The Gathering Storm

He stopped screaming. The pain was still there, it made his eyes water, but the screams would not come. All fell still.

Semirhage looked down at him, frowning, blood dripping from her chin. Another wave of pain washed across him. Whoever he was.

He stared up at her. Silent.

"What are you doing?" she said, compelling him. "Speak."

"No more can be done to me," he whispered.

Another wave of pain. It shocked him, and something inside of him whimpered, but he gave no outward reaction. Not because he held the screams in, but because he couldn't feel anything. The box, the two wounds in his side corrupting his own blood, beatings, humiliation, sorrows and his own suicide. Killing himself. He could suddenly and starkly remember that. After all of these things, what more could Semirhage do to him?

"Great Mistress," Elza said, turning to Semirhage, eyes still seeming faintly dazed by something. "Perhaps now we should—"

"Quiet, worm," Semirhage spat at her, wiping the blood from her chin. She looked at it. "That's twice now those knives have tasted my blood." She shook her head, then turned and smiled at Rand. "You say nothing more can be done to you? You forget, Lews Therin, to whom you speak. Pain is my specialty, and you are still little more than a boy. I've broken men ten times as strong as you. Stand."

He did. The pain had not gone away. She obviously intended to keep using it against him until she got a reaction.

He turned around, obeying her wordless command, and found Min hanging above the floor, tied by invisible ropes of Air. Her eyes were wild with fear, her arms bound behind her back, her mouth blocked by a woven Air gag.

Semirhage chuckled. "There is nothing more that I can do, you say?"

Rand seized saidin—not of his choice, but of hers. The roar of power slammed into him, bringing with it the strange nausea that he'd never been able to explain. He fell to his hand and knees, emptying his stomach with a groan as the room shook and spun around him.

"How odd," he heard Semirhage say, as if distant. He shook his head, still holding the One Power—wrestling with it as he always had to with saidin, forcing that powerful, twisting flow of energy to his will. It was like chaining a tempest of wind, and was difficult even when he was strong and healthy. Now it was nearly impossible.

Use it, Lews Therin whispered. Kill her while we can!

I will not kill a woman, Rand thought stubbornly, a figment of a memory from the back of his mind. That is the line I will not cross. . . .

Lews Therin roared, trying to take saidin from Rand, but without success. In fact, Rand found that he couldn't channel willfully any more than he could step without Semirhage's permission.

He righted himself by her command, the room growing more steady, the nausea retreating. And then he began to form weaves, complicated ones of Spirit and Fire.

"Yes," Semirhage said, almost to herself. "Now, if I can remember. . . . The male way of doing this is so odd, sometimes."

Rand made the weaves, then pushed them toward Min. "No!" he screamed as he did so. "Not that!"

"Ah, so you see," Semirhage said. "You weren't so difficult to break after all."

The weaves touched Min and she writhed in pain. Rand continued to channel, tears springing to his eyes as he was forced to send the complex weaves through her body. They brought agony only, but they did it very well. Semirhage must have released Min's gag, for she began to scream, weeping.

"Please, Rand!" she begged. "Please!"

Rand roared in anger, trying to stop, unable to. He could feel Min's pain through the bond, feel it as he caused it.

"Stop this!" he bellowed.

"Beg," Semirhage said.

"Please," he said, weeping. "Please, I beg you."

Suddenly, he stopped, the torturing weaves unraveling. Min hung in the air, whimpering, eyes dazed from the shock of pain. Rand turned around, facing Semirhage and the smaller figure of Elza beside her. The Black looked terrified, as if she'd gotten herself into something she hadn't been prepared for.

"Now," the Forsaken said, "you see that you have always been intended to serve the Great Lord. We will leave this room and will deal with those so-called Aes Sedai who imprisoned me. We will travel to

Shayol Ghul and present you to the Great Lord, and then this can all be finished."

He bowed his head. There had to be a way out! He imagined her using him to tear through the ranks of his own men. He imagined them afraid to attack, lest they harm him. He saw the blood, death and destruction he would cause. And it chilled him, turned him to ice inside.