such a conversation cannot possibly go well (especially with Moiraine in such a mood), and for another, that Rand gets off easily in comparison to most boys his age. He has never been paddled or switched or knocked around the head. Moiraine—it is always Moiraine who deals punishments, even when Lan is the one who catches Rand making trouble—prefers character building exercises, chores or long tedious tasks like kneeling in the corner and thinking about what he’s done.

“Sorry,” he tells Moiraine later that evening, still only half-meaning it.

Moiraine coolly says, “Perhaps next time we will both have the foresight to use our words,” which is even less of an apology but the closest she will ever come to one.

They rarely have guests, wherever it is they’re staying at the time, but when they do, it’s almost always a Tairen woman named Siuan. Rand likes Siuan; she has a steady smile and an easy manner and says lots of strange things about fish. She’s nothing like Lan or Moiraine, and the novelty of it is fun.

There are drawings all over Siuan. Tattoos, she calls them. Rand likes to touch the ones on her arms, following the patterns with the tip of his finger.

“I’m going to get tattoos too, one day,” Rand declares, and accidentally up-ends several bottles of ink that night pretending at it, for which Moiraine makes him scrub the floor every evening for a week.

At some point during every visit, Rand and Siuan sit alone at the kitchen table over tea, and she asks him questions. He has to tell the whole truth, she reminds him firmly every time. Moiraine and Lan don’t have to find out any of his answers if he doesn’t want them to, he won’t be in any trouble, but he has to tell the whole truth.

“Do you have violent urges?”

“Do you hear voices?”

“Do you have bad dreams?”

Rand explains, in enthusiastic detail, how he has lots of violent urges. There is nothing he wants more than to fight a Trolloc and chop off its head. A few times, when he’s played with other children in the towns they’ve passed through, older boys have tried to push him over, so he’s fought them. Sometimes when he’s angry, he wants to hit things or throw himself to the ground kicking and screaming—though he’s old enough to know better, and hasn’t ever attempted to hurt Lan or Moiraine except for that one time, which makes him ashamed to remember.

There’s only one voice in his head, and it’s his own. “Why would someone hear multiple voices?” he asks, but Siuan ignores the question in that same way Moiraine sometimes does others.

The dreams are all standard fare, the same things he describes to Moiraine. Monsters lurking in the shadows, Lan lying dead in the dirt of a battlefield, faceless Whitecloaks who take Moiraine away, huge armies that Rand has to fight all alone with only his wooden practice sword for a weapon.

By the time he’s finished, Siuan is usually much more relaxed than when they started, which is how Rand knows he has done well. She ruffles his hair, or pushes a second honeycake towards him if there are any around that day, and tells him to go play.

One time, he sticks around afterwards, listening from around the corner as Moiraine joins Siuan and takes Rand’s seat at the table.

“He’s a good boy,” Siuan tells Moiraine.

This is enough to make Rand grin all on its own, but then Moiraine says fondly, “Yes, he is,” and it’s almost enough to make Rand’s heart burst out of his chest with joy. Moiraine does not give compliments freely, so when they do come, they feel earned.

Moiraine is always in a good mood after Siuan’s visits. She is looser, less tightly coiled. Smiles come more easily.

This is the best time to ask Moiraine for things. Toys, trips to new places, second servings of desserts.

“My own horse,” Rand dares to ask after a longer visit that leaves Moiraine extra sweet.

He knows it’s somewhat a wild request, though he is getting a bit big to ride with either of them now, so he is shocked when Moiraine gives him an assessing look and declares, “Yes, I think you are ready.”

They ride south, all the way to the Tairen border, where Lan goes into the city and returns leading a small, shaggy brown mare. He presses the reins into Rand’s hands.

“For me?” Rand says, still not quite able to believe it.

Lan inclines his head. “For you.”

Rand puts his hand up to the mare and she nuzzles his palm, her velvety nose and hot breath tickling his skin. His own horse.

“What will you call her?” Moiraine prompts, running a gentle hand over the horse’s withers.

He thinks deeply for a moment. This is a big deal. He’s never gotten to name anything before. It comes to him in a flash of inspiration. “Bela.”

Moiraine sighs and mutters something he can’t quite make out about naming choices, but there’s no venom to it, and the mare stays Bela. She is Rand’s responsibility, and he takes that responsibility very seriously.

