#but not seeing people understand how fucked Egwene is is sure something

[moghedien]

I'm like, actively not looking forward to the next episode because I know what's gonna happen but let me just say

I have not seen a single show only fully grasp the situation that Egwene is in right now and the sheer hopelessness and horror the situation. I am kinda looking forward to seeing them figure that out

#I think its fine that they don't fully get it I will say #because the next episode is so clearly gonna make people get it based on the teaser alone #so I think the way information is trickling in is affective for the most part #but not seeing people understand how fucked Egwene is is sure something #people being like 'oh she's gonna escape. oh she might get roughed up a bit but she'll probably learn stuff from them to use against them' #like yall #yall really don't get the sheer torture my girl Egwene is about to go through or the the fact that escaping on her own is literally impossi #and the fact that the only people who can help her now will very easily be put in the exact same situation the second they're caught #its FUCKED in here #wheel of time #wot on prime #wot show spoilers #wot book spoilers #egwene al'vere

[markantonys]

I'm thinking about Rand's ending in the books and I hate both the bodyswap and that he abandons everyone but at the same time I get that his sacrifice has to mean something so the world forgets him/lets him fade into myth. And him actually dying would undermine the entire point of his arc. So I'm curious how you think the show might tackle this? I'm sure there's a few options

i hate it too! but yeah, rand needs to be forgotten by the world at large and needs to get a new face so he won't be recognized, or else he will never know peace. so the way i would do it is have him fade into myth among the general public, but still remain part of his loved ones' lives and they all just keep secret the fact that this guy is rand al'thor. his whole arc is about learning to stop self-isolating and to instead let himself lean on his loved ones for support, so i felt that him ending the series by fucking off into the mist all alone was totally contrary to that and did not make emotional sense as the endpoint of the journey we'd been on with him for 14 books. i can certainly understand if he needs to take a lil sabbatical and have some time to himself in the immediate aftermath, but that should not have been the very final concluding note of his whole arc! for my own sanity i have to imagine he just took a 2-week vacation and then went to caemlyn to be with his family (and told tam, nynaeve, and perrin that he's still alive, and rescued mat from the seanchan and incorporated him into the polycule, and bargained with the creator to bring egwene and gawyn back to life........okay i'm getting sidetracked)

as for what the show might do, i'll brace myself for them to adhere to the book version, but from what we've seen in the first 2 seasons, i think that ending would make even less sense for show!rand than it does for book!rand. in 1x08, we see that his greatest dream is to live a quiet, peaceful life with his family, and now we're going on a journey of watching him be forced to give up that dream for the rest of the series. what better way to end the show than by having rand finally get to live out that dream now that his duty to the world is done? the tears i would weep if the final scene of the show was similar to his 1x08 domestic AU, but real this time! plus, the s1 ending & s2 already did the whole thing of rand fucking off into the mist all alone, making his loved ones think he's dead, and trying to start over in a new town with a new life - AND HE LEARNS THAT THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE because he can't help but get attached to new people wherever he goes AND because he can't keep himself from remaining attached to the people from his old life and wanting to help them when he learns they're in trouble. and it also showed how his loved ones suffer because of him making them think he's dead and took a pretty hard stance in saying "no, no one is better off if rand fakes his death, not rand and not his loved ones." so i especially think rand's book epilogue scene would ring hollow in the show since s2 has specifically proven that that scenario doesn't work.

some people will harp on about happy endings being uNrEaLIsTIc, but i Do Not Give A Shit!!!! and so far the show has also shown that it's not interested in grimdark for grimdark's sake and that, like the books, it doesn't shy away from showing trauma and tragedy and yet still chooses hope & togetherness over cynicism & isolation at the end of the day, and so i think it feels very plausible for the show to give rand a bit more hopeful of an ending. (i guess the books TRIED to give him a hopeful ending what with him thinking happily about how he can travel around by himself and not be recognized, but it just felt false to me that that's the sort of thing that would make rand happy - in large part because show!rand was the first version i ever met, and i subconsciously carried his homebody caregiver stay-at-home dad-ness with me into the books even though he wasn't REALLY like that in the books in the way he is in the show. so that feels like further evidence that book!epilogue wouldn't work for show!rand.)

now as for the bodyswap, that's so tricky to imagine what the show might do. on the one hand, rand cannot fade into anonymity and be allowed to rest and set down his duties if he keeps his same body and will still be recognized wherever he goes. on the other hand, imagining rand's final moments in the whole show being portrayed by some random new actor instead of josha is so freaking sad! sad for us and sad for josha! it's fine in a book where we're in rand's head and can feel that he's still him even though he tells us he looks different, but in a visual medium, spending up to 8 seasons with josha as rand only to have his final moments be portrayed by a completely different person..........the emotions just wouldn't hit the same, it wouldn't feel like a proper sendoff for rand. granted, if moridin's actor had been in the show for several seasons already (and whether they would cast a new actor as moridin or bring fares fares back and just have the character still be called ishamael is another question i can't predict) then we'd be attached to him too by the finale, so maaaaaybe it could still feel emotional, but never as emotional as if it were josha doing that scene.

so i'm stuck here because story-wise it makes more sense for rand to get a new face, but TV-wise it's not sensible to have one of the main characters played by a different actor in their final scene(s). the potential solution to this would be, no bodyswap but have rand disguise his face with an illusion when in public so that he doesn't get recognized as the dragon reborn and get hassled.

so, okay, here's what i would do: rand wakes up in the healing tent still in his original body, but then he disguises himself and leaves the tent. he passes by his own funeral going on and slips away into the night, after exchanging a meaningful look with his partners who can sense that this stranger is him thanks to the bonds. then, cut to a proper epilogue scene of josha-as-rand undisguised in the privacy of his own home, watching his kids play with his partners by his side (and maybe all his friends and tam too if they REALLY feel like spoiling me haha) just like he told us in 1x01 he always dreamed of :')

#anonymous #answered #wot book spoilers

[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read The Great Hunt! Chapter 47: The Grave Is No Bar to My Call

I have absolutely no idea how the game is played but it feels to me like this particular card is nowhere near as good as the real thing. They always gotta "balance" shit for the games. Very annoying. I never balance my posts; I just stuff them full as many spoilers for the whole Wheel of Time series as possible and hope for the best. It hasn't failed me yet!

We get the exciting Horn of Valere icon this chapter because it is about to be blown.

He had the Horn of Valere lashed to the high pommel of his saddle as if it were just any horn, but the dagger was in his belt, the ruby-tipped hilt cupped protectively in a pale hand that seemed made of nothing but bone and sinew.

One half-wonders if the only reason Mat could be a horn-sounder at this point is that the dagger had all of his glory-related thoughts under wraps.

“We will all take the Horn to Verin, and then you can help her take it wherever she says it belongs.”

Rand's early oscillating between "I can't trust any Aes Sedai ever, I will not be used" and "Let's do whatever they say so I don't have to make a plan" is great.

Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain. So many duties. Egwene. The Horn. Fain. Mat and his dagger. Why can’t there just be one at a time? I have to take care of all of them.

It's rather funny that Rand will spend the whole series trying to avoid the solution he's automatically gone to here: off-load the less urgent responsibilities onto Mat and Perrin.

“That’s all very well, but what about you? Burn me, you can’t be going mad yet. You can’t!” Hurin gaped at them, not understanding half of it.

Mat's denial is very sweet and boy do I hope the narration is wrong about Hurin not getting it by now. Did he get a head injury no one noticed?

Rand shook his head. Threads. Duties. He felt as if he were about to explode like a firework. Light, what’s happening to me?

Rand, you're buckling under the stress of not communicating with everyone. Get ready because this is going to define your day to day life for the next eleven books.

“Saving Egwene isn’t wasting time!” But Mat’s hand had tightened on the dagger till it shook.

Mat's still a nice guy despite the corruption. I really don't get the people who want to say that his early book characterization veers all over the place: it's definitely true that not seeing his thought processes makes him harder to understand at this point. And of course the dagger was fucking him up last book. But this book's outside glimpses of Mat don't seem qualitatively different than what we get in later books, except of course that Mat hasn't had all his character development and power-ups yet.

“Lord Rand,” Hurin muttered, “if that lot lays an eye on the Horn of Valere, we’ll never get it close to an Aes Sedai. We’ll never get close to it again ourselves.”

Frankly Hurin, I doubt your heads will ever get close to your necks again if the Whitecloaks hear you have the Horn.

Have to go back. Have to go back. The longer he looked at the Horn, the more urgent his thoughts became. Have to. Have to.

I guess everyone's getting focused on salvation just being near the Horn as it's about to be blown correctly.

His last thought was regret. Byar would not be able to tell his son Dain how he had died.

Rest in... something, Mr. Bornhald. You sure were an almost reasonable human being. Sucks you couldn't stick around to benefit from Galad's leadership. Better luck next life!

Rand could not see the trees around them any longer. Mat had lowered the Horn, eyes wide with awe, but the sound of it still rang in Rand’s ears. The fog hid everything in rolling waves as white as the finest bleached wool, yet Rand could see. He could see, but it was mad. Falme floated somewhere beneath him, its landward border black with the Seanchan ranks, lightning ripping its streets.

I wonder if the intent was for this levitation to be a feature of the Horn. I do not recall Olver floating off in the Last Battle, though if he had it would have been quite a sequence and a good way to catch up with everything, considering that Rand can somehow see Bayle Domon's face from this distance. Certainly without the Horn's doing this whole sequence seems rather more miraculous than the series usually is.

Golden-haired Birgitte, with her gleaming silver bow and quiver bristling with silver arrows.

Hi Birgitte! Look forward to getting to know you better later!

They were little more than a hundred, Rand saw, and realized that somehow he had known that they would be.

I'm going to guess that there's about 106 of them, less Lews Therin and Noal. It seems like the kind of number Robert Jordan would want.

To his surprise, several of the small host behind Artur Hawkwing chuckled, and Birgitte, testing her bowstring, laughed. “You always choose women who cause you trouble, Lews Therin.” It had a fond sound, as between old friends.

Oh Birgitte just you fucking wait.

“My name is Rand al’Thor,” he snapped. “You have to hurry. There isn’t much time.”

Naturally, Rand's not fond of his deadname.

Hurin is meanwhile standing off to the side, probably somehow oblivious to what Rand being called Lews Therin means.

“You are here. The banner is here. The weave of this moment is set. We have come to the Horn, but we must follow the banner. And the Dragon.”

Speaking of being oblivious, I'm impressed with the whole of the fandom that we never noticed that the rules for hornsounding were set right here.

Perrin hesitated only an instant before swinging down off his horse and striding into the mist. There came a chopping sound, and when he returned, he carried a straight length of sapling shorn of its branches.

I guess they haven't gone floating away just yet, no matter what the Horn fog is doing? We're rapidly approaching one of those weird metaphysical sequences.

It seemed as if no time at all had passed since the Horn was first blown, as though time had paused while the heroes answered the call and now resumed counting.

That's a pretty nifty feature too. I guess Hero threads get priority when it comes to the weaving.

In a way, he could still see them, but now it was the way he could see Falme, and the Seanchan. He could not tell where they were, or where he was. He tightened his grip on his sword, peered into the mists ahead. He charged alone through the fog, and somehow he knew that was how it was meant to be.

Perhaps also they're sort of in T'A'R too? The Horn blurs the line between the two realities so that the Heroes, permitted access to one realm, might reach another? That would help explain Ba'alzy and all the floating.

Rand was aware of the other things, too.

His far-reaching sight foreshadows his actual conflict against the Dark One where from within Shayol Ghul he can still see the whole of the battle.

“Fool! Did those other fools you summoned not tell you who you are?” The fires of Ba’alzamon’s face roared with laughter.

Ish tries to distract Rand from his real lies (that Rand is his one way or another) by highlighting the truth Rand finds inconvenient, to make all of his statements seem more plausible. It's a good tactic!

Rand was so surprised he felt it inside the void. He doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t know! He was sure it must show on his face. To cover it, he rushed at Ba’alzamon.

Of course, the problem with Ishamael's techniques is that as effective as they are on ignorant country types, once the spell is broken there's literally no way to get it back. The only reason Rand insists on Ish being the Dark One from this point forward is the convenience it offers him, letting him avoid acknowledging his fate.

This time it was he who was driven back. Dimly, he saw the Seanchan fighting their way back in among the stables. He redoubled his efforts. The Kingfisher Takes a Silverback. The Seanchan gave way to a charge, Artur Hawkwing and Perrin side by side in the van.

The explicit connection between the specific struggle above and the general battle below is a nice touch. I'd comment more on the sword forms but... Effort. Most of these suggest vertical arcs to me, though of some different shape.

I have won again, Lews Therin. The thought was beyond the void, yet it took an effort to ignore it, not to think of all the lives where he had heard it.

The fact that the only compelling argument the Shadow has at this point stems directly from all the worlds that aren't speaks volumes to how pathetic an adversary it actually is.

For the first time Rand realized that Ba’alzamon acted as if the heron-mark blade could harm him. Steel can’t hurt the Dark One. But Ba’alzamon watched the sword warily.

Note that Rand can only acknowledge this under duress.

The picture formed of Egwene, collared, living her life as a damane. Threads of my life in danger. Egwene. If Hawkwing gets into Falme, he can save her. Before he knew it, he had taken the first position of Heron Wading in the Rushes, balanced on one foot, sword raised high, open and defenseless.

And again, Rand jumps entirely ahead of his character flaws. He hasn't really developed them yet, not fully. He also never comes to appreciate how it was this exact decision to trust in his allies being able to carry things out in the end is how he wins here - nor how it's the only way he gets to live after the overall war.

Rand screamed as he felt it pierce his side, burning like a white-hot poker. The void trembled, but he held on with the last of his strength, and drove the heron-mark blade into Ba’alzamon’s heart. Ba’alzamon screamed, and the dark behind him screamed. The world exploded in fire

Ish is so hilariously far from being a fighter, isn't he? He only does the damage he does and survives this blow through having stacked the deck so thoroughly. Poor Rand, though. From here on out things are only going to get tougher.

Next time: Ladies fight over Rand's body!

#let's read #wheel of time #wot #robert jordan #wheel of time spoilers #wot spoilers #rand al'thor #mat cauthon #perrin aybara #hurin #ingtar shinowa #geofram bornhald #bayle domon #gaidal cain #birgitte silverbow #mikel of the pure heart #paedrig the peacemaker #artur hawkwing #ishamael

[queenofmalkier]

So, for my personal thoughts I'm gonna have to watch it again, too much happened. I'm gonna word vomit every thought I have now. Putting it under a cut to be extra careful, spoilers for EVERYTHING.

BAYLE. MY BOY BAYLE.

The Seanchan are so much more horrifying when they explain they're about to fuck shit up in their best customer service voice. And that fucking SPIKE????? It's so perfect. Fucking gruesome. Not making the damane kneel was good too - because they're not people, they don't count. I do wish they'd shown her being rewarded at the end, petting her hair or something like that to really elevate the what the fuckery.

Adeleas is everything and I love her so, so much.

I understand why they made the change to have Nynaeve thought to be dead - it's sowing the seeds for whatever is going on with Mat and it gives Liandrin more depth. It also gives us Egwene showing her own stubbornness - if they won't go get Nyn then SHE'LL do it.

Honestly I'm kind of here for the Liandrin depth? She acts like a bratty little doll come to life but like. The Chucky kind.

AND SHE HAS A SON???? FUCKING TWIST OF THE CENTURY. I was wondering about her comments about living for such a long time and protecting little girls. And we all wanted to know about the "man" Moiraine threatened her with. Honestly I'm just... I like Liandrin as a character now and I don't know how I got here. How did this happen.

Egwene thinking she isn't noticed meanwhile all the background Aes Sedai are like DID YOU SEE HER. Babygirl you been seen. You're just not being stubborn so they don't have to worry about you.

Nynaeve. Fuck man. The Elnore scene broke me but they GOT ME with that fake out no lie. I was like WHAT IN THE FEMINISM GIRLBOSS BULLSHIT IS THIS!?!? And then "OH NO."

I'm glad Elayne got busted for trying to make her room fancy. I was initially annoyed because she wasn't supposed to get special treatment but I need to have more trust.

THEY GAVE US THE FADE SCENE.

They're also giving me Spooky Children of the Corn Elyas and I respect this decision wholeheartedly. He's very "Bitch you about to learn" and I also respect this. Even if him turning up riiiiight when Ishamael was being a shit covered in blood was not helpful for Perrin's Health, Wealth, or Wellbeing.

Oh the darkfriend social POV from the kid was actually genius. It showed all the details without the tricky business of an internal narrative! ALSO. Not everybody gets pulled to the shadow because they're afraid. I think it's important to show that, to show in some ways how indoctrination can happen. That's how you get people who are loyal down to their bones.

Fuck what else.

OH! OH OH OH! PERRIN WRITING LETTERS WAS ALSO GENIUS. Because he's so internal but he's genuinely so thoughtful. He would take the time to write letters, and would take care in what he wrote, and in that way we get to know him so much better. They're not doing my boy dirty this season.

Rand :( :( :( him working in a mental hospital worked well - I was afraid of that change, but they handled it with care. Him going after the dickhead showed us his lack of control too, even if I personally Support Him.

Lanfear is so good. She's so, so, SO fucking good. THIS is what she was always supposed to be. I love RJ, he's my boy, but I think he failed to convey just how fuck off horrifying somebody like Lanfear is. "Don't ever leave me" GIRL.

I saw some complaints about Logain "still taking care of himself" before it came out and was annoyed, but now I feel justified. The man is not eating willingly - I'm sure by now he knows if he doesn't eat they will force feed him. He's a living example. The madman in a cage. He's unkempt and unpredictable and I am living for it because to me, that is having nothing to live for. Asking for ridiculously expensive wine just to pour it out. Nothing matters to Logain anymore.

Min I'm unsure of. I feel like she was a plant by Moiraine for sure, to watch Mat and make him trust her the only way she could, but now she's helping him because of what she saw. (Which, WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKK!?!?!?!?)

All the Beltane lanterns broke my heart.

One gripe: Loial roaring was. Um. Weird.

#wheel of time tv series #wheel of time book spoilers #wot prime spoilers

[cheeeerie]

Hey! What the fuck!

Wheel of Time Book AND Show spoilers ahead.

So. Perrin/Egwene/Rand. That… happened. I sure do wish it hadn’t.

I have to say that I didn’t see it coming, despite the fact that other people told me they thought this was going to happen. And… yeah. Okay. I get where they’re coming from. I can see it too if I look back, and I was one of those who definitely picked up on something between the two of them in the first book, but it’s just one of Jordan’s abandoned plots. They’re all over book 1.

Which is why I EXPECTED them to do nothing with it in the show, but, hey, here we are. So here’s the issue with Perrin having feelings for Egwene: it makes Perrin so, *so* utterly unlikable. Listen, Perrin was already a little unlikable in the show, but I put up with it because book Perrin is my favorite character and the show was doing a good job of making me like characters I hadn’t liked in the books, so I trusted them to make me love Perrin by the end of the season. Well, the clock is ticking mother fuckers, and I still hate him.

So the fact that he married a woman without loving her and spent apparently the entire marriage pining after his best friend’s girlfriend is, como se dice, not good. Not only that, but this show is making you route for Egwene and Rand’s relationship in a way the books never did. In the books their relationship was pretty casual and innocent, and they gave both of them alternative options—Elayne for Rand and Aram for Egwene— pretty early on, so when they break up in book 4 you’re more relieved than upset. I understand that making them more serious will make the stakes higher, and therefore make the break up more emotional. In the books, we wanted them to break up. In the show, we want them to be together.

Not only does show Perrin still basically have the personality of soggy bread, he’s now an obstacle in a relationship we’re routing for. Or is he??? It’s made pretty clear that his feelings are one sided, so why are they even there if not to strain the relationship? Is it to give him something to hate himself about? Because that’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. Why can’t he just hate himself for MURDERING HIS WIFE!

Okay. Deep breaths. Here’s how they can not ruin the show with this dumb as fuck character dynamic.

Firstly, make it to where Perrin no longer loves Egwene. Make it clear that he married Laila in a spur of the moment decision after his bestie hooked up with his crush. It was a dumb stupid 18 year old move, make him regret it.

After he regrets it, have him do a little self-loathing over the fact that he never loved Laila OR Egwene. Boo-hoo, I’m a horrible violent wolf boy incapable of love, yada yada you get the gist.

Faile swoops in, also believing herself to be a horrible violent person incapable of love, except she doesn’t hate herself for it. She teaches Perrin to accept this “fact” about himself. They are both horrible violent people who pretend that they’re incapable of love even as they fall in love with each other.

Send Faile to Malden to do some good development while Perrin does some bad development, Faile comes back and says “oh shit I was wrong about that whole nihilism thing” and has to uncorrupt Perrin.

I don’t LOVE it, but it’s something I can like, and I did what I could with what I have. Would love to heat y’all’s ideas.

#wheel of time #perrin aybara #egwene al'vere #rand al'thor #egwene x rand #wot on prime #amazon wheel of time #wheel of time books #wheel of time show #it’s fine this is fine #screaming #i can fix this

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: Towers of Midnight ch 5

Gawyn tries his hand at a murder mystery and relationship negotiation, Graendal tries her hand at wolf-hunting, and Moridin is, as ever, a Situation.

Chapter 5: Writings

Gawyn? Must we? Though there’s a Forsaken chapter icon so I hold out some hope for this chapter.

And Sleete’s back, it would seem. And okay Gawyn your description of him is rather detailed and lingers lovingly on his ruggedness, grace, and cheekbones. Maybe you should ask him out and leave Egwene alone.

Oh, I see; we’re doing a murder mystery. Mesaana? Is that you?

“Do you really think you’ll find anything the sisters did not, Trakand?” Chubain asked, folding his arms.

“I’m looking for different things,” Gawyn said

Sorry Gawyn, but I don’t think you’ll find any critical thinking skills beneath that rug. You never know, though! Or maybe it’s hiding that sense of purpose you left behind in Andor?

Jokes aside, I think I know what’s going on here: we’re setting up a murder mystery so that Gawyn can solve it where no one else could and, in doing so, redeem himself in Egwene’s and I suppose theoretically the reader’s eyes as well.

Meh. It feels a little contrived, but that might just be because my patience with Gawyn ran out a book or two ago.

Or maybe because he was actually more interesting to me, in a kind of character-study sense, when he was falling, and I’m just not that interested in watching him rise.

[The guards] weren’t as antagonistic towards [Sleete] as they tended to be towards Gawyn. He still hadn’t figured out why they were like that with him.

Wow, Gawyn, I wonder why that could possibly be. Maybe because Sleete’s a Warder and also doesn’t go about antagonising the Amyrlin Seat and demanding to be let into places and annoying everyone within earshot? And also changing sides several times – and okay, yes, Gawyn picked the ‘right’ side in the end, but from the perspective of the guards… really, Gawyn? You can’t think why they might not like you?

At least he can figure out that this is probably not the Black Ajah’s work.

Why did nobody sense channelling from the places where the women were killed?

So this still fits with it being Mesaana but it reminds me of something that I’ve wondered about a few times: if Mesaana is masquerading as an Aes Sedai, how does no one notice her strength, if she’s not hiding her ability, or the fact that she apparently can’t channel, if she is? Or is it possible to partially mask the ability to channel?

