Recapping, am I right? This week’s rather lengthy installment of Reading The Wheel of Time covers Chapter 30-32, which includes Aviendha choosing not to run anymore, Rand doing a lot of off-the-cuff channeling, sex, the Seanchan, and yet another reminder that Rand needs to be “hard” when it comes to being a leader, both with his allies and his enemies.
Oh, and we also have perhaps the greatest romance trope of all time, the old “we have to share body heat or we’ll die.” I mean, the fanfic basically writes itself, doesn’t it? It’s kind of fun to see that in some ways, R.J. was just like the rest of us.
Chapter 30 opens in Eianrod, where Rand is stealing a moment alone, sitting on a bridge and watching the river below. The river is low, but he finds watching the water incredibly soothing after being in the Waste for so long. He’s also hiding from Moiraine, who has been trying to steal every moment she can with him.
She had even taken to bringing his meals to him and talking while he ate, as if she meant to cram everything she knew into his head before they reached the city of Cairhien. He could not face her begging to remain—actually begging!—as she had the previous night. For a woman like Moiraine, that behavior was so unnatural that he had wanted to agree simply to stop it. Which was very likely why she had done it. Much better an hour listening to the quiet liquid ripplings of the river. With luck, she would have given up on him for tonight.
Rand considers the low river and the dry, dusty town and wonders if he could make it rain here as he did in Rhuidean, as well as if he would be able to control it enough this time not to make a terrible storm. Asmodean has no interest in the weather and so hasn’t been able to teach him anything about it, and Rand considers how the Forsaken had once seemed omnipotent and all-powerful to him, but his time with Asmodean has shown him that at least some of them have weaknesses and areas of ignorance; in fact, it might be that in some areas he knows more than some of them, if only he could figure out which ones. He shivers as he realizes that he knows that Semirhage is also bad at weather. That isn’t something Asmodean told him.
Buy the Book
The Witness for the Dead
Sulin, who is in command of his body guard for the night, comes to join him, and mentions that they were all gambling when suddenly everyone was throwing nothing but sixes. Rand apologizes without thinking, but of course the Aiel don’t know that his ta’veren powers can affect things around him, often in odd and random ways. He thinks about how even the Aiel would never stay near him if they did. There have been other incidents too, like when three Stone Dogs were suddenly dropped into a viper pit and yet none were bitten, or the saddlemaker Tal Nethin tripping on a stone and somehow breaking his neck. On the other hand, however, Bael and Jheran have resolved the blood feud between the Shaarad and Goshien, although neither man seems to understand exactly how they ended up deciding to make the pledges and water oaths together.
He had wondered if those random effects would ever work in his favor; maybe this was as close as it came. What else had happened today that might be laid at his feet, he did not know; he never asked, and would as soon not hear. The Baels and Jherans could only partly make up for the Tal Nethins.
He asks where Adelin and Enaila are, having not seen them in days, and Sulin informs him that they will come back when “they learn to stop playing with dolls.” Rand has no idea what that means, but Sulin seems pleased when he instructs her to tell them that they are grown women and should act like it. They are discussing the fact that Rand needs to eat when they are suddenly interrupted by a group of Aiel escorting a party of about twenty horsemen, mostly Tairen but also a few Cairhienin. When the two Tairen officers see Rand they exchange startled looks and scramble down to kneel before him, asking incredulously if Rand has also been taken prisoner by the Aiel, that they were supposed to be taken to some Dawn fellow, the Car’a’carn.
“I am He Who Comes With the Dawn,” Rand told them quietly. “And the Car’a’carn.” He had them placed now: young lords who had spent their time drinking, gambling and chasing women when he was in the Stone. Estean’s eyes nearly popped out of his face; Edorion looked as surprised for a moment, then nodded slowly, as if he suddenly saw how it made sense.
Rand has them present their Cairhienin companions, and Edorion calls the two officers, Meresin and Daricain over, and in his head Rand likens it to a man calling his dogs. Rand explains that he did not send the Aiel to attack Cairhien, and that they are his enemies. He also has to get through instructing Meresin and Daricain to rise after the kneel to him; Rand had almost forgotten about all the kneeling and bowing after his time spent among the Aiel. He’s surprised to learn that they are both lords as well as soldiers.
They discuss how long Cairhien can hold out against the Shaido, the Cairhienin lords hesitantly addressing him as “my lord Dragon” and saying that it is doomed unless help comes soon. Estean explains that this is why they came out from the city, in order to find help.
He shivered despite the sweat on his brow, and his voice turned distant and hollow. “There were more of us when we started. I saw Baran go down, screaming with a spear through his guts. He’ll never turn a card at chop again. I could use a mug of strong brandy.”
Edorion cautiously broaches the concern that Rand’s party of Aiel won’t be able to reach Cairhien in time, while Estean continues to go on about the Couladin’s treatment of prisoners, the way the city was almost burned down, and how he really wants a glass of brandy.
“How long?” Rand asked Rhuarc.
“Seven days” was the reply. Mangin nodded, and Estean laughed.
Rand explains that the question isn’t how fast the Aiel can travel, but how fast Estean’s party can. He wants to send word to Meilan and Cairhien that help is coming, but it needs to be someone who won’t tell the Shaido anything if he is caught.