It’s nice to be the one taking care of another living being, like how Lan and Moiraine take care of Rand. One day, Rand tells them, I will have my own stables with lots of horses, and maybe a sheep farm like my father Tam al’Thor (not to be confused with my father al’Lan Mandragoran), and he does not notice the dark look that Lan and Moiraine exchange over his head.

Around the time Rand turns ten, something shifts. They begin heading east—towards Cairhien, Lan says, which is a place they’ve always stayed far away from before.

“Why?” Rand says.

“I have an estate there, where we can stay for some time,” Moiraine says.

“Why?” Rand says again. He sees the tense set of Moiraine’s shoulders and the tight line of her mouth and knows he is skirting the edge of her patience. “We haven’t stayed there before, I mean. Why now?”

“Because it is closer to Tar Valon.”

“Why do we need to be closer to Tar Valon?” They’ve always tried to steer clear of there, too, so far as he can tell. Moiraine generally slinks around avoiding other Aes Sedai like a guilty dog.

“Come help me scout ahead,” Lan interrupts, which is how Rand knows Moiraine is really getting annoyed with him.

Up ahead, he urges Bela forwards to catch up to Lan. “Why do we need to be closer to Tar Valon?” He repeats, in a lowered voice. Fear strikes suddenly at him. “Is Moiraine going back to the White Tower?”

There’s a place for Lan there, maybe, as a Warder, but he cannot imagine that the Aes Sedai have much need for a scrawny boy like him, even if he is actually quite good with a sword.

“No,” Lan says, then frowns. “Not for long, at any rate.”

It’s not reassuring at all. Long has an entirely different meaning to Lan and Moiraine than it does to Rand. He’s never been away from either of them for so much as one night. The very idea of it sounds horrible.

“But you wouldn’t leave me behind, would you?”

Lan’s face softens, though few people besides Rand would know his stony features well enough to recognise it. “Of course not. Moiraine would go alone,” at this, his voice dips unhappily, “and I would stay with you.”

There is some sting to it—the knowledge that, between the two of them, Lan prefers Moiraine over Rand—but this is overwhelmed by the selfish relief that Rand will not be left alone. He cannot think of anything worse than being alone.

It’s a countryside estate, nestled in the south of Cairhien, and it’s the biggest building Rand has ever seen, all fine pale grey brick that gleams gold in the sunlight.

Rand’s jaw drops a little. “I didn’t know we were rich,” he says.

“We are comfortable,” Moiraine replies delicately, and Lan snorts.

Inside, there are hallways filled with fine rugs and tapestries and paintings—even a painting of Moiraine, when she must have been just a few years older than him, with three other dark-haired blue-eyed children. A warning look from Lan stops Rand from asking after them, though he’s dying of curiosity. She never mentioned siblings either. He wonders if any of them live nearby, and have children he could play with.

There’s a gaggle of staff waiting to greet them, enough people to run at least two or three inns. They call him Master Rand. Nobody’s ever called him Master before—Boy, or Child, sometimes, particularly if Lan or Moiraine is being firm with him, but never anything as grand as this.

Rand is given his own room, another thing he’s never had before. He’s never even had his own tent, though Lan has been saying for a while that it’s about time, because it’s an increasingly tight fit for the three of them now that Rand is growing like a weed.

They’ve always traveled light, inevitably. Rand manages to fit all his belongings on one shelf: a few books, drawings, interesting rocks and feathers he has found over the years, a slingshot, some spinning tops and glass marbles, a few figurines. He sits on the bed for a long moment, entirely overwhelmed by how big everything in this house is, then sets off to explore.

Lan and Moiraine’s room turns out to be just down the hall; it’s good to know that they won’t be far. Lan is gone off somewhere, but Moiraine is lining books up neatly at a desk. Rand flops down on her bed, tilting his head back, watching her upside-down figure move around.

“Are you leaving soon?” he asks. She can’t be, surely, if she’s going to all the trouble of unpacking.

“After you have settled in.”

“But you promise you’ll come back?”

He listens very carefully for her response. You have to pay attention to words with Moiraine. Exact verbiage.

“I will do my very best,” Moiraine says.

Rand frowns. It’s not a promise.

“Why have we come to Cairhien, after all these years?” he says, again.

