The Eye Of The World (The Wheel of Time)

He edged Red closer to the gap. As far down as he could thrust his lantern on its pole, there was nothing. Blackness below as blackness above, shearing off the light. If there was a bottom, it could be a thousand feet down. Or never. But on the other side, he could see what was under the bridge, holding it up. Nothing. Less than a span in thickness, and absolutely nothing underneath.

Abruptly the stone under his feet seemed as thin as paper, and the endless drop over the edge pulled at him. The lantern and pole seemed suddenly heavy enough to pull him right out of the saddle. Head spinning, he backed the bay away from the abyss as cautiously as he had approached.

“Is it to this you’ve brought us, Aes Sedai?” Nynaeve said. “All this just to find out we have to go back to Caemlyn after all?”

“We do not have to go back,” Moiraine said. “Not all the way to Caemlyn. There are many paths along the Ways to any place. We need only go back far enough for Loial to find another path that will lead to Fal Dara. Loial? Loial!”

The Ogier pulled himself away from staring at the gap with a visible effort. “What? Oh. Yes, Aes Sedai. I can find another path. I had....” His eyes drifted back to the chasm, and his ears twitched. “I had not dreamed the decay had gone so far. If the bridges themselves are breaking, it may be that I cannot find the path you want. It may be that I cannot find a path back, either. The bridges could be falling behind us even now.”

“There has to be a way,” Perrin said, his voice flat. His eyes seemed to gather the light, to glow golden. A wolf at bay, Rand thought, startled. That’s what he looks like.

“It will be as the Wheel weaves,” Moiraine said, “but I do not believe the decay is as fast as you fear. Look at the stone, Loial. Even I can tell that this is an old break.”

“Yes,” Loial said slowly. “Yes, Aes Sedai. I can see it. There is no rain or wind here, but that stone has been in the air for ten years, at least.” He nodded with a relieved grin, so happy with the discovery that for a moment he seemed to forget his fear. Then he looked around and shrugged uncomfortably. “I could find other paths more easily than Mafal Dadaranell. Tar Valon, for instance? Or Stedding Shangtai. It’s only three bridges to Stedding Shangtai from the last Island. I suppose the Elders want to talk to me by this time.”

“Fal Dara, Loial,” Moiraine said firmly. “The Eye of the World lies beyond Fal Dara, and we must reach the Eye.”

“Fal Dara,” the Ogier agreed reluctantly.

Back at the Island Loial pored over the script-covered slab intently, drooping eyebrows drawn down as he muttered half to himself. Soon he was talking completely to himself, for he dropped into the Ogier language. That inflected tongue sounded like deep-voiced birds singing. It seemed odd to Rand that a people so big had such a musical language.

Finally the Ogier nodded. As he led them to the chosen bridge, he turned to peer forlornly at the signpost beside another. “Three crossings to Stedding Shangtai.” He sighed. But he took them on past without stopping and turned onto the third bridge beyond. He looked back regretfully as they started across, though the bridge to his home was hidden in the dark.

Rand took the bay up beside the Ogier. “When this is over, Loial, you show me your stedding, and I’ll show you Emond’s Field. No Ways, though. We’ll walk, or ride, if it takes all summer.”

“You believe it will ever be over, Rand?”

He frowned at the Ogier. “You said it would take two days to reach Fal Dara.”

“Not the Ways, Rand. All the rest.” Loial looked over his shoulder at the Aes Sedai, talking softly with Lan as they rode side-by-side. “What makes you believe it will ever be over?”

The bridges and ramps led up and down and across. Sometimes a white line ran off into the dark from the Guiding, just like the line they had followed from the Waygate in Caemlyn. Rand saw that he was not the only one who eyed those lines curiously, and a little wistfully. Nynaeve, Perrin, Mat, and even Egwene left the lines reluctantly. There was a Waygate at the other end of each of them, a gate back into the world, where there was sky and sun and wind. Even the wind would have been welcome. Leave them they did, under the Aes Sedai’s sharp eye. But Rand was not the only one to look back even after dark swallowed Island and Guiding and line.

Rand was yawning by the time Moiraine announced that they would stop for the night on one of the Islands. Mat looked at the blackness all around them and snickered loudly, but he got down as quickly as anyone else. Lan and the boys unsaddled and hobbled the horses while Nynaeve and Egwene set up a small oil stove to make tea. Looking like the base of a lantern, it was what Lan said Warders used in the Blight, where the wood could be dangerous to burn. The Warder produced tripod legs from the baskets they took off the packhorse, so the lantern poles could be set in a circle around their campsite.

