Welcome back to Reading The Wheel of Time! Sorry to keep you all waiting during last week’s unexpected break, but at least we weren’t all as on tenterhooks as Mat is while waiting for his plan to unfold. I’m loving the serendipity of Egeanin and Domon becoming part of Mat’s plan, and I’m just as happy for them to get away from the Seanchan. Egeanin clearly has a moral compass that doesn’t completely align with the strict values she’s been taught as a Seanchan, and although the transition will no doubt be difficult, I think she will probably do quite well finding a new life for herself, and may continue be an important asset to our heroes.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I start waxing poetic about the Seanchan way of life, let’s actually get into the recap of chapters 28–30 of Winter’s Heart.
Mat learns that Suroth—at Tuon’s “suggestion”—is taking Tylin to survey all the parts of Altara that she now rules. Tylin mistakes Mat’s sudden apprehension as fear of flying on a to’raken. Mat is relieved when he is told he won’t be coming, as this means he has the ability to plan the escape while Tylin is gone.
He accompanies the entourage that Tylin, Suroth, and the other members of the Blood take down to the docks, watching as Blood and servants, sul’dam and damane, board the rowboats that are to take them across the water to where the raken and to’raken are kept. He makes sure to stay on the docks until Tylin can’t see him anymore, and then rides slowly back, observing the sul’dam and damane patrolling the docks and looking into the boats. He decides that there is no way to get the Aes Sedai out via boat—it will have to be with Valan Luca’s traveling show.
Back at the palace he encounters Noal, who immediately offers his services for whatever Mat is planning. Mat acts causal, and Noal observes that it’s reasonable that Mat doesn’t trust him yet.
“You have the look in your eye. I’ve seen great men laying plans, and villains dark as the Pit of Doom, too. There is a look a man gets, laying dangerous plans he doesn’t want known.”
Noal also tells him about a man found dead with almost no blood left in his body, and has deduced that it was the gholam.
Mat assigns Juilin the duty of stealing a damane dress, three sul’dam dresses, and an a’dam. Juilin is reluctant, but agrees because he wants to steal away the da’covale—one of Suroth’s—who he has fallen in love with.
With Mat in his old clothes and his men clearly making preparations, all the servants deduce that he is planning to leave while Tylin is away. They find it amusing, but also work to prevent him; he has to keep his men on guard to stop his clothes from disappearing again and to keep Pips from being taken from the stables. But he also encourages the rumors, letting himself be seen exercising on his horse every day, so that Tylin won’t be blamed for the disappearance of the damane.
He worries over Teslyn and over the fact that he is still running into Tuon fairly often, about Tylin coming back before he has a chance to escape, and about the gholam finding him. But worse is the struggle to come up with a viable plan of escape, as they can only get the damane out of the kennels at night and need a signed order from one of the blood for the damane to move. They also need women to play the sul’dam.
As the gholam attacks lead to calls for increased Seanchan patrols in the streets at night, Mat gets his first piece of good news when Juilin arrives in his rooms with a cloth sack containing two sul’dam dresses and an a’dam. He meets with Joline and Setalle Anan, but Joline adamantly refuses to put the a’dam on; Mat is even menaced by her two Warders as he tries to convince her that this is the only way.
He learns that Setalle means to come with them; her husband and all her family have already left on his fishing boats, and Setalle has already sold the inn. She has stayed only to help Joline, and refuses to live in a land that enslaves channelers. She will meet her family in Illian.
Setalle is able to browbeat Joline into accepting the necessity of wearing the a’dam, and that they might as well test it now. Mat is confused.
“Not every woman can be a sul’dam. You should know that by now. I have hopes that I can, but better we find out before the last hour.” Scowling at the stubbornly closed bracelet, she turned it in her hands. “Do you know how to open this thing? I cannot even find where it opens.”
With Setalle wearing the bracelet, the collared Joline is only able to take two steps before she falls to the ground in agony. With his escape plans dashed, Mat assures them he will find another way, but Setalle seems to guess that he doesn’t have any other plans.
On his way back to the Palace, however, he is stopped by Bayle Domon. After some prompting Mat is able to recall some hazy memories of the man, and Domon insists that they get a drink together—only to usher Mat into a room and present him to “Lady Egeanin Tamarath.”
Egeanin intends to buy a ship in the spring and escape, and she wants Mat, Thom, Juilin, and whoever else Mat can supply to crew it. As Domon urges her to to be honest with Mat, Mat realizes that the Seekers must be after her. He tells her she needs to leave as quickly as she can, and travel to somewhere the Seanchan don’t control. Egeanin reluctantly agrees.
She says she can pay Mat, but he responds that he doesn’t need gold—he needs three sul’dam who will keep their mouths shut. After a moment, Egeanin agrees to supply these for him.
