This week in Reading The Wheel of Time, we’re mostly catching up with the baddies. Lots of drama with Sevanna and Galina, then Graendal gets some visitors, and finally we head back to Cairhien for a catch up with Cadsuane, who is not a baddie after all, but actually a very important piece of Rand’s future, as Min’s vision predicted. It’s chapters 11 and 12 of The Path of Daggers!
Hidden away in a stable, Sevanna and some of her Wise Ones have accidentally killed a Seanchan man they were interrogating. Most of the Wise Ones don’t believe the things their prisoner said about Artur Hawkwing, or that hundreds of thousands more Seanchan are on their way from across the sea.
Sevanna reminds the Wise Ones how rich and soft these lands are, and promises that they will find the rest of the septs and take this land for their own. But the Wise Ones remain unmoved, so Sevanna makes a show of not caring, and goes outside to instruct the Maidens to bury the prisoner’s body. The Wise Ones join her walking through the grounds of the manor they’ve taken over. One of the Brotherless comes over and asks them for their judgment on a dispute between the Mera’din and the Jumai. No one tries to hide their disdain for the Brotherless, but Sevanna promises that these six Wise Women will give him his judgment after hearing both sides. She says that she can’t be involved since she speaks as clan chief, but carefully makes sure that the man knows that she supports the Mera’din. With the Wise Ones preoccupied, Sevanna has a chance to sneak off and see Galina.
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The captive Aes Sedai is currently suspended in a sack over a fire, under the watchful eyes of two Maidens. Galina promises herself that she will escape, that she will make all of these Aiel pay with oceans of blood. Sevanna arrives, and she and the Maidens discuss Galina’s screaming and crying with disdain, then bring her down and dump her out onto the ground. Sevanna tells Galina that, if she swears to obey Sevanna, she can stop being da’tsang, and Galina is quick to make the promise. Of course, she only intends to obey until she gets her chance to escape, but then Sevanna tells her that she will be swearing on something she tosses at Galina’s feet. For a moment Galina thinks it is the Oath Rod from the White Tower, then realizes that it has different numbers on it. She hopes that perhaps this could be something other than another oath rod, but remains frozen on the spot.
They are interrupted by the arrival of a group of Wise Ones, led by Therava, who asks Sevanna when she planned to tell the rest of them about this oath. Therava sends the Maidens away, then tells Sevanna that the Mera’din received the justice they deserved despite her attempt to sway them. Sevanna sneers at that, making Galina wonder how Sevanna finds the nerve to face, never mind talk back to, women who can channel. She thinks that even being bound to obey Sevanna is better than being given back to Therava.
Therava and Sevanna bargain, and finally agree that Galina will swear to obey all the Wise Ones, but Sevanna and Therava first of all. Galina does not want to swear to obey Therava, but she also does not want to be given back to Therava to be broken. She swears and feels the oath settle over her, binding her just as the Oath Rod in the Tower does, and is filled with despair.
Therava tests the power of the rod by asking Galina if she has planned any violence against the Wise Ones, commanding her to answer truthfully and to beg to be punished if she has. Galina does, and Therava is satisfied that the oath works. Galina is instructed to behave meekly as a gai’shain and ordered not to touch saidar unless commanded too. Therava keeps the Oath Rod as well, despite Sevanna’s demands to have it back.
“We decided,” Therava said, “that just as a clan chief must have a Wise One to advise him, so must you have a Wise One’s advice. I will advise you.”
Again, Galina is astonished at Sevanna’s open hostility towards Therava as she asks what advice Therava offers. Therava advises moving at once, away from the Seanchan and north into the Mountains of Mist to establish a Hold. Sevanna counters that they will move, but east instead, and Therava reluctantly agrees. She warns Sevanna that clan chiefs have lived to regret rejecting a Wise One’s advice; Sevanna counters that she has made assurances that, if she is left for the vultures, so will they.
