Lews Therin was there—Rand was sure of it—but not a whisper sounded in his head that was not his own. For the rest of the day he did try to think of other things, useless as they might be. Berelain was ready to jump out of her skin for the number of times he popped in on her to ask about something she was perfectly capable of handling without him; he was not sure, but he thought she started trying to avoid him. Even Rhuarc began to look a little hunted after the tenth time Rand cornered him over the Shaido; the Shaido had not stirred, and the only choices Rhuarc could see were to leave them in Kinslayer’s Dagger or dig them out. Herid Fel had wandered off, as Idrien quickly pointed out he often did, and was nowhere to be found; when Fel became lost in thought, he sometimes lost his way in the city, too. Rand shouted at her. Fel was not her fault, not her responsibility, but Rand left her white and trembling. His temper rippled like a line of thunderstorms sweeping in from the horizon. He shouted at Meilan and Maringil till they shook in their boots and left him with pasty faces, reduced Colavaere to incoherent tears and actually sent Anaiyella running with her skirts hiked to her knees. For that matter, when Amys and Sorilea came to ask what he had told the Aes Sedai, he shouted at them as well; from the look on Sorilea’s face as they stalked away, he suspected that might have been the first time anyone had ever raised voice to her. It was knowing—knowing—that Lews Therin was really there, more than a voice, a man hiding inside his head.

He was almost afraid to fall asleep when night came, afraid Lews Therin might seize control while he slept, and when he did sleep his troubled dreams made him toss and mutter. The first hint of light through the windows woke him in tangled sweat-soaked sheets, with grainy eyes, a mouth that tasted like a horse six days dead, and legs that ached. The dreams he remembered had all been of running from something he could not see. He levered himself out of the great four-posted bed and made his ablutions at the gilded washstand. With the sky just turning gray outside, the gai’shain who would bring fresh water had not appeared yet, but last night’s did well enough.