The access key began to glow in his hands. The clouds above seemed to grow darker.
Rand's anger beat in rhythm with his heart, demanding to be set free.
"What if he is right?" Rand bellowed. "What if it's better for this all to end? What if the Light was a lie all along, and this is all just a punishment? We live again and again, growing feeble, dying, trapped forever. We are to be tortured for all time!"
Power flooded into Rand like surging waves filling a new ocean. He came to life, glorying in saidin, not caring that the display must be brilliantly visible to men everywhere who could channel. He felt himself alight with the Power, like a sun to the world below.
"NONE OF THIS MATTERS!"
He closed his eyes, drawing in more and more power, feeling as he had only twice before. Once when he had cleansed saidin. Once when he had created this mountain.
Then he drew in more.
He knew that much power would destroy him. He had stopped caring. Fury that had been building in him for years finally boiled free, unleashed at long last. He spread his arms out wide, access key in his hand. Lews Therin had been right to kill himself and create Dragonmount. Only he hadn't gone far enough.
Rand could remember that day. The smoke, the rumbling, the sharp pains of a Healing bringing him back to lucidity as he lay in a broken palace. But those pains had paled compared with the agony of realization. Agony from seeing the beautiful walls scarred and broken. From seeing the piles of familiar corpses, tossed to the floor like discarded rags.
From seeing Hyena a short distance away, her golden hair spread out on the ground around her.
He could feel the palace around him shaking from the earth's own sobs. Or was that Dragonmount, throbbing from the immense power he had drawn into himself?
He could smell the air thick with blood and soot and death and pain. Or was that just the scent of a dying world, spread before him?
The winds began to whip at him, spinning, enormous clouds above twisting upon themselves, like ancient leviathans passing in the profoud black deep.
Lews Therin had made a mistake. He had died, but had left the world alive, wounded, limping forward. He'd let the Wheel of Time keep turning, rotating, rotting and bringing him back around again. He could not escape it. Not without ending everything.
"Why?" Rand whispered to the twisting winds around him. The Power coming to him through the access key was greater than he'd held when cleansing saidin. Perhaps greater than any man had ever held. Great enough to unravel the Pattern itself and bring final peace.
"Why do we have to do this again?" he whispered. "I have already failed. She is dead by my hand. Why must you make me live it again}"
Lightning cracked above, thunder buffeting him. Rand closed his eyes, perched above a drop that plummeted thousands of feet downward, in the middle of a tempest of icy wind. Through his eyelids, he could sense the blazing light of the access key. The Power he held inside dwarfed that light. He was the sun. He was fire. He was life and death.
Why? Why must they do this over and over? The world could give him no answers.
Rand raised his arms high, a conduit of power and energy. An incarnation of death and destruction. He would end it. End it all and let men rest, finally, from their suffering.
Stop them from having to live over and over again. Why? Why had the Creator done this to them? Why?
Why do we live again? Lews Therin asked, suddenly. His voice was crisp and distinct.
Yes, Rand said, pleading. Tell me. Why?
Maybe . . . Lews Therin said, shockingly lucid, not a hint of madness to him. He spoke softly, reverently. Why? Could it be . . . Maybe it's so that we can have a second chance.
Rand froze. The winds blew against him, but he could not be moved by them. The Power hesitated inside him, like the headsman's axe, held quivering above the criminal's neck. You may not have a choice about which duties are given you, Tarn's voice, just a memory, said in his mind. But you can choose why you fulfill them.
Why, Rand? Why do you go to battle? What is the point?
Why?
All was still. Even with the tempest, the winds, the crashes of thunder. All was still.
Why? Rand thought with wonder. Because each time we live, we get to love again,
That was the answer. It all swept over him, lives lived, mistakes made, love changing everything. He saw the entire world in his mind's eye, lit by the glow in his hand. He remembered lives, hundreds of them, thousands of them, stretching to infinity. He remembered love, and peace, and joy, and hope.
Within that moment, suddenly something amazing occurred to him. /// live again, then she might as well!
