Welcome back to Reading The Wheel of Time! I’ve decided to do a slightly shorter one this week: We’ll only be covering chapter 15, which is all about enemies and Darkfriends, and then next week we’ll start into chapters 16 and 17, in which we will (finally!) get to find out what is going on with Egwene and the Salidar Aes Sedai and the siege on Tar Valon.
Chapter fifteen opens with Elenia riding alone through one of the camps outside Caemlyn. She has only four men and her maid with her, but despite her frustrations with the position Arymilla has trapped her in, she is determined to find a way out. She nods at some of the soldiers in an attempt to seed loyalty. Although she despises the commoners, she knows that their loyalty is necessary in order to gain and maintain power, whether as a High Seat or as queen. Arymilla doesn’t understand this.
Elenia thinks Arymilla isn’t smart enough to be queen, and is beyond frustrated that she has been forced to step lightly around Arymilla and worry about displeasing her.
It was grating to think that, only a few miles away, that young chit Elayne sat snug and warm in the comfort of the Royal Palace, attended by scores of well-trained servants and likely without two thoughts in her head beyond what to wear tonight at a supper prepared by the palace cooks. Rumor had the girl with child, possibly by some Guardsman. It might be so. Elayne had never possessed any more sense of decency than her mother. Dyelin was the brain there, a sharp mind and dangerous, notwithstanding her pathetic lack of ambition, perhaps advised by an Aes Sedai. There must be at least one real Aes Sedai among all those absurd rumors.
As she circles through the camp she encounters Naean. Elenia wants to give the other woman a wide berth, lest Arymilla suspect them of plotting, but Naean rides over to her anyway. Elenia orders her followers to keep back and remember that they haven’t seen anything. She is surprised when Naean brings up the idea of getting out of the trap Arymilla has caught them in; she believes that Elenia’s husband, Jarid, has a plan to get her free. Jarid has been kept away from Elenia by Arymilla, but Elenia does know that the man would do anything for her—including break his pledge to Arymilla if he believed Elenia wanted him to. In fact, one of Elenia’s worries is that the man will enact some plan he thinks Elenia would want but that would in fact cause Elenia more problems.
Still, Naean is convinced. She threatens to inform Arymilla if Naean is not included in those plans, but she is so frightened of Arymilla, and of the torture of one of her men, Master Lounalt, can inflict, that she promises to pledge her support to Elenia once they are free. Elenia accepts, provided Naean puts that oath in writing, under the light and by her hope of rebirth, in a document for Elenia to hold on to. Very reluctantly, Naean agrees.
Elenia is satisfied, especially because she managed to convince Naean that she wasn’t as afraid of Naean’s threat as Naean is of hers. But as she leaves Naean, she encounters Lord Nasin, the aging High Seat of House Caeren, the most powerful house in Andor, who is also “completely mad.” He believes that Elenia is his betrothed—and is relentless in his courtship, both in poetic expressions of love and unwanted physical attention. She does her best not to let the man within arms reach, futilely reminding him that she is married. Nasin thinks of Jarid as an oaf who is threatening Elenia with his attentions; Elenia has to think quickly to convince the man not to go after Jarid with a sword—because if the old man forces Jarid to kill him, it will upset Elenia’s plans.
Just then Arymilla arrives, accompanied by a retinue of followers that includes Naean and Sylvase, Nasin’s granddaughter and heir. Sylvase being under Arymilla’s thumb is the reason Nasin needs to stay alive. Arymilla believes that Sylvase is dull and witless, and has her own plans for the girl. Arymilla interrupts the confrontation between Elenia and Nasin, putting Nasin off by providing him with one of her maids to keep him company, instead.
Elenia shook her head in disgust. Pushing a pretty woman in front of Nasin to distract him was one thing—she did not even have to be that pretty; any woman the old fool could corner was in danger—but using your own maid was revolting.
Still, Elenia knows she has to appear humble and grateful in front of Arymilla, and Arymilla, light-hearted and confident, appears to believe the act. Elenia is shocked and briefly panicked when Arymilla tells her that she and Naean will have to share a bed for the night, because she fears that Arymilla suspects them of colluding, and that this is some kind of trap. But as they ride together, and Arymilla prattles on about random subjects, Elenia decides that she is a brainless fool and probably just thinks that Elenia and Naean are so far under her control that she no longer needs to worry about them. And Elenia knows that she has only one way out of the situation she’s in. The only question is whether Arymilla or Nasin should die first.