Meresin and Daricain were on their knees together, each seizing one of Rand’s hands to kiss. He let them, with as much patience as he could find; one bit of Moiraine’s advice that had the ring of common sense was not to offend people’s customs, however strange or even repulsive, unless you absolutely had to, and even then think twice.
The men thank him profusely, saying that they will take the news and pledging themselves as Rand’s men. Edorion offers to make a bet with Rand of a thousand gold crowns, on whether they can actually make it to the city in seven days. Rand, baffled, starts to tell them that he doesn’t have that kind of money when Sulin breaks in and informs Edorion that Rand does have the money, and will meet the wager.
Edorion laughed. “Done, Aiel. And worth every copper if I lose. Come to think, I’ll not live to collect if I win. Come, Meresin, Daricain.” It sounded as if he were summoning dogs to heel. “We ride.”
The men depart, and Rand demands to know what Sulin is talking about, since he’s definitely never seen a thousand gold crowns in his life. The Maidens, Rhuarc, and Mangin all give him perplexed looks and Sulin explains that, since he is their battle leader and their chief, one tenth of every fifth the Aiel take belongs to him—the fifth they took at the Stone as well as that in Cairhien, and since Tear submitted to him as their chief, he gets a tenth there as well.
Rand has called the Aiel’s fifth from Cairhien a tax, though the word confuses them, and he reflects now that although it isn’t really a tax, his tenth could be used the same way taxes are. If only he knew what taxes were used for. He finds himself wishing Elayne were there, but as it is he will have to ask Moiraine. He wishes he could get Elayne to explain the two letters. He also finds himself thinking of Min, who had laughed at him but never made him feel like he was speaking another language. But of course, if she saw him now she would run away from the Dragon Reborn.
Rhuarc suggests sending their own scouts as well, and Rand suggests the Thunder Walkers, even though he can feel the Maidens’ eyes on him. He knows some of the scouts will be killed, so he ignores them. Mangin and Rhuarc take Estean away to question him, after Rand insists that they only ask. Sulin, her voice flat, tells him that he tends his people well, but Rand refuses to rise to the bait, only answering “I try” and that he is going to go get something to eat and then to sleep.
He heads through the burned streets, remembering the way Lan had tracked the movement of battles between contendants for the Sun Throne, and noting how the last to hold the town were clearly bandits. They come to the merchant’s house he has claimed as his, declaring it the “Roof of the Winespring brothers” and that no one could enter unless they have drunk from the Winespring in Emond’s Field. He hadn’t been sure it would work, but the Maidens have respected the boundary and not entered.
Inside the place is empty aside from some gai’shain who have spread their blankets in the entry hall; keeping them out is as impossible as keeping out Moiraine. He is more interested in his bed than the gai’shain, looking forward to the real feather mattress they have found for him, but when he pushes open the door to his room he finds Aviendha inside, naked in front of the washstand with a bar of soap. She appears as flummoxed as he, stammering that she can’t make a sweat tent in the town and thought she might try his way, that she thought he would take longer at the bridge, and finally that she did not arrange for him to see her. Her voice rises in panic as she insists that she must get as far away from him as she can.
Suddenly a shimmering vertical line appeared in the air near her. It widened, as if rotating, into a gateway. Icy wind rushed through it into the room, carrying thick curtains of snow.
“I must get away!” she wailed, and darted through into the blizzard.
The gateway begins to close at once, but Rand instinctively channels and blocks it open. He doesn’t know how he does it, but he recognizes that this is a gateway for Traveling, which Asmodean has told him about but has been unable to teach him to do. He can see that Aviendha has just run naked into the heart of a winter storm, so he wastes no time thinking, just ties off the flows of saidin and gathers up her clothes as well as all the blankets and rugs and plunges through after her.
Wrapped in the Void he can still feel himself shivering, and he’s only able to spot Aviendha darting through the trees because of his sharpened sight. He calls after her, chases her, but she only seems to run faster at the sound of his voice. He follows, stumbling through snowbanks and into trees, trying to come up with a way to use channeling to help him, knowing that if he loses sight of her he’ll never find her again.
Melting a path with fire would just make mud, but suddenly Rand has the idea to heat the ground itself, and the snow before him melts. He can feel the heat through his boots, his feet flinching away from the heat even as the rest of him shivers. And he starts catching up to Aviendha.
Suddenly she vanishes as if she had fallen into a hole. Rand keeps his eyes on the spot and he suddenly finds himself splashing into icy water, and realizes that Aviendha ran out onto the ice and fell through. He leaves the blankets and rugs on the saidin-warmed bank and crawls out onto the ice, finds the hole where she fell through, and manages to grab her hair. He pulls her out, aware that he’s going to succumb to the cold soon and cursing at himself to keep his body moving as he hauls her out and drags her back to the warmed bank. But even wrapping her in blankets isn’t enough to warm her, and she isn’t moving. He can feel, outside the Void, that his hands and feet are numb and he’s no longer shivering; he knows that his body is shutting down.
He could feel the weave he had used to block open her gateway, a mile or perhaps two away through the storm. If he tried to carry her that far, neither of them would survive. They needed shelter, and they needed it here.
Rand channels Air, using it to pack the snow into walls and a roof, then carries her in, blocking up the doorway after them. He weaves and ties off a flame to give light in one corner, and also heats the air, though he doesn’t dare tie that weave off lest he fall asleep and accidentally melt his little snow hut.