Everyone is distracted by a sudden change in the weather. Dark clouds billow, and flurries of snow begin to fall. Therava demands Galina tell them what it is, and she answers that it is snow, which amuses Therava. Sevanna tries to take Galina with her, but Therava wins out on this as well, and Galina can feel her hopes evaporating.
In her palace, Graendal writes a letter and gives it to a courier, someone she has used compulsion on but who isn’t quite handsome enough to become one of her pets. The letter’s contents and method of delivery are designed to create more chaos, as per the Great Lord’s instructions, and also to further Graendal’s own ends.
Moghedien and a short young woman with silvery hair emerge through a gateway. Graendal holds saidar through a ring angreal she found in Illian after Sammael died. Moghedien introduces her companion, Cyndane, and says that they are working together. Cyndane asks if Graendal knows that Sammael is dead. Graendal notes that this young woman is stronger in the power even than she is, and instinctively hedges. Graendal tries to focus on Moghedien, but Cyndane corrects her.
“I lead between us. Moghedien is in a bad odor with Moridin for her recent mistakes.”
When Cyndane informs her that this Moridin person is Nae’blis, and that the Great Lord has decided that it is time for Graendal to serve the Nae’blis too, Graendal doesn’t believe her. She tells them to take their games elsewhere, maybe to Demandred or Semirhage. Suddenly Moghedien channels, plunging the room into darkness, and Graendal reacts at once, creating a ball of light to illuminate her attackers and covering them in a very strong web of compulsion. She informs Moghedien that she will pay for her trickery by serving Graendal now. She is shocked when Moghedien bursts into tears, begging her to serve the Nae’blis.
Suddenly the True Source vanishes from Graendal’s awareness. Her light is replaced by a ball of some kind of dark light, and Graendal can see a very tall Myrddraal. She has never heard of a Myrddraal that could interact with the One Power, and she’s shocked to see that Moghedien and Cyndane have fallen to their knees before it with their heads to the floor. The Myrddraal tells her that it is called Shaidar Haran, and it carelessly snaps the neck of the two servants in the room as it explains.
“When I speak, you may consider that you hear the voice of the Great Lord of the Dark. […] I am his hand in this world, Graendal. When you stand before me, you stand before him.”
After a moment’s rapid thought, Graendal kneels and asks what he would have her do. The Myrddraal is amused by her composure, telling her that she is braver than most but not to let bravery overcome her fear too far. Graendal listens to its commands, and considers her own plans for the future.
Cadsuane takes a coach to the Sun Palace, pleased that she’d been able to locate her woolen cloak after the weather suddenly started to cool. Kumira and Daigian are with her. Inside the Palace they are met by servants led by Corgaide, the Holder of the Keys, as well as three Aes Sedai.
Bera asks Cadsuane why she keeps coming back. The Aes Sedai in Rand’s service can’t help her if she won’t tell them what she wants. Merana adds that, sworn as they are, they will oppose Cadsuane if they have to. Cadsuane suggests that Kumira and Daigian (secretly tasked to listen and report back) would enjoy a visit, and asks Corgaide to show her to a palace where she can work on her embroidery undisturbed. Once there, she sets up her silver thread box so she can sit with her back to the door and watch it in the mirrored surface.
Alanna is annoyed at being constantly questioned by Cadsuane, but Cadsuane reminds her that she knows of Alanna’s crime and will core her like a cabbage if she wants to. Alanna is briefly defiant, then gives up, assuring Cadsuane that she has told her everything she can about Rand. Sorilea arrives to collect Alanna, sending her running to wherever Sorilea expects her to be. Kiruna brings tea, and is also summarily sent to “her lessons.” When she is gone, Cadsuane asks if Sorilea really thinks that Kiruna can learn the Aiel method of channeling. Once a weave is learned one way, it is very difficult to learn it another way; this is one of the reasons some sisters are against wilders in the Tower.
Sorilea shrugged. “Perhaps. Learning a second way is hard enough without all the hand-waving you Aes Sedai do. The main thing Kiruna Nachiman must learn is that she owns her pride; it does not own her. She will be a very strong woman once she learns that.”
