“Ho, Tam al’Thor!” Arganda said, raising a hand. He hadn’t seen his commander since parting after the battle at the ruins, hours ago now.
The Two Rivers men looked as worn down as Arganda felt. It had been a long, long day, and the fighting was by no means over. I wish Gallenne were here, Arganda thought, inspecting Trollocs at the river as al’Thor’s men approached. I could use someone to argue with.
Just downriver, shouts and clangs sounded from where the Andorans’ pike formations held off—barely—the Trolloc waves. By now, this battle was strung out along the Mora, almost up to Dashar Knob. His men had helped keep the Andorans from being flanked.
“What news, Arganda?” Tam asked as he came over.
“Cauthon lives,” Arganda said. “And that’s bloody amazing, considering that someone blew up his command post, set fire to his tent, killed a bunch of his damane, and chased off his wife. Cauthon crawled out of it somehow.”
“Ha!” Abell Cauthon said. “That’s my boy.”
“He told me you were coming,” Arganda said. “He said you’d have arrows. Do you?”
Tam nodded. “Our last orders sent us through the gateway to Mayene for Healing and resupply. I don’t know how Mat knew arrows would be coming, but a shipment from the women in the Two Rivers came right as we were getting ready to return here. We have longbows for you to use, if you need them.”
“I will. Cauthon wants all of our troops to move back upriver to the ruins, cut across the riverbed and march up the Heights from the northeastern side.”
“Not sure what that’s about, but I suppose he knows what he’s doing…” Tam said.
Together, their forces moved upriver in the night, leaving behind the fighting Andorans, Cairhienin and Aiel. Creator shelter you, friends, Arganda thought.
They crossed the dry riverbed and began moving up the northeastern slopes. It was quiet on top, at this end of the Heights, but the glow from lines of torches was evident.
“That’s going to be a tough nut to crack, if those are Sharans up there,” Tam said softly, looking up the darkened slope.
“Cauthon’s note said we’d have help,” Arganda replied.
“What kind of help?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t—”
Thunder rumbled nearby, and Arganda winced. Most of the channelers were supposed to be fighting on the other side of the Heights, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t see any here. He hated that feeling, the sensation that a channeler might be watching him, contemplating whether to kill him with fire, lightning or earth.
Channelers. The world would be just plain better without them. But that sound didn’t turn out to be thunder. A group of galloping riders bearing torches appeared from the night, crossing the riverbed to join Arganda and his men. They flew the Golden Crane at the center of an array of Borderlander banners.
“Well I’ll be a bloody Trolloc,” Arganda called. “You Borderlanders decided to join us?”
Lan Mandragoran saluted by torchlight, silvery sword glistening. He looked up the slope. “So we’re to fight here.”
Arganda nodded.
“Good,” Lan said softly from horseback. “I just received reports about a large Sharan army moving northeast across the top of the Heights. It’s clear to me they want to swing down around behind our people fighting the Trollocs at the river; then we’d be surrounded and at their mercy. Looks like it’s our job to keep that from happening.”
He turned toward Tam. “Are you ready to soften them up for us, archer?”
“I think we can manage that,” Tam replied.
Lan nodded, then raised his sword. A Malkieri man at his side raised the Golden Crane high. And then they charged right up that slope. Coming toward them was a huge enemy army spread out in wide ranks across the landscape, the sky lit up by the thousands of torches they carried.
Tam al’Thor shouted for his men to line up and fire. “Loose!” Tam yelled, sending flights of arrows at the Sharans.
Then arrows began to be returned in their direction, now that the distance between the two armies had narrowed. Arganda figured that the archers wouldn’t be nearly as accurate in the darkness as they might have been by day—but that would be true for both sides.
The Two Rivers men released a wave of death, arrows as fast as diving falcons.
“Hold!” Tam yelled to his men. They stopped firing just in time for Lan’s cavalry to hit the softened Sharan lines.
Where did Tam get his battle experience? Arganda thought, thinking of the times he’d seen Tam fight. Arganda had known seasoned generals with far less sense of a battlefield than this sheepherder.