Moiraine sighs heavily. She sets down her books, and takes a seat on the bed next to him.

“Do you remember your lessons on King Laman, Rand?”

“Yes. He’s the one who chopped down Avendasoldera and started the Aiel War.”

“That is correct. Well, King Laman was my uncle.”

Rand sits up on his elbows. “He was?”

It makes sense, in a way. Of course Moiraine would be a princess. Or, wait, no, a duchess. That almost sounds grander. Perhaps it’s only right that everybody here calls Rand Master.

“Yes,” Moiraine continues. “And when he died, there were some who thought I had a right to the throne, including the Amyrlin at the time. So I ran away.”

Moiraine always tells him that you can’t solve problems by running away from them, duty heavier than a mountain and all that, but Rand thinks better of pointing this out.

“There was a long succession war in Cairhien. So we had to stay away, you see, in case somebody tried to put me on the throne again. Now, Cairhien finally has a new king, and a new Aes Sedai has just been raised to the Amyrlin Seat so I am,” she coughs, “safer here now than I would have been before.”

He knows Moiraine well enough to tell that she is omitting something. There is another reason why they have stayed so far west all this time. If he remembers Moiraine’s lectures on royal politics correctly, Cairhien’s had its new king for a few years now. That leaves a gap worth a few years in Moiraine’s story.

Still, he doesn’t push. Sometimes you take what you can get, with Moiraine.

“Who’s the new Amyrlin Seat?”

Moiraine’s mouth twists in a way Rand can’t quite decipher. “Siuan Sanche.”

“Siuan?” There is no keeping the incredulousness from his voice. Bawdy, fish-talking Siuan as the Amyrlin Seat?

Maybe this is why Moiraine’s moods have been so stormy lately. This will probably put an end to Siuan’s visits. He wonders if a different Aes Sedai will come to ask him her questions.

“Can I come?” Rand says. “I want to see her.”

Again, a strange flicker of emotion on Moiraine’s face. “Another time.”

“Would you let me come if I was your Warder?” he asks, curiously.

This time, she laughs, which is a relief. “Would you like to be my Warder, Rand?”

“Yes,” he says, immediately. “It would be an honour, Aes Sedai.”

Moiraine smooths his hair, smiling. “You have been spending too much time with Lan lately. He is rubbing off on you.”

“So can I?”

“Sisters of the Blue Ajah are not supposed to take more than one Warder.”

Two weeks pass. They settle into this new home. In many ways, it is much the same as all the others they have had. Mornings are spent with Moiraine in the library doing his lessons, afternoons are spent training with Lan, dinner is eaten together but other meals are taken separately. In-between, he is free to do with his time as he will. He explores the grounds and some of the surrounding forests, makes friends with a stable boy who’s around his age.

Then the new guests arrive.

Rand is outside, practicing his sword forms, so he is first to see them. A pretty woman and two men on horseback, she in green and wearing a serpent ring, they in colour-shifting cloaks like Lan’s. Rand figures them all out in the space of a few seconds.

Hastily, he tucks his shirt in, then bows. “Good afternoon, Aes Sedai. Gaidin.”

The Aes Sedai hides a smile. “Good afternoon, little soldier. Who might you be?”

“Rand,” he says. He’s not supposed to give out more than that to strangers.

“Rand,” a voice calls sharply from the doorway. Moiraine is there, stiff, all spiky edges. “Come inside.”

He obeys quickly, stepping into the house behind her, his practice sword left sitting in the dust. He lingers, though, wanting to listen to what these strangers have to say.

“Alanna,” Moiraine says smoothly. “It is a surprise to see you.”

“I was in the area, and had to see if the rumours were true,” Alanna replies. “It’s been years, Moiraine. People were starting to think you might be dead.”

Moiraine doesn’t say anything.

“Won’t you invite us in?” Alanna says. “It’s been such a long journey.”

You said you were in the area, Rand thinks, how could it have been a long journey? But if Moiraine notices the discrepancy too, she does not let it deter her. “Please, come in.”

A sharp look from Moiraine sends him out of the way, out of sight, but not far enough that he can’t eavesdrop.

While the Warders hand over the horses to the stableboy and go to find Lan, Moiraine and Alanna have tea in the parlour. There is some brief small talk and pleasantries, then Alanna gets straight to the point.

