"NOOOOOO!" Asmodean crawled toward her. "You cannot do this to me! Please, Mierin! Please!"
"My name is Lanfear!" Rage twisted her face to ugliness, and the man lifted into the air, spread-eagled; his clothes pressed to him and the flesh of his face distorted, spread out like butter under a rock.
Rand could not let her kill the man, but he was too tired to touch the True Source unaided; he could barely sense it, a dim glow just out of sight. For an instant his hands tightened on the stone man with the crystal sphere. If he reached through to the huge sa'angreal in Cairhien again now, that much of the Power might destroy him. Instead, he reached through the carving in his waistband; with the angreal, it was a feeble flow, a hair-thin trickle compared to the other, but he was too weary to pull more. He hurled it all between the two Forsaken, hoping to distract her if nothing, else.
A bar of white-hot fire ten feet tall streaked between the pair in a blur surrounded by arcing blue lightning, searing a pace-deep groove across the square, a smooth-sided gash glowing with melted earth and stone; the fiery shaft struck a green-streaked palace wall and exploded, the roar buried in the rumble of collapsing marble. On one side of the melted slash Asmodean dropped to the pavement in a shuddering heap, blood trickling from nose and ears; on the other, Lanfear staggered back as if struck, then rounded on Rand. He swayed with the effort of what he had done, and lost saidin once more.
For a moment rage engorged her face as deeply as it had for Asmodean. For a moment Rand stood on the brink of death. Then fury vanished with startling abruptness, buried behind a seductive smile. "No, I mustn't kill him. Not after we have gone to so much effort." Moving closer, she reached up to stroke the side of his neck, where her bite from the dream was just healing; he had not let Moiraine know of it. "You still bear my mark. Shall I make it permanent?"
"Did you harm anyone at Alcair Dal, or in the camps?"
Her face never stopped smiling, but her caress changed, fingers suddenly poised as if to rip out his throat. "Such as who? I thought you had realized you did not love that little farmgirl. Or is it the Aiel jade?" A viper. A deadly viper who loved him – The Light help me! – and he did not know how to stop her if she decided to bite, whether him or someone else.
"I don't want anyone hurt. I need them yet. I can use them." It was painful saying that, painful for the amount of truth in it. But keeping Lanfear's fangs out of Egwene and Moiraine, away from Aviendha and anyone else close to him, that was worth a little pain.
Throwing back her beautiful head, she laughed like chiming bells. "I can remember when you were too softhearted to use anyone. Devious in battle, hard as stone and arrogant as the mountains, but open and softhearted as a girl! No, I did not harm any of your precious Aes Sedai, or your precious Aiel. I do not kill without cause, Lews Therin. I do not even hurt without cause." He was careful not to look at Asmodean; white-faced, drawing jagged breaths, the man had pushed up on one hand, using the other to wipe blood from his mouth and chin.
Turning slowly, Lanfear surveyed the great square. "You have destroyed this city as well as any army could have." But it was not the ruined palaces she stared at, though she pretended; it was the broken square with its jumbled litter of ter'angreal and who knew what else. The corners of her mouth were tight when she turned back to Rand; her dark eyes held a spark of suppressed anger. "Use his teachings well, Lews Therin. The others are still out there, Sammael with his envy of you, Demandred with his hate, Rahvin with his thirst for power. They will be more eager to bring you down, not less, if – when – they discover you hold that."
Her gaze flickered to the foot-tall figure in his hands, and for an instant he thought she was considering taking it from him. Not to keep the others from his back, but because with it he might be too powerful for her to handle. Right then he was not certain he could stop her if she used nothing but her hands. One instant she was weighing whether to leave the ter'angreal in his possession, the next measuring his tiredness. However much she talked of loving him, she would want to be far from him when he regained enough strength to use the thing. Briefly she scanned the plaza again, lips pursed; then abruptly a door opened beside her, not a door to blackness, but into what seemed a palace chamber, all carved white marble and white silk hangings.
"Which one were you?" he said as she stepped toward it, and she paused, looking over a shoulder at him with an almost coy smile.
"Do you think I could stand to be fat, ugly Keille?" She ran hands down her rounded slimness for emphasis. "Isendre, now. Slim, beautiful Isendre. I thought if you suspected, you would suspect her. My pride is strong enough to support a little fat, when it must." The smile became a baring of teeth. "Isendre thought she was dealing with simple Friends of the Dark. I would not be surprised if right now she is frantically trying to explain to some angry Aiel women why a large quantity of their gold necklaces and bracelets are in the bottom of her chest. She actually did steal some of them herself."
"I thought you said you didn't harm anyone!"
"Now your soft heart shows. I can show a tender, woman's heart when I choose. You'll not be able to save her being welted, I think – she deserves that for the least of the looks she gave me – but if you return quickly, you can prevent them sending her off with one waterskin to walk out of this blighted land. They are quite hard on thieves, it seems, these Aiel." She gave an amused laugh, shaking her head in wonder. "So different from what they were. You could slap a Da'shain's face, and all he did was ask what he had done. Slap again, and he asked if he had offended. He would not change if you continued all day." Giving Asmodean a contemptuous sidelong look, she added, "Learn well and quickly, Lews Therin. I mean us to rule together, not to watch Sammael kill you or Graendal add you to her collection of handsome young men. Learn well and quickly." She stepped into the chamber of white marble and silk, and the doorway seemed to turn sideways, narrowed, vanished.
Rand drew the first deep breath he had taken since her appearance. Mierin. A name remembered from the glass columns. The woman who had found the Dark One's prison in the Age of Legends, who had bored into it. Had she known what it was? How had she escaped that fiery doom he had seen? Had she given herself to the Dark One even then?
Asmodean was struggling to his feet, unsteady and nearly falling again. He no longer bled, but blood still traced thin lines from his ears down the sides of his neck, made a smear across his mouth and chin. His filthy red coat was torn, his white lace ripped and snagged. "It was my link to the Great Lord that allowed me to touch saidin without going mad," he said hoarsely. "All you have done is make me as vulnerable as you. You might as well let me go. I am not a very good teacher. She only chose me because —" His lips writhed, trying to pull the words back.
"Because there isn't anyone else," Rand finished for him and turned away.On tottering legs Rand crossed the broad square, picking his way through the litter. He and Asmodean had been flung halfway around the forest of glass columns from Avendesora. Crystal plinths lay against fallen statues of men and women, some broken in chunks, some not even chipped. A great flat ring of silvery metal had been flipped up on chairs of metal and stone, strange shapes in metal and crystal and glass, all mixed in a heap with shattered bits, a black metal shaft like a spear standing upright, improbably balanced on the pile. The entire plaza was like that.