he must save Rands life one more time

A figure stood at the very top of the jagged, broken tip of the mountain. Perrin kept pressing onward. Someone needed to watch. Someone needed to be there when it happened.

Finally, Perrin heaved atop one last stone and found himself within a dozen feet of the top. He could make out the figure now. The man stood at the very heart of the vortex of winds, staring eastward, motionless. He was faint and translucent, a reflection of the real world. Like a shadow. Perrin had never seen anything like it.

It was Rand, of course. Perrin had known that it would be. Perrin held to the stone with one ragged hand and pulled his cloak close with the other-he'd created the cloak several cliff faces ago. He blinked through reddened eyes, gazing upward. He had to focus most of his concentration on pushing back some of the winds to keep himself from being flung out into the tempest.

"Rand!" Perrin bellowed. "Fight it! Rand!"

His voice was lost in the wind, and he doubted that Rand could have heard him anyway. The darkness continued to seep out, like a liquid tar coming through Rand's pores, creating a miasma of pitch around the Dragon Reborn. Within moments, Perrin could barely see Rand through the blackness. It enclosed him, cutting him off, banishing him. The Dragon Reborn was gone. Only evil remained.

"Rand, please . . ." Perrin whispered.

And then-from the midst of the blackness, from the center of the uproar and the tempest-a tiny sliver of light split through the evil. Like a candle's glow on a very dark night. The light shone upward, toward the distant sky, like a beacon. So frail.