A Memory of Light

which he’d carried tied at his waist, but it was gone.
    Panicked, Mat looked about. “The banner! I dropped the bloody banner!”
    Olver smiled, looking up at the sign made by the swirling clouds. “It will be fine—were beneath his banner already,” he said, then lifted the Horn and blew a beautiful note.

CHAPTER 46

    To Awaken

    R and broke free from the darkness and entered the Pattern fully again.
    From his watching of the Pattern, he knew that although only minutes had passed here since he’d entered, in the valley outside this cavern, days had passed, and farther out into the world, it had been much longer.
    Rand threw Moridin back from the position they’d held during those tense minutes with blades locked. Still full of the One Power, so sweet, Rand whipped the blade of Callandor at his old friend.
    Moridin got his sword up in time to block, but only barely. Fie growled, pulling a knife from his belt and stepping back into a knife-and-sword stance.
    “You don’t matter any longer, Elan,” Rand said, the torrent of saidin raging within him. “Let us finish this!”
    “I don’t?” Moridin laughed.
    Then he spun and threw the knife at Alanna.

    Nynaeve watched in horror as the knife spun through the air. The winds didn’t touch it for some reason.
    No! After she had coaxed the woman back to life. I cannot lose her now! Nynaeve tried to catch the knife or block it, but she moved just a hair too slowly.
    The knife buried itself in Alanna’s breast.
    Nynaeve looked at it, horrified. This was not a wound that sewing and herbs could heal. That blade hit the heart.
    “Rand! I need the One Power!” Nynaeve cried.
    “Its ... all right . . .” Alanna whispered.
    Nynaeve looked at the woman's eyes. She was lucid. The andilay, Nynaeve realized, remembering the herb she’d used to give the woman strength. It brought her out of her stupor. It awakened her.
    “I can . . ” Alanna said. “I can release him . . .”
    The light faded from her eyes.
    Nynaeve looked at Moridin and Rand. Rand glanced at the dead woman with pity and sorrow, but Nynaeve saw no rage in his eyes. Alanna had released the bond before Rand could feel the effects of her death.
    Moridin turned back to Rand, another knife in his left hand. Rand raised Callandor to strike Moridin down.
    Moridin dropped his sword, and stabbed his own right hand with the knife. Rand twitched suddenly, and Callandor dropped from his grip as if his hand somehow hurt from Moridin’s attack.
    The glow emanating from the blade winked out, and the crystalline blade rang as it hit the ground.

    Perrin did not hold back in the fight with Slayer.
    He did not try to distinguish between wolf and man. He finally let everything out, every bit of rage at Slayer, every bit of pain at the deaths of his family—pressures which had been growing inside him unnoticed for months.
    He let it out. Light, he let it out. As he had on that terrible night when he’d killed those Whitecloaks. Ever since then, he’d clamped a firm grip on himself and his emotions. Just as Master Luhhan had said.
    He could see it now, in a frozen moment. Gentle Perrin, always afraid of hurting someone. A blacksmith who had learned control. He had rarely let himself strike with all of his strength.
    This day, he took the leash off the wolf. It had never belonged there anyway.
    The storm conformed to his rage. Perrin didn’t try to keep it back. Why would he? It matched his emotions perfectly. The fall of his hammer was like claps of thunder, the flashing of his eyes like lightning bolts. Wolves howled alongside the wind.
    Slayer tried to fight back. He jumped, he shifted , he stabbed. Each time, Perrin was there. Jumping at him as a wolf, swinging at him as a man, buffeting him like the tempest itself. Slayer got a wild look in his eyes. He raised a shield, trying to put it between himself and Perrin.
    Perrin attacked. Without thought, now, he became instinct only. Perrin roared, smashing his hammer into that shield time and time again. Driving Slayer before him. Beating the shield like a stubborn length of iron. Pounding away his anger, his fury.
    His last blow threw Slayer back and flung the shield from the man’s hands, sending it spinning a hundred feet in the air. Slayer hit the valley floor and rolled, gasping. He came to rest in the middle of the battlefield, shadowy figures rising all around him and dying as they fought in the real world. He looked at Perrin with panic, then