The Gathering Storm

33 A Conversation with the Dragon

“This,” Rand declared, “had better be important.” Nynaeve turned to find the Dragon Reborn standing in the doorway to the sitting room. He wore a dark red robe with black dragons embroidered up the arms. His stump was hidden in the folds of the left sleeve. Though his hair was tousled from sleep, his eyes were alert.

He strode into the sitting room, ever the king—even now, long after midnight and just awakened, he walked as if he were absolutely certain of himself. Some servants had brought a pot of hot tea, and he filled a cup as Min followed him into the room. She also wore a sleeping robe; the robes were one of the fashions of the Domani, and hers was of yellow silk, the weave far thinner than Rand’s. Aiel maidens took up positions by the door, lounging in their strangely dangerous way.

Rand took a gulp from his cup. It was getting harder and harder to see in him the boy Nynaeve had known in the Two Rivers. Had his jaw always been set with those lines of determination? When had his step grown so sure, his posture so demanding? This man almost seemed an ... interpretation of the Rand she’d once known. Like a statue, carved from rock to look like him, but exaggerated in heroic lines.

“Well?” Rand demanded. “Who is this?”

The young apprentice, Kerb, sat tied in Air upon one of the room’s cushioned benches. Nynaeve glanced at him, then Embraced the Source and wove a ward against eavesdropping. Rand looked at her sharply. “You channeled?” he asked. He could sense when she did so without taking precautions; he felt goose bumps on the flesh, according to Egwene and Elayne’s investigations.

“A ward,” she said, refusing to be cowed. “Last I checked, I didn’t need your permission to channel. You’ve grown high and mighty, Rand al’Thor, but don’t forget that I paddled your backside when you were barely as tall as a man’s shins.”

Once that would have gotten a reaction from him, if only a huff of annoyance. Now he just looked at her. Those eyes of his seemed, at times, the part of him that had changed the most.

He sighed. “Why have you wakened me, Nynaeve? Who is this spindly, terrified youth? If it had been anyone else who sent that message this time of night, I’d have sent them to Bashere for a flogging.”

Nynaeve nodded at Kerb. “I think this ‘spindly, terrified youth’ knows where the King is.”

That got Rand’s attention, and Min’s as well. She’d poured herself a cup of tea and was leaning against a wall. Why weren’t they married?

“The King?” Rand asked. “Graendal too, then. How do you know this, Nynaeve? Where did you find him?”

“At the dungeon where you sent Milisair Chadmar,” Nynaeve said, eyeing him. “It is terrible, Rand al’Thor. You have no right to treat a person in such a manner.”

He didn’t rise to that comment either. Instead, he simply walked over to Kerb. “He heard something from the interrogation?”

“No,” Nynaeve said. “But I think he killed the messenger. I know for a fact that he tried to poison Milisair. She’d have been dead by the end of the week if I hadn’t Healed her.”

Rand glanced at Nynaeve, and she could almost feel him connecting the comments to figure out what she had been doing. “You Aes Sedai,” he finally said, “share much with rats, I have come to realize. You are always in places where you are not wanted.”

Nynaeve snorted. “If I’d stayed away, then Milisair would be dying and Kerb would be free.”

“I assume you’ve asked him who ordered him to kill the messenger.”

“Not yet,” Nynaeve said. “I did find the poison among his things, however, and confirmed that he had prepared food both for Milisair and for the messenger.” She hesitated before continuing. “Rand, I’m not certain that he’ll be able to answer our questions. I Delved him, and while he’s not sick physically, there’s . . . something there. In his mind.”

“What do you mean?” Rand asked softly.

“A block of some sort,” Nynaeve said. “The jailer seemed frustrated—even surprised—that the messenger had been able to resist his ‘questioning.’ I think there must have been some block on that man too, something to keep him from revealing too much.”

“Compulsion,” Rand said. He spoke offhandedly, raising his tea to his lips.

Compulsion was dark, evil. She’d felt it herself; she still shivered when she considered what Moghedien had done to her. And that had been only a small thing, removing some memories.

“Few are as skilled with Compulsion as Graendal,” Rand said musingly. “Perhaps this is the confirmation I’ve been looking for. Yes . . . this could be a great discovery indeed, Nynaeve. Great enough to make me forget how you obtained it.”

Rand rounded the bench and leaned down to meet the young man’s eyes.

“Release him,” Rand commanded her.

She complied.

“Tell me,” Rand said to Kerb, “who told you to poison those people?”

“I don’t know anything!” the boy squeaked. “I just—”

“Stop,” Rand said softly. “Do you believe that I can kill you?”

