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Dawn at each day since Rhuidean has found Moiraine in the desert, a safe distance from any camp or settlement.
She took a passing look at the destruction she bought, a landscape re-shaped by her powers, amplified a hundredfold by the Sakarnen. The first rays on the sun painted all of it into hues of orange. The blue mist that clung to the faraway valleys gained a pink contour. It wasn't that bad, as destruction went, though she knew the Wise Ones disapproved of changing the shape of the ever lifeless desert. Dunes had found new locations and a few larger rocks were moved along strange, spiralling patterns around the boulder she chose for practice today. Having made sure no real harm was done to human life, she half kneeled, half collapsed, heaving from exertion. She tried to suppress her growing panic at how little improvement she manifested since she had collected the powerful sa'angreal. Meanwhile, their group got nearer and nearer to Alcair Dal. Clearly, she wasn't worthy or skilled enough to handle it. For someone who had been trained to submit to the One Power and to go with its flow, to seize and control this amount of Saidar, as Rand had suggested, sounded like a death trap. Saidar was a river, grabbing and controlling it was as likely a success as reigning in the spring floods of the Alguenya with poorly made dams and flood gates. It was insanity, Moiraine knew this for a fact, because Laman had tried to do this during the last years of his reign. She smiled at the thought bitterly. By all records, she shouldn't be having such a hard time doing something so reckless and destructive, having the ancestry she had.
Maybe the resolution lay somewhere in the middle, maybe it was a completely different, third way. In her place, Siuan would already figured it out, Moiraine was certain of this. She had always been the first to understand how an unfamiliar Weave worked and she was able to recreate anything after watching it done a single time. People always assumed they were equally talented, but they were only equals in their power. Siuan had a real, intuitive skill in channeling, Moiraine needed long hours of practice to keep up with her. Maybe Cadsuane would go further as well.
She closed her eyes and focused on slowing and deepening her shallow breaths. True, there were more skilled Aes Sedai to fight one of the Forsaken, but currently it was only her and a man with a power wrought blade to protect the Dragon. It was left for open debate which one of them was saner. (Of course, it was her, Moiraine thought, Lan couldn't even channel yet he kept jumping between her and her eventually unavoidable death.)
She swept her dishevered hair out of her sweaty forehead, feeling grains of sand struck to her skin during her power-wrought storm. She was glad she had been alone and far from curious eyes. She hated to interact with others, except Lan, when she wasn't perfectly put together.
'You are still trying to submit,' she heard a neutral voice coming from behind the next boulder she knew all too well. Great. She breathed out and swept the remainder of her hair out of her face before she scrambled from all fours to a relatively dignified sitting position. Light that sa'angreal completely drained her.
Rand effortlessly climbed up and invited himself to sit down cross-legged on the boulder across her. She noted that at least he was keeping himself well out of her personal space. For their own safety, Moiraine had told Lan to keep anyone from intervening, but her Warder had obvious limits when it came to controlling Ta'veren. The boy looked far too amused for Moiraine's liking, even though she was glad to see anything but the haunted look he seemed to be constantly wearing since the Forsaken attack on Cold Rock’s Hold.
He was encouraging her to do something that nearly killed them all last time, seizing so much of the One Power that it was impossible for anyone to get through him. Moiraine managed, somehow, and ever since she had been debating if the prospects of becoming the one person the Dragon relied on for dragging him back from the brink of destruction combined with the prospects of her impending death were any help in regards to the faith of the world. There were no good choices she could make.
A lifetime ago, she considered Siuan her brake. Or a Tairen-patterned net of safety that would protect her from spiralling into the madness that came with power, the madness that ran in her family tree. It wasn't a question of 'if', it was a question of 'when'. Siuan had never realized the uniqueness in her own relation to power: she only viewed it as a tool and it took Moiraine several hard conversations to make her understand she was an outlier and not the norm. She was the only person Moiraine ever met who could be trusted with power.
Rand gave her a questioning look and she realized that her somber thoughts were probably showing on her face, a mistake she had only rarely afforded herself since her novice years.
'It's hard to change something so deeply instilled,' she replied, only to say at least something true she could afford to say. She looked around and turned to collect the waterskin Lan had bullied her to take. She drank, surprised at her own thirst, then she offered it to Rand. He accepted it with a nod and took a few sips, careful to leave her enough. Lan was right to still call him a Sheepherder. Rand probably had no idea he meant it as a compliment.
It was getting warmer by each minute. It was a welcome feeling, nights in the Three-Fold-Land were freezing in a dry, cough-inducing way that easily settled into her wetlander bones. Rand seemed to be unbothered by it. He wore this environment with much more ease than any of them. He was still looking at her, his expression as if he was trying to puzzle something out. She raised an eyebrow and nodded, encouraging him to ask.
