The gateway was narrower. Maybe as much as a finger width narrower than moments before. Only his block held it open; it had tried to close as soon as Aviendha released her weave, and it was still trying to.

“Hurry,” he told Aviendha, and she gave him a look so patient it could as well have been a stone between his eyes.

“I am trying, Rand al’Thor,” she said, still working at the collar. Tears trickled down Seri’s cheeks; a continuous low moan came from her throat, as if the Aiel woman intended to slit it. “You nearly killed the other two, and maybe yourself. I could feel the Power rushing into both of them wildly when you touched the other collar. So leave me to it, and if I can do it, I will.” Muttering a curse, she tried at the side.

Rand thought about making the sul’dam remove the collars—if anyone knew how the things came off, they would—but from the set frowns on their faces, he knew he would have to force them to it. If he could not kill a woman, he could not very well torture one.

With a sigh he glanced at the gray blankness filling the gateway again. The flows appeared to be woven into his; he could not slice one without the other. Passing through might trigger the trap, but cutting away the grayness, even if that act did not trip it, would allow the gateway to snap shut before they had a chance to leap through. It would have to be a blind jump into the Light knew what.

Morsa had listened carefully to every word he and Aviendha said, and now she was gazing thoughtfully at the two sul’dam, but Jalindin had never taken her eyes from the noblewoman’s face. “Much has been kept secret that should not be held from the Seekers, Lady Morsa,” the stern woman said. “The Seekers must know all.”

“You forget yourself, Jalindin,” Morsa snapped, her gloved hands jerking; had her arms not been bound to her sides, she would have sawed the reins. As it was, she tilted her head to stare down her nose at the other woman. “You were sent to me because Sarek looks above himself and has designs on Serengada Dai and Tuel, not to ask of what the Empress has—”

Jalindin broke in harshly. “It is you who forgets herself, Lady Morsa, if you think that you are proof against the Seekers for Truth. I myself have put both a daughter and a son of the Empress, may the Light bless her, to the question, and in gratitude for the confessions I wrenched from them she allowed me to gaze upon her. Think you that your minor House stands higher than the Empress’s own children?”