The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  “They’ll try to squeeze us tight, envelop us, and that will be that. Only, Demandred sent a force up the Mora to stop the river from flowing, and it’s going to succeed very soon. We’ll see if there’s a way to make that work for us. But once the river’s gone, we’ll need a solid defense in place to stop the Trollocs when they try to surge over the riverbed. That’s what your forces are for.”

  “We’ll go,” Elayne said.

  “We?” Birgitte barked.

  “I’m riding with my troops,” Elayne said, walking toward the horselines. “It’s increasingly obvious that I won’t be able to do anything here, and Mat wants me away from the command position. I’ll bloody go, then.”

  “Into battle?” Birgitte said.

  “We’re already in battle, Birgitte,” Elayne said. “The Sharan channelers could have ten thousand men assaulting Dashar Knob, and this cleft, in minutes. Come. I promise I’ll let you put so many Guards around me that I won’t be able to sneeze without spraying a dozen of them.”

  Birgitte sighed, and Mat gave her a consoling look. She nodded farewell to him, then walked off with Elayne.

  All right, Mat thought, turning back toward the command building. Elayne was doing what she had to, and Talmanes had caught his signal. Now the real challenge.

  Could he coax Tuon into doing what he wanted?

  * * *

  Galad led the cavalry of the Children of the Light in a sweeping attack along the Mora, near the ruins. The Trollocs had constructed more raft bridges here, and bodies floated as thick as autumn leaves on a pond. The archers had done their work well.

  Those Trollocs that finally crossed now had the Children to contend with. Galad leaned in low, lance held firmly, as he split the neck of a hulking, bear-faced Trolloc; he continued forward, lance tip streaming blood, the Trolloc falling to its knees behind him.

  He guided his mount Sidama into the mass of Trollocs, knocking them down or causing them to leap out of the way. The power of a cavalry charge was in numbers, and those Galad forced aside could be trampled by the horses following him.

  After his charge came a volley from Tam’s men, who launched arrows into the main body of Trollocs as they stumbled onto the banks of the river. Those behind pushed over them, trampling the wounded.

  Golever and several other Children joined Galad as their charge—which swept lengthwise across the front rank of Trollocs—ran out of enemies. He and his men reared and turned, lances up, galloping back to locate small groups of men separated and fighting alone.

  The battlefield here was enormous. Galad spent the better part of an hour hunting out such groups, rescuing them and ordering them to the ruins so that Tam or one of his captains could form them into new banners. Slowly, as their numbers dwindled, original formations became mixed with one another. Mercenaries were not the only ones who now rode with the Children. Galad had Ghealdanin, Winged Guardsmen and a couple of Warders under his command. Kline and Alix. Both had lost their Aes Sedai. Galad didn’t expect those two to last long, but they were fighting with terrible ferocity.

  After sending another group of survivors back toward the ruins, Galad brought Sidama down to a slow walk, listening to the horse’s labored breath. This field beside the river had become a bloody churn of bodies and mud. Cauthon had been right to leave the Children in position here. Perhaps Galad gave the man too little credit.

  “How long have we been fighting, would you say?” Golever asked from beside him. The other Child’s tabard had been ripped free, exposing his mail. A section of links along the right side had been crushed by a Trolloc blade. The mail had held, but the stain of blood there indicated that many of the links had been driven through Golever’s quilted gambeson and into his side. The bleeding didn’t look bad, so Galad said nothing.

  “We’ve hit midday,” Galad guessed, though he could not see the sun for the clouds. He was reasonably certain they’d been fighting for four or five hours now.

  “Think they’ll stop for the night?” Golever asked.

  “Doubtful,” Galad said. “If this battle lasts that long.”

  Golever looked at him with concern. “You think—”

  “I cannot follow what is happening. Cauthon sent so many troops up here, and he pulled everyone off the Heights, from what I can tell. I don’t know why. And the water in the river … does it seem to be flowing in fits and spurts to you? The struggle upstream must be going poorly…” He shook his head. “Perhaps if I could see more of the battlefield, I could understand Cauthon’s plan.”

