Which is what draws me to the first point that I made in the argument, which is that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. If you cause someone who has not been tried and convicted as a darkfriend to be severed and she is later tried justly and found innocent, you have now caused a lawfully innocent person to suffer a pain beyond knowing.

As readers, we are sometimes granted insightful knowledge about characters that allow us to determine without question whether or not a woman is a darkfriend, but what about the characters? Elayne might have a very strong idea that Temaile Kenderode is an extremely sadistic wretch, but the rest of the Aes Sedai won't be sure of it until she can be tried and the evidence can be lawfully levied against her in court, and so what those Aes Sedai see instead is one of their own number, stilled without cause and against all law and propriety before her guilt can be predetermined.

What happens, then, when it is not Temaile Kenderode who gets put up on the stilling block, but instead someone who is genuinely innocent?



They do more than scream and weep. They scream and weep for days on end, and then stare at nothing and sit around unresponsive while their own sisters try futilely to talk to them. IIRC, the Aiel Wise Ones force them to run about and engage them in as many activities as they can possibly find for the sheer effort of keeping them alive, because otherwise they're just as liable to die outright.

I can't believe that anything that causes you to lose your will to live would not at least present the possibility of some psychological damage. You said it yourself. The women react as if they have just watched several of their family members die right before their eyes. Wouldn't that qualify as something traumatic enough that it presents the possibility for psychological damage?

I don't mean brain damage. I mean scars that never heal. I mean nightmares that plague you to your dying day. I mean bouts of depression that take you without any reason whatsoever, and flashbacks that take you wihout warning of any kind, or trance-like fugue states that wash over you and leave you in an empty-headed shell for as long as they last.

The fact is, any traumatic experience presents the possibility for some kind psychological damage, and being severed from the One Power is a traumatic experience.



You have listed three things that we, as readers, know about the restorative processs. What about the things we don't know? Here's a short list.

1. Do channelers who have been restored to the One Power die within a few years?
2. Do channelers who have been restored to the One Power lose any of their channeling strength over time?
3. What would happen if Nynaeve had used a better weave ( one that the yellow sisters would not be so quick to coin as "sloppy" ) on Siuan or Leane? Would they be restored to some greater degree of their full potential?
4. Why do Siuan and Leane look as if they are about as old as they were when they swore on the Oath Rod, when the slowing should place them a little older?
5. How does being severed from the One Power affect the slowing?
6. What would happen to a very old woman, such as a member of the Kin, who was stilled and then restored to a much weaker degree?
7. Can someone be restored to a higher degree of power than the one that they initially held?
8. If Siuan were stilled again, could she be restored?
9. If Siuan were stilled again, and then healed by Flinn, would she be restored to her full strength, or could she only be restored to the degree of power that she currently holds?
10. Do channelers who have been severed and restored suddenly wake up and lose their will to live?
11. Do channelers who are restored suffer from any strange diseases of the mind?
12. Do channelers who have been restored suffer from ANY strange long-term side-effects?

I just presented you with a handful of questions, some of which were logical and others of which were completely frivolous, that you have no way to answer with any absolute certainty. You can say "probably not" to a quite a few of them, and you can postulate and theorize about them until you're blue in the face, but the truth of the matter is that you and I, as readers, do not know nearly enough about the restoration process to answer any of them.

How much more must the Aes Sedai in Salidar want to know?



Don't forget forkroot tea.



Conceded.