He lays Aviendha down, noting the sandy ground and the unfamiliar scrub, but even in the warmth of the shelter she is icy cold. He knows she needs more warmth, but he can’t heat the air anymore so he decides to share body heat, stripping out of his wet clothes and wrapping himself in the blankets with her. He tries not to think about how smooth her skin feels, or what this position would be like if she was merely sleeping in his arms. To distract himself he tries to talk about other things, but Elayne is the first thing to come to mind, and thinking about kissing her isn’t helping. He tries Min next, insisting to himself he has never thought of her that way, but thinking of her doesn’t help either. He tries to talk about his plans for Cairhien, his hopes to bring an end to the war and famine and to unite the nations behind him.
But that had its own life, too, its own inevitable path, to Shayol Ghul, where he must face the Dark One and die, if the Prophecies were true. It seemed cowardly to say that he hoped he might live through that somehow. Aiel did not know cowardice; the worst of them was brave as a lion. “The Breaking of the World killed the weak,” he had heard Bael say, “and the Three-fold Land killed the cowards.”
He circles around to where they might be, and then to apologizing for walking in on her, how he knows that she doesn’t want to be around him and that he promises to send her away, to use his leverage as Car’a’carn to ensure that the Wise Ones don’t make her stay by him anymore. He upbraids her for her actions, too, and asks if she knows how much he will miss hearing her breathe at night. Suddenly he realizes that she’s very warm now, and then her eyes open and she looks up at him. He tries to move away but she grabs him by the hair.
“I promised my near-sister to watch you.” She seemed to be speaking to herself as much as to him, in a low, almost expressionless voice. “I ran from you as hard as I could, to shield my honor. And you followed me even here. The rings do not lie, and I can run no more.” Her tone firmed decisively. “I will run no more.”
She kisses him, and Rand loses his hold on the Void and saidin, and on rational thought in general.
Some hours later he is lying in the blankets watching Aviendha examine the walls of their shelter. She asks what it is, and is truly amazed as he explains what snow is. As she starts to dress he tells her that they can have the Wise Ones marry them as soon as they get back, and Aviendha gives him a flat look and replies that a man has no right to ask her that, and that anyway, he belongs to Elayne. Rand insists that they have to, after what they did, but of course that he wants to, as well.
They talk in circles for a while about the various customs of the Two Rivers, Aviendha clearly indicating that they can’t marry because they haven’t followed Two Rivers custom by asking permission from their family, and that by Aiel customs only she can ask him, and she isn’t going to. Rand insists that, since he started it permission doesn’t matter, they have to marry, but Aviendha only has a disdainful sniff for the notion that he started anything.
“It does not matter anyway, since we are going by Aiel customs. This will not happen again, Rand al’Thor.” He was surprised—and pleased—to hear regret in her voice. “You belong to the near-sister of my near-sister. I have toh to Elayne, now, but that is none of your concern.”
Aviendha suggests that Rand get moving, then suddenly realizes that she doesn’t know if she can remember how she made the hole, and he explains how he blocked the gateway open. He realizes that she intends to watch him get dressed, and reluctantly gets up to do so.
Rand cuts a hole in the wall with a thin flow of Fire, surprised to see daylight on the other side. He really has to put his back into pushing the block out, and ends up halfway outside of the shelter—which is a good thing because as he looks up he sees the huge leathery shape of some flying lizard high above, with two people riding on its back. He can tell they are searching for something, and that they would have seen him if they hadn’t been directly overhead. He ducks back into the shelter to warn Aviendha and to tell her that they are going to sneak back to the gateway, as carefully as they can. Outside they can see an ocean off to the east, confirming beyond a doubt that they’re very far from any lands they know. Aviendha is awestruck by the sight of the breakers.
It’s slow going back towards the gateway, and at one point Aviendha’s skirts are hampering her so much that Rand picks her up and carries her, which she endures a bit sullenly. He doesn’t dare melt them a path for fear of being spotted, and does his best to move from tree to tree, hoping that his tracks might pass for that of a large animal. Then, when he’s less than fifty paces from where he can feel his weave holding the gateway open, he sees a party waiting before the gateway.
And then Rand knows where they are; he recognizes the insect-like styling of the armor and the women wearing bracelets and leashes that lead to the collars of other women in gray. Seanchan. He set Aviendha down and gestures to the group.
“The two women on leashes can channel,” he whispered. “Can you block them?” Hurriedly he added, “Don’t embrace the Source yet. They’re prisoners, but they still might warn the others, and even if they don’t, the women with the bracelets might be able to feel them sense you.”
Aviendha gives him an odd look but doesn’t waste time asking how he knows, informing him instead that the women with the bracelets can also channel, though it feels strangely weak, as though they had never practiced. Rand asks if she can shield all four.
She gave him a very smug look. “Of course. Egwene taught me to handle several flows at once. I can block them, tie those off, and wrap them up in flows of Air before they know what is happening.” That self-satisfied little smile faded. “I am fast enough to handle them, and their horses, but that leaves the rest to you until I can bring help. If any get away… They can surely cast those spears this far, and if one of them pins you to the ground…” For a moment she muttered under her breath, as if angry that she could not complete a sentence. Finally she looked at him, her gaze as furious as he had ever seen it. “Egwene has told me of Healing, but she knows little, and I less.”
Rand cannot understand why she is angry but he tells her to handle the women and leave the rest to him, and they channel together, Aviendha shielding the women while Rand wraps the whole party—sul’dam, damane and soldiers—in a flow of Air, immobilizing them.
