The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  Aviendha stood up. Graendal was powerful and wily. She was exceptionally good at slicing weaves from the air as they were formed.

  Aviendha held a hand out to her side, and wove Fire, Air, Spirit. A glowing, burning spear of light and fire appeared in her hand. She prepared five other weaves of Spirit, then dashed forward.

  The thrumming of the trembling ground accompanied her footsteps. Crystalline lightning fell from the heavens, then froze in place. Men and beasts howled as the Darkhounds reached the final lines of humans defending the pathway up to Rand.

  Graendal saw Aviendha and began to weave balefire. Aviendha slashed the weave from the air with a flow of Spirit. Graendal cursed, weaving again. Aviendha struck, cutting the weave apart.

  Cadsuane and Talaan sent bursts of fire. One of the captive Aiel threw himself in front of Graendal, dying with a long cry as the flames engulfed him.

  Aviendha ran swiftly, the ground a blur beneath her, clutching a spear of light. She remembered her first race, one of the tests to join the Maidens. On that day, she had felt the wind behind her, urging her on.

  This time, she felt no wind. Instead, she heard the cries of the warriors. The Aiel who fought seemed to drive her onward. The sound itself carried her toward Graendal.

  The Forsaken made a weave before Aviendha could stop it, a powerful weave of Earth directed beneath Aviendha.

  So she leaped.

  The ground exploded, rocks flying upward as the blast threw her forward into the air. Stones flayed her legs, carrying ribbons of blood up through the air around her. Her feet were ripped apart, bones cracking, legs burning.

  She gripped the spear of fire and light in two hands amid the storm of rock, skirt rippling as it shredded. Graendal looked up, eyes widening, lips parting. She was going to Travel with the True Power. Aviendha knew it. The woman had only avoided it so far because this method of Traveling seemed to require her to touch her companions to take them with her, and she didn’t want to leave any.

  Aviendha met the Shadowsouled’s eyes during that brief moment when she hung in the air, and she saw true terror therein.

  The air began to warp.

  Aviendha’s spear, point first, sank into Graendal’s side.

  In a moment, both of them vanished.

  CHAPTER

  43

  A Field of Glass

  Logain stood in the middle of a field of glass, hands clasped behind his back. The battle raged across the Heights. The Sharans appeared to be falling back from the onslaught of Cauthon’s armies, and his scouts had just reported that the Shadow was being hit hard all across the Field of Merrilor.

  “I guess they probably won’t need you,” Gabrelle said to him as his scouts retreated. “So you were right.”

  The bond sent dissatisfaction and even disappointment. “I need to look to the future of the Black Tower,” Logain said.

  “You aren’t looking to its future,” she said, soft, almost threatening. “You’re looking to make certain you are a power in these lands, Logain. You cannot hide your emotions from me.”

  Logain shoved down his anger. He would not be subject to their power again. He would not. First the White Tower, then M’Hael and his men.

  Days of torture. Weeks.

  I will be stronger than any other, he thought. That was the only way out, wasn’t it? I will be feared.

  Light. He’d resisted their attempts to corrupt him, turn him to the Shadow … but he couldn’t help wondering if they had broken something else inside of him. Something profound. He leveled his gaze, looking across the field of crystal.

  Another rumble came beneath, and some of the crystals shattered. This entire area was going to collapse soon. And with it, the scepter …

  Power.

  “I’m warning you, mainlander,” a calm voice said nearby. “I have a message to deliver. If I need see your arm broken to deliver it, I will see it done.”

  That’s a Seanchan accent, Logain thought, turning with a frown. A Seanchan woman, accompanied by a large Illianer, was arguing with one of his guards. The woman knew how to make her voice carry without shouting. There was a self-possession to her that Logain found curious.

  He walked over, and the Seanchan woman looked up at him. “You have the look of authority about you,” she called to him. “You are the one called Logain?”

  He nodded.

  “The Amyrlin sends you her last words,” the Seanchan woman called. “You must deliver the seals up to the White Tower to be broken. The sign is the coming of light! She says it will be known when it arrives.”

  Logain raised an eyebrow. He nodded to the woman, mostly to put her off, then walked back the other way.

  “You don’t intend to do it,” Gabrelle said. “You fool. Those seals belong to—”

  “To me,” Logain said.

  “Logain,” Gabrelle said softly. “I know you have been hurt. But this is not a time for games.”

