The Guardswomen came near to arguing when they realized she intended them to wait outside her apartments while the three of them took him inside. Suddenly, Rand’s disguise did not seem amusing at all any longer. Caseille’s mouth thinned, and Deni’s wide face set in stubborn displeasure. Elayne almost had to wave her Great Serpent ring beneath their noses before they took positions beside her door, scowling. She shut the door softly, cutting off the sight of their frowns, but she wanted to slam it. Light, the man could have chosen something a little less unsavory for his disguise.
And as for him, he went straight to the inlaid table, leaning against it while the air around him shimmered and he became himself once more. The Dragon’s heads on the backs of his hands glittered metallically, scarlet and gold. “I need a drink,” he muttered thickly, catching sight of the tall-necked silver pitcher on the long side-table against the wall.
Still not looking at her or Min or Aviendha, he walked over unsteadily and filled a silver winecup that he half-drained in one long swallow. That sweet spicy wine had been left when her breakfast was taken away. It must be cold as ice by now. She had not been expected to return to her rooms so soon, and the fire on the hearth had been banked down beneath ashes. But he made no move she could see to warm the wine by channeling. She would have seen steam, at least. And why had he walked to the wine, instead of channeling to bring it to him? That was the sort of thing he always did, floating winecups and lamps about on flows of Air.
“Are you well, Rand?” Elayne asked. “I mean, are you sick?” Her stomach tightened at the thought of what sickness it might be, with him. “Nynaeve can—”
“I am as fine as I can be,” he said flatly. Still with his back to them. Emptying the cup, he began to fill it again. “Now what is it you don’t want Nynaeve to hear?”
Elayne’s eyebrows shot up, and she exchanged looks with Aviendha and Min. If he had seen through her subterfuge, Nynaeve certainly had. Why had she let them go? And how had he seen through it? Aviendha shook her head slightly in wonder. Min shook hers, too, but with a grin that said you just had to expect this sort of thing now and then. Elayne felt the smallest stab of—not quite jealousy; jealousy was out of the question, for them—just irritation that Min had had so much time with him and she had not. Well, if he wanted to play surprises . . .
“We want to bond you our Warder,” she said, smoothing her dress under her as she took a chair. Min sat on the edge of the table, legs dangling, and Aviendha settled onto the carpet cross-legged, carefully spreading out her heavy woolen skirts. “All three of us. It is customary to ask, first.”
He spun around, wine sloshing out of his cup, more pouring from the pitcher before he could bring it upright. With a muttered oath, he hastily stepped out of the spreading wetness on the carpet and put the pitcher back on the tray. A large damp spot decorated the front of his rough coat, and droplets of dark wine that he tried to brush away with his free hand. Very satisfactory.
“You really are mad,” he growled. “You know what’s ahead of me. You know what it means for anyone I’m bonded to. Even if I don’t go insane, she has to live through me dying! And what do you mean, all three of you? Min can’t channel. Anyway, Alanna Mosvani got there ahead of you, and she didn’t bother asking. She and Verin were taking some Two Rivers girls to the White Tower. I’ve been bonded to her for months, now.”
“And you kept it from me, you woolheaded sheepherder?” Min demanded. “If I’d known—!” She deftly produced a slim knife from her sleeve, then glared at it and glumly put it back. That cure would have been as hard on Rand as on Alanna.
“This was against custom,” Aviendha said, half questioning. She shifted on the carpet and fingered her belt knife.
“Very much so,” Elayne replied grimly. That a sister would do that to any man was disgusting! That Alanna had done it to Rand . . . ! She remembered the dark, fiery Green with her quicksilver humor and her quicksilver temper. “Alanna has more toh to him than she could repay in a lifetime! And to us. Even if she doesn’t, she will wish I had just killed her after I lay hands on her!”
“After we lay hands on her,” Aviendha said, nodding for emphasis.