Sorilea takes a seat across from Cadsuane without asking. She tells Cadsuane that it is difficult to train the Aes Sedai, who give an oath and then immediately try to find a way around it. She also asks how they can punish Alanna when it will also hurt the Car’a’carn. Cadsuane covers her surprise, then explains that Rand would die if they killed Alanna, but that anything else he is not going to feel himself, only be aware of it—and vaguely so at this distance.
Sorilea tells Cadsuane that Rand suspects anything that is offered freely to him. If Sorilea wanted him to accept something, she would pretend she didn’t want Rand to have it. And if she wanted to stay close to him, she would pretend not to care if she ever saw him again. Cadsuane is certain that Sorilea is feeling her out, hoping for some kind of agreement. She decides to take a risk, and asks Sorilea whether it important for a man to be hard, or strong. Sorilea answers that strong endures, but hard shatters, and Cadsuane commits to her risk.
“The boy confuses them,” she said. “He needs to be strong, and makes himself harder. Too hard, already, and he will not stop until he is stopped. He has forgotten how to laugh except in bitterness; there are no tears left in him. Unless he finds laughter and tears again, the world faces disaster. He must learn that even the Dragon Reborn is flesh. If he goes to Tarmon Gai’don as he is, even his victory may be as dark as his defeat.”
Sorilea answers that Rand treats the Aiel like disposable weapons, rather than as his people, and suggests that her goals and Cadsuane’s might not be very far apart. When she seems uncertain, Sorilea opens herself to saidar and demonstrates the weave for Traveling, explaining that she herself doesn’t have the strength to make the weaves work, but perhaps Cadsuane will find them useful. It is a very great gift, and Cadsuane realizes that she is now in Sorilea’s debt. Sorilea offers Cadsuane water oath, binding the two together in their goal to teach Rand al’Thor laughter and tears. Cadsuane accepts, but considers what will happen if their goals do not end up being compatible after all. Of the two, she knows which one is vital to achieve.
Rand has been trying to make himself “hard” at least since The Shadow Rising. Some of this is Lan’s fault—remember when he told Rand that darkness, pain, and death radiate from Rand, just as they do from Lan, and advised Rand to leave any woman he falls in love with? Granted, he said that just after Moiraine’s death, but the statement was far from out of character for him. He is a strong man in many ways, but also a hard man, forged by not only his own losses but also by the grief of those who raised him. It was clear in New Spring that Lan needed the balance that his Bond with Moiraine brought to his life—otherwise he was just going to waste it riding into the Blight until he got himself killed. And Moiraine knew that, even besides what the severing of a Bond does to a Warder, his hardness would get Lan killed again without someone new to balance him. Myrelle as a stop-gap wasn’t exactly a good idea, as it turns out, but Moiraine knew where Lan was really supposed to be.
Interestingly, Nynaeve is also a person who confuses hardness with strength. Her constant need to be treated as an authority is a cover for her fear and anxiety, and she doesn’t realize that it is her insistence on appearing to be right that makes her look foolish, not the fact that she doesn’t always know everything. She’s smart enough to see the difference sometimes, but not when she’s feeling scared or vulnerable. I think she and Lan will balance each other well, though, just as Min brings a certain amount of balance to Rand. Not enough, but I imagine that’s the main reason he needs to have three girlfriends.
And first, he’ll have to learn there is a difference between hardness and strength, as Cadsuane has pointed out. I’ve mentioned once or twice in the read that the repetition of “becoming hard” and “being hard” was really grating on my nerves, and I do think Jordan beat the concept to death a little bit by the end of A Crown of Swords. But this focus reads a little differently when you see what Jordan has been building to, and the long journey to this moment makes it even more poignant.
