Louise Belcher, True Crime

Rand sat in the rain, turning the Crown of Swords in his hands, looking at Callandor lying in the mud. He let Lews Therin rage.

Within his sight were twenty damane flanking the horsemen, each walking beside her sul’dam’s mount. The sul’dam bobbed in their saddles, bending to pat a damane’s head, straightening only to bend again to stroke her hair.

Madness waits for some, Lews Therin whispered. It creeps up on others.

 He held hard to the True Source, so hard it seemed to tremble in his grasp. With the Power in him, the sharp points of the Crown of Swords pricking his temples felt at once keener than ever and utterly removed, the midmorning chill both colder and beneath notice. The never-healing wounds in his side were a dull and distant ache.

Dashiva smiled, a twisted self-satisfied smile. “I cannot believe you didn’t notice before.” There was very close to a sneer in his voice. “You’ve been holding saidin practically day and night since we began this mad expedition. This is a simple ward, but it did not want to form, then it snapped together like pulling out of my hands.”

He had been raised to the Blood after riding fifty miles in a single night with three arrows in him to bring word of a rebel army marching on Seandar itself, and his back still pained him.

The Odyssey (2026)

Why doesn't Rand feel the ta'veren pull from Mat when he's so close to Ebou Dar? Is it because he's so ill from the taint on saidin?

“Do you think to abandon your men?” Jadranka snarled. “We rally them and attack, you—!” He cut off, gurgling, as Karede’s swordpoint went neatly into his throat. There were times fools could be tolerated, and times not. As the man toppled from his saddle, Karede deftly wiped his blade on the gelding’s white mane before the animal bolted. There were times for a little show, too.

Rand sighed. Not a pet dog. No! That name did not belong on the list! But he could hear the litany of names reciting itself in his head, and “Gille the damane” was there. Lews Therin moaned for his Ilyena. Her name also was on the list. Rand thought it had a right.

“We’ll do better next time,” Bashere murmured. He ran his gaze around the valley, then shook his head. “The worst mistake is to make the same one twice, and we won’t.” Weiramon heard him and repeated the same thing, but using twenty times the words, and flowery enough for a garden in spring. Without admitting that there had been any mistakes, certainly not on his part. He avoided Rand’s mistakes with equal adroitness.

Perrin in The Great Hunt.

A short man with a great hooked beak of a nose, he seemed larger than he was. Not because he strutted, but because he assumed that he was as tall as any man present, and other men took him so. 

“Get yourself into a proper coat before you join the others,” he said. “And Narishma . . . ” Rand straightened, fixing the other man with a steady gaze. “You tell anyone about this, and I will kill you.”

And Weiramon was a fool. [..] Too stupid to leave behind, too powerful to shove aside, so he rode with Rand and thought himself honored. It was almost a pity he was not stupid enough to do something that would get him executed.

Even half-hidden by the rain, there was a pride about them, an arrogance in the way they sat their saddles. A defiance. They gloried in what they were.