Crossroads of Twilight

wagon seat? Not the face that sometimes appeared in his thoughts, anyway, and the scene was gone in an instant, without any of the dizziness that accompanied the face.

“Come,” he called, standing up.

Elza spread her dark green skirts in an elegant curtsy when she entered, her eyes bright on his face. A pleasant-appearing woman, and coolly complacent as a cat, she hardly seemed to see Min. Of all the sisters who had sworn to him, Elza was the most eager. The only eager one, really. The others had their reasons for swearing, their explanations, and of course Verin and the sisters who came to find him at Dumai’s Wells had no real choice facing a ta’veren, but for all Elza’s outer coolness, she seemed to burn inside with a passion to see he reached Tarmon Gai’don. “You said to let you know when the Ogier came,” she said, never taking her eyes from his face.

“Loial!” Min shouted gleefully, tucking the knife back up her sleeve as she rushed past Elza, who blinked at the sight of the blade. “I could have killed Rand for letting you get off to your room before I saw you!” The bond said she did not mean it. Not exactly.

“Thank you,” Rand told Elza, listening to the sounds of merriment from the sitting room, Min’s light laughter and Loial’s quake of Ogier mirth, like the earth laughing. Thunder rolled across the sky.

Perhaps the Aes Sedai’s passion extended to wanting to know what he said to Loial, because her lips thinned, and she hesitated before making another curtsy and sweeping out of the bedchamber. A brief pause in the sounds of pleasure announced her passage across the sitting room, and their resumption her departure. Only then did he seize the Power. He tried never to let anyone see him do that.

Fire flooded into him, hotter than the sun, and cold to make the worst blizzard seem spring, all a swirling rage that dwarfed the storm outside, threatening to scour him away for a moment’s inattention. Seizing saidin was a war for survival. But the green of the cornices was suddenly greener, the black of his coat blacker, the gold of its embroidery more golden. He could see the grain of the vine-carved bedposts, see faint marks left by the craftsman’s sanding all those years ago. Saidin made him feel as if he had been half-blind and numb without it. That was a part of what he felt.

Clean, Lews Therin whispered. Pure and clean again.

It was. The foulness that had marked the male half of the Power since the Breaking was gone. That did not stop nausea from rising in Rand, though, the violent urge to bend double and empty himself on the floor. The room seemed to spin for an instant, and he had to put a hand on the nearest bedpost to steady himself. He did not know why he should still feel this sickness, with the taint gone. Lews Therin did not know, or would not tell. But the sickness was the reason he could not let anyone see him take hold of saidin, if he could help it. Elza might burn to see him reach the Last Battle, but too many others wanted to see him fall, not all of them Darkfriends.

In that moment of weakness, the dead man reached for saidin. Rand could feel him clawing for it greedily. Was it harder than it had been to push him away? In some ways, Lews Therin seemed more solidly part of him since Shadar Logoth. It did not matter. He had only so far left to go before he could die. He just had to last that far. Drawing a deep breath, he ignored the lingering traces of sickness in his belly and strode into the sitting room to the crash of thunder.

Min stood in the middle of the room holding one of Loial’s hands in both of hers and smiling up at him. It took both of her hands to hold one of Loial’s, and the pair did not come close to covering it. The top of his head missed the plaster ceiling by little more than a foot. He had donned a fresh coat of dark blue wool, the bottom flaring over baggy trousers to the tops of his knee-high boots, but for once his pockets did not bulge with the angular shapes of books. Eyes the size of teacups lit up at the sight of Rand, and the grin on his wide mouth really did split his face in two. The tufted ears sticking up through his shaggy hair quivered with pleasure.

“Lord Algarin has Ogier guest rooms, Rand,” he boomed in a voice like a deep drum. “Can you imagine it? Six of them! Of course, they haven’t been used in some time, but they’re aired out every week, so there isn’t any mustiness, and the bedsheets are very good linen. I thought I’d be back to doubling myself up in a human-sized bed. Umm. We aren’t staying here long, are we?” His long ears sagged a little, then began to twitch uneasily. “I don’t think we should. I mean, I might get used to having a real bed, and that wouldn’t do if I’m going to stay with you. I mean… Well, you know what I mean.”