The Seanchan cry out and then fall silent as Rand and Aviendha approach. He holds the weave rather than tying it off, so that they will be freed when he steps through the gateway, but when he approaches the gateway he finds that it no longer looks into his room, but instead shows a gray blank. Worse, the grayness is woven with saidin. He can’t tell what the weave is supposed to do, but it might easily be a trap laid by Asmodean.
One of the mounted women, a black raven in front of a stark tower on the gray breast of her cloak, had a severe face and dark eyes that seemed to want to drill into his skull. Another, younger and paler and shorter, yet more regal, wore a silver stag’s head on her green cloak. The little fingers of her riding gloves were too long. Rand knew from the shaven sides of her scalp that those long fingers covered nails grown long and no doubt lacquered, both signs of Seanchan nobility. The soldiers were stiff-faced and stiff-backed, but the officer’s blue eyes glittered behind the jaws of the insectlike helmet, and his gauntleted fingers writhed as he struggled futilely to reach his sword.
Rand doesn’t care about them, but he doesn’t want to leave the damane prisoners so he puts a hand to one collar to see if he can unlatch it. He feels a jolt that almost numbs his arm and saidin rages through him as the damane convulses and screams while her sul’dam gasps and goes white.
Rand tells Aviendha to try, figuring that a woman must be able to touch the collar safely, and Aviendha fumbles with it while the damane cries out that Aviendha is marath’damane and begs for her mistress to save her. But her sul’dam is more interested in Rand, informing the noblewoman, Lady Morsa, that “it is he.” Morsa doesn’t look surprised, only horrified.
He asks her if she was at Falme, and she confirms that she saw him and what he did. Rand tells her that if they give him no trouble he will leave them in peace, all the while internally debating who should go through the gateway first. He decides the only choice is to step through together.
The woman with the raven cloak observes that much of what happened “in the lands of the great Hawkwing” has been kept secret and that rumors claim that “the Ever Victorious Army” was defeated.
“Do you now seek truth in rumor, Jalindin?” Morsa asked in a cutting tone. “A Seeker above all should know when to keep silent. The Empress herself has forbidden speech of the Corenne until she calls it again. If you—or I—speak so much as the name of the city where that expedition landed, our tongues will be removed. Perhaps you would enjoy being tongueless, in the Tower of Ravens? Not even the Listeners would hear you scream for mercy, or pay heed.”
Rand doesn’t understand most of what they’re talking about, but he recognizes the word Corenne, and realizes that the Return has been called off, at least for a while. But he can also see that the gateway is getting narrower, and urges Aviendha to hurry. She snaps that she is trying, that he nearly killed the two and maybe himself, as she could feel the power rushing into them. She assures him that if it can be done, she will do it.
Morsa appears to be listening carefully to them, but Jalindin is still focused on the noblewoman, again repeating that much has been kept secret, and that the Seekers must know all. Morsa, clearly tense, tells her that she is forgetting herself, but Jalindin replies that it is Morsa who forgets herself. Jalindin has put both a daughter and a son of the Empress to the question, and asks if Morsa thinks herself above the family of the Empress. Morsa hurriedly claims that she only meant that the Empress already knows more than she can tell and that she didn’t mean anything by her words, but Jalindin is already speaking to the soldiers, informing them that Morsa, as well as the sul’dam and damane, are in the custody of the Seekers for Truth.
Horror painted the faces of the named women, but Morsa could have stood for any of them. Eyes wide and suddenly haggard, she slumped as much as her invisible bonds would allow, voicing not a word of protest. She looked as if she wanted to scream, yet she—accepted. Jalindin’s gaze turned to Rand.
She tells him that he will be well treated if he surrenders to her, that they will certainly be caught in the wide search for the marath’damane who channeled in the night, and that in Seanchan he can find great honor in the use of his power. Rand laughs and tells her that he can’t kill her but that he should stripe her hide for the lie; he knows that men who can wield the Power are shot on sight in Seanchan.
Meanwhile, the gateway is still closing, and Rand tells Aviendha to stop trying to break the collar. He puts an arm around her shoulders, telling himself it’s only because they have to be close to fit, and warns her to be ready for anything. They jump… and land in his room in Eianrod. Asmodean is there, not embracing saidin, but Rand puts a block between him and the Source anyway. When he turns to look, he finds that the gateway is still there, but that it’s invisible on this side. He slashes through his weave just as a spear shoots through the closing gateway, cutting the end of the shaft off at two feet of length. Rand snatches the rest with Air.
He observes that they’re lucky none of the damane recovered in time, and Aviendha tells him sternly that she did not release them, and that he must learn to be hard with his enemies, not soft. Rand supposes that she is right, and that he has left behind enemies he might have to face one day.
Aviendha tells him that it was smart of him, hiding the hole she made, lest one of the gai’shain had found it and the maidens marched through after them. Asmodean tells them that one did come in, and that he “took the liberty” of telling her that Rand and Aviendha didn’t wish to be disturbed. To his surprise, she laughed and ran off, and a few minutes later about twenty Maidens were outside, beating their spears on their bucklers for the next hour.
Rand is embarrassed that, even though their encounter had happened on the other side of the world, the Maidens still new, but Aviendha questions Asmodean about the gai’shain’s appearance and decides, furious, that it must have been her first sister, Niella, a weaver who was taken gai’shain by the Chareen Maidens. Niella always wanted Aviendha to give up the spear and get married.