When Egwene had told Gawyn he could visit the scenes of the murders if he wished, he’d asked if he could bring Sleete with him.

Good first date ideas: visit a murder scene!

(To be fair that’s basically the plot of most crime dramas, so)

True, he didn’t know much about gateways yet, and people could reportedly make them hang above the ground so they didn’t cut anything. But why would the Black Ajah care about that?

Because not all villains like to chew scenery? It’s awfully gristly, you know.

Also to avoid leaving evidence and make forensics harder. Come on, Gawyn, you’re going to have to step up your detective game a little bit here.

I am with Gawyn, though, on feeling itchy at the thought of setting up a desk that seats you with your back towards the door. How are you supposed to tab away from the embarrassing fanfic you’re writing on the shared family computer in time when someone can just walk in and see your screen? Clearly this Aes Sedai did not grow up in the early 2000s.

Aes Sedai, for all their cunning, sometimes seemed to have remarkably underdeveloped senses of self-preservation.

Gawyn. Please. No one in this series has a functioning sense of self-preservation, with the possible exception of Moghedien.

“But why kill with a knife?” Gawyn said. All four had been killed that way.

Ah. Not Mesaana, then; sounds more like one of the Seanchan bloodknives has thus far avoided notice or death. So we are setting up a victory for Gawyn. Fine. If we must.

Sleete thus far actually seems better at thinking things through and generally playing the detective game, but no doubt Gawyn’s going to get by on instinct and ‘it just doesn’t feel right’. Yes, I am probably being too hard on him. No I don’t care.

A part of him thought that if he could aid Egwene in this, maybe she would soften towards him. Perhaps forgive him for rescuing her from the Tower during the Seanchan attack.

Well, you’re in luck, Gawyn; that seems to be exactly what this narrative arc is being set up for.

Chubain really doesn’t like him. Shame, Chubain; he thinks you’re handsome.

Insufferable man! Gawyn thought. Does he have to be so dismissive towards me? I should—

No. Gawyn forced himself to keep his temper. Once, that hadn’t been nearly so hard.

Why was Chubain so hostile towards him? Gawyn found himself wondering how his mother would have handled such a man as this.

Character growth!

Seriously, though, this is a step in the right direction for Gawyn. To be able to think past that sense of anger and…entitlement, I suppose. To take a step back and think about the situation from another perspective, and think about how best to handle it, rather than just pressing forward with his first instinct. And to consider the wisdom of others who have experience in dealing with things like this, and learn from them.

Though he segues straight into blind rage over Rand al’Thor, Dragon Reborn and murderer extraordinaire, so we’ve still got a little ways to go.

In his heart, Gawyn wanted to meet al’Thor with sword in hand and ram steel through him

Pretty sure that’s not a euphemism.

Also, Ishamael tried that once. Didn’t work out too well for him. Not sure you’d fare any better.

Light! Gawyn thought as Chubain shot him a hostile glance. He thinks I’m trying to take his position.

The triumph of critical thinking! Okay okay, I give Gawyn a lot of shit, but this is the sort of thing he’s not actually bad at, when he takes half a second to do it. It’s just that for the majority of the last several books he’s been jumping to premature conclusions and acting on them without a second thought, assuming he knows best, refusing to listen to others or consider their perspectives, and trying to play his role as he thinks it should be, rather than as it is.

Gawyn’s reasonably clever and reasonably perceptive and generally reasonably competent; his downfall is that he thought he knew his place in the world, and the world didn’t comply. He was the fairytale prince, the noble hero, brother to a future queen and loyal to his oaths and son of a great nation and he knew how all of that fit together, knew his place in it, understood and embraced it.

Only this isn’t his story, and the world went ‘nope, fuck you’ and he’s spent the last several books scrambling to find his footing and not quite understanding that the world isn’t reading from the same script he was handed at age four.

(I think I’ve said elsewhere that it’s like he’s reading, say, Romeo’s lines in a production of The Tempest, and not understanding why nothing makes sense).

Gawyn could have been First Prince of the Sword—should have been First Prince of the Sword—leader of Andor’s armies and protector of the Queen.

And yet, you’re not. How lightly you take that broken oath, Gawyn.

Also, he thinks that makes it laughable that he would want Chubain’s position, but let’s continue to look at it from someone else’s perspective. The man who should have been First Prince of the Sword for some reason isn’t, and you have no idea why, and now he’s here doing some kind of independent investigation and trying to talk to the Amyrlin at every opportunity, having deserted an opposing force that he was commanding. Wouldn’t you be a little confused as to what he actually wants? He clearly doesn’t want the role you assumed he’d hold, so who’s to say he doesn’t want yours?

To give him credit, though, he handles the ensuing conversation with Chubain rather well. Keeps his temper, makes it clear without shaming Chubain that he’s not interested in usurping his role, and thanks Chubain graciously as a way of basically saying ‘I submit to your authority here, or at least I will recognise it and not challenge it’. Well done.

“I don’t think this is the work of the Black Ajah,” Gawyn said. “I think it might be a Grey Man, or some other kind of assassin.”

Yeah I think you’re actually right. Or close, anyway. My money’s on Bloodknives.

Especially now that Sleete’s found a scrap of black silk. What is this, Cluedo?

“I think this is more proof. I mean, it seems odd that nobody has actually seen these Black sisters. We’re making a lot of assumptions.”

Since when has that ever stopped you?

Egwene’s clearly still giving Gawyn something of the cold shoulder, and Gawyn’s being somewhat petulant about it and no, Gawyn, letting Hattori bond you in order to make Egwene jealous is probably not a wise move, but you know that.

It had not been easy to decide to give up Andor—not to mention the Younglings—for her. Yet she still refused to bond him.

Yeah, funny thing about choosing to make sacrifices for someone: if they haven’t asked it of you, it doesn’t actually entitle you to anything in return. A measure of respect or thanks, perhaps, but beyond that, they were your choices, Gawyn, and that’s kind of the point here.

Silviana’s clearly running interference for Egwene, telling Gawyn to wait while she writes a letter which probably means trying to teach him patience and what it actually means to date the Amyrlin.

Egwene saw him. She kept her face Aes Sedai serene—she’d grown good at that so quickly—and he found himself feeling awkward.

Good. You should.

Gawyn’s pursuit of Egwene just makes me want to hit my head against a wall repeatedly, in no small part because I’ve been on the receiving end of something similar and it is Not Fun.

Then again Egwene actually likes Gawyn, which… Egwene you could do so much better. But fine. Sure. Whatever. Sigh.

“Burn me, Egwene. Do you have to show me the Amyrlin every time we speak? Once in a while, can’t I see Egwene?”

“I show you the Amyrlin,” Egwene said, “because you refuse to accept her. Once you do so, perhaps we can move beyond that.”

YES. DRAG HIM.

But, my delight in this aside, this is exactly the point Gawyn needs to get through his head. She is the Amyrlin, and he has to actually understand that, and right now he still… doesn’t. I mean okay, being in a relationship with someone like a head of state is probably not exactly easy, but this is important water to be able to navigate. She is the Amyrlin, and he has to understand that sometimes that’s who she needs to be, and that he doesn’t get to ignore that just because he also knows Egwene. He needs to understand where those boundaries are between Egwene and Amyrlin, public and private, lines he can cross and lines he can’t, and when and how and where. Is that fair? Eh, maybe, maybe not. But it’s the reality, and if he can’t deal with it then maybe dating the Amyrlin Seat is not for him.

“Light! You’ve learned to talk like one of them.”

“That’s because I am one of them,” she said.

He still doesn’t get it. This isn’t just an act she’s putting on for fun, or something she can drop whenever she pleases. He doesn’t get all-hours access to Egwene al’Vere of Emond’s Field, because her role means she can’t be that all the time. She isn’t just that anymore. That’s what she’s trying to tell him here: just as Rand is both himself and Lews Therin, shepherd and Dragon Reborn, both and not separate, she is Egwene al’Vere the girl he first met but also the Amyrlin Seat, innkeeper’s daughter and Aes Sedai. That’s a part of her now, not just decoration (and not a distinct personality she can toggle on and off).

Gawyn sees her as playing a role, when in reality she is that role. And you know what they say: if you love someone you have to accept them for who they are. Or something like that. I wouldn’t know.

“I accept you,” Gawyn said. “I do, Egwene.”

Oh, if saying it made it so.

“But isn’t it important to have people who know you for yourself and not the title?”

Yes. Critically so. But you’re still missing a key part of that: it’s important to have people who know her for herself, but who also understand the title, and understand the necessity of it, and what it means for her.

Like Nynaeve and Elayne: they accept her authority as Amyrlin, and know that when she gives them commands as Amrylin to Aes Sedai, it doesn’t impinge on their friendship. And they also know that there are times to be her friend, and times not to be.

It’s about balance: the point of having people who know her for herself is to have an anchor, a steadying force. But Gawyn doesn’t see the balance; he’s just looking at a single part of her and trying to make that into the whole.

And again: it’s not easy! This is not going to be a simple relationship to navigate! But it’s not going to work if he can’t respect her day job that actually demands quite a lot of her and is sort of a little bit important and sometimes means he’s going to have to take a step back and let her be Amyrlin.

Right now, though, he’s still acting as if… as if he knows better. Which has kind of been the tone of their relationship all along, and is probably part of why it grates on me so much. He listens when he wants to, but as soon as he thinks he knows better he just ignores her. And so even this point he makes comes across as a form of entitlement: ‘play at Amyrlin, but I Know Better, so you should keep me around’.

(Also, how much does he really know her for herself? For one thing they never actually spent much time together, and for another he continually underestimates her, questions her judgement, sides against her because he doesn’t realise she’s not just a helpless child caught up in politics…I could go on).

Anyway. Point being: you still have to accept the title.

Her face softened. “You aren’t ready yet, Gawyn. I’m sorry.”

He set his jaw. Don’t overreact, he told himself. “Very well. Then, about the assassinations.”

Okay, credit where it’s due: this is exactly the right response.

Because this is, in effect, treating her like the Amyrlin. This is listening to her, much as he doesn’t like what he hears. Rather than pushing back again with hollow claims of accepting her, rather than saying ‘I am too ready’, he accepts, however grudgingly, the chastisement and also the framing of the conversation. She is speaking to him as Amyrlin, and so he pushes everything else aside and responds in kind.

Which is exactly the point she’s been trying to make, so… we’ll go ahead and call it progress.

And now he’s rewarded narratively by getting to make a point she apparently hasn’t considered: that there aren’t enough Warders given they’re heading into the Last Battle.

“The choosing and keeping of a Warder is a very personal and intimate decision. No woman should be forced to it.”

“Well,” Gawyn said, refusing to be intimidated, “the choice to go to war is very ‘personal’ and ‘intimate’ as well—yet all across the land, men are called into it. Sometimes, feelings aren’t as important as survival.”

I have…very mixed feelings on this particular argument, and kind of don’t want to go into that right now because I know a can of worms when I see one, but it sets my teeth on edge a bit.

I also don’t want Gawyn to get to score any points right now just because he managed to react the right way one time, but I can accept that this is, in fact, petty of me.

Egwene is less petty than I am and says she’ll consider it.

And I have to say, the two of them are actually navigating this whole conversation rather well. Gawyn’s trying his best to interact with her as the Amyrlin Seat, and Egwene, probably because of that, is answering his questions as much as she can. They’re establishing a working relationship, basically; they can work on their personal one next.

“You’re keeping secrets,” he said. “Not just from me. From the entire Tower.”

“Secrets are needed sometimes, Gawyn.”

“Can’t you trust me with them?” He hesitated. “I’m worried that the assassin will come for you, Egwene.”

Okay that’s toeing the line a bit, but again, he at least asks for her trust here now, rather than demanding it. Expresses his concerns, but in a way that feels more like open communication than like ‘I know best’.

And that earns him a measure of that trust, moments later:

“One of the Forsaken is in the White Tower.”

True, but I actually think Egwene is perhaps mistaken about her being the assassin. Which again annoys me because I’m petty and don’t want Gawyn to be right where she’s wrong, but hey at least I acknowledge it, right?

Point being, Gawyn, that you have to earn the trust you’re asking for, but you’re on the right track, and so you get a part of it.

And she even explains a bit of why she’s keeping it secret. This is the most openly and honestly these two have communicated with each other in… uh… ever. Round of applause.

Light, a Forsaken in the Tower seemed more plausible than Egwene being the Amyrlin Seat!

Damn it Gawyn, you were doing so well. This is the kind of thinking you need to train yourself out of. This is exactly what Egwene is referring to when she says you don’t accept her as Amyrlin. Yes, she was an unlikely appointee to that seat. Yes, she’s young and wasn’t even Aes Sedai when she was raised. Yes, it’s hard to believe. But you need to get past that now, because this just comes across as… incredibly condescending, honestly.

“For now, there is something I need of you.”

“If it is within my power, Egwene.” He took a step towards her. “You know that.”

“Is that so?” she asked dryly. “Very well. I want you to stop guarding my door at night.”

“What? Egwene, no!”

She shook her head. “You see? Your first reaction is to challenge me.”

“It  is the duty of a Warder to offer challenge, in private, where his Aes Sedai is concerned!” Hammar had taught him that.

“You are not my Warder, Gawyn.”

That brought him up short.

YES. GOOD.

It is… a rather excellent demonstration of her point. They’ve made some progress here, but this… she makes an open request and he immediately promises anything in his power. But then, Gawyn’s made other promises before, and doesn’t exactly have a perfect track record of keeping them, when it comes down to it.

What he means is: ‘if it is within my power, and if I want to’.

His challenging of her request is almost secondary; the real issue here is that he says one thing (‘if it is within my power’) but immediately shows that he doesn’t actually mean it. Just as he says he accepts her as Amyrlin, but when it comes down to it, he still doesn’t. And that’s the part that erodes trust; that’s the part that means he’s not ready.

A challenge to that request—or perhaps a question as to why she’s asking it—is not completely out of line here. Like, leaving aside the question of whether or not Egwene needs a guard, or of whether he should get to guard her door when she hasn’t actually asked him to, if he hadn’t promised blindly to do whatever she asks, it would be more or less fair to ask why, before agreeing.

But he doesn’t. He makes that empty promise—so like his empty words that he does accept her as Amyrlin, really, I swear—and then immediately goes back on it. Shows that he’ll only actually listen to her when it suits him, and that he still thinks he’s free to do whatever the fuck he wants when he thinks He Knows Better. That he doesn’t actually trust her, or listen to her, when he doesn’t want to.

Turns out Egwene is literally setting herself up as bait, hence not wanting a guard. And again, challenging her on that is, I think, fair. It’s a pretty big risk! It is arguably kind of reckless! And that’s the sort of thing he could and should be able to do as someone who (supposedly) knows her as more than just Amyrlin: say ‘are you sure’ and ‘I don’t like this’.

That’s not the problem. The problem is that he doesn’t approach it that way at all: he approaches it with a blank-cheque promise that he then pulls back as soon as he realises what she’s actually asking, because in his view he only needs to listen to her when he wants to.

It's not a good look, Gawyn.

“Exposing myself is only one of my plans—and you are right, it is dangerous. But my precautions have been extensive.”

“I don’t like it at all.”

“Your approval is not required.” She eyed him. “You will have to trust me.”

“I do trust you,” he said.

“All I ask is that you show it for once.”

That’s pretty much it. It’s easy to say ‘I trust you’ or ‘I accept you’ or ‘anything within my power’. But those words have to mean something, and unfortunately he’s shown that they don’t. And so in this case she needs to see that he can obey her as Amyrlin, because this is a plan she is making as Amyrlin.

And Gawyn, you’d probably be better able to protect her if you demonstrated that trust once in a while, because then she’d know she can let you in on her plans without worrying about you going rogue and doing something against them. Then she’d know she can actually rely on you. Then your challenges – if you’re no longer challenging everything she says – would probably carry more weight, because she’d know they’re not just coming from a place of ‘I know better and I’m not listening’.

Well. They’ll get there. Maybe.

***

Over to Egwene now, which means I have to deal with the fact that she does actually like him and feels emotions and things when he’s around. Why, Egwene? Why?

That passion of his was entrancing

Trust me, it’s vastly overrated.

And it was important that she have people she could rely upon to contradict her, in private. People who knew her as Egwene, rather than the Amyrlin.

But Gawyn was too loose, too untrusting, yet.

That’s kind of what I was getting at. Because it is sort of ironic: he wants to be let into her confidence and be able to protect her and challenge her—and they’re both right that she needs people to do that! But she has to be able to trust him, and has to know that he understands her and her role, in order for him to be able to do that in a meaningful way. She has to know that it’s not just him refusing to listen, or not understanding what her role as Amyrlin actually demands of her. And has to know that she can trust his judgement when it comes down to it, and weigh up how he feels for her as Egwene vs what she needs as Amyrlin.

She looked over her letter to the new King of Tear, explaining that Rand was threatening to break the seals. Her plan to stop him would depend on her gathering support from people he trusted.

Ha. Speaking of trust. I am certain the placement of this is entirely intentional.

I’m still rather uneasy about this, but I also think there’s a decent chance that it’s not so far from what Rand actually expects or even wants. Because even if her intention right now is to ‘stop’ him, if she can get all the rulers behind her and get everyone to the right place at the right time…

But it could also go so badly. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those razor-edge kinds of moments, where the world hangs in the balance and the thing that will tip it one way or another is whether or not Egwene and Rand can in the end trust one another.

***

Oh hey it’s Graendal! Is this my reward for putting up with Gawyn? (For a certain definition of ‘putting up with’…)

Poor Graendal, having to make due with a mere cavern, in which she’s still managing to lounge on a silk chaise. I weep for you, really, I do.

Moridin stood inside his black stone palace.

YES! GOOD! MORIDIN!

Er. I mean. Oh no, scary, evil, bad. Listen, I love him.

“Aran’gar is dead, lost to us—and after the Great Lord transmigrated her soul the last time. One might think you are making a habit of this sort of thing, Graendal.”

THE CHOSEN DWINDLE, DEMANDRED. BECAUSE GRAENDAL FOUND A SNIPER RIFLE.

Anyway, whatever Moridin is here for, it’s not to play Graendal’s games. Sorry, Graendal; you’re good but he’s kind of… quite literally operating on an entirely different level here.

He’s a bit more…direct here than he usually is, and I can’t tell if that’s just Sanderson or if it’s because he’s bored of these petty games he has to play with the others and impatient with them and it’s time to move things into position for the ending so he doesn’t have time to deal with their bullshit. Probably a bit of both.

“Moridin, don’t you see? How will Lews Therin react to what he has done? Destroying an entire fortress, a miniature city of its own, with hundreds of occupants? Killing innocents to reach his goal? Will that sit easily within him?”

Moridin hesitated. No, he had not considered that.

But I wonder: did he?

Graendal is…not wrong, here, in what Natrin’s Barrow very nearly did to Rand. Did do, really; he was so close to the edge there at the end, repressing everything because if he allowed himself to feel the reality of it, it would break him. And so it drove him, ultimately, to Dragonmount, and nearly to destroying the world.

Graendal and Semirhage did their parts very, very well in that regard, even if Graendal is er… playing up how intentional it was on her side. It’s just that, at the last, Rand understood something deeper.

But how much of that whole process did Moridin himself feel? He and Rand are linked, after all, and I’m all but certain some of his existential despair crossed that link to Rand, so could he feel Rand’s suppression of emotions, and his anger and despair and everything else that threatened to overwhelm him? (Or is Moridin all too familiar with that, or simply too practiced at his own form of apathy, to even feel it as a difference?)

‘He must know pain of heart’, Moridin said; I don’t think he is as naïve here as Graendal seems to believe.

And still, I have to wonder if he felt anything, anything at all, of Rand’s remembrance of hope on Dragonmount. Or if, as the Betrayer of Hope, that is too far lost to him.

She could vaguely remember what it had been like, taking those first few steps towards the Shadow. Had she ever felt that foolish pain? Yes, unfortunately.

DAMN IT you can’t just TEASE me with things like this! That’s rude! It’s unfair! I need this story now! This is where I live! Turning points and the pain of them and your logic destroyed you, didn’t it and crossing thresholds that lead too far and losing yourself along the way but reforging something else until that loss no longer hurts and and and

But others of them had taken different paths to the Shadow, including Ishamael.

YOUR LOGIC DESTROYED YOU, DIDN’T IT.

CALLED FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF EVERYTHING.

BETRAYER OF HOPE.

(Did you betray hope or did it betray you).

I’m fine.

She could see the memories, so distant, in Moridin’s eyes. Once, she had not been sure who this man was, but now she was. The face was different, but the soul the same. Yes, he knew exactly what al’Thor was feeling.

Yeah. That. He… very much does, I think, and maybe even more so than you realise. (But if he can know the anguish why can he not know the hope—).

Also the face was different, but the soul the same is pretty and reminds me of men wear many names, many faces; different faces yet always the same man except that in this context there’s a sadness to it: as if that soul, that self, is something he cannot escape. Which, of course, seems to be exactly what Moridin himself believes: that so long as the Wheel turns, this is his fate. To be the Betrayer, the Shadow’s Champion, the one whose role is always to fight, always to oppose, and always to fall. The one for whom there is no hope except nothingness, and so that is his goal.

And it’s so close to Rand’s thoughts, there on Dragonmount just before that moment of epiphany. Why keep fighting, if all it means is another fight? What does it matter? It will only demand his soul and his self and his life over and over, and the Light’s victory only means another battle and the Shadow’s victory means annihilation so why even try?

Rand, in the end, has love and enough light to draw him back. The hint of a promise of a future that will come, even if he does not live to see it this time around. He has something – though he has had to struggle to see it – that he is fighting for. What is Moridin (Ishamael, Elan) fighting for? What does he have left to fight for? Nothing – for him there is nothing but darkness and despair and perhaps, if he is lucky, the nothingness of oblivion. For him there is no promise – and perhaps not even a memory – of Light. This is how he sees it, this is his role, and he does not see an alternative.

And so once again I have to wonder if he felt anything at all when Rand stood on Dragonmount and remembered the hope that Elan once betrayed. Perhaps not.

Sorry. I just. This is where I live and Moridin is a Situation for me and we all just have to accept that.

Anyway, Moridin may or may not be able to communicate – or at least be communicated to – directly by the Great Lord, so that’s a thing.

And Graendal’s going after Perrin now. Everyone’s set on a Perrin Aybara collision course this book, it would seem. Better get your levelling up done quickly, Perrin; she’s not exactly an easy opponent.

“He’s important,” Graendal said. “The prophecies—”

“I know the prophecies,” Moridin said softly.

Oh, and how. Knows them, knows—or certainly knows what he believes to be—his own role in them. And sees in them no way out, except the annihilation of everything.

Moridin’s not too confident in Graendal’s ability to take down Perrin.

And also has an entire storage unit full of objects of Power. That’s…interesting and terrifying, and I am keeping careful track of the mentioned inventory.

A dreamspike? That sounds…ominous, and also very much like something suited to a Perrin-centric storyline. So that should be fun.

It also comes with a very clear warning to not use it against Moridin or the others, and I’d recommend sticking to that advice, Graendal, because he will destroy you.

Then again, if he gets his way and you all achieve your victory, that will destroy you too. So, you know. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Oh and Slayer as well! Buy one object of power, get one wildcard villain free!

That voice of his… it sounded, just faintly, like that of the Great Lord.

