“I have told you about the rings in Rhuidean,” she said slowly, and Elayne gave an impatient nod. Every woman who wanted to become a Wise One was sent through a ter’angreal before she began training. It was something like the ter’angreal used to test novices for being raised to Accepted in the White Tower, except that in this one, a woman saw her whole life. All of her possible lives, really, every decision made differently, an infinite fan of lives based on differing choices. “No one can remember all of that, Elayne, only bits and pieces. I knew I would love Rand al’Thor…” she was still uncomfortable sometimes about using just his first name in front of others, “and that I would find sister-wives. For most things, all you retain is a vague impression at best. A hint of warning, sometimes. I think if we go to him now, something very bad will happen. Maybe one of us will die, maybe both in spite of what Min said.” That she said Min’s name without fumbling was a measure of her concern. She did not know Min very well, and usually named her formally, as Min Farshaw. “Perhaps he will die. Perhaps something else. I do not know for sure—maybe we will all survive, and we will sit around a fire with him roasting pecara when we find him—but the glimmer of a warning is there in my head.”

Elayne opened her mouth angrily. Then she closed it again, anger draining away like water down a hole, and her shoulders slumped. Perhaps Aviendha’s glimmer was true and perhaps not, but the fact was that her arguments had been good from the start. A great risk taken in ignorance, and taking it might bring disaster. The beacon had grown brighter still. And he was there, right where the beacon was. The bond did not tell her so, not at this distance, but she knew. And she knew she had to leave him to take care of himself while she took care of Andor.

“I don’t have anything to teach you about being a Wise One, Aviendha,” she said quietly. “You are already much wiser than I. Not to mention braver and more coolheaded. We return to Caemlyn.”

Aviendha colored faintly under the praise—she could be very sensitive, at times—but she wasted no time in opening the gateway, a rotating view of a stableyard in the Royal Palace that widened into a hole in the air and let snow from the meadow fall onto the clean-swept paving stones as near three hundred miles away as made no difference. The sense of Birgitte, somewhere in the palace, sprang alive in Elayne’s head. Birgitte had a headache and a sour stomach, not unusual occurrences of late, but they suited Elayne’s mood all too well.