“The source of some of those rumors you heard might be . . . I don’t know what to call them except ‘bubbles of evil.’ Think of them like the bubbles that sometimes rise up in a bog, only these are rising from the Dark One as the seals weaken, and instead of rotten smells, they are full of . . . well, evil. They drift along the Pattern until they burst, and when they do, anything can happen. Anything. Your own reflection can leap out of the mirror and try to kill you. Believe me.”

If the litany dismayed Taim, he did not show it. All he said was “I have been in the Blight; I’ve killed Trollocs before, and Myrddraal.” He pushed a low branch out of the way and held it for Rand. “I have never heard of this balefire, but if a Darkhound comes after me, I will find some way to kill it.”

“Good.” That was for Taim’s ignorance as much as his confidence. Balefire was one bit of knowledge Rand would not mind seeing vanish from the world completely. “With luck you won’t find anything like that out here, but you can never be sure.”

The woods gave way abruptly to a farmyard, with a sprawling thatch-roofed house of two weathered stories, smoke rising from one of its chimneys, and a large barn that had a distinct lean. The day was no cooler here than in the city a few miles away, the sun no less blistering. Chickens scratched the dust, two dun cows chewed their cud in a rail-fenced enclosure, a flock of tethered black goats busily stripped leaves from bushes within their reach, and a high-wheeled cart stood in the barn’s shadow, but the place did not look like a farm. There were no fields in sight; forest stretched all around the yard, broken only by the dirt track meandering northward, used for rare excursions to the city. And there were too many people.