Are his eyes on fire yet though?

But it would seem both Champions have well and truly been chosen, and invested with their power now. Rand can make crops grow with a thought and warp the air to light around him and hold a room in thrall; Moridin can speak with and almost as the Great Lord and wield the True Power and orchestrate annihilation.

“If you do succeed, the Great Lord will be pleased. Very pleased. That which has been granted you in sparseness will be heaped upon you in glory.”

She licked her dry lips. In front of her, Moridin’s expression grew distant.

Distant as those promises are empty, for I don’t think there will be any rewards or glory in the aftermath of a true success for the Great Lord. All that will remain is chaos, forever. And still, none of the Chosen but Moridin seem to quite…get that. Selfishness, Verin said, and it blinds them here.

(Which is not to say Moridin is free of that selfishness; I just think what he wants is…different).

Oh hey dark prophecies.

“They have long been known to me,” Moridin said softly, still studying the book. “But not to many others, not even the Chosen. The women and men who spoke these were isolated and held alone. The Light must never know of these words. We know of their prophecies, but they will never know all of ours.”

(But what do these prophecies say of you, Moridin? Or what do they demand?)

Interesting to have these referenced now, though, especially when we don’t actually get any of the actual text of them. Where do these come from? Are the like the Prophecies of the Light: true, but not always in the way they seem to mean, and not a guarantee but merely a possibility?

“But this…” she said, rereading the passage. “This says Aybara will die!”

“There can be many interpretations of any prophecy,” Moridin said. “But yes. This Foretelling promises that Aybara will die by our hand.”

Hm. Which of course immediately makes me think it absolutely does not promise that, but it’s a little annoying to have this as a kind of… supposed-to-be-ominous foreshadowing without actually having anything of the wording there to pick apart and see what it might really mean. That’s where the fun of a lot of the other prophecies and fortellings and viewings lies: in knowing it doesn’t always mean what the characters think it does, and trying to look at it from another angle.

Whereas here, all I can really say is ‘okay Perrin’s probably not going to die by their hand’ but I don’t get to have any reasoning or justification or ‘oh, maybe it means this’ other than ‘that doesn’t feel like where the story is going’.

Meh, oh well.

Next (ToM ch 6) Previous (ToM ch 4)

#weird POV combination but okay #I guess they both start with G? #wheel of time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #Towers of Midnight

[ivanaskye]

WoT reactions: book 4

Okay, I may be super tired, but I finished The Shadow Rising last night, and I HAVE A DUTY TO THE PEOPLE

(That duty is reaction posts.)

Once again, going character-by-character, because it’s a really convenient way to organize my thoughts in a series as sprawling as this.

[[MORE]]

Rand

Rand’s POV is BACK baby, and he has now ACCEPTED RESPONSIBILITY

But his next hurdle is comprehending the concept of trusting people

He does a pretty alright job in this book, using Lanfear’s suggestion as a jumping off point for both fucking with her and getting one of the Forsaken as a teacher

God I hope he tells SOMEONE that’s who his teacher is

Also really sad and ironic how he keeps thinking “if only I could trust Moiraine” when like, at this point, he totally could.

That’ll become ESPECIALLY true once news of the coup at the Tower reaches them; Moiraine literally cannot leash him to the Tower if the Tower is 100% full of people who want to kill him

Meanwhile, a lot of what he does this book has to do with the Aiel, and the big reveal about them—a ferocious warrior society!—actually being an offshoot of the super-pacifist Tuatha’an was fantastically well done, one of the best parts of the series so far. Each successive magical flashback giving you another moment in the slow change in these people. It was really good okay.

Also in those flashbacks: a hint at the Age Of Legends, which looks to be WAY cooler than I thought, and also there were tree people aparrently, but in more of a spirit way than an ent way, and man I want to learn more about THEM-

Anyway, as far as Rand goes, I remain fascinated.

Min

Awww yeah, our first scene was with Min this book, I was so happy to have her back

She doesn’t have a lot of chapters, I’m just putting her second because I love her

Also I love how her plotline went. The Tower falls. Siuan, the former leader of the Tower, is stilled (cut off from her magic permanently.) THEY ESCAPE WITH LOGAIN, A FORMER FALSE DRAGON ALSO CUT OFF FROM HIS MAGIC

Actually that brings me to

Siuan

Oh man I am so excited for where she is going from here

Formerly stately and poised magical leader now cut off from magic forever, likely to become some manner of vindictive avenger to stave off the intense depression that usually comes from being stilled? Count me in

I’m also really interested in where Logain is going but don’t know enough about him to give him his own section

Perrin

This is a BIG book for Perrin, whose ta’veren ability to pull things to him naturally lead to. Him organizing a defense against the trollocs AND WHITECLOAKS in the Two Rivers

Gets married to Faile literally on the eve of battle

Now he might be forced into the position of Being A Lord, lol

He never asked for this but he’s not bad at it either

Faile

Finds out about Perrin’s wolfy nature and is so into it

I wonder how many kinks she has, probably a lot

TRIUMPHANT return after Perrin attempts to send her away for her safety, (which he does right after marrying her LOL), now he will probably not attempt that again

It’s actually funny how much more uhhh un-sexist this series is (with the women fighting being one of the things that turn the tide, with it being narratively clear that Faile’s place is in HELPING THE WAR EFFORT, NOT IN SAFETY, etc) than a great deal of more recently written things lol

Egwene

Okay I’m calling it now, her arc is going to involve her eventually becoming the next Amyrlin Seat

(That was in one of her own visions of her future, and now something very similar in one of Perrin’s dreams, SO)

Mostly this book is her Learning How To Dreamwalk and also as usual Wanting To Know Everything, which is v relatable of her

The chances that she’s going to get with Galad have totally increased now that we know Gawyn is the evil one

Moiraine

What did she see in Rhuidean

I am so worried for her

Mat

He gets the cover image this book, and a weird and cool new weapon

Also a lot of interaction with outside-of-reality orange-and-blue morality... snake people? Who are probably also the Fae equivalent

I wanna know like, everything about this world

Also he thoroughly speaks the Old Tongue now

I’m not sure if he’s become a better person though lol

It took me embarrassingly long to realize that “daughter of the nine moons” as his future wife meant one of the Seanchan, lol.

Aviendha

Pooooossibly gonna be Rand’s third wife, which I don’t really like since I’m not that interested in her yet

Shrug

Elayne

RACHETED up to one of my favs IMMEDIATELY after having one of her first POVs in the series, I’m love her

Absolutely Has Braincells, Everyone Is Astonished

ACTUALLY UNDERSTANDS DIPLOMACY

Filled with competence

Definitely The Friendly One in her part of the plot. Speaking of that...

Egeanin

NEW FAV NEW FAV

Plots about unlearning bigotry are usually pretty boring to me, but hers moves fast and I am honestly feeling so invested right now

COMPLETELY accidentally becomes friends with Elayne and Nynaeve, realizes ability to channel =/= evil

Order-obsessed, stern and *fantastic* in combat. We have two combat-oriented non-channeling women now and I am LIVING

Nynaeve

“How DARE Egeanin make me like her! I hate her so much for the fact that I still like her!” Legendary.

FACES OFF AGAINST A FORSAKEN AND WINS

UNIMAGINABLE RAW POWER

Is now confirmed to only be able to channel when angry because of a mental block/fear of her own power, I am so excited for when that block finally comes crashing down

#wot #wot reactions #WHEEEEEEE #....l of time

[shinylitwick94]

Shinylitwick reads Wheel of Time: final thoughts on the series

Overall thoughts on the Wheel of Time series now that I’ve finished the main books:

(Spoilers, obviously)

The good:

-magic

The magic in this series was exactly what I look for in magic in fantasy series. It allows our characters to do all sorts of cool things, there are some rules but not too many, and nobody is shoving a rulebook down my throat.

From the start I loved the idea of the divide between saidin/saidar, with saidin being tainted, and I felt like it never ceased to be an interesting aspect of the series, even by the later books. The male/female relationships themselves were a bit stupid sometimes, but I loved how the male/female magic divide was worked into the world.

-characters

Jordan’s focus as a writer is clearly characters,and it shows. We get to know our main characters very well, and we are introduced to a secondary and tertiary cast that contains hundreds maybe even thousands of names.

Rand, in particular, is a very rare thing in fantasy fiction - a main character who is simultaneously the most interesting character in the series. I loved following Rand’s internal conflict. It always felt believable and even when he did something incredibly stupid, you could see where he was coming from. I really liked how he turned out at the end too.

My other favorite character has to be Nyneave, although Egwene does a pretty good job in the later books too. I liked Nyneave form the start. I liked that she was a little older than the main cast. I liked that she felt responsible in some measure for this group of basically teeenagers. I liked how she struggled with her dislike of Aes Sedai while simultaneously becoming one. I liked how she handled her block. I liked her relationship with Lan. I liked how she managed to stay by Rand’s side until the very end, even while he was in completely crazy mode. There were moments where she felt a little annoying/childish, but I’d argue that’s a problem that affects pretty much the entire cast on occasion.

-the differences between fictional cultures

Specifically the differences between the mainstresm “we(s)tlander” cultures and the Aiel and the Seanchan.

The cultures on the main continent are all pretty similar to each other. Each country has one or two defining characteristics and perhaps the Borderlands are a little different from the rest of them, but all in all they’re pretty similar.

Which is what makes the contrast between those cultures and the Aiel on the one hand and the Seanchan on the other so fascinating. I loved both of those cultures so much! They’re quite alien, but here is enough there to make you believe they are or could be real. The Seanchan are slightly tougher to sell than the Aiel, because pretty much everything about them is fucked up, but if we think about it for a moment, many of those things have happened IRL. They just weren’t all concentrated in the same place and at the same time.

I also like how Jordan picks random bits of our world’s cultures and sort of mashes them together to make his own. It doesn’t always work, but at least it’s an effort, and anything that can help not replace a fictional country with the name of it’s real world counterpart is pretty good.

-the role played by trust, or the absence thereof, and miscommunication

It’s kind of a key point in this series that nobody trusts anybody. And the more they mistrust, the more paranoid they get and the worse things tend to go for them.

While at some points it almost had me screaming at the characters to just talk to each other already, it also seemed very realistic that so many of them wouldn’t and I liked seeing the consequences that had on the rumors that were spread and tehe assumptions that were made by other characters.

Probably one of the biggest examples of this in series is what happens with Morgase. Rand kills Rahvin, but Morgase had already escaped and so he assumes she is dead, as does Elayne. Morgase and everyone in her court had no clue who Rahvin was. Nor did anyone else in the world. Therefore, they assume that Rand killed both “Gaebril” and Morgase. And this assumption affects how a lot of characters behave, particularly Gawyn and even Galad, in a way. None of it is truly cleared up untill Morgase herself talks to someone who knows who she is and someone else tells her who “Gaebril” was.

-backstory

I’m normally not a big fan of “fantasy as a fallen future” as a trope, mostly because it tends to twist the fantasy I love too far into sci-fi. 

Thse books somehow manage fix this. I loved everything involving Lews Therin and the Age of Legends backstory. I wish we’d had more of it in the books, or just that there were more WoT fanfiction out there, so that I could keep reading about it.

I really liked the idea of the Forsaken having “mundane” jobs in the Age of Legends - Moghedien the accountant, Ishamael the philosopher, Mesaana the schoolteacher - it completely changed my perspective on them and made them feel more flawed and more real.

Lews Therin himself also strikes me as a huge asshole that I would be curious to know more about. I mean, out of 13 Forsaken at least 4, possibly 5, turn to the shadow because they have a problem with him, specifically. That’s a pretty big personality right there.

-it’s finished

Let’s face it, I would never in my life have picked up a 14 book series otherwise. 

The bad:

-too much...everything, really

I wrote this in almost every single one of my individual reviews for each book and I will write it here again: this series is much longer than it should be. Jordan clearly loves his world and is deeply immersed in it, and that’s great. However, there is such a thing as too much description. We don’t need to know every inn, every dress, every blade of grass. Mention it if it’s important of course, but otherwise, just leave it out.

The same criticism applies to certain plotlines that could have been much, much, much shorter, or just cut out altogether. There are far too many chapters of padding, or just focusing on secondary plots that the reader is never truly made to care about. There’s an entire book that barely has reason to exist at all!

-gender relations, aka men are from mars, women are form venus

First things first, I understand that Jordan is trying to make a point about a society where men are seen as having caused the end of the world, and so the world in general has a more negative attitude towards men. It’s an interesting idea, but it is, IMHO, poorly executed.

Because what Jordan did was not invert our world’s sexism, it was add extra sexism on top of it. So now instead just of having men be sexist towards women, we have women being sexist towards men too. 

 And everyone in this world sees almost every single interaction from a male vs female perspective. And it’s so, so exhausting. The men all think women can’t walk down the street alone without needing to be saved and the women all think that the men are stupid bumbling idiots. And they complain about it all the freaking time.

It’s a shame, but I do think this is probably the biggest failing in the series - it certainly seems to be one of the main factors that puts people off it, and it’s the thing that makes people hate some particular characters pretty extremely. I’m pretty sure my own dislike of Mat and a lot of readers’ dislike of Elayne and Nyneave and Egwene is due in large part to them all being so incredibly sexist. 

- the slump is real

It is. Which books will be the slumpiest for you will depend on what characters and plotlines you are the most or the least interested in, but everyone seems to agree that CoT is the worst of the bunch, and I agree with that too. Fortunately it is also the shortest one.

#shinylitwick reads books #wheel of time

[hyperbolicpurple]

Wheel of Time read: The Eye of the World

a recap/reactions post for @veliseraptor, whose love for these gigantic doorstoppers convinced me to read them, and @innermostplanet, whose reaction to hearing I am completely unspoiled for this series was, I believe, “dis gun be good”

(anyone feel free to comment or reply, but please don’t spoil me for what I haven’t yet read, please!)

Well, it’s pretty obvious why this is considered such a prime example of Western epic fantasy. Boy + mysterious lineage/sword/destiny + quest = a pretty straightforward formula, lol. Fortunately I’m down.

It’s sooooooo verboooooooose, like, even just at the sentence level I wanted to take a pen to it and hack away at it, but were all of those chapters really necessary, couldn’t they be recapped??? A pretty mild complaint though. I breezed through it so obviously it wasn’t so bad.

My other complaint: WHY ARE WE CALLING ANYTHING A “MYRDDRAAL” WHEN WE CAN JUST CALL IT A “FADE” AND WE ALREADY DO? Robert. Robert. My buddy. My pal. This is unnecessary.

(They’re also apparently called Halfmen, like come on, just give them one name, it’s OK.)

ONTO THE POSITIVE:

Characters I liked most: Min, whom we saw for like two seconds (and who just likes to word vomit her visions to total randos in convenient prophetic infodumps, I guess, lol); Nynaeve, who is delightfully prickly; and Lan and Perrin. I can resist neither guys described as wolfish nor guys who commune with wolves. Apparently.

(I feel like there’s an Aes Sedai/Warder AU out there waiting to be written about Daenerys/Jon, yeah? Would that not be a perfect fit?)

I can’t believe no one was dead by the end of this book? Like, for sure, I was expecting Mat to kick it and maybe Perrin too (since they seemed like such “extras,” Rand being Ba’alzamon’s obvious “real” target). BUT NO, THEY’RE ALL SPECIAL DUDES WITH SPECIAL POWERS AND DESTINIES, lmao. (Mat really did seem destined for the chopping block, though. You don’t steal magical artifacts from demons and lie about it, kid! The paranoia and antisocialness was some serious One Ring shit.) Even Thom apparently isn’t dead??? Or Rand’s dad??? Can no one actually die??? AND OBVIOUSLY Nynaeve and Egwene are both potentially powerful Aes Sedai too.

I really did not understand the Rand/Egwene relationship? At the beginning I got the impression they’d been ~maybe something~ in the past but Rand was backing away/wanting to call it off, and now they’re totally in love but doomed to be apart? I don’t know?

Did like Nynaeve/Lan, and CALLED IT, her weirdness around him was 100% “I am subconsciously attracted to this guy and aggravated by it,” haha. Also he thinks she deserves better than him and his inevitable death, and he said, I quote, “I will hate the man you choose because he is not me, and love him if he makes you smile,” and fuck you dude, now I love you, so naturally I’m all aboard that angst train. Toot toot!

SUCH a tonal difference from ASOIAF. Like, I was hit over the head by how many over-friendly over-generous innkeepers just love to give our heroes a helping hand and how many people like to stand up and give beautiful heartfelt speeches in defense of whoever the mob is attacking, etc. Also that was such a rosy picture of small town life. Sure, they’re all fond of each other and so good-hearted and who doesn’t love a wholesome country boy but omg I feel like I need to read a Stephen King book to cancel it out??? I don’t need everything to be as cynically crapsack as Westeros, but it did strain credulity juuuuuuust a little, lol.

And obviously Rand is an Aes Sedai too. Also successfully called! Not that it was hard, given the fainting and shaking spell after obviously performing some kind of magic not long after we were told that was a thing. And an “Aielman,” whatever that is. And the actual Dragon Reborn, whoever that is, as opposed to all the fake ones hanging around. (I wonder if we’ll see Logain again?) Since I doubt Rand will actually go insane (though that would be an interesting road for a protagonist to take) I assume they’re going to figure some way out of it. Either fix the “male” side of the power or be cut off from the power without the shitty side effects, or, I guess, access the “female” side of the power instead?

And there was a big tree dude who was all connected to the earth and some traveling pacifists (whom I liked very much) and some royal progeny in a garden. It really seems like we’ll see the royal progeny again, although again, I’m laughing about how apparently GOOD AND WHOLESOME those kids are.

(again, please don’t spoil me)

Next Posts: The Great Hunt

#wheel of time readthrough

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 36

It’s all in the nuances

Chapter 36: The Death of Tuon

Somehow I don’t think that title means what it looks like it means.

We’re back with Mat, but Verin is here so hopefully that should make things interesting.

“My goal was to make my way to Tar Valon.” “Then how did you end up here?” Mat asked

That’s an entirely fair question, but the first thing my mind went to, when Verin said that, was that you know who else’s goal was initially to make their way to Tar Valon?

Rand.

And so far, he has yet to even set foot in the city. I just find that kind of fun to think about, because I hadn’t really given it much thought before. But that was his entire goal pretty much all through EotW.

In comparison to that, Verin getting sidetracked for half a book somewhere in the middle of…is Mat in Murandy still?...is small potatoes.

Bloody [bench] must have been designed by insane, cross-eyed Trollocs and built from the bones of the damned. That was the only reasonable explanation.

Somewhat cringing at this because it is so very not Mat, and feels like it’s trying too hard. Meh. Anyway.

“You can Travel. So if you intended to go to the White Tower, then why not just bloody Travel there and be done with it?”

“Good questions,” Verin said. “Indeed. Might I have some tea?”

What, you thought you were going to get answers?

Good luck. I’ve been trying for ten books now and still all I have are suspicions. And one of those suspicions is that Verin is just a massive troll and enjoys fucking with people.

Because of the holes in his memory, Mat’s first meeting with Verin was fuzzy to him. In fact, his memory of her at all was fuzzy.

I’m not actually sure having your memories intact would help much with that, honestly.

Studying her, her mannerisms seemed too exaggerated to him. As if she were leaning on the preconceptions about Browns, using them. Fooling people, like a street performer taking in country boys with a clever game of three-card shuffle.

She eyed him. That smile on the corner of her lips? That was the smile of a jackleg who didn’t care that you were on to her con. Now that you understood, you could both enjoy the game, and perhaps together you could dupe someone else.

One trickster to another.

I like little moments of recognition like this between characters. Neither says anything, but they both know, and each one knows that the other knows, and so the rest of the scene can proceed with this undercurrent of understanding.

Two characters who recognise something similar in each other – or who recognise each other’s talents, at any rate – and who just look at each other across the board and say ‘shall we play a game?’

And as the reader you’re invited in as well, because it’s not so much adversarial as almost-but-not-quite-competitive, a test of skill almost, a game in many ways. So it’s an open invitation to play, because as the reader you also have that little extra bit of insight…but not enough to know everything that’s going on. So, like Mat, we get to try to spot the aforementioned con.

Also, I just love that Verin and Mat are set side by side here because at first glance they’re total opposites, but by positioning them this way we see Verin as being…perhaps not quite trickster but certainly trickster-adjacent, herself. She’s not the roguish yet honourable young man with a jaunty hat and a cool spear; she’s a plump middle-aged woman with probably an inkstain or two on her clothes and an almost grandmotherly manner. And yet here she is.

I mean, not that we didn’t already kind of know that. But I love these moments where Verin is revealed again to be not entirely what she seems, yet in a way that suits her. It’s some good character development for Mat, as well. Everyone wins here, really.

Good luck getting Mat to admit outright to being ta’veren, Verin.

(Good luck getting Verin to say anything at all outright, Mat).

“But you can’t hide your light in [Rand’s] shadow, Matrim Cauthon.”

That sounds like what Melindhra used to say to him.

Also, I don’t know; Tuon described Rand as having a shadow like a mountain last chapter, and it’s all rather dark there these days, so if you’re going to try, now’s the time.

Casual mention of Verin having just been with Rand, which I think is anything but casual.

“How…did he seem?” Mat said. “Is he…you know…”

“Mad?” Verin asked.

Mat nodded.

“I’m afraid so,” Verin said, lips downturning slightly. “I think he’s still in control of himself, however.”

There’s very little…softening of the truth with Verin, either to herself or to others. Obfuscating of it to serve her purposes, sure. But denial or wishful thinking or gentle presentation of facts? Not so much. She deals with the world as she finds it, because wishing it otherwise won’t make it so (unless, perhaps, you’re the Dragon Reborn and a Fisher King analogue, in which case all bets are off). So she’s not going to soft-pedal her perceptions of Rand, even for a friend of his. Whether or not she’s completely correct is another question, but she’s not going to waste time trying to ignore what she sees.

I like Mat’s hesitant concern for Rand, here. He tried to break off their friendship as far back as TGH, but it never quite snapped completely. And I think he cares more about Rand than he might admit.

“I’m not convinced young al’Thor’s problems are completely due to the Power, Matrim. Many would like to blame his temperament on saidin, but to do that is to ignore the incredible stresses that we’ve settled on that poor boy’s shoulders.

There’s something about the way she says this, so matter-of-fact but at the same time so clearly aware and even sympathetic of something that very few characters even begin to acknowledge, much less understand, that lends a great deal of poignancy to this statement.

I think it’s maybe because it’s so matter-of-fact. It’s not sentimental, and Verin knew Rand earlier on but doesn’t have any particular attachment to him the way, say, Min or Nynaeve or even Egwene or Mat do. She’s not saying this out of sympathy or sorrow. And yet that gives it more weight, in a way; it’s a way of showing how clear that is to her, that she sees it as just a statement of fact. His humanity and youth, so easily forgotten by most, are just simple fact to her.

And that means so much, when so few in the world see the Dragon Reborn anymore as anything but a force, a power, a monster, a legend. Rand is a man who can channel. Men who can channel are driven mad by the taint on saidin. Therefore Rand must be mad. Therefore the things Rand does must be madness. The root of this must be the taint. And thus they can ignore everything else involved that might be harder to accept, everything that might cause an uncomfortable conflict of conscience.

