The big room was much too quiet.
She hadn't told anyone where she'd gone—though Rand would likely have guessed—and she'd only been gone little more than half the day, and so the new room had been made up for two. The ticking of the cylinder clock seemed to echo unnaturally through the empty space, those empty spaces seeming bigger than they could anywhere but Tel'aran'rhiod. Stumbling over a low footstool in the dark, Nynaeve gave a wordless oath. Weariness clung to her bones like wet wool, and despite the willow still unsettling her stomach, her headache had come back.
Barking her shins on the bedstead, she half considered seizing the Source and just holding onto it, not even thinking to craft a dim light source. Nevermind that she was simply too tired to channel a lick even if she did manage to grasp it. Fumbling back the bed sheets, Nynaeve peeled off the outer shell of her dress, then her shift, letting both lie on the carpets where they'd fallen and climbing into the high, wide bed without bothering to hunt out a nightdress or bending to remove her stockings. Tear was much warmer than Arad Doman, but she still found herself shivering in her skin between the too-smooth bed sheets, and chafed at her arms; the cold material of the four matched rings on her left hand and the irregular bands on her right raised streaks of gooseflesh. The clock ticked loudly, and stone shifted. Faintly, Nynaeve could make out skitterings that could only be rodents behind the walls. Light, no rats, she thought, shuddering. The darkness pressed against her eyes—hardly changing whether she opened them or not—an oppressive weight, dragging like forkroot stupor. That thought sent an involuntary shiver up her spine, and her grainy lids shot open to see nothing at all, her rapid breath suddenly the loudest sound in the too-big room. Irritably, Nynaeve turned onto her side so that she faced the door, tugging the bedclothes up to her chin. She was not a child, to quake at her own fancies in the dark.
The room was much too large. Much, Nynaeve groused to herself. It was drafty, and the mattress was more lumps than bedding. Petulantly, she tossed herself onto her back, wedging the pillow tight under her neck. Above her on the ceiling, embossed in lines of invisible fire, sprawled a rough map of the Borderlands. The distance between the far western World's End and Tarwein's Gap shifted perversely with her frisking thoughts; sometimes just far enough, though mostly too close for comfort. Burn the man, she thought. Light burn the man, and send him home so I can box his ears myself! No matter that she couldn't reach. No matter that if—when—Lan did return, she was more than liable to go goose-brained and forget all about ear-boxing in favor of other— Stop that, you. Nynaeve admonished herself. The bed was far too cold, and her worry too raw, for those sorts of thoughts.
Shifting about made the bedclothes rustle, and the disturbance startled her, but she simply could not make herself comfortable. Her fatigue was the marrow-deep kind that made sleep impossible. After the ordeal with the Trollocs that morning, she'd had to draw extensively on the bracelet-and-rings angreal to manage that many gateways. There'd been a horrible moment in Arafelle when she'd been sure she'd have to find an inn and possibly even stay the night—or part of it, at least—just to recover strength enough for the return journey. But she'd neglected to leave a note, even, and she was chary of leaving Rand on his own for too long. Not that she'd even seen him, Nynaeve admitted to herself, crawling in as she did, but still.
And yet exhausted as she was, sleep continued to evade her with such an obstinacy a Two Rivers sheep would envy. The clock measured out the passing minutes with impassive monotony, each tick a reminder of another second Lan was sleeping rough and she half a continent away. It was nearer to morning than it was to midnight, she noted sourly as another hour chimed past. Another hour she lay grasping at sleep and unable to find it for worry and guilt. In desperation, Nynaeve even attempted to slip into the Aiel Dreamwalkers' fool waking trance that Egwene had tried to teach her, but gave it up. It left her head pounding, and more fidgety than when she started. For a few minutes, Nynaeve toyed with the idea of seeking out one of the other sisters, if any where awake—still or yet, she wasn't sure which it was now—and asking for the Healing she had so stubbornly denied earlier in the day. If only for something to do. If only to get her out of this huge, silent room where her uncomfortable thoughts banged off the walls and crashed back on her refracted and unbearable.
Once more, Nynaeve turned to face the door—uneasy with its unpredictable surface at her back—and found the cold, empty space behind her to be far more oppressive. The cold of the unoccupied side of her marriage bed leeched at the warmth she managed to gather about her, beat against her head with the horrible, inescapable knowledge of what was not there. Nynaeve glared at the empty place where her husband should have been—and laughed aloud at herself.
