A Memory of Light

me?” Olver asked. “Alone?”
    “I must,” she said, stuffing some bundles of arrows into her sack, her heart thundering in her chest. “Once those riders pass, find another place to hide! They will come back to search where I’ve been, after . . .”
    After they catch me.
    She would have to take her knife to herself, lest they torture out of her what she’d done with the Horn. She gripped Olver by the arm. “I’m sorry to place this upon you, little one. There is no one else. You did well earlier; you can do this. Take the Horn to Mat or all is lost.”
    She ran into the open, making the sack she carried obvious. Some of those strangely dressed foreigners saw her, pointing. She lifted the sack high and climbed into the saddle of the roan, then kicked it into a gallop.
    The Trollocs and Darkfriends followed, leaving the young boy and his heavy burden to huddle beneath a wagon in the middle of the Trolloc camp.

    Logain turned the thin disc over in his fingers. Black and white, split by a sinuous line. Cuendillar ; supposedly. The flakes that rubbed off beneath his fingers seemed to make mockery of its eternal nature.
    “Why didn’t Taim break them?” Logain asked. “He could have. These are as brittle as old leather.”
    “I don’t know,” Androl said, glancing at the others of his team. “Maybe the time wasn’t right yet.”
    “Break them at the right time, and it will help the Dragon,” said the man who called himself Emarin. He sounded worried. “Break them at the wrong time . . . and what?”
    “Nothing good, I suspect,” Pevara said. A Red.
    Would he ever have his vengeance against those who had gentled him? Once, that hatred—and it alone—had driven him to survive. He now found a new hunger inside of him. He had defeated Aes Sedai, he had beaten them down and claimed them as his own. Vengeance seemed . . . empty. His long-building thirst to kill M’Hael filled a little of that emptiness, but not enough. What more?
    Once, he had named himself the Dragon Reborn. Once, he had prepared himself to dominate the world. To make it heel. He fingered the seal to the Dark One’s prison while standing at the periphery of the battle. He was far to the southwest, below the bogs, where his Asha’man held a small base camp. Distant rumbles sounded from the Heights—explosions of weaves firing back and forth between Aes Sedai and Sharans.
    A large number of his Asha’man had fought there, but the Sharan channelers outnumbered the Aes Sedai and Asha’man combined. Others prowled the battlefields, hunting down Dreadlords, killing them.
    He had been losing men faster than the Shadow. There were too many enemies.
    He held up the seal. There was a power to it. Power to protect the Black Tower, somehow? If they do not fear us, fear me, what will happen to us once the Dragon is dead?
    Dissatisfaction radiated through the bond. He met Gabrelle’s eyes. She had been inspecting the battle, but now her eyes were upon him. Questioning. Threatening?
    Earlier, had he really been thinking that he’d tamed Aes Sedai? The idea should have made him laugh. No Aes Sedai could be tamed, not ever.
    Logain pointedly placed the seal and its fellows in the pouch at his belt. He drew its strings closed, meeting Gabrelle’s eyes. Her concern spiked. For a moment, he’d felt that concern of hers to be for him, not because of him.
    Perhaps she was learning how to manipulate the bond, to send him feelings she thought would lull him. No, Aes Sedai could not be tamed. Bonding them hadn’t contained them. It had made more complications.
    He reached to his high collar, undoing the dragon pin he wore there, and offered it to Androl. “Androl Genhald, you have walked into the pit of death itself and returned. Twice now, I am in your debt. I name you full Asha’man. Wear the pin with pride.” He had already given the man back his sword pin, restoring him to Dedicated.
    Androl hesitated, then reached out and took the pin in reverent hands.
    “And the seals?” Pevara asked, arms folded. “They belong to the White Tower; the Amyrlin is their Watcher.”
    “The Amyrlin,” Logain said, “is as good as dead, from what I have heard. In her absence, I am a fitting steward.” Logain seized the Source, subjecting it, dominating it. He opened a gateway back to the top of the Heights.
    The war returned to him in full force, the confusion, the smoke and screams. He stepped through, the others following. The powerful channeling