Funnily enough, I was actually planning a separate essay about the difference between being hard and being strong, but Cadsuane has beaten me to the punch here. She’s such an interesting character; I think I mentioned before that she makes me think of what Siuan might have become if she’d been able to leave the Tower and go adventuring like she wanted, instead of becoming tied to the search for the Dragon (newly) Reborn. I’m still not sure about Cadsuane’s approach to talking to Rand—I don’t see how belittling and insulting him is going to teach him the importance of being a human—but perhaps she’s rethinking it as well.
I love the idea of Cadsuane and Sorilea teaming up. It makes sense that they would see eye to eye, or close to it. They are both tough, experienced older women who have been around for while, have had time to learn both the importance of caution and protectiveness, and also the truth that life cannot be lived alone, that we need to be able to care for and rely upon other people. Interdependence is not a weakness—it’s a strength.
But I can’t be too hard on Rand, really, or on Lan. It’s very common for humans to shut off from difficult emotions, especially ones that are newly huge or unexpectedly painful. It’s not like Rand has a therapist, someone to teach him how to engage with the extraordinary amounts of pain, loss, and responsibility that were heaped on his shoulders basically overnight. Not to mention the trauma of his kidnapping and treatment by Galina and the others. Cadsuane is right that Elaida’s envoy made the job of teaching Rand to be a human again that much harder, and I’m not surprised that she doesn’t much care about what happens to them as prisoners of the Aiel.
The Aiel are a people who very much understand the difference between being strong and being hard. Not all their customs reflect this, but most do. For example, they care more than wetlanders about not expressing emotions such as pain or fear outwardly, but even sticklers like Aviendha believe that it is okay to show weakness in front of your close friends and family—it is not shameful in that instance, because you rely on that person for emotional intimacy and support. Wise Ones like Sorilea understand this even better than Aviendha, who is often too hard on herself, too prideful even by Aiel standards.
Even the Shaido Wise Ones understand this. In the beginning of Chapter 11, Someryn remarks the Seanchan man they were torturing would have lived if he hadn’t fought the pain so hard. The Aiel believe in accepting physical pain, treating it as something that can be made part of oneself, and so endured. They expect a certain outward stoicism, certainly, but no one is expected to pretend they don’t feel the pain of a punishment—the pain is actually the point, after all.
Sevanna has a rather twisted interpretation of this, as she does of many Aiel customs, even by Shaido standards. She thinks it’s shameful that some of the Jumai are openly afraid now that they’ve found themselves in such unfamiliar and dangerous circumstances, and yet she is perfectly happy to behave in some very shameful ways herself. She’ll sneak around and murder, she’ll manipulate and look down upon Wise ones, and she’ll abandon any customs she pleases, while despising others for not living up to the customs she decides are worth keeping. I feel really bad for all the ordinary people who Sevanna has most probably led to their destruction. I even feel a little bad for the Shaido Wise Ones, though really, they could have chosen not to follow Sevanna’s murderous schemes quite so far. I suppose they feel unmoored from their traditions and history as well; they might have rejected Rand as a false Car’a’carn, but his existence has uprooted them as firmly as it has the rest of the Aiel, and they are not likely to survive it. Perhaps this is the mistake the Shaido made: All the women who ever went to Rhuidean knew that one day the car’a’carn would come and that his coming would herald the destruction of the Aiel, but where the rest of the clans chose to face this painful truth, to accept the pain and do their best to make the brightest future they can under the weight of this prophecy, the Shaido Wise Ones turned their back on the truth. Perhaps they found it too painful to handle.
The Shaido are a hard people, but perhaps they are not as strong as the other clans. Since they were unable to accept the pain of Rand’s coming, perhaps they will die, just like the man they were torturing.
In many ways, the Aes Sedai handle pain and fear in a very similar way to the Aiel. A sister is expected to maintain an air of serenity and omnipotence around outsiders, but is allowed, and even encouraged, to express her emotions in front of other sisters (as long as certain levels of decorum are maintained, anyway). When Alanna breaks down in front of Verin shortly after bonding Rand, Verin reflects on how part of the problem is that Alanna hasn’t had enough time to cry and deal with her emotions after losing Owein—Verin even wonders if this problem affected Alanna’s judgment and led to her impulsive decision to bond Rand in the first place. At least some Aes Sedai, we can see, are aware that expressing and dealing with emotion is necessary and healthy.