That's why he fought. That's why he lived again, and that was the answer to Tarn's question. I fight because last time, I failed. I fight because I want to fix what I did wrong.
I want to do it right this time.
The Power within him reached a crescendo, and he turned it upon itself, drove it through the access key. The ter'angreal was connected to a much greater force, a massive sa'angreal to the south, built to stop the Dark One. Too powerful, some had said. Too powerful ever to use. Too frightening.
Rand used its own power upon it, crushing the distant globe, shattering it as if in the grip of a giant's hands.
The Choedan Kal exploded.
The Power winked out.
The tempest ended.
And Rand opened his eyes for the first time in a very long while. He knew—somehow—that he would never again hear Lews Therin's voice in his head. For they were not two men, and never had been.
He regarded the world beneath him. The clouds above had finally broken, if only just above him. The gloom dispersed, allowing him to see the sun hanging just above.
Rand looked up at it. Then he smiled. Finally, he let out a deep-throated laugh, true and pure.
It had been far too long.
EPILOGUE
Bathed in Light
Egwene worked by the light of two bronze lamps. They were shaped like women holding their hands into the air, a burst of flame appearing in each set of palms. The calm yellow light reflected on the curves of their hands, arms and faces. Were they symbols of the White Tower and the Flame of Tar Valon? Or were they instead depictions of an Aes Sedai, weaving Fire? Perhaps they were simply relics of a previous Amyrlin's taste.
They sat on either side of her desk. A proper desk, finally, with a proper chair to sit upon. She was inside the Amyrlin's study, purged of any and all references to Elaida. That left it bare, the walls empty, the wood paneling unadorned by picture or tapestry, the end tables empty of works of art. Even the bookshelves had been emptied, lest something of Elaida's offend Egwene.
The moment Egwene had seen what the others had done, she had ordered all of Elaida's effects gathered and placed under secure lock, guarded by women Egwene trusted. Hidden among those effects would be clues to Elaida's plans. They might simply be hidden notes slipped between the pages of books, left for further review. Or they might be as obscure as connections between the types of books she'd been reading or the items she'd had in the desk drawers. But they didn't have Elaida herself to question, and there was no telling what schemes of hers would return to bite the White Tower at a later date. Egwene intended to look over those objects, then interview each and every Aes Sedai who had been in the Tower and determine what clues they hid.
For now, she had her hands full. She shook her head, turning over the pages of Silviana's report. The woman was proving to be an effective Keeper indeed, far more skilled than Sheriam had ever been. The loyalist women respected Silviana, and the Red Ajah seemed to have accepted—at least in part—Egwene's offer of peace in choosing one of their own as her Keeper.
Of course, Egwene also had two stiff letters of disapproval—one from Romanda and one from Lelaine—on the bottom of her stack. The two women had withdrawn their effusive support almost as quickly as they'd given it. Right now, they were arguing over what to do with the damam Egwene had captured during the White Tower raid, and neither one liked Egwene's plan to train them as Aes Sedai. Romanda and Lelaine would trouble her for years yet, it appeared.
She set the report aside. It was late afternoon, and light peeked through the slits of the louvered shutters to her balcony. She didn't open them, preferring the quiet dimness. The solitude felt nice.
For now, she didn't mind the room's sparse decorations. True, it reminded her just a little too much of the study of the Mistress of Novices, but no number of wall hangings would banish her memory of those days, not when Silviana herself was Egwene's Keeper. That was fine. Why would Egwene want to banish those days? They contained some of her most satisfying victories.
Though she certainly didn't mind being able to sit without cringing.
She smiled faintly, scanning the next of Silviana's reports. Then she frowned. Most of the Black Ajah in the Tower had escaped. This report, written in Silviana's careful, flowing script, told that they had managed to seize some of the Blacks in the hours following Egwene's raising, but only the weakest of the lot. The majority of them—some sixty Black sisters—had escaped. Including one Sitter, as Egwene had noticed before, whose name had not been on Verin's list. Evanellein's disappearance indicated strongly that she was Black.
