The Ways are crumbling, Machin Shin is hunting them, and the exit is locked — so Moiraine melts it open with a thermonuclear blowtorch. Welcome to Fal Dara.
Rand looks across the chasm and notices the bridge is just… floating there. If this is upsetting to Rand, he doesn’t voice his discontent — that’s Nynaeve’s job. She is still blaming Moiraine for every misfortune, big or small. The bridge is out? Is this what you’ve brought us to, Aes Sedai? Whitecloaks are in town? You’ve put us in danger, Aes Sedai. Getting chased by Fades and Trollocs? What’s the plan now, genius? Honestly, if Moiraine snapped and slapped Nynaeve across her face, that would be understandable. Anyway, the bridge may be out, but there is always more than one route between places in the Ways, so they backtrack and keep going.
When it is time to stop for sleep, Moiraine tells the group that she doesn’t believe Thom is really dead because Min’s visions involved him too. This leads to a conversation where all of the twenty-somethings act like they’re still in high school, talking about who did what with various members of the opposite sex. Rand spoke to Min? How dare he! Egwene danced with Aram? Scandalous! Farmer Grinwell’s daughter, Else, had the hots for Rand? I need to go take a cold shower! I’ll tell you something — if I was Machin Shin, I would be in the mood to murder them, too, after having to listen to this tripe.
Indeed, after they start moving again, Lan tells the group that someone or something is following them. Hearing this, Mat turns around in his saddle and fires an arrow behind them into the darkness, giving us one of the best lines in this book:
LAN: Stop that, you village idiot.
The next Guiding stone they come upon has Trolloc runes carved into it. According to Moiraine, this explains how the Trolloc armies have been getting around so easily. At the foot of one of the bridges, a group of Trollocs appears to have been killed in some strange and painful way, causing them to turn to stone. Moiraine thinks they probably fell victim to a trap left by the male Aes Sedai who created the Ways. Sure, Moiraine. It must be that, and not the evil, invisible presence that is known to haunt the Ways.
RAND: Say, did you feel that breeze?
LOIAL: There is no breeze in the Ways.
It quickly becomes clear that Machin Shin is pursuing them, and they race to the Waygate that leads to Fal Dara. To Moiraine’s horror, the leaf is gone, so essentially it’s a door that is missing its handle. Moiraine switches to Plan B — burn the shit out of it. She channels balefire from the end of her staff and melts her way through the stone of the gate. Let me say that again. She melts a fucking hole in the fucking gate. This gate is a huge slab of stone that is probably a good foot in thickness. If she is able to melt a hole in it within a couple of minutes, that would mean that balefire would have to be at least as hot as the surface of the Sun. And hopefully that is in the form of coherent, directed energy, or else — to quote Sarah Connor — “anybody not wearing two-million sunblock is gonna have a real bad day.”
Once Moiraine melts the stone, Lan charges it with his horse and knocks it over, allowing everyone to escape. Welcome to Fal Dara, everyone. It’s a wintery shithole that is uncomfortably close to the Blight, but hey, at least it isn’t actively trying to kill you. Yet.