Easier to see the Dragon Reborn as a necessary monster on the verge of madness, perhaps, than to see a tortured young man carrying far too heavy a task for a world that fears and even reviles him. Because the first option doesn’t ask you to do anything. It’s terrifying, certainly, but in a distant ‘nothing I can do’ kind of way. Or, for those who want to manipulate him, it gives them a very reasonable basis for doing so.

But Verin…Verin just looks at the situation and sees truth, apparently unclouded by sentiment or self-interest or fear or denial. And thus, perhaps ironically, ends up with a view of Rand that is far more sympathetic than almost any other character aside from those very closest to him.

He is only human. He is young. He is tired and desperate and in pain. And Verin sees that, and understands its effects. Even as she is ostensibly working to keep him alive until it is ‘time for him to die’. She does not allow herself to soften that necessity, to take the easy way out by blaming saidin or by looking at him as anything other than what he is.

Oh and by the way saidin is clean now.

Once again, Verin has this way of getting straight to the heart of things, and making these sorts of statements that are almost uncomfortable in their truth or insightfulness or just in what they force people to think about. But she does it with this mask of being just a typical Brown, lost in her own thoughts, unaware of the full effect of what she’s saying, drifting off on a tangent that just so happens to make everyone else uncomfortable. et there’s nothing vague or accidental or even truly tactless about it. She knows that this is the best way to get her thoughts heard, but in such a way as to not bring any sort of…suspicion? scrutiny? unwanted attention? upon herself.

And also in a way that doesn’t leave people a lot of room to evade the truth, even if just for a few seconds. It’s why her words often result in brief uncomfortable silences. Because she doesn’t leave an easy way out…until she decides herself to provide one, to bring things back to comfortable topics.

“I would argue that the cleansing itself is more like a pebble thrown into a pond. The ripples will take some time to reach the shore.”

“A pebble?” Mat asked. “A pebble?”

“Well, perhaps more of a boulder.”

“A bloody mountain if you ask me”

Again with the mountains. Yes, Mat, a mountain. An almost literally bloody mountain, you could say.

Flaming Aes Sedai. Did they have to be like that? It was probably another oath they took and told nobody about, something to do with acting mysterious.

Hey, that sounded almost like Mat! The ‘it was probably another oath’ part, I mean.

And now back to alien body-snatcher Mat. Ah well.

That’s okay, because it’s storytime with Verin! Who seems to have experienced the fantasy, ta’veren-induced equivalent of the classic and truly infurating ‘this flight has been delayed for approximately thirty minutes’ announcement happening every hour on the hour for eight hours while you remain stuck in the airport waiting area, unable to actually go anywhere, even though you really could have, because every time you consider going a bit further away the announcement promises that you’ll be boarding soon. (It lies).

No I’m not speaking from personal experience what are you talking about.

Except in Verin’s case it involves a truly absurd number of coincidences such as leaks and inn fires to prevent her from ever learning a place well enough to Travel from it.

“So? Mat said. “Still sounds like a coincidence.”

You’d think Matrim ‘I’m leaving now, Rand, for real this ti—oh look a battle!’ Cauthon would have a little more sympathy.

“I soon started to feel a tugging on me. Something pulling me, yanking at me. As if…”

Mat shifted again. “As if somebody’s got a bloody fishhook inside of you?”

As if the Pattern is exasperatedly trying to fix a chessboard that was set up by six-year-olds? “No, that piece goes here…oh just let me do it.”

“I was quite fatigued from my days staying up all hours because of fires, crying babies, and constant moves from one inn room to another.”

Oh the joys of business travel.

“It was then that I kenw for certain that I was being directed. Most wouldn’t have noticed it, I suspect, but I have made a study of the nature of ta’veren.”

Is there anything you haven’tmade a study of, Verin?

“I spoke with Tomas, and we determined to avoid gong where we were being pulled. […] I opened a gateway, but when we reached the end of our journey, we stepped not into Tar Valon, but a small village in northern Murandy!”

I’m laughing at how hard the Pattern has to work to get anyone to go to Murandy, I guess. Maybe it’s not actually ta’veren; it’s just a lot of money spent on a tourism campaign. Part of Roedran’s plans for economic development, no doubt.

“One thing bothers me, however,” Verin said. “Was there no other person who could have happened into your path?”

You’re just that special, Verin.

Now the question is why?

“First, we should negotiate my price for taking you to Andor.”

Okay no, apparently the question now, as far as Verin is concerned, is just the classic ‘how much?’

I can respect that.

Ah, so she wasn’t the one distributing the drawings of him, she just found one.

I’m pretty sure saidarisn’t a verb, but then, Mat used ‘Aes Sedai’ as a verb when he was still being written by Robert Jordan, so…whatever. It’s probably the least out-of-character part of the sentence, which might be saying something.

“I received this paper, Matrim, from a Darkfriend,” she said, “who told me – thinking me a servant of the Shadow – that one of the Forsaken had commanded that the men in these pictures be killed.”

Oh, so it was about that after all.

More importantly though…*squints at Verin* any particular reason he thought you were a servant of the Shadow? That’s some extremely Aes Sedai phrasing right there…

She thinks Mat should go into hiding? That’s…extreme. Though it’s kind of what he’s been doing for the last several books, in a way, if not necessarily always by design.

“I’m always careful,” Mat said.

Presented without further comment.

She slipped a small folded piece of paper out from under the picture. It was sealed with a drop of blood-red wax.

Mat took it hesitantly. “It is?”

“Instructions,” Verin said. “Which you will follow on the tenth day after I leave you in Caemlyn.”

He scratched his neck, fronwing, then moved to break the seal.

“You aren’t to open them until that day,” Verin said.

NOW WHAT DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF?

Mysterious envelopes from an Aes Sedai, that must not be opened just yet, not while she’s here watching…

This has always boded well before. As Mat has every reason to know, having read another of them and seen a third handed over.

Mat wants no part of this agreement, though. Really? You’d rather walk twenty days to Caemlyn than wait ten days there?

Then again, promising to follow mysterious instructions given to you by an Aes Sedai you recognise as being not entirely what she seems, is…well, I suppose I can’t completely fault him for being wary. So here we are, at a question of whether or not to trust an Aes Sedai.

Is this her game, here? Which choice does she actually want him to make? Could it be that she knows he distrusts Aes Sedai and the One Power and also hates being told what to do, and so is presenting this to him in such a way that she knows he won’t open it? Though in that case, why? It reminds me a little, perhaps, of her giving Egwene the dream ter’angreal but not Corianin’s notes. Yet it also seems a little too convoluted; there would have to be some reason why she had no choice but to give him whatever instructions are in that envelope, and yet also not want him to follow them. Occam’s Razor would certainly suggest the simpler answer: she does want him to read them. But…I just don’t know.

“I might not need you to go through with the contents. I hope to be able to return to you and relieve you of the letter and send you on your way. But if I cannot…”

So there is a scenario in which she doesn’t want the instructions followed. Which means it’s possible she doesn’t want them followed at all, but has to give them to him for some reason…and nothing she’s said has narrowed it down even if we trust that she is bound by the first Oath. Which at this point I wouldn’t put any money on. On either side of that bet.

What instructions could she have for him, that are so conditional? And on what? WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING, VERIN?

What might you not be able to return from?

Who are you?

“The compromise, then?” Mat said.

“You may choose not to open the letter,” Verin said. “Burn it. But if you do so, you wait fifty days in Caemlyn”

A choice between knowledge but being bound, and ignorance but freedom. How…perfect a dilemma, really, for one who so embodies Odin and the trickster archetype.

But what does Verin know? What is going to happen in Caemlyn between ten and fifty days after she leaves? She has to know something; otherwise the waiting seems too arbitrary.

“Twenty days,” he said.

“Thirty days,” she said, rising, then raised a finger to cut off his objection.

She had to have known he would try to bargain with her. So, between ten and thirty days after she leaves him…what? What instructions would be relevant after ten days, but irrelevant before ten and after thirty? What is going to happen? All I can think of is something to do with Elayne being crowned as Queen, maybe, because just about everything else from that storyline was more or less wrapped up when we left Caemlyn at the end of the last book. Or something to do with the Borderlanders?

I can’t figure it out, and I also can’t work out what angle Verin is playing here, what she even wants Mat to do, which side of the compromise she wants him to take. So I can’t figure out which one he should take.

Verin’s pretty damn good at this.

Verin eyed him, a hint of worry on her face. He couldn’t let her know how pleased he was.

But we also know, from their brief moment of mutual recognition at the start of this scene, that she might know anyway. Or that she might be letting worry show deliberately. Or…

She folded up the picture of him, then took a small leather-bound satchel from her pocket. She opened it, sliding the picture inside, and as she did, he noticed that she had a small stack of folded, sealed pieces of paper inside just like the one he was holding.

What are you up to, Verin Sedai? Because this feels very like what Moiraine did when she knew she was about to…go away.

A stack full of mysterious letters? Instructions not to open them until after she leaves? A very vaguely worded statement about hoping she’ll be able to return to collect them?

She hasn’t told him ‘you will do well’, but other than that, this sure looks like a…not a farewell so much as a final play of some kind.

Also she can’t have let him see those letters by accident. So does she want him to wonder? Why?

Why was Verin being so cryptic?

GOOD. FUCKING. QUESTION.

Though it’s hardly a remarkable occurrence; she’s been cryptic for ten damn books already.

Tuon was dead. Gone, cast aside, forgotten.

That’s a fun way to start a POV. A statement not of identity, but of nonexistence. Of the relinquishing of an identity, the death of one.

Fortuona was empress.

OH

MY FUCKING GOD

FORTUONA.

Fortune rides like the sun on high, with the fox that makes the ravens fly…

Fortune. Fortuona. She’s Lady Luck.

I can’t decide if that’s brilliant or over the top. Maybe a little bit of both. It does give a rather excellent double meaning to that line of the Prophecies.

Either way, she’s standing in front of the forces she has assembled for, presumably, an attack on Tar Valon. So…we’re doing this.

Fifty sul’dam and damane pairs, including Dali and her sul’dam Malahavana, whom Fortuona had given to the cause. She had felt the need to sacrifice something personal to this most important of missions.

Um, Tuon? Those are people. So yes, you are sacrificing something personalin that you are sacrificing a person. Who herself has no choice in whether or not to be your own personal sacrifice so that you feel like you’re truly invested in this.

Though for some reason Rand’s thought a few chapters ago about Min, that if she died, he would add her name to the list and suffer for it comes to mind. These are people, and their lives have meaning beyond the pain their deaths would cause you.

But of course, to the Seanchan, Malahavana is simply property. So the greatest cost, if she dies, is not to her or her family, but to Tuon. Which is fucked up. Hot take: slavery is bad!

Fortuona looked down at the soldier before her, laying her fingers on his forehead, where she had kissed him. “May your death bring victory,” she said softly, speaking the ritual words. “May your knife draw blood. May your children sing your praises until the final dawn.”

That doesn’t sound like a blessing you give to someone who has any hope of returning. This soldier is one of five, so maybe it’s a special suicide mission? To do…what?

Their assault would begin in darkness

How…appropriate. It was made possible – or made certain – by the darkness surrounding Rand, and such an attack serves the Shadow far better than it serves the Light, by bringing even greater strife and division amongst those that should be united.

They really needed that treaty.

It speaks to why Rand suppressing his ability to feel, deciding there are no limits left to him, losing sight of what he’s fighting for, and pushing only for the Last Battle itself and nothing beyond that, is disastrous on more than just a metaphysical/teleological standpoint. It’s not just an issue because this is a fight between Good and Evil and so the champion of Good must embody that ideal. I do think there’s an element of that, of course – it’s where the Fisher King imagery comes in, and the notion of the land being one with the Dragon and vice versa – but there’s also the practical fact that if you’re terrifying and cold and surrounded by an aura of darkness, people aren’t going to want to make peace treaties with you. Or be motivated to fight for your cause. Or listen to you at all. Or have any hope themselves of what might come after, because the examples and expectations being set are so dark.

It all blurs together at some point, the practical and more philosophical reasons, but there’s definitely a practical aspect there. It’s hard to win a fight you no longer have any reason to want to win. And it’s hard to win a fight when you look more like the thing you’re fighting than the thing you’re fighting for, because other people will see that. People who should be on your side will see that. And they, like Tuon, will draw their own conclusions and act accordingly.

Oh hey one of these special five is a woman. At least one. I like that this is specifically shown, in addition to the more general statement that over half the Fists of Heaven here are women. General statements are a lot easier to make, and are sometimes used as a bit of an excuse, or a halfhearted ‘see, look, we gave you what you wanted’. Specifics help bolster that. Even if in this case the specific in question is a woman being sent on a suicide mission to fight for the enslavement of women who can wield Power. You can’t have everything.

(I should clarify I’m being facetious there; I don’t think the Seanchan staging an assault on the White Tower is specifically gender-coded in that way. And I do genuinely appreciate seeing women amongst the elite forces, because that’s cool, all other issues with the Seanchan aside).

Oh. Bloodknives. They’ve been mentioned before, but only in the most offhand of comments.

The pure black stone ring each one wore was a specialised ter’angrealthat would grant them strength and speed, and would shroud them in darkness

That sounds quite a lot like the benefits of the Warder bond.

The incredible abilities came at a cost, however, for the rings leeched life from their hosts, killing them in a matter of days.

That also sounds a little like the costs of the Warder bond. Of a bond that is broken, anyway.

The whole thing also smells of a secondary purpose, introduced like this so late in the game. Not sure how, precisely, but I’ll be keeping an eye on these ter’angrealthat have now been placed on the mantle.

These five would not return. They would stay behind, whatever the results of the raid, to kill as many marath’damane as they could

Oh.

Was this what Min foresaw, when she visited the Tower in TSR and saw death and blood on so many faces? And knew it would all happen within the same day? The fact that Elaida’s coup took place so soon after made it seem like that was what Min had seen, but what if it was actually a viewing of this attack? If so, that’s truly impressive use of foreshadowing and misdirection. Well played. *slow clap*

Fortuona kissed the last of the five Bloodknives, speaking the words condemning them to death, but also to heroism.

I love this sentence, because the structure of it implies that heroism is also a condemnation. They’re presented as illusory opposites, but the same verb applies to each. Condemned to heroism. It’s a concept and a way of looking at things that I love, and actually it’s not at all out of place in this series. Just look at Rand.

That whole sentence reminds me of Rand, really. Condemned to death and heroism. Destruction and salvation. Condemned to be the saviour of the world, and reaching a point where it’s hard to tell, between death and heroism, which is the cost and which is the reward.

And the soldiers are off. No turning back now. I hope you’re ready, Egwene. It might be your last and best chance to pull the Tower together. A common enemy…

As the final light of the sunset died, they struck northward.

There’s something very appropriate about that. The final death of the light, the vanishing of that last chance for reconciliation as Rand walked away; it felt like a victory for the Shadow, a fracturing of the Light.

Also, even striking northward has something of a double meaning. The Blight lies north, but still they fight each other. They should be heading there, as the Shadow stretches across the land and the last battle comes. As the sunset dies they should look north. But not like this.

It could be the beginning of a bold new tactic. Or it could lead to a disaster.

Travelling, gunpowder, aerial assaults. They’ve changed war, and that isn’t something that they can just…step back from, once the Last Battle has been fought.

“We have changed everything,” Fortuona said softly. “General Galgan is wrong; this will not give the Dragon Reborn a worse bargaining position. It will turn him against us.”

She sees. She understands what that negotiation was, and what its failure has cost them. She does not see any other decision she can make – and given what she saw of Rand, it’s hard to see how she could think otherwise, and hard even to disagree with the underlying thought there, that he is dangerous and cannot be allowed to claim more power, as he is – but Tuon is very good at what she does. She understands nuances of politics and power and strategy, and she knows what this will do. But she also does not see an alternative.

Or should I be calling her Fortuona, now? It’s hard when fictional characters change names mid-story; I like it, as a storytelling device, because it’s such a good way to convey a sense or change of identity, but I never then know how to refer to the character, especially in something like this liveblog. And I’m not at all consistent – I call Moridin by his new name but I’m still referring to Tuon as Tuon rather than Fortuona, and I’m not even sure what I do with Egeanin/Leilwin.

“And was he not against us before?” Selucia asked.

“No,” Fortuona said. “We were against him.”

This is excellent. The subtle but at the same time vast difference between those two. The fact that Tuon can so clearly understand this, and what it means. They were his enemy. Now, because of what they do today, they will make him theirs.

Tuon isn’t always the most sympathetic character, largely because she came to the story late, is from a completely foreign culture to the rest of the narrative, and holds some views that are…difficult to reconcile, for a modern reader. But it’s moments like these that make her work, I think. This ability to see beyond what most do – not to change her mind, necessarily, but to be so perceptive and to understand the way people think and work. To be able to look at and judge her own actions and decisions, and to understand the implications.

She’s not going to war against the Tower – and making an enemy of the Dragon Reborn – just for shits and giggles, or even because of a clash of ideologies. That plays into it, because she believes her view to be the right one, but it goes deeper than that. And she understands consequences and tradeoffs and costs. She can recognise that yes, they were against him. And that this will not fix that, but will instead likely exacerbate it. And also that she has no other choice.

But we can sympathise with her more, because we believe that thought process, even if ours might be different. She doesn’t simply press blindly ahead with a single agenda; she looks at the whole situation and understands what her options are and what the results will likely be of each. And because she’s so perceptive, and so strategically capable, we can then trust her more, in a sense, when she does make a decision that sets her against most of the other sympathetic characters. So instead of being a villain by default, she gains much more depth and a certain level of sympathy.

Anyway, this is of course going to end well. To make an enemy of Rand, as he is now?

Though perhaps the more interesting question is, what will Egwene do in the face of her dream coming true? It seems like she could use this to unite the Tower around her. But I also wonder if maybe, just maybe, she could do here what Rand could not. There would be a certain poetry in that, for her own arc.

Next (TGS ch 37) Previous (TGS ch 35)

#nothing is as it seems #unless it seems like disaster #Wheel of Time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #The Gathering Storm

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 32

In which ghosts have funerals and Nynaeve plays detective.

Chapter 32: Rivers of Shadow

That’s a lovely chapter title. And interesting, if a little ominous, combined with the snake-and-wheel icon that’s basically shorthand for ‘this chapter has implications for the entire story and world’.

And we’re with Nynaeve. Standing on top of a wall. Not you, too, Nynaeve!

I’m not going to quote the whole thing but the opening description is very atmospheric and lovely.

She can still feel a storm in the north, only it’s not really a storm, it’s a metaphor, and when the wind starts blowing it’s also a metaphor, and actually it’s another point of parallel between her and Mat. Her weather-sense is quite a lot like his dice. Both basically just say ‘PLOT COMETH AHEAD’.

There would never again be a place for her in the Two Rivers. She knew this, though it hurt her. She was Aes Sedai now; it had become who she was, more important to her now than being Wisdom had once been.

That’s quite an admission from Nynaeve, Queen of Denial, Self-Deception and Malkier.

It’s also a nice continuation of her thoughts from way back in TFoH, when she and Elayne were on the wagon away from Tanchico and Nynaeve had a moment to think about what she wanted and who she was becoming. How this started out as her wanting to protect the people from her village, but then shifted more into a desire to learn how to Heal, and set her on the path towards becoming Aes Sedai – something she once utterly denied ever wanting to be, but has been becoming ever since.

And it’s one thing for Egwene to leave the Two Rivers behind; she wanted a bigger world, and while she’s occasionally expressed some nostalgia, she came of age elsewhere. The Two Rivers was a childhood home, but she is no longer a child, and her life has taken her beyond that village.

Nynaeve, though, came into adulthood in the Two Rivers. She was Wisdom; it was her place in the world, her identity, not just her childhood. And when she left, so much of that was taken from her, and so much of her journey since then has been about re-establishing who she is, both to herself and to those around her. She is no longer the Wisdom, but along the way she has gained wisdom.

And now, she’s almost finished with that journey. They all are. The time for character development is past; it’s time to take their places, as who they have become, for an ending.

That simple life – once all she had been able to imagine – would now seem dull and unfulfilling.

How far she has come, to be able to acknowledge that and admit it to herself without fighting it. She knows herself, now. She’s faced so many of her fears and insecurities – has actually faced one of her worst fears twice: once in her Accepted test and then again at World’s End – broken her block, become and embraced being Aes Sedai, and in the process she’s learned to accept and be herself. She’s still Nynaeve, so she’d still probably want to box your ears if you said that to her, but she can be so much more honest with herself now. She can see and understand things like this, even if it runs counter to who she once thought she was meant to be.

Have I mentioned that I love Nynaeve’s character arc?

The nearby fields were barren. Ploughed, seeded, yet still barren. Light! Why didn’t crops grow anymore? Where would they find food this winter?

I don’t know, maybe ask some Aiel to come sing to them? They might not mind a break from kidnapping rulers. Loial would probably join in.

So they’re up here to look at…ghosts?

Like a wisp of the ocean fog, a tiny patch of glowing light was blowing across the ground. It grew, bulging like a tiny storm cloud, glowing with a pearly light not unlike that of the clouds above. It resolved into the shape of a man, walking. Then that luminescent fog sprouted more figures. Within moments, an entire glowing procession strode across the ground, moving at a mournful pace. […] They were composed of a strange, otherworldly light. Several figures in the group – which was now about two hundred strong – were carrying a large object. Some kind of palanquin? Or…no. It was a coffin. Was this a funeral procession from long ago, then? What had happened to these people, and why had they been drawn back to the world of the living?

This is lovely. I didn’t mean to quote so much of it, but it’s just a very cool image. Soft and light and a little bit eerie and a little bit mournful but also strangely beautiful. Then again, Sanderson has practice at writing ghosts among mist…

I suppose it’s fitting that a ghostly funeral procession turned up the day after Rand did. The Pattern’s fraying, and right now he carries a feeling of darkness and death…and yet, this doesn’t seem dark in the same way. Sad, perhaps. Wistful. But it puts me in mind of the whole no beginnings or endings notion. This has been, and perhaps soon will be again, and the Wheel turns.

A guy turning to charcoal, on the other hand, is just fucking creepy.

But also kind of cool.

Mostly creepy, though.

“You’ve heard that he is proclaiming that the Last Battle will begin soon.” Nynaeve felt a stab of worry for Lan, then anger towards Rand. He still thought that if he could stage his assault at the same time as Lan’s attack on Tarwin’s Gap, he could confuse his enemies. Lan’s attack could very well be the beginning of the Last Battle.

Which seems very fitting, to me. Maybe it’s because Malkier feels almost like a prelude to Tarmon Gai’don, if you zoom out a little. Or maybe because of the parallels between Lan and Rand, and the way Lan feels like a…version of Rand on a smaller scale and different timeline. Tied to Malkier as Rand is tied to the land as a whole, an embodiment almost of a nation or world. Fated, or believing himself fated, to give his life to that cause.

And it would be fitting, too, for Lan’s personal war in the Blight to finally come to fulfilment not as a waste, not as a distraction from his and Moiraine’s and the world’s greater cause, but as the true beginning of its culmination. As if Lan has been held back until now, held back by other duties and other bonds but always looking northwards, until it becomes time for those things to intersect and so he is released.

Also it would be a fitting nod to part of Aragorn’s role in Return of the King, so there’s that.

