Page 13 of Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time 13)

The creature that had been Padan Fain fingered his beautiful dagger, feeling the ridges of the designs in the fine golden wire that wrapped its hilt. A large ruby capped the end of its hilt, and he carried the weapon unsheathed in his right hand so that the blade extended between his first two fingers. The sides of those fingers had been cut a dozen times over.

Blood dripped from the tip of the dagger down onto the weeds. Crimson spots to cheer him. Red below, black above. Perfect. Did his hatred cause that storm? It must be so. Yes.

The drops of blood fell alongside spots of darkness that appeared on dead leaves and stems as he moved farther north into the Blight.

He was mad. That was good. When you accepted madness into yourself embraced it and drank it in as if it were sunlight or water or

the air itself it became another part of you. Like a hand or an eye. You could see by madness. You could hold things with madness. It was wonderful. Liberating.

He was finally free.

The creature that had been Mordeth reached the bottom of the hill and did not look back at the large, purplish mass that he'd left atop it. Worms were very messy to kill the right way, but some things needed to be done the right way. It was the principle of the thing.

Mist had begun to trail him, creeping up from the ground. Was that mist his madness, or was it his hatred? It was so familiar. It twisted around his ankles and licked at his heels.

Something peeked around a hillside nearby, then ducked back. Worms died loudly. Worms did everything loudly. A pack of Worms could destroy an entire legion. When you heard them, you went the other way, quickly. But then, it could be advantageous to send scouts to go judge the direction of the pack, lest you continue on and run across it again elsewhere.

So the creature that had been Padan Fain was not surprised when he rounded the hillside and found a nervous group of Trollocs there, a Myrddraal guiding them.

He smiled. My friends. It had been too long.

It took a moment for their brutish brains to come to the obvious but false conclusion: If a man was wandering around, then Worms couldn't be near. Those would have smelled his blood and come for him. Worms preferred humans over Trollocs. That made sense. The creature that had been Mordeth had tasted both, and Trolloc flesh had little to recommend it.

The Trollocs tore forward in a mismatched pack, feathers, beaks, claws, teeth, tusks. The creature that had been Fain stood still, mist licking his unshod feet. How wonderful! At the very back of the group, the Myrddraal hesitated, its eyeless gaze fixed on him. Perhaps it sensed that something was terribly, terribly wrong. And right, of course. You couldn't be one without the other. That wouldn't make sense.

The creature that had been Mordeth he would need a new name soon smiled deeply.

The Myrddraal turned to run away.

The mist struck.

It rolled over the Trollocs, moving quickly, like the tentacles of a leviathan in the Aryth Ocean. Lengths of it snapped forward through Trolloc chests. One long rope whipped above their heads, then shot forward in a blur, taking the Fade in the neck.

The Trollocs screamed, dropping, spasming. Their hair fell out in patches, and their skin began to boil. Blisters and cysts. When those popped, they left craterlike pocks in the Shadowspawn skin, like bubbles on the surface of metal that cooled too quickly.

The creature that had been Padan Fain opened his mouth in glee, closing his eyes to the tumultuous black sky and raising his face, lips parted, enjoying his feast. After it passed, he sighed, holding his dagger tighter cutting his flesh.

Red below, black above. Red and black, red and black, so much red and black. Wonderful.

He walked on through the Blight.

The corrupted Trollocs climbed to their feet behind him, lurching into motion, spittle dropping from their lips. Their eyes had grown sluggish and dull, but when he desired it, they would respond with a frenzied battle lust that would surpass what they had known in life.

He left the Myrddraal. It would not rise, as rumors said they did. His touch now brought instant death to one of its kind. Pity. He had a few nails he might have otherwise put to good use.

Perhaps he should get some gloves. But if he did, he couldn't cut his hand. What a problem.

No matter. Onward. The time had come to kill al'Thor.

It saddened him that the hunt must end. But there was no longer a reason for a hunt. You didn't hunt something when you knew exactly where it was going to be. You merely showed up to meet it.

Like an old friend. A dear, beloved old friend that you were going to stab through the eye, open up at the gut and consume by handfuls while drinking his blood. That was the proper way to treat friends.

It was an honor.

Malenarin Rai shuffled through supply reports. That blasted shutter on the window behind his desk snapped and blew open again, letting in the damp heat of the Blight.

Despite ten years serving as commander of Heeth Tower, he hadn't grown accustomed to the heat in the highlands. Damp. Muggy, the air often full of rotting scents.