He stared at them, expressionless, and slowly put his fingers to his temples.
"Oh, Light, Rand, the pain," Min murmured in a hurt voice. "I never knew; I never imagined. How can you stand it? There are pains you don't even seem to know, as if you've lived with them so long they're part of you. Those herons on your hands; you can still feel the branding. Those things on your arms hurt! And your side. Oh, Light, your side! Why aren't you crying, Rand? Why aren't you crying?"
"He is the Car'a'carn," Aviendha said, laughing, "as strong as the Three-fold Land itself!" Her face was proud—oh, so proud—but even as she laughed, tears streamed down her sun-dark cheeks. "The veins of gold. Oh, the veins of gold. You do love me, Rand."
Elayne simply stared at him, felt him in her head. The pain of wounds and hurts he really had forgotten. The tension and disbelief; the wonder. His emotions were too rigid, though, like a knot of hardened pine sap, almost stone. Yet laced through them, golden veins pulsed and glowed whenever he looked at Min, or Aviendha. Or her. He did love her. He loved all three of them. And that made her want to laugh with joy. Other women might find doubts, but she would always know the truth of his love.
"The Light send you know what you've done," he said in a low voice. "The Light send you aren't…" The pine sap grew a trifle harder. He was sure they would be hurt, and was already steeling himself. "I… I have to go, now. At least I'll know you are all well now; I won't have to worry about you." Suddenly he grinned; he might have looked almost boyish if it had reached his eyes. "Nynaeve will be frantic thinking I've slipped away without seeing her. Not that she doesn't deserve a little flustering."
"There is one more thing, Rand," Elayne said, and stopped to swallow. Light, she had thought this would be the easy part.
"I suppose Aviendha and I have to talk while we can," Min said hurriedly, springing off the table. "Somewhere we can be alone. If you'll excuse us?"
Aviendha rose from the carpet gracefully, smoothing her skirts. "Yes. Min Farshaw and I must learn about one another." She eyed Min doubtfully, adjusting her shawl, but they left arm in arm.
Rand watched them warily, as if he knew their leaving had been planned. A cornered wolf. But those veins of gold gleamed in her head.
"There is something they have had from you that I haven't," Elayne began, and choked, a flush scalding her face. Blood and ashes! How did other women go about this? Carefully she considered the bundle of sensations in her head that was him, and the bundle that was Birgitte. There was still no change in the second. She imagined wrapping it in a kerchief, knotting the kerchief snugly, and Birgitte was gone. There was only Rand. And those shining golden veins. Butterflies the size of wolfhounds drummed their wings in her middle. Swallowing hard, she took a long breath. "You will have to help me with my buttons," she said unsteadily. "I cannot take this dress off by myself."
The two Guardswomen stirred when Min came into the corridor with the Aiel woman, and jerked erect when they realized, as Min closed the door, that no one else was coming out.
"Her taste can't be that bad," the blocky, sleepy-eyed one muttered under her breath, hands tightening on her long cudgel. Min did not think anyone had been meant to hear.
"Too much courage, and too much innocence," the lean, mannish one growled. "The Captain-General warned us about that." She put a gauntleted hand on the lion-headed doorlatch.
"You go in there now, and she might skin you, too," Min said blithely. "Have you ever seen her in a temper? She could make a bear weep!"
Aviendha disengaged her arm from Min's and put a little distance between them. It was the Guardswomen who received her scowl, though. "You doubt my sister can handle a single man? She is Aes Sedai, and has the heart of a lion. And you are oath-sworn to follow her! You follow where she leads, not put your noses up her sleeve."
The Guardswomen exchanged a long look. The heavier woman shrugged. The wiry one grimaced, but she took her hand from the doorlatch. "I'm oath-sworn to keep that girl alive," she said in a hard voice, "and I mean to. Now you children go play with your dolls and let me do my job."
Min considered producing a knife and performing one of the flashy finger-rolls Thom Merrilin had taught her. Just to show them who was a child. The lean woman was not young, but there was no gray in her hair, and she looked quite strong. And quick. Min wanted to believe some of the other woman's bulk was fat, but she did not. She could not see any images or auras around either, but neither looked in the least afraid to do whatever she thought needed doing. Well, at least they were leaving Elayne and Rand alone. Maybe the knife was unnecessary.