“Who is the boy, Moiraine? He didn’t seem like a servant.”

There is a quiet that Rand recognises as Moiraine rolling words around in her mouth, testing what the First Oath will allow, forming a plan within a plan within a plan. Then she says, “He is my son.”

Rand’s heart thumps unevenly in his chest. He cannot tell if he’s happy or sad or angry or all three.

Alanna gasps delightedly. “You and Lan—”

“Of course not,” Moiraine says.

“Then…” Alanna’s voice seesaws from delight to something darker, sadder. “Oh, he has the look of… Moiraine, you weren’t, after the Aiel War…” Rand isn’t entirely sure what she’s asking.

“No,” Moiraine says, quickly, to whatever it is. “That is, his father was a soldier in the Aiel War, but he fought alongside the Cairhienin forces, and never did anything untoward to me.”

There’s some of that tricky truth-telling Rand knows so well.

“Moiraine Damodred in a war-time romance,” Alanna muses. “I never would have pictured it. I didn’t even know you liked men!” Which is silly, because it’s clear as day that Lan is a man, and he’s Moiraine’s best friend, she likes him a lot. “So that’s why you disappeared for so long.”

Moiraine sniffs delicately. “You understand, had the Reds known then…”

There is a shifting sound, Alanna moving closer to Moiraine perhaps, offering some kind of comfort. “Sierin let them run wild. I do not imagine that Siuan Sanche will do the same.”

Eventually, the women’s talk turns to much more boring things, Aes Sedai business Rand can’t make heads or tails of. He skulks off to find Lan. He’s sitting outside with Alanna’s Warders—Maksim and Ihvon, they introduce themselves—and smoking tabac from long-stemmed pipes.

“Can I try?” Rand asks.

Maksim and Ihvon laugh.

“No,” Lan says.

“What’s a boy like you doing around here then, Rand?” Maksim asks. Clearly, he’s trying to get knowledge for Alanna, in case her tea with Moiraine doesn’t prove fruitful. “Has Lan taken on a squire?”

A bold flicker of madness runs through him and Rand says, casually, but glowing with pride, “No, Moiraine’s taken on a son.”

It does not make sense, that she can say that he is her son, when she has been so insistent all these years that she is not his mother—though it’s been a while since she has done that, now he comes to think of it—but he will cling to it, all the same. She has claimed him to Alanna. She cannot take it back.

Maksim and Ihvon exchange a quick, shocked look.

Meanwhile, Lan’s face does something very scary. He has never, in ten years, lifted a hand against Rand, but in that moment, he seems as though he might. It would be worth it, Rand tells himself, but he shifts nervously in his chair. It occurs to him that Lan does not know what Moiraine told Alanna, and that he thinks Rand has just carelessly put Moiraine in danger.

“Rand,” Lan says. His voice is quiet, smooth as silk, which is how Rand knows he’s really in a world of trouble. “Why don’t you go to your room? This is a conversation for adults.”

He is lucky that Moiraine finds him before Lan does, he thinks.

“You almost gave poor Lan a fit,” Moiraine reprimands him gently.

“You said it first,” Rand says. He realises, with a hot flash of embarrassment, that he is near tears. “You said I was your son.”

Moiraine closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “You are my son, in that I have raised you. That is why I was able to say it.” Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but it sounds as though she is trying to convince herself as much as she is him. “I will still never be your mother in any way that matters. Do not think of me in that way.”

Rand shakes his head. “You are my mother in the only way that matters.”

Moiraine leaves for Tar Valon the following morning, with Alanna and her Warders. It is only practical, safer than Moiraine travelling alone, yet Rand cannot help feeling as though it is a punishment. She doesn’t even say goodbye.

My mother, he repeats to himself. She cannot forbid me from saying it anymore. Not now that she has called me her son, regardless of why she might have said it.

He cannot sleep that night, or the night after. It has been enough of an adjustment, learning to sleep in a room empty of Lan and Moiraine’s quiet even breaths, without the added knowledge that Moiraine is no longer just a few rooms away if he has a bad dream.

Eventually, he ends up standing next to the head of Lan’s bed. He can tell that the man isn’t asleep yet, that his eyes are just closed.

“Lan,” he whispers. “Lan, can I sleep here?”

There is no contemplation. “No.”