Rand tells her that he wants to talk to Natael and if she would mind making her bed somewhere else for the rest of the night. Aviendha goes, slamming the door behind her, and Rand wonders if she could be mad at him, given that she was the one who said nothing else was going to happen between them. Either way, he’s glad he isn’t Niella. Still holding the spear, he turns to Asmodean, who remarks that it is a strange scepter.
“It will do for one.” To remind him that the Seanchan were still out there. For once he wished his voice was even colder than the Void and saidin made it. He had to be hard. “Before I decide whether to skewer you with it like a lamb, why did you never mention this trick of making something invisible? If I hadn’t been able to see the flows, I’d never have known the gateway was still there.”
Asmodean is clearly alarmed, babbling, even getting to his knees as he explains that Rand never asked, that it’s just a trick of bending light, and that he used the same trick to sneak past the Maidens, but he must realize by now that Asmodean has thrown his lot in with Rand, that he is his man. The last bit gets through to Rand, reminding him of the Cairhienin, who also swore that they were “his men.”
He tells Asmodean that, from now on, he will tell Rand two things that he has not yet asked about, every lesson. Sitting down on the bed he thinks again about how the spear is a good reminder, and what could have happened if Aviendha had not been there to shield the damane.
“You have tried showing me how to shield a woman and failed. Try showing me how to avoid flows I cannot see, how to counter them.” Once Lanfear had sliced his weavings as neatly as with a knife.
Asmodean answers that it won’t be easy without a woman to practice against. Rand tells him to try, and that he has two hours.
In some ways, Chapter 30 feels a little slow compared with 31 and 32, but it actually contains a lot of really important character moments. There are a lot of little moments when Rand reflects on Elayne (I loved the bit when he wishes he could ask her what taxes are for) and on Min (showing that Min isn’t the only one feeling a pull that doesn’t quite make sense) as well as moments of Rand just being himself, getting away from being the Dragon Reborn for a few stolen moments. His time in the snow with Aviendha is fraught both by their possible deaths and by the danger of being caught by the Seanchan, but it’s really nice to see him get to be just a man for a few hours.
This is also the first time in a while we’ve seen mention of Rand’s ta’veren nature causing seemingly random events to happen; I can’t actually remember it coming up since he reached the Stone. And we see that Rand sometimes controls chance the way that Mat does, which is interesting as well.
I still have a lot of questions about how the ta’veren effect works, and it was kind of fun seeing that Rand and I are in the same boat. He wonders if these “random” effects will ever work in his favor; I myself have been questioning whether the effects are random at all, or if they all serve some purpose in the Pattern that the characters, and the reader, cannot see. Now, given the timing, I have a new theory. Perhaps Rand’s strong ta’veren power exists to allow him to enact monumental change in important moments (like the taking of the Stone and the bending of Tear to his will) and when it isn’t being used it’s just floundering around aimlessly and occasionally resulting in Indiana Jones-style misadventures into pits full of snakes. I kind of love that Randland has this ridiculous detail (pit vipers in our world/Age being named for the pits in their heads, not for where they live, of course).
I also have a lot of feelings about Rand’s desire to make it rain in Eianrod. Much of The Fires of Heaven is focused on the people around him either thinking he needs to learn to be tougher and harder or worrying that he’s turned into some kind of cruel, arrogant monster. In moments like this, however, we see what makes Rand a special person: He so desperately wants to help people, to use his Power to protect and heal. There is a truly lovely gentleness to Rand that people don’t often see. Egwene claims that he’s changed, Nynaeve remembers him as being a gentle boy, but what they don’t realize is that that trait is still there, still very much a part of him. But there’s so much else, and this constant call to be “hard”, while perhaps necessary, isn’t helping in that respect. Maybe Rand’s increased intimacy with Aviendha will help him finally open up and let someone else see that part of him—but who am I kidding, that is definitely wishful thinking. The two may have hit a milestone in their relationship, but they’re still pretty far away from being emotionally vulnerable with each other.
Speaking of being vulnerable, my heart broke as much as Rand’s, maybe more, at the idea of Moiraine literally begging to be allowed to stay. I wonder if whatever fate she saw in the Rhuidean arch is getting closer now, if she knows exactly when it will come and is counting down the days. Or is it just the certainty that drives her, the way it has been driving Aviendha? The rings don’t lie, Aviendha says, before she gives in and kisses Rand. But there is still room for interpretation, I think, and room to misinterpret. Just as Rand believes that the prophecies foretell his death, while it’s possible that they only speak of an injury, or mean something even more poetic by “the Dragon’s blood stains the rock of Shayol Ghul.” After all, “blood” means lineage in other lines.
Not that I can imagine any interpretation that sounds like much fun for Rand.
But Aviendha is also making a mistake here, though it’s quite understandable why she is. We the readers know from Min’s vision that Aviendha, Elayne, and Min are all destined to share Rand somehow, which one assumes means that they will eventually come to some kind of mutually agreeable arrangement. Aviendha has apparently seen that she is fated to be with Rand, but not that Elayne (or Min) would be involved. I had put her reluctance towards him down to the fact that she had to give up the spear, and a relationship with Rand was one more step away from the person she used to be. But the fact that it’s about Elayne makes perfect sense; since Aviendha has agreed to look after Rand for her, she feels that being with Rand herself violates her honor. The Aiel are all about that ji’e’toh.
