The Silk Road

Hurin leads them to the Defender of the Dragonwall, where Rand settles to wait, it being the one place Ingtar might find them.

In a Foregate hall Rand follows a voice he never expected to hear again, and is told to look for the Bunch of Grapes.

Alone with Thom at the Bunch of Grapes, Rand asks what the Prophecies of the Dragon really say.

Back at the Defender of the Dragonwall, the innkeeper hands Rand another sealed letter in a flowing hand.

Cornered with Selene inside the Illuminators' walls, Rand grabs a smouldering stick and turns a firework tube on the Trollocs.

Coming back from another useless visit to the gate, Rand sees smoke rising over the rooftops near his inn.

Back together after the fire, Rand tells his tale at the Great Tree while Hurin is out on the trail.

Invited to Barthanes's manor, Rand plays the lord among Cairhienin nobles while Mat and Hurin search below stairs, and Thom is there, hired to play.

Back at the Great Tree, Rand says he is going to Toman Head, and Verin points to the Waygate at Stedding Tsofu, not far to the south and east.

Leaving the manor, Rand is held back at the door by Barthanes with a message for him.

Hurin's trail behind the manor ends at an old Waygate, and Rand climbs the wall to reach it.

Before going home, Thom bribes his way to the inn where Rand is staying, still not sure what he means to say.

Kept late at the manor, Thom walks back to the Bunch of Grapes in the first light and finds it far too quiet.

Rand's column halts below a walled town at the mouth of the pass, its walls hung with the dead, and three ragged townsfolk come out of the rocks to tell what happened.

The host camps in the mouth of the pass below ruined Taien, Egwene rides up with Aviendha to see the town, and late that evening Aviendha carries something long wrapped in a blanket into Rand's tent.

Birdcalls from Rand's home country ring an alarm through the camp at night, and Mat goes out among the thornbushes with his spear while Rand runs from his tent in his stocking feet.

The host streams down out of the Jangai Pass past burned Selean while Egwene watches from a hilltop, and Rand tells the clan chiefs what they may and may not take from the land.

Sleepless in his wagon a quarter mile from Eianrod, the merchant turns over an unsigned note found under his door, until a scraping at the door announces a visitor.

With the host halted at Eianrod, Rand sits on the town's stone bridge at night until weary riders from besieged Cairhien are brought to him, and one young Tairen lord offers him a wager.

Rand takes a merchant's house on Eianrod's square for one night in a real bed and finds Aviendha in his bedchamber, where a gateway suddenly opens on a blizzard.

Rand puts a question to Egwene at the foot of a new log tower, then climbs it with Lan and the clan chiefs to study the ground through a lensmaker's glasses.

At first light Rand climbs the log tower with Egwene and Aviendha and looks out over the wooded hills around Cairhien.

Riding south away from the Aiel host, Mat comes on a column of Tairen and Cairhienin soldiers marching through the hills and stops to speak to its captains.

In the afternoon rain Mat scans the hills from a hilltop for a way south, and his captains bring word of a large force of Aiel heading straight for them.

Back in the valley below the ruined log tower, Mat looks for a chance to slip away while two young lords press him over a coming procession, and Moiraine and Lan watch from the hill.

Moiraine stays among Kadere's wagons, looking over the doorframe lashed under canvas, while Rand and his escort ride past on their way to the city.

Rand rides through the cheering, ash-ringed city to the Royal Palace and goes into its great hall, where Tairen and Cairhienin nobles stand waiting for him.

In the palace, Moiraine, Egwene and Aviendha bring Rand two letters from the White Tower, and then Mat, back from his fighting across the Alguenya, is called in with what he has heard of Andor.

Moiraine leads the party out through a city gate onto the stone quay beneath the wall, past grain carts and cheering onlookers, to the far end of the line of Kadere's wagons.

On the morning Rand means to strike at Caemlyn, Moiraine meets him in a tapestried corridor with a sealed letter of her own and one for Thom, and horses readied to take him first to the docks.

On the quay after the fight, Lan takes his leave of Rand beside Moiraine's mare, and later, alone in the windowless dockmaster's hut, Rand opens her letter until a Maiden comes in with a grievance.

Rand rides back to the palace's great court, packed with Aiel of every society, and opens a gateway at the foot of the steps while Mat grumbles beside his horse.