Loial examined the Guiding for a moment, then dropped down cross-legged and rubbed a hand across the dusty, pockmarked stone. “Once things grew on the Islands,” he said sadly. “All the books tell of it. There was green grass to sleep on, soft as any feather bed. Fruit trees to spice the food you’d brought with an apple or a pear or a bellfruit, sweet and crisp and juicy whatever the time of year outside.”

“Nothing to hunt,” Perrin growled, then looked surprised that he had spoken.

Egwene handed Loial a cup of tea. He held it without drinking, staring at it as if he could find the fruit trees in its depths.

“Aren’t you going to set wards?” Nynaeve asked Moiraine. “Surely there must be worse than rats in this. Even if I haven’t seen anything, I can still feel.”

The Aes Sedai rubbed her fingers against her palms distastefully. “You feel the taint, the corruption of the Power that made the Ways. I will not use the One Power in the Ways unless I must. The taint is so strong that whatever I tried to do would surely be corrupted.”

That made everyone as silent as Loial. Lan settled down to his meal methodically, as if he were stoking a fire, the food less important than fueling his body. Moiraine ate well, too, and as tidily as if they were not squatting on bare stone quite literally in the middle of nowhere, but Rand only picked at his food. The tiny flame of the oil stove gave just enough heat to boil water, but he crouched toward it as if he could soak up warmth. His shoulders brushed Mat and Perrin. They all made a tight circle around the stove. Mat held his bread and meat and cheese forgotten in his hands, and Perrin set his tin plate down after only a few bites. The mood became more and more glum, and everyone looked down, avoiding the dark around them.

Moiraine studied them as she ate. Finally she put her plate aside and patted her lips with a napkin. “I can tell you one cheerful thing. I do not think Thom Merrilin is dead.”

Rand looked at her sharply. “But ... the Fade....”

“Mat told me what happened in Whitebridge,” the Aes Sedai said. “People there mentioned a gleeman, but they said nothing of him dying. They would have, I think, if a gleeman had been killed. Whitebridge is not so big as for a gleeman to be a small thing. And Thom is a part of the Pattern that weaves itself around you three. Too important a part, I believe, to be cut off yet.”

Too important? Rand thought. How could Moiraine know ... ? “Min? She saw something about Thom?”

“She saw a great deal,” Moiraine said wryly. “About all of you. I wish I could understand half of what she saw, but even she does not. Old barriers fail. But whether what Min does is old or new, she sees true. Your fates are bound together. Thom Merrilin’s, too.”

Nynaeve gave a dismissive sniff and poured herself another cup of tea.

“I don’t see how she saw anything about any of us,” Mat said with a grin. “As I remember it, she spent most of her time looking at Rand.”

Egwene raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You didn’t tell me that, Moiraine Sedai.”

Rand glanced at her. She was not looking at him, but her tone had been too carefully neutral. “I talked to her once,” he said. “She dresses like a boy, and her hair is as short as mine.”

“You talked to her. Once.” Egwene nodded slowly. Still not looking at him, she raised her cup to her lips.

“Min was just somebody who worked at the inn in Baerlon,” Perrin said. “Not like Aram.”

Egwene choked on her tea. “Too hot,” she muttered.

“Who’s Aram?” Rand asked. Perrin smiled, much like Mat’s smile in the old days when he was up to mischief, and hid behind his cup.

“One of the Traveling People,” Egwene said casually, but red spots bloomed in her cheeks.

“One of the Traveling People,” Perrin said blandly. “He dances. Like a bird. Wasn’t that what you said, Egwene? It was like flying with a bird?”

Egwene set her cup down deliberately. “I don’t know if anyone else is tired, but I’m going to sleep.”

As she rolled herself up in her blankets, Perrin reached over to nudge Rand in the ribs and winked. Rand found himself grinning back. Burn me, if I didn’t come out best for a change. I wish I knew as much about women as Perrin.

“Maybe, Rand,” Mat said slyly, “you ought to tell Egwene about Farmer Grinwell’s daughter, Else.” Egwene lifted her head to stare first at Mat, then at him.

He hastily got up to fetch his own blankets. “Sleep sounds good to me right now.”

All the Emond’s Field people began seeking their blankets then, and Loial, too. Moiraine sat sipping her tea. And Lan. The Warder did not look as if he ever intended to sleep, or needed to.

Even rolled up for sleep, no one wanted to get very far from the others. They made a small circle of blanket-covered mounds right around the stove, almost touching one another.