Daved Hanlon makes his way through the streets of Caemlyn in the cold darkness of night. He’d rather be in the Royal Palace in front of a fire, but he has been summoned by Shiaine. He is careful to keep an eye out for patrols of Guardsmen and keeps his knife ready in his right hand. He becomes aware of someone following him, hides around a corner, and stabs the man through the lungs before he can even cry out. A hasty examination of the body can’t tell Hanlon anything about who the man was or who sent him, but the man had his knife already drawn. He takes the man’s purse, so that the killing will look like a robbery, and continues on his way.
Hanlon is troubled by the question of who could have sent the man. He can’t imagine he has angered the windfinders or the kin in any way, but it could have been Birgitte, who Hanlon considers to be a silly bint and who might think Hanlon a threat to her position. It’s also possible that Shiaine herself set the trap, as she is the one who summoned Hanlon and would know that he’d be out in the streets tonight. He considers leaving the city, but that would be constantly watching his back; sooner or later he’d end up dead.
Falion opens the door for him. Hanlon leers at her until she informs him that they are alone; Shiaine is upstairs with a visitor and Murellin is outside in the stables, smoking. Falion and Hanlon have an arrangement: Hanlon pretends to be following his orders to sexually harass her when other people can witness, but when they are alone they exchange information. He doesn’t want an Aes Sedai to be angry at him; she might be finished with her punishment before he has a chance to kill her.
While he waits for Shiaine to be ready to see him, Hanlon exchanges information with Falion. She tells him of other visitors Shiaine has had recently: a man connected to House Sarand and another connected to House Marne. She describes them both in detail so that Hanlon could recognize them if he ever ran into them. Usually, Falion asks about the goings on in Caemlyn, about the Sea Folk and the Kin and the Aes Sedai—news Hanlon always sees as pointless gossip—but today she is interrupted by Murellin, who acts possessive over her and makes Hanlon suspicious. Then Shiaine calls for Falion to bring Hanlon up to her.
On the stairs, Falion informs Hanlon that Shiaine gave her to Murellin to make sure that Falion understands who is in charge. When Hanlon gets aggressive with her, she uses the One Power to pick him up and choke him. She asks if Hanlon can get her something to put in Murellin’s drink that will make him sleep—not poison, just something to make him sleep for a night.
In the front sitting room, Shiaine is lounging in an armchair with her dagger out, her visitor dead on the floor. She tells Falion to get Murellin to dispose of the body, then turns her attention to Hanlon. She asks if the rumors are true about him being the father of Elayne’s child.
“I don’t know who fathered the whelp,” he said wryly. “Why, my Lady? Do you think I’d go soft? The last chit who claimed I’d gotten a child on her, I stuffed her down a well to cool her head and made sure she stayed there.”
Shiaine startles him by knowing the woman’s name (Catrelle Mosenain) and the details of the murder, suggesting that Hanlon was a little soft because he killed her with a rock before throwing her in the well. Hanlon wonders how she could know the details, as he himself hadn’t even remembered the woman’s name.
Shiaine wants him to arrange for some of the sul’dam and damane to escape, or at least some of the sul’dam. She also wants him to shift guards away from some of the food warehouses so they can actually be burned down. The latter is impossible, but he might be able to manage the former.
Hanlon has a sense that Shiaine is toying with him, even laughing at him, as she asks how close he is to actually enjoying Elayne’s affections, and whether or not he would like to see Caemlyn looted. He answers that he’d like it well enough, as long as he had his men at his back and a clear path to the gates, and suggests that if he knew more of her plans he might be able to help her reach it faster.
“Of course.” She smiled a toothy smile while her eyes stayed as flat as brown stones. “But first, tell me why there is fresh blood on your gauntlet?”
He smiled back. “A footpad who got unlucky, my Lady.” Maybe she had sent the man and maybe not, but he added her throat to the list of those he intended to slit. And he might as well add Marillin Gemalphin, too. After all, a lone survivor was the only one who could tell the tale of what had happened.
I have a feeling that Elenia is going to turn out to have been very, very wrong about Sylvase. Is the woman slow-witted and vapid, or is she secretly very smart and playing her cards incredibly close to her chest? I certainly don’t trust Elenia as a judge of character, and if Sylvase is heir to Nasin, she might well be waiting until she has control over her house as High Seat; she wouldn’t want to give away any intelligence or ambition to the likes of Arymilla, who is keeping her as close as she is keeping Elenia or Naean.