“So.” Rand peered into his wine. “You can see there’s no point in this. I . . . I think I’d better go back to Nynaeve, now. Are you coming, Min?” Despite what they had told him, he sounded as though he did not really believe, as if Min might abandon him now. He did not sound afraid of it, only resigned.
“There is a point,” Elayne said insistently. She leaned toward him, trying by the force of her will to make him accept what she was saying. “One bond doesn’t ward you against another. Sisters don’t bond the same man because of custom, Rand, because they don’t want to share him, not because it can’t be done. And it isn’t against Tower law, either.” Of course, some customs were strong as law, at least in the eyes of the sisters. Nynaeve seemed to go on more every day about upholding Aes Sedai customs and dignity. When she learned of this, she would probably explode right through the roof. “Well, we do want to share you! We will share you, if you agree.”
How easy it was to say that! She had been sure she could not, once. Until she came to realize that she loved Aviendha as much as she did him, just in a different way. And Min, too; another sister, even if they had not adopted one another. She would stripe Alanna from top to bottom for touching him, given the chance, but Aviendha and Min were different. They were part of her. In a way, they were her, and she them.
She softened her tone. “I am asking, Rand. We are asking. Please let us bond you.”
“Min,” he murmured, almost accusingly. His eyes on Min’s face were filled with despair. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew if I laid eyes on them . . .” He shook his head, unable or unwilling to go on.
“I didn’t know about the bonding until they told me less than an hour ago,” she said, meeting his gaze with the most gentle look Elayne had ever seen. “But I knew, I hoped, what would happen if you saw them again. Some things have to be, Rand. They have to be.”
Rand stared into the winecup, moments seeming to stretch like hours, and at last set it back on the tray. “All right,” he said quietly. “I can’t say I do not want this, because I do. The Light burn me for it! But think of the cost. Think of the price you’ll pay.”
Elayne did not need to think of the price. She had known it from the beginning, had discussed it with Aviendha to make sure she understands, too. She had explained it to Min. Take what you want, and pay for it, the old saying went. None of them had to think about the price; they knew, and they were willing to pay. There was no time to waste, though. Even now, she did not put it past him to decide that price was too high. As if that were his decision to make!
Opening herself to saidar, she linked with Aviendha, sharing a smile with her. The increased awareness of one another, the more intimate sharing of emotions and physical feelings, was always a pleasure with her sister. It was very much like what they would soon share with Rand. She had worked this out carefully, studied it from every angle. What she had been able to learn of the Aiel adoption weaves had been a great help. That ceremony had been when the idea first came to her.
Carefully she wove Spirit, a flow of over a hundred threads, every thread placed just so, and laid the weave on Aviendha sitting on the floor, then did the same to Min on the table’s edge. In a way, they were not two separate weaves at all. They glowed with a precise similarity, and it seemed that looking at one, she saw the other as well. These were not the weaves used in the adoption ceremony, but they used the same principles. They included; what happened to one meshed in that weave, happened to all in it. As soon as the weaves were in place, she passed the lead of the circle of two to Aviendha. The weaves already made remained, and Aviendha immediately wove identical weaves around Elayne, and around Min again, blending that one until it was indistinguishable from Elayne’s before passing control back. They did that very easily now, after a great deal of practice. Four weaves, or rather, t
hree now, yet they all seemed the same weave.
Everything was ready. Aviendha was a rock of confidence as strong as anything Elayne had ever felt from Birgitte. Min sat gripping the edge of the table, her ankles locked together; she could not see the flows, but she gave an assured grin that was only spoiled a little when she licked her lips. Elayne breathed deeply. To her eyes, they three were surrounded and connected by a tracery of Spirit that made the finest lace seem drab. Now if only it worked as she believed it would.
From each of them, she extended the weave in narrow lines toward Rand, twisting the three lines into one, changing it into the Warder bond. That, she laid on Rand as softly as if she were laying a blanket on a baby. The spiderweb of Spirit settled around him, settled into him. He did not even blink, but it was done. She let go of saidar. Done.
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 if 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.
“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.
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