The room was empty except for the Keeper’s writing table, with its piles of papers and stacks of scrolls and documents, and a row of chairs against one wall where Aes Sedai would sit while waiting to speak to Elaida. Anaiya, Morvrin and Carlinya were gone, but one of the tall outer doors was still swinging shut. A woman’s frantic screams rolled through the narrowing opening. Sheriam, Myrelle and Beonin almost knocked Elayne down in their haste to reach the hall. They might have appeared misty, but they felt solid enough.

“Be careful,” Elayne shouted, yet there was really nothing to do but gather her skirts and follow as quickly as possible with Siuan. They stepped into a scene from nightmare. Literally.

Some thirty paces to their right, the tapestry-hung corridor suddenly widened into a stony cavern that seemed to stretch forever, lit in dim patches by the red glow of scattered fires and braziers. There were Trollocs everywhere, great manlike shapes, their all-too-human faces distorted by bestial muzzles and snouts and beaks, sporting horns or tusks or feathered crests. Those in the distance appeared more indistinct than the nearest, only half-formed, while the nearest were giants twice as tall as a man, even larger than any real Trolloc, all clad in leather and black spiked mail, howling and capering around cookfires and cauldrons, racks and strange spiked frames and metal shapes.

It really was a nightmare, though larger than any Elayne had heard of from Egwene or the Wise Ones. Once freed of the mind that created them, such things sometimes drifted through the World of Dreams and sometimes latched on to a particular spot. Aiel dreamwalkers destroyed each as a matter of course whenever they found one, but they—and Egwene—had told her the best thing to do was avoid any she saw altogether. Unfortunately, Carlinya apparently had not listened when she and Nynaeve passed that on.

The White sister was bound and hanging by her ankles from a chain that disappeared into darkness overhead. To Elayne’s eyes the glow of saidar still surrounded her, but Carlinya writhed frantically and screamed as she was slowly lowered headfirst toward a great bubbling black kettle of boiling oil.

Even as Elayne ran into the corridor, Anaiya and Morvrin halted at the border where hallway abruptly became cavern. For all of a heartbeat, they halted, then suddenly their hazy forms seemed to elongate toward the boundary, like smoke drawn into a chimney. No sooner had they touched it than they were inside, Morvrin shouting as two Trollocs turned great iron wheels that stretched her out tighter and tighter, Anaiya dangling by her wrists as Trollocs danced about her, flogging her with metal-tipped whips that tore long rents in her dress.