But I am still confused about whether Aviendha saw herself entering into a relationship with Rand, or if it’s just the one sexual encounter that was predicted in the rings. Because her insistence that it won’t happen again means something very different if she truly thinks the whole ordeal is over, rather than if she is still resisting the destiny the rings showed her. And for that matter, her abject panic at his finding her naked seems a bit extreme if the only thing she was running from was a single fated encounter. Granted, the Aiel honor code is a bit hard to follow, and often quite extreme, so I may simply not be understanding how it really feels to be in her position.
I can’t decide if Aviendha and Rand’s constant misunderstanding of each other is cute or annoying. Maybe both. I was kind of mad at him when he misinterpreted her fear for him as anger—like the man doesn’t know about protective instincts and fear for the ones he loves—but I was annoyed with her when she went on about him noticing Morsa’s body so I guess they’re both just a little foolish in their love, and in their individual fears and foibles. And on the other hand, the hurt and confusion Rand experiences when he believes that Aviendha just despises him is really moving. Although I wish he could read between the lines a bit better, he’s pretty primed already to believe that everyone just wants to get as far away from him as possible, being a male channeler, and the Dragon, and the man prophesied to Break the world again. Plenty of people do feel that way.
And as much as Aviendha is insisting that nothing like this encounter will ever happen again, and as much as Rand is sure that nothing about their relationship will get any easier or less confusing, you can see changes in how Aviendha regards him—or at the very least changes in how much of that regard she allows Rand to see. He notes it only as less arguing, but to me it reads more like trust, confidence in Rand’s decisions and his capability. The way she looks to him when she realizes that she doesn’t know how to make “the hole” back to Eianrod shows a strong confidence in him that may come from his being He Who Comes With the Dawn or from her love for him, or perhaps both, but she seems less afraid to show that confidence somehow. She even lets him carry her—although I’m skeptical that skirts are that much more of a hamper to moving through snow than carrying another person. And Aviendha is strong and muscular, not a light burden.
Rand recognizes the Gateway Aviendha makes from Asmodean’s description of one, but didn’t he make one himself to follow Asmodean to Rhuidean at the end of The Shadow Rising? I guess that the two doorways did work differently—Aviendha’s goes straight to another location, whereas the one Rand and Asmodean used entered into a black space that they had to travel through. I can’t help but wonder what that black space was. Was it like the backstage of the world? The space between quantum particles? Some kind of tunnel, like the Ways? And for that matter, why did Asmodean make that kind of gateway when this one seems so much faster and more expedient? One assumes that he can’t for some reason. Maybe he’s not powerful enough.
At the beginning of Chapter 30, Rand observes that he had once believed that the Forsaken were basically all-powerful and omnipotent, but now he is learning (and remembering) that they aren’t. Asmodean himself does not seem to be as strongly powered as many of his fellows, and it may be that he’s only averagely powerful by the standards of his own day. Or maybe just averagely educated—he seems to be more concerned with being a great bard than a powerful channeler, or ruler. Most of the other Forsaken seem to want to be kings and queens, but it’s kind of hard to imagine Asmodean caring about affairs of state or whatever.
(I mean, maybe there won’t be affairs of state once the Dark One is in charge, but if the majority of the Forsaken believe that they will be immortal rulers one day, they must also believe that there will be some semblance of society left to rule over.)
It’s odd to think that some of the most important Darkfriends of the Age of Legends might not have also been some of the most powerful, but there may have been other ways, other reasons, that they were able to maneuver themselves to such high-ranking roles. Wealth, nobility, prestige and connection might have been important, as well as being continually successful in their assignments from their Great Lord. Or perhaps, like Moghedien, talent in a specific area gave them an edge. After all, we’ve seen that Nynaeve and Moghedien were equally matched in their battle, which means that Nynaeve’s raw power must be much greater than that of Moghedien, who had the advantage of age, training, and experience.
The whole rescuing Aviendha from the frozen lake didn’t do much for me, just because stories about people falling in ice are so common in fiction, especially television and film. But what I really enjoyed about the segment was watching Rand use saidin in a bunch of different ways; usually when we’re in his head about channeling it is during one specific, large event, and usually what he does is based in instinct. This time, however, we see him thinking through the various skills he has been trained in by Asmodean as well as developing a few techniques on the fly. The heating of the ground was a particularly fun move, and I loved the description of Rand building the snow fort around them, using Air to push the snow against the wind and into walls. It’s not his fault I was thinking of Frozen the whole time—Rand’s ice palace came first.
It’s not mentioned, but I assume he thought to put in air holes at some point, or he and Aviendha would not have had time to get warm anyway. I only think of it because I remember that Rand doesn’t know that air gets thinner the higher you go, so I have to wonder if he knows about things like using up oxygen. Does he know what oxygen is at this point? Ostensibly this is a thing that Asmodean knows and could teach him. But Rand would have had to ask.
I actually… felt a little bad for Asmodean here? My bigger concern is for Rand, of course; I’m worried that he’s been pushed too far in the direction of being hard, cold, and calculating. Of course he needs to not let his personal feelings get in the way of his judgment, but feelings and emotions exist for a reason, and the suggestion that reason and emotion are at odds with each other is a flawed one, even though it is common in our culture and, apparently, in Randland. But cold calculation could take Rand in some very dangerous, morally dubious directions. We’ve seen how the Whitecloaks and their binary thinking start to stray very quickly from moral goodness and perhaps even from the Light. We’ve seen how good rulers like Morgase govern fairly and justly because they have empathy and understanding for their subjects.
