A Memory of Light

do not suspect these keep to ji’e’tolo ,” Gaul said. “Would you take a man who could channel as gai’shain anyway?” He shuddered visibly.
    “Just kill them and be done with it,” Lanfear said.
    Perrin eyed her. He didn’t jump as she spoke—he had grown somewhat accustomed to the way she popped in and out. He did find it annoying, however.
    “If I kill them here, will that kill them forever?”
    “No,” she said. “It doesn’t work that way for men.”
    Did he trust her? On this point, for some reason, he found that he did. Why would she lie? Still, killing unarmed men . . . they were barely more than babies here to him.
    No, he thought, considering the dead wolves, not babies. Far more dangerous than that.
    “Those two have been Turned,” she said, folding her arms, nodding to the two channelers. “Many are born to their life these days, but those two have the filed teeth. They were taken and Turned.”
    Gaul muttered something. It sounded like an oath, but it also sounded reverent. It was in the Old Tongue, and Perrin didn’t catch its meaning. After that, however, Gaul raised a spear. He smelled regretful. “You spat in his eye, and so he uses you, my brothers. Horrible . . .”
    Turned , Perrin thought. Like those men at the Black Tower. He frowned, walking up and taking the head of one of the men in his hands. Could he will the man back to the Light? If he could be forced to be evil, could he be restored?
    Perrin hit something vast as he pushed against the minds of these men. His will bounced free, like a twig used to try beating down an iron gate. Perrin stumbled back.
    He looked at Gaul, and shook his head. “I can do nothing for them.”
    “I will do it,” Gaul said. “They are brothers.”
    Perrin nodded, reluctant, as Gaul slit the throats of the two men. It was better this way. Still, it ripped Perrin up inside to see it. He hated what fighting did to people, what it did to him. The Perrin of months ago could never have stood and watched this. Light ... if Gaul hadn’t done it, he would have himself. He knew it.
    “You can be such a child,” Lanfear said, arms still folded beneath her breasts as she watched him. She sighed, then took him by the arm. A wave of icy Healing washed through him. The wound on his cheek closed.
    Perrin took a deep breath, then nodded toward Gaul.
    “I am not your errand woman, wolf pup,” she said.
    “You want to convince me that you’re not a foe?” he asked. “That’s a good place to start.”
    She sighed, then waved impatiently for Gaul to approach. He did so, limping, and she Healed him.
    A distant rumbling shook the cavern behind them. She looked at it, and narrowed her eyes. “I cannot stay here,” she said. Then she was gone.
    “I do not know what to make of that one,” Gaul said, rubbing his arm where the clothing was burned, but the skin healed. “I believe she is gaming with us, Perrin Aybara. I do not know which game.”
    Perrin grunted in agreement.
    “This Slayer ... he will return.”
    “Fm thinking of a way to do something about that,” Perrin said, reaching to his waist where he’d tied the dreamspike to his belt with straps. He freed it. “Watch here,” he told Gaul, then entered the cavern.
    Perrin walked past those stones like teeth. It was hard to escape the feeling that he was crawling into the mouth of a Darkhound. The light at the bottom of the descent was blinding, but Perrin created a bubble around himself that was shaded, like glass that was only translucent. He could make out Rand and someone else striking at one another with swords at the lip of a deep pit.
    No. It wasn’t a pit. Perrin gaped. The entire world seemed to end here, the cavern opening into a vast nothingness. An eternal expanse, like the blackness of the Ways, only this one seemed to be pulling him into it. Him, and everything else. He’d grown accustomed to the storm raging outside, so he hadn’t noticed the wind in the tunnel. Now that he paid attention, he could feel it streaming through the cavern into that hole.
    Looking into that gap, he knew that he’d never understood blackness before, not really. This was blackness. This was nothingness. The absolute end of all. Other darkness was frightening because of what it might hide. This darkness was different; if this engulfed you, you would cease completely.
    Perrin stumbled back, though the wind blowing down the tunnel wasn’t strong. Just . . . steady, like a stream running into