A Memory of Light

overheard her saying . . . Yes. That’s it, I’m certain. Instead of fighting our armies with armies of her own, she plans to bring down the great captains. Elyas, do you know how a man can shift in and out of the wolf dream in the flesh?”
    Even if I knew this thing—which I do not—I would not teach it to you, Elyas said with a growl. Has nobody told you it is a terrible, dangerous thing that you do?
    “Too many,” Perrin said. “Light! We need to warn Bashere. I must—
    Perrin Aybara!” Gaul said, pointing. “He is here!”
    Perrin spun to see a dark blur streak upward toward the entrance to the Pit of Doom. Wolves whimpered and died. Others howled, beginning the hunt. This time, Slayer did not back away.
    The way of the predator. Two or three quick lunges to determine weakness, then an all-out attack.
    “Wake!” Perrin called to Elyas, running up the incline. “Warn Elayne, Egwene, anyone you can! And if you cannot, stop Ituralde somehow. The great captains are being corrupted. One of the Forsaken controls their minds, and their tactics cannot be trusted!”
    I will do it, Young Bull, Elyas sent, fading.
    “Go to Rand, Gaul!” Perrin roared. “Guard the way to him! Do not let any of those red-veils pass you!”
    Perrin summoned his hammer to his hands, not waiting for a reply, then shifted to confront Slayer.

    Rand clashed with Moridin, sword against sword, standing before the darkness that was the essence of the Dark One. The cold expanse was somehow both infinite and empty.
    Rand held so much of the One Power that he nearly burst. He would need that strength in the fight to come. For now, he resisted Moridin sword against sword. He wielded Callandor as a physical weapon, fighting as if with a sword made of light itself, parrying Moridin's attacks.
    Each step Rand took dripped blood to the ground. Nynaeve and Moiraine clung to stalagmites as if something were battering them, a wind that Rand could not sense. Nynaeve closed her eyes. Moiraine stared straight ahead as if determined not to look away, no matter the price.
    Rand turned aside Moridin’s latest attack, the blades throwing sparks. He had always been the better swordsman of the two, during the Age of Legends.
    He had lost his hand, but thanks to Tam, that no longer mattered as it once might have. And he was also wounded. This place . . . this place changed things. Rocks on the ground seemed to move, and he often stumbled. The air grew alternately musty and dry, then humid and moldy. Time slipped around them like a stream. Rand felt as if he could see it. Each blow here took moments, yet hours passed outside.
    He scored Moridin across the arm, drawing his blood to spray against the wall.
    “My blood and yours,” Rand said. “I have you to thank for this wound in my side, Elan. You thought you were the Dark One, didn’t you? Has he punished you for that?”
    “Yes,” Moridin snarled. “He returned me to life.” Moridin came swinging hard in a two-handed blow. Rand stepped backward, catching the blow on Callandor ; but he misjudged the slope of the ground. Either that, or the slope changed on him. Rand stumbled, the blow forcing him down on one knee.
    Blade against blade. Rand’s leg slipped backward, and brushed the darkness behind, which waited like a pool of ink.
    All went black.

    The distant Ogier song was comforting to Elayne as she slumped in her saddle atop the hill just north of Cairhien.
    The women around her weren’t in any better shape than she was. Elayne had gathered all of the Kinswomen who could hold on to saidar —no matter how weak or tired—and formed two circles with them. She had twelve with her in her own circle, but their collective strength in the Power at the moment was barely more than that of a single Aes Sedai.
    Elayne had stopped channeling in an attempt to let the women recover. Most of them slumped in their saddles or sat on the ground. In front of them extended a ragged battle line. Men fought desperately before the Cairhienin hills, trying to hold against the sea of Trollocs.
    Their victory over the northern Trolloc army had been short-lived, as they now found themselves strung-out, exhausted and in serious danger of being surrounded by the southern one.
    “We almost managed,” Arganda said from beside her, shaking his head. “We almost made it.”
    He wore a plume in his helmet. It had belonged to Gallenne. Elayne hadn’t been there when the Mayener commander had fallen.
    That was the