This is the first chapter in a while where people aren’t just walking around the woods and shit. The Stag and Lion Inn in Baerlon is bustling with activity; staff walking around with trays of food, kids running around screaming and yelling, bellhops waiting for elevators, concierges tap-tap-tapping on their computers. What a sight to behold!

Master Fitch, the fat innkeeper, he arranges for baths for the group. Rand is excited because he hasn’t been able to wash his stinky body in eight days and the first thing he wants to do is get naked in front of the gleeman. Moiraine asks for an audience with Min, a slender, androgynous individual who Rand sees a glimpse of later. Then she and Egwene go the lady bathhouse while the rest go to the not-lady bathhouse. The bathhouse attendant, Ara, leaves out some curious details as he goes over what little he knows about the battle in Ghealdan. Mat starts talking about Trollocs and the rest of them all but tell him to shut the fuck up. The ever-grumpy Lan reiterates that he’s trying to keep these punks alive, and a lot of that means NOT blabbing to Joe Nobody Inn Staff about anything related to the Dark One and his intentions to murder three children from the sticks.

Lan gathers some intel around the inn and learns that Logain — the false Dragon — presumably — has won the battle in Ghaldean. The Aes Sedai there are either all dead or all alive, something like that, no one knows for sure. Some may have even defected! Wouldn’t that be a kick in the ol’ nutsack?

Everyone retires to their quarters. Rand gets to share a room with the abusive Lan and the child molester Thom. Rand has another one of those FASCINATING dream sequences again, but at least this one is better than the one from Chapter 9. He has a run-in with Dark One Fade Myrddraal McNulty, who calls himself Ba’alzamon. So that’s a fifteenth name for Satan that we have to deal with here. Ba’alzamon yammers about Rand being “the one” and how the White Tower is going to use him as a puppet just like all the other false Dragons milling about and sauntering around the land. Ba’alzamon also asks Rand if the Eye of the World will serve, finally referencing the title of the book for first time.

This motherfucker also starts bragging about, among other things, being responsible for Lews Therin’s madness and his slaughtering of every single person in his family. Rand spends this whole time pissing his tunic and freaking out about how he can’t will himself to wake from this nightmare. He finally does wake up when Ba’alzamon attempts to snap his back like a twig, and he hems and haws about asking for Moiraine’s help in getting rid of these pesky nightmares.

The group is going to stay in the city for another day. I expect Mat will buy cotton candy laced with PCP from a street vendor, Thom is going to pay for at least three ladies of the night, and Egwene is going to throw rocks through windows while screaming “I’M AN AES SEDAI NOW, BITCHES!”