From the corner of her eye she caught sight of the Aiel reluctantly letting a hand fall from her belt knife. If the woman did not stop mirroring her this way, she was going to start thinking there was more to this jiggery-pokery with the Power than she had been told. Then again, it had begun before the jiggery-pokery. Maybe they just thought alike. A disturbing idea. Light, all this talk about him marrying all three of them was very well for talk, but which one was he really going to marry?
"Elayne is brave," she told the Guards, "as brave as anybody I've ever met. And she isn't stupid. If you start off thinking she is, you'll soon go wrong with her." They stared down at her from the vantage of an added fifteen or twenty years, solid, unperturbed and determined. In a moment they would tell her to run along, again. "Well, we can't stand around here if we're going to talk, can we, Aviendha?"
"No," the Aiel woman breathed in a tight voice, glaring at the Guardswomen. "We cannot stand here."
The Guardswomen took no notice of their going at all. They had a job to do, and it had nothing to with watching Elayne's friends. Min hoped they did their job well. She isn't at all stupid, she thought. She just lets her courage lead the way, sometimes. She hoped they would not let Elayne scramble into brambles she could not get out of.
Walking along the hallway, she eyed the Aiel woman sideways. Aviendha strode along as far from her as she could be and still remain in the same corridor. Not even glancing in Min's direction, she pulled a thickly carved ivory bracelet from her belt pouch and slipped it over her left wrist with a small, satisfied smile. She had had a fly on her nose from the first, and Min did not understand why. Aiel were supposed to be used to women sharing a man. A far cry more than she could say for herself. She just loved him so badly she was willing to share, and if she must, then there was no one in the world she would rather share with than Elayne. With her, it almost wasn't like sharing at all. This Aiel woman was a stranger, though. Elayne had said it was important they get to know one another, but how could they it the woman would not talk to her?
She did not spend much time worrying about Elayne, though, or Aviendha. What lay in her head was too wondrous. Rand. A little ball that told her everything about him. She had been sure the whole thing would fail, for her at least. What would making love with him be like after this, when she knew everything! Light! Of course, he would know everything about her, too. She was definitely uncertain how she felt about that!
Abruptly she realized that the bundle of emotions and sensations was no longer the same as at first. There was a… red roaring… to it, now, like wildfire raging through a tinder dry forest. What could…? Light! She stumbled, and just caught her footing short of tumbling. If she had known this furnace, this fierce hunger, was inside him, she would have been afraid to let him touch her! On the other hand… It might be nice, knowing she had sparked such an inferno. She could not wait to see whether she produced the same effect as… She stumbled again, and this time had to catch herself on an ornately carved highchest. Oh, Light! Elayne! Her face felt like a furnace. This was like peeking through the bedcurtains!
Hurriedly she tried the trick Elayne had told her about, imaging that ball of emotions tied up in a kerchief. Nothing happened. Frantically she tried again, but the raging fire was still there! She had to stop looking at it, stop feeling it. Anything to get her attention anywhere but there! Anything! Maybe if she started talking.
&
nbsp; "She should have drunk that heartleaf tea," she babbled. She never told what she saw except to those involved, and only then if they wanted to hear, but she had to say something. "She'll get with child from this. Two of them; a boy and a girl; both healthy and strong."
"She wants his babies," the Aiel woman mumbled. Her green eyes stared straight ahead; her jaw was tight, and sweat beaded on her forehead. "I will not drink the tea myself if I—" Giving herself a shake, she frowned across the width of the hall at Min. "My sister and the Wise Ones told me about you. You really see things about people that come true?"
"Sometimes I see things, and if I know what they mean, they happen," Min said. Their voices, raised to reach each other, carried along the corridor. Red-and-white-liveried servants turned to stare at them. Min moved to the center of the hallway. She would meet the other woman halfway, no more. After a moment, Aviendha joined her.
