The Gathering Storm - By Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson Page 0,258

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.