Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time 13)

"I . . . Yes." What other answer was there? To dismiss it as nothing would be to dishonor them. "Wakeda fell today. Rajabi . . . well, a Draghkar got him. Ankaer. He lasted until this afternoon. Never did find out why that trumpeter sounded early. Rossin was looking into it. He's dead, too." •

"We need to get out of the city," Bashere said, his voice urgent. "I'm sorry, man. Maradon is lost."

"No," al'Thor said softly. "The Shadow will not have this city. Not after what these men did to hold it. I will not allow it."

"An honorable sentiment," Bashere said, "but we don't . . ." He trailed off as al'Thor looked at him.

Those eyes. So intense. They seemed almost alight. "They will not take this city, Bashere," al'Thor said, an edge of anger entering his quiet voice. He waved to the side, and a gateway split the air. The sounds of drums and Trollocs yelling grew closer, suddenly. "I'm tired of letting him hurt my people. Pull your soldiers back."

With that, al'Thor stepped through the gateway. A pair of Aiel Maidens hurried into the room, and he left the gateway open long enough for them to leap through behind him. Then he let it vanish.

Bashere looked stunned, mouth half-open. "Curse that man!" he finally said, turning to the window again. "I thought he wasn't going to do this sort of thing any longer!"

Ituralde joined Bashere, raising his looking glass, looking out through the enormous gap in the wall. Outside, al'Thor was crossing the trampled ground, wearing his brown cloak and followed by the two Maidens.

Ituralde thought he could hear the sounds of the howling Trollocs. Their drums beat. They saw three people alone.

The Trollocs surged forward, charging across the ground. Hundreds. Thousands. Ituralde gasped. Bashere uttered a quiet prayer.

Al'Thor raised one hand, then thrust it palm forward toward the tide of Shadowspawn.

And they started to die.

It began with waves of fire, much like the ones Asha'man used. Only these were far larger. The flames burned terrible swaths of death through the Trollocs. They followed the course of the land, seeping up the hill and down into the trenches, filling them with white-hot fire, searing and destroying.

Clouds of Draghkar spun in the sky, diving for al'Thor. The air above him turned blue, and shards of ice exploded outward, spraying the air like arrows from the bows of an entire banner of archers. The beasts shrieked their inhuman agony, carcasses tumbling to the ground.

Light and Power exploded from the Dragon Reborn. He was like an entire army of channelers. Thousands of Shadowspawn died. Deathgates sprang up, striking across the ground, killing hundreds.

The Asha'man Naeff standing beside Bashere gasped. "I've never seen so many weaves at once," he whispered. "I can't track them all. He's a storm. A storm of Light and streams of Power!"

Clouds began to form and swirl above the city. The wind picked up, howling, and lightning struck from above. Blasts of thunder overpowered the sounds of drums as Trollocs tried in vain to get to al'Thor, climbing over the burning carcasses of their brethren. The swirling white clouds crashed into the black, boiling tempest, intermingling. Wind spun around al'Thor, whipping at his cloak.

The man himself seemed to be glowing. Was it the reflection of the swaths of fire, or perhaps the lightning blasts? Al'Thor seemed brighter than them all, his hand upraised against the Shadowspawn. His Maidens hunched near the ground on either side of him, eyes forward, shoulders set against the great wind.

Clouds spinning about one another made funnels into the masses of Trollocs, sweeping across the top of the hill, taking up the creatures into the air. Great waterspouts rose behind, made of flesh and fire. The beasts rained down, falling upon the others. Ituralde watched with awe, the hair on his arms and head rising. There was an energy to the very air itself.

A scream came from nearby. Within the building, in one of the nearby rooms. Ituralde did not turn away from the window. He had to watch this beautiful, terrible moment of destruction and Power.

Waves of Trollocs broke, the drums faltering. Entire legions of them turned and fled, stumbling up the hillside and over one another, fleeing back toward the Blight. Some remained firm too angry, too intimidated by those driving them, or too stupid to flee. The tempest of destruction seemed to come to a peak, flashes of light blasting down in time with howling wind, thrumming waves of burning flame, tinkling shards of ice.

It was a masterwork. A terrible, destructive, wonderful masterwork. Al'Thor lifted his hand toward the sky. The winds grew faster, the lightning strikes larger, the fires hotter. Trollocs screamed, moaned, howled. Ituralde found himself trembling.

Al'Thor closed his hand into a fist, and it all ended.

The last of the wind-seized Trollocs dropped from the sky like leaves abandoned by a passing breeze. Everything fell silent. The flames died, the black and white clouds cleared and opened to a blue sky.

Al'Thor lowered his hand. The field before him was piled with carcasses atop carcasses. Tens of thousands of dead Trollocs smoldering. Directly before al'Thor, a pile a hundred paces wide formed a ridge five feet tall, a mound of dead that had nearly reached him.

How long had it taken? Ituralde found that he could not gauge the time, though looking at the sun, at least an hour had passed. Perhaps more. It had seemed like seconds.

Al'Thor turned to walk away. The Maidens rose on shaky feet, stumbling after him.

"What was that scream?" Naeff asked. "The one nearby, in the building. Did you hear it?"

Ituralde frowned. What had that been? He crossed the room, the others including several of Bashere's officers following. Many others stayed in the room, however, staring out at the field that had been cleansed by ice and by fire. It was odd, but Ituralde hadn't been able to spot a single fallen tower atop the hill. It was as if al'Thor's attacks had somehow affected only the Shadowspawn. Could a man really be that precise?

The hallway outside was empty, but Ituralde had a suspicion now of where the scream had come from. He walked to Lord Torkumen's door; Bashere unlocked it, and they went inside.