The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  * * *

  Egwene wove Earth and destroyed the boulders behind which the Sharans had hidden. The other Aes Sedai struck immediately, hurling weaves through the crackling air. The Sharans died in fire, lightning and explosions.

  This side of the Heights was so piled with rubble and scarred with trenches it looked like the remains of a city following a terrible earthquake. It was still night, and they had been fighting … Light, how long had it been since Gawyn died? Hours upon hours.

  Egwene redoubled her efforts, refusing to let the thought of him pull her down. Over the hours, her Aes Sedai and the Sharans had fought back and forth across the western side of the Heights. Slowly, Egwene was pushing them eastward.

  At times, Egwene’s side had seemed to be winning, but lately, more and more Aes Sedai fell from the effects of fatigue or the One Power.

  Another group of channelers approached through the smoke, drawing on the One Power. Egwene could sense them more than see them.

  “Deflect their weaves!” Egwene yelled, standing at the forefront. “I will attack, you defend!”

  Other women took up the call, yelling it along their battle line. No longer did they fight in pockets alone; women of all Ajahs lined up to either side of Egwene, concentration on their ageless faces. Warders stood in front of them; using their bodies to stop weaves was the only protection they could offer.

  Egwene felt Leilwin approaching from behind. The new Warder took her duties seriously. A Seanchan, fighting as her Warder in the Last Battle. Why not? The world itself was unraveling. The cracks all around Egwene’s feet proved that. Those had not faded, as earlier ones had—the darkness remained. Balefire had been used too much in this area.

  Egwene launched a wave of fire like a moving wall. Corpses went up in flames as the wall passed, leaving behind smoking piles of bones. Her attack scored the ground, blackening it, and the Sharans banded together to fight back against the weave. She killed a few of them before they shattered the attack.

  The other Aes Sedai deflected or destroyed their return weaves, and Egwene gathered her strength to try again. So tired … a piece of her whispered. Egwene, you’re so tired. This is becoming dangerous.

  Leilwin stepped up, stumbling on broken rock but joining her at the front. “I bring word, Mother,” she said in that Seanchan drawl. “The Asha’man have recovered the seals. Their leader carries them.”

  Egwene let out a relieved breath. She wove Fire and sent it forth in pillars this time, the flames illuminating the broken ground around them. Those cracks that M’Hael had caused worried her deeply. She began another weave, then stopped. Something was wrong.

  She spun around as balefire—a column as wide as a man’s arm—ripped through the Aes Sedai line, vaporizing half a dozen women. Explosions all around appeared as if from nowhere, and other women went from battle to death in a heartbeat.

  The balefire burned away women who had stopped weaves from killing us … but those women had been removed from the Pattern before they could weave those, and could no longer have stopped the Sharan attacks. Balefire burned a thread backward in the Pattern.

  The chain of events was catastrophic. Sharan channelers who had been dead were now alive again, and they surged forward—men clawing across the broken ground like hounds, women walking in linked groups of four or five. Egwene sought out the source of the balefire. She had never seen such an immense bar of it, so powerful it must have burned threads a few hours back.

  She found M’Hael standing atop the Heights, the air warped in a bubble around him. Black tendrils—like moss or lichen—crept out of gaps in the rock around him. A spreading sickness. Darkness, nothing. It would consume them all.

  Another bar of balefire burned a hole through the ground and touched women, making their forms glow, then vanish. The air itself broke, like a bubble of force that exploded from M’Hael. The storm from before returned, stronger.

  “I thought that I’d taught you to run,” Egwene snarled, climbing to her feet and gathering her power. At her feet, the ground cracked and opened into nothing.

  Light! She could feel the emptiness in that hole. She began a weave, but another strike of balefire coursed across the battlefield, killing women she loved. The trembling underfoot threw Egwene to the ground. Screams grew loud as Sharan attacks slaughtered Egwene’s followers. Aes Sedai scattered, seeking safety.

  The cracks on the ground spread, as if the top of the Heights here had been hit by a hammer.

  Balefire. She needed her own. It was the only way to fight him! She rose to her knees and began crafting the forbidden weave, though her heart lurched as she did it.