The Borderlanders pulled back, letting Tam and his men loose more arrows. Tam signaled to Arganda.
“Let’s go!” Arganda called to his foot soldiers. “All companies, forward!”
The one-two attack of archers and heavy cavalry was powerful, but it had limited advantage, once the enemy set their defenses. Soon the Sharans would get a solid shield-and-spear wall up to deflect the horsemen, or the archers would pick them off. That’s where the infantry came in.
Arganda unhooked his mace—those Sharans wore chain mail and leather—and raised it high, leading his men across the Heights, meeting the Sharans halfway, as they’d advanced to engage. Tam’s troops were Whitecloaks, Ghealdanin, Perrin’s Wolf Guard and the Mayener Winged Guard, but they viewed themselves as one army. Not six months ago, Arganda would have sworn on his father’s grave that men such as these would never fight together—let alone come to one another’s aid, as the Wolf Guard did when the Whitecloak forces were being overrun.
Some Trollocs could be heard howling and began moving up alongside the Sharans. Light! Trollocs, too?
Arganda swung his mace until his arm burned, then switched hands and kept going, breaking bones, smashing hands and arms until Mighty’s coat was flecked with blood.
Flashes of light suddenly launched from the opposite end of the Heights toward the Andorans defending below. Arganda barely noted it, consumed by the fighting as he was, but something inside of him whimpered. Demandred must have resumed his attack.
“I have defeated your brother, Lews Therin!” The voice boomed across the battlefield, loud as a crack of thunder. “He dies now, bleeding away his mortality!”
Arganda danced Mighty back, turning as a hulking Trolloc with an almost-human face shoved away the wounded Sharan beside it and bellowed. Blood streamed from a cut on its shoulder, but it didn’t seem to notice. It twisted, heaving a short-chained flail with a head like a log covered in spikes.
The flail crashed to the ground right beside Mighty, spooking the horse. As Arganda fought for control, the immense Trolloc stepped forward and punched with its off hand, slamming a ham fist into the side of Mighty’s head, knocking the horse to the ground.
“Have you any care for the flesh of this birth?” Demandred thundered in the distance. “Share you any love for the one who named you brother, this man in white?”
Mighty’s head had cracked like an egg. The horse’s legs spasmed and jerked. Arganda hauled himself to his feet. He didn’t remember leaping free as the horse fell, but his instincts had preserved him. Unfortunately, his roll had taken him away from his guards, who fought for their lives against a group of Sharans.
His men were advancing, and the Sharans were getting slowly pushed back. He didn’t have time to look, though. That Trolloc was on him. Arganda hefted his mace and looked up at the towering beast before him, whipping its flail over its head as it stepped over the dying horse.
Never had Arganda felt so small.
“Coward!” Demandred roared. “You name yourself savior of this land? I claim that title! Face me! Do I need to kill this kin of yours to draw you out?” Arganda took a deep breath, then leaped forward. He figured that was the last thing the Trolloc would anticipate. Indeed, the beast’s swing went wide. Arganda scored a solid crack at its side, his mace hitting the Trolloc’s pelvis, crushing bone.
Th
en the thing backhanded him. Arganda saw white, and the sounds of battle faded. Screaming, pounding of feet, yelling. Screams and yells. Yells and screams… Nothing.
Sometime later—he didn’t know how long—he felt himself being lifted up. The Trolloc? He blinked, intent on at least spitting in the face of his killer, only to find himself being hauled into the saddle behind al’Lan Mandragoran.
“I’m alive?” Arganda said. A wave of pain across his left side informed him that yes, indeed, he was.
“You felled a big one, Ghealdanin,” Lan said, spurring his horse to a gallop toward their rear lines. The other Borderlanders were riding with them, Arganda saw. “The Trolloc hit you in its death throes. I thought you were dead, but I could not come for you until we had pushed them back. We would have been hard pressed if that other army hadn’t surprised the Sharans.”
“Other army?” said Arganda, rubbing his arm.