Thom and Juilin somewhat reluctantly admit that they believe Domon and Egeanin can be trusted. Mat convinces them to tell him what happened in Tanchico, and Mat doesn’t understand why they should worry about rumors spreading about a male a’dam, until Thom points out what could happen if, say, enough people believed the rumors that Rand has sworn fealty to the White Tower. Juilin says it doesn’t matter because the a’dam is at the bottom of the sea.
The next morning, Mat drills Lopin on the plan to have Lopin and Nerim secure Mat’s things from the Wandering Woman and then to take them and Olver with the rest of the Redarms out of the city. If Mat doesn’t meet them at the rendezvous by a certain time, they are to keep moving until they can join Talmanes and the rest of the Band.
The alarm would go up with the morning inspection of the kennels, and if he was not out of the city before that, he expected to learn whether his luck ran to stopping a headsman’s axe. He had been told that he was fated to die and live again—a prophecy, or near enough one—but he was pretty sure that had already happened.
With some difficulty, Mat has talked Beslan down from staging a full uprising to setting fire to some of the Seanchan stores as a diversion. With every servant in the Palace aware that he is going to leave soon, Mat makes sure to be seen frowning at the weather, and resolves not to take his ashandarei from Tylin’s rooms until the last possible moment.
Juilin is going to take Thera, the da’covale woman he loves, from the Palace while Thom and one of the sul’dam are to take Joline from the Wandering Woman and meet Mat, with Egeanin, Domon, and the other two sul’dam, Teslyn and Edasina, at the city gate. It’s a good plan, but Mat knows that plans never go exactly as they should; he’s too worried even to eat.
When the time comes Mat goes to the stableyard, taking shelter from the rain under a doorway. Egeanin arrives, with Domon, a pair of sul’dam, and an entourage Mat can’t make out in the dark. Egeanin complains that Mat didn’t mention that Joline had two men with her, or that Mistress Anan was coming with them, but luckily Egeanin knows how to adapt. Mat is a little worried that she altered the plan, bringing everyone from the inn with her to the Palace.
Egeanin names the two sul’dam as Renna and Seta, and Mat wonders what hold Egeanin has on them.
“No point standing here,” Mat said. “Let’s get on with it.” He let her changes in the plan go without further comment. After all, lying on that bed in Tylin’s apartments, he had decided to risk a change or two himself.
One thing I love about Mat’s sections is that I feel like, of all Jordan’s characters, Mat has the most specific and developed narrative voice. Jordan’s narration can sometimes be a very tight third person and other times drift into a wider, more omniscient point of view, which often works but sometimes can feel forced or contrived in an obvious way. But Mat’s sections always feel very clear and the little hints and dramatic ironies that Jordan slips in for the readers never feel out of place, nor do the moments in which he withholds the character’s thoughts from us. As a writer myself, I’m always under the impression that Mat is one of the characters Jordan most enjoyed writing.
One has to wonder if any of the fortuitous circumstances that have brought Egeanin and Domon into Mat’s scheme have to do with his ta’veren sphere of influence. On the surface it seems as though his, Rand’s, and Perrin’s powers are very different, but if we set aside the fact that the scale and power of Rand’s influence is on a whole different level, the different expression of their ta’veren nature is mostly down to perception and focus.
So far, Perrin’s power seems the least obvious. We have mostly seen it express itself when he is making a speech and leading people, which is a much more subtle expression than people getting married or the sudden discovery of treasure buried near a random village. Rand and Mat also influence people this way, but it’s only with Rand that the influence is so pronounced that it’s easily identified by those who it affects, such as during the initial negotiations with the Sea Folk. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t working when Mat and Perrin are negotiating or recruiting; it just means that the results feel a bit more plausible. And as we know, ta’veren powers don’t make the impossible happen, even for Rand al’Thor.
The dice Mat loves to play make his effect on the pattern, on the likelihood of certain outcomes, clear and obvious in a way they wouldn’t be otherwise. He and Rand have both been saved from assassination by stumbling or “randomly” moving in a way that foiled a surprise attack, but while they both recognize that this was probably ta’veren chance versus regular blind chance, they can’t really know. If you throw dice twenty times and they come up the same every time, it’s pretty hard to deny something unusual is going on. Just like the story Juilin tells in chapter 29.
“Once, while Rand al’Thor was in Tear, I saw a tossed coin land on its edge five times in a row. We finally walked away and left it standing there on the table. I suppose anything can happen.”
It’s easy to see how tossed dice or thrown coins are affected by the ta’veren manipulation of chance. It’s clear and simple. It’s a bit harder to know that a sudden trip or casual movement that averts disaster is down to the same cause, but if you know you’re ta’veren, you can assume that your influence is probably at work. But how about the fortuitous arrival of Egeanin into the kitchen just as Mat was meeting with Setalle and Joline? That’s a much more complicated situation than dice.
