The drums woke him.
Spencer came up from sleep like a drowning man breaking surface, heart pounding before his eyes were fully open. Fourteen hours of unconsciousness had left him disoriented, the room unfamiliar, his body uncertain which world it belonged to.
Caemlyn. Queen's Blessing. Safe.
The drums continued — a martial rhythm, the sound of soldiers marking time for a procession. Spencer crossed to the window and looked down at the street below.
People were gathering. Merchants closing their shops, servants abandoning their errands, everyone pressing toward the main avenue where the sound was coming from. The excitement was palpable, threads pulsing with the shared energy of a crowd anticipating spectacle.
Logain. The False Dragon. They're parading him through the city.
Spencer dressed quickly and went to find the others.
---
Rand was already in the common room, nursing a cup of tea with the hollow-eyed look of someone who hadn't slept well. His thread still blazed gold, stable and strong, but shadows moved beneath the surface — memories of lightning, questions without answers.
"The procession," Spencer said, sitting across from him. "Logain Ablar. The False Dragon from Ghealdan."
"I heard." Rand's hands tightened around his cup. "They gentled him. Cut him off from... from whatever he could do."
Saidin. The male half of the True Source. The power that's going to drive you mad if you're not careful.
"I want to see it," Spencer said.
"Why?"
Because I need to understand what gentling looks like. Because someday, the Red Ajah might try to do it to you. Because knowledge is the only weapon I have.
"Information. The more I understand about channelers, the better I can help when we find Moiraine again."
Rand's thread flickered with something complicated — hope and fear and the desperate wish that someone else could explain what was happening to him. "You think she can... you think she knows what I did? At Four Kings?"
"I think she knows a lot of things." Spencer kept his voice carefully neutral. "And I think she'll want to help you understand."
Whether you want her help or not. Whether the help she offers is what you actually need.
Mat appeared on the stairs, moving with the heavy tread of a man fighting his own body. His thread was darker than yesterday — the corruption feeding on the stress of travel, the conflict, the foreign city pressing in from all sides.
"Where are we going?" Mat demanded.
"To see the False Dragon."
"Why?"
"Because I want to. You can stay here if you'd rather."
Mat's jaw tightened. The paranoia flared in his thread, suspicion warring with the bone-deep exhaustion that made everything harder than it should be. "I'm coming. Someone needs to watch you."
Watch me for what? For stealing more of your belongings? For leading you into traps?
Spencer didn't argue. Arguing made things worse.
---
The crowd was massive.
Spencer had underestimated how many people would turn out for the spectacle — thousands lining the processional route, packed shoulder to shoulder, craning for a glimpse of the man who'd claimed to be the Dragon Reborn. The energy was ugly, festive violence simmering beneath the surface. People wanted to see the monster who'd terrorized Ghealdan. They wanted to jeer, to throw things, to feel superior to the broken man in the cage.
This is what happens to channelers who get caught. This is what they'll do to Rand if they find out what he is.
Spencer maneuvered through the crowd, using his smaller frame to slip through gaps that Rand and Mat couldn't follow. He needed height. He needed a clear line of sight.
"Up here." He pointed toward a merchant's awning, its support beams offering a makeshift ladder to the roof. "We'll see better from above."
The climb was awkward but manageable. Spencer's blistered feet complained at every step, but the view from the rooftop was worth the pain. He could see the entire processional route — the ranks of Queen's Guards, the mounted escorts, and at the center of it all, a cage on wheels carrying a man who'd once commanded armies.
[Thread Sight active. Range: 18m. Stability: High.]
Spencer focused on Logain Ablar.
The False Dragon was tall, dark-haired, with the bearing of someone who'd been important once. His face held the hollow resignation of a man who'd lost everything that mattered. But it was his thread that made Spencer's breath catch.
Silver. Like Moiraine's. But broken.
Logain's fate-thread should have blazed with the silver-blue of a male channeler — bright and fierce, the thread of a man connected to the most powerful force in existence. Instead, it guttered like a candle in rain, surrounded by scars where the Aes Sedai had cut away his connection to saidin.
The scars were visible to Thread Sight as jagged lines, places where the Pattern itself had been torn. They pulsed with residual trauma, wounds that would never heal, damage that had reduced a would-be Dragon to a shell of bitter survival.
[Skill Archive: Recording. Category: Channeling-Adjacent. Entry: Gentling Thread Pattern. Comprehension: 0.]
