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? THIS FIGHT ISN’T ABOUT A VICTORY IN BATTLE. TAKING ME… IT WAS NEVER ABOUT BEATING ME. IT WAS ABOUT BREAKING ME.
THAT’S WHAT YOU’VE TRIED TO DO WITH ALL OF US. IT’S WHY AT TIMES YOU TRIED TO HAVE US KILLED, WHILE OTHER TIMES YOU DIDN’T SEEM TO CARE. YOU WIN WHEN YOU BREAK US. BUT YOU HAVEN’T. YOU CAN’T.
The darkness trembled. The nothingness shook, as if the arches of the heavens themselves were cracking. The Dark One’s shout was defiant.
Within the void, Rand continued forward, and the darkness trembled.
I CAN STILL KILL, the Dark One bellowed. I CAN STILL TAKE THEM ALL! I AM LORD OF THE GRAVE. THE BATTLE LORD, HE IS MINE. ALL ARE MINE EVENTUALLY!
Rand stepped forward, hand stretched out. In his palm sat the world, and upon that world a continent, and upon that continent a battlefield, and upon that battlefield two bodies on the ground.
Mat fought, Tam at his side with sword out. Karede and the Deathwatch Guard joined them, then Loial and the Ogier. The armies of a dozen nations and peoples fought, many joining him as he rushed across the plateau.
They were outnumbered three to one.
Mat fought, bellowing in the Old Tongue. “For the Light! For honor! For glory! For life itself!”
He slew one Trolloc, then another. Half a dozen in moments, but he felt he was fighting with the surf itself. Wherever he struck down blackness, more took its place. Trollocs moving in the shadows, lit only by the occasional lantern or burning arrow stuck in the ground.
The Trollocs didn’t fight as one. We can break them, Mat thought. We have to break them! This was his chance. Push now, while the Sharans were dazed at Demandred’s fall.
THE SON OF BATTLES. I WILL TAKE HIM. I WILL TAKE THEM ALL, ADVERSARY. AS I TOOK THE KING OF NOTHING.
Blood and bloody ashes! What was that nothingness in his head? Mat beheaded a Trolloc, then wiped his brow, Karede and the Deathwatch Guards covering him for a moment.
Mat could feel the battlefield in the night. There were a lot of Trollocs and Sharans, so many of them.
“There are too many!” Arganda called from nearby. “Light, they’ll overwhelm us! We need to fall back! Cauthon, can you hear me?”
I can do this, Mat thought. I can win this battle. An army could defeat superior numbers, but Mat needed momentum, an opening. A favorable toss of the dice.
Rand stood above the Pattern and looked down at the fallen men in a land where hope seemed to have died. “You have not been watching closely enough. About one thing, you are wrong. So very wrong…”
Cornered and alone, a boy huddled in a cleft in the rock. Horrors with knives and fangs— the Shadow itself made flesh—dug at his hiding place, reaching with nails like knives and ripping his skin.
Terrified, crying, bloodied, the boy raised a golden horn to his lips.
Mat squinted, the battle seeming to dim around him.
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!
Mat felt the battlefield grow still. All were frozen in place.
At that moment, there rang out a soft but powerful sound, a clear note, golden; one long tone that encompassed everything. The sound of a horn, pure and beautiful.
Mat had heard that sound once before.
Mellar knelt beside Elayne, pressing the medallion against her head to stop her from channeling. “This could have gone in a very different way, my Queen,” he said. “You should have been more accommodating.”
Light. That leer was an awful thing. He had gagged her, of course, but she did not give him the satisfaction of crying.