Robert Jordan - A Memory of Light

“I’m certain,” she replied. “It has been tested exhaustively.”

She was becoming skilled with these viewing gateways. She had created this one on top of a table brought through to their camp from Tar Valon. He was looking down at the battleground as he would a map.

“If you have truly made the other side invisible,” Egwene said speculatively, “this might be useful indeed . . .”

“It would be easier to spot from up close,” Yukiri admitted. “This one is so high in the sky that nobody below will be able to make it out.”

Gawyn didn’t like Egwene standing there, head and shoulders hanging out over the battlefield. He held his tongue; the gateway was as safe as they could make it. He couldn’t protect her from everything.

“Light,” Bryne said softly, “they’re cutting us to pieces.”

Gawyn glanced at him. The man rebuffed suggestions—even strong ones—that he return to his estates. He insisted that he was still capable of holding a sword; he just couldn’t be allowed to lead. Besides, he argued, any of them could be under Compulsion. In a way, knowing that he was gave them an advantage. At least him they could watch.

And Siuan did, holding to his arm protectively. The only others in the tent were Silviana and Doesine.

The battle was not going well. Cauthon had lost the Heights already—the original plan had been to hold there as long as possible—and the dragons were in pieces. Demandred’s attack with the One Power had come far more powerfully than any of them had anticipated. And the other large Trolloc army had arrived from the northeast and were pressing Cauthon’s defenders upriver.

“What is he planning?” Egwene said, tapping the side of the table. Distant yells drifted through the opening. “If this keeps up, our armies are going to be surrounded.”

“He’s trying to bait the trap,” Bryne said.

“What kind of trap?”

“It is a guess,” Bryne said, “and Light knows, my own assessment cannot be trusted as it once was. It looks like Cauthon is planning to heap everything into one battle, no delaying, no trying to wear the Trollocs down. The way this is going, it will be decided in days. Maybe hours.”

“That sounds exactly like something Mat would do,” Egwene said, resigned.

“The strength of those weaves,” Lelaine said, “that power . . .”

“Demandred is in a circle,” Egwene said. “Eyewitnesses say a full circle. Something that hasn’t been seen since the Age of Legends. And he has a sa’angreal. Some of the soldiers saw it—a scepter.”

Gawyn watched the fighting far below, his hand on his sword. He could hear men scream as Demandred aimed wave after wave of fire at them.

The Forsaken’s voice boomed, suddenly, reaching high into the air. “Where are you, Lews Therin! You were seen at each of the other battlefields in disguise. Are you here, too? Fight me!”

Gawyn’s hand tightened on his sword. Soldiers flooded down the southwestern side of the Heights, to cross the ford. A few small groups held on the slopes, and dragoners there—tiny as insects to Gawyn—led the remaining dragons to safety, pulled by mules.

Demandred flung destruction at the fleeing troops. He was an army unto himself, hurling bodies into the air, exploding horses, burning and destroying. Around him, his Trollocs seized the high ground. Their brutish cheers floated through the gateway.

“We’re going to have to deal with him, Mother,” Silviana said. “Soon.”

“He’s trying to draw us out,” Egwene said. “He has that sa’angreal. We could build a circle of seventy-two ourselves, but what then? Fall into his trap? Be slaughtered?”

“What choice have we, Mother?” Lelaine asked. “Light. He’s killing thousands.”

Killing thousands. And here they stood.

Gawyn stepped back.

Nobody seemed to notice his withdrawal other than Yukiri, who eagerly stepped up and took his place beside Egwene. Gawyn slipped out of the tent, and when the tent guards glanced at him, said he needed some fresh air. Egwene would approve. She sensed how tired he was lately; she’d mentioned it to him several times. His eyelids felt as if they had weights of iron pulling them down. Gawyn looked toward the blackened sky He could hear the distant booms. How long would he just stand around and do nothing while men died?

You promised, he thought to himself. You said you were willing to stand in her shadow.

That didn’t mean he had to stop doing important work, did it? He fished in his pouch and took out a ring of the Bloodknives. He put it on, and immediately his strength returned, his exhaustion fleeing.

He hesitated, then took out the other rings and slipped them on as well.

On the south bank of the River Mora, in front of the ruins northeast of Dashar Knob, Tam al’Thor summoned the void as Kimtin had taught him all of those years ago. Tam imagined the single flame, and poured his emotions into it. He grew calm, then the calmness left him, leaving nothing. Like a newly painted wall, beautiful and white, that had just been washed. Everything melted away.

Tam was the void. He drew his bow, the good black yew bending, arrow to his cheek. He took aim, but this was only a formality. When he was this strongly within the void, the arrow would do exactly as he commanded. He didn’t know this, any more than the sun knew that it would rise or the branches knew that their leaves would fall. These were not things known\ they were things that were.

He released, bowstring snapping, arrow drilling through the air. Another followed, then another. He had five in the air at once, each one aimed in anticipation of the shifting winds.

The first five Trollocs fell as they tried to make their way across one of several of the raft bridges they had managed to place on the river here. Trollocs hated water; even shallow water daunted them. Whatever Mat had done to protect the river upstream, it was working for now, and the river was still flowing. The Shadow would try to stop it. Was trying to stop it. Occasionally a Trolloc or mule carcass floated past from far upriver.

Tam continued to launch arrows, Abell and the other Two Rivers men joining him. Sometimes they aimed into the mass, not picking out an individual Trolloc—though that was rare. A regular soldier might shoot unsighted and assume his arrow would find flesh, but not a good Two Rivers archer. Arrows were cheap to soldiers, but not to woodsmen.

Trollocs fell in waves. Beside Tam and the Two Rivers men, crossbowmen cranked their weapons and loosed wave after wave into the Shadowspawn. Fades behind whipped at the Trollocs, trying to urge them across the river—with little success.

Tam’s arrow hit a Fade right where its eyes should have been. Nearby, a large man named Bayrd whistled in appreciation, leaning on his axe and watching the arrows fall. He was part of the group of soldiers set just behind the archers to move in and protect them, once the Trollocs were forced to cross.

Bayrd was one of the mercenary leaders who had drifted into the army, and though he was an Andoran, neither he nor the hundred or so men he led would speak of where they’d come from. “I need to get one of those bows,” Bayrd said to his companions. “Burn me, do you see that?”

Nearby, Abell and Azi smiled, continuing to shoot. Tam did not smile. There was no humor within the void, though outside of the void, a thought did flutter. Tam knew why Abell and Azi had smiled. Having a Two Rivers bow did not make one into a Two Rivers archer.

“I think,” Galad Damodred said from horseback nearby, “that you’d likely do more harm to yourself than to the enemy, should you try to use one of those. Al’Thor, how long?”