The Gathering Storm - Robert Jordan

She watched it burn, tiny little flames of blue and green, topped by orange. The scent of burning leather was shockingly similar to that of burning human flesh. The night was still, no wind to shake the flames, and so they danced freely.

Alliandre doused the belt and put it on to the miniature fire. Arrela did the same with the veil. Finally, Lacile added the handkerchief. She was still crying.

This was all they could do. There hadn't been a way to see to the bodies in the chaos of leaving Maiden. Chiad had said there was no dishonor in leaving them, but Faile had needed to do something. Some small way of honoring Rolan and the others.

"Dead by our hand," Faile said, "or simply dead from battle, these four showed us honor. As the Aiel would say, we have great toh to them. I don't think it can be repaid. But we can remember them. The Brother-less and one Maiden showed us kindness when they didn't need to. They kept their honor when others had abandoned it. If there is a redemption to be found for them, and for us, this will be it."

"There's a Brotherless in Perrin's camp," Lacile said, eyes reflecting the flames of their pyre. "Niagen is his name; he is gai'shain to Sulin, the Maiden. I went to tell him of what the others did for us. He is a kind man."

Faile closed her eyes. Lacile probably meant that she had gone to the bed of this Niagen. That wasn't forbidden of gai'shain. "You can't replace Jhoradin like that," she said, opening her eyes. "Or undo what you did."

"I know," Lacile said defensively. "But they were so full of humor, despite the terrible situation. There was something about them. Jhoradin wanted to take me back to the Three-fold Land, make me his wife."

And you'd never have done it, Faile thought. / know you wouldn't have. But now that he's dead, you realize the opportunity you lost.

Well, who was she to chastise? Let Lacile do as she wished. If this Niagen was half the man that Rolan or the others had been, then perhaps Lacile would do well with him.

"Kinhuin had only just started looking out for me," Alliandre said. "I know what he wished for, but he never demanded it. I think he was planning to leave the Shaido, and would have helped us escape. Even if I turned him down, he would have helped us."

"Marthea hated what the other Shaido did," Arrela said. "But she stayed with them for her clan. She died for that loyalty. There are worse things to die for."

Faile watched the last embers of the miniature pyre flicker out. "I think Rolan actually loved me," she said. And that was all.

The four rose and returned to the camp. The past was a field of embers and ash, an old Saldaean proverb said, the remnants of the fire that was the present. Those embers blew away behind her. But she kept Rolan's turquoise stone. Not for regret, but for remembrance.

Perrin lay awake in the still night, smelling the canvas of his tent and the unique scent of Faile. She wasn't there, though she had been recently. He'd dozed off, and now she was gone. Perhaps to the privy.

He stared up in the darkness, trying to make sense of Hopper and the wolf dream. The more he thought about it, the more determined he grew. He would march to the Last Battle—and when he did, he wanted to be able to control the wolf inside of him. He wanted either to be free of all of these people who followed him, or to learn how to accept their loyalty.

He had some decisions to make. They wouldn't be easy, but he'd make them. A man had to do hard things. That was the way of life. That was what had gone wrong with the way he'd handled Faile's capture. Instead of making decisions, he'd avoided them. Master Luhhan would have been disappointed in him.

And that led Perrin to another decision, the hardest of all. He was going to have to let Faile ride into danger, perhaps risk her again. Was that a decision? Could he make such a decision? The mere thought of her in danger made him want to sick up. But he would have to do something.

Three problems. He would face them and he would decide. But he would consider them first, because that was what he did. A man was a fool to make decisions without thinking first.

But the decision to face his problems brought him a measure of peace, and he rolled over and drifted back to sleep.

CHAPTER 22

The Last That Could Be Done

Semirhage sat alone in the small room. They had taken away her chair and given her no lantern or candle. Blast this cursed Age and its cursed people! What she would have given for glowbulbs on the walls. During her days, prisoners hadn't been denied light. Of course, she had locked several of her experiments away in total darkness, but that was different. It had been important to discover what effect the lack of light would have on them. These so-called Aes Sedai who held her, they had no rational reason for leaving her in darkness. They just did it to humiliate her.

She pulled her arms closer, huddling against the wooden wall. She did not cry. She was of the Chosen! So what if she had been forced to abase herself? She was not broken.

But . . . the fool Aes Sedai no longer regarded her as they had. Semirhage hadn't changed, but they had. Somehow, in one swoop, that cursed woman with the paralis-net in her hair had unraveled Semirhage's authority with the entire lot of them.

How? How had she lost control so quickly? She shuddered as she remembered being turned over the woman's knees and spanked. And the nonchalance of it. The only emotion in the woman's voice had been a slight annoyance. She'd treated Semirhage—one of the Chosen!—as if she were barely worthy of notice. That had galled more than the blows.

