A Memory of Light

turned away.
    Beside him, Gaul let out a very soft breath of relief. How did I do that? Perrin thought. It wasn’t something he had practiced; it had merely seemed right.
    Heartseeker—this had to be she—waved her fingers, and the tent split in half above her, the canvas flaps hanging down. She rose through the air, moving toward the black tempest above.
    Perrin whispered to Gaul, “Wait here and watch for danger.”
    Gaul nodded. Perrin cautiously followed Heartseeker, lifting himself into the air with a thought. He tried to form another wall between himself and her, but it was too difficult to keep the right image displayed while moving. Instead, he kept his distance and put a blank brownish-green wall between him and the Forsaken, hoping that if she happened to glance down, she’d pass over the small oddity.
    She began to move more quickly, and Perrin forced himself to keep up.
    He glanced down, and was rewarded with the stomach-churning sight of Merrilor’s landscape dwindling below. Then it grew dark and vanished into blackness.
    They didn’t pass through the clouds. As the ground faded away, so did the clouds, and they entered someplace black. Pinpricks of light appeared all around Perrin. The woman above stopped and hung in the air for a few moments before streaking away to the right.
    Perrin followed again, coloring himself—his skin, his clothing, everything—black to hide. The woman approached one of the pinpricks of light until it expanded and dominated the sky in front of her.
    Heartseeker reached her hands forward and pressed them against the light. She was muttering to herself. Feeling he needed to hear what she was saying, Perrin dared move closer, though he suspected that the pounding of his heart was so loud it would give him away.
    “. . . take it from me?” she said. “You think I care? Give me a face of broken stone. What do I care? That’s not me. I will have your place, Moridin. It will be mine. This face will just make them underestimate me. Burn you.” Perrin frowned. He couldn’t make much sense of what she was saying. “Go ahead and throw your armies at them, you fools,” she continued to herself. “I’ll have the greater victory. An insect can have a thousand legs, but only one head. Destroy the head, and the day is yours. All you’re doing is cutting off the legs, stupid fool. Stupid, arrogant, insufferable fool. I’ll have what is due me, I’ll . . .”
    She hesitated, then pivoted. Perrin, spooked, immediately sent himself back to the ground. It worked, thankfully—he hadn’t known if it would, up in that place of lights. Gaul jumped, and Perrin took a deep breath. “Let’s—”
    A ball of blazing fire crashed into the ground beside him. Perrin cursed and rolled, cooling himself with a gust of wind, imagining his hammer up into his hand.
    Heartseeker dropped to the ground in a wave of energy, power rippling around her. “Who are you?” she demanded. “Where are you? I—”
    She focused suddenly on Perrin, seeing him completely for the first time, the blackness having faded from his clothing. “You!” she screeched. “You are to blame for this!”
    She raised her hands; her eyes almost seemed to glow with hatred. Perrin could smell the emotion in spite of the blowing wind. She released a white-hot bar of light, but Perrin bent it around himself.
    The woman started. They always did that. Didn’t they realize that nothing was real here except what you thought to be real? Perrin vanished, appearing behind her, raising his hammer. Then he hesitated. A woman?
    She spun about, screaming and ripping the earth beneath him. He jumped up into the sky, and the air around him tried to seize him—but he did what he’d done before, creating a wall of nothingness. There was no air to grab him. Holding his breath, he vanished and appeared back on the ground, summoning banks of earth in front of him to block the balls of fire that hurtled his way.
    “I want you dead!” the woman screamed. “You should be dead. My plans were perfect!”
    Perrin vanished, leaving behind a statue of himself. He appeared beside the tent, where Gaul watched carefully, spear raised. Perrin put a wall between them and the woman, coloring it to hide them, and made a barrier to block the sound.
    “She can’t hear us now,” Perrin said.
    “You are strong here,” Gaul said thoughtfully. “Very strong. Do the Wise Ones know of this?”
    “I’m still a pup compared to them,” Perrin