The gateway was there all right, but instead of looking into his room in Eianrod, it was a gray blank. It seemed narrower than he remembered, too. Worse, he could see the weave of that grayness. It had been woven from saidin. Furious thought slid across the Void. He could not tell what it was meant to do, yet it could easily be a trap for whoever stepped through, woven by one of the male Forsaken. By Asmodean, most likely; if the man could hand him over to the others, he might be able to regain his place among them. Yet there could be no question of staying here. If Aviendha only remembered how she had woven the gateway in the first place, she could open another, but as it was, they were going to have to use this, trap or no.

One of the mounted women, a black raven in front of a stark tower on the gray breast of her cloak, had a severe face and dark eyes that seemed to want to drill into his skull. Another, younger and paler and shorter, yet more regal, wore a silver stag’s head on her green cloak. The little fingers of her riding gloves were too long. Rand knew from the shaven sides of her scalp that those long fingers covered nails grown long and no doubt lacquered, both signs of Seanchan nobility. The soldiers were stiff-faced and stiff-backed, but the officer’s blue eyes glittered behind the jaws of the insectlike helmet, and his gauntleted fingers writhed as he struggled futilely to reach his sword.

Rand did not care very much about them, but he did not want to leave the damane behind. At the least he could give them a chance to escape. They might be staring at him as they would a wild animal with bared fangs, but they had not chosen to be prisoners, treated little better than domestic animals themselves. He put a hand to the collar of the nearest, and felt a jolt that nearly numbed his arm; for an instant the Void shifted, and saidin raged through him like the snowstorm a thousandfold. The damane’s short yellow hair flailed as she convulsed at his touch, screaming, and the sul’dam connected to her gasped, face going white. Both would have fallen if not held by bonds of Air.

“You try it,” he told Aviendha, working his hand. “A woman must be able to touch the thing safely. I don’t know how it unfastens.” It looked of a piece, linked somehow, just like bracelet and leash. “But it went on, so it must be able to come off.” A few moments could not make any difference to whatever had happened to the gateway. Was it Asmodean?