A Memory of Light

parting his flesh. He pushed back with everything he had, but the others started a thrumming pressure. Each thump, like the chop of an axe, came closer and closer to boring into him.
    AND SO I WIN.
    The failure hit Rand hard—the knowledge that what happened here was his fault. Nynaeve, Egwene, Turned to the Shadow because of him. Those he loved, becoming playthings for the Shadow.
    Rand should have protected them.
    I WIN. AGAIN.
    “You think I am the same youth that Ishamael tried so hard to frighten?” Rand shouted, fighting down his terror and shame.
    THE FIGHT IS OVER.
    “IT HAS NOT YET BEGUN!” Rand screamed.
    The reality around him shattered again into ribbons of light. Nynaeve’s face shredded, coming apart like lace with a loose thread. The ground disintegrated, and the fortress ceased to exist.
    Rand dropped from bands of Air that had never been completely there. The reality the Dark One had created, fragile, unwove into its component parts. Threads of light spiraled out, quivering like the strings of a harp.
    They waited to be woven.
    Rand drew breath, deeply, through his teeth and looked up at the darkness beyond the threads. “I will not sit passively and suffer it this time, Shaitan. I will not be captive to your nightmares. I have become something greater than I once was.”
    Rand seized those threads spinning about him, taking them—hundreds upon hundreds of them. There was no Fire, Air, Earth, Water or Spirit here, these were somehow more base, somehow more varied. Each one was individual, unique. Instead of Five Powers, there were thousands.
    Rand took them, gathered them and in his hand held the fabric of creation itself Then he channeled it, spinning it into a different possibility.
    “Now,” Rand said, breathing deeply, trying to banish the horror of what he had seen. “Now I will show you what is going to happen.”

    Bryne bowed. “The men are in position, Mother.”
    Egwene took a deep breath. Mat had sent the White Towers forces across the dry riverbed below the ford and around the western side of the bogs; it was time for Egwene to join them. She hesitated for a moment, looking through the gateway to Mats command post. Egwene met the eyes of the Seanchan woman across the table, where she sat imperiously on her throne.
    I have not finished with you, Egwene thought.
    “Lets go,” she said, turning, waving for Yukiri to close the gateway to Mats building. She fingered Vora’s sa’angreal , held in one hand as she strode out of her tent.
    She hesitated when she saw something there. Something slight, on the ground. Tiny spiderweb cracks in the rocks. She bent down.
    “There are more and more of those around, Mother,” Yukiri said, stooping down beside her. “We think that when Dreadlords channel, the cracks can spread. Particularly if balefire is used . . ”
    Egwene felt them. Though they seemed like ordinary cracks to the touch, they looked down into pure nothing. Blackness, far too deep for simple cracks to have caused through shadows of the light.
    She wove. All five powers, together, testing at the cracks. Yes . . .
    She wasn’t certain exactly what she did, but the fledgling weave covered the cracks like a bandage. The darkness faded, leaving behind only ordinary cracks—and a thin film of crystals.
    “Interesting,” Yukiri said. “What was that weave?”
    “I don’t know,” Egwene said. “It felt right. Gawyn, have you . . .” She trailed off.
    Gawyn.
    Egwene stood up with a start. She vaguely remembered him leaving her command tent for some air. How long ago had it been? She turned around slowly, sensing where he was. The bond let her tell his direction. She stopped when she was pointing toward him.
    She was looking toward the riverbed, just up from the ford, where Mat had positioned Elayne’s forces.
    Oh, Light. . .
    “What?” Silviana asked.
    “Gawyn has gone to fight,” Egwene said, keeping her voice calm with effort. That wool-headed idiot of a man! Could he not wait an hour or two until her armies were in position? She knew that he was eager to fight, but he should have at least asked!
    Bryne groaned softly.
    Send someone to fetch him,” Egwene said. Now her voice was cold, angry. She could not make it otherwise. “He has apparently joined the Andoran armies.”
    I will do it, Bryne said, one hand on his sword, his other arm raised toward one of the grooms. “I cannot be trusted to lead armies. At least I can do this.”
    It made sense. Take Yukiri