The boy fell silent and—though Nynaeve wouldn’t have thought it possible—his blue eyes opened wider.

“Do you believe that if I simply said the word,” Rand continued in his eerie, quiet voice, “your heart would stop beating? I am the Dragon Reborn. Do you believe that I can take your life, or your soul itself, if I so much as will it to happen?”

Nynaeve saw it again, the patina of darkness around Rand, that aura that she couldn’t quite be certain was there. She raised her tea to her lips—and found that it had suddenly grown bitter and stale, as if it had been left to sit too long.

Kerb slouched down and began to cry.

“Speak,” Rand commanded.

The youth opened his mouth, but only a groan came out. He was so transfixed by Rand that he didn’t—or couldn’t—blink the sweat from his eyes.

“Yes,” Rand said thoughtfully. “This is Compulsion, Nynaeve. She’s here! I was right.” He looked at Nynaeve. “You will have to unravel the web of Compulsion, wipe it from his mind, before he can tell us what he knows.”

“What?” she asked incredulously.

“I have little skill with this kind of weaving,” Rand said with a wave of his hand. “I suspect that you can remove Compulsion, if you try. It is similar to Healing, in a way. Use the same weave that creates Compulsion, but reverse it.”

She frowned. Healing the poor boy sounded like a fine idea—every wound should be Healed, after all. But trying something she’d never done before, and doing so in front of Rand, was not appealing. What if she did it wrong and somehow hurt the boy?

Rand sat down on the cushioned bench seat across from the youth, Min walking over to sit beside him. She was regarding her tea with a grimace; apparently, hers had spoiled as suddenly as Nynaeve’s had.

Rand watched Nynaeve, waiting.

“Rand, I—”

“Just try it,” Rand said. “I can’t tell you how it is done specifically, not for a woman, but you are clever. I’m certain you can manage.”

His unintentionally patronizing tone sent her back into a rage. Being as tired as she was didn’t help. She gritted her teeth, turning toward Kerb, and wove all five Powers. His eyes darted back and forth, though he couldn’t see the weaves.

Nynaeve laid a very light Healing across him, causing him to stiffen. She wove a separate line of Spirit, Delving into his head as delicately as she could, prodding at the weaves that clumped across his mind. Yes, she could see it now, a complex web made from lines of Spirit, Air and Water. It was horrible, looking at it with her mind’s eye, crisscrossing the youth’s brain. Bits of the weave touched here and there, like tiny hooks, jutting deep into the brain itself.

Reverse the weave, Rand had said. That was far from easy. She’d have to pull the web of Compulsion off layer by layer, and if she made a mistake, she could very easily kill him. She almost backed away.

But who else was there? Compulsion was a forbidden weave, and she doubted that Corele or the others had any experience with it. If Nynaeve stopped now, Rand would just send for the others and ask them to do it. They’d obey him, laughing behind their hands at Nynaeve, the Accepted who thought herself a full Aes Sedai.

Well, she had discovered new ways of Healing! She had helped cleanse the taint from the One Power itself! She had Healed stilling and gentling!

She could do this.

She worked quickly, weaving a mirror image of the first layer of Compulsion. Each use of the Power was exact, but reversed from the pattern already woven in the boy’s mind. Nynaeve laid her weave down carefully, hesitantly, and as Rand had said, both puffed away and vanished.

How had he known? She shivered, thinking of what Semirhage had said about him. Memories from another life, memories he had no right to. There was a reason the Creator allowed them to forget their past lives. No man should have to remember the failures of Lews Therin Telamon.

She continued, layer after layer, stripping away the Compulsion’s weaves like a hedge-doctor removing bandages from a wounded leg. It was exhausting work, but fulfilling. Each weave fixed a wrong, healed the youth a little more, made something just a hair more right in the world.

It took the better part of an hour, and was a grueling experience. But she did it. As the last layer of Compulsion vanished, she let out an exhausted sigh and released the One Power, convinced that she couldn’t channel a single thread more if it were to save her life. She wobbled over to a chair and slumped down. Min, she noticed, had curled up on the bench seat beside Rand and had fallen asleep.

But he did not sleep. The Dragon Reborn watched, as if seeing things Nynaeve could not. He stood up and walked to Kerb. In her dizzied state, Nynaeve hadn’t noticed the young chandler’s face. It was oddly blank, like that of a person dazed from a strong blow to the head.

Rand lowered himself to one knee, cradling the youth’s chin in his hand, staring into his eyes. “Where?” he asked softly. “Where is she?”

The youth opened his mouth, and a line of drool leaked out the side of it.