Min wondered whether to tell her what she had seen while they were all together. Aviendha would have Rand's babies, too. Four of them at once! Something was odd about that, though. The babies would be healthy, but still something odd. And people often did not like hearing about their futures, even when they said they wanted to. She wished someone could tell her whether she herself would…
Walking along in silence, Aviendha wiped sweat from her face with her fingers and swallowed hard. Min had to swallow, too. Everything Rand was feeling was in that ball. Everything!
"The kerchief trick didn't work for you, either?" she said hoarsely.
Aviendha blinked, and crimson darkened her face. A moment later, she said, "That is better. Thank you. I… With him in my head, I forgot." She frowned. "It did not work for you?"
Min shook her head miserably. This was indecent! "It helps if I talk, though." She had to make friends with this woman, somehow, if this whole peculiar business was to have a hope of working. "I'm sorry for what I said. About toes, I mean. I know a little of your customs. There's something about that man that just makes me cheeky. I can't control my tongue. But don't think I'm going let you start hitting me or carving on me. Maybe I have toh, but we'll have to find some other way. I could always groom your horse, when we have time."
"You are as proud as my sister," Aviendha muttered, frowning. What did she mean by that? "You have a good sense of humor, too." She seemed to be talking to herself. "You did not make a fool of yourself about Rand and Elayne the way most wetlander women would. And you did remind me…" With a sigh, she flipped her shawl up onto her shoulders. "I know where there is some oosquai. If you are too drunk to think, then—" Staring down the hallway, she stopped dead. "No!" she growled. "Not yet!"
Coming toward them was an apparition that made Min's jaw drop. Consternation pushed Rand beyond awareness. From comments she had known that the Captain-General of Elayne's Guards was a woman, and Elayne's Warder to boot, but nothing else. This woman had a thick, intricate golden braid pulled over one shoulder other short, white-collared red coat, and her voluminous blue trousers were tucked into boots with heels as high as Min's. Auras danced around her and images flickered, more than Min had ever seen around anyone, thousands it seemed, cascading over one another. Elayne's Warder and Captain-General of the Queen's Guards… wobbled… a little, as though she had already been into the oosquai. Servants who caught sight of her decided they had work in another part of the Palace, leaving the three of them alone in the corridor. She did not seem to see Min and Aviendha until she almost walked into them.
"You bloody helped her in this, didn't you?" she growled, focusing glassy-looking blue eyes on Aviendha. "First, she flaming vanishes out of my head, and then…!" She trembled, and visibly controlled herself, but even then she was breathing hard. Her legs did not seem to want to hold her upright. Licking her lips, she swallowed and went on angrily. "Burn her, I can't concentrate enough to shake it off! You let me tell you, if she's doing what I think she's doing, I'll kick her tickle-heart around the bloody Palace, and then I'll flaming welt her till she can't sit for a month — and you alongside her!—if I have to find forkroot to do it!"
"My first-sister is a grown woman, Birgitte Trahelion," Aviendha said truculently. Despite her tone, her shoulders were hunched, and she did not quite meet the other woman's stare. "You must stop trying to treat us as children!"
"When she bloody well behaves like an adult, I bloody well treat her as one, but she has no right to do this, not in my flaming head, she doesn't! Not in my—!" Abruptly, Birgitte's glazed blue eyes bulged. The golden haired woman's mouth dropped open, and she would have fallen if Min and Aviendha had not each seized an arm.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she sobbed, just once, and whimpered, "Two months!" Shaking free of them, she straightened and fixed Aviendha with blue eyes clear as water and hard as ice. "Shield her for me, and I'll let you off your share." Aviendha's sullen, indignant glare just slid off her.
"You're Birgitte Silverbow!" Min breathed. She had been sure even before Aviendha said the name. No wonder the Aiel woman was behaving as if she feared those threats would be carried out right then and there. Birgitte Silverbow! "I saw you at Falme!"
Birgitte gave a start as if goosed, then looked around hurriedly. Once she realized they were alone, she relaxed. A little. She eyed Min up and down. "Whatever you saw, Silverbow is dead," she said bluntly. "I'm Birgitte Trahelion, now, and that's all." Her lips twisted wryly for a moment. "The flaming Lady Birgitte Trahelion, if you flaming please. Kiss a sheep on Mother's Day if I can do anything about that, I suppose. And who might you be when you're to home? Do you always show off your legs like a bloody feather dancer?"
