She released Seri's collar and gave him an exasperated look, but her eyes went past him to the gateway, and she hoisted her skirts to stump through the snow to him, muttering to herself about frozen water.
“Be ready for anything,” he told her, putting an arm around her shoulders. He told himself they had to be close together to fit. Not because she felt good. “I don't know what, but be ready.” She nodded, and he said, “Jump!”
Together they leaped into the grayness, Rand releasing the weave that had held the Seanchan in order to fill himself to bursting with saidin...
...and landed stumbling in his bedchamber in Eianrod, lamplit, with darkness outside the windows.
Asmodean sat against the wall beside the door with his legs crossed. He was not embracing the Source, but Rand slammed a block between the man and saidin anyway. Whirling with his arm still around Aviendha, he found the gateway gone. No, not gone — he could still see his weaving, and what he knew must be Asmodean's — but there seemed to be nothing there at all. Without pause he slashed his weave, and suddenly the gateway appeared, a rapidly narrowing view of Seanchan, the Lady Morsa slumped in her saddle, Jalindin shouting orders. A greenandwhite tasseled spear lanced through the opening, just before it snapped shut. Instinctively, Rand channeled Air to snatch the suddenly wobbling twofoot length of spear. The shaft ended as smoothly as any craftsman could have worked it. Shivering, he was glad that he had not tried removing the gray barrier — whatever it had been — before jumping through.
“A good thing neither of the sul'dam recovered in time,” he said, taking the severed spear in his hand, “or we'd have had worse than this coming after us.” He watched Asmodean from the corner of his eye, but the man only sat there, looking slightly ill. He could not know whether Rand meant to stuff that spear down his throat.
Aviendha's sniff was her most pointed yet. “Do you think I released them?” she said heatedly. She removed his arm firmly, but he did not think her temper was for him. Or not for his arm, anyway. “I tied their shields as tightly as I could. They are your enemies, Rand al'Thor. Even the ones you called damane are faithful dogs who would have killed you rather than be free. You must be hard with your enemies, not soft.”
She was right, he thought, hefting the spear. He had left enemies behind that he might well have to face one day. He had to become harder. Or else he would be ground to flour before he ever reached Shayol Ghul.
Abruptly she began smoothing her skirts, and her voice became almost conversational. “I notice that you did not save that wheyfaced Morsa from her fate. From the way you looked at her, I thought big eyes and a round bosom had caught your eye.”
Rand stared at her in amazement that oozed across the emptiness surrounding him like syrup. She could have been saying the soup was ready. He wondered how he was supposed to have noticed Morsa's bosom, hidden as it was in a furlined cloak. “I should have brought her,” he said. “To question her about the Seanchan. I will be troubled by them again, I am afraid.”
The glint that had appeared in her eye vanished. She opened her mouth, but stopped, glancing at Asmodean, when he raised a hand. He could all but see the questions about Seanchan piled up behind her eyes. If he knew her, once begun she would not stop digging until she had uncovered scraps he did not even remember he knew. Which might not be a bad thing. Another time. After he had wrung a few answers out of Asmodean. She was right. He had to be hard.
“That was a smart thing you did,” she said, “hiding the hole I made. If a gai'shain had come in here, a thousand of the spearsisters might have marched through seeking you.”
Asmodean cleared his throat. “One of the gai'shain did come. Someone named Sulin had told her she must see you eat, my Lord Dragon, and to stop her from bringing the tray in here and finding you gone, I took the liberty of telling her that you and the young woman did not want to be disturbed.” A slight tightening of his eyes caught Rand's attention.
“What?”
“Just that she took it strangely. She laughed out loud and went running off. A few minutes later, there must have been twenty Far Dareis Mar beneath the window, shouting and beating their spears on their bucklers for a good hour or more. I must say, my Lord Dragon, some of the suggestions they called up startled even me.”
Rand felt his cheeks burning — it had happened on the other side of the bloody world, and still the Maidens knew! — but Aviendha only narrowed her eyes.
“Did she have hair and eyes like mine?” She did not wait for Asmodean's nod. “It must have been my firstsister Niella.” She saw the startled. question on Rand's face and answered it before he could speak. “Niella is a weaver, not a Maiden, and she was taken half a year ago by Chareen Maidens during a raid on Sulara Hold. She tried to talk me out of taking the spear, and she has always wanted me wed. I am going to send her back to the Chareen with a welt on her bottom for every one she told!”
Rand caught her arm as she started to stalk out of the room. “I want to talk with Natael. I don't suppose there is much time left until dawn...”
“Two hours, maybe,” Asmodean put in.
“... so there will be little sleeping now. If you want to try, would you mind making your bed elsewhere for what's left of the night? You need new blankets anyway.”
She nodded curtly before pulling loose, and slammed the door behind her. Surely she was not angry at being tossed out of his bedchamber — how could she be; she had said nothing more would happen between them — but he was glad he was not Niella.
Bouncing the shortened spear in his hand, he turned to Asmodean.
“A strange scepter, my Lord Dragon.”
“It will do for one.” To remind him that the Seanchan were still out there. For once he wished his voice was even colder than the Void and saidin made it. He had to be hard. “Before I decide whether to skewer you with it like a lamb, why did you never mention this trick of making something invisible? If I hadn't been able to see the flows, I'd never have known the gateway was still there.”
Asmodean swallowed, shifting as though he did not know whether Rand meant his threat. Rand was not sure himself. “My Lord Dragon, you never asked. A matter of bending light. You always have so many questions, it is hard to find a moment to speak of anything else. You must realize by now that I've thrown my lot in with yours completely.” Licking his lips, he got up. As far as his knees. And began to babble. “I felt your weave — anybody within a mile could have felt it — I never saw anything like it — I didn't know that anyone but Demandred could block a gateway that was closing, and maybe Semirhage — and Lews Therin — I felt it, and came, and a hard time I had getting past those Maidens — I used the same trick — you must know I am your man now. My Lord Dragon, I am your man.”
It was the repetition of what the Cairhienin had said that got through as much as anything else. Gesturing with the halfspear, he said roughly, “Stand. You aren't a dog.” But as Asmodean slowly rose, he laid the long spearpoint alongside the man's throat. He had to be hard. “From now on, you will tell me two things I don't ask about every time we talk. Every time, mind. If I think you are trying to hide anything from me, you will be glad to let Semirhage have you.”
“As you say, my Lord Dragon,” Asmodean stammered. He looked ready to bow and kiss Rand's hand.
To avoid the chance, Rand moved to the blanketless bed and sat on the linen sheet, the feather mattresses yielding under him as he studied the spear. A good idea to keep it for remembrance, if not as a scepter. Even with everything else, he had best not forget the Seanchan. Those damane. If Aviendha had not been there to block them from the Source...
“You have tried showing me how to shield a woman and failed. Try showing me how to avoid flows I cannot see, how to counter them.” Once Lanfear had sliced his weavings as neatly as with a knife.
“Not easy, my Lord Dragon, without a woman to practice against.”