“Rand,” Mat whispered, “was there anything between you and Min? I barely got a look at her. She was pretty, but she must be nearly as old as Nynaeve.”

“What about this Else?” Perrin added from the other side of him. “She pretty?”

“Blood and ashes,” he mumbled, “can’t I even talk to a girl? You two are as bad as Egwene.”

“As the Wisdom would say,” Mat chided mockingly, “watch your tongue. Well, if you won’t talk about it, I’m going to get some sleep.”

“Good,” Rand grumbled. “That’s the first decent thing you’ve said.”

Sleep was not easily come by, though. The stone was hard, however Rand lay, and he could feel the pits through his blanket. There was no way to imagine he was anywhere but in the Ways, made by the men who had broken the world, tainted by the Dark One. He kept picturing the broken bridge, and the nothing under it.

When he turned one way he found Mat looking at him; looking through him, really. Mocking was forgotten when the dark around them was remembered. He rolled the other way, and Perrin had his eyes open, too. Perrin’s face was less afraid than Mat’s, but he had his hands on his chest, tapping his thumbs together worriedly.

Moiraine made a circuit of them, kneeling by each person’s head and bending down to speak softly. Rand could not hear what she said to Perrin, but it made his thumbs stop. When she bent over Rand, her face almost touching his, she said in a low, comforting voice, “Even here, your destiny protects you. Not even the Dark One can change the Pattern completely. You are safe from him, so long as I am close. Your dreams are safe. For a time, yet, they are safe.”

As she passed from him to Mat, he wondered if she thought it was that simple, that she could tell him he was safe and he would believe it. But somehow he did feel safe—safer, at least. Thinking that, he drifted into sleep and did not dream.

Lan woke them. Rand wondered if the Warder had slept; he did not look tired, not even as tired as those who had laid some hours on the hard stone. Moiraine allowed enough time to make tea, but only one cup apiece. They ate breakfast in the saddle, Loial and the Warder leading. It was the same meal as the others, bread and meat and cheese. Rand thought it would be easy to get tired of bread and meat and cheese.

Not long after the last crumb was licked off a finger, Lan said quietly, “Someone is following us. Or something.” They were in the middle of a bridge, both ends of it hidden.

Mat jerked an arrow from his quiver and, before anyone could stop him, loosed it in the dark behind them.

“I knew I shouldn’t have done this,” Loial muttered. “Never deal with an Aes Sedai except in a stedding.”

Lan pushed the bow down before Mat could nock another. “Stop that, you village idiot. There’s no way to tell who it is.”

“That’s the only place they’re safe,” the Ogier went on.

“What else would be in a place like this besides something evil?” Mat demanded.

“That’s what the Elders say, and I should have listened to them.”

“We are, for one,” the Warder said dryly.

“Maybe it’s another traveler,” Egwene said hopefully. “An Ogier, perhaps.”

“Ogier have more sense than to use the Ways,” Loial growled. “All but Loial, who has no sense at all. Elder Haman always said it, and it’s true.”

“What do you feel, Lan?” Moiraine asked. “Is it something that serves the Dark One?”

The Warder shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he said as if that surprised him. “I cannot tell. Perhaps it’s the Ways, and the taint. It all feels wrong. But whoever it is, or whatever, he’s not trying to catch us. He almost caught up at the last Island and scampered back across the bridge so as not to. If I fall behind, I might surprise him though, and see who, or what, he is.”

“If you fall behind, Warder,” Loial said firmly, “you’ll spend the rest of your life in the Ways. Even if you can read Ogier, I have never heard or read of a human who could find his path off the first Island lacking an Ogier guide. Can you read Ogier?”

Lan shook his head again, and Moiraine said, “So long as he does not trouble us, we will not trouble him. We have no time. No time.”

As they rode off the bridge onto the next Island, Loial said, “If I remember the last Guiding correctly, there is a path from here that leads toward Tar Valon. Half a day’s journey at most. Not quite as long as it will take us to reach Mafal Dadaranell. I’m sure that—”

He cut off as the light of their lanterns reached the Guiding. Near the top of the slab, deeply chiseled lines, sharp and angular, made wounds in the stone. Suddenly Lan’s alertness was no longer hidden. He remained easily erect in his saddle, but Rand had the sudden impression that the Warder could feel everything around him, even feel the rest of them breathing. Lan began circling his stallion around the Guiding, spiraling outward. He rode as if he were ready to be attacked, or to attack himself.