'Submission to Saidar or... to the Seat?' his small wince was not enough to dampen the double meaning in his question. A few weeks ago Moiraine would have felt offended at his audacity. Her visions in Rhuidean, however, changed something in how she viewed herself, fundamentally. Was there really any point to rage over a hint of her being the Amyrlin Seat's lover with a certain agenda, when she had seen how far exactly she was willing to go for her mission? It was not difficult to smile at him in the calm, cold way that had always come to her naturally, long before she ever set foot into the office of the Mistress of Novices.
Rand seemed to be unsettled by her silence, sensing he went too far.
'You gave me such a hard time after Lanfear, it was only fair to ask,' he added.
'You seem to worship powerful women in a near pathological way,' she replied with a hint of a smile. 'It will easily become your undoing.'
'At least I'm not alone in this,' Rand smiled back. He suddenly reached for his left ear, feeling a sudden sharp flick of Air. He threw a surprised and accusing look at Moiraine, who seemed to study the intricately woven leather casing of her waterskin. They sat in silence for a while. She didn't owe him an explanation and he seemed to respect that. Yet, the one thing she learned in the Rings was how lethal any lack of trust or misunderstanding was between them.
'We have been together long before she was raised to the Seat,' she said in near whisper. It felt strange, like a small sacrilege, to talk about Siuan so openly. 'Long before you were born.'
Rand looked up from where he was fiddling with his frayed sleeve. Once again, he was wearing none of the quality shirts she had purchased in Tar Valon. Moiraine wasn't even sure any of them had made it to the Tree-Fold-Land.
'Like... Egwene and me?' he asked, not hiding his curiosity.
She wanted to cackle. Oh, to be children, if only for a single Turning, to grow up together hidden in safety. No agendas other than some expectation from their families. Having families. Thoughtlessly falling into a relationship because the other was always there and it was convenient. Only to drift apart after the first few difficulties. They never had such luxury with Siuan, had they? It was only them with the secret that could break the Wheel. She had no gentle way to break this to Rand so she stayed silent. There was no point in casual cruelty. Instead, her mind wandered to those first few blissful years, those resembling the most of that oblivious youth Rand mourned right now. Yet even those times were riddled with taboos and expectations due to her station and the Tower's approach to female relationships. Something rabid buried deep inside her, with claws and teeth, still grumbled in its slumber at the concept of 'pillow friends'. All those patronizing hints and forced conversations with the likes of Merean about how the connection was to fade with time. How it would all change, after they were raised. Ironically, their relationship had far outlived the Mistress of Novices. It was only a mere coincidence that Moiraine herself had something to do with that. She smirked at the thought.
Having a relationship with Siuan was constant hard work. It tested the limits of her Daes'daemar skills, it was decades of tension, stealth and espionage, sometimes even involving Lan to abridge their inabilities to lie. It only worked because through all those years, they remained madly in love, because of Siuan's brilliance at plotting and maneuvering, and maybe a good helping of the Dark One's luck. It was exhausting. She could have given years of her life in exchange for being able to hold Siuan's hand and walk along the Erinin out in the sun, simply because they could. Moiraine led a lonely life, searching for the Dragon Reborn, but at least she had Lan's constant support and care. Siuan had no one. For the past decade, she had barely left the Tower and when she had been raised to the Seat, she lost her last few remaining friends from their Novice years. It was unbecoming of the Seat to keep those relations alive and to play favourites. It was only those rare times, when Moiraine returned, when she could lay her burdens down.
She looked at Rand, who was still waiting for a reply. Light, if someone would have been able to relate to the loneliness that came with his path, it was Siuan. Yet here they were, Rand regarding her as a threat, after a series of mistakes sprung from Moiraine's despair at being cut off from the One Power. Her paralyzation to send timely letters, her inability to ask for her help.
'We have a fairly different dynamic,' was all she managed to say, consciously unclenching her wrists. Her Oaths let her use present time. Light.
He looked at her with misplaced sympathy.
'More like I had with Lanfear?'
There was a need to talk about Lanfear at some point and Moiraine was not looking forward to it. She was unsure if Rand understood the extent of her manipulation, or the still visible marks she had left on him as a person. Maybe Rand still believed he could reach her, even turn her away from the Shadow, given the love she thirsted for in their past lives but never had. Moiraine had her own doubts if love was of any use. At least ever since Rhuidean, she knew that seduction didn't work. On neither of them.
She managed to suppress a full-body shudder.
'Nothing like that,' she assured him, forcing a serene smile while he looked at her doubtfully. 'Do you want to talk about it?'
'About how she violated your Oaths,' he asked her, playing the patient listener, intentionally misinterpreting her. Moiraine rolled her eyes, 'or about how she shielded and locked me up after telling me I was only a tool?'
'You act as if in her place I would've acted differently, if not even worse,' she calmly told him.