This, too, feels like a punishment.

Well, fine. The company is enough. Rand goes to curl up on the floor.

Minutes pass. He shifts. The floor is hard and cold. But he won’t leave now, he has to make his point.

Finally, Lan sighs. “Get in.”

Rand climbs in eagerly beside him. “Do you miss her too?” he asks.

There is a long pause.

“Yes,” Lan says. “Now hush. It’s late.”

“Is she feeling okay?”

“She’s asleep. As you should be,” Lan adds the second part pointedly.

And, soothed at last, Rand does.

Leagues away, and days later, Moiraine is finally able to slip away for a private audience with the new Amyrlin Seat.

“How is he?” Siuan asks.

Moiraine huffs an exhausted laugh. “He is… he is just a boy. A normal boy. Frustrating and clever and stupid and noble.”

There is a fondness to the way she describes him. Siuan does not know if it is a mother’s love—like Moiraine, she does not remember her own mother. She hopes it is not. It will be so much easier for everyone if it’s not.

When the boy goes mad one day—when, not if—he will kill those closest to him first. Siuan does not want those people to be Moiraine and Lan.

“Do you think it is time to bring him here?” Moiraine says.

“No,” Siuan replies, immediately, though reluctantly. “The Reds are still pushing boundaries where they can, and I’m certain there are more Black Ajah I haven’t rooted out. It’s not safe yet.”

A look that can only be relief passes over Moiraine’s face.

“You’ve let yourself get attached,” Siuan says.

Moiraine sighs. “Have you not?” She runs a hand through her hair. She looks tired. “Do you ever feel like we are raising a lamb for slaughter?”

Siuan does not reply. Perhaps they are. Perhaps it is what’s necessary.

“I told Alanna he was my son.”

This, at last, is what sparks a reaction. “Flaming fishguts, Moiraine! What a stupid thing to do.”

If she believed it enough to get it past the Oaths, she is more than attached. It’s a problem, really. But what is Siuan supposed to do? She can hardly take the boychild away from her. There is no one else who could be trusted with him. 

“If I’m to stay put in one place for now, close-by, especially in Cairhien, word will get around eventually,” Moiraine explains patiently. “It already has, if Alanna’s visit is anything to go by. People will be suspicious if they find out I have taken a boy as my ward. There will be those—the Black Ajah—who will try to kill him, in case he is the Dragon Reborn. But if they think he is my son—and I know I can say it, now—and that is why I have been gone all these years…”

So a day later, Moiraine is called to the Hall.

“Moiraine Sedai,” Siuan booms. “You directly disobeyed the orders of the last Amyrlin Seat and ignored her summons for over a decade. Give me your reasons why, so that I may determine your penance.”

“Forgive me, Mother,” Moiraine says, bowing her head in deference. “I have stayed away from Tar Valon because I have been raising my son.”

Whispers break out across the room.

Outside the Hall, a confrontation:

“A son,” Liandrin spits at Moiraine, as though it is a personal betrayal. “A son!”

“I am not a Red, and I swore no Oaths against forming ties with men,” Moiraine says calmly.

Liandrin lurches forwards, perhaps meaning to throttle Moiraine with her bare hands. Moiraine side-steps her neatly.

Every day for over a month, Rand spends hours peering out of windows, searching for a glimpse of a blue rider on a white horse on the horizon. He sits on the doorstep with his school books, or practices more sword forms in front of the house.

“Like a dog waiting for its master,” Lan comments one afternoon, looking vaguely disturbed. “Maybe the distance will do you some good.”

Which is hypocritical, Rand thinks, because what is Lan if not Moiraine’s hound?

“Is she close?” He pesters Lan. “Is she happy? Does she miss me?”

Lan won’t tell him how Moiraine’s feeling—it’s none of his business—only that she’s safe, and not in any distress.

Then, finally, one day, Lan smiles and says, “She’s close.”

And Aldieb appears in the distance, a tiny white figure that grows bigger and bigger, Moiraine’s blue cloak streaming behind them like a banner. Rand is running towards them before Moiraine has even dismounted, and then he’s wrapping his arms around Moiraine in a tight hug.

They have only ever really hugged a handful of times before, and she seems a little bewildered, like she’s not sure what to do. Eventually, her hands come to rest on top of his head, brushing through his hair gently.

