Chapter 37: What Might Be

At the Portal Stone outside Stedding Tsofu, Verin tells Rand he will have to work it; she lacks the strength to channel what a Portal Stone demands. She explains that the upper symbols mark the Worlds That Might Be and the lower ones mark other Stones, and points out the one for a Stone on Toman Head. The trick of using them was lost in the Breaking, and guessing wrong could destroy them. Rand picks a symbol almost at random, an arrow piercing a circle.

The Power surges past him. Rand lives and dies through a hundred alternate lives: killed beside Tam on Winternight; married to Egwene in the Two Rivers and wasting under a strange sickness before falling to Trollocs at the Taren; a Queen's Guardsman dying to defend Queen Elayne at Caemlyn; shepherd, king, Aiel, gleeman. Every death ends with a voice whispering, "I have won again, Lews Therin."

They come to on rough stone, all shaken. Verin says the surge forced them through the Lines that join the Worlds That Might Be. They have reached Toman Head, but it is late autumn now—roughly four months gone. Rand refuses her healing touch, and they ride west.