Chapter 16: In the Mirror of Darkness

Pressing south through the washed-out mirror world, Rand, Loial, and Hurin reach a great spire where Hawkwing's victory monument should stand. Its face bears Trolloc band markings and a slain hawk pierced by lightning. Loial guesses this is a world where the Trollocs won.

Worse, Kinslayer's Dagger already looms ahead, though it lies more than a hundred leagues south of where they entered. Loial suggests the place works like the Ways. Rand resolves to be careful from here on.

Screams pull Rand to a stream where a woman fights off a grolm, a frog-hided three-eyed beast. He drops into the void and kills it with an arrow through its central eye. The woman is Selene, a Cairhienin noblewoman, and she names the void the Oneness.

Selene knows far more than she should about these reflected worlds and a book called Mirrors of the Wheel. She heals Rand's branded palm with a salve and presses him to take her to a nearby Portal Stone so she can return to Cairhien. Rand refuses to touch saidin and insists on following the Horn first. As they argue, five grolm crest a hill and bound toward them.