“Cauthon had an army lying in wait on the northern side of the Heights. By the looks of it, Dragonsworn and a banner of cavalry, probably part of the Band. About the time you were tussling with that Trolloc, they fell on the Sharan’s left flank, breaking them all apart. It’s going to take them a while to regroup.”
“Light,” Arganda said, then groaned. He could tell his left arm was broken. Well, he lived. Good enough for now. He looked toward the front lines where his soldiers still held their ranks. Queen Alliandre rode in their midst, back and forth through the ranks, encouraging them. Light. He wished she’d been willing to serve at the hospital in Mayene.
There was peace here at the moment—the Sharans had been hit hard enough that they had pulled back, leaving a section of ground open between the opposing armies. They probably hadn’t been expecting such a sudden and strong attack.
But wait. Shadows approached from Arganda’s right, oversized figures walking from the darkness. More Trollocs? He set his jaw against the pain. He’d dropped his mace, but he still had his boot knife. He’d not go down without… Without…
Ogier, he realized, blinking. Those aren’t Trollocs. They’re Ogier. Trollocs wouldn’t carry torches as these beings did.
“Glory to the Builders!” Lan called up to them. “So you were part of the army Cauthon sent to attack the Sharans’ flank. Where is he? I would have words with him!”
One of the Ogier let out a rumbling laugh. “You are not the only one, Dai Shan! Cauthon moves about like a squirrel hunting nuts in the underbrush. One moment here, another moment gone. I am to tell you that we must hold back this Sharan advance, at all cost.”
More light flashed from the distant side of the Heights. The Aes Sedai and Sharans fought there. Cauthon was trying to box the Shadow’s forces in. Arganda shoved aside his pain, trying to think.
What of Demandred? Arganda could now see another swath of destruction launched from the Forsaken. It burned through defenders across the river. The pike formations had begun to shatter, each burst of light killing hundreds.
“Sharan channelers in the distance on one side,” Arganda mumbled, “and one of the Forsaken on the other! Light! I didn’t realize how many Trollocs there were. They’re endless.” He could see them now, confronting Elayne’s troops; blasts of the One Power showed thousands of them in the distance below. “We’re finished, aren’t we?”
Lan’s face reflected torchlight. Eyes like slate, a face of granite. He did not correct Arganda.
“What will we do?” Arganda said. “To win… Light, to win we’d need to break these Sharans, rescue the pikemen—they will soon be surrounded by the Trollocs—and each man of ours would need to kill at least five of those beasts! That’s not even counting Demandred.”
No reply from Lan.
“We’re doomed,” Arganda said.
“If so,” Lan said, “we stand atop the high ground, and we fight until we die, Ghealdanin. You surrender when you’re dead. Many a man has been given less.”
The threads of possibility resisted Rand as he wove them together into the world he imagined. He did not know what that meant. Perhaps what he demanded was highly unlikely. This thing he did, using threads to show what could be, was more than simple illusion. It involved looking to worlds that had been before, worlds that could be again. Mirrors of the reality he lived in.
He didn’t create these worlds. He merely… manifested them. He forced the threads to open the reality he demanded, and finally they obeyed. One last time, the darkness became light, and the nothing became something.
He stepped into a world that did not know the Dark One.
He chose Caemlyn as a point of entry. Perhaps because the Dark One had used the place in his last creation, and Rand wanted to prove to himself that the terrible vision was not inevitable. He needed to see the city again, but untainted.
He walked on the road before the palace, taking a deep breath. The butterchain trees were in bloom, the bright yellow blossoms spilling out of the gardens and hanging over the courtyard walls. Children played in them, throwing the petals into the air.
Not a cloud marred the brilliant sky. Rand looked up, raising his arms, and stepped out from beneath the blossoming branches into the deep warming sunlight. No guards stood at the way into the palace, only a kindly servant who answered questions for some visitors.
Rand strode forward, feet leaving tracks in golden petals as he approached the entrance. A child came toward him, and Rand stopped, smiling at her.
She stepped up, reaching to touch the sword at Rand’s waist. The child seemed confused. “What is it?” she asked, looking up with wide eyes.
“A relic,” Rand whispered.
