A Memory of Light (Wheel of Time, #14)

by Robert Jordan

And the Shadow fell upon the Land, and the World was riven stone from stone. The oceans fled, and the mountains were swallowed up, and the nations were scattered to the eight corners of the World. The moon was as blood, and the sun was as ashes. The seas boiled, and the living envied the dead. All was shattered, and all but memory lost, and one memory above all others, of him who brought the Shadow and the Breaking of the World. And him they named Dragon. —from Aleth nin Taerin alta Camora, The Breaking of the World. Author unknown, the Fourth Age.

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. He 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. Aviendha raised her hand to him, and he raised his in return. That would be their only farewell if he failed in his task or she died during hers. With a last look, she turned away from him and toward her duty.

She frowned, looking up. What was that shadow? High above, the sun shone in a turbulent sky. Some storm clouds, in patches, some deep black, others brilliant white. It wasn’t a cloud that had suddenly obscured the sun, however, but something solid and black sliding into place. Aviendha felt a chill and found herself trembling as the light slipped away. Darkness, true darkness, fell. Soldiers across the field looked up in awe, and even fear. The light went out. The end of the world had come.

Though Aviendha couldn’t see much through the darkness, she could tell soldiers were staring at the sky. Even the Trollocs looked awestruck. But then the solid blackness began to move in the sky, revealing first the edge of the sun, and then the sun itself. Light! The end was not upon them.

IT IS TIME. LET THE TASK BE UNDERTAKEN. The voice spoke with the inevitability of an earthquake, the words vibrating through him. More than sound in the air, far more, the words spoke as if from one soul to another. Moiraine gasped, eyes opening wide. Rand was not surprised. He had heard this voice once before, and he realized that he had been expecting it. Hoping for it, at least. “Thank you,” Rand whispered, then stepped forward into the Dark One’s realm, leaving footprints of blood behind.

“This is the place,” she announced, enhancing her voice with the One Power to project across the field, “where I promise you we will win. This is where I tell you that days will continue, that the land will recover. This is the time when I promise you that the light will return, that hope will survive, that we will continue to live.”

“I am supposed to reassure you,” Elayne shouted to the men. “But I cannot! I will not tell you that the land will survive, that the Light will prevail. Doing so would remove responsibility. “This is our duty! Our blood that will be spilled this day. We have come here to fight. If we do not, then the land will die! The Light will fall to the Shadow. This is not a day for empty promises. Our blood! Our blood is the fire within us. Today, our blood must drive us to defeat the Shadow.”

“Our blood is our passion,” she shouted. “Too much of what I hear from my armies is about resistance. We cannot merely resist! We must show them our anger, our fury, at what they have done. We must not resist. Today, we must destroy. “Our blood is our land. This place is ours, and we claim it! For our fathers and mothers, for our children. “Our blood is our life. We have come to give it. Across the world, other armies are pushed back. We will not retreat. Our task is to spend our blood, to die advancing. We will not remain still, no! “If we are to have the Light again, we must make it ours! We must reclaim it and cast out the Shadow! He seeks to make you despair, to win this battle before it begins. We will not give him that satisfaction! We will destroy this army before us, then destroy the one behind. And from there, we bring our blood—our life, our fire, our passion—to the others who fight. From there it spreads to victory and the Light!”

When younger, she’d imagined the soldiers clapping and shouting—the response given to a gleeman at a rowdy tavern. Instead, the men raised weapons to her. Drawn swords, pikes lifted, then thumped back against the ground. The Aiel did give some whoops, but the Andorans looked at her with solemn eyes. She had not inspired them to excitement, but to determination. That seemed the more honest emotion. They ignored the darkness in the sky and turned eyes on the goal.

“Even if Min hadn’t had that viewing, I’d still insist on fighting. You think the babes of these soldiers aren’t at risk? Many of them line the walls of that city! If we fail here, they will be slaughtered. No, I will not keep myself out of danger, and no, I will not sit back and wait. If you think it’s your duty as my Warder to stop me, then I will bloody sever this bond right here and now and send you to someone else! I’m not going to spend the Last Battle lounging on a chaise and drinking goat’s milk!”

“This is it, Egwene,” Mat said. “Take a deep breath, a last pull on the brandy, or burn your final pinch of tabac. Have a good look at the ground before you, as it’s soon going to be covered in blood. In an hour, we’ll be in the thick of it. The Light watch over us all.”

Dawn broke that morning on Polov Heights, but the sun did not shine on the Defenders of the Light. Out of the west and out of the north came the armies of Darkness, to win this one last battle and cast a Shadow across the earth; to usher in an Age where the wails of suffering would go unheard. —from the notebook of Loial, son of Arent son of Halan, the Fourth Age

Was this what you wished for, his mind whispered, when you raised the banner of the Dragon? When you sought to save mankind? Did you do it to be feared? Hated? He ignored that voice. The only times he had accomplished anything in life had come when he’d been feared.

“Link to me!” he commanded those who remained with him. “Join me in a circle, and let us hunt the M’Hael and his men as well. Light send that I can find him—my table deserves only the finest of meat, the head stag himself!”

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.