  “Why not? Has the White Tower’s treatment of me been anything other than a great long game?”

  “Logain.” She touched him on the arm.

  Light burn that bond! He wished he’d never forced her to it. Tied to her as he was, he could sense her sincerity. How much easier his life would be if he could continue to regard all Aes Sedai with suspicion.

  Sincerity. Would that be his downfall?

  “Lord Logain!” Desautel called from nearby. The Asha’man Dedicated was as big as a blacksmith. “Lord Logain, I think I’ve found it!”

  Logain broke eye contact with Gabrelle, looking toward Desautel. The Asha’man stood beside a large crystal. “It’s here,” Desautel said, wiping the crystal as Logain approached. “See?”

  Logain knelt, weaving a globe of light. Yes … there, within the crystal. It looked like a hand, made from a slightly different type of crystal, sparkling in his light. That hand held a golden scepter, the top vaguely cup-shaped.

  Logain gathered the One Power, smiling broadly. He let saidin flow from him into the crystal, using a weave to shatter it as he would a stone.

  The ground trembled. The crystal, whatever it was, resisted. The harder he pushed, the more violent the shaking became.

  “Logain…” Gabrelle said.

  “Stand back,” Logain said. “I think I’ll need to try balefire.”

  Panic surged through the bond. Fortunately, Gabrelle did not try to tell him what was forbidden and what was not. Asha’man need not obey White Tower law.

  “Logain!”

  Another voice. Would they not leave him alone? He prepared his weave.

  “Logain!” Androl was breathing deeply as he arrived. He fell to his knees, face scorched and burned. He looked worse than death itself. “Logain … the refugees of Caemlyn … The Shadow has sent Trollocs to kill them at the ruins. Light! They’re being murdered.”

  Logain wove balefire, but held the weave in place, nearly complete as he looked at the crystal and its golden prize.

  “Logain…” Androl said, pained. “The others with me stayed to fight, but they are too tired. I can’t find Cauthon, and the soldiers I went to are too busy fighting to help. I don’t think any of the commanders know that the Trollocs are up there. Light.”

  Logain held his weave, feeling the One Power pulse within him. Power. Fear.

  “Please,” Androl whispered, so soft. “Children, Logain. They’re slaughtering the children…”

  Logain closed his eyes.

  * * *

  Mat rode with the heroes of the Horn. Apparently, having once been the Hornsounder gave him a special place among them. They joined him, called to him, spoke to him as if they knew him. They looked so, well, heroic, tall in their saddles and surrounded by a mist that glowed against the breaking dawn’s light.

  Amid the fighting, he finally asked the question that had been haunting him for a long while now. “I’m not bloody … one of you, am I?” he asked Hend the Striker. “You know … since heroes are born sometimes, then die and … do whatever you do.”


  The big man laughed, riding a bay horse that could have almost gone shoulder-to-shoulder with a Seanchan boar-horse. “I knew that you would ask this thing, Gambler!”

  “Well, then you should bloody well have an answer prepared.” Mat felt his face flush as he anticipated the reply.

  “No, you are not one of us,” Hend said. “Be at ease. Though you have done more than enough to earn a place, you have not been chosen. I do not know why.”

  “Maybe because I don’t like the idea of having to hop whenever anyone blows on that bloody instrument.”

  “Maybe!” Hend grinned and galloped toward a line of Sharan spears.

  Mat no longer directed troop movements on the battlefield. The Light willing, he had set things up well enough that direct control would not be needed. He rode across the plateau, fighting, yelling, joining the heroes.

  Elayne was back, and she had rallied her troops. Mat saw Elayne’s banner glowing above them in the sky, crafted of the One Power, and caught a glimpse of someone who looked like her riding among the soldiers, hair glowing as if lit from behind her. She seemed a bloody hero of the Horn herself.

  Mat let out a whoop of joy as he saw the Seanchan army marching north, about to merge with Elayne’s army, and he continued riding along the eastern slope of the Heights. Soon after, he slowed, Pips just having trampled a Trolloc. That rushing sound … Mat looked down below as the river returned in a swift crash of muddy water. It broke the Trolloc army into two parts, washing away many of them, as it surged back into its bed.

  Snow-haired Rogosh watched the water flow, then nodded to Mat in respect. “Well done, Gambler,” he said. The river’s return had divided the Shadow’s forces.