Laughter from the other children turned the girl’s head, and she left him, giggling as one of the children threw an armful of petals into the air.
Rand walked on.
IS THIS PERFECTION FOR YOU? The Dark One’s voice felt distant. He could pierce this reality to speak to Rand, but he could not appear here as he had in the other visions. This place was his antithesis.
For this was the world that would exist if Rand killed him in the Last Battle.
“Come and see,” Rand said to him, smiling.
No reply. If the Dark One allowed himself to be drawn too fully into this reality, he would cease to exist. In this place, he had died.
All things turned and came again. That was the meaning of the Wheel of Time. What was the point of winning a single battle against the Dark One, only to know that he would return? Rand could do more. He could do this.
“I would like to see the Queen,” Rand asked of the servant at the Palace doors. “Is she in?”
“You should find her in the gardens, young man,” the guide said. He looked at Rand’s sword, but out of curiosity, not worry. In this world, men could not conceive that one would want to hurt another. It didn’t happen.
“Thank you,” Rand said, walking into the Palace. The hallways were familiar, yet different. Caemlyn had nearly been razed during the Last Battle, the Palace burned. The reconstruction resembled what had been there before, but not completely.
Rand strolled the hallways. Something worried him, a discomfort from the back of his mind. What was it…
Do not be caught here, he realized. Do not be complacent. This world was not real, not completely. Not yet.
Could this have been a plan of the Dark One? To trick Rand into creating paradise for himself, only to enter it and be trapped while the Last Battle raged? People were dying as they fought.
He had to remember that. He could not let this fancy consume him. That was difficult to remember as he entered the gallery—a long hallway, lined with what appeared to be windows. Only, those windows did not look out at Caemlyn. These new glass portals allowed one to see other places, like a gateway always in place.
Rand passed one that looked out into a submerged bay, colorful fish darting this way and that. Another gave a view of a peaceful meadow high in the Mountains of Mist. Red flowers pushed up through the green, like specks of paint scattered on the floor following a paint
er’s daily work.
On the other wall, the windows looked at the great cities of the world. Rand passed Tear, where the Stone was now a museum to the days of the Third Age, with the Defenders as its curators. None of this generation had ever carried a weapon, and were baffled by the stories of their grandparents having fought. Another showed the Seven Towers of Malkier, built strong again—but as a monument, not a fortification. The Blight had vanished upon the Dark One’s death, and the Shadowspawn had fallen dead immediately. As if the Dark One had been linked to them all, like a Fade leading a fist of Trollocs.
Doors did not bear locks. Coinage was a nearly forgotten eccentricity. Channelers helped create food for everyone. Rand passed a window to Tar Valon, where the Aes Sedai Healed any who came and created gateways to bring loved ones together. All had everything they needed.
He hesitated beside the next window. It looked out at Rhuidean. Had this city ever been in a desert? The Waste bloomed, from Shara to Cairhien. And here, through the window, Rand saw the Chora Fields—a forest of them, surrounding the fabled city. Though he could not hear their words, he saw the Aiel singing.
No more weapons. No more spears to dance. Once again, the Aiel were a people of peace.
He continued on. Bandar Eban, Ebou Dar, the Seanchan lands, Shara. Each nation was represented, though these days, people didn’t pay much heed to borders. Another relic. Who cared who lived in what nation, and why would someone try to “own” land? There was enough for all. The blooming of the Waste had opened up room for new cities, new wonders. Many of the windows Rand passed looked at places he did not know, though he was pleased to see the Two Rivers looking so majestic, almost like Manetheren come again.
The last window gave him pause. It looked upon a valley in what had once been the Blasted Lands. A stone slab, where a body had been burned long ago, rested here alone. Overgrown with life: vines, grass, flowers. A furry spider the size of a child’s hand scurried across the stones.
Rand’s grave. The place where his body had been burned following the Last Battle. He lingered a long while at that window before finally forcing himself to move on, leaving the Gallery and making his way to the Palace gardens. Servants were helpful whenever he spoke to them. Nobody questioned why he wanted to see the Queen.