Widely regarded as the series' strongest volume, The Shadow Rising splits into three major storylines. Rand travels to the Aiel Waste to prove himself to the desert warrior people whose prophecies also speak of a man who will break and remake their world. Perrin returns to the Two Rivers to defend his homeland from a Trolloc invasion and the machinations of the Whitecloaks. And Nynaeve and Elayne journey to Tanchico to hunt members of the Black Ajah - Aes Sedai who secretly serve the Dark One. The novel reveals the true history of the Aiel through Rand's journey through the ancestral memory ter'angreal in Rhuidean, one of the most acclaimed sequences in the series.