Robert Jordan - The Fires of Heaven

Fire rolled over them in waves. Arrows of it pierced those who came on with their clothes in flames. It was not as if Lanfear battled them, or even paid them any real mind. She might have been brushing aside gnats or bitemes. Those who fled burned as well as those who tried to fight. She moved toward Rand as if nothing else existed.

Heartbeats only.

Three steps she had taken when Rand seized the male half of the True Source, molten steel and steel-shattering ice, sweet honey and midden heap. Deep in the Void, the fight for survival was distant, the battle before him scarcely less. As Moiraine vanished beneath the wagon, he channeled, pulling the heat from Lanfear's fires, sinking it into the river. Flames that a moment before engulfed human forms, vanished. In the same instant he wove the flows again, and a misty gray dome came into being, a long oval enclosing him and Lanfear and most of the wagons, an almost transparent wall that shut out all not already within. Even as he tied the weave, he was not sure what it was or where it had come from — some memory of Lews Therin's perhaps — but Lanfear's fires struck it and stopped. He could see people outside dimly, too many thrashing and flailing — he had taken the flames, not the searing of flesh; that stench still hung in the air — but none would burn now that had not already. Bodies lay inside, too, mounds of charred cloth, some stirring feebly, moaning. She did not care; her channeled flames winked out; the gnats were dispelled; she never glanced aside.

Heartbeats. He was cold in the emptiness of the Void, and if he felt sorrow for the dead and dying and scarred, the feeling was so far off it might not have been. He was cold itself. Emptiness itself. Only the rage of saidin filled him.

Movement to either side. Aviendha and Egwene, eyes concentrated on Lanfear. He had meant to shut them out from this. They must have raced with him. Mat and Asmodean; outside; the wall missed the final few wagons. In icy calm he channeled Air to snare Lanfear; Egwene and Aviendha could shield her while he distracted her.

Something severed his flows; they snapped back so hard that he grunted.

"One of them?" Lanfear snarled. "Which is Aviendha?" Egwene threw her head back and wailed, eyes bulging, the world's agony shrieking from her mouth. "Which?" Aviendha rose on tiptoes, shuddering, howls chasing Egwene's as they climbed higher and higher.

The thought was suddenly there in the emptiness. Spirit woven so, with Fire and Earth. There . Rand felt something being cut, something he could not see, and Egwene collapsed in a motionless heap, Aviendha to hands and knees, head down and swaying.

Lanfear staggered, her eyes going from the women to him, dark pools of black fire. "You are mine, Lews Therin! Mine!"

"No." Rand's voice seemed to come to his ears down a mile-long tunnel. Distract her from the girls . He kept moving forward, did not look back. "I was never yours, Mierin. I will always belong to Ilyena." The Void quivered with sorrow and loss. And with desperation, as he fought something besides the scouring of saidin . For a moment he hung balanced. I am Rand al'Thor . And, Ilyena, ever and always my heart . Balanced on a razor edge. I am Rand al'Thor! Other thoughts tried to well up, a fountain of them, of Ilyena, of Mierin, of what he could do to defeat her. He forced them down, even the last. If he came down on the wrong side… I am Rand al'Thor! "Your name is Lanfear, and I'll die before I love one of the Forsaken."

Something that might have been anguish crossed her face; then it was a marble mask once more. "If you are not mine," she said coldly, "then you are dead."

Agony in his chest, as if his heart was about to explode, in his head, white-hot nails driving into his brain, pain so strong that inside the Void he wanted to scream. Death was there, and he knew it. Frantically — even in the Void, frantic; emptiness shimmered, dwindled — he wove Spirit and Fire and Earth, flailing it wildly. His heart was no longer beating. Fingers of dark pain crushing the Void. Gray veil falling over his eyes. He felt his weave slice raggedly through hers. The burn of breath in empty lungs, lurch of heart beginning to pump again. He could see again, silver and black flecks floated between him and a stone-faced Lanfear still catching her balance from the rebound of her flows. The pain was there in head and chest like wounds, but the Void firmed, and bodily pain was remote.

Well that it was distant, for he had no time to recover. Forcing himself to move forward, he struck at her with Air, a club to knock her senseless. She slashed the weave, and he struck again, again, again each time that she sliced through his last weave, a furious rain of blows she somehow saw and countered, always moving closer. If he could keep her occupied for a moment more, if one of those invisible cudgels landed on her head, if he could get close enough to strike her with his fist… Unconscious, she would be as helpless as anyone else.

Suddenly she seemed to realize what he was doing. Still blocking his blows as easily as if she could see every one, she danced backwards until her shoulders hit the wagon behind her. And she smiled like winter's heart. "You will die slowly, and beg me to let you love me before you die," she said.

It was not at him directly that she struck this time. It was at his link to saidin .

Panic rang the Void like a gong at the first knife-sharp touch, the Power diminishing as it slid deeper between him and the Source. With Spirit and Fire and Earth he cut at the knife blade; he knew where to find it; he knew where his link was, could feel that first nick. Her attempted shield vanished, reappeared, returned as fast as he could cut it, but always with that momentary ebbing of saidin , moments when it almost failed, leaving his counterstroke barely enough to foil her attack. Handling two weaves at once should have been easy — he could handle ten or more — but not when one was a desperate defense against something he could not know was there until it was almost too late. Not when another man's thoughts kept trying to surface inside the Void, trying to tell him how to defeat her. If he listened, it might be Lews Therin Telamon who walked away, with Rand al'Thor a voice sometimes floating in his head if that.

"I'll make both of those trulls watch you beg," Lanfear said. "But should I make them watch you die first, or you them?" When had she climbed into the open wagon-bed? He had to watch her, watch for any hint that she was tiring, her concentration slipping. It was a vain hope. Standing beside the twisted doorframe ter'angreal , she looked down at him, a queen about to pass sentence, yet she could spare time for chill smiles at a dark ivory bracelet that she turned over and over in her fingers. "Which will hurt you most, Lews Therin? I want you to hurt. I want you to know pain such as no man has ever known!"

The thicker the flow to him from the Source, the harder it would be to cut. His hand tightened on his coat pocket, the fat little stone man with his sword hard against the heron branded into his palm. He drew on saidin as deeply as he could, till the taint floated in the emptiness with him like misting rain.

"Pain, Lews Therin."

And there was pain, the world swallowed in agony. Not heart or head this time, but everywhere, every part of him, hot needles stabbing into the Void. He almost thought he could hear a quenching hiss at each thrust, and each came deeper than the last. Her attempts to shield him did not slow; they came faster, stronger. He could not believe she was so strong. Clinging to the Void, to searing, freezing saidin , he defended himself wildly. He could end it, finish her. He could call down lightning, or wrap her in the fire she herself had used to kill.