  Mat rejoined the battle. He noticed as he galloped across the plateau that the Sharans—what remained of them—were fleeing through gateways. He let them go.

  When the Trollocs atop the Heights saw the Sharans fleeing, their resistance cracked, and they panicked. Boxed in and being swept across the plateau by Mat’s combined armies, they had no choice but to flee toward the long slope to the southwest.

  It had become total mayhem off the Heights. The Seanchan army had joined with Elayne’s, and both groups lit into the Trollocs with an intense fury. They formed a cordon around the beasts and advanced quickly, not allowing one to escape. The ground quickly turned to a deep, red mud as Trollocs fell by the thousands.

  But the engagement on the Shienaran side of the Mora was nothing compared to the struggle taking place on the other side of the river. The corridor between the bogs and Polov Heights was choked with Trollocs trying to escape the Seanchan attacking them from the far side of the corridor on the west.

  The vanguard sent in first against the Trollocs in the corridor was not composed of Seanchan soldiers, but squads of lopar and morat’lopar. On their hind legs, the lopar were no taller than Trollocs, but they outweighed them considerably. The lopar came at the Trollocs, raising up and slashing with their razor-sharp claws. Once a lopar softened up its prey, it grasped the Trolloc behind the neck with its paws and bit the beast’s head off at the neck. This gave the lopar great pleasure.

  The lopar were withdrawn as the corpses of Trollocs began to stack up at the far end of the corridor. Next into this pit of carnage came flocks of corlm, large, wingless, feathered creatures with long curved beaks designed to shred flesh. These carnivores easily ran over the stacks of corpses toward Trollocs still fighting, to separate the beasts’ meat from bone. The Seanchan soldiers took little part in these proceedings, only setting their pikes to ensure that no Trollocs escaped through the corridor or off the western side of the Heights. The creatures assaulting them so unnerved the Trollocs that few had any notion of running toward the Seanchan troops.

  On the slope, terror-stricken Trollocs, fleeing from Mat’s army charging down after them, threw themselves onto the Trollocs that filled the corridor. The monsters tumbled on top of one another, and they fought among themselves, trying to be the ones to reach the top of the pile and continue breathing a while longer.

  Talmanes and Aludra had set up their dragons across from the corridor and commenced firing dragons’ eggs into the roiling masses of terrorized Trollocs.

  It was all over quickly. The numbers of living Trollocs diminished from the many thousands to the hundreds. Those that remained, seeing death snatching at them from three sides, fled into the bogs, where many of them were sucked down into the shallow waters. Their deaths were less violent, but equally horrifying. The remainder received a more merciful end, shot with arrows, spears and crossbow bolts as they slogged through the mire toward the sweet scent of freedom.

  * * *

  Mat lowered his bloodied ashandarei. He checked the sky. The sun was hidden up there somewhere; he was not certain how long he had been riding with the heroes.

  He would have to thank Tuon for returning. He did not go looking for her, though. He had a feeling that she would expect him to perform his princely duties, whatever they might be.

  Only … he did feel that strange tugging inside. Getting stronger and stronger.

  Blood and bloody ashes, Rand, Mat thought. I’ve done my part. You do yours.

  Amaresu’s words returned to him. Each breath you take is at his forbearance, Gambler …

  Mat had been a good friend when Rand needed, had he not? Most of the time? Blood and ashes, you could not expect a fellow to not worry … maybe stay a little distant … when a madman was involved. Right?

  “Hawkwing!” Mat called, riding up to the man. “The battle,” Mat said, drawing a deep breath. “It’s done, right?”

  “You have sewn this one up tight, Gambler,” Hawkwing said, sitting his mount regally. “Ah … what I would give to go at you across the battlefield. What a grand fight it would be.”

  “Great. Wonderful. I didn’t mean this battlefield. I mean the Last Battle. It’s done, right?”

  “You ask that under a sky of shadow, atop an earth that trembles in fear? What does your soul say, Gambler?”

  Those dice still tumbled inside of Mat’s head.

  “My soul says I’m a fool,” Mat growled. “That, and a bloody sparring dummy, set up and waiting to be attacked.” He turned northward. “I need to go to Rand. Hawkwing, would you do me a favor?”

  “Ask it, Hornblower.”

  “Do you know the Seanchan?”

  “I am … familiar with them.”

