The Fires of Heaven

Driven out of the Aiel Waste, Rand al'Thor leads an army against the renegade Shaido Aiel and toward the nation of Cairhien, even as the Forsaken move openly to destroy or control him. Nynaeve and Elayne make their way across the world with a traveling show, hunted by one of the Dark One's most cunning servants. Mat Cauthon, marked by memories that are not his own and a luck that borders on the uncanny, finds himself reluctantly becoming the general the age demands. The fifth volume of The Wheel of Time tightens around its central players and delivers one of the saga's most talked-about turning points on a Cairhien dock, a moment that reshapes the emotional landscape of the series. It is a book of pursuit and reversal, where victories carry heavy prices and a confrontation long in the making finally arrives. Threads from earlier volumes pay off as the war against the Shadow moves from rumor and prophecy into open conflict.