Page 109 of The Gathering Storm (The Wheel of Time 12)

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. I 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. Th

ough 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?”

Rand nodded toward Bashere, who rode through the brush at Rand’s right. “I bring with me troops of their own blood,” he said. “The Saldaeans are my allies.”

Bashere laughed. “I doubt that the Queen will see it that way, my friend! It’s been many months since I last asked her for orders. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that she’s demanded my head by now.”

Rand turned his eyes forward. “I am the Dragon Reborn. It is not an invasion to march against the forces of the Dark One.” Ahead of them rose the foothills of the Mountains of Dhoom. They had a dark cast, as if their slopes were coated with soot.