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Set in the month between The Eye of the World and The Great Hunt.
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A gust shunted Rand’s arrow to the side again so that it struck only the edge of the target. He was not sure whether the breeze or his nerves had caused him to miss. The wind had begun to unnerve him since he had returned to Fal Dara from the Blight. Just now, he thought that he could feel the fresh chill of spring turn to damp rot, oddly warm against his skin. He wasn’t sure whether it was real, and he did not want to ask Mat or Perrin whether they sometimes felt it too, just in case it was not.
The air clung heavily to him. The need to get back inside the keep, out of the blighted wind, overwhelmed him. He collected his arrows and unstrung his bow in a hurried daze. It was not until he was nearly out of the archery range that he noticed another person had entered while he cleaned up and that she had been wordlessly waiting for him to clear the area around the targets.
“Sorry,” he muttered as he passed her.
“It is no matter,” she answered in a voice as cold and clear as bells.
“Moiraine!” Rand halted. “Are you … well?” He had seen her in the weeks since they had returned to Fal Dara, but only in flashes. From a window into a courtyard where she rested in a bedchair. Down the end of a hallway where she walked tentatively, tailed by Lan, who did not allow him to get close. He looked down at her now. She unwrapped the heavy cloak from around her form and flashed a glance up at him.
Her face had a gray cast and tightness to it, but was far less alarming than it had been at the Eye, when she had told him what he was. “I find this to be helpful,” she said, gesturing towards the targets. Without another word, she folded her cloak, set it neatly on the ground beside her, and proceeded to string her bow. The movement was stiff but capable. “If you would,” she said again when he did not move.
He stepped back. “I need to talk to you. Can you tell me—”
“I have told you what I know.” She did not look at him, only picked through her quiver to withdraw an arrow.
“But surely you can teach me something!” he insisted desperately. Then he fell silent and looked around. The courtyard containing the keep’s archery range was empty except for them, save for one stablewoman who had quite clearly stopped whatever she was doing to watch them. Rand had to control himself. If his tongue was too loose, everyone would learn what he was.
Moiraine studied him with her eyebrows raised and shook her head once. Cowed, Rand walked away. He had understood that she would not speak with him while she healed, but he had hoped that now that she was upright …
“You know her, the Aes Sedai?” The stablewoman interrupted his ruminations as he walked by her.
“Yes,” Rand answered without stopping. The less this woman knew, the safer he would be.
“She’s quite good,” she went on. One booted foot bent back to balance her as she leaned casually against the wall. She was pretty, Rand noticed, but she looked past him towards Moiraine. “She has been here the past few days.”
That stopped him. “She comes here often?” Moiraine had been well enough to practice archery for days and yet hadn’t spared Rand, apparently the Dragon Reborn by her own declaration, more than a word?
“She shoots like someone who knows what she is doing, so I’d assume that she practices. Does that surprise you?” Light, had this woman noticed Rand’s own misses? Had Moiraine? “Watch her,” she nudged him. So he did.
Moiraine squared her hips, eyed the target, and then gently pulled back on the bowstring. The thin cloth of her shirt rippled as the muscles in her upper back shifted. For a moment she was motionless, only the wind eddying around her. She waited for it to die down before she loosed. The arrow arced elegantly toward the target before striking the center.
Her ease down was controlled. Only when the tension had left the string did she roll her shoulders back. She might have winced. Her face was too still to tell.
“You can tell that she’s hurt from the way she moves her arms, but look how she’s not compensating for it by straining. She’s just stabilizing with her stomach muscles.”
Rand blinked at the stablewoman. Just how often had Moiraine been coming here?
A soft thud indicated that a second arrow had hit the target. It nestled right beside the first. The stablewoman let out a hiss of approval.
Moiraine paused to roll up her sleeves. Her fingers slipped as she folded the fabric, and she fumbled in selecting the third arrow from her quiver. But when she drew again, her movements were again steady. The muscles in her forearm flexed neatly as she released the arrow.
It was almost as if she could only control her body when she was shooting. It reminded Rand of how he felt when he used the flame and the void. He knew that Lan used something of the kind. Might Moiraine too?
“What happened to her?” the stablewoman asked as Moiraine continued to shoot. She took progressively longer between shots as she went, but had not yet halted.
Rand looked at his feet. “She was hurt. It was … I’m glad she is getting better.”
“Alright, you don’t have to tell me. I heard you say that she won’t teach you? It is only that I’d like to get better as well, and she’s …” She grinned rakishly and gestured towards Moiraine. The target was growing full of near perfect shots.
“Try her yourself. She won’t talk to me,” Rand said. Rand considered for a moment offering to teach the woman himself, but she had seen him humiliate himself, so that would not do, and he did want to get inside.
“I might.” The woman ran her hands through her hair, taming the bits that had blown out of place, and straightened her clothing.
Before the stablewoman could reach her, though, Moiraine finished her quiver. She gave a satisfied nod, set down her bow, and walked gingerly to the target. She extracted the arrows one by one, pausing to open and clench her hands after each.
The other woman was there before Moiraine could finish. She handily removed the remaining arrows, then took the ones Moiraine was still holding from her clawed grip.
Moiraine cocked her head, murmured something that Rand could not make out—thanks, perhaps, but it might just as easily have been a dismissal.
It wasn’t, though. The two women walked back to the shooting line with their heads bent slightly towards each other. The stablewoman refilled Moiraine’s quiver, and then—finally—there was the expected dismissal, this time in the form of Moiraine nodding and turning away. It had taken longer for Moiraine to chase off the stablewoman than it had for her to turn Rand away. “Of course,” he muttered to himself.
The woman withdrew to give the Aes Sedai room to resume her practice. She reached Rand laughing. “She says that she hunted often as a girl. So did I, but when I shoot, it sure doesn’t look like that.”
“She never told me that,” Rand said bitterly. Not that she told him much of anything.
He was scrambling for a reason to excuse himself when the wind gusted again and sent the distinct smell of rotting animal flesh to Rand’s nostrils. He recoiled with an unthinking cry of, “That’s awful! How do you live with that stench?”
The stablewoman only pulled her fluttering shirt back into order. “What do you mean? What stench?” Her eyes narrowed and she stepped away from him.
Moiraine looked back at them then, blue jewel sparkling at her brow, and a knowing yet concerned look in her eyes when they met Rand’s. Without a word of leave, Rand fled indoors, away from phantom smells, Aes Sedai who knew too much and said too little, and stablewomen whose involvement he sincerely hoped began and ended with Moiraine’s regard.