Elayne trotted her horse among heaps of dead Trollocs. The day was won. She had everyone who could stand searching for the living among the dead.
So many dead. Hundreds of thousands of men and Trollocs, lying in piles all across Merrilor. The river’s banks were slaughterhouses, the bogs mass graves, floating with corpses. Ahead of her, across the river, the Heights groaned and rumbled. She’d pulled her people away from there. She could barely sit on her horse.
The entire plateau collapsed upon itself, burying the dead. Elayne watched, feeling numb, feeling the ground shake. It—
Light.
She sat up straight, feeling the swelling of power in Rand. Her attention flew away from the Heights, instead focused on him. The feeling of supreme strength, the beauty of control and domination. A light shot into the sky far to the north, so bright that she gasped.
The end had come.
Thom stumbled back from the entrance to the Pit of Doom, shading his eyes with his arm as light—radiant as the sun itself—burst out of the cavern. Moiraine!
“Light,” Thom whispered.
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Light it was, breaking out of the top of the mountain of Shayol Ghul, a radiant beam that melted the mountain’s tip and shot straight into the sky.
Min raised her hand to her breast, stepping away from the rows of wounded for whom she’d been changing linens.
Rand, she thought, feeling his agonized determination. Far to the north, a beam of light rose into the air, so bright that it lit the Field of Merrilor even such a great distance away. The helpers and the wounded alike blinked, stumbling to their feet, shading their faces.
That light, a brilliant lance in the heavens, burned away the clouds and opened up the sky.
Aviendha blinked at the light, and knew it was Rand.
It drew her back from the brink of darkness, flooding her with warmth. He was winning. He was winning. He was so strong. She saw the true warrior in him now.
Nearby, Graendal stumbled to her knees, eyes glazed over. The unraveling gateway had exploded, but not with as large a blast as last time. Weaves and the One Power had sprayed out, just as Graendal tried to spin Compulsion.
The Forsaken turned to Aviendha, and she adopted an adoring gaze. She bowed down, as if worshipping Aviendha.
The explosion, Aviendha realized, numb. It had done something to the Compulsion weave. Honestly, she had expected that blast to kill her. It had done something else instead.
“Please, glorious one,” Graendal said. “Tell me what you wish of me. Let me serve you!”
Aviendha looked back to the light that was Rand and held her breath.
Logain stepped from the ruins, holding a toddler—maybe two years of age—in his arms. The child’s weeping mother took her son from his hands. “Thank you. Bless you, Asha’man. Light bless you.”
Logain stumbled to a halt amid the people. The air stank of burned flesh and dead Trollocs. “The Heights are gone?” he asked.
“Gone,” Androl said reluctantly from beside him. “The earthquakes took them.”
Logain sighed. The prize… was it lost, then? Would he ever be able to dig it out?
I am a fool, he thought. He had abandoned that power for what? To save these refugees? People who would spurn him and hate him for what he was. People who…
… who looked at him with awe.
Logain frowned. These were common people, not like folk from the Black Tower who were accustomed to men who could channel. In that moment, he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
Logain watched with wonder as the people flocked around his Asha’man, weeping for their salvation. Elderly men took Asha’man by the hands, overcome, praising them.
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.”