“Well, all right,” Faile said. “But in the future, please consider warning me of your plans.”

“I will,” he said, yawning and lying back. “In truth, it didn’t occur to me until the last moment.”

Faile kept her tongue with some difficulty. At least something good had come from that parley. She’d watched Berelain when she’d met Damodred, and she’d rarely seen a woman’s eyes light up so brightly. Faile might be able to make use of that.

She looked down. Perrin was already snoring softly.

Perrin found himself sitting with his back against something hard and smooth. The too-dark, almost evil sky of the wolf dream boiled above the forest, which was a mixture of fir, oak and leatherleaf.

He stood up, then turned and looked at what he had been leaning against. A massive steel tower stretched toward the turbulent sky. Too straight, with walls that looked like a single piece of seamless metal, the tower exuded a completely unnatural feel.

I told you this place was evil, Hopper sent, suddenly sitting next to Perrin. Foolish cub.

“I didn’t come here by choice,” Perrin protested. “I woke here.”

Your mind is focused on it, Hopper said. Or the mind of one to whom you are connected.

“Mat,” Perrin said, without understanding how he knew. The colors didn’t appear. They never did in the wolf dream.

As foolish a cub as yourself?

“Maybe more foolish.”

Hopper smelled incredulous, as if unwilling to believe that was possible. Come, the wolf sent. It has returned.

“What has—”

Hopper vanished. Perrin followed with a frown. He now could easily catch the scent of where Hopper had gone. They appeared on the Jehannah Road, and that strange violet glass wall was there again, slicing the roadway in half, extending high in the air and into the distance in either direction. Perrin walked up to a tree. Its bare branches seemed trapped in the glass, immobile.

Hopper paced nearby. We have seen this thing before, he sent. Long, long ago. So many lives ago.

“What is it?”

A thing of men.

Hopper’s sending included confused images. Flying, glowing discs. Impossibly tall structures of steel. Things from the Age of Legends? Hopper didn’t understand their use any more than he understood the use of a horse cart or a candle.

Perrin looked down the roadway. He didn’t recognize this section of Ghealdan; it must be farther toward Lugard. The wall had appeared in a different place than it had last time.

A thought occurring to him, Perrin moved down the roadway in a few jumping bursts. A hundred paces away, he looked back and confirmed his suspicions. That glass didn’t make a wall, but an enormous dome. Translucent, with a violet tint, it seemed to extend for leagues.

Hopper moved at a blur, coming to stand beside him. We must go.

“He’s in there, isn’t he?” Perrin asked. He reached out. Oak Dancer, Sparks and Boundless were near. Ahead, inside the dome. They responded with quick, frantic sendings, at hunt and being hunted.