7 A Departure

Before sunrise in Rhuidean, Egwene mounts for the march west, still exhilarated by finding Amys’s dreams and testing her growing ability to slip between dreams. She avoids entering Wise Ones’ and Rand’s dreams, fails to breach Rand’s warded slumber, and notes Isendre laboring in black under Maiden punishment, haunted by nightmares.

In the plaza, Rand confers with clan chiefs and Aiel traders about summoning Ogier stonemasons to rebuild Rhuidean. Mat waits to ride, while Jasin Natael hovers nearby. Egwene is startled that Moiraine obeys when Rand curtly tells her to be quiet, and she worries over Aviendha’s tense fixation on Rand and the meaning of her ivory bracelet.

Asked whether he will ever return, Rand answers uncertainly, then restores every fountain in Rhuidean, leaving the Aiel awed. He orders the march, Maidens closing about him as escort, with Aviendha at his stirrup. Egwene rides behind, determined to help her friend despite Aviendha’s denial of fear.

Moiraine delays to watch Kadere’s wagons roll out, including the covered redstone doorframe and other ter’angreal left behind. She recalls the Wise Ones’ trials—the glass columns and the three great rings—and that she herself once walked the rings. Riding with Lan, she shows rare worry; he questions her recent impatience and the oath of obedience she swore to Rand. She justifies it as necessary to stay close and guide him, remembering the rings warned that intimacy with Rand would mean disaster.

As the vast column snakes down from Chaendaer into the oven-hot flats, Moiraine muses on Lan’s quiet changes and his love for Nynaeve, and on the hard land shaping a hard people. The company pushes west toward the Jangai Pass and the Shaido, with Rand firmly in command and tensions and private resolves carried into the Waste.