If anything, the sneer deepened. “So you are him, are you?” He looked Rand up and down insolently. “You do not look so grand to me. I think that I myself could—” A flow of Air solidified just before it clipped him under the ear, and he collapsed in a heap.

“Sometimes we need a hard discipline,” Taim said, coming to stand over the man on the ground. His voice was almost jolly, but his dark tilted eyes stared close to murder at the man he had clubbed. “You cannot tell a man he has the power to make the earth shake, then expect him to walk small.” The Dragons climbing the sleeves of his black coat glittered in the sunlight; thread-of-gold would do for the one, but what could make the blue shine so? Abruptly he raised his voice. “Kisman! Rochaid! Drag Torval away and douse him until he wakes. No Healing, mind you. Maybe an aching head will teach him to mind his tongue.”

Two men in black coats, younger than Rand, came running and bent over Torval, then hesitated, glancing at Taim. After a moment, Rand felt saidin fill them; flows of Air lifted a limp Torval, and the pair trotted away with him floating between them.

I should have killed him long ago, Lews Therin panted. I should have . . . should have. . . . There was a stretching toward the Source.

No, burn you! Rand thought. No, you don’t! You’re only a bloody voice! With a fading wail Lews Therin fled.

Rand took a slow breath. Taim was looking at him, wearing that almost-smile. “You teach them Healing?”

“The little I know, first thing. Even before how not to sweat to death in this weather. A weapon loses its utility if it’s going to be laid up with the first wound. As it is, I have had one kill himself drawing too deeply and three burn themselves out, but no one has died from a sword yet.” He managed to put a good deal of contempt into the word “sword.”

“I see,” Rand said simply. One dead and three burned out. Did Aes Sedai lose that many in the Tower? But then, they went slowly. They could afford to go slowly. “What is this Black Tower the fellow was talking about? I don’t like the sound of it, Taim.” Lews Therin was mumbling and moaning again, just short of making words.

The hawk-nosed man shrugged, studying the farm and the students with a proprietory pride. “A name the students use. You could not go on calling this just ‘the farm.’ They certainly did not feel right about it; they wanted something more. The Black Tower to balance the White Tower.” He tilted his head, looking at Rand almost sideways. “I can suppress it, if you wish. It is easy enough to take a word from men’s lips.”