The Gathering Storm: Chapter 28
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Chapter Icon: Five dice, arranged in a ring
Point of View: Mat
Location: Hinderstap
Characters: Mat, Talmanes, Delarn, Blaeric, Fen, Joline, Edesina, Thom, Barlden
Outline
Mat and the others are attacked by the townsfolk and barely escape. In the morning they find out all the people they saw being killed are alive. The mayor tells them this started happening a few months ago and they don't remember and can't escape it. He also says a woman in a nearby town hands pictures looking for Mat and Perrin.
Summary
Mat, Talamanes, and the others fight their way from the townsfolk, who are mindlessly attacking them and not caring if they are injured or killed themselves. Delarn falls and is pulled from his horse, so Mat goes back for him, against Talmanes' advice. They go to the inn the Aes Sedai were relaxing at and are attacked by a fireball before they can tell the Aes Sedai who they are. Edesina Heals Delarn.
Joline at first says they would rather stay, but Mat makes her see that the attacks will just keep coming and they will just have to keep killing more people. She agrees to go, but only if they can take the serving girls, who they have tied up, with them. They make it out of the village and camp outside. They are unsure what has happened, but Thom tells Mat there may be some connection to him as he got a drawing of Mat from a drunken man in the village.
As dawn breaks, the serving girls vanish and Mat insists on returning to see what happened. They notice that the amount of blood is not sufficient and Barlden overhears them, so comes to tell what happened. He says that it started some months before, and that they wake up in bed each day, with few memories of the night before and that they don't want to know. People who spend the night in the town become trapped there, part of the same nightmare and people who try to leave are returned each day, no matter where they are. He tells them they should just leave and that they will honour the bet. He also tells them of a woman in Trustair, a town a few miles away, who has been handing out pictures with good likenesses of both Mat and Perrin.
