” Tears began spilling down her cheeks. There was an awful roar, and pieces of wood everywhere, and I recognized part of the chest, and. Gently he turned her over.īig dark eyes stared up at him. He did not care if it was Tarmon Gai’don. He could smell wood burning, hear men shouting and screaming, the clash of metal, the cacophony of battle. Halfway to Min he became aware of lightning bolts lancing out of the sky and fireballs exploding overhead. Desperately he wondered why no one came to her screams. The angular woman did not look at him or stop shrieking even when he knocked her over against the low stone coping of a well as he crawled past.
An instant of regret that it was not Galina or Erian he had stilled-he was not sure he had intended to do that Lews Therin had gone on at length about how he intended to sever every one of them who had imprisoned him Rand hoped it had been his own idea, however hasty-an instant, and he saw another shape stretched out on the ground beneath bits of the chest. She seemed untouched by all the splinters and pieces of the chest. The third, an angular woman, was on her knees staring at nothing, clutching her head in both hands and screaming. Two lay on the ground near him, apparently unconscious, one with a nasty gash bleeding across her forehead. He had to move more Aes Sedai would be coming. He was in a large clump of scattered trees, with broad shafts of sunlight filtering through nearly leafless branches he was shocked to realize it was still daylight, maybe even midday. Emptiness buffered emotion, but something close to panic tried to wriggle creepers into the Void. It was a distant screaming, someone else’s body in pain, but he could not make that body move faster however strong saidin made him feel. Muscles beaten twice a day for he did not know how long, crammed into a chest every day, those muscles screamed as he gritted his teeth and slowly pushed up to hands and knees. Rand knew he had to move even more quickly now, move quickly and violently, but at first he struggled to move at all. The chest exploded away from him with a loud boom.įree, Lews Therin breathed, and it was an echo of Rand’s thought.
Before he even finished with the fists of Spirit, he channeled Air. Aside from that, he still could only channel where he could see, and all he could see, dimly, was the inside of the chest, what he could glimpse of it with his head forced between his knees. The Power filled him, and as it did, he seized at those three soft points, crushing them ruthlessly in fists of Spirit. Suddenly it tore apart before him like rotted cloth. It gave as he pressed, bending under his pressure, bending, bending. When he reached for saidin, the invisible barrier was still there, but it no longer seemed stone or brick.