Robert Jordan - The Gathering Storm

"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 Tberin 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.