  He was a soldier. A soldier need not understand the whole of the battle in order to follow his orders. However, Galad was usually able to at least piece together his side’s strategy from commands given.

  “Have you ever imagined a battle this large?” Golever asked, turning his head. Arganda’s infantry was crashing into the Trollocs at the river. More and more of the Shadowspawn were getting across—with alarm, Galad realized that the river had stopped flowing completely.

  The Shadowspawn had gotten a footing in the last hour. It was going to be a tough fight, but at least the numbers were more even now, with all the Trollocs they had killed earlier. Cauthon had known the river would stop flowing. That was why he’d sent so many troops up here, to stem this onslaught from the other side.

  Light, Galad thought, I’m watching the Game of Houses on the battlefield itself. Yes, he had not given Cauthon nearly enough credit.

  A lead ball with a red streamer suddenly fell from the sky about twenty paces ahead, hitting a dead Trolloc in the skull. Far overhead, the raken screeched and continued on its way. Galad heeled Sidama forward, and Golever climbed down to fetch the letter for him. Gateways were useful, but raken could see the battlefield in its expanse, search out banners for specific men and deliver orders.

  Golever handed him the letter, and Galad pulled his list of ciphers from the leather envelope he carried in the top of his boot. The ciphers were simple—a list of numbers with words beside them. If orders didn’t use the right word and the right number together, then they were suspect.

  Damodred, the orders read, bring yourself and a dozen of the best men from your twenty-second company and move along the river toward Hawal Ford. Stop when you can see Elayne’s banner and hold there for more orders. P.S. If you see any Trollocs with quarterstaffs, I suggest you let Golever fight them instead, as I know you have trouble with those types. Mat.

  Galad sighed, showing the letter to Golever. The cipher authenticated it; the number twenty-two and the word “quarterstaff” were paired.

  “What does he want of us?” Golever asked.

  “I wish I knew,” Galad said. He really did.

  “I’ll go gather some men,” Golever said. “I assume you’ll want Harnesh, Mallone, Brokel…” He continued through an entire list.

  Galad nodded. “A good list. Well, I can’t say I’m sad for this order. My sister has entered the field, it appears. I would keep watch on her.” Beyond that, he wanted to look over another section of the battlefield. Perhaps that would help him understand what Cauthon was doing.

  “As you order, Lord Captain Commander,” Golever said.

  * * *

  The Dark One attacked.

  It was an attempt to tear Rand apart, to destroy him bit by bit. The Dark One sought to claim the very elements that made up Rand’s essence, then annihilate them.

  Rand couldn’t gasp, couldn’t cry out. This attack wasn’t at his body, for he had no true body in this place, just a memory of one.

  Rand held himself together. With difficulty. In the face of this awesome attack, any notion of defeating the Dark One—of killing him—vanished. Rand couldn’t defeat anything. He could barely hold on.

  He could not have described the sensation if he’d tried. It was as if the Dark One was shredding him while at the same time trying to crush him entirely, coming at Rand from infinite directions, all at once, in a wave.

  Rand fell to his knees. It was a projection of himself tha
t did so, but it felt real to him.

  An eternity passed.

  Rand suffered it. The crushing pressure, the noise of destruction. He weathered it on his knees, fingers taut like claws, sweat streaming from his brow. He suffered it and looked up.

  “That is all you have?” Rand growled.

  I WILL WIN.

  “You made me strong,” Rand said, voice ragged. “Each time you or your minions tried to destroy me, your failure was like the blacksmith’s hammer beating against metal. This attempt…” Rand took a deep breath. “This attempt of yours is nothing. I will not break.”

  YOU MISTAKE. THIS IS NOT AN ATTEMPT TO DESTROY YOU. THIS IS PREPARATION.

  “For what?”

  TO SHOW YOU TRUTH.

  Fragments of the Pattern … threads … suddenly spun before Rand, splitting from the main body of light like hundreds of tiny flowing streams. He knew this was not actually the Pattern, no more than what he saw as himself was actually his body. In interpreting something so vast as the fabric of creation, his mind needed some kind of imagery. This was what his consciousness chose.

