He did nothing that she could see or feel—of course, she could not—but for a moment she thought the hallway behind him had . . . turned in some way. But it did not look any different. Except . . . She blinked. There was no half-gone column in the colonnade beyond him, no hole in the stone railing.

He went on as if nothing had happened. “Tell Elayne. . . . Ask her not to hate me. Ask her . . .” Pain twisted his face. For a moment she saw the boy she had known, looking as though something precious was being ripped away from him. She reached out to comfort him, and he stepped back, his face stone again, and bleak. “Lan was right. Tell Elayne to forget me, Nynaeve. Tell her I’ve found something else to love, and there’s no room left for her. He wanted me to tell you the same thing. Lan has found someone else, too. He said for you to forget him. Better never to have been born than to love us.” He stepped back again, three long steps, the hall seemed to turn dizzyingly with him in it—or part of the hall did—and he was gone.

Nynaeve stared at where he had been, and not at the fitfully flickering reappearance of the damage to the colonnade. Lan had told him to say that?

“A . . . remarkable man,” Moghedien said softly. “A very, very dangerous man.”

Nynaeve stared at her. Something new was coming through the bracelet to her. Fear was still there, but muted by . . . Expectation might have been the best way to describe it.

“I have been helpful, have I not?” Moghedien said. “Rahvin dead, Rand al’Thor saved. None of it would have been possible without me.”

Nynaeve understood now. Hope more than expectation. Sooner or later Nynaeve would have to wake. The a’dam would vanish. Moghedien was trying to remind her of her aid—as if it had not had to be wrenched out of her—just in case Nynaeve might be steeling herself to kill before she went. “It is time for me to go, too,” Nynaeve said. Moghedien’s face did not alter, but fear strengthened and so did hope. A large silver cup appeared in Nynaeve’s hand, apparently filled with tea. “Drink this.”

Moghedien edged back. “What—?”

“Not poison. I could kill you easily enough without, if that was my aim. After all, what happens to you here is real in the waking world, too.” Hope much stronger than fear now. “It will make you sleep. A deep sleep; too deep to touch Tel’aran’rhiod. It’s called forkroot.”

Moghedien took the cup slowly. “So I cannot follow you? I will not argue.” She tipped back her head and swallowed until the cup was empty.