I love the Moiraine-Lan(-Nynaeve)(-Rand) dynamics in all that book, and oh, that scene. I adore it. (With a certain masochism, obviously, but this is nothing new. And I love it even aside from all RP stuff.)

And poor Rand. I really like him a lot in book 5; he's coming into his own more by then, I think. And becoming increasingly better equipped to deal with all the horrible stuff he needs to, even if it's awful that he does have to.

Egwene gets lamer for a while, but then she turns AWESOME again.