It would not happen again. Semirhage would be ready for the blows next time, and she would give them no weight. Yes, that would work. Wouldn't it?

She shuddered again. She had tortured hundreds, perhaps thousands, in the name of understanding and reason. Torture made sense. You truly saw what a person was made of, in more ways than one, when you began to slice into them. That was a phrase she'd used on numerous occasions. It usually made her smile.

This time it did not.

Why couldn't they have given her pain? Broken fingers, cuts into her flesh, coals in the pits of her elbows. She had steeled her mind to each of these things, preparing for them. A small, eager part of herself had looked forward to them.

But this? Being forced to eat food off the floor? Being treated like a child in front of those who had regarded her with such awe?

I will kill her, she thought, not for the first time. / will remove her tendons, one at a time, using the Power to heal her so that she lives to experience the pain. No. No, I'll do something new to her. I will show her agony that hasn't been known to anyone in any Age!

"Semirhage." A whisper.

She froze, looking up in the darkness. That voice had been soft, like a chill wind, yet still sharp and biting. Had she imagined it? He couldn't be there, could he?

"You have failed greatly, Semirhage," the voice continued, so soft. A faint light shone underneath the door, but the voice came from inside her cell. The light seemed to grow brighter, and it flushed a deep red, illuminating the hem of a figure in a black cloak standing before her. She looked up. The ruddy light revealed a face of white, the color of dead skin. The face had no eyes.

She immediately knelt to the floor, prostrating herself on the aged wood. Though the figure before her looked like a Myrddraal, it was much taller and much, much more important. She shivered as she remembered the voice of the Great Lord himself, speaking to her.

When you obey Shaidar Haran, you obey me. When you disobey. . . .

"You were to capture the boy, not kill him," the figure whispered in a hiss, like steam escaping through cracks between pot and lid. "You took his hand and nearly his life. You have revealed yourself and have lost valuable pawns. You have been captured by our enemies, and now they have broken you." She could hear the smile on its lips. Shaidar Haran was the only Myrddraal she had ever seen bear a smile. But, then, she did not think this thing was truly a Myrddraal.

She did not reply to its charges. One did not lie, or even make excuses, before this figure.

Suddenly, the shield blocking her vanished. Her breath caught. Saidar had returned! Sweet power. However, as she reached for it, she hesitated. Those imitation Aes Sedai outside would feel it if she channeled.

A cold, long-nailed hand touched her chin. The flesh of it felt like dead leather. It rotated her face upward to meet the eyeless gaze. "You have been given one last chance," the maggotlike lips whispered. "Do. Not. Fail."

The light faded. The hand at her chin withdrew. She continued to kneel, fighting down terror. One last chance. The Great Lord always rewarded failure in ... imaginative ways. She had given such rewards before, and had no desire to receive them. They would make any torture or punishment these Aes Sedai could imagine look childish.

She forced herself to her feet, feeling her way around the room. She reached the door and, holding her breath, tried it.

The door opened. She slipped out of the room without letting the hinges creak. Outside, three corpses lay on the ground, slumped free of their chairs. The women who had been maintaining her shield. There was someone else there, kneeling on the floor before the three of them. One of the Aes Sedai. A woman in green, with brown hair, pulled back into a tail, her head bowed.

"I live to serve, Great Mistress," the woman whispered. "I am instructed to tell you that there is Compulsion in my mind you are to remove."

Semirhage raised an eyebrow; she hadn't realized there were any of the Black among those Aes Sedai here. Removing Compulsion could have a very . . . nasty effect on a person. Even if the Compulsion were weak or subtle, the brain could be harmed seriously by removing it. If the Compulsion were strong . . . well, it was quite interesting to watch.

"Also," the woman said, handing something forward, wrapped in cloth. "I am to give you this." She removed the cloth, revealing a dull-colored metallic collar, and two bracelets. The Domination Band. Crafted during the Breaking, strikingly similar to the a'dam Semirhage had spent so much time working with.

With this ter'angreal, a male channeler could be controlled. A smile finally broke through Semirhage's fear.

Rand had only visited the Blight on a single occasion, though he could faintly remember having come to this area on several occasions, before the Blight infected the land. Lews Therin's memories. Not his own.

The madman took to hissing and muttering angrily as they rode through the Saldaean scrub. Even Tai'daishar grew skittish as they moved northward.

Saldaea was a brown landscape of brushland and dark soil, nowhere near as barren as the Aiel Waste, but hardly a soft or lush land. Homesteads were common, but they had nearly the look of forts, and young children held themselves like trained warriors. Lan had once told him that among Borderlanders, a boy became a man when he earned the right to carry a sword.

"Has it occurred to you," Ituralde said, riding on Rand's left, "that what we are doing here could constitute an invasion?"