A Memory of Light

on their heads. This creature, with thinning hair, was far more marvelous.
    She neared, wonderful, amazing. Incredible. She touched his chin as he knelt on the ground, and her fingertips were as soft as clouds.
    “Yes, you’ll do,” she said. “Come, my pet. Join the others.”
    She gestured toward a group following her. Several Wise Ones, a pair of Aes Sedai, a man with a spear. Rhuarc growled. Would this man try to take the affection of his beloved? He would kill the man for that. He would—
    His mistress chuckled. “And Moridin thinks this face a punishment.
    Well, you don’t care what face I wear, do you, my pet?” Her voice grew softer, and at the same time harsher. “When I’m through, nobody will. Moridin himself will praise my beauty, for he will see through eyes that I grant him. Just like you, pet. Just like you.”
    She patted Rhuarc. He joined her and the others and moved through the valley, leaving behind the men he had called brothers.

    Rand stepped forward as a roadway formed itself from threads of light in front of him. His foot fell on a bright, clean paving stone and he passed from nothingness into majesty.
    The road was wide enough to let six wagons pass one another at a time, but no vehicles clogged the roadway. Only people. Vibrant people, in colorful clothing, chatting, calling, eager. Sounds filled the emptiness—the sounds of life.
    Rand turned, looking at the buildings as they grew around him. Tall houses lined the thoroughfare, ribbed with columns in front. Long and thin, they abutted one another, their faces toward the roadway. Beyond them lay domes and marvels, buildings that stretched toward the sky. It was like no city he had ever seen, though the workmanship was Ogier.
    Partly Ogier work, that was. Nearby, workers repaired a stone facade that had broken during a storm. Thick-fingered Ogier laughed rumbling laughs as they worked alongside men. When the Ogier had come to the Two Rivers to repay Rand for his sacrifice, intending to build a monument here, the town’s leaders had wisely requested help improving their city instead.
    Over the years, the Ogier and Two Rivers people had worked closely together—to the extent that now, Two Rivers craftsmen were sought the world over. Rand walked up the roadway, moving among people from all nationalities. Domani trailing colorful, filmy clothing. Tairens—the division between commoner and noble vanishing more and more by the day—in baggy clothing and shirts marked by striped sleeves. Seanchan wearing exotic silks. Borderlanders with noble airs. Even some Sharans.
    All had come to Emond’s Field. The city now bore little resemblance to its name, and yet there were hints. More trees and open green spaces dotted the landscape than one would find in other great cities, like Caemlyn or Tear. In the Two Rivers, craftsmen were revered. And their marksmen were the best the world knew. An elite group of Two Rivers men, armed with the new firing sticks men were calling rifles, served with the Aiel in their peacekeeping campaigns in Shara. It was the only place war was known in the world. Oh, there were disputes here and there. The flare up between Murandy and Tear five years back had nearly given the land its first real war in the century since the Last Battle.
    Rand smiled as he moved through the crowd, not jostling, but listening with pride to the joy in people’s voices. The “flare-up” in Murandy had been dynamic by Fourth Age standards, but in truth it had been nothing. A single disgruntled nobleman had fired on an Aiel patrol. Three wounded, none dead, and this was the worst “fighting” in years, outside of the Sharan campaigns.
    Above, sunlight broke through the thin cloud cover, bathing the roadway in light. Rand finally reached the city square, which had once been the Green in Emond's Field. What to think of the Quarry Road now that it was wide enough to march an army down? He walked around the massive fountain at the center of the square, a monument to those who had fallen in the Last Battle, crafted by the Ogier.
    He saw familiar faces among the statuary in the center of the fountain, and turned away.
    Not final yet, he thought. This isn’t real yet. He’d built this reality out of threads of what could be, of mirrors of the world as it now played out. It wasn’t set.
    For the first time since entering this vision of his own design, his confidence shook. He knew the Last Battle wasn’t a failure. But people were