Chapter 46: Fal Dara

The party emerges from the Ways into Shienar a few miles from Fal Dara. The country is dead from the bitter winter, and the farms they pass have been abandoned within the last week. At the gates, guards hail Lan as Dai Shan and shout for the Golden Crane to fly again. Inside the walls, Fal Dara is choked with farm folk and livestock who have fled the Trolloc raids.

Lord Agelmar receives them in the keep. He confirms that Trollocs have raided every Borderland through the winter, each kingdom too afraid to send help, and that Shienar will ride to Tarwin's Gap outnumbered ten to one. He pleads with Lan and Moiraine to stand with him, but Lan refuses—he is bound for the Blight as Moiraine's Warder, not as a Malkieri lord—and Moiraine tells Agelmar her own battle lies at the Eye of the World. Loial's presence, she hints, is part of how she means to find it.

Over supper, Ingtar brings in a filthy stranger caught scaling the wall. Rand, Mat, and Perrin recognize Padan Fain. He swings between whimpering that a man with burning eyes made him a hound and boasting to Agelmar that he can teach Shienar how to defeat the Dark One. Moiraine takes him aside to question him alone.