“I know,” Rand said softly. He could have laughed at the Ogier’s consternation. He should have laughed. Laughter just seemed to have escaped him, lately. Spinning a web against eavesdropping around the room, he knotted it so he could release saidin. The last traces of nausea began to fade immediately. He could control the sickness, usually, with an effort, but there was no point when he did not have to. “Did any of your books get wet?” Loial’s main concern coming in had been to check on his books.

Suddenly it struck him that he had thought of what he had done as spinning a web. That was how Lews Therin would put it. That sort of thing happened too often, the other man’s turns of phrase drifting into his head, the other man’s memories mingling with his. He was Rand al’Thor, not Lews Therin Telamon. He had woven a ward and tied off the weave, not spun a web and knotted it. But the one came to him as easily as the other.

“My Essays of Willim of Maneches got damp,” Loial said disgustedly, rubbing his upper lip with a finger the thickness of a sausage. Had he been careless shaving, or was that the beginning of a mustache beneath his wide nose? “The pages may spot. I shouldn’t have been so careless, not with a book. And my book of notes took some wet, too. But the ink didn’t run. Everything is still readable, but I really need to make a case to protect…” Slowly, a frown crept onto his face, dangling the long ends of his eyebrows onto his cheeks. “You look tired, Rand. He looks tired, Min.”

“He’s been doing too much, but he’s resting now,” Min said defensively, and Rand did smile. A little. Min would always defend him, even to his friends. “You are resting, sheepherder,” she added, letting go of Loial’s huge hand and planting her fists on her hips. “Sit down and rest. Oh, sit down, Loial. I’ll put a crick in my neck if I keep staring up at you.”

Loial chuckled, the bellowing of a bull muted in his throat, as he examined one of the straight-back chairs dubiously. Compared to him, it seemed a chair made for a child. “Sheepherder. You don’t know how good it is to hear you calling him sheepherder, Min.” He sat down cautiously. The plain-carved chair creaked under his weight, and his knees stuck up in front of him. “I am sorry, Rand, but it is funny, and I haven’t heard much to laugh at these past months.” The chair was holding. With a quick glance toward the hall door, he added, a little too loudly, “Karldin doesn’t have much sense of humor.”

“You can speak freely,” Rand told him. “We’re safe behind a… a ward.” He had almost said behind a shield, which was not the same thing. Except that he knew it was.

He was too weary to sit, just as he was too tired to find sleep easily most nights — his bones ached with it — so he went to stand in front of the fireplace. Winds gusting across the chimney top made the flames dance on the split logs and sometimes let a small puff of smoke into the room, and he could hear the rain drumming away at the windows, but the thunder seemed to have moved on. Maybe the storm was ending. Clasping his hands behind his back, he turned away from the fire. “What did the Elders say, Loial?”

Instead of answering straightaway, Loial looked at Min as if seeking encouragement or support. Perched on the edge of a blue armchair with her knees crossed, she smiled at the Ogier and nodded, and he sighed heavily, a wind gusting through deep caverns. “Karldin and I visited every stedding, Rand. All but Stedding Shangtai, of course. I couldn’t go there, but I left a message everywhere we went, and Daiting isn’t far from Shangtai. Someone will carry it there. The Great Stump is meeting in Shangtai, and that will attract crowds. This is the first time a Great Stump has been called in a thousand years, not since you humans fought the War of the Hundred Years, and it was Shangtai’s turn. They must be considering something very important, but no one would tell me why it was called. They won’t tell you about any Stump until you have a beard,” he muttered, fingering a narrow patch of stubble on his broad chin. Apparently, he intended to remedy his lack, though it was not certain that he could. Loial was over ninety years old, now, yet for an Ogier, that was still a boy.

“The Elders?” Rand asked patiently. You had to be patient with Loial, with any Ogier. They did not see time the way humans did — who among humans would think of whose turn it was after a thousand years? — and Loial tended to go on at length, given half a chance. Great length.

Loial’s ears twitched, and he gave Min another look, received another encouraging smile in return. “Well, as I said, I visited all the stedding but Shangtai. Karldin wouldn’t go inside. He’d rather sleep