If Nasin dies, it may be that Sylvase becomes a real player in this game. Elenia observes that Nasin is “High Seat of the most powerful single House in Andor,” so the support of that house would mean a lot to whichever claimant receives it. There are hints that Sylvase disapproves of her grandfather; she is one of the only people who doesn’t look away when Arymilla assigns her maid to look after Lord Nasin. It would be beautifully ironic if Elenia’s plans freed Sylvase from both her grandfather and Arymilla. Perhaps Sylvase would rather seek out an alliance with Elayne rather than stay with yet another person who wants to control her, and the power of her House, for their own designs.
I shall have to wait and see, but I will admit that I am always predisposed to liking a character whose name references Silvanus—not because of my own name, or because of Tolkien elves, or anything.
My favorite moment in the whole chapter is when Elenia thinks about how Elayne is probably snug and warm in the Royal Palace not having to worry about anything. Granted, it’s probably a lot more comfortable and warm in the rooms of the Palace than it is in the camps, even if your bath is inevitably going to be interrupted by Windfinder drama. But we the readers know better, since we’ve just come off of several chapters in which we’ve seen how busy and stressed Elayne is, how she continually has to remind herself that she can’t even spend time worrying about Rand because her own hands are so full with politics and strategy, with rooting out spies and finding enough men to protect the walls of Caemlyn, with Windfinders and Kin and Aes Sedai problems—not to mention she has to hide the identity of her unborn children and the fact that her use of Mellar as a decoy may very well backfire in the most spectacular way.
More on that last part in a moment, but first, I think it’s interesting that none of the women who most threaten Elayne’s claim to the throne seem to be that intelligent, at least politically speaking, though I guess Elenia does have some idea of what she’s doing, or at least should be doing. I’m kind of on the fence about her, really. My first thought was that she isn’t very smart if she thinks that Elayne doesn’t have her work cut out for her trying to care for Caemlyn, and that such a belief shows that Elenia doesn’t understand what it takes to rule. Then again, Elenia seems to believe that Dyelin is the brains behind Elayne’s claim to the throne, so perhaps the issue is not that she doesn’t understand how much work any claimant to the Lion Throne has to do, but that she thinks Elayne’s just swanning about while Dyelin, possibly advised by an Aes Sedai, does all the heavy lifting.
Elenia is clearly a terrible person, as well. In her mind she makes a metaphor that both High Seats and Queens sit at the top of a tower built of people, and although the people at the bottom are common bricks “of the basest clay,” if those bricks crumble, the Tower falls. Elayne wouldn’t agree with her assessment of those common bricks and their worth, but the general premise is one she would agree with. Elenia clearly despises the commoners of Andor, however, and I think she doesn’t realize how much it shows. She thinks she’s building support for herself by nodding to and noticing the soldiers and other people around her, but I’m not sure it’s having the effect she thinks it’s having.
Keeping her hood back far enough to show her features clearly in spite of the freezing wind, she nodded graciously to every unwashed lout who so much as looked in her direction, and ignored the surprised starts that some gave at her condescension.
She believes that people will remember the encounter later, and think of her as affable or even feel honored and pleased that she noticed them, but a surprised start isn’t exactly indicative of pleasure so much as it is one of alarm or confusion. As we saw back when she was sucking up to Rand and trying to put herself forward as a candidate for the Lion Throne, Elenia’s intentions are a lot easier to read than she thinks they are. I wouldn’t be that surprised if she turned out to be as transparent to everyone else as she was to Rand. I mean:
She nodded to a wide-eyed young man with a dark scarf wrapped around his head, and he recoiled as though she had glared. Fool peasant!
Oh yeah, this plan is definitely not going to work out the way she thinks it will.
Elenia, Naean, and Arymilla were all among those nobles who were enemies of Morgase, and who sided with Gaebril against her. All three opposed Morgase back when she was contending for the Lion Throne, too. We have no indication that any of them are Darkfriends (though one or more certainly could turn out to be) but even without a direct loyalty to the Dark, one has to wonder if that prolonged proximity to Rahvin had any effect on them. Even if he was saving his use of compulsion for Morgase, I’m sure there was a lot of manipulation going on, and there is a lot he could have whispered in their ears that might cause problems and chaos for Andor later. Rahvin’s first plan, of course, was to remain in control of Andor and its armies, but if Elayne is unable to reunite the country quickly, the chaos his actions have caused will serve the Dark just as well, I think.