“Please don’t leave again.” His voice is muffled against her riding dress.

“I will promise no such thing,” Moiraine says sternly, but then her voice softens. “It is good to see you too, Rand.”

Years pass by at the estate in Cairhien, life slowly sinking into a rhythm.

It’s a good, comfortable life, yet all too often Rand finds himself missing those days of travelling the world on horseback, even as the memories themselves blur and fade. The three of them were all happier then, he thinks.

Other Aes Sedai visit sometimes, though never Siuan again, and none of them ask Siuan’s questions—Moiraine takes care of that herself, now. Alanna returns fairly often, as do some other Greens called Kerene and Myrelle, and a kindly Blue called Anaiya. They are all very interested in Rand, and Rand is always happy when they come, because it means he and Moiraine get to play mother and son.

Surprisingly, Moiraine lets him stick around and get to know the Aes Sedai. “It will be good for you to form some connections of your own,” she says. Rand doesn’t question it. He’s always game for new company; as much as he loves them, Lan and Moiraine are not exactly talkative, and there aren’t many other people around.

At some point, as he grows older, something begins to chafe. There is always a tension within Rand, simmering beneath the surface. It’s this life here, he tells himself. The isolation. He feels boxed in, caged.

Moiraine, to her credit, seems to notice.

“It will be your nameday soon,” she says. His nineteenth. “What would you like to do?”

They have never really been the types to celebrate namedays. In many ways, whatever Rand has wanted, he has always got, regardless of the day or time of year.

Is it even his real nameday, he wonders, or is it one Lan and Moiraine selected for him at random when they took him in?

And it’s those thoughts, perhaps, that lead to him saying, “I’d like to return to the Two Rivers. I want to learn more about my parents.” My other parents, he doesn’t say, because Moiraine still finds it off-putting to be reminded that he thinks that way.

She purses her lips. He isn’t expecting her to say yes, but she does. Maybe Lan and Moiraine are just as restless as he is.

It’s a long journey from Cairhien to the Two Rivers, over two months. He has outgrown Bela, by now; instead, there’s a quick-footed silvery gelding he calls Cloud.

In some ways, the travel itself is exactly how he dreamed it. Campfires, sleeping under the stars, hunting and fishing for their meals. He has his own tent, this time around. He’s too old to sleep with Lan or Moiraine, or to want to, for that matter.

There is a sense of peace, but it is not enough.

They arrive at the al’Thor farm first. It is long-abandoned; nobody from the village wanted to live here after what happened to the last owners, it seems.

Rand pays his respects at his parents’ graves. He wishes he knew what they looked like—perhaps it would be easier to miss them, then. He tries to picture Tam and Kari al’Thor, but only comes up with disjointed flickers of features he is used to seeing in the mirror, grey eyes and the straight slope of a nose and the cleft of a chin.

He examines their home—his home, in another life—and finds a heron-marked blade in a locked chest under the bed.

His father would have wanted him to have it, Lan says, so Rand takes it. It feels like robbing a grave.

The Two Rivers is like any of the other villages they have passed through during Rand’s life. Small, neat houses with slate roofs. A peddler, setting up his stock in time for Bel Tine. There is not even a scar in the soft earth of the village green where a mass grave once yawned open.

Lan and Moiraine do not worry about being recognised. They visited for less than the duration of a day twenty years ago, at a time of great chaos when the villagers had much more important matters on their minds.

And nobody does recognise them—until Nynaeve al’Meara spots them from across the Winespring Inn that evening.

“You!” She spits at Moiraine, whose face has not changed at all in the span of two decades. Lan steps in front of Moiraine protectively as the younger woman storms over. “The two of you!” Nynaeve continues, stabbing at Lan’s chest with her pointer finger. “I remember you, you’re the ones who stole the al’Thor baby—”

“I do not recall any such thefts occurring,” Moiraine says lightly.

Nynaeve fumes.

“As the stolen baby,” Rand offers, before she can throw any more accusations, “I don’t feel hard done by at all. I was raised pretty lovingly.”

She does not warm to Lan or Moiraine, but upon receiving this knowledge, Nynaeve cannot help warming to Rand. Here, too, finally, there is someone who can tell Rand more about Tam and Kari al’Thor. The two of them step away from Lan and Moiraine as they talk, and soon Nynaeve is introducing them to the trio who would have been his peers in another life: Mat, Perrin, Egwene.

