The Shadow Rising

The Dragon banner whipped in the winds above the Stone of Tear, a sinuous, scarlet-and-gold figure seeming to ride the morning sky. The great fortress, which had never fallen to assault, had fallen. Within its walls, the Aiel, the warrior people of the Waste, walked the halls as conquerors who seemed to care nothing for their conquest, their veiled faces and pale eyes unsettling the city's most powerful lords. At the Stone's heart, Rand al'Thor held *Callandor*, the Sword That Is Not a Sword, a blade of crystal and light. He was the Dragon Reborn, but the fulfillment of one prophecy was only the beginning of a thousand more, each a path that could lead to salvation or a new Breaking of the World.

The victory in Tear was not an end but a scattering. From the White Tower, a message had come for Moiraine Sedai, a command from the Amyrlin Seat herself. Egwene and Elayne were to hunt the thirteen Black Ajah sisters who had fled the Tower, a desperate search for Darkfriends who could channel. At the same time, a dark rumor drifted north on merchants' ships, a whisper of Whitecloaks in the Two Rivers, of farms burned and people slain. Hearing it, Perrin Aybara knew he must go home. His path lay through the Ways, those dark, tainted passages that even Ogier now feared to travel. And Rand, knowing his own destiny lay not in Tear but in the sun-scorched emptiness of the Aiel Waste, prepared for a journey to the legendary, forbidden city of Rhuidean to claim his heritage among a people who might kill him for it. Pulled by the threads of the Pattern, Mat Cauthon went with him, grumbling and gambling, seeking only escape but finding his fate ever more tightly bound to Rand's.

Following the Aiel across the barren, cracked earth of the Three-fold Land, Rand, Mat, and Egwene journeyed toward the Dragonwall, toward a hidden valley and a city shrouded in mist. Rhuidean. There, Rand was told, he must enter a forest of glass columns to face his past. He stepped between the glowing pillars into a shimmering light, and found himself looking not at his own life, but at the lives of his ancestors. He was Mandein, a clan chief in the Waste, watching the strange, pacifist Jenn Aiel build their city. He was Rhodric, a young warrior watching the Jenn flee across the Spine of the World, the Dragonwall. He was Jonai, a servant to Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends, a man who followed the Way of the Leaf, who would not raise a hand in violence even as the world was torn apart by the Breaking. Through a thousand generations, he watched the Aiel change from a people of peace to the most feared warriors in the world, a people who had forgotten their own history, their own purpose.

Far away in the green lands of his birth, Perrin found not peace but fire and death. The Whitecloaks had come to the Two Rivers, led by the stern Dain Bornhald and goaded by the sinister Padan Fain, who now called himself Ordeith. Tam al'Thor's farm was a blackened ruin, as was the Cauthons'. And Perrin's own home, when at last he reached it, was a place of silent ash and fourteen freshly mounded graves beneath the apple trees. His family was gone, slaughtered by Trollocs. Grieving, he found that his path and the Whitecloaks' were one. To protect the remaining people of the Two Rivers, he had to fight.

He did not ask to be a leader, to have men follow him, but they did. The name was whispered in the night, shouted in the heat of battle. “Perrin Goldeneyes.” He taught the farmers and blacksmiths of the Two Rivers to fight, to make a stand against the Shadowspawn that ravaged their lands. He forged them into a small army, their ranks swelling with every farm saved and every family brought to the safety of Emond's Field. Surrounded by a hedge of sharpened stakes, with a red wolfhead banner flying over the Green, they fought for their homes with a fury that stunned the Whitecloaks and bloodied the Trollocs. But with the Waygate open, more Trollocs poured into the mountains, and Perrin knew that soon their courage and their longbows would not be enough.

In the sweltering port city of Tanchico, Nynaeve and Elayne hunted for a different kind of shadow. They found a city rotting from within, where nobles plotted behind masks and starving refugees crowded streets ruled by fear. Aided by the gleeman Thom Merrilin and the thief-catcher Juilin Sandar, they navigated the treacherous currents of the city's underworld and its palaces, seeking any sign of the Black Ajah. Their search led them to the Panarch's Palace, a place now ringed by Whitecloaks and secrets, where they suspected their quarry was close to finding a dangerous weapon, an object from the Age of Legends that could be used to control a man who could channel.

Within the palace, they found the Panarch Amathera a prisoner in her own apartments, tormented by the cruel Black sister Temaile. But as Nynaeve delved deeper into the World of Dreams, seeking answers, she found herself in a silent, deadly duel with a far greater foe: Moghedien, one of the Forsaken. Though she fought the Spider to a standstill, Nynaeve learned the horrifying truth. The Black Ajah sought not only the male *a'dam*, but also one of the seven seals on the Dark One's prison. In a desperate race through the palace, with balefire searing the walls, they managed to secure both the seal and the terrible collar, leaving the Panarch's Palace to burn behind them.

Meanwhile, a storm of a different sort had broken over Tar Valon. Min, returning to the White Tower with a message from Moiraine, saw visions of death and betrayal flickering around the Aes Sedai. Her warnings came too late. Led by the implacable Elaida of the Red Ajah, a faction of sisters staged a coup. The Amyrlin Seat, Siuan Sanche, was deposed, her Warder murdered before her eyes, and she and her Keeper, Leane Sharif, were dragged to the Tower's dungeons. There they suffered the most terrible fate for any who had touched the True Source. They were stilled, cut off from the One Power forever. Broken and stripped of all authority, they were little more than prisoners, until Min, with the help of the Mistress of the Kitchens, engineered their escape into a world that now saw them as powerless fugitives.

Rand emerged from Rhuidean bearing the twin dragons on his arms, the sign of the Car'a'carn, the chief of chiefs. On the floor of the great canyon of Alcair Dal, before the chiefs of all the Aiel clans, he faced his rival, the Shaido Couladin, who bore false dragons tattooed on his own arms. To prove his claim, Rand spoke of what he had seen in the glass columns, revealing the long-lost history of the Aiel, their covenant with the Aes Sedai, and their ancient adherence to the Way of the Leaf. He broke them with the truth to make them whole again. Yet even as most clans acclaimed him, the Shaido and others fled, splintering the Aiel.

His victory was cut short. The Forsaken Asmodean, disguised as the gleeman Jasin Natael, had also been to Rhuidean, seeking a powerful *ter'angreal*. Rand pursued him, and in a cataclysmic duel of the One Power, they shattered the city and the land for miles around. Rand won, but only by severing Asmodean from the Dark One, leaving the Forsaken shielded and bound to him as a teacher. It was a victory that felt like another trap. For in the Waste, with an army of Aiel who both followed and feared him, Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, now had to learn the Power from a man who had served the Shadow for a thousand years.