The Gathering Storm - By Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson Page 0,25

her. That sort of thing wasn’t beyond her.

“Well, what did you learn?” he asked, walking from the window and pouring himself a cup of wine as well. Min walked to the bed—with its frame of cedar logs and a skip-peeled headboard stained deeply reddish brown—and sat down, hands in her lap. She watched Alivia carefully.

Cadsuane raised an eyebrow at the sharpness in Rand’s voice. He sighed, forcing down his annoyance. He had asked her to be his counselor, and he had agreed to her stipulations. Min said there was something important he would need to learn from Cadsuane—that was another viewing—and in truth, he had found her advice useful on more than one occasion. She was worth her constant demands for decorum.

“How did the questioning go, Cadsuane Sedai?” he asked in a more moderate tone.

She smiled to herself. “Well enough.”

“Well enough?” Nynaeve snapped. She had made no promises to Cadsuane about civility. “That woman is infuriating!”

Cadsuane sipped her wine. “I wonder what else one could expect from one of the Forsaken, child. She has had a great deal of time to practice being . . . infuriating.”

“Rand, that . . . creature is a stone,” Nynaeve said, turning to him. “She’s yielded barely a single useful sentence despite days of questioning! All she does is explain how inferior and backward we are, with the occasional aside that she’s eventually going to kill us all.” Nynaeve reached up to her long, single braid—but stopped herself short of tugging on it. She was getting better about that. Rand wondered why she bothered, considering how obvious her temper was.

“For all the girl’s dramatic talk,” Cadsuane said, nodding to Nynaeve, “she has a reasonable grasp on the situation. Phaw! When I said ‘well enough’ you were to interpret it as ‘as well as you might expect, given our unfortunate constraints.’ One cannot blindfold an artist, then be surprised when he has nothing to paint.”

“This isn’t art, Cadsuane,” Rand said dryly. “It’s torture.” Min shared a glance with him, and he felt her concern. Concern for him? He wasn’t the one being tortured.

The box, Lews Therin whispered. We should have died in the box. Then . . . then it would be over.

Cadsuane sipped her wine. Rand hadn’t tasted his—he already knew that the spices were so strong as to render the drink unpalatable. Better that than the alternative.

“You press us for results, boy,” Cadsuane said. “And yet you deny us the tools we need to get them. Whether you name it torture, questioning, or baking, I call it foolishness. Now, if we were allowed to—”

“No!” Rand growled, waving a hand . . . a stump . . . at her. “You will not threaten or hurt her.”

Time spent in a dark box, being pulled forth and being beaten repeatedly. He would not have a woman in his power treated the same way. Not even one of the Forsaken. “You may question her, but some things I will not allow.”

Nynaeve sniffed. “Rand, she’s one of the Forsaken, dangerous beyond reason!”

“I am aware of the threat,” Rand said flatly, holding up the stump where his left hand had been. The metallic gold and red tattoo of a dragon’s body sparkled in the lamplight. Its head had been consumed in the Fire that had nearly killed him.

Nynaeve took a deep breath. “Yes, well, then you must see that normal rules shouldn’t apply to her!”

“I said no!” Rand said. “You will question her, but you will not hurt her!” Not a woman. I will keep to this one shred of light inside me. I’ve caused the deaths and sorrows of too many women already.

“If that is what you demand, boy,” Cadsuane said tersely, “then that is what shall be done. Just don’t whine when we are unable to drag out of her what she had for breakfast yesterday, let alone the locations of the other Forsaken. One begins to wonder why you insist we continue this farce at all. Perhaps we should simply turn her over to the White Tower and be done with it.”

Rand turned away. Outside, the soldiers had finished with the horselines. They looked good. Even and straight, the animals given just the right amount of slack.

Turn her over to the White Tower? That would never happen. Cadsuane wouldn’t let Semirhage out of her grip until she got the answers she wanted. The wind still blew outside, his own banners flapping before his eyes.

“Turn her over to the White Tower, you say?” he said, glancing