Elayne confesses her love for Rand, and they kiss. Mat comes to Egwene for advice, and she tells him about the redstone doorframe.
RAND: Oh, you’re still here my Lady?
ELAYNE: Indeed, Lord Dragon. Please, call me Elayne, and I’ll call you Rand.
RAND: Elayne.
ELAYNE: Rand, I’m fond of you.
RAND: I’m fond of you as well.
ELAYNE: No, I mean I’m very, VERY fond of you. Kiss me!
And he does! This whole Dragon business must really be going to his head — farmboy Rand wouldn’t have had the guts. Then the Tairen High Lords arrive, and Elayne leaves. Mission: success? Maybe, Elayne. Maybe — but you’re going to have to do better than that if you want to keep yourself in his thoughts.
As Egwene walks down a hallway, Mat falls in beside her. He tells Egwene that he is troubled by the strange things that have happened to him since leaving Emond’s Field. Time and again he has spontaneously spoken words in the Old Tongue that sound like gibberish to him, and there are huge holes in his memory. He feels like he’s going crazy. He wants answers, craves advice.
Looks like Egwene borrowed the Bag of Horrible Ideas, because in her next breath she tells Mat about the redstone doorframe and the rules for using it. Think about that for a minute — Egwene has just been handed this information about an exotic and dangerous magical artifact, and she immediately passes it on to the person least qualified to handle it. “Just don’t use it unless Moiraine says it’s okay,” she says. What the fuck is wrong with her, anyway? She knows damn well that if you give Mat something fun and dangerous, he immediately forgets all about the danger part.
Mat swears to Egwene that he “won’t go near that thing unless [his] life depends on it.” Our more attentive readers will have already spotted the loophole in this, but Egwene is content to stick her head back up her ass and move on.