Spencer studied the pattern with clinical precision, memorizing the shape of the scars, the way they intersected with Logain's fate-thread, the specific nature of the damage. This was what the Red Ajah did to men who channeled. This was what waited for Rand if he was ever caught.
I need to understand this. I need to know how to recognize it, how to prevent it, how to maybe — somehow — repair it.
Because if I can't protect Rand from this fate, everything else I'm trying to do is pointless.
---
Mat was struggling.
Spencer noticed it halfway through the procession — the way Mat's corruption-thread flared and darkened in response to the crowd's energy. The paranoia was feeding on the emotional chaos, drawing strength from the hatred and fear swirling around them.
"We should go," Spencer said quietly.
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're—"
"I said I'm FINE." Mat's voice rose, drawing glances from nearby spectators. A merchant in a red-slashed coat shot them a disapproving look.
Rand stepped between them, his bulk blocking Mat from the merchant's line of sight. "Easy. Both of you. We're supposed to be inconspicuous."
"Tell him that." Mat jabbed a finger at Spencer. "Tell him to stop looking at me like I'm sick. I'm not sick. I'm just tired of being treated like a child who can't take care of himself."
You can't take care of yourself. The corruption is eating you from the inside, and every conflict makes it worse.
But I can't say that. I can't explain without revealing what I took from you, what I know, what I am.
"Fine," Spencer said flatly. "You're not sick. You're just having a bad couple of weeks. We all are."
Mat's thread flickered with something that might have been relief or might have been triumph. He turned back to the procession, shoulders rigid, attention fixed on Logain's passing cage with an intensity that bordered on obsession.
Spencer let him watch. There was nothing else to do.
---
Logain's eyes found Spencer in the crowd.
It happened quickly — a sweep of the False Dragon's gaze across the rooftops, pausing for a heartbeat on the three figures above the merchant's awning. Something shifted in Logain's expression, a flicker of awareness that hadn't been there before.
He sees me looking at him differently. He knows I'm not just watching the spectacle.
Logain's damaged thread pulsed once, brighter than before, as if responding to Spencer's attention. Then the cage moved past, carrying the broken channeler toward whatever fate awaited him in the Palace.
Spencer watched until the procession disappeared around a corner. Then he climbed down from the roof and led the others back toward the Queen's Blessing.
---
That evening, Spencer borrowed a journal from Master Gill and sat by the window, sketching what he'd seen.
The gentling scars took shape under his charcoal — jagged lines mapping the damage to Logain's fate-thread, structural analysis of spiritual destruction. Spencer worked with the precision of an engineer documenting a disaster, clinical and thorough, suppressing the horror that wanted to overwhelm him.
This is what they do to men who channel. This is considered mercy.
The alternative is madness, they say. The alternative is the taint driving you insane, destroying everything you love.
But looking at these scars... looking at what they carved out of him...
I'm not sure which is worse.
Rand appeared in the doorway, hesitating on the threshold. His thread was troubled, restless, pulsing with questions he didn't know how to ask.
"Can I see?" Rand asked.
Spencer hesitated. Showing Rand the sketches meant explaining what they represented — the fate that awaited male channelers, the choice between madness and mutilation.
He needs to know. He needs to understand what's coming.
But not yet. Not until Moiraine can help him process it.
"Just notes," Spencer said, closing the journal. "Nothing interesting."
Rand's thread flickered with disappointment, but he didn't push. "Gill says there's no word of Moiraine. No Aes Sedai in the city except the ones escorting Logain."
"She'll come. She has to."
"How do you know?"
Because I read the books. Because this is where the party reunites. Because the Pattern won't let the Dragon Reborn wander around Caemlyn without his Aes Sedai handler for long.
"Because she's Moiraine. She doesn't give up on things she's started."
Rand nodded slowly, accepting the answer even though Spencer could see the doubt threading through his fate-line. "Mat's getting worse."
"I know."
"Can you help him?"
No. The corruption is beyond anything I can fix. He needs Aes Sedai Healing, real Healing, not whatever half-measures I can improvise.
"I'm trying," Spencer said. "But some things need more than I can give."
Rand stood in the doorway for a long moment, his thread pulsing with the weight of responsibilities he was only beginning to understand. Then he nodded and walked away, leaving Spencer alone with his journal and his useless sketches.
Moiraine will come. She has to come.
Because if she doesn't, I'm going to watch Mat die by inches, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
Outside, Caemlyn hummed with ten thousand lives, and somewhere in the Palace, a broken channeler sat in a cage, his thread guttering like a candle in rain.
Spencer closed his eyes and waited for morning.
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