And suddenly Rand was in another Heart of the Stone, surrounded by columns still whole, and fighting men screaming and dying, veiled men and men in breastplates and helmets. Moiraine still lay crumpled at the base of a redstone column. And at Rand’s feet lay the body of a man, sprawled on its back with a hole burned through the chest. He might have been a handsome man in his middle years, except that where his eyes and mouth should have been were only pits from which rose tendrils of black smoke.

I have done it, he thought. I have killed Ba’alzamon, killed Shai’tan! I have won the Last Battle! Light, I AM the Dragon Reborn! The breaker of nations, the Breaker of the World. No! I will END the breaking, end the killing! I will MAKE it end!

He raised Callandor above his head. Silver lightning crackled from the blade, jagged streaks arching toward the great dome above. “Stop!” he shouted. The fighting ceased; men stared at him in wonder, over black veils, from beneath the rims of round helmets. “I am Rand al’Thor!” he called, so his voice rang through the chamber. “I am the Dragon Reborn!” Callandor shone in his grasp.

One by one, veiled men and helmeted, they knelt to him, crying, “The Dragon is Reborn! The Dragon is Reborn!”

CHAPTER
56

People of the Dragon

Throughout the city of Tear people woke with the dawn, speaking of the dreams they had had, dreams of the Dragon battling Ba’alzamon in the Heart of the Stone, and when their eyes rose to the great fortress of the Stone, they beheld a banner waving from its greatest height. Across a field of white flowed a sinuous form like a great serpent scaled in scarlet and gold, but with a golden lion’s mane and four legs, each tipped with five golden claws. Men came, stunned and frightened, from the Stone to speak in hushed tones of what had happened in the night, and men and women thronged the streets, weeping as they shouted the fulfillment of Prophecy.

“The Dragon!” they shouted. “Al’Thor! The Dragon! Al’Thor!”

Peering through an arrowslit high on the side of the Stone, Mat shook his head as he listened to the chorus rising out of the city in waves. Well, maybe he is. He was still having a hard enough time coming to grips with Rand really being there.