Growing up an only child, she had nearly always slept singly. After her parents died and Mistress Barran took her in—a childless woman herself, as Wisdoms often were—the pattern had continued. For the five years of her own tenure in that position, she had occupied the little cottage and its single bed all by herself. But during the long months of abrupt change since—Months? Light, it'd been over a year! Nearly two!—certainly after leaving the White Tower, Nynaeve doubted very much whether she had spent a solitary night. Between crowded hell-inns and palaces and circus caravans, she'd become over-used to sleeping three and four to a bed. It had been difficult, at first, but a body could become accustomed to anything. Without meaning to, she'd grown used to sharing a narrow mattress with Egwene or Birgitte, most often recently with Aviendha and Elayne—who kicked, if you please, despite the haughty redhead's own constant griping that Nynaeve was far too free with her elbows. And now, since Ebou Dar, there had not been a night—a night where she had slept at all, that is—when Lan had not lain beside her: whether he slept or made a pretense of it, he was never farther from her than a hand span. Being a married woman had graced her with the commodity of a bed to herself and her husband, and a room too, most nights. And he didn't seem to mind her elbows at all.
But Nynaeve knew herself for a creature of habit. It was not simply the oblong bulk of her tall husband absent beside her that kept her awake, although that certainly did not help. Somewhere along the way, between lighting out of inns in the middle of the night and recurring nightmares, sleeping pressed together for warmth, economy and safety, she'd up and forgotten how to sleep alone. Light, just now she would gladly have crawled into bed with Thom Merrilin, if it would let her get some rest.
The empty bed, the empty room, was almost as dark, almost as tight as that sunken ship full of heavy green riverwater. The air was just as thick; for all of her, she might have been drowning again. Sending Lan away had been one of the most difficult things she had forced herself to do—or ever would again, at that. It was a thought she'd been hedging all day. She'd fret about him no end, and pray more than she did for herself or even Rand. But she'd done what little she could, ensuring that her wonderfully woolheaded Lord of the Seven Towers did not simply blunt his own sword on the teeth of the Blight. It was not near enough, not by half—she'd druther he stay with her, where she could keep him safe. But Nynaeve knew Lan Mandragoran keenly enough, and respected him too much, to try and hang onto him when his fool mind was that set. You could not chain a wolf in the dooryard and expect him not to pine.
Firmly, Nynaeve shut her mind off to thoughts of wolves and Trollocs and pining. She dearly hoped for just a few hours sleep before she had to face whatever the Wheel would deign to throw at her in the morning. If she didn't sleep, her eyes would get red, and folk would think she'd been crying when she hadn't.
In a futile attempt to find a comfortable position, she gave herself back over to tossing on the wide bed. Like a little ship on rough seas, Nynaeve thought sourly. It was the pain lancing up the back of her skull that was keeping her awake as much as anything else, now. She wished for Lan's huge, strong hands to work away the tightness that bunched her neck and shoulders, his touch a Healing in itself. Light, if only she loved him just a little bit less, she would have refused to let him go. She would have tied to him to her apron strings, and tugged him back every time he even thought of his Light-blinded war…nevermind that she never wore aprons anymore. She would have wired their hands together with a Far Madding peace bond, and welded it shut with the Power.
But she knew Lan, and she knew herself. If she hadn't let him go, he would never have forgiven her. He would have loved her still, and likely never said a word in reproach…but never have forgiven her.
Nynaeve finally had the presence of mind to wiggle herself directly into center of the bed, and while the empty space on either side was still cold and reprimanding, she no longer felt so unbalanced. This way, she could at least try to pretend that her entire world wasn't amiss. Grinding the heels of her hands into her temples and pressing them together fit to crush her head like a melon, Nynaeve thought despairingly, and not for the first time, what she wouldn't give to have Lan's Bond back from that trollop Myrelle. She was grateful, she supposed, to the uppity Green for keeping Lan alive when she hadn't been there to do it herself, whatever the cost, whatever the means….But she half-feared that when she finally did come face to face with Myrelle, she was liable to break at least one of the Oaths. The ignominy of it, to not be the one who held the Bond of her own husband…! And, she thought, wringing her fingers, what she would not give now to know just how he fared while danger nipped at his heels and stalked hers, and more than half the world lay between them. Again.
Light, she prayed, keep him safe. Keep him safe, and send him home so I can box his fool ears myself! No matter that she couldn't reach. Well. She'd just kick his shins 'til he fell to his knees. …And while she had him down, she would see about paying him out for all the worry he'd caused her in the meantime.