The Gathering Storm полностью

Oh, Light, Lews Therin suddenly screamed. That’s impossible! We can’t use it! Cast it away! That is death we hold, death and betrayal.

It is HIM.

Rand closed his eyes as he knelt above Min, then he channeled the strange, unknown force. Energy and life surged through him, a torrent of power like saidin, only ten times as sweet and a hundred times as violent. It made him alive, made him realize that he’d never been alive before. It gave him such strength as he’d never imagined. It rivaled, even, the power he’d held when drawing from the Choedan Kal.

He screamed, in both rapture and rage, and wove enormous spears of Fire and Air. He slammed the weaves against the collar at his neck, and the room exploded with flames and bits of molten metal, each one distinct to Rand. He could feel each shard of metal blast away from his neck, warping the air with its heat, trailing smoke as it hit a wall or the floor. He opened his eyes and released Min. She gasped and sobbed.

Rand stood and turned, white-hot magma in his veins—as when Semirhage had tortured him, yet somehow opposite. As painful as this was, it was also pure ecstasy.

Semirhage looked utterly shocked. “But . . . that’s impossible . . .” she said. “I felt nothing. You can’t—” She looked up, staring at him with wide eyes. “The True Power. Why have you betrayed me, Great Lord? Why?”

Rand raised a hand and, filled with the power he did not understand, wove a single weave. A bar of pure white light, a cleansing fire, burst from his hand and struck Semirhage in the chest. She flashed and vanished, leaving a faint afterimage to Rand’s vision. Her bracelet dropped to the floor.

Elza ran toward the door. She vanished before another bar of light, her entire figure becoming light for a moment. Her bracelet dropped to the floor, as well, the women who had held them burned completely from the Pattern.

What have you done? Lews Therin asked. Oh, Light. Better to have killed again than to do this. . . . Oh, Light. We are doomed.

Rand savored the power for a moment longer, then—regretfully—let it drop away. He would have held on, but he was simply too exhausted. The vanishing of it left him numb.

Or . . . no. That numbness had nothing to do with the power he’d held. He turned around, looking down at Min, who coughed quietly and rubbed her neck. She looked up at him, and seemed afraid. He doubted that she would ever see him the same way again.

He had been wrong; there had indeed been something more that Semirhage could do to him. He had felt himself killing one he loved dearly. Before, when he’d done it as Lews Therin, he had been mad and unable to control himself. He could barely remember slaying Hyena, as if through a clouded dream. He’d realized what he had done only after Ishamael had awakened him.

Finally, now, he knew precisely what it was like to watch as he killed those he loved.

“It is done,” Rand whispered.

“What?” Min asked, coughing again.

“The last that could be done to me,” he said, surprised at his own calmness. “They have taken everything from me now.”

“What are you saying, Rand?” Min asked. She rubbed her neck again. Bruises were beginning to show.

He shook his head as—finally—voices sounded in the hallway outside. Perhaps the Asha’man had sensed him channeling when he’d tortured Min.

“I have made my choice, Min,” he said, turning toward the door. “You have asked for flexibility and laughter from me, but such things are no longer mine to give. I am sorry.”

Once, weeks ago, he had decided that he must become stronger—where he had been iron, he had decided to become steel. It appeared that steel was too weak.

He would be harder, now. He understood how. Where he had once been steel, he became something else. From now on, he was cuendillar. He had entered a place like the void that Tarn had trained him to seek, so long ago. But within this void he had no emotion. None at all.

They could not break or bend him.

It was done.

“What of the sisters who were guarding her cell?” Cadsuane asked, stomping up the wooden steps beside Merise. “Corele and Nesune are alive, thankfully, though they were left extremely weak,” Merise said, holding her skirt up as she hurried along. Narishma followed them, the bells at the end of his braids ringing softly. “Daigian is dead. We’re not certain why the other two were left alive.”

“Warders,” Cadsuane said. “Kill the Aes Sedai, and their Warders would know immediately—and we would have learned that something was wrong.” The Warders should have noticed that something was wrong anyway—they’d have to interrogate the men to see what they had felt. But there was likely a correlation.