"I am Min Farshaw," she replied curtly. This was Birgitte Silverbow, hero of a hundred legends? The woman was foul-mouthed! And what did she mean, Silverbow was dead? The woman was standing right in front of her! Besides, those multitudes of images and auras flashed by too quickly for her to make out any clearly, but she was certain they indicated more adventures than a woman could have in one lifetime. Strangely, some were connected to an ugly man who was older than she, and others to an ugly man who was much younger, yet somehow Min knew they were the same man. Legend or no legend, that superior air irritated her no end. "Elayne, Aviendha and I just bonded a Warder," she said without thinking. "And if Elayne is celebrating a little, well, you better think twice about storming in, or you'll be the one sitting tender."
That was enough to make her aware of Rand again. That raging furnace was still there, hardly lessened at all, but thank the Light, he was no longer… Blood rushed into her cheeks. He had lain often enough in her arms, catching his breath in the tangle of their bedding, but this really did seem like peeping!
"Him?" Birgitte said softly. "Mothers' milk in a cup! She could have fallen in love with a cutpurse or a horse thief, but she had to choose him, more fool her. By what I saw of him at that place you mentioned, the man's too pretty to be good for any woman. In any case, she has to stop."
"You have no right!" Aviendha insisted in a sulky voice, and Birgitte took on a look of patience. Stretched patience, but still patience.
"She might be proper as a Talmouri maiden except when it comes to putting her head on the chopping block, but I think she'll wind up her courage to put him through his paces again, and even if she does whatever it was she did, she'll forget and be back in my head. I won't bloody go through that again!" She squared herself, plainly ready to march off and confront Elayne.
"Think of it as a good joke," Aviendha said pleadingly. Pleadingly! "She has played a good joke on you, that is all." A curl of Birgitte's lip expressed what she thought of that.
"There's a trick Elayne told me," Min said hurriedly, catching hold of Birgitte's sleeve. "It didn't work for me, but maybe…" Unfortunately, once she had explained…
"She's still there," Birgitte said grimly after a moment. "Step out of my way, Min Farshaw," she said, pulling her arm free, "or—"
"Oosquai!" Aviendha voice rose desperately, and she was actually wringing her hands! "I know where there is oo
squai! If you are drunk… '. Please, Birgitte! I… I will pledge myself to obey you, as apprentice to mistress, but please do not interrupt her! Do not shame her so!"
"Oosquai?" Birgitte mused, rubbing her jaw. "Is that anything like brandy? Hmm. I think the girl is blushing! She really is prim most of the time, you know. A joke, you said?" Suddenly she grinned, and spread her arms expansively. "Lead me to this oosquai of yours, Aviendha. I don't know about you two, but I intend to get drunk enough to… well… to take off my clothes and dance on the table. And not a hair drunker."
Min did not understand that at all, or why Aviendha stared at Birgitte and suddenly began laughing about it being "a wonderful joke," but she was sure she knew why Elayne was blushing, if she actually was. That hard ball of sensations in her head was a raging wildfire again.
"Could we go find that oosquai, now?" she said. "I want to get drunk as a drowned mouse, and fast!"
When Elayne woke the next morning, the bedchamber was icy, a light snow was falling on Caemlyn, and Rand was gone. Except inside her head. That would do. She smiled, a slow smile. For now, it would. Stretching languorously beneath the blankets, she remembered her abandon the night before—and most of the day as well! She could hardly believe it had been her!—and thought that she should be blushing like the sun! But she wanted to be abandoned with Rand, and she did not think she would ever blush again, not for anything connected to him.
Best of all, he had left her a present. On the pillow beside her when she woke lay a golden lily in full bloom, the dew fresh on the lush petals. Where he could have gotten such a thing in the middle of winter she could not begin to imagine. But she wove a Keeping around it, and set it on a side table where she would see it every morning when she woke. The weave was Moghedien's teaching, but it would hold the blossom fresh forever, the dew-drops never evaporating, a constant reminder of the man who had given her his heart.
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