Page 196 of The Gathering Storm (The Wheel of Time 12)

Rand turned, looking at Nynaeve. Standing on the other side of him, Min couldn’t see what was in his face, but she could see Nynaeve grow pale. It was her own fault. Couldn’t she sense how on edge Rand was? Perhaps Min’s chill didn’t just come from the cold. She moved up close to him, but he didn’t put his arm around her as he might once have. When he finally turned away from Nynaeve, the Aes Sedai slumped slightly, as if she had been dangling, held up by his gaze.

Rand did not speak for some time, and so they waited quietly on the mountain ridge as the distant sun made its way toward the horizon. Shadows lengthened, fingers stretching away from the sun. Down below, by the fortress walls, a group of grooms began walking some horses to give them exercise. More lights had been lit in the fortress windows. How many people did Graendal have in there? Scores, if not hundreds.

A crashing sound in the brush suddenly drew Min’s attention; it was accompanied by curses. She jumped as the noise cut off quite abruptly.

A small group of Aiel approached a few moments later, leading a disheveled Ramshalan, his fine clothing stuck with needles and scratched from branches. He dusted himself off, then took a step toward Rand.

The Maidens held him back. He glanced at them, cocking his head. “My Lord Dragon?”

“Is he infected?” Rand asked of Nynaeve.

“By what?” she asked.

“Graendal’s touch.”

Nynaeve walked over to Ramshalan and looked at him for a moment. She hissed and said, “Yes. Rand, he’s under a heavy Compulsion. There are a lot of weaves here. Not as bad as the chandler’s apprentice, or maybe just more subtle.”

“I say,” Ramshalan said, “my Lord Dragon, what is going on? The lady of the castle down there was quite friendly—she is an ally, my Lord. You have nothing to fear from her! Very refined, I must say.”

“Is that so?” Rand asked quietly. It was growing dark, sun setting behind the distant mountains. Besides the dim evening light, the only illumination came from the still-open gateway behind them. It shone with lamplight, an inviting portal back to warmth, away from this place of shadow and coldness.

Rand’s voice sounded so hard. Worse than Min had ever heard it before.

“Rand,” she said, touching his arm. “Let’s go back.”

“I have something I must do,” he said, not looking at her.

“Think about it some more,” Min said. “At least take some advice. We can ask Cadsuane, or—”

“Cadsuane held me in a box, Min,” he said very softly. His face was clasped in shadow, but as he turned toward her, his eyes reflected the light from the open gateway. Orange and red. There was an edge of anger to his tone. I shouldn’t have mentioned Cadsuane, she realized. The woman’s name was one of the few things that could still get emotion out of him.

“A box, Min,” Rand whispered. “Though Cadsuane’s box had walls that were invisible, it was as binding as any that ever held me. Her tongue was far more painful a rod than any that was taken to my skin. I see that now.”

Rand pulled away from Min’s touch.

“What is the purpose of all this?” Nynaeve demanded. “You sent this man to suffer a Compulsion, knowing what it would do to him? I won’t watch another man squirm and die because of this! Whatever she has compelled him to do, I won’t remove it! It will be your own fault if it brings your death.”

“My Lord?” Ramshalan asked. The growing terror in his voice put Min on edge.

The sun set; Rand was now just a silhouette. The fortress was only a black profile with lanterns lighting the holes in its walls. Rand stepped up to the lip of the ridge, removing the access key from his pocket. It started to glow just faintly, a red light coming from its very heart. Nynaeve inhaled sharply.

“Neither of you were there when Callandor failed me,” he said into the night. “It happened twice. Once I tried to use it to raise the dead, but I got only a puppeted body. Once I tried to use it to destroy the Seanchan, but I caused as much death among my own armies as I caused among theirs.

“Cadsuane told me that the second failure came from a flaw in Callandor itself. It cannot be controlled by a lone man, you see. It only works if he’s in a box. Callandor is a carefully enticing leash, intended to make me surrender willingly.”

The access key’s globe burst alight with a more brilliant color, seeming crystalline. The light within was scarlet, the core brilliant and bright. As if someone had dropped a glowing rock into a pool of blood.

“I see a different answer to my problems,” Rand said, voice still almost a whisper. “Both times Callandor failed me, I was being reckless with my emotion. I allowed temper to drive me. I can’t kill in anger, Min. I have to keep that anger inside; I must channel it as I channel the One Power. Each death must be deliberate. Intentional.”

Min couldn’t speak. Couldn’t phrase her fears, couldn’t find the words to make him stop. His eyes remained in the darkness, somehow, despite the liquid light he held before him. That light hurled shadows away from his figure, as if he was the point of a silent explosion. Min turned to Nynaeve; the Aes Sedai watched with wide eyes, mouth slightly open. She couldn’t find words either.

Min turned back to Rand. When he’d been close to killing her with his own hand, she hadn’t feared him. But then, she’d known that it wasn’t Rand hurting her, but Semirhage.

But this Rand—hand aflame, eyes so intent yet so dispassionate—terrified her.

“I’ve done it before,” he whispered. “I once said that I didn’t kill women, but it was a lie. I murdered a woman long before I faced Semirhage. Her name was Liah. I killed her in Shadar Logoth. I struck her down, and I called it mercy.”

He turned to the fortress palace below.