Chapter 45: What Follows in Shadow

The party finds a bridge collapsed into the black, and Loial backtracks to find another path toward Fal Dara. Resting on an Island, Moiraine tells them Thom Merrilin is likely still alive—Whitebridge would have spoken of a gleeman's death—and that the Pattern binds his fate to the boys'.

Lan senses something following them through the Ways, but cannot tell whether it serves the Dark One. Moiraine refuses to use the One Power inside the Ways. The taint would corrupt anything she tried.

At the next Guiding they find Trolloc runes carved into the stone, and a bridge ending in a knot of Trollocs frozen mid-charge in the swollen rock. Trollocs have been using the Ways. That is how a force reached the Two Rivers through the long-buried Waygate at Manetheren, and how Halfmen massed an army near Caemlyn unseen.

Then a wind rises behind them, and Loial names it: Machin Shin, the Black Wind that steals souls. They race for the Fal Dara gate only to find the Avendesora leaf key gone. Moiraine cuts through the stone with a sickly, taint-fouled flame, and Lan drives Mandarb shoulder-first through the weakened gate to topple it. The party rides out into winter daylight, and Moiraine holds the Wind back at the threshold. It cannot follow.