The Gathering Storm

opened the box, moved it, or barely touched it with the most delicate thread of the One Power.

Cadsuane flipped up the lid. The extreme precaution was necessary. For inside this box were two items that presented very serious danger.

Sorilea walked over, looking in at the contents. One was a figurine of a wise, bearded man holding aloft a sphere, about a foot tall. The other was a a black metallic collar and two bracelets: an a'dam made for a man. With this ter'angreal, a woman could turn a man who could channel into her slave, controlling his ability to touch the One Power. Perhaps controlling him completely. They had not tested the collar. Al'Thor had forbidden it.

Sorilea hissed quietly, ignoring the statue and focusing on the bracelets and collar. 'This thing is evil.'

'Yes,' Cadsuane said. Rarely would she have called a simple object 'evil,' but this one was. 'Nynaeve al'Meara claims some familiarity with this thing. Though I have not been able to press out of the girl how she knows these things, she claims to know that there was only one male a'dam, and that she'd arranged for its disposal in the ocean. She also admits, however, that she didn't see it destroyed personally. It may have been used as a pattern by the Seanchan.'

'This is unsettling to see,' Sorilea said. 'If one of the Shadowsouled, or even one of the Seanchan, captured him with this. . . .'

'Light protect us all,' Bair whispered.

'And the people who have these are the same people with whom al'Thor wishes to make peace?' Sorilea shook her head. 'Creation of these abominations alone should warrant a blood feud. I heard that there were others like it. What of those?'

'Stored elsewhere,' Cadsuane said, shutting the lid. 'Along with the female a'dam we took. Some acquaintances of mine—Aes Sedai who have retired from the world—are testing them trying to discover their weakness.' They also had Callandor. Cadsuane was loath to let it out of her sight, but she felt that the sword still held secrets that could be teased out.

'I keep this one here because I intend to find a way to test it on a man,' she said. 'That would be the best way to discover its weaknesses. Al'Thor won't allow any of his Asha'man to be leashed by it, however. Not for the shortest time.'

This made Bair uncomfortable. 'A little like testing a spear's strength by stabbing it into someone,' she muttered.

Sorilea, however, nodded in agreement. She understood.

One of the first things Cadsuane had done after capturing those female a'dam was put one on and practice ways to escape from it. She'd done so under carefully controlled circumstances, of course, with women she trusted to help her escape. They'd eventually had to do that. Cadsuane had been able to discover no way out on her own.

But if your enemy was planning to do something to you, you had to discover how to counter it. Even if that meant leashing yourself. Al'Thor couldn't see this. When she asked, he simply muttered about 'that bloody box' and being beaten.

'We have to do something about that man,' Sorilea said, meeting Cadsuane's eyes. 'He has grown worse since we last met.'

'He has,' Cadsuane said. 'He's surprisingly accomplished at ignoring my training.'

'Then let us discuss,' Sorilea said, pulling over a stool. 'A plan must be arranged. For the good of all.'

'For the good of all,' Cadsuane agreed. 'Al'Thor himself most of all.'

CHAPTER 15 A Place to Begin

Rand woke on the floor of a hallway. He sat up, listening to the distant sound of water. The stream outside the manor house? No . . . no, that was wrong. The walls and floor here were stone, not wood. No candles or lamps hung from the stonework, and yet there was light, ambient in the air.

He stood, then straightened his red coat, feeling strangely unafraid. He recognized this place from somewhere, distant in his memory. How had he come here? The recent past was clouded, and seemed to slip from him, like fading trails of mist. . . .

No, he thought firmly. His memories obeyed, snapping back into place before the strength of his determination. He had been in the Do-mani manor house, awaiting a report from Rhuarc about the capture of the first few members of the merchant council. Min had been reading Each Castle, a biography, in the deep, green chair of the room they shared.

Rand had been exhausted, as he often was lately. He'd gone to lie down. He was asleep, then. Was this the World of Dreams? Though he had visited it on occasion, he knew very few specifics. Egwene and the Aiel dreamwalkers spoke of it only guardedly.

This place felt different from the dream world, and oddly familiar. He looked down the hallway; it was so long that it vanished into shadows, walls broken by doors at intervals, the wood dry and cracked. Yes . . .

he thought, seizing at a memory. / have been here before, but not in a long time.

He chose one of the doors at random—he knew that it wouldn't matter which one he picked—and pushed it open. There was a room beyond, of modest size. The far side was a series of gray stone arches, beyond them a little courtyard and a sky of burning red clouds. The clouds grew and sprang from one another like bubbles in boiling water. They were the clouds of an impending storm, unnatural though they were.

He looked more closely, and saw that each new cloud formed the shape of a tormented face, the mouth open in a silent scream. The cloud would swell, expanding upon itself, face distorting, jaw working, cheeks twisting, eyes bulging. Then it would split, other faces swelling out of its surface, yelling and seething. It was transfixing and horrifying at the same time.

There was no ground beyond the courtyard. Just that terrible sky.

Rand did not want to look toward the left side of the room. The fireplace was there. The stones that formed floor, hearth and columns were warped, as if they had been melted by an extreme heat. At the edges of his vision, they seemed to shift and change. The angles and proportions of the room were wrong. Just as they had been when he'd come here, long ago.

Something was different this time, however. Something about the colors. Many of the stones were black, as if they'd been burned, and cracks laced them. Distant red light glowed from within, as if they had cores of molten lava. There had once been a table here, hadn't there? Polished and of fine wood, its ordinary lines a discomforting contrast to the distorted angles of the stones?

The table was gone, but two chairs sat before the fireplace, high backed and facing the flames, obscuring whomever might be sitting in them. Rand forced himself to walk forward, his boots clicking on stones that burned. He felt no heat, either from them or the fire. His breath caught and his heart pounded as he approached those chairs. He feared what he would find.

He rounded them. A man sat in the chair on the left. Tall and youthful, he had a square face and ancient blue eyes that reflected the hearth-fire, turning his irises almost purple. The other chair was empty. Rand walked to it and sat down, calming his heart and watching the dancing flames. He had seen this man before in visions, not unlike the ones that appeared when he thought of Mat or Perrin.

The colors did not appear on this thought of his friends. That was odd, but somehow not unexpected. The visions he'd seen of the man in the other chair were different from the ones involving Perrin and Mat. They were more visceral, somehow, more real. At times during those visions, Rand had felt almost as if he could reach out and touch this man. He'd been afraid of what would happen if he did.