Yes, al’Thor. The one he would kill, destroy, feast upon. Yes, al’Thor!

Something trembled at one edge of his senses. Shaisam hesitated, frowning to himself.

What was wrong there? A piece of him… a piece of him had stopped sensing. What was this? He ran his physical form across the ground through the mist. Blood trailed from his fingers, flayed by the dagger he carried, the wonderful seed, the last bit of his old self.

He came upon a corpse, one that his mists had killed. Shaisam frowned, bending down. That body looked familiar…

The corpse’s hand reached up and grabbed Shaisam by the throat. He gasped, thrashing, as the corpse opened its eye.

“There’s an odd thing about diseases I once heard, Fain,” Matrim Cauthon whispered. “Once you catch a disease and survive, you can’t get it again.”

Shaisam thrashed, panicked. No. No, this was not how a meeting with an old friend should go! He clawed at the hand holding him, then realized with horror that he’d dropped the dagger.

Cauthon pulled him down, slamming him to the ground. Shaisam called for his drones. Too late! Too slow!

“I’ve come to give you your gift back, Mordeth,” Cauthon whispered. “I consider our debt paid in full.”

Cauthon rammed the dagger right between the ribs, into Shaisam’s heart. Tied to this pitiful mortal form, Mordeth screamed. Padan Fain howled, and felt his flesh melting from his bones. The mists trembled, began to swirl and shake.

Together they died.

Perrin shifted to the wolf dream and found Gaul by tracing the scent of blood. He had hated to leave Mat with Mashadar, but was confident—from a look Mat had given him after falling—that his friend could survive the mist, and knew what he was doing.

Gaul had hidden himself well, pushed up into a split in the rock just outside the Pit of Doom. Gaul still carried one spear and had darkened his clothing to match the rocks around him.

He was nodding off when Perrin found him. Gaul was not only wounded, but had been in the wolf dream far too long. If Perrin felt an aching exhaustion, it must be worse for Gaul.

“Come, Gaul,” Perrin said, helping him out of the rocks.

Gaul looked dazed. “Nobody passed me by,” he mumbled. “I watched, Perrin Aybara. The Car’a’carn is safe.”

“You did well, my friend,” Perrin replied. “Better than anyone could have expected. You have much honor.”

Gaul smiled as he leaned on Perrin’s shoulder. “I worried… when the wolves vanished, I worried.”

“They fight on in the waking world.” Perrin felt a need to return here. Finding Gaul had been part of that, but there was something else, a drive he couldn’t explain.

“Hold on,” Perrin said, grabbing Gaul about the waist. He shifted them to the Field of Merrilor, then shifted them out of the wolf dream and appeared in the center of the Two Rivers camp.

People immediately locked on Perrin, yells rising. “Light, Perrin!” a man said nearby. Grady rushed up, deep bags beneath his eyes. “I nearly burned you to char, Lord Goldeneyes. How did you appear like that?”

Perrin shook his head, setting Gaul down. Grady eyed the wound in the man’s side, then called for one of the Aes Sedai to handle the Healing. They bustled around—some of the Two Rivers men calling out that Lord Goldeneyes had returned.

Faile. Faile had been here at Merrilor with the Horn.

I have to find her.

Rand was alone, unguarded in the wolf dream.

Burn it, that doesn’t matter! Perrin thought. If I lose Faile…

If Rand died, he would lose Faile. And everything else. There were still Forsaken out there. Perrin wavered. He had to go look for her, didn’t he? Wasn’t that his duty, as her husband? Couldn’t someone else look after Rand?

But… if not him, then who?

Though it ripped him apart, Perrin sought the wolf dream one last time.

Moridin scooped Callandor up off the floor. It burst alight with the One Power.

Rand stumbled away, holding his aching hand to his chest. Moridin laughed, raising the weapon high. “You are mine, Lews Therin. You are finally mine! I…” He trailed off, then looked up at the sword, perhaps in awe. “It can amplify the True Power. A True Power sa’angreal? How? Why?” He laughed louder.

