Elyas, Perrin, and Egwene run away from deadly flocks of ravens. They find a place of peace and safety called a stedding — a place so peaceful even the shadowspawn won’t enter. Elyas tells them about the final days of Artur Hawkwing’s empire.
Elyas guides Perrin and Egwene through rolling hills of wilderness. They move at a pace balanced between urgency and paranoia. Elyas insists on staying below the ridge line whenever possible, and just when it seems like he’s jumping at shadows, a flock of ravens bursts out of a copse of trees. “Oh,” you might say. “A flock of ravens, well that’s not so bad. They’re the eyes and ears of the Dark One and all, but they’re just birds, right?” Then a fox bursts out of the treeline, running as fast as possible, and is swarmed by the ravens until nothing is left but a bloody pulp. Alrighty then, make that a murderous swarm of ravens. Perhaps this situation has become a tad more worrying.
They make haste for some time before they abruptly sense a change. Elyas announces that they have reached a stedding, a place of safety where shadowspawn will not go. It is a place of peace where even Aes Sedai are cut off from the True Source.
In the middle of the stedding is the ruined remains of a statue of Artur Hawkwing. Elyas turns out to be quite the history buff. He tells Perrin and Egwene about how during the final days of his reign, Hawkwing planned to build a capital right here in the stedding, in the center of the continent; but on the day the statue was completed, Hawkwing died. His relatives squabbled amongst themselves, and the land fractured in the War of the Hundred Years. Turns out unifying a continent is easier than keeping your kids from turning it into a generational civil war. Most of his descendants perished, but some voyaged across the Aryth Ocean. I believe this will be relevant later when the Seanchan enter the picture.