“Yes,” Cadsuane said, musingly, “he is probably right.” Why did she keep that hood up? Rand obviously wasn’t around.

Because it adds to her aura of wisdom and mystery, obviously. She’s almost three hundred years old; she can do it for the aesthetic if she wants to.

The other Aes Sedai resumed their conversation, Merise and Corele taking further opportunity to voice their displeasure with Rand in their separate ways – one dour, the other congenial.

It made Nynaeve want to defend him.

Ah, Nynaeve. That’s just like her – she can chew out her people until the cows (sheep?) come home, but if someone else so much as looks at them crosswise, she will be boxing ears before you can say ‘hypocrite’. I love her.

And honestly, that’s not even a particularly unusual trait, as much as it’s fun to laugh about in Nynaeve. Anyone here have siblings? Yeah.

Nynaeve started to leave, and as she did so she noticed that Cadsuane was watching her. Nynaeve hesitated, turning toward the cloaked woman. Cadsuane’s face was barely visible by torchlight, but Nynaeve caught a grimace in the shadows, as if Cadsuane were displeased with Merise’s and Corele’s complaints. Nynaeve and Cadsuane stared at each other for a moment; then Cadsuane nodded curtly. The aged Aes Sedai turned and began to walk away, right in the middle of one of Merise’s tirades about Rand.

One of the subtle things I’ve enjoyed is watching the relationship between these two change, especially Cadsuane’s growing respect for Nynaeve. In Winter’s Heart, she thinks she will not acknowledge Nynaeve as Aes Sedai until Nynaeve has been tested and has held the Oath Rod. Then, in Crossroads of Twilight, we get this: The child would need to flash her Great Serpent ring under people’s noses to be taken for Aes Sedai, which she was, if just technically. It’s a small shift, but definitely a shift. And now this – a nod of seeming respect, of agreement, even, as if between equals or allies. It’s just one of those on-the-sidelines relationship shifts that can be fun to see in subtle snippets like these.

That nod of Cadsuane’s couldn’t possibly have been given out of respect. Cadsuane was far too self-righteous and arrogant for that.

Well, she’d hardly be the first Aes Sedai you’ve judged that way, Nynaeve. Moiraine?

What to do about Rand, then? He didn’t want Nynaeve’s help – or anyone’s help – but that was nothing new.

It’s hard, when there’s so much else at stake. Because it’s not just about him – it’s about the entire world.

And ‘I don’t want anyone’s help’ is fine when it’s, say, your maths homework. Or a struggle between friends that people keep meddling with. Or when work sucks and you’re tired and your flat’s a mess and you just want to not have to deal with any of it for a bit. But there’s a point where it stops being a thing people actually need to listen to – where help becomes necessary whether you want it or not – and I’m pretty sure that point is somewhere slightly before ‘I carry a nuke in my pocket just in case’.

Now, it’s also true that a lot of the people ostensibly trying to help Rand are actually just trying to push him in one direction or another, and are not in fact helping at all.

And there are others who are trying to help, but are going about it in a way that is absolutely not going to work.

And there are some who are perhaps trying to help him, but are mostly trying to help keep the world from breaking apart around him. That’s where it gets a bit…tricky.

But as threatening and as intimidating as Lan could be, he’d sooner chop off his own hand than raise it to harm her.

Too soon, Nynaeve. Too soon.

Rand. Once, she’d thought him as gentle as Lan.

Once, he was gentle. But then…*waves at entirety of series up to this point* thathappened.

That Rand was gone. Nynaeve saw again the moment when he had exiled Cadsuane. She’d believed that he wouldkill Cadsuane if he saw her face again, and thinking of the moment still gave her shivers. Surely it had been her imagination, but the room had seemed to darkendistinctly at that moment, as if a cloud had passed over the sun.

Yeah um…not just your imagination, sorry.

And this is where Nynaeve sees more than perhaps most of the people around Rand, including some of the other Aes Sedai. Cadsuane sees it as well, but the others, I think, don’t realise quite how significantly he’s changed. Nynaeve, though…she knew him when he was gentle. And she knew him when he was becoming the Dragon Reborn, Healed him when he said he wasn’t sure how human the Dragon Reborn could afford to be, stood by his side and protected him when she could, however she could. She can see that something has changed, that the boy she knew is…hopefully not gone forever but certainly on a very extended, forced holiday.

Still, she won’t turn away from him. Nynaeve doesn’t give up on people like that. And anything can be healed.

But first, a coughing child. I suppose it’s the sort of thing Rand might once have paid attention to – refugees and starving children – as he did in Tear with the two steamwagon boys for whom Min foresaw tragedy. Now, though, he can’t take the time or the energy to care. And so it falls to Nynaeve.

I suppose it’s a way to show her in a role that’s not actually unlike Wisdom. Just for the world in general and with greater power and knowledge. But that doesn’t mean she’s left this behind: her care for those who need help or Healing, her sense of responsibility for those who find themselves in her care or purview. And also her low tolerance for bullshit, as evidenced by her dealings with this kid’s father.

“He should live, if you do as I say. […] If the fever starts again, bring him to me at the Dragon’s palace.”

“Yes, my Lady,” the woman said as the husband knelt, taking the boy and smiling. 

Nynaeve picked up her lantern and rose.

“Lady,” the woman said. “Thank you.”

Nynaeve turned back. “You should have brought him to me days ago. I don’t care what foolish superstitions people are spreading, the Aes Sedai are not your enemies. If you know any who are sick, encourage them to visit us.”

She’s still blunt and a bit abrasive, of course, but even so I think she’s just done more for the reputation of and sentiment towards Aes Sedai with one Healing than any of the others have in the city thus far.

Because, while she has become Aes Sedai, Nynaeve isn’t one to hold herself aloof and apart from the world, not when there are people who need her help or healing. She can’t help everyone – like Rand, she can’t solve everyone’s problems – but when she can, she’ll always try. She doesn’t ignore the refugees as not worth her time; she just tells them to bring their sick to her. Because they’re suffering, and she can help, so she will. She’s practical that way. Practical and caring – it was one of her early conflicts with Moiraine, that Moiraine could look away when people were suffering, in the name of a greater cause.

Both kinds of people are needed, and this helps highlight Nynaeve’s own strengths. She knows Tarmon Gai’don is coming, and is certainly focused on that, but she doesn’t let that stop her from taking the time to help a random child who needs it, because that’s who she is. She’s still Wisdom in many ways, just of more than Emond’s Field, and it doesn’t much matter to her if the people who need her help are refugees or royalty.

But I think it definitely surprises the family, to see an Aes Sedai so…human, I suppose. Human, and straightforward, and helping them while asking nothing in return except that they not keep anyone else who needs help away.

How did one handle a creature like the Dragon Reborn?

Ask Min. Or Elayne. Or Aviendha.

Look, it was just lying there…

Nynaeve knew that the old Rand was there, within him somewhere.

Oddly enough, she seems to be one of the every few to actually…see that. To remember that he’s human.

He had simply been beaten and kicked so many times that he’d gone into hiding, letting this harsher version rule.

He’s human, and he’s hurting, and he’s been hurting so much for so long. It’s amazing, in a way, that so few are able to understand that, seeing instead a monster or a legend or a weapon or an obstacle, but rarely seeing the broken, bleeding boy. Amazing, and yet at the same time not surprising at all. That’s how this works. And he’s done too good a job of pushing that humanity away – though it becomes a vicious cycle at some point; how long can you retain humanity when no one expects it of you?

It’s one of the most important things about Nynaeve, especially in terms of her role in Rand’s story: she doesn’t stop seeing that. She can see what he has become, can see what he’s done to himself, but she can also still see the boy from her village. And that’s no small thing. He needs that now as much as – perhaps more than – he ever has; he needs those anchor points, those people who know him and love him and see him, otherwise how could he find his way back even if he decided he wanted to? This at least gives him the choice. To know he is loved, to know he is seen, to know that he is still human in the eyes of those who know him.

As much as it galled her to admit it, bullying him was just not going to work. But how was she to get him to do what he should, since he was too bullheaded to respond to ordinary prodding?

Ah, Nynaeve. Bless her. *shakes head fondly*

It’s a good realisation, but I also like it because even her thinking here shows clearly that she’s seeing him like just another problem from her village, rather than as some cosmic gamepiece she needs to position and control. Yes, she’s trying to get him to ‘do what he should’, but it’s the sort of tone she might have used in thinking about how to get young Matrim Cauthon to milk his father’s cows when he’s supposed to.

So in that sense she’s not really…treating him any differently, just because he’s the Dragon Reborn and could incinerate her where she stands. And there’s great value in that – it’s honest, it’s straightforward, and it’s very much Nynaeve. This is just how she shows her love.

There was one person who hadmanaged to work with Rand while at the same time teaching and training him. It hadn’t been Cadsuane, nor had it been any of the Aes Sedai who tried to capture him, trick him or bully him. It had been Moiraine.

So much growth from Nynaeve, to be able to understand and acknowledge this.

Her grudge against or hatred for Moiraine is another thing I’ve enjoyed watching the progress of over time because it does what so many hate-at-first-sight reflexive yet largely irrational hatreds and grudges do in reality: it fades, gradually and often subtly, until it’s just not there anymore but you can’t put a finger on when exactly it vanished, or why. It just takes lesser and lesser importance in the face of other things, other points of focus.

Of course, her apparent death, and Nynaeve’s shame at her own response to it, certainly helped – I think that ‘death’ shifted the perception of her in the eyes of quite a lot of characters and even readers towards the more positive. Because memory turns to legend, and things are altered in that changing. It does set her up well for an eleventh-hour return.

But a lot of it is just that Nynaeve hated Moiraine because Moiraine represented the changes she resented – leaving Emond’s Field, the boys and Egwene changing and sometimes suffering, Nynaeve losing her sense of place and purpose and authority – more than because of Moiraine herself. And so as she’s grown – as she’s accepted some of those changes, and found a place in this larger world for herself, and learned to embrace her own power, and understood the necessity or inevitability of some of what has happened, and focused on her true passion for healing – that sharp hatred faded to wariness and then to something more like a stubborn and even petty attempt at holding on to that grudge, and eventually even that faded to…respect. Understanding, perhaps.

Well, Nynaeve wasn’t about to act the same way for Rand al’Thor, no matter how many fancy titles he had.

I’m not sure that method would work now, anyway. It worked for Moiraine because she understood what he needed and would accept and respond to at the time. When he was being pushed and chased and tormented into a power he feared, when he was fighting to prove his claim to a destiny he didn’t want, when he was unsure and afraid and trying desperately to mask it, fighting for control and authority and so, so afraid of being outplayed, taken, used by those who knew this game he was only beginning to understand but was thrown in the middle of.

That was a mindset in which he could accept some guidance and advice because on some level he could admit he very much needed it, so long as he could be sure it was free of manipulation – the thing he so greatly feared, because at the time he was far more susceptible to it, new as he was to the game and to power, and with barely even the Aiel at his back.

Now…subservience, obedience, obequieousness are commonplace to him. Aes Sedai have sworn fealty to him. He doesn’t fear manipulation as he once did, because the scales of power have shifted so drastically, and doesn’t acknowledge his need for advice the way he once might have. So it will have to be a different approach.

Perhaps Nynaeve is well-suited to that; perhaps meeting his eyes and letting the fact that he is the Dragon Reborn and could kill her on a whim just…pass her by, seeing him and treating him instead as human, is in itself a form of surrendering in order to control. Not fighting against what he is, yet also not being cowed by it; just letting it exist, and accepting it, and focusing on him instead of on that.

Maybe I’m forcing the metaphor too far. But it’s a nice metaphor, so…*shoves*

Or maybe the solution is just appearing to die in a way almost perfectly designed to fuck with the guy’s head, and then reappearing dramatically at an opportune moment.

She needed to show him that they were working for the same goals. She didn’t want to tell him what to do; she just wanted him to stop acting like a fool. And, beyond that, she just wanted him to be safe.

It’s that last part that makes her so different from the others she disdains as petty manipulators. The simple fact that she cares about him.

She’d also like him to be a leader that people respected, not one that people feared. He seemed incapable of seeing that the path he was on was that of a tyrant.

No, Nynaeve, he sees it. He just can’t bring himself to care. After all, what does a tyrant’s rule matter if it is destined to be short-lived?

(A somewhat related but largely tangential question: does anyone know if there’s any etymological link between ‘tyrant’ and Tyr, Norse god of justice/law/war who sacrificed his hand to bind a wolf? It feels like there shouldbe, though I can’t find anything that says so, but as I’m neither linguist nor Norse mythology/language/history expert, I’m really not qualified to answer.)

Anyway, Nynaeve, like Cadsuane, has a plan. Lots of mysterious plans showing up here recently. Knowing Sanderson, they’re likely to collide around the 85% mark somewhere.

Though I don’t know how much of the pacing he’s directly responsible for and how much of it would be contingent on whatever was already outlined, so who knows?

Nynaeve’s lantern cast strange shadows on the grass as its light shone through the trees trained and trimmed in the shapes of fanciful animals. The shadows moved in concert with her lantern, the phantom shapes lengthening and merging with the greater blackness of the night around her. Like rivers of shadow.

Subtle as a hammer. But it works, because it’s not meant to be subtle at this point. It’s meant to be a drumbeat that says Tarmon Gai’don, that doesn’t let you forget for a moment where we’re heading, because it’s close, now. It’s close, and it’s everywhere, and it’s inescapable.

There’s also a bit of a circling back to the opening of the chapter here, in the image of phantom shapes moving with her lantern – with the light – but merging with the darkness around as well…and a glowing funeral procession of the dead, a haunting yet beautiful reminder that the world is coming apart at the seams, as Light and Shadow take to the field.

The whitewashed walls were as immaculate here as they were in other sections of the mansion, but they were unornamented.

Not unlike— actually, no. I am not going to sit here and write a paragraph on the symbolism of undecorated walls. I am not. You can’t make me. I have dignity.

Turns out Nynaeve doesn’t need grey hair or an Aes Sedai face to get people to do as she tells them when she has her mind set on something. Especially when it relates in any way to helping or protecting her people. Which includes just about anyone she says it does.

Do they not know she’s Aes Sedai? Or is she ‘my Lady’ because she’s married to a king? Or is the hat she made fun of on that random worker actually a fedora?

Rand had determined that his hunt for the Domani king had hit a wall with the death of the messenger.

But you know how to deal with walls, Rand! Just climb on top of them and then fall off.

Nynaeve wasn’t so certain. There were others involved, and a few well-placed questions might be very illuminating.

Ah, so that’s the plan. Find out some information that will be useful to Rand – that he definitely wants – as a sort of…not peace offering exactly, but indication that she’s on his side and willing to help.

I’m not sure that’s really the secret to getting him to listen, but I suppose it can’t hurt.

…that’s probably a stupid thing to say, given, you know, everything about this book so far.

When in doubt, ask the housekeeper. And she’s seen the messenger, who definitely sounds beautiful enough to have come from Graendal. Probably the one we saw, briefly.

“Had one of the most beautiful faces I rightly think I’ve ever seen on a man.”

Unless of course he’s Galad.

“He was sent for questioning,” Nynaeve said shortly. “I have little time for foolishness, Loral. I am not here looking for evidence against your mistress, and I don’t really care what your loyalties are. There are much larger issues at stake. Answer my question.”

But what a different sort of not-caring it is than Rand’s. She’s direct and to the point, and not particularly delicate about it, and anything that isn’t relevant is not her concern because there are bigger issues…but it’s not an all-consuming attitude; it’s just pragmatism. It’s not nice, and she’s definitely using her power and position to intimidate and to get people to do what she wants, but she also has very clear, definite limits. And a clear, definite purpose. And also the capacity to feel emotion, which is probably a plus.

Excellent, looks like we’re in for some good old midnight skulduggery. Elayne would be so proud.

So would Cadsuane, probably, at how Nynaeve is handling this. But I’ll try not to let Nynaeve hear me say that.

True, Rand might grow angry at her for appropriating soldiers and stirring up trouble.

But Nynaeve is one of the very few people left who doesn’t fear his anger. She does a little, on something of an instinctive level where if he looks at her with the full force of his I-have-stared-into-the-True-Power-and-the-True-Power-stared-back act she’ll recoil, but it doesn’t…take. It doesn’t last. It’s not enough to make her turn away, or run. It’s unnerving, but there’s too much caring and concern and sheer stubbornness to her where he’s concerned for fear to truly take root.

Moiraine said something to this effect once, that he would need people around him who could face or quell his rages, who could, in essence, continue to look him in the eyes. She was talking to Egwene, but Nynaeve has taken on that role in many ways.

And I think it’s important that she’s there as someone who doesn’t love him the same way Min and Aviendha and Elayne do. It’s a different kind of love, a different kind of bond, and therefore a different kind of…anchor, or reminder.

Such a lovely evening stroll, through the rotting fish gut district to the prison.

She wished she had news from the White Tower.

Yeah, huh, it’s been a hot second since she’s actually heard anything from…anyone, really. It seems like Egwene could pay her a dream-visit, but I suppose Egwene has quite a lot of other things demanding her immediate focus, last we saw she was bleeding and about to be imprisoned, and I think she might not want to bring her problems to Nynaeve’s attention because she knows there’s nothing Nynaeve can do about it right now. There’s too much else that needs to be done, and all she can do is focus on her part of it, on doing what she can to heal the Tower.

Still, a brief message would be…far too much communication to expect, in this series.

Ha, a prison disguised as a chandlery. A place of walls and dark and cold, disguised as a place that sells candles for illumination. Cute.

Sanderson, we need to have a talk about your obsession with hawk-faced men. It’s gotten out of control. An intervention is required.

The writing here also feels much more Sanderson than some of the other parts have, but I don’t actually mind it as much because the shape of the characters and ideas feel mostly how they should. Maybe Nynaeve’s a little more direct in some of her thoughts, but it still feels like her, so it bothers me less that the phrasing is off. Sanderson said in his introduction that he wasn’t going to try to perfectly imitate Jordan’s style, and he hasn’t, and I can live with that because it’s certainly preferable to the alternative. It’s noticeable, but that’s okay. It’s only when the actual content – characterisation, particularly – feels wrong that it becomes frustrating.

But any good secret operation would have a working front.

Always another secret, right, Sanderson?

See, that’s the sort of line that definitely doesn’t feel like Jordan, but…oh well. It’s fine. It does the job. And this doesn’t feel like a scene where note-perfect prose is important, the way, say, The Last That Could Be Done was. And that, Sanderson got right. So I’ll take it.

(I may be less sanguine next time a Mat chapter rolls around, but again that’s because the changes start to actually interfere with the character and the story.)

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Pacing-wise, I suppose it’s about time this particular storyline was punctuated by a random fistfight. Not that I’m complaining about the fact that it’s been mostly talking and thinking since Chapter 22, because it’s deliciously painful talking and thinking, but sometimes you’ve just got to break some noses I guess.

“Which one do you think I should ungag,” she asked casually, “and which one should I kill?”

Okay she can be pretty terrifying when she wants to be. This almost reminds me of…Semirhage, actually, in that scene where she had Cabriana and her Warder held suspended in flows of Air much like Nynaeve has these two not-chandlers. I mean, that’s just about the only similarity, but it’s what came to mind.

Of course, she’s not going to kill either of them. They just don’t know that.

Which makes this interesting to compare to Rand; as a reader it’s incredibly obvious that there is a difference, because we can see their thoughts. But just as it seems many outside observers don’t fully realise just how far Rand has gone, it’s possible they also wouldn’t see as much of a difference between his threats and Nynaeve’s, here. So much is dependent on perception, and on what you know and don’t know.

But there is a difference, whether or not it’s clearly visible to an outside observer, and in this series that’s important. It’s important that Nynaeve does not intend to kill, here, and almost certainly would not even if it would make this task easier. It’s important that she’s doing this for a clear purpose, and for a cause she cares about. It’s important that she can feel.

Private jailers like these riled her anger.

Guess we know where she stands on the privatisation of prisons, then…

“I will do whatever you say! Please, don’t fill my stomach with insects! I haven’t done anything wrong, I promise you, I—”

She stuffed the gag of Air back in.

But you’re missing the best part, which is where you pause and then take the gag back out and he’s still talking, so it’s like pressing ‘mute’ off and on. Come on, if we’re doing a midnight prison raid there are tropes that must be observed!

[The other] looked sick, but he had probably already guessed that she’d want the dungeon. It was unlikely that an Aes Sedai would burst into the shop after midnight because she’d been sold a bad candle.

I mean, I wouldn’t put money on it. We’ve been taught well: Aes Sedai do the things they do for their own reasons.

A youth sat on the floor in front of him, and Nynaeve’s globe of light illuminated his face, a frightened Domani one with uncharacteristically light hair and hands spotted with burns.

“Now, that’s a chandler’s apprentice,” Triben said

Is he now? I feel like he wouldn’t be mentioned if he weren’t relevant – and I especially feel like he wouldn’t be mentioned in such a disarming, ‘nothing to see here’ way. I’ve read murder mysteries and whodunits. I know what I’m about.

She raised her globe of light and surveyed the cellar. The walls were stone, which made her feel much less nervous about the weight of the building above.

If you’d spent any time in the Tower recently, you might feel differently…

Or if you’ve spent any time with a mad Asha’man in the basement of a palace…

‘Hawk-faced’ count this chapter: 3. Sanderson. Please.

“Keys?” she asked.

Okay now I want a story about a wilder thief in one of the bigger cities whose main ‘trick’ is picking locks with weaves of Air.

And hello there, Lady Chadmar. Not enjoying your stay here, I see.

Nynaeve inhaled sharply at seeing how the woman was being treated. How could Rand allow this?

Because he dismissed her, and put her out of his mind completely. Because he can’t afford to care about her anymore, so she is none of his concern. Because nothing matters anymore, beside the Last Battle. If she lives, she lifes. If she dies, well, he’s already damned; what’s one more name?

Again, Semirhage was treated better. But that’s because Rand still cared, then.

“Now,” she said to the three, “I am going to ask some questions. You are going to answer. I’m not certain what I’m going to do with you yet, so realise it’s best to be veryhonest with me.”

Cadsuane really would be proud. She’s sticking to the truth here, but still conveying a…well, it’s more of a figs-and-mice kind of threat than anything else, really. And it’s certainly effective.

Nynaeve sighed. “Look,” she said to him. “I am Aes Sedai, and am bound by my word. If you tell me what I want to know, I will see that you are not suspected in the death. The Dragon doesn’t care about you three, otherwise you wouldn’t still be here”

But she also gives them this. She doesn’t sit there speculating on whether or not she could simply will their hearts to stop beating. She threatens them, yes. She’s harsh. But she also offers…fairness, amnesty, pardon. It’s a question of lines in the sand again, I suppose, in determining the relative morality of this compared to Rand, but it still seems to me there’s a very marked difference. One is bound, still, by her word and her station and her general sense of what is and is not acceptable. The other…isn’t. It’s a question of limits.

The interesting part, again, is in the difference or similarity of perception by those who don’t have the privileged access we do into Rand’s and Nynaeve’s heads. Do these jailers feel any less threatened by Nynaeve than they would by Rand? She seems to be more human, offering them a chance to leave with their names clear, and reassurances that she will hold to her word, but she’s also Aes Sedai, appearing at midnight. Would they see the darkness around Rand? Would they react differently? To what extent does it matter whether or not the person threatening you has limits, if you don’t know where those limits are?