“This explains much,” Moiraine said softly, “and it makes me afraid. So much. I should have guessed. The taint, the decay. I should have guessed.”

“Guessed what?” Nynaeve demanded just as Loial asked, “What is it? Who did this? I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it.”

The Aes Sedai faced them calmly. “Trollocs.” She ignored their frightened gasps. “Or Fades. Those are Trolloc runes. The Trollocs have discovered how to enter the Ways. That must be how they got to the Two Rivers undiscovered; through the Waygate at Manetheren. There is at least one Waygate in the Blight.” She glanced toward Lan before continuing; the Warder was far enough away that only the faint light of his lantern could be seen. “Manetheren was destroyed, but almost nothing can destroy a Waygate. That is how the Fades could gather a small army around Caemlyn without raising an alarm in every nation between the Blight and Andor.” Pausing, she touched her lips thoughtfully. “But they cannot know all the paths yet, else they would have been pouring into Caemlyn through the gate we used. Yes.”

Rand shivered. Walking through the Waygate to find Trollocs waiting in the dark, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, twisted giants with half-animal faces snarling as they leaped forward in the blackness to kill. Or worse.

“They don’t use the Ways easily,” Lan called. His lantern was no more than twenty spans off, but the light of it was only a dim, fuzzy ball that seemed very distant to those around the Guiding. Moiraine led the way to him. Rand wished his stomach were empty when he saw what the Warder had found.

At the foot of one of the bridges the frozen shapes of Trollocs reared, caught flailing about them with hooked axes and scythe-like swords. Gray and pitted like the stone, the huge bodies were half sunken in the swollen, bubbled surface. Some of the bubbles had burst, revealing more snouted faces, forever snarling with fear. Rand heard someone retching behind him, and swallowed hard to keep from joining whoever it was. Even for Trollocs it had been a horrible way to die.

A few feet beyond the Trollocs the bridge ended. The signpost lay shattered into a thousand shards.

Loial got down from his horse gingerly, eyeing the Trollocs, as if he thought they might come back to life. He examined the remains of the signpost hurriedly, picking out the metal script that had been inlaid in the stone, then scrambled back into his saddle. “This was the first bridge of the path from here to Tar Valon,” he said.

Mat was scrubbing the back of his hand across his mouth, with his head turned away from the Trollocs. Egwene hid her face in her hands. Rand moved his horse close to Bela and touched her shoulder. She twisted around and clutched him, shuddering. He wanted to shudder, too; her holding him was the only thing that kept him from it.

“As well we are not going to Tar Valon yet,” Moiraine said.

Nynaeve rounded on the Aes Sedai. “How can you take it so calmly? The same could happen to us!”

“Perhaps,” Moiraine said serenely, and Nynaeve ground her teeth so hard Rand could hear them grate. “It is more likely, though,” Moiraine went on, unruffled, “that the men, the Aes Sedai, who made the Ways protected them, building in traps for creatures of the Dark One. It is something they must have feared then, before the Halfmen and Trollocs had been driven into the Blight. In any case, we cannot tarry here, and whatever way we choose, back or ahead, is as likely to have a trap as any other. Loial, do you know the next bridge?”

“Yes. Yes, they did not ruin that part of the Guiding, thank the Light.” For the first time Loial seemed as eager to go on as Moiraine did. He had his big horse moving before he finished speaking.

Egwene clung to Rand’s arm for two more bridges. He regretted it when she finally let go with a murmured apology and a forced laugh, and not just because it had felt good having her hold onto him that way. It was easier to be brave, he discovered, when someone needed your protection.

Moiraine might not have believed a trap could be set for them, but for all the haste she spoke of, she made them travel more slowly than before, pausing before letting them onto any bridge, or off one onto an Island. She would step Aldieb forward, feeling the air in front of her with an outstretched hand, and not even Loial, or Lan, was allowed to go ahead until she gave permission.

Rand had to trust her judgment about traps, but he peered into the darkness around them as if he could actually see anything more than ten feet away, and strained his ears listening. If Trollocs could use the Ways, then whatever was following them could be another creature of the Dark One. Or more than one. Lan had said he could not tell in the Ways. But as they crossed bridge after bridge, ate a midday meal riding, and crossed still more bridges, all he could hear were their own saddles creaking, and the horses’ hooves, and sometimes one of the others coughing, or muttering to himself. Later there was a distant wind, too, off in the black somewhere. He could not say in which direction. At first he thought it was his imagination, but with time he became sure.

Suddenly he blinked. “Loial, didn’t you say there isn’t any wind in the Ways?”

