He was drawn toward that fortress nearby. Why did he feel he knew this place? He was in the Blight; the plants made that clear. If that wasn’t enough, he could smell rot in the air. The heat was like that of a bog in the summer—sweltering, oppressive despite the clouds.
He walked down the shallow hillside, and caught sight of some figures working nearby. Men with axes, hacking at trees. There were maybe a dozen of them. As Rand approached, he glanced to the side, and saw the nothing that was the Dark One in the distance, consuming part of the landscape, like a pit on the horizon. A reminder that what Rand was seeing wasn’t real?
He passed stumps of cut trees. Were the men gathering firewood? The thock, thock of axes—and the postures of the workers—had none of the steadfast strength Rand associated with woodsmen. The beats were lethargic, the men working with slumped shoulders.
That man on the left . . . As Rand grew closer, he recognized him, despite the bent posture and wrinkled skin. Light. Tam had to be at least seventy, perhaps eighty. Why was he out working so hard?
It’s a vision, Rand thought. A nightmare. The Dark One’s own creation. Not
real.
Yet, while standing within it, Rand found it difficult not to react as if this were indeed real. And it was, after a fashion. The Dark One used shadowed threads of the pattern—the possibilities that rippled from creation like waves from a dropped pebble in a pond—to create this.
"Father?" Rand asked.
Tam turned, but his eyes didn’t focus on Rand.
Rand took Tam by the shoulder. "Father!"
Tam stood dully for a moment, then went back to his work, raising his axe. Nearby, Dannil and Jori hacked at a stump. They had aged as well, and were now men well into their middle years. Dannil seemed sick with something awful, his face pale, his skin having broken out in some kind of sores.
Jori’s axe bit deep into the bitter earth, and a black flood seeped from the soil—insects that had been hiding at the base of the stump. The blade had pierced their lair.
The insects swarmed out and sped up the handle to cover Jori. He screamed, batting at them, but his open mouth let them climb inside. Rand had heard of such a thing, a deathswarm, one of the many dangers of the Blight. He raised a hand toward Jori, but the man slumped to the side, dead as quickly as a man could draw breath.
Tam yelled in horror and broke away, running. Rand spun as his father crashed into a thicket of brush nearby, trying to flee the deathswarm. Something jumped from a branch, quick as a snapping whip, and wrapped around Tams neck, jerking him to a halt.
"No!" Rand said. It wasn’t real. He still couldn’t watch his father die. He seized the Source, punching through the sickly darkness of the taint. It seemed to suffocate him, and Rand spent an excruciating time trying to find saidin. When he did grasp it, only a trickle came through.
He wove anyway, roaring, sending a ribbon of flame to kill the vine that had grabbed his father. Tam dropped from its grip as the vines writhed, dying.
Tam didn’t move. His eyes stared upward, dead.
"No!" Rand turned on the deathswarm. He destroyed it with a weave of Fire. Only seconds had passed, but all that remained of Jori was bones.
The insects popped as he burned them.
"A channeler", Dannil breathed, cowering nearby, eyes wide as he looked at Rand. Others of the woodsmen had fled into the wilderness. Rand heard several scream.
Rand could not stop himself from retching. The taint . . . it was so awful, so putrid. He could not hold to the Source any longer.
"Come", Dannil said, and grabbed Rand’s arm. "Come, I need you!"
"Dannil", Rand croaked, standing up. "You don’t recognize me?"
"Come", Dannil repeated, towing Rand toward the fortress.
"I’m Rand. Rand, Dannil. The Dragon Reborn".
No understanding shone in Dannil’s eyes.
"What has he done to you?" Rand whispered.
THEY DO NOT KNOW YOU, ADVERSARY. I HAVE REMADE THEM. ALL THINGS ARE MINE. THEY WILL NOT KNOW THAT THEY LOST. THEY WILL KNOW NOTHING BUT ME.
"I deny you", Rand whispered. "I deny you".
DENYING THE SUN DOES NOT MAKE IT SET. DENYING ME DOES NOT PREVENT MY VICTORY.
"Come", Dannil said, towing Rand. "Please. You must save me!"
"End this", Rand said.
END IT? THERE ARE NO ENDINGS, ADVERSARY. IT IS. I HAVE CREATED IT.
"You imagine it".
"Please", Dannil said.
Rand allowed himself to be pulled along toward the dark fortress. "What were you doing out there, Dannil?" Rand demanded. "Why gather wood in the Blight itself? It isn’t safe".
"It was our punishment", Dannil whispered. "Those who fail our master are sent out and told to bring back a tree they have cut down with their own hands. If the deathswarms or the twigs don’t get you, the sound of cutting wood draws other things . . ".
Rand frowned as they stepped onto a road leading to the town and its dark fortress. Yes, this place was familiar. The Quarry Road, Rand thought with surprise. And that ahead . . . The fortress dominated what had once been the Green at the center of Emond’s Field.
The Blight had consumed the Two Rivers.
The clouds overhead seemed to push down on Rand, and he heard Jori’s screams in his head. He again saw Tam struggling as he was strangled.
It isn’t real.
This was what would happen if Rand failed. So many people depended on him . . . so many. Some, he had already failed. He had to fight to keep from going over in his head the list of those who had died in his service. Even if he saved others, he had failed to protect these.
It was an attack of a different kind from the one that had tried to destroy his essence. Rand felt it, the Dark One forcing his tendrils into Rand, infecting his mind with worry, doubt, fear.
Dannil led him to the walls of the village where a pair of Myrddraal in unmoving cloaks guarded the gates. They slid forward. "You were sent to gather wood", one whispered with too-white lips.
"I . . . I brought this one!" Dannil said, stumbling away. "A gift for our master! He can channel. I found him for you!"
Rand growled, then plunged toward the One Power again, swimming in filth. He reached the trickle of saidin, seizing it.
It was immediately knocked from his grasp. A shield slid between him and the Source.
"It isn’t real", he whispered as he turned
