A Memory of Light

back from the entrance to the Pit of Doom, shading his eyes with his arm as light—radiant as the sun itself—burst out of the cavern. Moiraine!
    “Light,” Thom whispered.
    Light it was, breaking out of the top of the mountain of Shayol Ghul, a radiant beam that melted the mountain’s tip and shot straight into the sky.

    Min raised her hand to her breast, stepping away from the rows of wounded for whom she’d been changing linens.
    Rand, she thought, feeling his agonized determination. Far to the north, a beam of light rose into the air, so bright that it lit the Field of Merrilor even such a great distance away. The helpers and the wounded alike blinked, stumbling to their feet, shading their faces.
    That light, a brilliant lance in the heavens, burned away the clouds and opened up the sky.

    Aviendha blinked at the light, and knew it was Rand.
    It drew her back from the brink of darkness, flooding her with warmth. He was winning. He was winning. He was so strong. She saw the true warrior in him now.
    Nearby, Graendal stumbled to her knees, eyes glazed over. The unraveling gateway had exploded, but not with as large a blast as last time. Weaves and the One Power had sprayed out, just as Graendal tried to spin Compulsion.
    The Forsaken turned to Aviendha, and she adopted an adoring gaze. She bowed down, as if worshipping Aviendha.
    The explosion, Aviendha realized, numb. It had done something to the Compulsion weave. Honestly, she had expected that blast to kill her. It had done something else instead.
    “Please, glorious one,” Graendal said. “Tell me what you wish of me. Let me serve you!”
    Aviendha looked back to the light that was Rand and held her breath.

    Logain stepped from the ruins, holding a toddler—maybe two years of age—in his arms. The child’s weeping mother took her son from his hands. “Thank you. Bless you, Asha’man. Light bless you."
    Logain stumbled to a halt amid the people. The air stank of burned flesh and dead Trollocs. “The Heights are gone?” he asked.
    “Gone,” Androl said reluctantly from beside him. “The earthquakes took them.”
    Logain sighed. The prize . . . was it lost, then? Would he ever be able to dig it out?
    I am a fool, he thought. He had abandoned that power for what? To save these refugees? People who would spurn him and hate him for what he was. People who . . .
    . . . who looked at him with awe.
    Logain frowned. These were common people, not like folk from the Black Tower who were accustomed to men who could channel. In that moment, he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
    Logain watched with wonder as the people flocked around his Asha’man, weeping for their salvation. Elderly men took Asha’man by the hands, overcome, praising them.
    Nearby a youth looked at Logain with admiration. A dozen youths. Light, a hundred ’ Not a hint of fear in their eyes.
    “Thank you,” the young mother said again. “Thank you.”
    “The Black Tower protects,” Logain heard himself say. “Always.”
    “I will send him to you to be tested when he is of age,” the woman promised, holding her son. “I would have him join you, if he has the talent.”
    The talent. Not the curse. The talent.
    Light bathed them.
    He stopped. That beam of light to the north . . . channeling like none he’d ever felt before, not even at the cleansing. Such power.
    “It’s happening,” Gabrelle said, stepping up to him.
    Logain reached to his belt, then took three items from his pouch. Discs, half white, half black. The nearby Asha’man turned toward him, pausing in Healing and comforting the people.
    “Do it,” Gabrelle said. “Do it, Sealbreaker .”
    Logain snapped the once unbreakable seals, one by one, and dropped the pieces to the ground.

CHAPTER 49

    Light and Shadow

    E verything was dead. In the wolf dream, Perrin stumbled across a rocky wasteland without plants or soil. The sky had gone black, the dark clouds themselves vanishing into that nothingness. As he climbed atop a ridge, an entire section of the ground behind him crumbled— his stone footing shaking violently—and was pulled into the air.
    Beneath that was only emptiness.
    In the wolf dream, all was being consumed. Perrin continued forward toward Shayol Ghul. He could see it, like a beacon, glowing with light.’ Strangely, behind, he could make out Dragonmount, though it should have been far too distant to see. As the land between them crumbled, the world seemed to be shrinking.
    The