That man looks familiar, Loial thought. Yes, it was the horse. He’d seen that horse before, many times. Lan, he thought, numb. Lan is the one riding out alone. Loial stood. Erith looked up at him as he shouldered his axe. “Wait,” Loial said to her. “Fight alongside the others. I must go.” “Go?” “I need to witness this,” Loial said. The fall of the last king of the Malkieri. He would need to include it in his book.

Demandred felt at the wound in his cheek, and his eyes opened wider. “Who are you?” Demandred asked. “I am the man who will kill you.”

“I did not come here to win,” Lan whispered, smiling. “I came here to kill you. Death is lighter than a feather.”

“I will not give up,” he repeated, and the words seemed a wonder to him. I CONTROL THEM ALL. I BREAK THEM BEFORE ME. YOU HAVE LOST, CHILD OF HUMANKIND. “If you think that,” Rand whispered into the darkness, “then it is because you cannot see.”

Mat forced down his grief. That wasn’t what Lan would have wanted. Instead, Mat raised his ashandarei. “Tai’shar Malkier!” he screamed with all the force he could. “Lan Mandragoran, you bloody wonderful man! You did it!” His shouts rang in the silence as he charged toward the Shadow armies. Shouts rang behind him: “Tai’shar Malkier!” Shouts from all nationalities, all peoples, Borderlander and not. They surged across the Heights alongside Mat. Together, they attacked the stunned foe.

Rand stepped forward. In this place of nothing, the Pattern seemed to swirl around him like a tapestry. HERE IS YOUR FLAW, SHAI’TAN—LORD OF THE DARK, LORD OF ENVY! LORD OF NOTHING! HERE IS WHY YOU FAIL! IT WAS NOT ABOUT ME. IT’S NEVER BEEN ABOUT ME!

HERE IS THE TRUTH, SHAI’TAN, Rand said, taking another step forward, arms out, woven Pattern spreading around them. YOU CANNOT WIN UNLESS WE GIVE UP. THAT’S IT, ISN’T IT?

So very wrong, Shai’tan, Rand’s voice whispered in Mat’s mind. Then the voice was no longer in Mat’s mind. It could be heard distinctly by everyone on the battlefield. That one you have tried to kill many times, Rand said, that one who lost his kingdom, that one from whom you took everything … Lurching, bloodied from the sword strike to his side, the last king of the Malkieri stumbled to his feet. Lan thrust his hand into the air, holding by its hair the head of Demandred, general of the Shadow’s armies. That man, Rand shouted. That man still fights!

“I am Birgitte Silverbow,” Birgitte announced, as if to dispel doubt. “The Horn of Valere has sounded, calling all to the Last Battle. The heroes have returned!”

Suddenly, Olver felt a deep warmth. He had lost so many people, but one of them … one … had come back for him.

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.

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.

The force in his hand, which was at once vast and yet tiny, trembled. Its screams were the sounds of planets grinding together.

The blackness in front of Rand hung like a hole, sucking in everything. Slowly, bit by bit, that hole shrank away until it was just a pinprick. It vanished.

“I left … to save you,” Nynaeve whispered. “I only came along to protect you.” “You did, Nynaeve. You protected Rand so he could do what he had to do.”

As evening settled onto the land, Tam looked up across what had once been the most feared place of all. Shayol Ghul. The last flickers of light showed plants growing here, flowers blooming, grass growing up around fallen weapons and over corpses. Is this your gift to us, son? he wondered. A final one?

Tam went up to the bier, beside Thom and Moiraine, who were holding hands, faces solemn. Moiraine reached over and gently squeezed Tam’s arm. Tam looked at the corpse, gazing down into his son’s face by the fire’s light. He did not wipe the tears from his eyes. You did well. My boy … you did so well. He lit the pyre with a reverent hand.

“I’ve seen this,” Min said. “I knew it would come the day I first met him. We three, together, here.” Elayne nodded. “So now what?” “Now…” Aviendha said. “Now we make sure that everyone well and truly believes he is gone.”

As he did so, a wind rose up around him, around the man who had been called lord, Dragon Reborn, king, killer, lover and friend. The wind rose high and free, to soar in an open sky with no clouds. It passed over a broken landscape scattered with corpses not yet buried. A landscape covered, at the same time, with celebrations. It tickled the branches of trees that had finally begun to put forth buds. The wind blew southward, through knotted forests, over shimmering plains and toward lands unexplored. This wind, it was not the ending. There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was an ending.

And it came to pass in those days, as it had come before and would come again, that the Dark lay heavy on the land and weighed down the hearts of men, and the green things failed, and hope died. And men cried out to the Creator, saying, O Light of the Heavens, Light of the World, let the Promised One be born of the mountain, according to the prophecies, as he was in ages past and will be in ages to come. Let the Prince of the Morning sing to the land that green things will grow and the valleys give forth lambs. Let the arm of the Lord of the Dawn shelter us from the Dark, and the great sword of justice defend us. Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time. —from Charal Drianaan te Calamon, The Cycle of the Dragon. Author unknown, the Fourth Age.

He came like the wind, like the wind touched everything, and like the wind was gone. —from The Dragon Reborn. By Loial, son of Arent son of Halan, the Fourth Age.