He sighed. “I know what you mean about life filling you, though, even with the taint turning my stomach. Colors are sharper, smells clearer. Everything is more real, somehow. I don't want to let go, once I have it, even while it's trying to swallow me. But the rest.... Face the facts, Egwene. The Tower is right about this. Accept it for the truth, because it is.”
She shook her head. “I will accept it when it is proved to me.” She did not sound as sure as she wanted to, not as sure she had been. What he told sounded like some twisted halfreflection of what she did, similarities only emphasizing differences. Yet there were similarities. She would not give up. “Can you tell the flows apart? Air, Water, Spirit, Earth, Fire?”
“Sometimes,” he said slowly. “Not usually. I just take what I need to do what I want. Fumble for it, mostly. It's very strange. Sometimes I need to do a thing, and I do it, but only afterward do I know what it was I did, or how. It's almost like remembering something I've forgotten. But I can remember how to do it again. Most of the time.”
“Yet you do remember how,” she insisted. “How did you set fire to those tables?” She wanted to ask him how he had made them dance — she thought she saw a way, with Air and Water — but she wanted to start with something simple; lighting a candle and putting it out were things a novice could do.
Rand's face took on a pained expression. “I don't know.” He sounded embarrassed. “When I want fire, for a lamp or a fireplace, I just make it, but I do not know how. I don't really need to think to do things with fire.”
That almost stood to reason. Of the Five Powers, Fire and Earth had been strongest in men in the Age of Legends, and Air and Water in women; Spirit had been shared equally. Egwene hardly had to think to use Air or Water, once she had learned to do a thing in the first place. But the thought did not further their purpose.
This time it was Elayne who pressed him. “Do you know how you extinguished them? You seemed to think before they went out.”
“That I do remember, because I don't believe I have ever done it before. I took in the heat from the tables and spread it into the stone of the fireplace; a fireplace wouldn't even notice that much heat.”
Elayne gasped, unconsciously cradling her left arm for a moment, and Egwene winced in sympathy. She remembered when that arm had been a mass of blisters because the DaughterHeir had done what Rand had just described, and with just the lamp in her room. Sheriam had threatened to let the blisters heal by themselves; she had not done it, but she had threatened. It was one of the warnings novices were given; never draw heat in. A flame could be extinguished using Air or Water, but using Fire to pull the heat away meant disaster with a flame of any size. It was not a matter of strength, so Sheriam had said; heat once taken in could not be gotten rid of, not by the strongest woman ever to come out of the White Tower. Women had actually burst into flame themselves that way. Women had burst into flame. Egwene drew a ragged breath.
“What's the matter?” Rand asked.
“I think you just proved the difference to me.” She sighed.
“Oh. Does that mean you're ready to give up?”
“No!” She tried to make her voice softer. She was not angry with him. Exactly. She was not sure who she was angry with. “Maybe my teachers were right, but there has to be a way. Some way. Only I cannot think of one, right now.”
“You tried,” he said simply. “I thank you for that. It is not your fault it did not work.”
“There must be a way,” Egwene muttered, and Elayne murmured, “We will find it. We will.”
“Of course you will,” he said with a forced cheerfulness. “But not today.” He hesitated. “I suppose you'll be going, then.” He sounded halfregretful, halfglad. “I do need to tell the High Lords a few things about taxes this morning. They seem to think they can take as much from a farmer in a poor year as a good without beggaring him. And I suppose you have to get back to questioning those Darkfriends.” He frowned.
He had not said anything, but Egwene was sure he would like to keep them as far from the Black Ajah as possible. She was a little surprised he had not already tried to make them return to the Tower. Perhaps he knew that she and Nynaeve would put a flea in his ear the size of a horse if he tried.
“We do,” she said firmly. “But not right away. Rand...” The time had come to bring up her second reason for being there, but it was even more difficult than she had expected. This was going to hurt him; those sad, wary eyes convinced her it would. But it had to be done. She snugged the scarf around her; it enveloped her from shoulders to waist. “Rand, I cannot marry you.”
“I know,” he said.
She blinked. He was not taking it as hard as she expected. She told herself that was good. “I do not mean to hurt you — really, I don't — but I do not want to marry you.”
“I understand, Egwene. I know what I am. No woman could — ”
“You woolbrained idiot!” she snapped. “This had nothing to do with you channeling. I do not love you! At least, not in the way to want to marry you.”
Rand's jaw dropped. “You don't... love me?” He sounded as surprised as he looked. And hurt, too.
“Please try to understand,” she said in a gentler voice. “People change, Rand. Feelings change. When people are apart, sometimes they grow apart. I love you as I would a brother, perhaps more than a brother, but not to marry. Can you understand that?”
He managed a rueful grin. “I really am a fool. I didn't really believe you might change, too. Egwene, I do not want to marry you, either. I did not want to change, I didn't try to, but it happened. If you knew how much this means to me. Not having to pretend. Not being afraid I'll hurt you. I never wanted to do that, Egwene. Never to hurt you.”
She very nearly smiled. He was putting on such a brave face; he was actually quite close to convincing. “I am glad you are taking it so well,” she told him in a soft voice. “I did not want to hurt you, either. And now I really must go.” Rising from her chair, she bent to brush a kiss across his cheek. “You will find someone else.”
“Of course,” he said, getting to his feet, the lie loud in his voice.
“You will.”
She slipped out with a sense of satisfaction and hurried across the anteroom, letting saidar go as she took the scarf from her shoulders. The thing was abominably hot.
He was ready for Elayne to pick up like a lost puppy if she handled him the way they had discussed. She thought Elayne would manage him nicely, now and later. For as much later as they had. Something had to be done about his control. She was willing to admit that what she had been told was right — no woman could teach him; fish and birds — but that was not the same as giving up. Something had to be done, so a way had to be found. That horrible wound and the madness were problems for later, but they would be dealt with eventually. Somehow. Everyone said Two Rivers men were stubborn, but they could not match Two Rivers women.