  NO. Using balefire would only push the world toward destruction.

  Then what?

  It’s only a weave, Egwene. Perrin’s words, when he had seen her in the World of Dreams and stopped balefire from hitting him. But it wasn’t just another weave. There wasn’t anything like it.

  So exhausted. Now that she’d stopped for a moment, she could feel her numbing fatigue. In its depths, she felt the loss, the bitter loss, of Gawyn’s death.

  “Mother!” Leilwin said, pulling her shoulder. The woman had stayed with her. “Mother, we must go! The Aes Sedai have broken! The Sharans overrun us.”

  Ahead, M’Hael saw her. He smiled, striding forward, a scepter in one hand, the other pointed toward her, palm up. What would happen if he burned her away with balefire? The last two hours would vanish. Her rally of the Aes Sedai, the dozens upon dozens of Sharans she had killed …

  Just a weave …

  No other like it.

  That isn’t the way it works, she thought. Two sides to every coin. Two halves to the Power. Hot and cold, light and dark, woman and man.

  If a weave exists, so must its opposite.

  M’Hael released balefire, and Egwene did … something. The weave she’d tried before on the cracks, but of a much greater power and scope: a majestic, marvelous weave, a combination of all Five Powers. It slid into place before her. She yelled, releasing it as if from her very soul, a column of pure white that struck M’Hael’s weave at its center.

  The two canceled one another, like scalding water and freezing water poured together. A powerful flash of light overwhelmed all else, blinding Egwene, but she could feel something from what she did. A shoring up of the Pattern. The cracks stopped spreading, and something welled up inside of them, a stabilizing force. A growth, like scab on a wound. Not a perfect fix, but at least a patch.

  She yelled, forcing herself to her feet. She would not face him on her knees! She drew every scrap of the Power she could hold, throwing it at the Forsaken with the fury of the Amyrlin.

  The two streams of power sprayed light against one another, the ground around M’Hael cracking as the ground near Egwene rebuilt itself. She still did not know what it was she wove. The opposite of balefire. A fire of her own, a weave of light and rebuilding.

  The Flame of Tar Valon.

  They matched one another, in stasis, for an eternal moment. In that moment, Egwene felt a peace come upon her. The pain of Gawyn’s death faded. He would be reborn. The Pattern would continue. The very weave she wielded calmed her anger and replaced it with peace. She reached more deeply into saidar, that glowing comfort that had guided her so long.

  And she drew on more of the Power.

  Her stream of energy pushed its way through M’Hael’s balefire like a sword thrust, spraying the Power aside and traveling right up the stream into M’Hael’s outstretched hand. It pierced the hand and shot through his chest.

  The balefire vanished. M’Hael gaped, stumbling, eyes wide, and then he crystallized from the inside out, as if freezing in ice. A multihued, beautiful crystal grew from him. Uncut and rough, as if from the core of the earth itself. Somehow Egwene knew that the Flame would have had much less effect on a person who had not given himself to the Shadow.

  She clung to the Power she’d held. She had pulled in too much. She knew that if she released her grip, she would lea
ve herself burned out, unable to channel another drop. The Power surged through her in this last moment.

  Something trembled far to the north. Rand’s fight continued. The gaps in the land expanded. M’Hael's and Demandred’s balefire had done its work. The world here was crumbling. Black lines radiated across the Heights, and her mind’s eye saw them opening, the land shattering, and a void appearing here that sucked into it all life.

  “Watch for the light,” Egwene whispered.

  “Mother?” Leilwin still knelt beside her. Around them, hundreds of Sharans picked themselves up off the ground.

  “Watch for the light, Leilwin,” Egwene said. “As the Amyrlin Seat, I command you—find the seals of the Dark One’s prison and break them. Do it the moment the light shines. Only then can it save us.”

  “But…”

  Egwene wove a gateway and wrapped Leilwin in Air, shoving her through to safety. As she went, Egwene released the woman’s bond, severing their brief tie.

  “No!” Leilwin cried.