I suppose Rahvin’s interference is also the reason that all of Elayne’s rivals are bad people, and not the smartest either. Driving away Morgase’s supporters was an action intended to weaken and isolate her, but it may also have destabilized some of the other important Houses, at least temporarily—not critically or anything, but some of those who Morgase abused and degraded while under Rahvin’s control may well have felt it better to attend to their own affairs for a while and not immediately get involved with larger political problems and the fight for the throne. Since they were burned by Morgase, who they had supported for a long time, supporting anyone might feel a bit like a bad bet just now. We saw how Gareth Bryne was thinking of it; some of those larger houses might feel much the same as he did.
Of course, just because they wouldn’t make good rulers doesn’t mean that Elenia, Naean, and Arymilla can’t be real threats to Elayne. The right supporters backing them, a lucky or clever move during the siege—there’s always the chance they’ll manage to sway some of Elayne’s mercenaries to betray her. Alternatively, some other as-yet-unforeseen event could put Caemlyn in the hands of one of them. They just don’t really feel like a threat, reading this chapter. It’s hard to imagine any of them outmaneuvering Elayne. It’s also clear that most of the support that Arymilla has is fragile, based on little more than strength in numbers and her ability to threaten people with torture and other abuse. The fragility of Elayne’s position is due to Rahvin’s actions, but she herself has proven so capable, so smart, and so willing to make the hard sacrifices that anyone who actually has a chance to spend time with her will, I think, come around to Dyelin’s perspective—especially since most of the reasonable and good High Seats seem to want to back her as queen anyway, so Elayne needs for them to be convinced to accept her guidance in following Elayne, instead of her rule. I do think most could be convinced if they had a chance to actually talk to Elayne and see what kind of person she is, maybe even hear an explanation from her own lips as to why things went the way they did with Morgase.
(I did find myself thinking about Morgase a lot during the last few chapters. We know how things are going for her as a prisoner of the Aiel. It’s also painful to see how none of what happened in Andor is actually her fault. She’s still being blamed for hurting the country, when she was actually extraordinarily strong in finally breaking free of Rahvin’s control—yet all she has received since is more pain and suffering.)
It would have been interesting if Elayne had a rival who could match her, someone who didn’t seem quite so self-centered and unintelligent. Someone who, although not the character the reader is rooting for, might make a good queen. I’ve often commented that one of the most frustrating moments is when the good guys are working against each other, but that is also the most dynamic situation. When it is for real, understandable reasons and not short-sighted or silly ones, it adds a real depth to the conflict. As it is, however, there’s an interesting comparison to be made between Elayne and Egwene, and the ways in which each woman’s position is similar to and different from the other’s. Elayne and Egwene are both facing women who are morally terrible for the positions they are in and whose selfishness makes them even worse as leaders, but Elayne is at least in possession of Caemlyn and was the expected heir before Rahvin came in and messed everything up. In Egwene’s case, her opponent is the one entrenched in the institution and more secure in position of the two. Meanwhile Egwene is the newcomer, whose very position is unusual and whose ability is untried.
Elayne, on the other hand, was raised by the Queen of Andor as the daughter-heir, and is facing what is not literally usurpation, but feels a bit like it—from Elayne and the reader’s point-of-view, at least. Elayne is the one in the stronger position as holder of the besieged city, while Egwene is attempting to besiege a powerful city that has many more resources than she does. As we will see next week, for someone who cares for those under her command and those in the city she is besieging, there is a heavy moral cost that isn’t easy to bear. I don’t think Elenia or Arymilla give two hoots about any deaths, either of soldiers or civilians, that happen in the course of giving them the crown. Well, to be fair, Elenia does care about a few people close to her, including loyal servants like Janni; we see this when she draws a distinction between throwing some woman to Nasin to distract him (acceptable) and using her own servants (revolting). It’s a pale kind of morality, but it is… something.
