Apparently squatting at her ease in the garden below Rand al’Thor’s rooms, Sulin tossed a small knife into the dirt, seemingly amusing herself with a game of flip. A rock owl’s cry from one of the windows brought her to her feet with an oath, slipping the knife behind her belt. Rand al’Thor had left his rooms again. Keeping watch over him this way was not going to work. If she had Enaila or Somara here, she would set them on him. Normally she tried to protect him from that sort of nonsense as she would a first-brother.

Trotting to the nearest doorway, she joined three more Maidens—none had come with her—and began to search the warren of corridors while trying to appear just to be walking. Whatever the Car’a’carn wanted, nothing must happen to the only son of a Maiden ever to come back to them.

CHAPTER
19

Matters of Toh

Rand thought that he would sleep well that night. He was nearly tired enough to forget Alanna’s touch, and more important, Aviendha was out in the tents with the Wise Ones, not undressing for bed with no regard for his presence, not disturbing his rest with the sound of her breathing. Something else made him toss, though. Dreams. He always warded his dreams, to keep the Forsaken out—and the Wise Ones—but warding could not keep out what was already inside. Dreams came of huge white things like giant birdwings without the bird, sailing across the sky; of great cities of impossibly tall buildings, shining in the sun, with shapes like beetles and flattened water-drops speeding along the streets. He had seen all that before, inside the huge ter’angreal in Rhuidean where he had gained the Dragons on his arms, and knew them for images of the Age of Legends, but this time it was all different. Everything seemed twisted, the colors . . . wrong, as though something had gone askew in his eyes. The sho-wings faltered and fell, each carrying hundreds to death. Buildings shattered like glass, cities burned, the land heaved like storm-tossed seas. And time after time he faced a beautiful golden-haired woman, watched love turn to terror on her face. Part of him knew her. Part of him wanted to save her, from the Dark One, from any harm, from what he himself was about to do. So many parts of him, mind splintered in glittering shards, all screaming.

He woke in darkness, sweating, shaking. Lews Therin’s dreams. That had never happened before, not dreaming the man’s dreams. He lay there the hours remaining until sunrise, staring at nothing, afraid to close his eyes. He held on to saidin as if he could use it to fight the dead man, but Lews Therin remained silent.