“Rand, maybe that's the answer they give to everybody. Those snake people, I mean. Got to Rhuidean. Maybe we don't have to be here at all.' He did not believe it, but with that fog staring him in the face. ...Rand turned his head to look at him, not speaking. Finally he said, 'They never mentioned Rhuidean to me, Mat.''Oh, burn me,' he muttered.”

“The Light willing, we will see one another again," Rand said. He held out his hand to Perrin. "Watch out for Mat. I'm honestly not sure what he's going to do, but I have a feeling it will be highly dangerous for all involved.""Not like us," Perrin said, clasping Rand's forearm. "You and I, we're much better at keeping to the safe paths.”

“He did not own her, and she did not own him. The act of his movement so that they faced the same direction meant far more to her than other gesture could.-Aviendha about Rand”

“The woman [Cadsuane] looked at the battered tea things as if she had all the time in the world. “Now you know,” she said at last, calm as ever, “that I know your future, and your present. The Light’s mercy fades to nothing for a man who can channel. Some see that and believe the Light denies those men. I do not. Have you begun to hear voices, yet?”“What do you mean?” he asked slowly. He could feel Lews Therin listening.[...]“Some men who can channel begin to hear voices.” She spoke almost absently, frowning at the flattened sphere of silver and gold. “It is a part of the madness. Voices conversing with them, telling them what to do.” The teapot drifted gently to the floor by her feet. “Have you heard any?”[...]“I will ask the questions,” Rand said firmly. “You seem to forget. I am the Dragon Reborn.” You are real, aren’t you? he wondered. There was no answer. Lews Therin? Sometimes the man did not answer, but Aes Sedai always drew him. Lews Therin? He was not mad; the voice was real, not imagination. Not madness. A sudden desire to laugh did not help.Cadsuane sighed. “You are a young man who has little idea where he is going or why, or what lies ahead. You seem overwrought. Perhaps we can speak when you are more settled. Have you any objection to my taking Merana and Annoura away for a little while? I’ve seen neither in quite some time.”Rand gaped at her. She swooped in, insulted him, threatened him, casually announced she knew about the voice in his head, and with that she wanted to leave and talk with Merana and Annoura? Is she mad? Still no answer from Lews Therin. The man was real. He was!“Go away,” he said. “Go away, and...” He was not mad. “All of you, get out! Get out!”[...] Finally they were all gone, and he was alone. Alone.Convulsively he hurled the Dragon Scepter. The spear-point stuck quivering in the back of one the chairs, the tassels swaying.“I am not mad,” he said to the empty room. Lews Therin had told him things; he would never have escaped Galina’s chest without the dead man’s voice. But he had used the Power before he ever heard the voice; he had figured out how to call lightning and hurl fire and form a construct that had killed hundreds of Trollocs. But then, maybe that had been Lews Therin, like those memories of climbing trees in a plum orchard, and entering the Hall of the Servants, and a dozen more that crept up on him unawares. And maybe those memories were all fancies, mad dreams of a mad mind, just like the voice.”

“Sometimes it amazed him. Lanky Thom with his white hair and mustaches, who had been a Queen’s lover once, and more willingly than himself, not to mention more than a lover, if you believed half he said. Square-jawed Harnan with that tattoo on his cheek and more elsewhere, who had been a soldier all his life. Juilin with his bamboo staff and his sword-breaker on his hip, who thought himself as good as any lord even if the idea of carrying a sword himself still made him uneasy, and fat Vanin, who made Juilin look a bootlicker by comparison. Skinny Fergin, and Gorderan, nearly as wide in the shoulders as Perrin, and Metwyn, whose pale Cairhienin face still looked like a boy’s despite being years older than Mat. Some of them followed Mat Cauthon because they thought he was lucky, because his luck might keep them alive when the swords were out, and some for reasons he was not really sure of, but they followed. Not even Thom had ever more than protested an order of his. Maybe Renaile had been more than luck. Maybe his being ta’veren did more than dump him in the-middle of trouble. Suddenly he felt... responsible... for these men. It was an uncomfortable feeling. Mat Cauthon and responsibility did not go together. It was unnatural.”

“It has been quite a weight, hasn't it?" Tam asked."What weight?" Rand replied."That lost hand you've been carrying."Rand looked down at his stump. "Yes. I believe it has been at that.”

“Burn me," Mat said, throwing on the shirt he dug out of the bundle. "I'll give you a hundred Tar Valon marks if you do it, just so I can tell the story.”