Rand took a breath, probably to say something in denial, but then thought better of it and stood up with a huff. Her feet had fallen asleep. He offered her his hand to help her up and she accepted it after a moment of hesitation. It was still something brand new and very fragile, putting her trust not in the Dragon Reborn, but Rand al'Thor. She doubted Lews Therin would have waited for her in that cursed city for days. Rand did. If only he could stay in control for as long as the Wheel needed him, but what the Rings had shown her was contradictory.
'Let's have those conversations some other day,' he said, offering truce, and she nodded in agreement. For a while they simply stood and watched the dawn painting the desert into oranges and purples.
'I'll need something more than Dragon tattoos to impress the Chiefs at Alcair Dal,' Rand eventually said, when she started thinking about leaving the boulder to start her day. Moiraine suddenly understood why he had seeked her out and could barely contain her shock. He was really asking for her advice, wasn't he? All those arguments and childish tantrums in the past two years and all it took were... several near death experiences shielding him from the Forsaken and betraying the only person she ever fell in love with. She wanted to sit down to cackle or weep.
'When we were fleeing the Two Rivers, we were hidden from the trollocks by mist and rain many times,' he continued, 'at first I thought it was a coincidence, but it was you, wasn't it?' He was looking at her as if he had said something humorous, but Moiraine failed to see anything funny in that. He was already aware how she had created the Dragon of Fire for him over Falme and how she was the one who had broken his shield.
'What gave me away?' she asked curiously.
'It was Lan's disapproval,' he smiled.
'He needs to work on his subtlety, doesn't he?' Moiraine huffed reluctantly. Rand only shrugged, then he turned to her, regarding her carefully.
'Can you teach me how to do that? Most of the Aiel have never seen rain.'
Ah. It was genuinely good thinking and she felt a small flare of pride. Yet.
'You know I can't teach you to channel Saidin, just like a fish can't teach a...'
'...bird to fly, yet Verin Sedai told me some fish can fly and some birds can swim.'
Of course she told him that. Moiraine wondered, not for the first time, about her motivations, first offering her shelter then helping them escape from Cairhien. Gaining any certainty of her loyalties, as many things these days, was beyond her control now.
'Just explain the theory you were taught at the Tower.'
There was more curiosity than pleading in his tone. They both knew that sooner or later, he would figure it out by himself, or by tapping into Lews' memories. He only needed time, something they didn't have in abundance. Moiraine suppressed a defeated sigh.
'It's not something they teach, but a rare talent,' she hesitated to continue, because it was unbecoming to talk about one's potential in the One Power, especially in relation to others.
'Of course it is,' Rand deadpanned.
'Talents work in a more intuitive way,' she continued, easily switching to the calm tone she used for lecturing Novices during her Accepted years. She never realized how much she had missed teaching. Rand, sensing the shift, sat back on a rock ledge and she took up pacing in front of him. 'They are deeply rooted in emotions and more difficult to control.'
'Like Nynaeve's Healing?'
'Exactly, if we disregard her block,' Moiraine said, ‘most Sisters are capable of healing a single lethal wound by decades of practice of emptying their minds to focus on the right weaves. Nynaeve’s distress healed a caveful of people in mere seconds without her conscious control.’
Rand seemed to consider this.
‘No wonder she had a hard time fitting in the Tower.’
Moiraine looked at him to continue. Nynaeve had many qualities that destined her to not fit in the White Tower and it was hard to just pick one over the others.
‘Egwene told me how Novices are instructed to ignore their feelings when channeling. To picture a bud,’ he explained. ‘I know it helps. I often picture a flame and I feed everything to it, but what if it’s not the only way? What if for someone as powerful as Nynaeve the methods are simply different? You call it a block but the Tower is forcing her to submit to a level of power no Aes Sedai had in a millenia. No wonder she’s stuck, she must be terrified of it, and no one has the same experience to help her.’
Moiraine raised her eyebrows at his accusing tone but carefully considered what he said.
‘Are you suggesting that I could use the Sakarnen with what? Raw feelings after a lifetime of being cautioned against it?’
Rand gaped at her. He was clearly not suggesting anything along that line but now he suddenly realized the potential as well.
‘I solved your problem, didn’t I?’ he grinned at her blooming annoyance.
‘Quite by accident,’ Moiraine sniffed. ‘I still need to test it.’
She gave him a pointed look that was supposed to urge him to leave as soon as possible but he didn’t move from the ledge.
‘You can go ahead, I’m shielding myself,’ he told her, ‘it’s better if I stay to watch over you,’ he added when she didn’t move, ‘and when it’s proven that I was right you can…’
‘...teach a fish to fly,’ Moiraine sighed reluctantly. Before she turned towards the desert, however, she gave him a half smile and he cautiously smiled in return. For the first time since Rhuidean, it felt like at least they had a fighting chance.