Loial pulled his horse up just short of the next Island and cocked his head to listen. Slowly his face paled, and he licked his lips. “Machin Shin,” he whispered hoarsely. “The Black Wind. The Light illumine and protect us. It’s the Black Wind.”

“How many more bridges?” Moiraine asked sharply. “Loial, how many more bridges?”

“Two. I think, two.”

“Quickly, then,” she said, trotting Aldieb onto the Island. “Find it quickly!”

Loial talked to himself, or to anyone who was listening, while he read the Guiding. “They came out mad, screaming about Machin Shin. Light help us! Even those Aes Sedai could heal, they....” He scanned the stone hastily, and galloped toward the chosen bridge with a shouted, “This way!”

This time Moiraine did not wait to check. She urged them on to a gallop, the bridge trembling beneath the horses, lanterns swinging wildly overhead. Loial ran his eyes over the next Guiding and wheeled his big mount around like a racer almost before it had stopped. The sound of the wind became louder. Rand could hear it even over the pounding of hooves on stone. Behind them, and gusting closer.

They did not bother with the last Guiding. As soon as the light of the lanterns caught the white line running from it, they swung in that direction, still galloping. The Island vanished behind, and there was only the pitted, gray stone underfoot and the white line. Rand was breathing so hard he was no longer sure if he could hear the wind.

Out of the darkness the gates appeared, vine-carved and standing alone in the black like a tiny piece of wall in the night. Moiraine leaned out of her saddle, reaching toward the carvings, and suddenly pulled back. “The Avendesora leaf is not here!” she said. “The key is gone!”

“Light!” Mat shouted. “Bloody Light!” Loial threw back his head and gave a mournful cry, like a howl of dying.

Egwene touched Rand’s arm. Her lips trembled, but she only looked at him. He put his hand on top of hers, hoping he did not look more frightened than she did. He felt it. Back toward the Guiding, the wind howled. He almost thought he could hear voices in it, voices screaming vileness that, even half understood, brought bile up in his throat.

Moiraine raised her staff and flame lanced from the end of it. It was not the pure, white flame that Rand remembered from Emond’s Field, and the battle before Shadar Logoth. Sickly yellow streaked through the fire, and slow-drifting flecks of black, like soot. A thin, acrid smoke drifted from the flame, setting Loial coughing and the horses dancing nervously, but Moiraine thrust it at the gates. The smoke rasped Rand’s throat and burned his nose.

Stone melted like butter, leaf and vine withering in the flame and vanishing. The Aes Sedai moved the fire as fast as she could, but cutting an opening big enough for everyone to get through was no quick task. To Rand, it seemed as if the line of melted stone crept along its arc at a snail’s pace. His cloak stirred, as if caught by the edge of a breeze, and his heart froze.

“I can feel it,” Mat said, his voice quavering. “Light, I can bloody feel it!”

The flame winked out, and Moiraine lowered her staff. “Done,” she said. “Half done.”

A thin line ran across the stone carving. Rand thought he could see light—dim, but still light—through the crack. But despite the cutting, the two big, curved wedges of stone still stood there, half an arc out of each door. The opening would be big enough for everyone to ride through, though Loial might have to lie flat on his horse’s back. Once the two wedges of stone were gone, it would be big enough. He wondered how much each weighed. A thousand pounds? More? Maybe if we all get down and push. Maybe we can push one of them over before the wind gets here. A gust tugged at his cloak. He tried not to listen to what the voices cried.

As Moiraine stepped back, Mandarb leaped forward, straight toward the gates, Lan crouched in the saddle. At the last instant the warhorse twisted to catch the stone with his shoulder, just as he had been taught to catch other horses in battle. With a crash the stone toppled outward, and the Warder and his horse were carried by their momentum through the smoky shimmer of a Waygate. The light that came through was mid-morning light, pale and thin, but it seemed to Rand as if the noonday summer sun blazed in his face.

On the far side of the gate Lan and Mandarb slowed to a crawl, stumbling in slow motion as the Warder reined back around toward the gate. Rand did not wait. Pushing Bela’s head toward the opening, he slapped the shaggy mare hard on the croup. Egwene had just enough time to throw a startled look over her shoulder at him before Bela carried her out of the Ways.

“All of you, out!” Moiraine directed. “Quickly! Go!”