  The threads spun, not unlike threads in a weave of the One Power, only there were thousands upon thousands of them, and the colors were more varied, more vibrant. Each was straight, like a string pulled taut. Or a beam of light.

  They came together like the product of a loom, creating a vision around him. A ground of slimy soil, plants speckled with black, trees with limbs that drooped like arms bereft of strength.

  It became a place. A reality. Rand pushed himself to his feet, and could feel the soil. He could smell smoke in the air. Could hear … moans of sorrow. Rand turned, and found that he was on a mostly barren slope above a dark city with black stone walls. Buildings huddled inside, squat and dull, like bunkers.

  “What is this?” Rand whispered. Something about the place felt familiar. He looked up, but could not see the sun for the clouds that dominated the sky.

  IT IS WHAT WILL BE.

  Rand felt for the One Power, but drew back in revulsion. The taint had returned, but it was worse—far worse. Where it had once been a dark film on the molten light of saidin, it was now a sludge so thick that he could not pierce it. He would have to drink in the darkness, envelop himself in it, to seek out the One Power beneath—if, indeed, it was even still there. The mere thought made bile rise in his throat, and he had to fight to keep his stomach from emptying.

  He was drawn toward that fortress nearby. Why did he feel he knew this place? He was in the Blight; the plants made that clear. If that wasn’t enough, he could smell rot in the air. The heat was like that of a bog in the summer—sweltering, oppressive despite the clouds.

  He walked down the shallow hillside, and caught sight of some figures working nearby. Men with axes, hacking at trees. There were maybe a dozen of them. As Rand approached, he glanced to the side, and saw the nothing that was the Dark One in the distance, consuming part of the landscape, like a pit on the horizon. A reminder that what Rand was seeing wasn’t real?

  He passed stumps of cut trees. Were the men gathering firewood? The thock, thock of axes—and the postures of the workers—had none of the steadfast strength Rand associated with woodsmen. The beats were lethargic, the men working with slumped shoulders.

  That man on the left … As Rand grew closer, he recognized him, despite the bent posture and wrinkled skin. Light. Tam had to be at least seventy, perhaps eighty. Why was he out working so hard?

  It’s a vision, Rand thought. A nightmare. The Dark One’s own creation. Not real.

  Yet, while standing within it, Rand found it difficult not to react as if this were indeed real. And it was, after a fashion. The Dark One used shadowed threads of the pattern—the possibilities that rippled from creation like waves from a dropped pebble in a pond—to create this.

  “Father?” Rand asked.

  Tam turned, but his eyes didn’t focus on Rand.

  Rand took Tam by the shoulder. “Father!”

  Tam stood dully for a moment, then went back to his work, raising his axe. Nearby, Dannil and Jori hacked at a stump. They had aged as well, and were now men well into their middle years. Dannil seemed sick with something awful, his face pale, his skin having broken out in some kind of sores.

  Jori’s axe bit deep into the bitter earth, and a black flood seeped from the soil—insects that had been hiding at the base of the stump. The blade had pierced their lair.

  The insects swarmed out and sped up the handle to cover Jori. He screamed, batting at them, but his open mouth let them climb inside. Rand had heard of such a thing, a deathswarm, one of the many dangers of the Blight. He raised a hand toward Jori, but the man slumped to the side, dead as quickly as a man could draw breath.

  Tam yelled in horror and broke away, running. Rand spun as his father crashed into a thicket of brush nearby, trying to flee the deathswarm. Something jumped from a branch, quick as a snapping whip, and wrapped around Tam’s neck, jerking him to a halt.

  “No!” Rand said. It wasn’t real. He still couldn’t watch his father die. He seized the Source, punching through the sickly darkness of the taint. It seemed to suffocate him, and Rand spent an excruciating time trying to find saidin. When he did grasp it, only a trickle came through.

  He wove anyway, roaring, sending a ribbon of flame to kill the vine that had grabbed his father. Tam dropped from its grip as the vines writhed, dying.

  Tam didn’t move. His eyes stared upward, dead.

  “No!” Rand turned on the deathswarm. He destroyed it with a weave of Fire. Only seconds had passed, but all that remained of Jori was bones.

