Men and Myrddraal stiffened where they stood. White frost grew thick on them, frost that smoked as Mat’s boots had smoked. The Myrddraal’s upraised arm broke off with a loud crack. When it hit the floor tiles, arm and sword shattered.

Rand could feel the cold—yes, that was his name; Rand—cold like a knife as he walked past and turned the way they had come. Cold, yet warmer than saidin.

A man and a woman crouched against the wall, servants liveried in red and white, short of their middle years and holding each other as though for protection. Seeing Rand—there was more to the name; not just Rand—the man started to rise from where he had huddled away from the Myrddraal-led band, but the woman hauled him back by his sleeve.

“Go in peace,” Rand said, putting out a hand. Al’Thor. Yes, Rand al’Thor. “I’ll not hurt you, but you could be hurt if you stay.”

The woman’s brown eyes rolled up in her head. She would have collapsed in a heap if the man had not caught her, and his narrow mouth was working rapidly, as if he was praying but could not get the words out.

Rand looked where the man was looking. His hand had stretched out of his coatsleeve far enough to bare the Dragon’s golden-maned head that was part of his skin. “I will not hurt you,” he said, and walked on, leaving them there. He had Rahvin to corner yet. Rahvin to kill. And then?

No sound but the click of his boots on the tiles. And deep in his head, a faint voice murmuring mournfully of Ilyena and forgiveness. He strained to feel Rahvin channeling, to feel the man filled with the True Source. Nothing. Saidin seared his bones, froze his flesh, scoured his soul, but from without it was not easy to see until you were close. A lion in high grass, Asmodean had said once. A rabid lion. Should Asmodean count among those who should not have died? Or Lanfear? No. Not—

He had only a moment’s warning to throw himself flat, a hair-thin slice of time between feeling flows suddenly woven and an arm-thick bar of white light, liquid fire, slicing through the wall, ripping across like a sword through where his chest had been. Where that bar slashed, on both sides of the hallways, wall and friezes, doors and tapestries ceased to exist. Severed wall hangings and chunks of stone and plaster broken free rained to the floor.

So much for the Forsaken fearing to use balefire. Who had told him that? Moiraine. She surely had deserved to live.

Balefire leaped from his hands, a brilliant white shaft streaking toward where that other bar had originated. The other failed even as his punched through the wall, leaving a purple afterimage fanning across his vision. He released his own flow. Had he done it finally?