Egwene picked up another report, frowning to herself. It was a list of all the women in the White Tower, an extensive list several pages long, broken down by Ajah. Many names had a notation beside them. Black, escaped. Black, captured. Taken by the Seanchan.
That last group was galling. Saerin—acting with foresight—had taken a census following the attack to determine exactly who had been captured.
Nearly forty initiates—over two dozen of them full Aes Sedai—snatched in the night and carried off. It was like a story told to children at bedtime, warning of Fades or Halfmen who stole wicked children. Those women would be beaten, confined and turned into nothing more than tools.
Egwene had to steel herself from reaching up to feel her neck, where the collar had held her. She wasn't focusing on that right now, burn it all!
Each of the Black Ajah members on Verin's list had been seen healthy and alive following the Seanchan attack. But most had escaped before Egwene arrived at the Tower to take her seat. Velina was gone. So were Chai and Birlen. And Alviarin; the Black hunters hadn't managed to get to her in time.
What had tipped them off? Unfortunately, it had probably something to do with Egwene seizing the Black Ajah in the rebel camp. She had worried about overplaying her hand. But what else should she have done? Her only hope had been to seize every Black in the camp and hope that word didn't spread to the White Tower.
But it had. She'd captured the ones who remained, and had them executed. Then she'd resworn every sister in the Tower on the Oath Rod. They hadn't liked it, of course. But the knowledge that all of the women in the rebel camp had done it had swayed them. If it hadn't, the news that Egwene had ordered the execution of her own Keeper probably did. It had certainly been a relief when Silviana had offered to swear first, in front of the entire Hall, to prove herself. Egwene had followed by reswearing herself, then told the Hall truthfully that she had watched each and every woman in the camp prove that she wasn't a Darkfriend. They'd captured three more Black sisters who hadn't been on Verin's list. Only three. What accuracy! Verin had proven herself once again.
Egwene set aside the report. Knowledge of those who had escaped still chewed at her. She had known the names of sixty Darkfriends, and they had escaped her grasp. That number reached to eighty if she included those who had escaped from the rebel camp.
/ will find you, Alviarin, Egwene thought, tapping the sheet with her finger. / will find you all. You were a rot within the Tower itself. The worst kind of rot. I will not let you spread it.
She set the sheet aside and picked up another. This one bore only a few names. A list of all the women in the Tower who had not been on Verin's list and who had either been taken by the Seanchan, or had disappeared following the attack.
Verin had believed that one of the Forsaken, Mesaana, was hiding in the Tower. Sheriam's confession corroborated this. Egwene's task of reswearing every Aes Sedai on the Rod had revealed no Darkfriends of great power. Hopefully, the reswearing itself would ease the tension between the Ajahs. They could stop worrying if there were Blacks in their midst. Of course, it could very well weaken the Aes Sedai by giving proof that the Black Ajah had indeed existed in the first place.
Either way, Egwene had a problem. She looked over the sheet before her. Each woman in the White Tower had proven that she was not a Darkfriend. Each woman on Verin's list was accounted for. She'd been executed, she'd been captured, she'd fled the White Tower the day of Egwene's ascension, she'd been taken by the Seanchan or she was out of the Tower at the moment—and had been for some time. The sisters had instructions to watch for those.
Perhaps they'd been lucky, and the Forsaken was one of those women who had been taken by the Seanchan. But Egwene didn't believe in that kind of luck. One of the Forsaken would not be captured so easily. She'd probably known about the attack in the first place.
That left the three names on the list in front of Egwene. Nalasia Mer-han, a Brown; Teramina, a Green; and Jamilila Norsish, a Red. All were very weak in the Power. And the women on this list had all been in the Tower for years. It seemed implausible that Mesaana had been impersonating one of them and doing it so well that her subterfuge hadn't been noticed.
Egwene had a feeling. A premonition, perhaps. At the very least, a fear. These three names were the only ones who could have been the Forsaken. But none of them fit, not at all. That gave her a chill. Was Mesaana still hiding in the Tower?
If so, she somehow knew how to defeat the Oath Rod.
A soft knock came at her door. It cracked a moment later. "Moth