The Void provides Rand with clarity, heightening his senses and connecting him to the world in a profound way. But it distances him from himself, and cannot accommodate his emotions, either keeping them at bay or shattering under their weight. It is a very useful and important tool in his arsenal, but so is Rand’s compassion. His warmth, his generosity, his desire for connection and simplicity in his life—all these traits make him stronger. And I worry that he doesn’t recognize that—that he’ll decide that these traits are a liability that must be ignored, or even purged.
After all, Frodo wasn’t the only person who could carry the ring to Mordor because he was the wisest, or the most stoic, or the strongest. It was because he was loving, and kind, and good. He had no designs on power or prestige, and so the ring’s effect on him was slower than those who might dream of what they could accomplish with it.
Rand doesn’t have a ring, but he does have power. He has unparalleled strength in saidin (which has its own corrupting influence) and he has authority over others—perhaps eventually over every nation in the world. How quickly could that sort of dominance go to someone’s head? Nynaeve and Egwene might me misinterpreting Rand’s actions and what he thinks of himself now that he is the Lord Dragon, but their concerns are not without merit.
Power corrupts, as they say, and the main way it does so is by making the powerful feel separated from others. They lose their empathy, because the experience of the masses is so different from their own that they can no longer understand it on an emotional level. This is what Egwene and Nynaeve want Rand to avoid, I think, even if they put it in slightly pettier terms.
So maybe my pity for Asmodean is actually worry for Rand. But I am also aware that Asmodean is as much a prisoner as the damane Rand and Aviendha met in Seanchan. Of course the damane are innocent victims, while Asmodean did much to deserve his current situation—probably many horrific things. But he is also terrified of Rand and of his fellow Forsaken, and it’s hard not to feel pity for that. He seems… a small man, somehow. He sold his soul to Darkness because of little more than petty greed, and he’s terribly unprepared to pay the price of his choice. How sad.
It’s a shame Aviendha wasn’t able to free the two damane, although I don’t know how prepared she and Rand were to deal with the fallout the two women would experience. It was heartbreaking when Seri begged her sul’dam to be saved from Aviendha, and it makes me anxious about the future of the Seanchan channelers as well as for the Aes Sedai—Min has had a few visions now of collars on Aes Sedai.
I am intrigued by the Seekers; the incredibly strict hierarchy in Seanchan culture has some interesting quirks, including the amount of social mobility it actually accommodates. It’s clearly not simple or easy to rise in the ranks, but it is possible to rise very high from one’s position at birth, as long as one is born free. (And it’s possible to fall just as far, as well.) But there are also the high-ranked slaves, such as the Seekers and, I believe, a few others that have been mentioned. Some slaves owned by very high nobility seem to have greater social status than commoners and those of lesser social status. And the Seekers, as personal property of the Empress herself, have great power indeed. We saw how Egeanin looked down on the Seeker who visited her, regarding him as property, and yet bowed to his authority completely, answering all his questions and even making him tea. And in this most recent encounter, we see Morsa want to treat Jalindin with derision but also recognize her authority to the point of accepting that she is going to be put to the question, which is clearly a horrible ordeal.
Whew! I don’t know about you all, but I am tired after all that. Next week will cover Chapters 33 and 34, in which both Liandrin and Nynaeve will learn some very hard lessons. I’m quite worried about it, actually. About Nynaeve that is. Liandrin kind of gets what’s coming to her.
Sylas K Barrett has a snow fort built in his front yard right now, actually. Maybe the neighbors are really channelers!
Asmodeon is a fool. Don’t forget before we knew who he was, he performed a ballad for Rand and the Aiel, the subject matter of which ocurred after he was imprisoned with the other Forsaken. That means he learned the ballad and story after he was freed. So while most of the Forsaken were setting themselves up to rule various countries or control them from the inside, he was essentially memorizing Beowulf so he could perform it.
It’s an interesting observation you made about social mobility and the presence of slaves with power and authority in Seanchan culture.
One of the things I really love about the cultures Jordan created is that instead of each one being a 1:1 translation from a culture that existed in history, he assembled the culture by taking parts from existing ones.
So the existence of slaves with authority over free persons is not without precedent: The Ottoman Janissaries, for example.
@1 That’s what makes Asmodean so amazing. He earned a third name through his music, was a great composer in life, and still decided to go to the Shadow because he felt he hadn’t received proper recognition for his talents. And then he ended up blinding and maiming other artists in the areas he governed for the Shadow so that they couldn’t upstage him. It’s like the film about Salieri and Mozart but on crack (also that film has very little do with reality).
When I thought about it, I just realized that Aviendha and Rand don’t have sex again until the very end of the series.
@@@@@1 – Yeah, Asmodean pretty much says that he turned to the Shadow so that he could play music forever, and also so he could screw over the people who were considered better than him. Maybe its in the Big Book of Bad Art, but I remember reading he was a child prodigy who never really lived up to his potential. So it makes sense that when he got free, he had no real ambition except to play some music and live a life of luxury, and had to be actively coerced into Lanfear’s scheme.