“Where is she?” Rand repeated.

Kerb moaned, eyes still blank, tongue parting his lips just slightly.

“Rand!” Nynaeve said. “Stop it! What are you doing to him?”

“I have done nothing,” Rand said quietly, not looking toward her. “This is what you did, Nynaeve, in unraveling those weaves. Graendal’s Compulsions are powerful—but crude, in some ways. She fills a mind with Compulsion to such an extent as to erase personality and intellect, leaving behind a puppet who works only according to her direct commands.”

“But he was able to interact just moments ago!”

Rand shook his head. “If you ask the men at the jail, they’ll tell you this one was slow of thought and rarely spoke to them. There was no real person in this head, only layered weaves of Compulsion. Instructions cleverly designed to wipe whatever personality this poor wretch had and replace it with a creature who would act exactly as Graendal wished. I’ve seen it dozens of times.”

Dozens of times? Nynaeve thought with a shiver. You’ve seen it, or Lews Therin saw it? Which memories rule you right now?

She looked at Kerb, sick to her stomach. His eyes weren’t blank from being dazed as she’d thought; they were more empty than that. When Nynaeve had been younger, new to her role as Wisdom, a woman had been brought to her who had fallen off of her wagon. The woman had slept for days, and when she’d finally awoken, she’d had a stare like this one. No hint that she recognized anyone, no clue that there was any soul left in the husk that was her body.

She’d died about a week later.

Rand spoke to Kerb again. “I need a location,” Rand said. “Something. If there is any vestige within you that resisted, any scrap that fought her, I promise you revenge. A location. Where is she?”

Spittle dripped from the boy’s lips. They seemed to quiver. Rand stood up, looming, still holding the youth’s eyes with his own. Kerb shivered, then whispered two words.

“Natrin’s Barrow.”

Rand exhaled softly, then released Kerb with an almost reverent motion. The youth slipped from the bench to the floor, spittle drooling from his lips onto the rug. Nynaeve cursed, leaping from her seat, then wobbling slightly as the room spun. Light, she was exhausted! She steadied herself, closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then she knelt at the boy’s side.

“You needn’t bother,” Rand said. “He is dead.”

Nynaeve confirmed the death for herself. Then she snapped her head up, looking at Rand. What right did he have to look as exhausted as she felt? He had done barely anything! “What did you—”

“I did nothing, Nynaeve. I suspect that once you removed that Compulsion, the only thing keeping him alive was his anger at Graendal, buried deeply. Whatever bit of himself remained, it knew the only help it could give were those two words. After that, he just let go. There was nothing more we could do for him.”

“I don’t accept that,” Nynaeve said, frustrated. “He could have been Healed!” She should have been able to help him! Undoing Graendal’s Compulsion had felt so good, so right. It shouldn’t have ended this way!

She shuddered, feeling dirtied. Used. How was she better than the jailer who had done such horrible things for information? She glared at Rand. He could have told her what removing Compulsion would do!

“Don’t look at me like that, Nynaeve.” He walked to the door and gestured for the Maidens there to collect Kerb’s body. They did so, carrying it away as Rand called softly for a new pot of tea.

He returned, sitting down on the bench beside the sleeping Min; she’d tucked one of the bench’s pillows under her head. One of the two lamps in the room was burning low, and that left his face half in shadow. “This was the only way it could have happened,” he continued. “The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. You are Aes Sedai. Is that not one of your creeds?”

“I don’t know what it is,” Nynaeve snapped, “but it’s not an excuse for your actions.”

“What actions?” he asked. “You brought this man to me. Graendal used Compulsion on him. Now I will kill her for it—that action will be my sole responsibility. Now, let me be. I shall try to go back to sleep.”

“Don’t you feel any guilt at all?” she demanded.

They locked eyes, Nynaeve frustrated and helpless, Rand. . . . Who could guess what Rand felt these days!

“Should I suffer for them all, Nynaeve?” he asked quietly, rising, face still half in the darkness. “Lay this death at my feet, if you wish. It will just be one of many. How many stones can you pile on a man’s body before the weight stops mattering? How far can you burn a lump of flesh until further heat is irrelevant? If I let myself feel guilt for this boy, then I would need to feel guilt for the others. And it would crush me.”

She regarded him in the half light. A king, certainly. A soldier, though he had only occasionally seen war. She forced down her anger. Hadn’t this all been about proving to him that he could trust her?

“Oh, Rand,” she said, turning away. “This thing you have become, the heart without any emotion but anger. It will destroy you.”

“Yes,” he said softly.

