They’d all fallen. Thum, Yang…both dead. Light, they were all dead.
Barriga shuddered. How had he come to this? He was just a merchant. I should have listened to Rebek, he thought. Smoke rose from Heeth Tower behind. That was where his caravan had been going. How could this be happening?
He needed to keep moving. East. He’d make for Arafel. The other Borderlands couldn’t have fallen, could they?
He climbed up a hillside, hands pulling against short, coiling chokevine. Like worms between his fingers. He was growing woozy. He reached the hilltop; the world was spinning. He fell there, blood seeping from his bandage.
Something moved in front of him. He blinked. Those clouds above were a tempest. In front of him, three figures wearing black and brown approached with a sleek grace. Myrddraal!
No. He blinked the tears and blood from his eyes. No, those weren’t Myrddraal. They were men, wearing red veils over their faces. They walked at a crouch, scanning the terrain, short spears worn on their backs.
“Light be praised,” he whispered. “Aiel.” He’d been in Andor when Rand al’Thor had come. Everyone knew the Aiel followed the Dragon Reborn. He had tamed them.
I’m safe!
One of the Aiel stepped up to Barriga. Why was the man’s veil red? That was unusual. The Aiel’s dark eyes were glassy and hard. The Aiel man undid his veil, and revealed a smiling face.
The man’s teeth had been filed to points. His smile broadened, and he slipped a knife from his belt.
Barriga stuttered, looking at that horrific maw and the glee in this man’s eyes as he reached in for the kill. These weren’t Aiel. They were something else.
Something terrible.
Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, sat quietly in his dream. He breathed in the cool, chill air. White clouds floated gently around him, kissing his skin with their condensation.
His throne for the night was a flat boulder on a mountain slope; he looked down through the clouds at a narrow valley. This wasn’t the real location. It wasn’t even the World of Dreams, that place where he’d fought Forsaken, the place he’d been told was so dangerous.
No, this was one of his own ordinary dreams. He controlled them now. They were a place he could find peace to think, protected by wards while his body slept beside Min in their new camp, surrounded by Borderlanders, set up on the Field of Merrilor. Egwene was there, with armies marshaled. He was ready for that. He’d counted on it.
On the morrow, they’d hear his demands. Not what he would demand to keep him from breaking the seals—he was going to do that, regardless of what Egwene said. No, these would be the demands he made on the monarchs of the world in exchange for going to Shayol Ghul to face the Dark One.
He wasn’t certain what he’d do if they refused him. They’d find it very difficult to do so. Sometimes, it could be useful to have a reputation for being irrational.
He breathed in deeply, peaceful. Here, in his dreams, the hills grew green. As he remembered them. In that nameless valley below, sheltered in the Mountains of Mist, he’d begun a journey. Not his first, and not his last, but perhaps the most important. One of the most painful, for certain.
“And now I come back,” he whispered. “I’ve changed again. A man is always changing.”
He felt a unity in returning here, to the place where he’d first confronted the killer inside him. The place where he’d first tried to flee from those whom he should have kept near. He closed his eyes, enjoying tranquility. Calmness. Harmony.
In the distance, he heard screams of pain.
Rand opened his eyes. What had that been? He stood up, spinning. This place was created of his own mind, protected and safe. It couldn’t—
The scream came again. Distant. He frowned and raised a hand. The scene around him vanished, puffing away into mist. He stood in blackness.
There, he thought. He was in a long corridor of dark wood paneling. He walked down it, boots thumping. That screaming. It shook his peace. Someone was in pain. They needed him.
Rand began to run. He reached a doorway at the end of the hall. The door’s russet wood was knobbed and ridged, like the thick roots of an ancient tree. Rand seized the handle—just another root—and wrenched the door open.
The vast room beyond was pure black, lightless, like a cavern deep beneath the ground. The room seemed to suck in the light and extinguish it. The screaming voice was inside. It was weak, as if it were being smothered by the darkness.
Rand entered. The darkness swallowed him. It seemed to pull the life out of him, like a hundred leeches sucking blood from his veins. He pressed onward. He couldn’t distinguish the direction of the cries, so he moved along the walls; they felt like bone, smooth but occasionally cracked.
The room was round. As if he stood inside the bowl of an enormous skull.
There! A faint light ahead, a single candle on the ground, illuminating a floor of black marble. Rand hurried toward it. Yes, there was a figure there. Huddled against the bone-white wall. It was a woman with silvery hair, wearing a thin white shift.
She was weeping now, her figure shaking and trembling. Rand knelt beside her, the candle flickering from his motion. How had this woman gotten into his dream? Was she someone real, or was this a creation of his mind? He laid a hand on her shoulder.
She glanced toward him, eyes red, face a mask of pain, tears dripping from her chin. “Please,” she pled. “Please. He has me.”
“Who are you?”
“You know me,” she whispered, taking his hand, clinging to it. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. He has me. He flays my soul anew each eve. Oh, please! Let it stop.” The tears flowed more freely.
“I don’t know you,” Rand said. “I…”
Those eyes. Those beautiful, terrible eyes. Rand gasped, releasing her hand. The face was different. But he did know that soul. “Mierin? You’re dead. I saw you die!”
She shook her head. “I wish I were dead. I wish it. Please! He grinds my bones and snaps them like twigs, then leaves me to die before Healing me just enough to keep me alive. He—” She cut off, jerking.
“What?”
Her eyes opened wide and she spun toward the wall. “No!” she screamed. “He comes! The Shadow in every man’s mind, the murderer of truth. No!” She spun, reaching for Rand, but something towed her backward. The wall broke away, and she tumbled