  The insects popped as he burned them.

  “A channeler,” Dannil breathed, cowering nearby, eyes wide as he looked at Rand. Others of the woodsmen had fled into the wilderness. Rand heard several scream.

  Rand could not stop himself from retching. The taint … it was so awful, so putrid. He could not hold to the Source any longer.

  “Come,” Dannil said, and grabbed Rand’s arm. “Come, I need you!”

  “Dannil,” Rand croaked, standing up. “You don’t recognize me?”

  “Come,” Dannil repeated, towing Rand toward the fortress.

  “I’m Rand. Rand, Dannil. The Dragon Reborn.”

  No understanding shone in Dannil’s eyes.

  “What has he done to you?” Rand whispered.

  THEY DO NOT KNOW YOU, ADVERSARY. I HAVE REMADE THEM. ALL THINGS ARE MINE. THEY WILL NOT KNOW THAT THEY LOST. THEY WILL KNOW NOTHING BUT ME.

  “I deny you,” Rand whispered. “I deny you.”

  DENYING THE SUN DOES NOT MAKE IT SET. DENYING ME DOES NOT PREVENT MY VICTORY.

  “Come,” Dannil said, towing Rand. “Please. You must save me!”

  “End this,” Rand said.

  END IT? THERE ARE NO ENDINGS, ADVERSARY. IT IS. I HAVE CREATED IT.

  “You imagine it.”

  “Please,” Dannil said.

  Rand allowed himself to be pulled along toward the dark fortress. “What were you doing out there, Dannil?” Rand demanded. “Why gather wood in the Blight itself? It isn’t safe.”

  “It was our punishment,” Dannil whispered. “Those who fail our master are sent out and told to bring back a tree they have cut down with their own hands. If the deathswarms or the twigs don’t get you, the sound of cutting wood draws other things…”

  Rand frowned as they stepped onto a road leading to the town and its dark fortress. Yes, this place was familiar. The Quarry Road, Rand thought with surprise. And that ahead … The fortress dominated what had once been the Green at the center of Emond’s Field.

  The Blight had consumed the Two Rivers.

  The clouds overhead seemed to push down on Rand, and he heard Jori’s screams in his head. He again saw Tam struggling as he was strangled.

  It isn’t real.

  This was what would happen if Rand failed. So many people depended on him … so many. Some, he had already failed. He had to fight to keep from go
ing over in his head the list of those who had died in his service. Even if he saved others, he had failed to protect these.

  It was an attack of a different kind from the one that had tried to destroy his essence. Rand felt it, the Dark One forcing his tendrils into Rand, infecting his mind with worry, doubt, fear.

  Dannil led him to the walls of the village where a pair of Myrddraal in unmoving cloaks guarded the gates. They slid forward. “You were sent to gather wood,” one whispered with too-white lips.

  “I … I brought this one!” Dannil said, stumbling away. “A gift for our master! He can channel. I found him for you!”

  Rand growled, then plunged toward the One Power again, swimming in filth. He reached the trickle of saidin, seizing it.

  It was immediately knocked from his grasp. A shield slid between him and the Source.

  “It isn’t real,” he whispered as he turned to see who had channeled.

  Nynaeve strode through the city gates, dressed in black. “A wilder?” she asked. “Undiscovered? How did he survive this long? You have done well, Dannil. I give you back your life. Do not fail again.”

  Dannil wept for joy, then scrambled past Nynaeve into the city.

  “It isn’t real,” Rand said as Nynaeve tied him in weaves of Air, then dragged him into the Dark One’s version of Emond’s Field, the two Myrddraal rushing in ahead of her. It was a large city now. The houses had the feel of mice clustered together before a cat, each one of the same, uniform dullness. People scuttled through alleyways, eyes down.

  People scattered before Nynaeve, sometimes calling her “mistress.” Others named her Chosen. The two Myrddraal sped through the city, like shadows. When Rand and Nynaeve reached the fortress, a small group had gathered in the courtyard. Twelve people—Rand could sense that the four men in the group held saidin, though he only recognized Damer Flinn from among them. A couple of the women were girls he had known in the Two Rivers.