Before Mat decided to go check on his chest under the floorboards, he was feeling pretty good about how everything was going and he left the secreting away of his money and clothes to Nerim and Lopin. Suddenly he began to worry about the loose coins being hidden beside the chest, about someone prying up the floorboard and easily finding his money. Only… once he arrived and looked at the setup he immediately felt silly for worrying.
Setalle would have sent for Mat if he hadn’t already been there when she arrived with Joline, but the timing would have been off, then, and Mat would not have been in the kitchen when Domon pushed his way in and Egeanin demanded a room. Meeting when they did gave Domon a chance to recognize Mat and consider his change in station, for the encounter with Bethamin, and for Domon to decide to recruit Mat’s assistance right when Mat needed theirs in turn.
Even if the meeting itself was not powered by ta’veren turning of chance, it may be that Domon was compelled by it in his decision to seek out Mat’s aid in Egeanin’s escape from Ebou Dar. It’s not an entirely implausible choice, especially given how few other options they have and the fact that they know he is a companion of Thom Merrilin. However, Bayle doesn’t know a lot about Mat, other than his connection to Thom, the fact that he’s clearly come up in the world, and the fact that he was able to survive being chased by Myrddraal and Trollocs. Which could mean anything, really. It certainly doesn’t make him automatically trustworthy, and being a one-time companion of Thom’s doesn’t mean they’re close friends or that Thom trusts him, either.
There’s no way to say for sure, of course, but so many coincidences and chance (re)meetings seems significant to me. As does the good luck of Egeanin being on the secret of the sul’dam and Bethamin accidentally revealing the truth about Renna and Seta just in time for it to be very useful to Mat. If they had just had Bethamin, it wouldn’t have been enough.
There’s a certain irony in Bethamin’s situation now. After being so careful to be a perfect sul’dam and draw only the right kind of attention to herself, she’s now being forced into treasonous action. And after attending carefully to the fact that Teslyn was pretending compliance in order to lull the sul’dam and arranging for the harsh treatment to break her—treatment that is already starting to have an effect, judging by Mat’s observations—she is now being blackmailed into playing sul’dam for Teslyn so that she can escape.
I kind of love it, to be honest. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the sul’dam who have discovered they are marath’damane, who are now facing the fear and terror they have inflicted upon others. No one deserves collaring, not even former sul’dam, but being used for their abilities to help free damane feels like exactly the right kind of poetic justice for all three of these women. If they were smart they could even leave with Mat and his group… but I doubt that will happen.
It’s been clear for some time that Setalle Anan has a connection to the White Tower, but she can’t be a former novice or Accepted who failed to make Aes Sedai because no one senses the ability to channel in her. She is a former Aes Sedai who was stilled or burned herself out.
I wouldn’t have guessed that the a’dam would cause a problem if held by a woman who couldn’t channel. We know that the Empress would occasionally put the bracelet on a man, and either nothing would happen or he and the damane would die in agony. If the man had the ability to learn to channel, the a’dam would attempt to establish a link, but this wouldn’t work because it was designed to work with saidar, not saidin. But if the man didn’t have the ability then nothing would happen; presumably, when the bracelet is worn by a non-channeler then the a’dam is basically just an ordinary piece of jewelry as far as they are concerned.
My guess here is that, since the bracelet can’t register Setalle as a channeler and create a link with her, the bracelet is behaving the same way as it would if she were the peg a sul’dam left it on, acting as though Joline was trying to move the bracelet by herself. I was surprised at first, but it kind of makes sense. The collaring of channelers needs to be as foolproof as possible, and the secret nature of the clasps is only one line of defense. Seta and Renna both knew how to unfasten the a’dam and yet even though they were each trying to remove the other’s a’dam, they seem to have been physically affected very similarly to how they would have been if they had been trying to remove their own. Again, this makes sense—damane work closely with their sul’dam, and even if the sul’dam are cautious, a damane could accidentally have enough opportunity to observe how the collars open. You would want to build in a failsafe so that a collared woman couldn’t free another, even if she did understand the latch. And as long as you’re thinking about two damane aiding each other, why not also provide against her receiving some other outside help? It took Mat an hour to figure out how the latch worked—someone who wanted to free a damane would stand a much better chance if they could first take the collared woman to somewhere hidden where they could examine the collar at length than if they had to figure it out before spiriting the damane out of her kennel. And when the a’dam was first designed there would have been a greater danger of such an act, when female channelers would likely have had friends and allies, than there is now, when Seanchan society shuns them.