It’s interesting to note that Cadsuane is also aware of the flaws in the Aes Sedai hierarchy. We see that she is intentionally exploiting it by using Kumira and Daigian, two women who stand lower in the power, to learn more about the Aes Sedai sworn to Rand.
So Daigian would pour the tea and sit quietly except when addressed—and apply her excellent mind to everything she heard. Kumira would let everyone except Daigian speak before her—and sort and file away every word, every gesture and grimace.
Of course, Cadsuane herself stands quite high since she is so strong in the One Power, and also an elder Aes Sedai, so I don’t necessarily think she dislikes the structure. But she does recognize the strengths of other women, which also helps her here when connecting with Sorilea.
And then, finally, there are the darkfriends from this section. There isn’t much to say about Galina, really, but I do think that your average darkfriend is very bad at dealing with their emotions or their pain. From what we’ve seen, many people run to the Dark One in search of power and prestige because they feel like they are better than others but can’t actually achieve as much as they feel they’re owed. And although I don’t much enjoy torture scenes, or believe in eye-for-an-eye justice, I do have to admit that there is something to the fact that Galina can deal out torture and mistreatment but can’t take it. Therava is to her pretty much what Galina intended to be to Rand, and I have a feeling that Galina’s fate is sealed here. Unless something wild happens, she’s going to basically be a meek and obedient servant to the Shaido for the foreseeable future.
Graendal is maybe my least favorite of the Forsaken, she manages to be gross with all her mind-destroying compulsion and weird sex stuff, and yet she’s also pretty boring. I loved how Cyndane (Her name means “last chance?” Yeah, that’s definitely Lanfear.) called her out for removing anything interesting about her “pretties.” Especially since Lanfear’s whole deal was that she was like, the hottest woman to ever live or whatever. Even she saw that the physical beauty of Graendal’s captives wasn’t really worth anything once their minds were destroyed by the compulsion.
And yet, as boring as I find Graendal, her part in these chapters does fit the theme. She is wary and self-protective, but she also shows herself to be adaptable and capable of handling her fear rationally. Most darkfriends can’t handle their fear or their desires rationally, and that fact has already contributed to the demise of several of them. It will be interesting to see if anyone can do better, although I’m sure it won’t really matter in the long run.
As I finish the chapter, I’m left thinking about what Sorilea said of Kiruna, that she will be a very strong woman if she can learn that she controls her pride, rather than her pride controlling her. Pride is just another emotion, after all, and sometimes just as painful as fear or loss, in its own way. Sorilea seems to be saying here that Kiruna’s emotions, perhaps even her actions, are affected by her pride: She’s unable to experience the emotion without giving in to its demands. But the Wise Ones hope to teach her that she doesn’t always have to let her pride dictate her choices. (Sounds a bit like Nynaeve, doesn’t it?)
And you know, I wonder if the attitude of the “apprenticed” Aes Sedai would change if they understood why the Wise Ones conduct their affairs the way they do. We see that Kiruna is pleased by the praise she received from Sorilea, and surprised at her pleasure. I think she’d be even more surprised to hear what Sorilea told Cadsuane—I think all the Aes Sedai sworn to Rand would be surprised to learn that the Wise Ones intend them any good, or feel any kind of care or compassion for them. (Perrin certainly would.) But those who are able to make it through this ordeal, perhaps even be named Wise Ones themselves, will have a whole different experience of training and strength to draw on that the rest of their sisters do not. It will be very very interesting to see how they change, and what changes may come to Egwene’s Aes Sedai as a result.
Sylas K Barrett is fascinated by human emotions, and by the complicated ways we engage with them–and the ways we sometimes don’t. The Wheel of Time is a text that asks a lot of philosophical questions around that topic as well, and it’s one of the many reasons for the enjoyability of this read.
