Siuan made certain to look into the woman’s eyes. There had been talk, of what had happened at the Black Tower. Myrelle had spoken of it, of events shared by her new Warders. Something dark.
They said you could tell. Siuan would see the change in Egwene if it had happened to her, wouldn’t she?
If we can’t tell, Siuan thought, then we’re already doomed. She would have to trust the Amyrlin as she had so many times before.
“Gather the Aes Sedai,” Egwene said. “Commander Bryne, you have your orders. We hold at this river unless the losses become so absolutely unbearable that…” She trailed off. “How long have those been there?”
Siuan looked up at the raken scouts passing overhead. “All morning. You have his letter.”
“Bloody man,” Egwene said. The Dragon Reborn’s message, delivered by Min Farshaw, had been brief.
The Seanchan fight the Shadow.
He’d sent Min to them, for reasons the woman wouldn’t quite state.
Bryne had given her tasks immediately: She was working for the supply masters as a clerk.
“Do you trust the Dragon Reborn’s word regarding the Seanchan, Mother?” Saerin asked.
“I don’t know,” Egwene said. “Form up our battle lines anyway, but keep an eye on those things up there, in case they attack.”
As Rand entered the cavern, something changed in the air. The Dark One only now sensed his arrival, and was surprised by it. The dagger had done its job.
Rand led the way, Nynaeve at his left, Moiraine at his right. The cavern led downward, and climbing down it lost them all of the elevation they’d gained. The passage was familiar to him, from another’s memory, from another Age.
It was as if the cavern were swallowing them, forcing them down toward the fires below. The cavern’s ceiling, jagged with fanglike stalactites, seemed to lower as they walked. Inching down with each step. It didn’t move, and the cavern didn’t gradually narrow. It just changed, tall one moment, shorter the next.
The cavern was a set of jaws, slowly tightening on its prey. Rand’s head brushed the tip of a stalactite, and Nynaeve crouched down, looking upward and cursing softly.
“No,” Rand said, stopping. “I will not come to you on my knees, Shai’tan.” The cavern rumbled. The cavern’s dark reaches seemed to press inward, pushing against Rand. He stood motionless. It was as if he were a stuck gear, and the rest of the machine strained to keep turning the hands on the clock. He held firm.
The rocks trembled, then retreated. Rand stepped forward, and released a breath as the pressure lessened. This thing he had begun could not be stopped now. Slowing strained both him and the Dark One; his adversary was caught up in this inevitability as much as he was. The Dark One didn’t exist within the Pattern, but the Pattern still affected him.
Behind Rand, where he had stopped, lay a small pool of blood.
I will need to be quick about this, he thought. I can’t bleed to death until the battle is finished.
The ground trembled again.
“That’s right,” Rand whispered. “I’m coming for you. I am not a sheep being led to the slaughter, Shai’tan. Today, I am the hunter.”
The trembling of the ground seemed almost like laughter. Horrible laughter. Rand ignored Moiraine’s worried look as she walked beside him.
Down they went. An odd sensation came to mind. One of the women was in trouble. Was it Elayne? Aviendha? He could not tell. The warping of this place affected the bond. He was moving through time differently than they, and he lost his sense of where they were. He could only feel that one was in pain.
Rand growled, walking faster. If the Dark One had hurt them… Shouldn’t it be growing lighter in here? They had to rely on the glow of Callandor as he pulled saidin through it. “Where are the fires?” Rand asked, voice echoing. “The molten stone at the bottom of the p
ath?”
“The fires have been consumed, Lews Therin,” a voice said from the shadows ahead.
Rand stopped, then stepped forward, Callandor thrust out to illuminate a figure on one knee at the edge of the light, head bowed, sword held before him, tip resting against the ground.
Beyond the figure was… nothing. A blackness.
“Rand,” Moiraine said, hand on his arm. “The Dark One wells up against his bonds. Do not touch that blackness.”
The figure stood and turned, Moridin’s now-familiar face reflecting Callandor’s glow. Beside him on the ground lay a husk. Rand could explain it no other way. It was like the shell some insects leave behind when they grow, only it was in the shape of a man. A man with no eyes. One of the Myrddraal?