It was really upsetting when Mat recognized Ryma Galfrey among the damane, and saw how passive and content she now is with her new life. And speaking of formerly powerful people who are now Seanchan slaves… I have to wonder if Thera might not be Amathera. We know that the Seanchan have conquered Tarabon, and while they are happy to keep the current power structure if the nobles and leaders can be made part of the Blood and folded into the Seanchan hierarchy and way of life, sworn to the Empress and obeying all those of the Blood who exist above them, I can’t imagine Amathera submitting to her new life as pragmatically as Tylin has. Not after having seen how she was with Elayne and Nynaeve.
Of course the name might be a coincidence, but the Seanchan have a habit of making diminutives out of the names of slaves who don’t obey. Furthermore, Egeanin was also involved in Amathera’s rescue. I don’t think Juilin met Amathera, but he was in Tanchico. It would be just like Jordan to bring Amathera back at this moment, and I feel pretty confident that my guess is correct.
And I like the idea of Amathera and Juilin together. She’s a noble who until recently had little idea of what the rest of her people lived like, and he’s a commoner who is disdainful of the nobility. But Elayne also observed that Amathera had a strong sense of justice, which Juilin also has.
It’s also interesting to see Mat trying to manage Beslan’s desire to lead a revolt against the Seanchan. Mat has an understanding of the Seanchan tactics that Beslan doesn’t, especially because he understands the common people. Even though his mother didn’t control very much territory, from Beslan’s perspective he has gone from being a free nobleman to a conquered person, whose freedom exists only at the whim of his conquerors and is contingent upon his behaving in a very specified way. It’s not the same as being actually enslaved, but there are similarities, and a misstep could very well see him being made da’covale. Tylin may very well share this opinion, despite being more willing to accept that she has no alternative.
But as has already been noticed by Mat and by others, for the common people not much changes under Seanchan rule. In time the Seanchan might expect them to conform to more of their rules and hierarchies, but while commoners are expected to behave appropriately towards the Blood and everyone is expected to take the oaths, those who don’t rebel against the Seanchan rule aren’t being sold into slavery or otherwise punished, and are (mostly) allowed to continue their lives uninterrupted. It would be difficult to encourage them to risk their lives, and risk being made into slaves, under such circumstances, as Mat is well aware.
And his concern for Tylin is notable too. He wants to make sure she isn’t implicated, either in Beslyn’s actions or Mat’s own, which is commendable really, especially given what she has put Mat through. Not to say she deserves what the Seachan would do to her, but it’s a lot of extra thought for Mat to have to take while he’s already juggling a lot of problems and trying to bring them all together into one solid escape plan.
And then there’s the mystery of Noal. Narratively, it is clear that he is going to be important, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up helping out with an unexpected complication and coming with them in their escape from Ebou Dar. In a lot of ways, Noal reminds me of Thom—he’s a storyteller, he seems to be very well-traveled, and he also is very canny, despite his somewhat befuddled attitude. He’s spot on about Mat of course, for all that Mat can’t see it, and he was quick-witted in deducing what was up with the gholam.
An aside: When the concept of the gholam was first introduced, I pointed out the problems and inherent (even if accidental) antisemitism in taking a creature from Jewish mythology that was a protector of a persecuted people and turning it into a monster created by the Dark to murder channelers. Stating that the creature drinks blood—that in addition to being a targeted weapon against Aes Sedai it is also a weird vampire that haunts the streets snapping up innocent victims and drinking their blood to live—is an unfortunate increase in that antisemitic flavor, and I think it’s a really poor decision on Jordan’s part. He could have leaned a little more into the vampiric nature of it, or maybe called it a ghoul instead, and that would have been just as effective of a creature while referencing something in the mythology of our world which is actually aligned to evil and darkness.
Everything we’ve seen of Noal so far makes me wonder if he isn’t also a gleeman, perhaps with some important connections to someone that will become relevant later, just as Thom’s connections to Morgase were. Perhaps it has something to do with Shara. Unlike Mat, I am inclined to believe that he really has been there, or at least knows something about the place. And I seem to remember that back in Lord of Chaos, Graendal showed off some slaves she had taken from a distant land. That could have been Shara, I suppose. I know there are others that are on the other side of the Aiel Waste but not enough about them to form a theory.
I might well be off here, but Noal’s claim of having traveled to Shara feels important. And we do know that Darkfriend agents are in Ebou Dar; perhaps Noal is attached to them in some way. He might not be an ally after all.
It’s hard to believe that we are getting so close to the end of Winter’s Heart, but there are only five more chapters left in the book! Next week we’re onto chapters 31 and 32, with a possibility for 33 depending on how far I get. Will Mat and his friends manage their escape? How are things going with Rand’s plans to cleanse saidin? Only time (and my hopefully decent time-management) will tell! See you next week!