  “I think their Empress would like very much to make your acquaintance,” Mat said, galloping away. “If you could go to speak with her, I’d appreciate it. And if you do, kindly tell her I sent you.”

  * * *

  YOU THINK I WILL RETREAT? the Dark One asked.

  The thing that spoke those words was something that Rand could never truly comprehend. Even seeing the universe in its entirety did not allow him to understand Evil itself.

  I NEVER EXPECT YOU TO RETREAT, Rand said. I BELIEVE YOU INCAPABLE OF IT. I WISH YOU COULD SEE, COULD KNOW, WHY IT IS YOU CONTINUE TO LOSE.

  Beneath them, on the battlefield, the Trollocs had fallen, beaten by a young gambler from the Two Rivers. The Shadow shouldn’t have lost. It made no sense. The Trollocs had the greater force.

  However, Trollocs fought only because the Myrddraal forced them—on its own, a Trolloc would no more fight something stronger than a fox would attempt to kill a lion.

  It was one of the most basic rules among predators. Eat that which was weaker than you. Flee from that stronger than you.

  The Dark One seethed with a boiling anger that Rand felt in this place as a physical force.

  YOU SHOULD NOT BE SURPRISED, Rand said. WHEN HAVE YOU EVER INSPIRED THE BEST IN MEN? YOU CANNOT. IT IS OUTSIDE YOUR POWER, SHAI’TAN. YOUR MINIONS WILL NEVER FIGHT ON WHEN HOPE IS LOST. THEY WILL NEVER STAND BECAUSE DOING SO IS RIGHT. IT IS NOT STRENGTH THAT BEATS YOU. IT IS NOBILITY.

  I WILL DESTROY! I WILL REND AND BURN! I WILL BRING DARKNESS TO ALL, AND DEATH WILL BE THE TRUMPET I SOUND BEFORE MY ARRIVAL! AND YOU, ADVERSARY … OTH
ERS MAY ESCAPE, BUT YOU WILL DIE. YOU MUST KNOW THIS.

  OH, I DO, SHAI’TAN, Rand said softly. I EMBRACE IT, FOR DEATH IS—AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN—LIGHTER THAN A FEATHER. DEATH ARRIVES IN A HEARTBEAT, NO MORE TANGIBLE THAN A FLICKER OF LIGHT. IT HAS NO WEIGHT, NO SUBSTANCE.…

  Rand strode forward, speaking louder. DEATH CANNOT KEEP ME AT BAY, AND IT CANNOT RULE ME. IT COMES DOWN TO THIS, FATHER OF LIES. WHEN HAVE YOU INSPIRED A PERSON TO GIVE THEIR LIFE FOR YOU? NOT FOR THE PROMISES YOU GIVE, NOT FOR THE RICHES THEY SEEK OR THE POSITIONS THEY WOULD HOLD, BUT FOR YOU. HAS IT EVER HAPPENED?

  The darkness grew still.

  BRING MY DEATH, SHAI’TAN, Rand growled, throwing himself into the blackness. FOR I BRING YOURS!

  * * *

  Aviendha dropped to a rocky ledge far above the floor of Thakan’dar. She tried to stand, but her ruined feet and legs couldn’t support her weight. She collapsed on the ledge, the spear of light vanishing from her fingers. Pain climbed up her legs as if they’d been thrust into a fire.

  Graendal stumbled back from her, gasping huge breaths, holding her side. Aviendha immediately wove an attack, flames of fire, but Graendal cut them down with her own weaves.

  “You!” Graendal spat. “You vermin, you detestable child!” The woman was still strong, though wounded.

  Aviendha needed help. Amys, Cadsuane, the others. Desperate, clinging to the One Power despite her agony, she began weaving a gateway back to where she had been. It was near enough that she did not need to know the area well.

  Graendal let this weave pass. Blood gushed between the woman’s fingers. While Aviendha worked, Graendal wove a thin trickle of Air and stanched the wound with it. Then she pointed bloody fingers at Aviendha. “Trying to escape?”

  The woman began weaving a shield.

  Frantic, her strength waning, Aviendha tied off her weave, leaving the gateway open and in place. Please, Amys, see it! she thought as she countered Graendal’s shield.

  She barely managed to block it; she was very weak. Graendal had been using borrowed power for their entire fight, while Aviendha had been using her own. Even with her angreal, in her state she was really no match for Graendal.