Despite Elayne’s intelligence and the fact that she has been well-raised and well-taught by her mother in preparation for this very struggle, not all of her decisions feel like the smartest. I know the rumors started first, and she just decided not to take advantage of them, but I still keep thinking about how she could have found someone else to stand in as the probable father of her children. Of course she doesn’t know that Mellar is really Hanlon, a Darkfriend, but it isn’t like he’s hiding any of that odious personality when he is playing Mellar. Then again, maybe I’m not being entirely fair. I know the truth about him, and I can’t stop dwelling on the fact that the entire point of making everyone believe that he is the babies’ real father is to protect the truth—that the kids are Rand’s—but the one person who is the greatest immediate threat to those kids, not to mention to Elayne herself, is Mellar/Hanlon himself.
It’s not clear if Shiaine knows that Elayne is connected to Rand or not, but I don’t think we have any direct evidence that she does. If Shiaine is only after Elayne because she has orders to further destabilize Andor, her interest is going to be very much increased if she finds out, or even suspects, the truth about Rand being the dad. That will put Elayne in a great deal of danger, as she well knows! Ironic that the subterfuge protects her from everyone except these two.
I can’t quite decide if I think Hanlon and Shiaine’s respective murders of unnamed characters are going to turn out to be important to the plot, or if they are just there to remind us of the kind of people they are. The man following Hanlon could easily have been sent by Birgitte or Elayne herself, I think; his general attitude and the incident with Lord Luan might be enough for them to want to check up on his doings. I could also see it being Shiaine or some other Darkfriend, but we don’t really have any information that would point to a specific reason someone might be having him followed. Of course, there’s always the possibility that Hanlon is being overly paranoid, and that this was just a thief trying to rob him for ordinary reasons.
In general, Hanlon reminds me a lot of Carridin/Bors. He’s not as high ranking as Carridin was, but he has a very similar outlook and approach to things. He seems to think of his cruel ways as being nothing more than practicality, and to see other people who don’t act similarly as being foolish or illogical. Even the mention of the girl he murdered reminded me of Carridin, with the way he doesn’t even remember her name anymore, but Shiaine suspects he intended just a little bit of mercy in the killing, since he killed or knocked her out with the rock before dumping her in the well.
Of course, Shiaine and Carridin were briefly connected: She rose in status as he fell, then she was given the task of having him killed. It’s common enough for Darkfriends to change ranks and/or get killed off when they fail in the jobs they are given by their superiors. It will be interesting to see how things go for Hanlon and for Shiaine, though really, they’re both rather too odious for “interesting” to be the right word.
I was intrigued by Hanlon’s arrangement with Falion. I don’t know if it was Jordan’s intention, but he even rose in my estimation for a moment. Yes, he and Falion are both Darkfriends and bad people, but there’s just something enjoyable when Darkfriends are secretly plotting together against other Darkfriends. His decision not to molest her if he didn’t have to seemed… well, not good, but some kind of less than purely evil. Of course, Hanlon isn’t avoiding hurting Falion because he has a conscience about it—the narration even mentions that he has no problem with a lack of consent from women—but only because he suspects that Falion will be done with her punishment eventually. He doesn’t want an Aes Sedai angry with him, in case he doesn’t get a chance to kill her right away.
I believe even Shiaine shares this perspective: When she punished Falion earlier at Moridin’s direction, she mentioned that it was only because she herself would be punished for not doing so. Of course there’s also the fact that Hanlon and Falion aren’t as clever as they think they are—and now Shiaine has gotten Murellin involved.
There is a lot of sexual assault in this chapter, mostly against “bad guys” like Falion and Elenia—though also against that one maid of Arymilla’s and of several victims of Hanlon’s that are alluded to at various points. I’m not sure if it’s just there to remind us that these are the villains, or to add to the general sense of darkness (the chapter is called “Gathering Darkness” after all), or just for the old standby reason of “it’s realistic”—but I wish that Jordan had left it out. It doesn’t feel necessary to the story, and it could almost be read as intended to be slightly titillating, especially with Elenia and Naean. It’s a bit like how the only confirmed lesbians are all evil, and mostly Darkfriends. I wouldn’t call it egregious, but it’s there, and it stands out to me a lot from time to time.
Kind of like how the word “chit” suddenly keeps showing up. Technically the word only means a girl who seems too self-confident or impudent, but it takes on a slightly more derogatory feeling when it’s used by Hanlon, as though it were a slur. He uses the word in the same way he uses terms like “strumpet” or “silly bint” about Birgitte.
Next week, in chapters 16 and 17, we move away from Caemlyn and towards Tar Valon, where Egwene has her own siege to manage and her own politics to muddle through. See you then!
