Chewing her lip, she frowned at the shawl sourly. It did not help at all. Just the thought of tearing a hole in the Pattern made her queasy. She had hoped it would be like something she had worked out concerning Tel’aran’rhiod. Not that she ever meant to use it, of course, but she had had all that time on her hands, and the Wise Ones kept grumbling about the Aes Sedai asking how to enter in the flesh. She thought the way would be to create—a similarity seemed the only way to describe it—a similarity between the real world and its reflection in the World of Dreams. That should make a place where it was possible to simply step from one to the other. If Rand’s method of travel had seemed even slightly the same, she would have been willing to try, but this. . . . Saidar did as you wanted as long as you remembered it was infinitely stronger than you and had to be guided gently; try to force the wrong thing, and you were dead or burned out before you could scream.

“Rand, are you sure there isn’t any sense of making things the same . . . or. . . .” She did not know how to put it, but in any case, he shook his head before she trailed off.

“That sounds like changing the weave of the Pattern. I think it would tear me apart if I so much as tried. I bore a hole.” He poked a finger at her to demonstrate.

Well, there was no point in pursuing that. She shifted her shawl irritably. “Rand, about those Sea Folk. I don’t know any more than I’ve read”—she did, but she still was not going to tell him—“but it must be something important to bring them this far to see you.”

“Light,” he muttered absently, “you jump around like a drop of water on a hot griddle. I’ll see them when I have time.” For a moment he rubbed at his forehead, and his eyes seemed to see nothing. With a blink he was seeing her again. “Do you intend to stay until they come back?” He really did want to be rid of her.

At the door she paused, but he was already stalking up the room, hands clasped behind his back, talking to himself. Softly, but she could make out some. “Where are you hiding, burn you? I know you’re there!”

Shivering, she let herself out. If he really was going mad already, there was no changing it. The Wheel weaved as the Wheel willed, and its weaving must be accepted.

Realizing that she was eyeing the servants passing up and down the hall, wondering which might be Aes Sedai agents, she made herself stop. The Wheel weaved as the Wheel willed. With a nod for Somara, she squared her shoulders and tried very hard not to scuttle on her way to the nearest servants’ entrance.