Machin Shin is also blocking the Waygate at Stedding Tsofu, so plan B is to use a Portal Stone.
Look, I understand wanting to give the Ogier some dimension and backstory. I really do. But where the fuck is the urgency? We’ve established that whoever blows the Horn of Valere is biometrically linked to it for life. Considering this, if I were Rand, my tolerance for bullshit would be at an all-time low. But everyone seems perfectly content to scratch their balls and go wherever the Ogier elders want to lead them.
Padan Fain could be putting on a rendition of Yankee Doodle Dandy right now… but yes please, elders, let’s have an intervention! They parade an Ogier out of the back rooms and introduce him as Trayal, the last of their number to have gone into the Ways. Trayal is a drooling husk of a man, and the elders apparently keep him around to serve as a warning. It’s almost as lame as the “This is your brain on drugs” campaign from the 1980s. Dude, we’ve already been in the Ways. We’ve already seen Machin fucking Shin. If you guys really want to do something useful, I hear there’s a Waygate up by Fal Dara that needs a new door. Otherwise, are we done here?
Unfortunately, by the time the group gets to the Waygate and opens it, Machin Shin is waiting there as well. Then Hurin, ever the idea man, reminds everyone that when he, Loial, and Rand were in the mirror universe, they traveled a hundred leagues in just two days. Without any other option to reach Toman Head fast enough, they head to the nearby Portal Stone.