He looked at the other Saldaean women. They watched him like a troop of cavalry ready to charge, faces also granite, tilted eyes icy. All they awaited was Deira’s command. He could well believe the stories of Saldaean women taking up fallen husbands’ swords and leading their men back into battle. Being pleasant had gotten him exactly nowhere with Bashere’s wife; Bashere himself only shrugged and said she was a difficult woman at times, all the while grinning with what could only be pride.

“Tell Lord Bashere I am pleased,” he said. Turning Jeade’en, he started back toward Caemlyn. The Saldaean women’s eyes seemed to press against his back.

Lews Therin was giggling; that was the only word for it. Never prod at a woman unless you must. She will kill you faster than a man and for less reason, even if she weeps over it after.

Are you really there? Rand demanded. Is there more to you than a voice? Only that soft, mad laughter answered.

He stewed over Lews Therin all the way back to Caemlyn, and even after they had ridden past one of the long markets of tile roofs lining the approaches to the gates and into the New City. He worried over going mad—not just the fact of it, though that was bad enough; if he went insane, how could he do what he had to do?—but he had seen no sign of it. But then, if his mind did crack, would he know it? He had never seen a madman. All he had to go by was Lews Therin maundering in his head. Did all men go mad alike? Would he end like that, laughing and weeping over things no one else saw or knew? He knew he had a chance to live, if a seemingly impossible one. If you would live, you must die; that was one of three things he knew must be true, told to him inside a ter’angreal where the answers were always true if apparently never easy to understand. But to live like that. . . . He was not sure he would not rather die.

The crowds in the New City gave way before more than forty Aiel, and a handful recognized the Dragon Reborn as well. Maybe more did, but it was a ragged handful of cheers that went up as he rode by. “The Light shine on the Dragon Reborn!” and “The glory of the Light for the Dragon Reborn!” and “The Dragon Reborn, King of Andor!”