It’s part of the whole thing that I find so interesting about outsider POV – a chance to see how these characters are perceived by someone who can’t see their thoughts, and therefore a glimpse at them from a different angle, which can sometimes reveal surprising things. And then its close cousin, the view of outsiders from within a known character’s mind, but in such a way as to make you wonder what exactly it is they’re seeing. To see that character in a different way even while you’re in their head, through the reactions of those around them.

It’s something Jordan was particularly good at, and it’s being done rather well in these recent chapters as well, with the change in Rand’s mindset, and the way it’s so clear in his POV but not necessarily to all of those around him. And here, to see complete outsiders react to Nynaeve in such a way that makes it clear they see her very differently than those of us who have been in her head since the first book.

Anyway, it’s something I always find intriguing. Perception is such a fun thing to play with, and you can do so much with it when you have these lovely long character arcs.

“If we talk, we go free?” the fat man said, eyeing her. “Your word?”

Nynaeve glanced about the tiny room with a dissatisfied eye. They had left Lady Chadmar in the dark, and the door was packed with cloth to muffle screams. The cell would be dark, stuffy and cramped. Men wo would work a place like this barely deserved life, let alone freedom.

But there was a much larger sickness to deal with. “Yes,” Nynaeve said, the word bitter in her mouth.

Because there are things she will not do. And things she needs more; things that matter more.

And I do think there’s a difference in how they see her to how they would see Rand, because they’re willing to ask for that promise, for her word, and to take her up on it.

So the jailer is holding firm to the story that the messenger just dropped dead one day. Some aspect of Compulsion, perhaps?

“The man remained for months in your possession, presumably healthy all that time. Then, the daybefore he is to be brought before the Dragon Reborn, he suddenly dies?”

Nynaeve, too, has read her murder mysteries.

“I don’t know how he did it, Lady. Burn me, but I don’t! It’s like some…force had ahold of his tongue. It was like he couldn’t talk. Even if he wanted to.”

Yeah there was definitely some element of Compulsion involved, at least in keeping the messenger from talking. I wonder what happens when you put a Forsaken’s Compulsion against a dark ta’veren’s pull?

I’m kind of surprised that, for all Nynaeve’s experience with Compulsion at Moghedien’s hands, she doesn’t seem to pick up on this.

But she can’t seem to get much else out of any of them, and like so many ideas that seem excellent around or just after midnight, this one is starting to lose its shine a little.

Aha!

As soon as Nynaeve began the Delving, Nynaeve froze. She had expected to find Milisair’s body taxed by exhaustion. She had expected to find disease, perhaps hunger.

She had not expected to find poison.

A slow poison administered in several doses through food. And who makes the food?

Any guesses?

Yes indeed, it’s the ‘chandler’s apprentice’. Well done, Nynaeve, you’ve solved the case!

Next (TGS ch 33) Previous (TGS ch 31)

#this chapter almost passes for light but only by comparison #Wheel of Time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #The Gathering Storm

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 25

The apocalypse? In your lifetime? (It’s more common than you might think! Click here to find out why)

Er. I mean. I return, featuring Sheriam and Egwene.

Chapter 25: In Darkness

That title, the Black Ajah chapter icon, and the first word is ‘Sheriam’. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Things were going quite well for once.

Uh huh. Sure. You really should know better than to say things like that. Or even think them. Especially when you’re a secondary-at-best character in epic fantasy and have very probably sold your soul. There’s tempting fate, and then there’s flinging yourself off a thousand-foot cliff in the form of a goldfish.

Confirmation, in case any was needed, that Halima/Aran’gar was the one from that brief scene of Sheriam being punished.

Well, so long as Egwene was away, that tent was functionally Sheriam’s for all but sleeping. After all, an Amyrlin’s Keeper was expected to look after her affairs.

Sheriam smiled again.

If she had a moustache, she’d be twirling it right now.

Pain would come again. There was always agony and punishment involved in the service she gave.

Not sure I’d put that on the recruitment posters – I’m still partial to ‘Immorality for Immortality’ myself – but points for honesty.

But she had learned to take the times of peace and cherish them.

Oh, the irony. Swear yourself to a force of chaos and destruction and only then learn the value of peace. That is bitter.

At times, she wished she’d kept her mouth closed, not asked questions. But she had, and here she was.

Now who does that sound like? Hmmm…

And, separately, I want a story sometime where asking questions isn’t punished. Not that it doesn’t make for good stories when they are – seeking out truth need not necessarily be painless, and it’s certainly not unrealistic to have negative consequences of digging too far, or asking the wrong questions of the wrong people – but it also seems to be one of those story elements that so often goes unquestioned (if you’ll pardon the slight pun). As someone who comes from a scientific background, where the entire purpose is to ask questions of the world and see any answer at all as a reward, I’d like to see someone at some point take a different angle on this trope. Mostly just because I think it’d be interesting, and as a reader I’d be curious to see how that kind of premise would work, and what would result from it. One for the wishlist…

Not infrequently she wished she’d chosen the Brown

NOW WHO DOES THAT SOUND LIKE? HMMM.

and hidden herself away in a library somewhere, never to see others.

I mean sure, that’s one way of being Brown, but.

There was no use wondering about what could have happened.

NOW. WHO. DOES. THAT. SOUND. LIKE?

She wasn’t so naïve as to feel guilty about the things she’d done. Every sister in the White Tower tried to get ahead; that’s what life was about! There wasn’t an Aes Sedai who wouldn’t stab her sisters in the back if she thought it would give her advantage. Sheriam’s friends were just a little more…practiced at it.

Hey, I’m not judging; as a Slytherin I can appreciate some honest, pragmatic, amoral ambition.

But why had the end of days had to come now of all times?

But I am laughing. If you’re going to sell your soul, you’d better read the fine print and make absolutely sure the deal is worth it, even when the price is called in in full. Sheriam seems to be more of a realist than some, but not quite realistic enough. Area Woman Never Expected To Actually Pay Her Mortgage.

And there’s the actual confirmation of Black Ajah. So…what does it say about the Aes Sedai that at one point, both women claiming the title of Keeper were Black Ajah?

It’s ‘blood and ashes’ or ‘blood and bloody ashes’ never has it been just ‘bloody ashes’ yes this is a nitpick no I shouldn’t care yes I care anyway because of Who I Am As A Person.

Sheriam opened her eyes to find a jet-black figure standing above her cot; slivers of moonlight passing through the fluttering tent flaps were just enough to outline the figure’s form. It was clothed in an unnatural darkness, ribbons of black cloth fluttering behind it, the face obscured by a deep blackness.

#aesthetic but why do I get the sudden feeling we’re in a 2006 music video?

Also, Halima had never come in such a…dramatic way.

Embrace the emo, Sheriam. Just go with it. Don’t question. Only ‘90s children will understand, etc.

(I feel like I should be posting this on myspace or something. How did we end up here? I have no idea and I’m so sorry).

“Egwene al’Vere. She must be deposed.”

Good fucking luck. That girl has as much ambition as all of you and she serves a Righteous Cause. You may as well just give up now. Accept it. Write a song about it and move on.

(Look I don’t even know. It’s been a while, okay?)

“It was by orders from one of the Chosen that I helped raise her as Amyrlin in the first place!”

“Yes, but we’ve done a companywide reorg and sometimes that just means reversing every single thing anyone has accomplished in the last six months; also she doesn’t work here anymore so I’m your boss now.”

“Yes, but she has proven to have been a…poor choice.”

That’s one way of putting it. It’s almost too bad you didn’t try to recruit her; that would have been hilarious.

Sheriam hesitated. Her first instinct was to lie or hedge—this seemed like information she could hold over the figure. But lying to one of the Chosen? A poor choice.

(Somewhere in a distant universe, Marisa Coulter is laughing at you).

But that’s the value of having legend and 3000 years on your side; The Forsaken may be only human but so much has been built up around their names and image that most don’t even dare to challenge them. Useful, that.

Stealing the ter’angreal could be a nuisance for Egwene, though. Not an insurmountable one, because this is Egwene al’Vere we’re talking about, but more and more things are drawing to a point where it all has to come to a head soon. Egwene imprisoned having forced Elaida’s hand, the sisters in the Tower just starting to listen to her, the rebels growing less and less certain of Egwene’s return, some beginning to talk about moving someone else into her tent, Lelaine setting herself up to be the next Amyrlin, and now Sheriam about to try preventing the dream-meetings. Something has to happen and soon to break the deadlock and prevent a slide back into inertia.

Oh, speak of the Amyrlin and she doth appear. Hi Egwene.

Her two days of imprisonment had not been pleasant, but she would suffer them with dignity. Even if they locked her away in a tiny room with a door that wouldn’t let in light. Even if they refused to let her change from the bloodied novice dress. Even if they beat her each day for how she had treated Elaida.

Because that worked out so well for you last time, Elaida. Anyway, at least now I know who to call next time I need to move house; Elaida’s very good at boxing things up.

Of course, as with everything else about the theme-and-variation of the parallels between Rand and Egwene, this is presented in an entirely different tone and through a very different lens than Rand’s imprisonment. I know I talk about this a lot but it’s because playing with the possibilities narrative symmetry offers is one of my favourite things, and this is such a well-done example over such a long stretch of series now; give two different characters situations or arc elements or paths that on the very surface are similar, and use these to highlight all the variations. It’s like controlling your variables; you can take two similar characters and throw them at entirely different problems, or you can take similar problems and throw them at two very different characters. You can also just write two completely different stories without the thread of similarity but this way feels so much more satisfying. It gives a unifying theme or undercurrent to two characters who spend almost the entire series thus far diverging. Same yet opposite; allies yet adversaries; Dragon and Amyrlin, saidin and saidar, Rand and Egwene.

Egwene was surprised she had visitors, but Seaine wasn’t the only one who had come to her. Several had been Sitters. Curious.

The tipping point approacheth. And so her imprisonment carries with it the note of rising, of moving towards something victorious, whereas Rand’s carried little more than a sense of spiralling impending disaster. A victory in the end, sort of, but.

Egwene may find it surprising that Sitters are visiting her, but she’s also no doubt been more effective in fighting her war than she perhaps thought. Also, rumours have a tendency to spike curiosity when something this dramatic happens; the Amyrlin losing her shit and lashing out at a novice who then stands there calm and bleeding and lectures her, and then is locked away out of sight? It’s as if Elaida wanted to draw everyone’s attention to Egwene. (Or no, it’s like Elaida wanted to do exactly the opposite of that, because Elaida has a talent for accomplishing the opposite of what she wants. A Talent, even).

Seaine at least seems to be on Egwene’s side, and I doubt she’s the only one.

“Proving that accusation is difficult by Tower standards,” Seaine said. “And so I suspect that she will not try to prove it in trial—”

Couldn’t they use the Oath Rod in trials to verify claims like the one Elaida is trying to make – that she expelled Egwene from the Tower before beating her, for being a Darkfriend? Even if Elaida genuinely believed the Darkfriend accusation, she’d struggle to state the rest outright because that’s…not what happened. Also the other Sitters who were there could go under Oath (literally) and testify as to what happened. Seems like a pretty damn effective tool in a trial…

Also, if she’s not going to try to prove in trial something she’s using as a justification for her actions, what the hell is she going to do? Hello yes I would like to speak to the Aes Sedai’s legal adviser…

“partially because doing so would require her to let you speak for yourself, and I suspect that she’ll want to keep you hidden.”

How To Make A Martyr (in 8 Easy Steps) by Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan

“But if she can’t prove I’m a Darkfriend and she couldn’t stop this from going to trial…”

“It is not an offence worthy of deposing her,” Seaine said. “The maximum punishment is a formal censure from the Hall and penance for a month. She would retain the shawl.”

But would lose a great deal of credibility, Egwene thought.

That would require her having credibility to begin with…

But now I’m still stuck on the notion of the Oath Rod being involved in trials. Mostly because it seems like a perfect solution at first glance and then has the potential to be absolutely terrible depending on how those involved chose to use it, how skilled those questioning or testifying are at either bending the truth or forcing a desired narrative using nothing but true confessions put together into exactly the story they want told, thus forcing someone to condemn themselves with their own words…

Anyway.

I like Seaine still; she’s a Tower Aes Sedai, secluded and not particularly revolutionary, but she’s also very…honest, I suppose. She even seems to have a degree of humility, and deals more in facts and evidence than in ambition and denial.

Things are getting worse, the Pattern is still trying its hand at interior design by randomly moving rooms in the Tower and all things considered should probably not quit its day job.

“You have to bring these things up, Seaine,” Egwene said softly. “Keep reminding the sisters that the Dark One stirs and that the Last Battle approaches. Keep their attention on working together, not dividing.”

It’s not just Sheriam who is less than thrilled with the fact that this is happening during her lifetime. You see that sort of thing with evil characters fairly regularly—it’s the Faustian story, or variations thereof; characters who sell their soul or commit themselves to an evil cause because of the perks (power, immortality, a great healthcare package…) and don’t really expect it to be called due in quite the way it is—but I don’t think it applies solely to villains.

People who actually want to or are willing to be heroes, to give their life and maybe their death to a cause, to face the ultimate crisis point of something they’ve committed to, are rare. It’s one thing to commit yourself to something in peacetime, or to commit to something when it’s an abstract or low-level issue. It’s another thing to realise that the tipping point or catastrophe will come in your lifetime, or is happening right now. It’s why we tell stories about heroes; they’re extraordinary. It doesn’t mean ‘ordinary’ people are lazy or not really committed or cowardly; it just means we’re human. How many people, faced with Achilles’s choice (to die a hero and be remembered forever, or to live a long and peaceful life and die forgotten) would choose the ‘heroic’ path? Some, certainly. Most? Probably not.

We’re human; we’re not good at dealing with The Actual End Of The World, and we’re very good at denial when it comes to potential large-scale all-out disaster. A character can swear away their soul and never really expect that the Forces of Evil will actually call upon them to fight in the last battle, and a character can commit themselves to the cause of good or Light and never expect to actually have to stand in that final catastrophe. And I feel like if I take this much further I’m going to end up solidly in current events so I’ll just…stop there. The point is, this sense of ‘oh shit you mean this is actually happening now and I’m a part of it? I didn’t mean to sign up for this take it away’ doesn’t belong solely to villains.

So it’s a nice place to put this particular conversation, right after we see Sheriam thinking in explicit terms that she never really wanted to be a part of this, seems fitting and nicely balancing.

“You must work hard, Seaine,” Egwene said, rising as the Reds approached. “Do what I cannot. Ask the other sto do so as well.” […] “The Last Battle comes, Seaine. Remember.”

Also, Egwene is one of those people absolutely willing to be a hero in the ‘give your life to a cause’ sense. She was not chosen; she chose. And she continues to choose this path, even as it becomes difficult, even as it is painful, even as it seems too much. It’s why she’s such an effective rallying point; she has committed absolutely to the cause they are all sworn to, and she faces the impending apocalypse with determination and dignity and grace, and doesn’t try to turn away or deny it.  It makes her a source of inspiration to those who are more…human about facing this reality and their upcoming role in it. Which I supposes you could argue is part of what heroes are for.

(In case you can’t tell, another thing I’m generally fascinated by is the entire notion and spectrum and variants of Heroes and Villains and the ways in which they exist and interact with their stories and worlds).

Even if Elaida was punished, what would be done with Egwene? Elaida would try to have her executed. And she still hand grounds, as Egwene had—by the White Tower’s definition—impersonated the Amyrlin Seat.

I must stay firm, Egwene told herself in the darkness. I warmed this pot myself, and now I must boil in it, if that is what will protect the Tower. They knew she continued to resist. That was all she could give them.

And she will give them everything she can, willingly. She is not having to pay the dues on a debt she never thought would be called in; she is not being dragged into a fate she has no choice but to accept. That’s not her story. She is the one who faces what is coming with eyes open, even when it turns out to be bigger and more difficult and worse and more painful than she expected. She understands what might be…I hesitate to even say ‘asked of her’ because that’s the point, isn’t it; she looks at the situation and she simply asks this of herself, because that is the only way to win.

It is part of why I’m still relatively certain she will not survive this series. I don’t think Elaida will execute her, but I do think she will give her life for the world. Because she’s one of those who would not choose to die needlessly, but could do so willingly and thus powerfully.

Next (TGS ch 26) Previous (TGS ch 24)

#I have been informed that I have ~130 chapters left #and I am DETERMINED to finish this year so uh #wheel of time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #The Gathering Storm

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 2

In which Egwene is excellent, understanding is reached, and laughter is achieved

Chapter 2: The Nature of Pain

Well that’s a promising start to a chapter.

Egwene! She only had one chapter last book but what a chapter it was, and I am loving her current arc so here’s to more of that, hopefully.

She smiled to her reflection, and her twin selves nodded to one another in satisfaction.

Speaking of reflections. It does seem to carry just a bit of double-meaning here (see what I did there?) if you want it to, what with her entire battle here to…maintain and also affirm her identity, and make those around her see her for who she truly is, and to be who she needs to be.

So she’s still spending quality time in the Mistress of Novice’s study every day. But she’s barely crying anymore. (Though, unlike a certain Dragon, she’s still capable of tears. Which is…good? I suppose? For a given definition of ‘good’, anyway).

The Aiel could laugh during the most cruel of tortures. Well, she could smile the moment she stood up.

I’m reminded, here, of the time when Rand forced himself to smile through the torture he was subjected to in the lead-up to Dumai’s Wells. Both Egwene and Rand have now been subjected to torture at the hands of the White Tower, and both have smiled in response, though the similarity pretty much ends there. I don’t really have a point to this comparison, because they’re very different situations and characters and contexts, but I like how something can be so superficially similar yet so different in every meaningful way.

(I would not be at all opposed to this arc culminating in a Dumai’s Wells level scene, though. I can’t see Egwene outright fighting the other Aes Sedai, but she did have that dream of the Seanchan attacking the Tower, and there’s also the issue of Mesaana…)

Give up? You’re asking Egwene when she plans to give up? Have you…met this girl? Ever? At any time across the last eleven books?

“Proper order, Silviana?” Egwene asked. “As it has been maintained elsewhere in the Tower?”

The score stands something like Egwene 2304913 – 0 Elaida. I’ve been keeping careful track.

Speaking of Elaida, Egwene gets to go serve her dinner. And, if we’re lucky, serve her in a more colloquial sense. (Does anyone even say that anymore? No? Nevermind then).

Silviana seems worried about Egwene’s wellbeing and Egwene doesn’t quite recognise it – in that, she and Rand have another thing in common, it would seem. The disconnect between them and those around them, when it comes to understanding that people are concerned for them, and even why those people might be concerned for them. Though again, while it’s a similarity on one level, it gets very different when looked at more closely.

She considered that last comment. Perhaps it hadn’t been surprise that Silviana had shown upon hearing of Egwene’s visit to Elaida. Perhaps it had been sympathy.

I’m momentarily amused at the memory of Egwene accusing Moiraine of not even recognising human emotion.

But Egwene’s role, as she sees and embodies it now, isn’t one she would think of as deserving sympathy. She’s not trying to get the other Aes Sedai to feel sorry for her. She’s trying to get them to follow her and recognise her as Amyrlin. More than that, she’s trying to repair the near-fatal damage that has already been done to the Tower and the Aes Sedai, and also prepare them for the end of the world, and at some point that starts demanding a force of nature more than a person.

Like so much else, the same could be said of Rand, to a degree. I say that a lot, I know, but what fascinates me about the parallels between Egwene and Rand are not the parallels themselves so much as the differences beneath them, which are highlighted by the surface-level similarities. And the more I think about it, the more I think it comes down to an issue of choice. Egwene chooses, where Rand was chosen.

I mean that not so much as a narrative truth but as a matter of perception, which in a way is what makes it so fascinating. This is a fantasy  world with prophecy and a Pattern and therefore a rather complicated notion of free will (or the lack thereof) that I would probably tie my brain into logical knots trying to untangle. So I’m not looking at how much choice or agency Rand and Egwene have relative to one another, but rather how much they perceive themselves to have. (Because perception and belief are the keys, aren’t they, to living freely a predestined life? But then, I’m an atheist; what would I know?)

Rand makes choices – he chooses to continue day after day, despite everything – but he does so with the increasing knowledge or certainty that his life does not belong to him but to the Pattern, to history, to the world itself. He chooses to do what must be done because it is his task and his duty and his destiny, and so is no choice at all. He is arguably the single most powerful individual in the world, but in many things he no longer perceives himself to have agency. He must do what he must. His choice is resignation. He is the chosen one; he does not get to choose.

(To go on a slight tangent from my tangent here, this relates back to what I was thinking about last chapter. That he has lost sight or sense of why he is fighting. He is using himself and everything around him, and destroying himself in the process, because it’s what he has to do, but it feels as if his aims are becoming increasingly…hollow. And with a fading sense of purpose beyond determined resignation, his ability to choose anything in a meaningful way fades as well, so he becomes little more than a weapon of fate, wielded by prophecy. Something is going to have to change that).

Egwene, though. Egwene actively chooses her path, and the steps she takes. Sure, she’s pushed and pulled by events around her, not to mention the part where she’s literally enslaved. Often, her choices are limited, and often she has to do things she would rather not, but the point is that she does not stop seeing them as choices. It is a matter of perception, and she believes herself to have agency. She leaves the Two Rivers because she wants something more. She goes to the Tower because she wants to learn. She goes to the Aiel because she wants to learn. She is summoned to become Amyrlin, but even then, she herself decides to truly be Amyrlin rather than a puppet. She makes that choice her own, rather than resigning herself to it. And now she is striving to save the Tower because she knows it needs saving. Egwene is not a prophecied hero; she is a hero because she chooses to be.

And I love that about her. I love that, if you try to map her story to the Hero’s Journey, she manufactures her own ‘call to adventure’ and then skips right past the ‘hero is reluctant’ step. I love that even when she is pushed a certain direction, she goes on her own terms. Becoming Amyrlin, being taken captive… when she surrenders, she does so in order to control. I love that instead of fighting a path she has been set on, she steps onto her own and dares the world to defy her.

It doesn’t make her storyline or character better or worse than Rand’s – at least, not the way I read it; they’re different characters and their different arcs are each lovely and effective in their own rights – but it enhances this effect of…contrasting parallels between them. For example, the way they deal with pain. Rand endures it because he must. Egwene embraces it because it is a victory. Both are determination and willpower, but one is resignation while the other is choice. It’s a bit like listening to the same piece of music played once in a major key and once in a minor key. The same, sort of, but also not the same at all.

Anyway.

Egwene treating Katerine as a servant amuses me far more than it should.

Egwene ignored the threat. What more could they do to her?

Not a question I would recommend asking, given that the answer is usually ‘challenge accepted’.

Egwene just gives them a lecture on precisely how fucked the Tower is right now, and how they should pull their heads out of their arses and do something about it.

More eloquently, of course. And very slightly more subtly.

Of course, this is no doubt lost on Katerine, given her actual Ajah. But Silviana seems to have been listening at the door…

I still rather like Silviana. I think Egwene kind of does as well. She certainly respects her, anyway.

No Alviarin? Where is she now? What is she up to? Trying to find a new concealer to cover the invisible mark Shaidar Haran left on her?

