Rand lands everyone safely in the Aiel Waste near Rhuidean. Most of the Aiel disperse because they secretly hate each other. The Wise Ones show up and allow Rand and Mat to enter Rhuidean. Aviendha and Moiraine are sent there too (naked, because reasons). Egwene stays behind to study Dreamwalking.
Rand teleports the entire group to the Aiel Waste flawlessly. He is proud to have accomplished his goal of moving faster than his enemies, but it has left him exhausted. Is Moiraine ready to admit that his idea had some merit? Fuck no!
MOIRAINE: The angreal was not sufficient for the task. You must not do this again.
MOIRAINE: I cannot completely Heal your fatigue. Perhaps what remains will remind you to be more careful in the future.
I wish I could reach through the page and slap her. Is she trying to be an insufferable smart-ass?
Now that they’re back in the Waste, the Aiel are no longer obliged to ignore their clans and feuds. Luckily, Rhuidean is a place of peace, so they simply disperse and cluster into groups. Four Aiel women — the Wise Ones — approach. Egwene recognizes Amys among them from her dream, and for an amusing moment she thinks they are interested in her, but Amys beckons to Rand.
Rand seems strangely prepared for the moment, as though Rhuarc coached him. He formally asks permission to enter Rhuidean. They all answer yes, and they are about to proceed with sending Rand on his way when Mat also asks to enter Rhuidean. This takes everyone by surprise, but they don’t know what happened to Mat in the redstone doorframe: he needs to go to Rhuidean, or he’ll die. At first the Wise Ones won’t even entertain the idea, but they capitulate alarmingly fast. The whole exchange goes something like this:
MAT: I wanna go too.
WISE ONE 1: You can’t.
MAT: Please?
WISE ONE 2: No.
RAND: Pretty please?
WISE ONE 2: No.
WISE ONE 3: Much is changing.
WISE ONE 4: Much is changing.
WISE ONE 1: Fine, whatever, you can go.
Look, I get it that these guys are ta’veren, but come on! I’ve seen Jedi mind tricks that took more effort than that. The whole thing was so silly, I couldn’t help but think of the XKCD comic. So that wraps it up for Mat and Rand, who head for Rhuidean.
Next order of business: Aviendha. She really didn’t want to come here, and we soon learn it’s because she has the ability to channel. In other words, it doesn’t matter that she would rather be a Maiden of the Spear. She’s going to channel whether she wants to or not, and the Wise Ones intend to see her properly trained. It’s very similar to how the Aes Sedai insist on bringing girls who can channel to the White Tower. They even have a ter’angreal that sounds suspiciously similar to the one the Aes Sedai use to raise novices to Accepted. The difference is that the White Tower trains their initiates before sending them through their ter’angreal. The Wise Ones send their girls to Rhuidean completely unprepared and naked. It’s like bringing someone out into the middle of the ocean, tossing them overboard, and saying, “So long, fucker! You’ll be one of us on the off chance you make it back!”
As Aviendha trudges toward Rhuidean and her fate, the Wise Ones turn their attentions to Egwene and Moiraine. They retire to the shade of a tent, where Moiraine asks questions about how much the Wise Ones foretold of their coming. One of the Wise Ones lets it slip that Moiraine, too, must enter the ter’angreal in Rhuidean, or else… something bad will happen. And Moiraine just believes them! She strips off her clothes and joins the small army of people going to Rhuidean. For a woman who demands proof of everything Rand says, she’s awful quick to strip naked and walk right into mortal danger on the word of a fortune-telling stranger. Presumably, the redstone doorframe told her this would happen, but she could have at least pretended to be skeptical.
To recap, that makes four main characters who have voluntarily gone to this place that most people don’t come back from, and for some undisclosed reason it is only the women who need to strip naked. What the fuck? Did M. Night Shyamalan direct this chapter?
Egwene, having more sense than the rest of them combined, elects to stay with the Wise Ones and learn about Dreamwalking.