  The gateway closed. Black cracks into nothingness expanded all around Egwene as she faced the hundreds of Sharans. Her Aes Sedai had fought with strength and valor, but those Sharan channelers still remained. They surrounded her, some timid, others smiling in triumph.

  She closed her eyes and drew in the power. More than a woman should be able to, more than was right. Far beyond safety, far beyond wisdom. This sa’angreal had no buffer to prevent this.

  Her body was spent. She offered it up and became a column of light, releasing the Flame of Tar Valon into the ground beneath her and high into the sky. The Power left her in a quiet, beautiful explosion, washing across the Sharans and sealing the cracks created by her fight with M’Hael.

  Egwene’s soul separated from her collapsing body and rested upon that wave, riding it into the Light.

  * * *

  Egwene died.

  Rand screamed in denial, in rage, in sorrow.

  “Not her! NOT HER!”

  THE DEAD ARE MINE.

  “Shai’tan!” Rand yelled. “Not her!”

  I WILL KILL THEM ALL, ADVERSARY.

  Rand bent over, squeezing his eyes shut. I will protect you, he thought. Whatever else happens, I will see you safe, I swear it. I swear it …

  Oh, Light. Egwene’s name joined the list of the dead. That list continued to grow, thundering in his mind. His failures. So many failures.

  He should have been able to save them.

  The Dark One’s attacks persisted, trying to rip Rand apart and crush him all at once.

  Oh, Light. Not Egwene.

  Rand closed his eyes and collapsed, barely holding back the next attack.

  Darkness enclosed him.

  * * *

  Leane raised her arm, shading her eyes against the magnificent burst of light. It washed the hillside of its darkness and—for a moment—left only brilliance. Sharans froze in place, casting shadows behind them as they crystallized.

  The column of power rose high in the air, a beacon, then faded.

  Leane dropped to her knees, one hand resting on the ground to steady herself. A blanket of crystals coated the ground, growing over broken rock, coating the scarred landscape. Where cracks had opened, they were now filled with crystal, looking like tiny rivers.

  Leane climbed to her feet and crept forward, passing the Sharans frozen in crystal, dead in time.

  At the very center of the explosion, Leane found a column of crystal as wide as an ancient leatherleaf tree, rising some fifty feet in the air. Frozen at its center was a fluted rod, Vora’s sa’angreal. There was no sign of the Amyrlin herself, but Leane knew.

  “The Amyrlin Seat has fallen,” a nearby Aes Sedai cried amid the crystallized Sharans. “The Amyrlin Seat has fallen!”

  * * *

  Thunder rumbled. Berelain looked up from the side of the bed, then stood, Galad’s hand slipping from hers as she walked to the window set in the stone wall.

  The sea churned and broke against the rocks outside, roaring, as if in anger. Perhaps pain. White foam sprayed, violent, toward clouds where lightning cast a fractured light. While she watched, those clouds grew thicker in the night, if that was possible. Darker.

  Dawn was still an hour off. The clouds were so black, though, she knew she would not see the sun when it rose. She went back to Galad’s side, sat down and took his hand. When would an Aes Sedai come to Heal him? He was still unconscious, save for nightmare whispers. He twisted, and something sparkled at his neck.

  Berelain reached under his shirt, taking out a medallion. It was in the shape of a fox’s head. She rubbed her finger across it.

  “… back to Cauthon…” Galad whispered, eyes closed. “… Hope…”

  Berelain thought for a moment, feeling that darkness outside as if it were the Dark One’s own, smothering the land and crawling in through windows, under doors. She rose, left Galad and walked quickly away, carrying the medallion.

  * * *

  “The Amyrlin Seat is dead,” Arganda reported.

  Blood and bloody ashes, Mat thought. Egwene. Not Egwene too? It hit him like a punch to the face.

  “What’s more,” Arganda continued, “the Aes Sedai report that they have lost over half their numbers. The ones remaining claim … and this is a quote … that they ‘couldn’t channel enough of the One Power to lift a feather.’ They’re out of the battle.”

  Mat grunted. “How many of the Sharan channelers did they take?” he asked, bracing himself.

  “All of them.”

  Mat looked at Arganda and frowned. “What?”