If you asked Rand, he would tell you that this was the beginning of the end.

The Trollocs come the next night.

Rand is in merry spirits. He has drunk with Perrin and gambled with Mat and is dancing with Egwene. A part of him is busy imagining the life he could have had. The simple one, where he is only a sheepherder and these are his dear childhood friends.

Then an axe splits through the head of a boy dancing next to them, raining warm blood across Rand’s face.

They fight, of course.

Lan and Moiraine stand at the centre of it all, slashing through Shadowspawn with ease. It is the first time Rand has ever seen them really battle. It’s mesmerising.

Rand grasps Tam al’Thor’s heron-marked sword and makes kills of his own.

He seizes ko'di, shuts out the screaming and weeping and the crack of lightning and the sweet smell of burning flesh. The sword is a part of Rand. He moves swiftly through familiar forms. The Boar Rushes Down The Mountain. Heron Wading In The Rushes. The Swallow Takes Flight.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he watches Moiraine fall.

Nynaeve is gone. Another thread tying Rand to his past life, cut away.

With no Wisdom around to help, Moiraine insists on sticking around to heal the injured. Lan and Rand hover, worried, as she grows increasingly pale and unsteady. There is nobody who can knit together the flesh of her own blackening wound.

When she finally agrees to leave, Moiraine insists on taking Rand’s new friends with them. They are ta’veren, she says, and the girl a channeler besides. This is all news to Rand. But they come. They have little choice—the Trollocs came, supposedly, in part because of them, and will follow.

It’s an intense ride. The chase. Hunting horns blaring close behind them.

Rand feels something building, building, inside him. I could heal her, some part of him thinks with a deep conviction the rest of him does not share. I could heal her. If I could heal her…

Then the dreams start.

Shadar Logoth, and they are split up. Rand has no way of knowing if Moiraine is going to be okay or not.

Mat throws up his hands. “Why do you bloody care so much? She’s Aes Sedai! She’s probably using you for some secret purpose or another.”

“She’s my mother,” Rand says. “Don’t you understand?”

Mat does not.

Then Rand channels for the first time, and learns the rot inside himself. And wonders, with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, if Moiraine knew. If she knew all along, and never told him.

And that’s why… That’s why everything. An understanding of his entire life clicks into place.

He has never been a son. He is only a tool.

They get to Tar Valon, eventually. He takes Mat to The Queen’s Blessing, then sets off to the White Tower to find Moiraine.

A blonde woman in red finds him first. She isn’t one of the Aes Sedai he knows. “So you’re Moiraine’s boy,” she says, and in spite of the betrayal, Rand still puffs up with pride at the title.

“Is she okay?” he says.

She sniffs disparagingly. “She’s alive.”

“And she’s been healed?”

“What happened to her, anyway?”

Her voice is light. She’s toying with her words on purpose now, trying to get a rise out of him. It’s working. Rand feels something beneath his skin hum, and pushes it down.

“We were attacked and got separated,” he says. “Has she been healed?”

“Attacked by what?”

Rand pushes past her and finds somebody else to ask for directions.

Moiraine has been healed. She is going to be okay.

Instinctively, Rand throws his arms around her in a tight hug—then recoils as he remembers.

He does not tell her what he knows he is.

She needs to help Mat, he says dully, and she does. They are both relieved when Rand decides to stay with Mat at The Queen’s Blessing.

In the end, inevitably, it is the two of them who make their way to the Eye of the World.

“Lan should be here,” Rand says when they pass the Seven Towers, and Moiraine ignores him.

Ishamael shows him a life where he’s raised as a sheepherder by Tam and Kari al’Thor. Where he has two loving, normal parents who encourage him when he calls them Mother and Father. He could make it real, Ishamael says. Rand does not.

He wakes in Moiraine’s arms, her knife pressed to his throat.

“Would you have gone through with it?” he asks her.

Moiraine lowers her head, unable to meet his eyes. “Yes.”

He nods. It is not a bad thing. It is not good either.

“Tell them I’m gone,” he says, pushing himself up off the ground and beginning to walk away.

“Rand, wait. This wasn’t—”

“You’re not my mother, Moiraine,” he says. “You don't get to tell me what to do.”