A Memory of Light

wasn’t coming quickly enough, and he was farther away than she’d expected. What was wrong? Now that she’d let her worry out of its hidden place, it overwhelmed her, beating against her, a series of blows.

“Your man. .” the Sharan said. “You have one of them. What are they called, again? Odd, that you should rely on the protection of a man, but you never reach your potential in this land, I am told. He will be taken. I’ve sent for him.”

As Egwene had feared. Light! She’d led Gawyn to this. She’d led the army to disaster. Egwene squeezed her eyes shut. She’d led the White Tower to its destruction.

Her parents would be slaughtered. The Two Rivers would burn.

She should have been stronger.

She should have been smarter.

No.

She had not been broken by the Seanchan. She would not be broken by this. Egwene opened her eyes and met the gaze of the Sharan in the soft blue light. Egwene wrestled her emotions to stillness, and felt the Aes Sedai calm envelop her.

“You. . are an odd one,” the Sharan whispered, still held by Egwene’s eyes. So transfixed was she that the woman didn’t notice when the shadow moved up behind her. A shadow that could not have been Gawyn, for he was still distant.

Something smashed into the woman’s head from behind. She crumpled, slumping to the ground. The globe winked out instantly, and Egwene was free. She dropped to a crouch, fingers finding her knife.

A figure moved up to her. Egwene raised her knife and prepared herself to embrace the Source. She would draw attention if she had to. She would not be taken again.

But who was this?

“Hush,” the figure said.

Egwene recognized the voice. “Leilwin?”

“Others noticed this woman channeling,” Leilwin said. “They will come to see what she was doing. We must move!”

“You saved me,” Egwene whispered. “You rescued me.”

“I take my oaths seriously,” Leilwin said. Then, so softly that Egwene could barely hear it, she added, “Maybe too seriously. Such horrible omens this night. .”

They moved quickly through the camp for a few moments, until Egwene sensed Gawyn approaching. She couldn’t make him out in the darkness. Finally, she whispered softly, “Gawyn?”

Suddenly, he was there, right next to her. “Egwene? Who did you find?”

Leilwin stiffened, then hissed softly through her teeth. Something seemed to have upset her greatly. Perhaps she was angry at having someone sneak up on her. If that was the case, Egwene shared the emotion. She’d been taking pride in her abilities, and then she’d been blindsided not only by a channeler, but now by Gawyn! Why should a boy raised in the city be able to move so well without her spotting him?

“I didn’t find anyone,” Egwene whispered. “Leilwin found me. . and she pulled me out of a fire.”

“Leilwin?” Gawyn said, peering through the darkness. Egwene could feel his surprise, and his suspicion.

“We must keep moving,” Leilwin said.

“I will not argue with that,” Gawyn replied. “We’re almost out. We’ll want to go a little to the north, though. I left some bodies just to the right.

Bodies?” Leilwin asked.

“Half a dozen or so Sharans jumped me,” Gawyn said.

Half a dozen? Egwene thought. He made it sound as if it were nothing. This was not the place for discussion. She joined the other two, heading out of the camp, Leilwin leading them in a specific direction. Each noise or shout from the camp made Egwene wince, worried that one of the bodies had been found. In fact, she nearly jumped all the way to the storm clouds above when someone spoke from the darkness.

“Do that be you?”

“It is us, Bayle,” Leilwin said softly.

“My aged grandmother!” Bayle Domon exclaimed softly, joining them. “You found her? Woman, you do amaze me again.” He hesitated. “I do wish you’d have let me come with you.”

“My husband,” Leilwin whispered, “you are as brave and stout a man as any woman could wish on her crew. But you move with all of the stillness of a bear charging through a river.”

He grunted, but joined them as they left the edge of the camp, quietly and carefully. About ten minutes away, Egwene finally trusted herself to embrace the Source. Glorying in it, she made a gateway for them and Skimmed to the White Tower.

Aviendha ran with the rest of the Aiel through gateways. They surged, like floodwaters, into the valley of Thakan’dar. Two waves, rushing down from opposite sides of the valley.

Aviendha did not carry a spear; that was not her place. Instead, she was a spear.

She was joined by two men in black coats, five Wise Ones, the woman Alivia and ten of Rand's sworn Aes Sedai with Warders. None of them save Alivia had responded well to having Aviendha placed above them. The Asha’man did not like having to answer to any woman, the Wise Ones didn’t like being ordered by Rand at all, and the Aes Sedai still thought of Aiel channelers as inferior. They all obeyed the order anyway.

Rand had whispered to her in a quiet moment to watch them all for Darkfriends. Fear did not make him speak those words, but his sense of realism. Shadows could creep anywhere.

There were Trollocs here in the valley and some Myrddraal, but they had not anticipated this attack. The Aiel took advantage of their disarray and commenced a slaughter. Aviendha led her group of channelers toward the forge, that massive gray-roofed building. The Shadow-forgers turned from their inexorable movement, showing just a hint of confusion.

Aviendha wove Fire at one, removing its head from its shoulders. The body turned to stone, then started to crumble.

That seemed a signal to the other channelers, and Shadow-forgers through the valley began to explode. They were said to be terrible warriors when provoked, with skin that turned aside swords. That might just be rumor, as few Aiel had ever actually danced the spears with a Shadow-forger.

Aviendha didn’t particularly want to discover the truth. She let her team end the first group of Shadow- forgers, and tried not to think too hard about the death and destruction these things had caused during their unnatural lives.

The Shadowspawn tried to mount a defense, some of the Myrddraal screaming and whipping at their Trollocs to charge and break the Aiel attack that came at them across a broad front. It would have been easier to stop a river with a handful of twigs. The Aiel didn’t slow, and those Shadowspawn who tried to resist were slain in their tracks, often falling to multiple spears or arrows.

Most of the Trollocs broke and ran, fleeing before the thunder of Aiel yells. Aviendha and her channelers reached the forges and the nearby pens of dirty, lifeless-eyed captives who had been awaiting death.

“Quickly!” Aviendha said to the Warders who accompanied her. The men broke open pens as Aviendha and the others attacked the last of the Shadow-forgers. As they died-falling to stone and dust-they dropped half-finished Thakan’dar blades to the rocks.

Aviendha looked upward to the right. A long serpentine path led up toward the cavern maw in the side of the mountain that loomed above. The hole there was dark. It seemed a trap that tempted light to enter, then never released it.

Aviendha wove Fire and Spirit, then released the weave into the air. A moment later, a gateway opened at the head of the path up to Shayol Ghul. Four figures stepped through. A woman in blue, small of stature but not of will. An aging man, white-haired and shrouded in a multihued cloak. A woman in yellow, her dark hair cut short, adorned with an assortment of gemstones set in gold.

And a tall man, hair the color of living coals. Fie wore his coat of red and gold, but under it a simple Two Rivers shirt. What he had become and what he had been, wrapped together in one. He carried two swords, like a Shienaran. One looked as if it were glass; he wore it upon his back. The other was the sword of the Treekiller, King Laman, tied at his waist. He carried that because of her. Fool man.