She looked back at him, shocked.

“I continue to wonder,” he said, glancing down at Min, “why you all assume that I am too dense to see what you find so obvious. Yes, Nynaeve. Yes, this hardness will destroy me. I know.”

“Then why?” she asked. “Why won’t you let us help you?”

He looked up—not at her, but staring off at nothing. A servant knocked quietly, wearing the white and forest green of Milisair’s house. She entered and deposited the new pot of tea, picked up the old one, then withdrew.

“When I was much younger,” he said, voice soft, “Tam told me of a story he’d heard while traveling the world. He spoke of Dragonmount. I didn’t know at the time that he’d actually seen it, nor that he had found me there. I was just a shepherd boy, and Dragonmount, Tar Valon and Caemlyn were almost mythical places to me.

“He told me of it, though, a mountain so high it made even Twin-horn’s Peak back home seem a dwarf. Tarn’s stories claimed no man had ever climbed to Dragonmount’s peak. Not because it was impossible—but because reaching the top would take every last ounce of strength a man had. So tall was the mountain that besting it would be a struggle that drained a man completely.”

He fell silent.

“So?” Nynaeve finally asked.

He looked at her. “Don’t you see? The stories claimed no man had climbed the mountain because in doing so, he would be without strength to return. A mountaineer could best it, reach the top, see what no man had ever seen. But then he would die. The strongest and wisest explorers knew this. So they never climbed it. They always wanted to, but they waited, reserving that trip for another day. For they knew it would be their last.”

“But that’s just a story,” Nynaeve said. “A legend.”

“That’s what I am,” Rand said. “A story. A legend. To be told to children years from now, spoken of in whispers.” He shook his head. “Sometimes, you can’t turn back. You have to keep pressing on. And sometimes, you know this climb is your last.

“You all claim that I have grown too hard, that I will inevitably shatter and break if I continue on. But you assume that there needs to be something left of me to continue on. That I need to climb back down the mountain once I’ve reached the top.

“That’s the key, Nynaeve. I see it now. I will not live through this, and so I don’t need to worry about what might happen to me after the Last Battle. I don’t need to hold back, don’t need to salvage anything of this beaten up soul of mine. I know that I must die. Those who wish for me to be softer, willing to bend, are those who cannot accept what will happen to me.” He looked down at Min again. Many times before, Nynaeve had seen affection in his eyes when he regarded her, but this time they were blank. Set in that same, emotionless face.

“We can find a way, Rand,” Nynaeve said. “Surely there is a way to win but also let you live.”

“No,” he growled softly. “Do not tempt me down that path again. It only leads to pain, Nynaeve. I ... I used to think about leaving something behind to help the world survive once I died, but that was a struggle to keep living. I can’t indulge myself. I’ll climb this bloody mountain and face the sun. You all will deal with what comes next. That is how it must be.”

She opened her mouth to object again, but he gave her a sharp glance. “That is how it must be, Nynaeve.”

She closed her mouth.

“You did well tonight,” Rand said. “You have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“I did it because I want you to trust me,” Nynaeve said, then immediately cursed herself. Why had she said that? Was she really so tired that she blabbed the first thing that came to her mind?

Rand just nodded. “I do trust you, Nynaeve. As much as I trust anyone; more than I trust most. You think you know what is best for me, even against my wishes, but that is something I can accept. The difference between you and Cadsuane is that you actually care about me. She only cares about my place in her plans. She wants me to be part of the Last Battle. You want me to live. For that, you have my thanks. Dream on my behalf, Nynaeve. Dream for things I no longer can.”

He leaned down to pick up Min; he managed it despite his missing hand, snaking one arm underneath her and gripping with his hand as he lifted her up. She stirred, then snuggled in close to him, waking and murmuring a complaint that she could walk. He didn’t put her down; perhaps because of the exhaustion in her voice. Nynaeve knew she stayed up with her books most nights, pushing herself almost as hard as Rand did.

Carrying Min, he walked toward the door. “We will deal with the Seanchan first,” he said. “Be well prepared for that meeting. I will take care of Graendal soon after.”

He left her then. The flickering lamp finally gave out, leaving only the one on the table.

Rand had surprised her again. He was still a wool-headed fool, but he was a surprisingly self-aware one. How could a man understand so much, yet still be so ignorant?

And why couldn’t she come up with an argument against what he’d said? Why couldn’t she make herself yell at him that he was wrong? There was always hope. By surrendering that most important emotion, he might make himself strong—but risked losing all reason he might have to care about the outcome of his battles.

For some reason, she couldn’t find words for the argument.