Yes, Egwene was winning. But she was beginning to lose the satisfaction she’d once felt at that victory. Who could take joy in seeing the Aes Sedai unravelling like aged canvas? Who could feel glad that Tar Valon, the grandest of all great cities, was piled with refuse? As much as Egwene might despise Elaida, she could not exult at seeing an Amyrlin Seat lead with such incompetence.

Time for Phase Two, perhaps? Whatever that might be, in this case?

I still just love the situation she’s in, because it’s so uniquely…odd. There’s an aspect of the classic ‘leading a rebellion from within the enemy’s camp’ element to it, of course, but the twist is that the Tower itself, and the other Aes Sedai, aren’t her enemies. She’s leading a rebellion, but one that seeks not to undermine or break the Tower, but rather to strengthen it. To take advangate of the cracks in the foundation, but at the same time to heal them. To gather support to her, but without ever letting the overall whole weaken.

Easy, right?

So now she has to figure out how to behave with Elaida. Punching her in the face, unfortunately, seems like it’s not an option.

Corridors are still shifting and also paintings are becoming significantly more creepy. Maybe Shai’tan once had ambitions of becoming an interior designer, and turned to evil when no one wanted to employ him.

Oh, there’s Alviarin.

This was the woman who had pulled down Siuan, the woman who had beaten Rand

So she knows about that now, it seems. Last book she was surprised to hear that Elaida had tried to have Rand kidnapped, but I guess she’s filled in the details.

And she thinks of him as Rand, here. It’s not ‘the woman who had beaten the Dragon Reborn’ and thus caused something of a diplomatic crisis. She doesn’t think of it here in terms of Elaida mishandling the Dragon Reborn, but of Elaida beating Rand. There is still love between them, even if it is strained almost to breaking and nearly overshadowed by everything else.

Elaida needed to know Egwene’s anger, she needed to be humiliated and made ashamed! She…

Egwene stopped in front of Elaida’s gilded door. No.

She could imagine the scene easily. Elaida enraged, Egwene banished to the dark cells beneath the Tower. What good would that do? She could not confront the woman, not yet. That would only lead to momentary satisfaction followed by a debilitating failure.

But Light, she couldn’t bow to Elaida either! The Amyrlin did no such thing!

Or…no. The Amyrlin did what was required of her. Which was more important? The White Tower, or Egwene’s pride? The only way to win this battle was to let Elaida think that she was winning. No…No, the only way to win was to let Elaida think there was no battle.

This is, I think, a very important moment in – or perhaps illustration of – Egwene’s character development. And it’s excellent.

We’ve already seen Egwene’s decision to accept pain, and her refusal to accept the role Elaida (and most of the Tower’s Aes Sedai) are trying to force her into. We’ve seen her determined and we’ve seen her defiant.

But this is different. Humility, I think we can agree, is not exactly one of Egwene’s main traits. That has often served her well – after all, arrogance, pride, and ambition are often separated from determination, confidence, and resolve by little more than context – but stubbornness even in the form of calm defiance isn’t the right tool, here.

The fact that she is able to recognise that, and not back away from it, is a real mark of strength and maturity in her. It reminds me of her conversation with Moiraine all the way back in TFoH, when Egwene asked why Moiraine had started doing what Rand told her. And Moiraine replied simply that she had remembered how to control saidar. It was a major moment in Moiraine’s own behaviour and approach, and Egwene is now facing something like that herself, and truly understanding it. Sometimes surrender, or the appearance of surrender, is necessary. Sometimes pride must be set aside.

This is about something far greater than her pride, and while that may seem a simple statement, it’s no easy thing to recognise and genuinely accept. Not just for Egwene – for anyone. But she accepts it here, and shows how far she has come, and how deserving of the Amyrlin Seat she is. She is not doing this for herself, but for the Tower. She will accept pain and sacrifice pride where necessary in order to heal and unite the Tower, will give of herself whatever is required, because it is about something greater than herself.

Moiraine would be proud. I’m proud. It’s such a strong moment, even though no one around her is able to notice anything of it.

Character development is one of those things that really benefits from a fourteen-book series, if you do it right.

Silence. That would be her weapon this evening.

Excellent. Silence is such an effective tool in so many circumstances, and it’s so often underestimated.

Ah, Meidani’s here. And not apparently happy about it. Poor Meidani; she’s caught in a pretty shit situation.

In stark contrast to Egwene’s understanding of when to set aside some measure of her own pride, Elaida’s sitting on basically a throne in an elaborately decorated room, smirking. Elaida wants power for power’s sake – she knows the world is going to need saving sometime in the near future, but while she is in her way trying to work towards that, it’s important to her that she be remembered as the one who saved it. That she be known as the greatest Amyrlin ever, etc. It’s not about the Tower and the World, it’s about Elaida. And she’s not effective enough to make that kind of arrogance work.

Though Egwene had not chosen an Ajah herself, she would have taken the Green.

This is one  thing I dislike about Egwene’s characterisation, actually. There’s such a good opportunity here for her to be truly of all Ajahs and of none. Not raised in the ordinary way, never given the choice of an Ajah, and therefore being in a position to understand and appreciate and identify somewhat with all of them. Especially because, while I can see why she might lean towards the Green, she does have elements of several of the others. There’s also the fact that she has brought a great deal of change already and means to bring more, so having her sort of…outside of the normal rigid structure of Ajahs, and instead as someone who genuinely stands getween and linked to and yet apart from all of them, could be a way to emphasise that. And it would underscore her suitability for the role of Amyrlin in general, because unlike every single other Aes Sedai, she actually isn’t of any Ajah, and never has been.

I just feel like it’s a bit of a wasted opportunity, and it always strikes me as slightly odd whenever it’s mentioned.

But Egwene held her tongue. This meeting was about survival. Egwene could bear straps of pain for the good of the Tower. Could she bear Elaida’s arrogance as well?

A less painful task, perhaps, but not necessarily a less difficult one.

Egwene broke her gaze away from Elaida’s. And – feeling the shame of it vibrate through her very bones – she bowed her head.

Elaida laughed, obviously taking the gesture the right way. “Honestly, I expected you to be more trouble. It appears that Silviana does know her duty.”

It seems like a small gesture to have to make, and her shame and anger could be read as slightly hyperbolic, but…it’s really hard to stay calm and let someone you absolutely hate take the upper hand, without making any move to show them how incompetent and mistaken they are, and that they’re only winning because you’re throwing the game.

Egwene hears Meidani’s name and knows she’s one of the spies, but doesn’t know the entirety of all the ways in which Meidani’s life sucks right now. Compelled by an oath she was forced to swear to spend time with Elaida, while knowing that Elaida knows she was sent by the rebels and terrified of what might happen if any of that goes wrong. Also the implication that their ‘pillow friendship’ has probably been renewed makes it even more unpleasant, given Meidani doesn’t really want anything to do with any of this.

“Ah, that is right,” Elaida said musingly. “It will be good to know how traitors have been treated in the past. Beheading seems too easy and simple a punishment to me. Those who split our Tower, those who flaunt their defection, a very special reward will be needed for them. well, continue your search then.”

How spectacularly cruel.

Egwene, meanwhile, is proving her ability to multitask: she can seethe and serve soup at the same time. Just about.

Elaida’s still being generally awful, asking Meidani for information about the rebels and insinuating that she could strip her of the shawl and then laughing about it. And Egwene continues to show admirable restraint by not punching her.

Light! What had happened to Elaida? Egwene had met this woman before, and Elaida had struck her as stern, but not tyrannical. Power changed people. It appeared that in Elaida’s case, holding the Amyrlin Seat had taken her sternness and solemnity and replaced them with a heady sense of entitlement and cruelty.

Well, and I think Fain might have had something to do with that, but otherwise Egwene is probably correct. Elaida craves power, but she clings to it too tightly. She’s not strong enough to feel secure in her position, so she tries to forcibly show herself to be even stronger, and instead ends up brittle.

At least some of the Aes Sedai are apparently nervous about the Seanchan, but Elaida dismisses that as well.

Egwene couldn’t speak. She could barely have sputtered. How would Elaida feel about these ‘exaggerated’ rumours if the Seanchan slapped a cold a’dam around her idiot neck? Egwene could sometimes feel that band on her own skin, itching, impossible to move.

…Yeah. It’s hard enough for her to keep silent and ignore Elaida tearing the Tower apart, and being wantonly cruel towards Meidani, and dismissive of a threat Egwene has seen. But the fact that the threat is the Seanchan makes it so much worse for her to be listening to this. She has suffered firsthand what Elaida scoffs at, and it’s no wonder she still feels echoes of it, and she can’t let herself show anything. So she’s stuck in a room with someone she hates, someone she thinks could bring down the Tower and possibly the world, and now she’s also stuck in here remembering enslavement and torture and generally one of the worst times of her life.

“No […] These Seanchan are not the problem. The real danger is the complete lack of obedience shown by the Aes Sedai.”

Holding onto power so hard that it shatters in her hands like porcelain. She is not strong enough to inspire respect, so instead she tries to beat everyone around her into submission. Which always ends well…

“Fortunately, I have an idea myself. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that the Three Oaths contain no mention of obedience to the White Tower? […] Why no oath to obey the Amyrlin? If that simple promise were part of all of us, how much pain and difficulty could we have avoided? Perhaps some revision is in order.”

Um…yikes. Double yikes because Meidani is listening to this and has already been forced into a fourth Oath of obedience.

Egwene is rather horrified at this notion; she has received oaths of fealty, but the first two were given voluntarily and the others were taken from those who tried to use her as a puppet, and none were sworn on the Oath Rod. There’s some grey morality there, but this is several steps further. Elaida wants to demand them of all Aes Sedai, for the sake of maintaining her own increasingly despotic power. Which is…understandably both terrifying and infuriating.

Egwene’s rage boiled within her, steaming like the soup in her hands. This woman, this…creature! She was the cause of the problems in the White Tower, she was the one who caused division between rebels and loyalists. She had taken Rand captive and beaten him.

Again with thinking of him as Rand here, and feeling angry at the fact that he was beaten, rather than at the fact that Elaida fucked things up with the Dragon Reborn. As for the rest…yeah, pretty much. The other Aes Sedai are not her enemies, and most want the Tower to be whole again, but Elaida stands in the way of that.

Egwene felt herself shaking. In another moment, she’d burst and let Elaida hear truth. It was boiling free from her, and she could barely contain it.

No! she thought. If I do that, my battle ends. I lose my war.

So Egwene did the only thing she could think of to stop herself. She dumped the soup on the floor.

Well, that’s…one way of handling things, I suppose. It’s certainly amusing, but again it’s actually not as excessive as it immediately appears, I don’t think. Given what Egwene has endured thus far, and everything that has happened as a result of Elaida, and even what she’s had to listen to in this scene alone, and the fact that she can’t let herself do or say anything and she has to act like she’s submissive and defeated…well, it’s not suprising that her self-control would waver slightly.

It is still amusing, though.

“I’m sorry,” Egwene said. “I wish that hadn’t happened.”

Ha. Well played.

And she has her composure back, so it seems to have worked.

Meidani gets the task of helping Egwene clean up the soup, so Egwene tries to tell Meidani to send for her. Of course, that just adds a third string to Meidani, pulling her in yet another direction, but Egwene doesn’t know that.

Egwene laid a hand on her shoulder. “Elaida can be unseated, Meidani. The Tower will be reunited. I will see it happen, but we must keep courage. Send for me.”

Meidani looked up, studying Egwene. “How…how do you do it? They say you are punished three and four times a day, that you need Healing between so that they can beat you further. How can you take it?”

“I take it because I must,” Egwene said, lowering her hand.

Leading by example. But she does win Meidani over very quickly here, by showing such determination and strength.

“I can help heal what has been broken, but I will need your help.”

I’m remembering way back in the beginning, when Nynaeve still thought of Egwene as her apprentice, and mentioned how ‘Egwene has the desire to heal, the need to’. And…in a way, she wasn’t wrong. Egwene hasn’t followed the same path of healing that Nynaeve has, but here she is trying to heal what is essentially the greatest wound to the Aes Sedai as a whole.

Elaida throws Egwene out, which is probably the best way this could have ended, all things considered.

Oh, except she wants Egwene to come back another day. Deep breaths, Egwene. You can do it.

“And if you so much as spill another drop, I will have you locked away in a cell with no windows or lights for a week.”

Elaida. Please. Can we stop with the locking people in boxes thing? That’s a parallel Rand and Egwene really don’t need to share.

Egwene left the room. Had this woman ever been a true Aes Sedai, in control of her emotions?

Yet Egwene herself had lost control of her emotions. She should never have let herself get to a point where she’d been forced to drop the soup. She had underestimated how infuriating Elaida could be, but that would not happen again. She calmed herself as she walked, breathing in and out. Rage did her no good.

Just like embracing pain, she has to learn how to do this, and it’s not exactly easy at first. But she knows where she went wrong, and is already making sure she will do better next time. And I like the recognition that rage does her no good, because it reminds me of her first meeting with Silviana, where Silviana asked why she was not hysterical and Egwene responded by saying she could not see how that would help.

Egwene ate contemplatively, listening to Laras and the scullions bang pots at washing up in the other room, surprised at how calm she felt.

She is learning true Aes Sedai serenity. Not the forced and brittle mask of it that so many seem to have used as a substitute, but the real thing. The ability to acknowledge emotion but dismiss it when it does not help her. Not forcing things like pain away, but accepting them as part of her. The ability to face anything, and withstand it in a state of calm.

She had changed; something was different about her. watching Elaida, finally confronting the woman who had been her rival all of these months, forced her to look at what she was doing in a new light.

She had imagined herself undermining Elaida and seizing control of the White Tower from within. Now she realised that she didn’t need to undermine Elaida. The woman was fully capable of doing that herself.

This is all excellent. She is steadfast and stubborn and determined, but she’s also able to recognise when she needs to shift her focus slightly, or reevaluate her exact goals and strategies. Because, again, it’s about something far greater than herself, and she knows it. And this is a lovely, subtle realisation.

Her role isn’t to undermine Elaida, but to be a source of strength in contrast to Elaida’s weakness, to be a centre around which the Tower can reform and rebuild and heal, even as Elaida shakes its foundations. She isn’t seizing control, because it isn’t about control, really. It’s about being there to support something that is crumbling, to show strength and sow unity amidst division and weakness.

It’s also a strong revelation because it means essentially relinquishing any sort of personal grudge against Elaida. It means making this, once again, not about her but about the Tower itself. Letting go of her own anger in order to focus on what is truly important.

Elaida would topple eventually, with or without Egwene’s help. Egwene’s duty, as Amyrlin, wasn’t to speed that fall – but to do whatever she could to hold the Tower and its occupants together. They couldn’t afford to fracture further. Her duty was to hold back the chaos and destruction that threatened them all, to reforge the Tower.

Yes, that, exactly. And holding the Amyrlin Seat, coming into power, may be a part of that, but this is the realisation that that part is…incidental, almost. That, again, it’s not about her at all. Nor is it about Elaida, even. It’s about doing whatever she can do to hold the Tower together and heal it.

And that’s what she’s been working towards this whole time, but this is just that…slight change in focus, and a much more subtle and nuanced understanding of her true purpose here, and what needs to be done.

She has come so far, to be able to see and understand and act upon this, and it’s beautiful to watch.

Time for another trip to Silviana, which will probably be edifying for anyone but Egwene. Because really, what can they do to her? And as Meidani showed –and as the reactions of some of the other Aes Sedai have shown – at some point it just makes the others respect her more, and thus serves her own purpose. She will not be broken so easily, and the others are coming to see that strength.

[Egwene] spoke calmly about the evening, omitting the fact that she’d dropped the bowl of soup on purpose. She did, however, say that she’d dropped it after Elaida had talked of revoking and changing the Three Oaths.

Silviana looked very thoughtful at that.

“Well,” the woman said, standing up and fetching her lash, “The Amyrlin has spoken.”

“Yes, I have,” Egwene said

Ha. It’s not quite on the level of “there’s no need to call me ‘sir’, professor” but that’s what I’m immediately reminded of, and it’s pretty excellent.

Oddly, Egwene felt no desire to cry out. It hurt, of course, but she just couldn’t scream. How ridiculous the punishment was!

It’s almost like the end of a training montage, except with…pain. She started off determined to embrace the pain, even though she wasn’t completely sure how, and did a decent job of it. But it still hurt, and she still screamed, and it took effort. Now…now, it just seems ridiculous.

She’s thinking of the far greater pain of seeing the division and hostility amongst the Ajahs, of hearing Elaida speak of an oath of obedience to the Amyrlin, of Meidani’s treatment.

Each of these things was a pain inside of Egwene, a knife to the chest, piercing the heart. As the beating continued, she realised that nothing they could do to her body would ever compare to the pain of soul she felt at seeing the White Tower suffer beneath Elaida’s hand. Compared with those internal agonies, the beating was ridiculous.

And so she began to laugh.

This is lovely. She thought, in the very beginning of her odd captivity, about how the Aiel could supposedly laugh through any torture. About how she could not see how she could manage that, but she could at least try to embrace the pain. And she had to remind herself of it at first, with something of a constant mantra, and over time it got easier, little by little. Easier still when she understood that every beating was a victory, a sign that she was winning.

And now…now she has realised something even greater than that: namely, that in the face of the wounds the Tower is facing, this pain is nothing. That in the face of a far greater task for a far greater purpose, this is a minor obstacle. A triviality. And that renders the pain…irrelevant, almost.

And so she laughs, finally succeeding at truly embracing pain and laughing in the face of it, without having to force it.

Laughter in the face of pain, serenity as she contemplates her true task – and the fact that it isn’t about undermining Elaida. These are major steps, and they show such incredible growth and understanding. Her way forward won’t be easy, but she understands what she has to do, and she’s strong enough to do it, and with that comes this sense of…lightness, almost.

The lashing stopped. Egwene turned. Surely that wasn’t all of it!

Silviana was regarding her with a concerned expression. “Child?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

Ha. Yeah, to anyone who is not Egwene (or Aiel, I suppose), that would look…rather worrying. It’s okay, Silviana, Egwene’s just badass and also a better Aes Sedai than most Aes Sedai.

“Can’t you see it?” Egwene asked. “Don’t you feel the pain? The agony of watching the Tower crumble around you? Could any beating compare to that?”

Silviana did not respond.

I understand, Egwene thought. I didn’t realise what the Aiel did. I assumed that I just had to be harder, and that was what would teach me to laugh at pain. But it’s not hardness at all. it’s not strength that makes me laugh. It’s understanding.

That is beautiful. And this is such a perfect chapter to follow the previous one, because the contrast is so clear. Rand hasn’t yet reached that understanding, not truly. He is lost and afraid and desperate and he doesn’t understand, not really, and he’s in so much pain that all he can think to do is become harder in order to prevent it from breaking him. So he has lost laughter, along with tears.

And the answer is understanding. Understanding what this is all for, as Egwene is finally understanding what her true focus is, what her battles and her war are all about. She was close, before, but now she understands it in full, and with that comes this sense of laughter and release and the true strength necessary to win, rather than the brittle hard strength of resistance and defiance.

So this is what Rand, too, will need to reach, in some form or another. An understanding of what it is he is doing, of why he is enduring all this pain, of what his task is and why it matters. He knows it, knows the prophecies and his role and knows he must win or the world dies, but it’s…like Egwene thinking that she has to beat Elaida and bring the Tower to herself. It’s very close to the right answer, but it lacks nuance, and the focus is ever so slightly off, but that small difference can mean everything.

“I will not make the same mistake [as Shemerin], Silviana. Elaida can say whatever she wants. But that doesn’t change who I am, or who any of us are. Even if she tries to change the Three Oaths, there will be those who resist, who hold to what is correct. And so, when you beat me, you beat the Amyrlin Seat. And that should be amusing enough to make us both laugh.” The punishment continued, and Egwene embraced the pain, took it into herself, and judged it insignificant, impatient for the punishment to cease. She had a lot of work to do.

What a fantastic chapter. So many great realisations, so much really wonderful character growth, and I am so very much looking forward to seeing how this arc plays out.

Next (TGS ch 3) Previous (TGS ch 1)

#character development and understanding and alkfsjela #Wheel of Time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #The Gathering Storm

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 1

Chapter title says it all, really. 

Chapter 1: Tears from Steel

The prologue chapter title may have been a bit lacklustre, but “Tears from Steel”? Even without having read the chapter, I would already put that high on the list of contenders for most beautiful chapter title of the series thus far.

It’s lovely in its own right, but it’s one of those titles that, even with no context but the Dragon icon, speaks to so much more because of everything that has been built into those words. Tears, which Rand has lost. Steel, which he has so long sought to become. And both of those threads have been built for so long now, and have become so central to his character arc, that all it takes to evoke an entire mindset and sense of heartbreak and futility and pain is those three words.

It reminds me of ‘Mashiara’ that way. Or ‘The Golden Crane’. Or ‘The Dedicated’. Elements of story that have filled individual words with far more meaning than they had on their own, and have thus given those words the power to convey all of that in a glance.

Anyway. It’s been a while; let’s get on with reading, shall we?

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass…

I imagine it would be somewhat…reassuring, I suppose, as an author stepping in to finish another author’s series, to have the first paragraph written for you. There’s still the rest of the book, of course, but at least that’s a way to ease into it.

And this time the wind is beginning around the White Tower. That seems appropriate. Especially since last book it was Dragonmount.

It’s almost strange to not have half-page sentences in this opening bit.

Tar Valon has seen better days, is the general idea here.

It actually makes Egwene’s task into another parallel with Rand’s; where he had to cleanse the taint from the male half of the Source, she must now essentially cleanse the power that claims the female half of the Power.

Tar Valon had repelled every enemy.

Yes, well, so did Aridhol.

Aes Sedai were in control. Always. Even now, when they had suffered an indelible defeat: Egwene al’Vere, the rebel Amyrlin Seat, had been captured and imprisoned within the Tower.

And imprisonment seems to be working about as well on her as it has supposedly worked on Semirhage in the past.

So the wind blows onwards, from the White Tower to Dragonmount. The Tower, pristine and outwardly perfect, but inwardly crumbling. Dragonmount, with its shattered peak. The two symbols of two great powers that must stand together, whole, and yet are broken and all but irreconcilable.

Time for spring to come, hmm? With its new life and rebirth and all that? No wonder it’s a bit delayed, what with the Fisher King feeling…somewhat less than springlike.

The land was still dormant, as if waiting, holding its breath.

Yeah, that. The Dragon is one with the land, so the land is waiting for…what was it? ‘Let the Prince of the Morning sing to the land that green things will grow and the valleys give forth lambs.’ Sorry, he’s a bit preoccupied at the moment, but I’m sure if you leave a message he’ll be with you as soon as he can.

To the west, as it approached the land known as Arad Doman – cresting hills and short peaks – something suddenly slammed against it.

Wait what?

Soemthing unseen, something spawned by the distant darkness to the north. Something that flowed against the natural tide and currents of the air. The wind was consumed by it, blown southward in a gust, across low peaks and brown foothills

We’re fucking with the wind now? The wind that begins every book, untouched and unchecked and sometimes gentle, sometimes violent, but always free? Well then. That’s…new and interesting and I suppose it goes well with the black and silver clouds and the gathering storm and the fact that we are rapidly approaching the ending.

Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, stood, hands behind his back as he looked out the open manor window. He still thought of them that way, his ‘hands’, though he now had only one.