As she spoke, the Aes Sedai thrust her staff out at arm’s length, pointed back toward the Guiding. Something leaped from the end of the staff, like liquid light rendered to a syrup of fire, a blazing spear of white and red and yellow, streaking into the black, exploding, coruscating like shattered diamonds. The wind shrieked in agony; it screamed in rage. The thousand murmurs that hid in the wind roared like thunder, roars of madness, half-heard voices cackling and howling promises that twisted Rand’s stomach as much by the pleasure in them as by what he almost understood them to say.

He booted Red forward, crowding into the opening, squeezing after the others, all forcing through the smoky glistening at once. The icy chill ran through him again, the peculiar sensation of being slowly lowered facedown into a winter pond, the cold water crawling across his skin by infinitesimal increments. Just as before it seemed to go on forever, while his mind raced, wondering if the wind could catch them while they were held like that.

As suddenly as a pricked bubble the chill vanished, and he was outside. His horse, for one abrupt instant moving twice as fast as he had been, stumbled and almost pitched him over his head. He threw both arms around the bay’s neck and hung on for dear life. While he got back into the saddle, Red shook himself, then trotted over to join the others as calmly as if nothing at all odd had happened. It was cold, not the chill of the Waygate, but welcome, natural winter-cold that slowly, steadily burrowed into flesh.

He pulled his cloak around him, his eyes on the dull glimmer of the Waygate. Beside him Lan leaned forward in his saddle, one hand on his sword; man and horse were tensed, as if on the point of charging back through if Moiraine did not appear.

The Waygate stood in a jumble of stones at the base of a hill, hidden by bushes except where the falling pieces had broken down the bare, brown branches. Alongside the carvings on the remains of the gates, the brush looked more lifeless than the stone.

Slowly the murky surface bulged like some strange, long bubble rising to the surface of a pond. Moiraine’s back broke through the bubble. Inchmeal, the Aes Sedai and her dim reflection backed out of each other. She still held her staff out in front of her, and she kept it there as she drew Aldieb out of the Waygate after her, the white mare dancing with fear, eyes rolling. Still watching the Waygate, Moiraine backed away.

The Waygate darkened. The hazy shimmer became murkier, sinking through gray to charcoal, then to black as deep as the heart of the Ways. As if from a great distance the wind howled at them, hidden voices filled with an unquenchable thirst for living things, filled with a hunger for pain, filled with frustration.

The voices seemed to whisper in Rand’s ears, right at the brink of understanding, and within it. Flesh so fine, so fine to tear, to gash the skin; skin to strip, to plait, so nice to plait the strips, so nice, so red the drops that fall; blood so red, so red, so sweet; sweet screams, pretty screams, singing screams, scream your song, sing your screams....

The whispers drifted, the blackness lessened, faded, and the Waygate was again a murky shimmer seen through an arch of carved stone.

Rand let out a long, shuddering breath. He was not the only one; he heard other relieved exhalations. Egwene had Bela alongside Nynaeve’s horse, and the two women had their arms around each other, their heads on each other’s shoulders. Even Lan seemed relieved, though the hard planes of his face showed nothing; it was more in the way he sat Mandarb, a loosening of the shoulders as he looked at Moiraine, a tilt of the head.

“It could not pass,” Moiraine said. “I thought it could not; I hoped it could not. Faugh!” She tossed her staff on the ground and scrubbed her hand on her cloak. Char, thick and black, marked the staff for over half its length. “The taint corrupts everything in that place.”

“What was that?” Nynaeve demanded. “What was it?”

Loial appeared confused. “Why, Machin Shin, of course. The Black Wind that steals souls.”

“But what is it?” Nynaeve persisted. “Even with a Trolloc, you can look at it, touch it if you have a strong stomach. But that....” She gave a convulsive shiver.

“Something left from the Time of Madness, perhaps,” Moiraine replied. “Or even from the War of the Shadow, the War of Power. Something hiding in the Ways so long it can no longer get out. No one, not even among the Ogier, knows how far the Ways run, or how deep. It could even be something of the Ways themselves. As Loial said, the Ways are living things, and all living things have parasites. Perhaps even a creature of the corruption itself, something born of the decay. Something that hates life and light.”

“Stop!” Egwene cried. “I don’t want to hear any more. I could hear it, saying....” She cut off, shivering.

“There is worse to be faced yet,” Moiraine said softly. Rand did not think she meant it to be heard.

The Aes Sedai climbed into her saddle wearily and settled there with a grateful sigh. “This is dangerous,” she said, looking at the broken gates. Her charred staff received only a glance. “The thing cannot get out, but anyone could wander in. Agelmar must send men to wall it up, once we reach Fal Dara.” She pointed to the north, to towers in the misty distance above the barren treetops.