A maelstrom churned about them.

“Channeling the True Power is death here, Elan!” Rand yelled. “It will burn you to a cinder!”

“It is oblivion!” Moridin yelled. “I will know that release, Lews Therin. I will take you with me.”

The sword’s glow turned a violent crimson. Rand could feel the power emanating from Moridin as he drew in the True Power.

This was the most dangerous part of the plan. Min had figured it out. Callandor had such flaws, such incredible flaws. Created so that a man using it needed women to control him, created so that if Rand used it, others could take control of him…

Why was Rand to need a weapon with such flaws? Why did the prophecies mention it so? A sa’angreal for the True Power. Why would he ever need such a thing?

The answer was so simple.

“Now!” Rand yelled.

Nynaeve and Moiraine channeled together, exploiting the flaw in Callandor as Moridin tried to bring it to bear against Rand. Wind whipped in the tunnel. The ground quivered, and Moridin yelled, eyes going wide.

They took control of him. Callandor was flawed. Any man using it could be forced to link with women, to be placed in their control. A trap… and one he used on Moridin.

“Link!” Rand commanded.

They fed it to him. Power.

Saidar from the women.

The True Power from Moridin.

Saidin from Rand.

Moridin’s channeling the True Power here threatened to destroy them all, but they buffered it with saidin and saidar, then directed all three at the Dark One.

Rand punched through the blackness there and created a conduit of light and darkness, turning the Dark One’s own essence upon him.

Rand felt the Dark One beyond, his immensity. Space, size, time… Rand understood how these things could be irrelevant now.

With a bellow— three Powers coursing through him, blood streaming down his side— the Dragon Reborn raised a hand of power and seized the Dark One through the Bore, like a man reaching through water to grab the prize at the river’s bottom.

The Dark One tried to pull back, but Rand’s claw was gloved by the True Power. The enemy could not taint saidin again. The Dark One tried to withdraw the True Power from Moridin, but the conduit flowed too freely, too powerfully to shut off now. Even for Shai’tan himself.

So it was that Rand used the Dark One’s own essence, channeled in its full strength. He held the Dark One tightly, like a dove in the grip of a hawk.

And light exploded from him.

CHAPTER

48

A Brilliant Lance

Elayne trotted her horse among heaps of dead Trollocs. The day was won. She had everyone who could stand searching for the living among the dead.

So many dead. Hundreds of thousands of men and Trollocs, lying in piles all across Merrilor. The river’s banks were slaughterhouses, the bogs mass graves, floating with corpses. Ahead of her, across the river, the Heights groaned and rumbled. She’d pulled her people away from there. She could barely sit on her horse.

The entire plateau collapsed upon itself, burying the dead. Elayne watched, feeling numb, feeling the ground shake. It—

Light.

She sat up straight, feeling the swelling of power in Rand. Her attention flew away from the Heights, instead focused on him. The feeling of supreme strength, the beauty of control and domination. A light shot into the sky far to the north, so bright that she gasped.

The end had come.

Thom stumbled 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.

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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

Everything 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 two peaks, pulling toward one another, all between shattered and broken. Perrin shifted to the front of the tunnel into the Pit of Doom, then stepped in, passing the violet barrier he’d erected earlier.

Lanfear lounged inside. Her hair was jet black, as it had been when he’d first met her, and her face was familiar. It looked as it once had.

“I find that dreamspike annoying,” she said. “Did you have to place it here?”

“It keeps the other Forsaken away,” Perrin said absently.

“I suppose it does that,” she said, folding her arms.

“He is still ahead?” Perrin asked.

“It is the end,” she said, nodding. “Something amazing just happened.” She narrowed her eyes. “This might be the most important moment for humankind since we opened the Bore.”

“Let’s make sure nothing goes wrong, then,” Perrin said, walking forward down the long maw of stone, Lanfear at his side.

