Egwene’s lips compressed, but she stepped out. I did not! “It’s me, Rand. Do not be afraid. It is a dream. I must be in your dreams.”
He was on his feet so suddenly that she stopped dead. He seemed in some way larger than she remembered. And a touch dangerous. Perhaps more than a touch. His blue-gray eyes seemed to burn like frozen fire.
“Do you think I don’t know it is a dream?” he sneered. “I know that makes it no less real.” He stared angrily out into the darkness as if looking for someone. “How long will you try?” he shouted at the night. “How many faces will you send? My mother, my father, now her! Pretty girls won’t tempt me with a kiss, not even one I know! I deny you, Father of Lies! I deny you!”
“Rand,” she said uncertainly. “It’s Egwene. I am Egwene.”
There was a sword in his hands, suddenly, out of nowhere. Its blade was worked out of a single flame, slightly curved and graven with a heron. “My mother gave me honeycake,” he said in a tight voice, “with the smell of poison rank on it. My father had a knife for my ribs. She—she offered kisses, and more.” Sweat slicked his face; his stare seemed enough to set her afire. “What do you bring?”
“You are going to listen to me, Rand al’Thor, if I have to sit on you.” She gathered saidar, channeled the flows to make the air hold him in a net.
The sword spun in his hands, roaring like an open furnace.
She grunted and stag
gered; it felt as if a rope stretched too tight had broken and snapped back into her.
Rand laughed. “I learn, you see. When it works. . . .” He grimaced and started toward her. “I could stand any face but that one. Not her face, burn you!” The sword flashed out.
Egwene fled.
She was not sure what it was she did, or how, but she found herself back among the rolling hills under a sunny sky, with larks singing and butterflies playing. She drew a deep, shuddering breath.
I’ve learned. . . . What? That the Dark One is still after Rand? I knew that already. That maybe the Dark One wants to kill him? That’s different. Unless maybe he’s gone mad already, and does not know what he is saying. Light, why couldn’t I help him? Oh, Light, Rand!
She took another long breath to calm herself. “The only way to help him is to gentle him,” she muttered. “As well go ahead and kill him.” Her stomach twisted and knotted. “I’ll never do that. Never!”
A redbird had perched on a cloudberry bush nearby, crest lifting as it tilted its head to watch her cautiously. She addressed the bird. “Well, I am not helping anything standing here talking to myself, am I? Or talking to you, either.”
The redbird took wing as she stepped toward the bush. It was still a flash of crimson as she took the next step, vanished into a thicket as she took a third.
She stopped and fished the stone ring on its cord out of the front of her dress. Why was it not changing? Everything had changed so fast up till now that she could hardly catch her breath. Why not now? Unless there was some answer right here? She looked around uncertainly. The wildflowers taunted her, and the larksong mocked her. This place seemed too much of her own making.
Determined, she tightened her hand around the ter’angreal. “Take me where I need to be.” She shut her eyes and concentrated on the ring. It was stone, after all; Earth should give her some feeling for it. “Do it. Take me where I need to be.” Once again she embraced saidar, fed a trickle of the One Power into the ring. She knew it did not need any flow of Power directed at it to work, and she did not try to do anything to it. Only to give it more of the Power to use. “Take me to where I can find an answer. I need to know what the Black Ajah wants. Take me to the answer.”
“Well, you’ve found your way at last, child. All sorts of answers here.”
Egwene’s eyes snapped open. She stood in a great hall, its vast domed ceiling supported by a forest of massive redstone columns. And hanging in midair was a sword of crystal, gleaming and sparkling as it slowly revolved. She was not certain, but she thought it might be the sword Rand had been reaching for in that dream. That other dream. This all felt so real, she had to keep reminding herself it was a dream, too.
An old woman stepped out of the shadows of the column, bent and hobbling with a stick. Ugly did not begin to describe her. She had a bony, pointed chin, an even bonier, sharper nose, and it seemed there were more warts growing hairs on her face than there was face.
“Who are you?” Egwene said. The only people she had seen so far in Tel’aran’rhiod were those she already knew, but she did not think she could have forgotten this poor old woman.
“Just poor old Silvie, my Lady,” the old woman cackled. At the same time she managed a stoop that might have been meant for a curtsy, or possibly a cringe. “You know poor old Silvie, my Lady. Served your family faithfully all these years. Does this old face still frighten you? Don’t let it, my Lady. It serves me, when I need it, as good as a prettier.”
“Of course, it does,” Egwene said. “It’s a strong face. A good face.” She hoped the woman believed it. Whoever this Silvie was, she seemed to think she knew Egwene. Perhaps she knew answers, too. “Silvie, you said something about finding answers here.”
“Oh, you’ve come to the right place for answers, my Lady. The Heart of the Stone is full of answers. And secrets. The High Lords would not be pleased to see us here, my Lady. Oh, no. None but the High Lords enter here. And servants, of course.” She gave a sly, screeching laugh. “The High Lords don’t sweep and mop. But who sees a servant?”
“What kind of secrets?”
But Silvie was hobbling toward the crystal sword. “Plots,” she said as if to herself. “All of them pretending to serve the Great Lord, and all the while plotting and planning to regain what they lost. Each one thinking he or she is the only one plotting. Ishamael is a fool!”
“What?” Egwene said sharply. “What did you say about Ishamael?”
The old woman turned to present a crooked, ingratiating smile. “Just a thing poor folks say, my Lady. It turns the Forsaken’s power, calling them fools. Makes you feel good, and safe. Even the Shadow can’t take being called a fool. Try it, my Lady. Say, Ba’alzamon is a fool!”
Egwene’s lips twitched on the edge of a smile. “Ba’alzamon is a fool! You are right, Silvie.” It actually did feel good, laughing at the Dark One. The old woman chuckled. The sword revolved just beyond her shoulder. “Silvie, what is that?”