In a way, letting Asmodean know his plans was less important than revealing his intentions to the Aes Sedai. To Moiraine I’m still just a shepherd she can use for the Tower’s ends, but to Asmodean I’m the only branch he can hold on to in a flood. Strange to think he could probably trust one of the Forsaken more than he could Moiraine. Not that he could trust either very far. Asmodean. If his bonds to the Dark One had shielded him from the taint on saidin, there had to be another way to do it. Or to cleanse it.

The trouble was that before they went over to the Shadow, the Forsaken had been among the most powerful Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends, when things the White Tower never dreamed of were commonplace. If Asmodean did not know a way, it probably did not exist. It has to. There has to be something. I’m not going to just sit until I go mad and die.

That was plain foolish. Prophecy had made a rendezvous for him at Shayol Ghul. When, he did not know; but afterward, he would not have to worry about going mad any longer. He shivered and thought about unfolding his blankets.

The faint sound of soft-soled footsteps in the hall snapped him upright. I told them! If they can’t . . . ! The woman who pushed open the door, her arms full of thick wool blankets, was not anyone he expected.

Aviendha paused just inside the room to regard him with cool, blue-green eyes. A more than pretty woman, of an age with him, she had been a Maiden until she gave up the spear to become a Wise One, not very long ago. Her dark reddish hair still came well short of her shoulders and hardly needed the folded brown scarf to keep it out of her face. She seemed a bit awkward with her brown shawl, a bit impatient with her full gray skirts.

He felt a stab of jealousy at the silver necklace she wore, an elaborate string of intricately worked discs, each different. Who gave her that? She would not have chosen it herself; she did not seem to like jewelry. The only other piece she wore was a wide ivory bracelet, carved in finely detailed roses. He had given her that, and he was not sure she had forgiven him for it yet. It was foolish of him to be jealous in any case.

“I haven’t seen you in ten days,” he said. “I thought the Wise Ones would have tied you to my arm once they found out I’d blocked them out of my dreams.” Asmodean had been amused at the first thing he’d wanted to learn, and then frustrated at how long Rand took to learn it.