At the end of the tunnel, they found an unexpected scene. Someone else was holding Callandor, the man that Rand had been fighting earlier. Maybe that was Demandred? Perrin did not know. He was certainly one of the Forsaken.

That man knelt on the floor, with Nynaeve’s hand on his shoulder. She stood just behind Rand and to the left. Moiraine was on Rand’s right, all three of them standing tall, with eyes forward, staring into the nothingness ahead.

The mountain rumbled.

“Perfect,” Lanfear whispered. “I couldn’t have dreamed that it could come out this well.” She eyed the two women. “We will need to strike quickly. I will kill the taller woman, you the shorter one.”

Perrin frowned. Something about that seemed very wrong. “Kill… ?”

“Of course,” Lanfear said. “If we strike quickly, there will still be time to seize control of Moridin while he holds that blade. With that, I can force Lews Therin to bow.” She narrowed her eyes. “He holds the Dark One between his fingers, needing only one squeeze to pinch the life—if it can be called that—away. Only one hand can save the Great Lord. In this moment, I earn my reward. In this moment, I become highest of the high.”

“You… you want to save the Dark One?” Perrin said, raising a hand to his head. “You joined us. I remember…”

She glanced at him. “Such an inferior tool,” she said, smelling dissatisfied. “I hate having to use it. This makes me no better than Graendal.” She shivered. “If they had given me more time, I would have had you fairly.” She patted Perrin fondly on the cheek. “You are troubled. The taller one is from your village, I remember. You grew up together, I presume? I won’t make you kill her, my wolf. You can kill the short one. You hate her, don’t you?”

“I… yes, I do. She stole me away from my family. It’s because of her that they died, really. I would have been there, otherwise.”

“That’s right,” Lanfear said. “We must be quick. Our moment of opportunity will not last long.”

She turned toward the two women. Nynaeve and Moiraine. His friends. And then… and then Rand. She would kill him, Perrin knew. She would force him to bow, and then she would kill him. All along, her goal had been to put herself into a position where the Dark One himself would be helpless and she could step in to bring him salvation.

Perrin came up beside her.

“We strike together,” Lanfear said softly. “The barriers between worlds have been broken here. They will be able to fight back unless we are quick. We must kill them at the same time.”

This is wrong, Perrin thought. This is very, very wrong. He couldn’t let it happen, and yet his hands rose.

IT IS WRONG. He didn’t know why. His thoughts wouldn’t allow him to think of why.

“Ready,” Lanfear said, eyes on Nynaeve.

Perrin turned toward Lanfear.

“I will count to three,” Lanfear said, not looking at him.

My duty, Perrin thought, is to do the things Rand cannot.

This was the wolf dream. In the wolf dream, what he felt became reality.

“One,” Lanfear said.

He loved Faile.

“Two.”

He loved Faile.

“Three.”

He loved Faile. The Compulsion vanished like smoke in the wind, thrown off like clothing changed in the blink of an eye. Before Lanfear could strike, Perrin reached out and took her by the neck.

He twisted once. Her neck popped in his fingers.

Lanfear crumpled, and Perrin caught her body. She was beautiful. As she died, she changed back to the other form she had been wearing before, her new body.

Perrin felt a horrible stab of loss. He hadn’t completely wiped what she’d done from his mind. He’d overcome it, perhaps overlaid it with something new, something right. Only the wolf dream and his ability to view himself as he should be had allowed him to accomplish that.

Unfortunately, deep within, he still felt love for this woman. That sickened him. The love was nowhere near as strong as his love for Faile, but it was there. He found himself crying as he lowered her body, draped in sleek white and silver, to the stone floor.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Killing a woman, particularly one who wasn’t threatening him personally… it was something he’d never have thought himself capable of.

Someone had needed to do it. This was one test, at least, that Rand would not need to face. It was one burden that Perrin could carry for his friend.

He looked up toward Rand. “Go,” Perrin whispered. “Do what you must do. As always, I will watch your back.”

* * *

The seals crumbled. The Dark One burst free.

Rand held the Dark One tightly.