Page 195 of The Gathering Storm (The Wheel of Time 12)

“All right, Rand,” Nynaeve demanded after a few minutes, her arms folded. “What game is this?”

“How would you beat her, Nynaeve?” Rand asked. “She won’t be goaded into fighting me, like Rahvin or Sammael were. She won’t be easily trapped either. Graendal understands people better than anyone. Twisted she may be, but she is crafty, and should not be underestimated. Torhs Margin made that mistake, I recall, and you know his fate.”

Min frowned. “Who?” she asked, looking at Nynaeve. The Aes Sedai shrugged.

Rand glanced at them. “I believe in history he was known as Tohrs the Broken.”

Again, Min shook her head. Nynaeve joined her. Neither was deeply versed in history, true, but Rand acted as if they should know this name. Rand’s face hardened, and he blushed just faintly, turning away from them. “The question remains,” he said, voice soft but tense. “How would you fight her, Nynaeve?”

“I don’t care to play your games, Rand al’Thor,” Nynaeve replied with a huff. “You’ve obviously already decided what you intend to do. Why ask me?”

“Because what I am about to do should frighten me,” he said. “It doesn’t.”

Min shivered. Rand nodded to the Maidens standing in the doorway. Moving lightly, they crossed the room, leaped through the gateway, and spread through the pine forest, quickly vanishing from sight. All twenty together made less noise than Ramshalan had.

Min waited. On the other side of the gateway, a distant sun was hidden from sight, giving a late-afternoon light to the shadowed forest floor. After a few moments, white-haired Nerilea stepped into view and nodded to Rand. All clear.

“Come,” Rand said, and walked to the gateway. Min followed, though Nynaeve—breaking into a trot—beat her to the gateway.

They stepped out onto a carpet of brown pine needles, dirtied from a long slumber beneath the vanished winter snows. Branches nudged one another in the breeze, and the mountain air was more chilly than the breeze had indicated. Min wished for a cloak, but there wasn’t time to go fetch one. Rand strode directly through the forest, Nynaeve trotting up to him and speaking in a low voice.

Nynaeve wouldn’t get anything useful out of Rand, not when he was in this kind of mood. They would just have to see what he revealed. Min caught sight of some Aiel in the woods, but only brief glimpses when they obviously weren’t taking care to hide. They certainly had taken well to life in the wetlands. How did a people raised in the Waste know so instinctively how to hide in a forest?

Up ahead, the trees broke. Min hastened to join Rand and Nynaeve, who had stopped at the top of a gently sloping ridge. Here, they could see over the forest, and the trees continued down below like a sea of green and brown. The pines parted at the shores of a small mountain lake, caught in a triangular depression of the land.

Atop a ridge of its own, high above the water, was an impressive white stone structure. Rectangular and tall, it was built in the form of several towers stacked atop one another, each one slightly thinner than the one beneath. That gave the palace an elegant shape—fortified, yet palatial. “It’s beautiful,” she said breathlessly.

“It was built during a different time,” Rand said. “A time when people still thought that the majesty of a structure lent it strength.”

The palace was distant, but not so distant that Min couldn’t make out the figures of men walking the battlements on guard, halberds at their shoulders, breastplates reflecting the late sunlight. A late party of hunters rode in through the gates, a fine buck deer lashed to the packhorse, and a group of workers chopped at a fallen tree nearby, perhaps for firewood. A pair of serving women in white carried poles, bucket at each end, up from the lake, and lights were winking on in windows the length of the structure. It was a living, working estate bundled up in a single massive building.

“Do you think Ramshalan found his way?” Nynaeve said, arms folded, obviously trying not to look impressed.

“Even a fool like him could not miss that,” Rand said, eyes narrowing. He still carried the statuette in his pocket. Min wished he had left the thing behind. It made her uncomfortable, the way he fingered it. Caressed it.

“So you sent Ramshalan to die,” Nynaeve said. “What will that accomplish?”

“She won’t kill him,” Rand said.

“How can you be sure of that?”

“It isn’t her way,” Rand said. “Not when she can use him against me.”

“You don’t expect her to believe that story you told him,” Min said. “About sending him out to test the allegiance of the Domani lords?”

Rand slowly shook his head. “No. I hope for her to believe something of that tale, but I do not expect it. I meant what I said about her, Min—she’s more crafty than I am. And I fear that she knows me far better than I know her. She will compel Ramshalan and pull from him that entire conversation we had. From there, she will find a way to use that conversation against me.”

“How?” Min asked.

“I don’t know. I wish I did. She’ll think of something clever, then infect Ramshalan with a very subtle Compulsion that I won’t be able to anticipate. I’ll be left with the choice to keep him nearby and see what he does, or to send him away. But of course, she will think of that as well, and whatever I do will set in motion her other plans.”

“You make it sound as if you can’t win,” Nynaeve said, frowning. She didn’t seem to notice the chill at all. In fact, neither did Rand. Whatever that “trick” about ignoring cold and heat was, Min had never been a

ble to figure it out. They claimed it had nothing to do with the power, but if that were so, why were Rand and the Aes Sedai the only ones who could manage it? The Aiel didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold either, but they didn’t count. They never seemed bothered by regular human concerns, though they could be very touchy about the most random and insignificant things.

“We can’t win, you say?” Rand asked. “Is that what we’re trying to do? Win?”

Nynaeve raised an eyebrow. “Do you not answer questions anymore?”