  “All of the channelers,” Arganda said. “All the ones that were fighting the Aes Sedai.”

  “That’s something,” Mat said. But Egwene …

  No. No thinking of that right now. She and her people had stopped the Sharan channelers.

  The Sharans and Trollocs fell back from the front lines to regroup. Mat took the opportunity to do the same.

  His forces—what remained of them—were strung out across the Heights. He had joined together everyone he had left. The Borderlanders, the Dragonsworn, Loial and the Ogier, Tam’s troops, the Whitecloaks, soldiers of the Band of the Red Hand. They fought hard, but their foe greatly outnumbered them. It was bad enough when they just had the Sharans to contend with, but once the Trollocs had broken through on the eastern edge of the Heights, they were forced to defend themselves on two fronts. Over the past hour they had been pushed back more than a thousand paces, in a northerly direction, and their back ranks had almost reached the end of the plateau.

  This would be the last push. The end of the battle. With the Sharan channelers gone, Mat would not be wiped out immediately, but Light … there were still so many bloody Trollocs left. Mat had danced this dance well. He knew he had. But there was only so much a man could do. Even Tuon’s return might not be enough, if it came.

  Arganda handled reports from the other areas of the battlefield—the man was wounded badly enough he could not fight, and there was no one with enough of the Power left to spare for Healing. He did his job well. Good man. Mat could have used him in the Band.

  The Trollocs gathered for their push, again moving bodies out of the way, forming into fists with Myrddraal leading them. That would give Mat five or ten minutes to get ready. Then it would come.

  Lan walked over, expression grim. “What would you have my men do, Cauthon?”

  “Get ready to fight those Trollocs,” Mat said. “Has anyone checked with Mayene lately? Now would be a wonderful time to get back a few ranks of men who have been Healed.”

  “I will check on it for you,” Lan said. “And then I will prepare my men.”

  Mat dug in his saddlebags as Lan withdrew. He pulled out Rand’s banner, the one of the ancient Aes Sedai. He’d gathered it earlier, thinking perhaps it might have some use. “Somebody hoist this thing up. We’re fighting in Rand’s bloody name. Let’s show the Shadow we’re proud of it.”

  Dannil took the banner, finding a spea
r to use as a pole. Mat took a deep breath. The way the Borderlanders spoke, they thought this would end in a glorious, heroic, suicidal charge. That was how Thom’s songs always ended … the kinds of songs Mat had hoped to never find himself in. Faint hope that was, now.

  Think, think. In the distance, the Trolloc horns started blowing. Tuon had delayed. Was she going to come? He hoped, secretly, she would not. With the battle going so poorly, even the Seanchan might not be enough.

  He needed an opening. Come on, luck! Another gateway opened, and Arganda went to collect the messenger’s report. Mat did not need to hear to realize the kind of news it was, as when Arganda returned, he was frowning.

  “All right,” Mat said, sighing. “Give me your news.”

  “The Queen of Andor is dead,” Arganda said.

  Bloody Ashes! Not Elayne! Mat felt a lurch inside. Rand … I’m sorry. “Who leads there? Bashere?”

  “Dead,” Arganda said. “And his wife. They fell during an attack against the Andoran pikemen. We’ve lost six Aiel clan chiefs as well. Nobody leads the Andorans or the Aiel at the riverbed. They’re crumbling fast.”

  “This is the end!” Demandred’s augmented voice washed across Mat from the other end of the plateau. “Lews Therin has abandoned you! Cry out to him as you die. Let him feel your pain.”

  They had arrived at the last few moves in their game, and Demandred had played well. Mat looked over his army of exhausted troops, many of them wounded. There was no denying it, they were in a desperate situation.

  “Send for the Aes Sedai,” Mat said. “I don’t care if they say they can’t lift a feather. Maybe when it comes down to their lives, they’ll find a little strength for a fireball here and there. Besides, their Warders can still fight.”

  Arganda nodded. Nearby, a gateway opened, and two beleaguered-looking Asha’man stumbled out. Naeff and Neald bore scorch marks on their skins, and Naeff’s Aes Sedai was not with them.