It’s okay, Rand, you’re in good company. The Skywalkers, Maedhros, Tyr…

Steel, he thought. I am steel. This cannot be fixed, and so I move on.

He is steel, and steel does not know tears. And he’s so close, at this point. He’s been dragging himself through hell and leaving pieces of himself behind for so long, and now he’s drawing close to an ending. He’s made a promise to Lews Therin, he’s not-quite-but-mostly given up on any hope of living afterwards, or wanting to. This cannot be fixed, and it is almost the end. All he has to do is carry on now, for however little time is left. Though of course, a breaking point is almost sure to happen before that, but as far as his current state of mind…yeah, he’s just dragging himself the last bit of the way, and little else matters.

It was the Dark One’s touch, and it grew with each passing day. How long until it was as overwhelming, as oily and nauseating, as the taint that had once coated saidin, the male half of the One Power?

Breaking the normal flow of time wherever it touches, breaking order, leaving chaos and entropy. Much, I think, like the taint did to the minds of those exposed to it. It was a…contained version of the Dark One’s touch on the world. Contained being a very relative term, here.

“The boughs,” he said, nodding out the window. “You see those pines, just to the side of Bashere’s camp?”

“Yes, Rand, But—”

“They blow the wrong direction,” Rand said.

There’s an immature ‘who broke the wind’ joke in there but for real WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE WIND. Now, it’s possible I am a bit too attached to the wind that begins every book, which is largely the fault of another series entirely, but in my mind it’s linked with Rand and I find all of this wind blowing the wrong way stuff VERY DISCONCERTING.

All three [banners] flew proud…yet just to the side of them, the needles on the pines blew in the opposite direction.

Boughs – the land, the world – are blowing one way and his banners – power, force, pride – are blowing a different direction. I see what you did there. I actually really like this image, and the idea behind it.

He could almost think these winds a result of his own ta’veren nature, but the events he caused were always possible. The wind blowing in two directions at once…

Well, how many people do you have in your head right now, Rand, if we’re talking about ‘possible’. But I’m with him on thinking it’s not really ta’veren at work here, though I’m not convinced it’s the Dark One. That’s an option, but there’s also the possibility that it’s to do with his own divided nature, and the way he’s on a course of fighting everything, fighting himself, fighting the world, trying to force something that perhaps cannot be forced. Trying to fight the wind.

His eyesight hadn’t been the same since the attack on that day he’d lost his hand. It was as if…as if he looked through water at something distorted.

Fitting, and again no doubt representative of something deeper and more pervasive. Everything has been distorted, especially in his outlook and even his character. Plus the Dragon-Land thing yet again, with everything being stretched and warped and distorted as reality is strained. I like the way distortion and reflection is used in this series in general. It’s not the most prevalent theme or anything, but it crops up here and there and ties in nicely with the broader issue of perception and its biases and flaws and shifts.

He’d wanted to keep moving, jumping from location to location

Fisher on white… (Oh, look, Lia made a sha’rah reference. How many is that now? Twelve past too many, no doubt).

Rand needed his army to be strong. Need. No longer was it about what Rand wanted or what he wished. Everything he did focused only on need, and what he needed most was the lives of those who followed him.

This has been his path for a while now. He is a weapon against the Shadow, a prophecy made flesh, a figure of salvation and destruction, a power. He is the Dragon Reborn, something both more and less than human in the eyes of most. He said it himself – I don’t know how human the Dragon Reborn can afford to be. The world demands the Dragon Reborn, and in becoming that he has all but lost Rand al’Thor, for his life is no longer truly his. As Moiraine said, he belongs to the Pattern, and to history.

Also I do love ‘what he needed most was the lives of those who followed him’. Not them, but their lives. And it doesn’t even spark a thread of self-admonishment for thinking about using them; he crossed that line a long time ago, out of necessity, and he will use anyone and anything he can, himself included.

(To quote another work entirely… ‘who cares about your lonely soul / we strive towards a larger goal / our little lives don’t count at all’).

Just outside the window, the winds suddenly righted themselves, and the flags whipped around, blowing in the other direction. So it hadn’t been the needles after all, but the banners that had been in the wrong.

Doesn’t really get plainer than that, does it?

Aviendha’s on her way here? Why but also yay.

But the truth was that he needed Min, needed her strength and her love. He would use her as he used so many others. No, there was no place in him for regret. He just wished he could banish guilt as easily.

Rand, there’s a difference between using people and letting loved ones help and support you.

Thoughts of guilt of course lead to Lews Therin crying about Ilyena, which leads to Rand thinking about what Semirhage said and trying not to think about it. Because that’s always a successful approach to problems.

Besides, he didn’t need to understand women in order to use them. Particularly if they had information he needed.

He gritted his teeth. No, he thought. No, there are lines I will not cross. There are things even I will not do.

I don’t think he’s ever stated it quite that plainly before, that this is the line he will not cross. Some of the directness is very likely Sanderson – it does fit more with how he portrays characters’ mindsets – but I think it can also work with where Rand is right now. He has gone so far, and he has so much blood on his hands – er, hand – and he is so deep in self-hatred that he barely even notices it anymore. He has crossed so many of the lines he once tried to draw, and every time he does, every step he takes, this one last threshold stands out even more clearly as he draws closer to it. So it would make sense that here, now, standing on the brink of irredeemability, he would state it very clearly to himself. This is it.

And I think I’ve said it before, but the fact that this final line is drawn at hurting or killing a woman is, as I see it, only partly linked to the frustrating chivalry he was raised with. That plays a role, but so, I believe, does Ilyena. Lews Therin’s breaking point was seeing and realising that he had killed Ilyena. Had killed everyone he loved, but she was sort of the…representative of that. And it’s such a deep, horrifying guilt that Rand carries it too, across the barrier between lifetimes that is falling away.

(Here’s a thought: what if, instead of focusing all his guilt and horror on Ilyena, Lews Therin had fallen to his knees next to his children, also killed by his hand. If they had been the deaths that broke him, if they had been the ones of whom he begged forgiveness before killing himself. If, then, Rand’s one last line in the sand was killing or harming a child, rather than killing or harming a woman. Of course, that could get either very dark or excessively sentimental, but still).

Now everyone’s thinking about the male a’dam that Semirhage had and YEAH THAT’S STILL NOT EVEN REMOTELY OUT OF PLAY, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY FOR THIS TO END WELL.

The exchange had ended with Rand losing a hand but gaining one of the Forsaken as his prisoner. The last time he’d been in a similar situation, it hadn’t ended well. He still didn’t know where Asmodean had gone or why the weasel of a man had fled in the first place, but Rand did suspect that he had betrayed much about Rand’s plans and activities. Should have killed him. Should have killed them all.

There’s something surprisingly sad about this, that Rand’s perception of Asmodean is coloured by his belief that Asmodean betrayed him. There was such a fascinating and complicated dynamic between the two of them, especially towards the end of…er…Asmodean’s life, but it ends with Rand believing the worst.

Rand nodded, then froze. Had that been Lews Therin’s thought or his own?

Yes.

Burn you! Rand thought. Talk to me! The time is coming. I need to know what you know! How did you seal the Dark One’s prison? What went wrong, and why did it leave the prison flawed? Speak to me!

I…don’t think that’s going to work, Rand. You need to know what Lews Therin knows – or knew – and I think the only way to truly do that is going to be to let yourself remember.

Yes, that was definitely sobbing, not laughter. Sometimes it was hard to tell with Lews Therin.

Meanwhile Rand cannot let himself do either. Both have been relegated to Lews Therin, and Rand can no longer distinguish between them within himself because they are both…lost to him.

Rand continued to think of the dead man as a separate individual from himself, regardless of what Semirhage had said.

Huh. I don’t think that’s ever been stated quite so plainly either. I also don’t think he’s entirely right about that. Different lifetimes, yes. Different individuals? Not…precisely. Lews Therin is Rand’s past and Rand is Lews Therin’s future and it’s complicated because how are we defining ‘individual’ in this case? Personality? The sum total of a person’s experiences? A single soul? If the barrier between lifetimes hadn’t been eroded it wouldn’t be a problem, but it has and it is, and Rand’s mind doesn’t know what to do with that. Where do these experiences and personality traits go? Rand has his own and now he has more and there are no holes in his memory for them to fill in like they did with Mat – sort of – so where do they fit? How can he be Lews Therin Telamon and Rand al’Thor without losing one of them? How can he carry two lifetimes, to selves that are both ‘true’, and still hold himself together? Add to that the fact that one of those lifetimes ended in Kinslayer, and it’s no surprise, really, that his method of dealing with this has been to maintain some kind of barrier between them with everything he has. To hold Lews Therin as a separate entity, and fight so hard to keep it that way.  

North and east. He had to force the lands into peace, whether they wanted it or not.

‘For his peace was the peace of the sword…’ He has to force peace, so that he can bring them all to face battle. The whole situation is full of sad irony.

And what were those Borderlanders up to? They had left their posts, joining together and marching south to find Rand, but giving no explanation of what they wanted of him. they were some of the best soldiers west of the Spine of the World. Their help would be invaluable at the Last Battle. But they had left the northlands. Why?

This has got to be THE MOST FRUSTRATING set of circular miscommunications. The Borderlanders want Rand in the Borderlands to fight the Last Battle, so they leave the Borderlands to tell Rand to go to the Borderlands, which confuses and frustrates Rand, who wants the Borderlanders in the Borderlands but hasn’t gone to the Borderlands to tell them so, because he assumed the Borderlanders would stay in the Borderlands.

In summary: YOU ALL WANT THE SAME DAMN THING, BUT NO ONE EVER TALKS TO ANYONE ELSE SO HOW WOULD YOU KNOW.

Light! He would have thought that, of all people, he could have depended on the Borderlanders to support him against the Shadow.

Why on earth did Lan not say anything to him? Lan was frustrated with him for much the same thing as the Borderlanders are, and he said as much to Nynaeve, but why not talk to Rand? Ask him what his plans are for the Borderlands? Advise him? Lan used to do many of those things, and Rand used to listen, more or less. And despite everything, there is still trust between them. So WHY NO COMMUNICATION? Argh.

I suppose the answer is that Lan is not entirely rational when it comes to Malkier and his own death-wish, and Rand is not entirely rational when it comes to people suggesting things to him, and there were a lot of Trollocs at the time. Which does tend to complicate things.

Every time he thought he had a nation secure, it seemed a dozen others fell apart. How could he bring peace to a people who refused to accept it? […] He could not fight both the Seanchan and the Dark One. He had to keep the Seanchan from advancing until the Last Battle was over. After that, the Light could burn them all.

This is just…sad. It’s the salvation-destruction duality again, in variation. He is trying so desperately to force peace – though peace through battle – but they will not accept it. He is trying to lead them to battle, but they fear it. And that battle itself is to secure a future in which there can be peace, but he doesn’t even believe in that much right now. He just has to get them there, and then…the Light could burn them all. There will always be another battle. He is giving everything he has to this and all he sees is despair and he can’t let himself care because he has to get there anyway. Has to get there and win, even if he has all but lost sight of – or lost hope in – why. All that is left is necessity.

And that ties back to the idea that if he continues along this path, his victory will be as dark as his defeat. He is so focused on the necessity of winning Tarmon Gai’don, and doing whatever is necessary to get there, that it has become his entire purpose. It’s the ‘what are you fighting for?’ question. Right now…nothing. He is fighting because he has to, because he has to win. That’s the goal, the destination, the end, and he’s stopped letting himself think about or hope for anything after. He’s lost the ‘why’ of it all, along with laughter and tears.

“I wonder if we’ll find Graendal here,” Rand said thoughtfully.

“Graendal?” Min asked. “What makes you think she might be?”

Rand shook his head. Asmodean had said Graendal was in Arad Doman, though that had been months ago.

Only months, since Rand was still learning how to channel from Asmodean. Not even a full year, and in that time he’s done so much and so much has been done to him and he’s had no time to rest before the next catastrophe and then the next and the next. He just keeps pushing onward because it’s all he can do, and only months ago he was the boy who fought his reflections out of a mirror and tried to turn feathers into a flower.

Wait he has a new sword now? Huh? When did that happen? Also where and why and what and who and how?

The weapon was long, slightly curved, and the lacquered scabbard was painted with a long, sinuous dragon of red and gold. It looked as if it had been designed specifically for Rand – and yet it was centuries old, unearthed only recently. How odd, that they should find this now, he thought, and make a git of it to me, completely unaware of what they were holding…

He had taken to wearing the sword immediately. It felt right beneath his fingers. He had told no one, not even Min, that he recognised the weapon. And not, oddly, from Lews Therin’s memories – but Rand’s own.

He took to wearing it immediately, when in Far Madding he didn’t want to fight five at once because he was worried about the possiblity of having to abandon his sword, which was a gift from Aviendha. Yet there’s nothing at all in his thoughts about that now, about putting aside the sword she gave him and taking up this one, given to him by…um…?

Still, it’s clearly an Important Sword. And he recognises it from…wait, is this Justice? Artur Hawkwing’s sword? Rand saw that at Falme, after all (and I seem to recall it shining like a mirror, which is another fun and kind of fitting play on reflections) and there’s the early Prophecy fragment about ‘let the arm of the Lord of the Dawn shelter us from the dark, and the great sword of justice defend us.’

But why and how would it have dragons on it? I’m very confused about this sword.

Nynaeve was expected; she often followed Cadsuane these days, like a rival cat she found encroaching on her territory. She did it for him, likely. The dark-haired Aes Sedai had never quite given up being Wisdom of Emond’s Field, no matter what she said, and she gave no quarter to anyone she thought was abusing one under her protection.

And how important that is, even when it’s a flaw as well as a virtue. It’s not that she’s clinging to her past, really; she has grown and changed and become so much more, but this is part of her and always will be.

Alivia would help Rand die, eventually. That had been one of Min’s viewings – and Min’s viewings were never wrong. Except that she’d said she’d been wrong about Moiraine. Perhaps that meant he wouldn’t have to…

No. Anything that made him think of living through the Last Battle, anything that made him hope, was dangerous.

Oh, Rand. He can’t let himself hope, because he’s afraid it will break him, but abandoning hope is perhaps even more dangerous because again, if he doesn’t let himself hope for anything, what is he fighting for?

So Cadsuane’s been in charge of questioning Semirhage, and I’m rather amused at the notion of those two facing off. Not in a fight, precisely, but in a…staring contest, as it were. Adelorna regretted that Cadsuane wasn’t in the Tower because she thought it would be interesting to see her try to deal with Egwene, but I rather think Cadsuane’s found herself enough of a challenge.

“How did the questioning go, Cadsuane Sedai?” he asked in a more moderate tone.

She smiled to herself. “Well enough.”

“Well enough?” Nynaeve snapped. She had made no promises to Cadsuane about civility. “That woman is infuriating!”

Cadsuane sipped her wine. “I wonder what else one could expect from oen of the Forsaken, child. She has had a great deal of time to practice being…infuriating.”

“Rand, that…creature is a stone,” Nynaeve said, turning to him. “She’s yielded barely a single useful sentence despite days of questioning! All she does is explain how inferior and backward we are, with the occasional aside that she’s eventually going to kill us all.”

Have I mentioned that I kind of love her?

“For all the girl’s dramatic talk,” Cadsuane said, nodding to Nynaeve, “she has a reasonable grasp on the situation. Phaw! When I said ‘well enough’ you were to interpret it as ‘as well as you might expect, given our unfortunate constraints’.”

Okay, no. There’s no way any Aes Sedai, much less Cadusane, would say ‘when I said this, you were supposed to interpret it as this…’ Nynaeve’s phrasing was slightly off but enjoyable. This is just…off. I feel like Cadsuane would have been more likely to let Nynaeve finish, give her a look, and then pick up as if she hadn’t spoken at all with a ‘Well enough, that is, given our unfortunate constraints’.

…and now I’m doing exactly what I said I was going to try not to do, with the nitpicking the change in authors. Sorry. Moving on.

“This isn’t art, Cadsuane,” Rand said dryly. “It’s torture.” Min shared a glance with him, and he felt her concern. Concern for him? He wasn’t the one being tortured.

The box, Lews Therin whispered. We should have died in the box. Then…then it would be over.

This is well done, with that sense of disconnect between what Rand feels from Min and his understanding of it – or lack thereof. It’s that sort of layering of PoV, where Rand is unable to perceive or recognise certain things in himself or his thoughts, so instead we see them through Min, but through Min via Rand, and the disconnect itself emphasises Rand’s state of mind.

Also Lews Therin’s oh-so-helpful commentary reminds me of when Rand was in the box and he thought about how he had hallucinated just...walking free. Nothing else, just walking. He’s kind of in a similar place right now in the sense that there is nothing left to him but necessity, nothing left of what he wants or wishes, very little left, as far as he can see, of him. All there is is pain and an impossible task, and so much of him just wants it to be over.

For all that Cadsuane feels constrained by Rand’s prohibition on torturing Semirhage, I have to wonder if torture would even work on her. There are two ways that could go, really. One would be that having her own power and expertise turned on her, holding her under the very tool she once used to assert her own dominance and superiority, would break her. The other would be that it would do absolutely nothing at all, and she would laugh at their attempts. I’m thinking in this case it’s probably more option B. Pain isn’t going to work on her, I don’t think. (There’s of course also the more modern argument that torture is ineffective in getting useful and accurate information, but in this setting I think we’re meant to accept it as a useful but morally difficult tool).

“I am aware of the threat,” Rand said flatly

Are you though? Are you really? You’ve lost a hand to her but she could do so much worse and I’m all but convinced she’s going to.

“I said no!” Rand said. “You will question her, but you will not hurt her!” Not a woman. I will keep to this one shred of light inside me.

Yeah, that. The one line he will not cross. It’s not so much about what that line is specifically, as it is about keeping that one shred of light, that one last threshold. It’s not even rational, really. It’s just a desperate attempt to hold on to himself, to believe that he is not lost, to believe that there is something distinguishing him from that which he fights. One last line.

So Cadsuane says they may as well turn her over to the White Tower and…oh.

“Would you entrust her to Elaida? Or did you eman the others? I doubt that Egwene would be pleased if I dropped one of the Forsaken in her lap. Egwene might just let Semirhage go and take me captive instead. Force me to kneel before the White Tower’s justice and gentle me just to give her another notch in her belt.”

Nynaeve frowned. “Rand! Egwene would never—”

“She’s Amyrlin,” he said. […] “Aes Sedai to the core. I’m just another pawn to her.”

This…was inevitable, really, but it’s still sad to watch it happen. To see Egwene in the last few books thinking about the rumours of Aes Sedai kneeling to Rand, and assuming the worst. To see Rand now returning the same doubts and distrust. To see both of them certain that the other means to use them, means to force them to submit. To see both of them responding to that with distrust and anger.

Yet it’s been so beautifully done, over the course of eleven books now. The childhood friends, all but betrothed, slowly and naturally and inevitably becoming this. Growing up and growing apart and changing, each following their own path and each making so many sacrifices and each absolutely dedicated to their cause. Each acting out of perceived necessity and each doing the best they can, and yet, through circumstance more than individual fault, ending up…not quite enemies. Not that. Not yet. But close.

Part of what makes it so lovely and so sad is that the blame doesn’t really fall on either of them. On both of them, somewhat, but more on the fact that they’ve been apart too long, on different paths for too long, faced with different tasks and demands for too long. They’ve each had to become something so much more than themselves, and in doing so have had to give up much of who they were or might have once wanted to be, and whatever bond Rand al’Thor and Egwene al’Vere shared, it hasn’t been enough to hold the Dragon Reborn and the Amyrlin Seat together.

Yet at the same time, I think the friendship and love between them, strained as it is, will be of the utmost importance in the end. Because they need to be able to face Tarmon Gai’don as allies, this time. They need to be able to stand together, unlike Lews Therin Telamon and Latra Posae Decume. And if there were nothing binding them together at all, I don’t think that would be possible. They’re too far apart, too opposed, and there’s too much between them. As it is, I think it will be almost impossible, but that one thread of love and friendship between Rand and Egwene will give them something to hold on to, something to turn near-enmity into tenuous alliance. A small and strained thread, against everything that has come between them, but at least it’s something.

And then I can’t help but think back to TGH, where Egwene went to Almoth Plain because she was told Rand needed her help, and Rand went into Falme largely because he couldn’t forgive himself if he left Egwene there. They’re bound together, even if everything since then has pulled them gradually and naturally and inexorably apart, and I think they will reconcile and understand, in the end. They’ve both had such individually excellent character arcs, and the way they’ve crossed and collided, converged and diverged, opposed and reflected, is so well-developed, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing how it plays out in the end.

Yes, Lews Therin said. We need to stay away from all of them. They refused to help us, you know. Refused! Said my plan was too reckless. That left me with only the Hundred Companions, no women to form a circle. Traitors! This is their fault. But…but I’m the one who killed Ilyena. Why?

But this is not then. It’s a different Age, and Rand and Egwene may well be Lews Therin and Latra Posae reborn – guessing on Egwene there; I like it but I have no real evidence besides thinking it would fit nicely – but they’re different. It can be different, this time, and they are not bound by their past mistakes or choices.

“Tell me!” Rand yelled, throwing his cup down. “Burn you, Kinslayer! Speak to me!” The room fell silent.

So there’s that. And of course they have far less context than he does, so it looks even stranger and likely worse from the outside, and Rand’s afraid of what they see and think, and he’s afraid of his own mind and of madness, and desperate for answers because he doesn’t know what to do, only that he has to do something, and it’s all too much.

Light! He thought. I’m losing control. Half the time, I don’t know which voice is mine and which is his. This was supposed to get better when I cleansed saidin! I was supposed to be safe…

Ah, the beautiful ambiguity of that last sentence. Safe from the madness? Safe from Lews Therin’s fate? Safe in the sense that others would be safe from him, that he would be safe to be around, safe from the world? All of the above?

And he is losing control. There’s too much…pressure…built up on that barrier between him and Lews Therin, a barrier I’m convinced he’s largely put there himself and is trying to hold because he cannot accept fully who and what he is, because if he does it will break him. But the refusal is now breaking him anyway, and nothing he does is enough, and the world is balanced as precariously as his own mind and he’s trying to hold it all, trying to keep everything together when reality is tearing it apart, trying to do the impossible because there’s nothing else he can do, and still it’s not enough. And he knows it.

I can’t keep this up. My eyes see as if in a fog, my hand is burned away, and the old wounds in my side rip open if I do anything more strenuous than breathe. I’m dry, like an overused well. I need to finish my work here and get to Shayol Ghul.

Otherwise, there won’t be anything left of me for the Dark One to kill.

Again it’s stated rather more plainly and directly than previously, and this whole chapter has felt at time like Sanderson is…writing his way into Rand’s mindset, I suppose. But for the most part it works, because Rand is at this point of…very nearly coming undone. He’s been on a dark path for a long time now, and I’m certain a breaking point is coming soon, because there’s not much further he can go. He has so little left, and at this point it makes sense, in a way, that he would know that and be unable to shy away from it. He’s slipping and he knows it, knows he’s falling apart, knows there’s only so much longer he can hold on to everything before something shatters and it all collapses.

That wasn’t a thought to cause laughter; it was one to cause despair. But Rand did not weep, for tears could not come from steel.

For the moment, Lews Therin’s cries seemed enough for both of them.

That is lovely. Lovely and awful and more or less perfect.

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