It’s also worth noting that in the Age of Legends being a powerful channeler was an asset, but not in and of itself a guaranteed way to power and success – the strong implication we have is that it tended to help, but that earning a third name (of respect) was based on achievement and reputation. Thus, hyper-powerful channelers like Moghedien or Mesaana weren’t particularly well respected in times of peace, whereas in the violent hierarchy of the Shadow, where personal power is all, their raw ability with the Power gives them a lot more room for advancement. We also know that the Forsaken are essentially just the folks who were on top when the Bore was sealed – Asmodean may have been a mid-level guy who by luck or everyone above him dying/being away on business was included in the final council at Shayol Ghul when Lews Therin showed up.
@@@@@ 4 – yeah, and Rand and Elayne only get a night or two together as well!
@@.-@ She leaves with Mat to find Elayne not too long after this, and the night they bond him is the only time he sees either one of them again before the last battle. It’s one of the reasons I’ve never been terribly compelled by their supposed relationships.
@5 – Pretty much everything you indicated about War of Power politics as it relates to the Forsaken is spot on. There were (as stated in the BBoBA) more than just the final 13 Forsaken during the War of Power. Any channelers who went over to the DO during the war were known as Dreadlords. Those among the Dreadlords who were strongest in their ability with the OP were given the rank of Chosen and given access to “other powers”, presumably access to the True Power. By the time the last year of the war rolled around the Forsaken’s number had been whittled down to the 13 who were sealed in The Bore. Interestingly (if not surprising) enough, the BBoBA explicitly states that not a single Forsaken was killed by enemy action but rather from in-fighting and scheming.
The part that I find really interesting is how the heck did Asmo make it that long? He is quite the coward, is the lowest among the Forsaken in terms of Power ability, doesn’t appear to have ever been martially inclined, doesn’t seem to be much of a schemer, and basically lacks EVERY characteristic that would indicate any ability to stay alive long enough to be sealed in The Bore. The only two explanations that seem remotely plausible are that he is A) better at hiding than Moghedien, which I doubt. Or, B) any time he had to fight for his life he would just play some tunes off of Kevin Federline’s album until his enemies inevitably killed themselves to make it stop.
The noticing of Rand’s need for human compassion, warmth, and companionship continues to be spot on. And while at this point in the story Egwene is still reasonably well positioned to provide that reminder of who the boy/man he was growing up, we see this shift. The Maidens to a certain extent, and Aviendha/Min, step into this role much more intensely as time goes on. Especially Min. Which is fortunate, because for all Egwene constantly is harping to herself that Rand needs someone to remind him that while he may be a king, he’s still Rand, she is heading in the opposite direction of forgetting who she was, where she came from, and staring to associate her own wants and desires with what is best for the people she is meant to be looking out for.
Also I had never noticed Aviendha’s insistence that Rand become “harder” with his enemies. As Sylas will find out, this particular word choice will be a problematic one later, especially as it relates to what Aviendha was asking Rand to do.
Your thoughts on Rand and the balance between hardness and warmth are something that is going to have a slow burn payoff that I am quite fond of :) But it will be awhile before we get there, and it will get worse before it gets better.
As somebody who has written her share of over dramatic fanfic (even as I cringe at the cliche of it all)…I’m glad you can at least somewhat appreciate this scene lol. I have to admit, I do find it a bit cringey. That and Rand wanting a shotgun wedding, lol.
Asmodean gets a bad rap. He’s actually pretty smart and observant and fairly adaptable. I don’t necessarily know that it’s all that smart to play the power games the others do. Off all the Forsaken freed in the mass breakout (after Aginor & Balthamel), Belal was the first to go down, and Sammael and Rahvin are on Rand’s radar. No one else is. For a Forsaken, “winning” does not necessarily encompass the Dark One’s victory. If Rand or Egwene or Nynaeve or Mat dies to save the world from the Shadow, from their PoV, that’s more or less a win. But a Forsaken doesn’t care about the Dark One, so he does not gain anything from the Dark One’s victory if he doesn’t claim a tangible reward through it. For the Emond’s Fielders, living in a world where the Dark One is triumphant is a defeat, but for the Forsaken, if the Dark One is defeated and sealed up again, that’s still better than nothing. And from their point of view, the Dark One has more than enough power to steamroll Rand, no matter how many troops, nations and channelers are on his side, so why go through all the fuss. Belal, Rahvin & Sammael do so because of their egos and their need to have people bowing down and serving them. Asmodean just wants to stay alive. He’s much more …humble isn’t the right word for any of them, but he (and Moghedian) come the closest.
Note that Asmodean was smart enough to see right through Lanfear’s plans, and jump off the crazy train before it got wrecked. If he didn’t get very unlucky, with Lanfear just happening to mention to Rand where he was going in time for Rand to catch him, he would have been holding the access key while Rand had his hands full with Couladin. Also, Asmodean was smart enough to identify Couladin as a useful tool and to not only come up with a way to use him to make trouble, but to actually get the racist and arrogant Couladin to listen and go along with it. If Asmodean got away with the sa’angreal, he’s top dog. None of the armies or nations the others gathered would mean anything next to what he could do. As for gathering of nations, off an improvised, seat of his pants plan, he was that close to having the frickin’ Aiel behind him, with Couladin as his proxy ruler. What’s Andor or Illian next to that?
Of the male Forsaken, I’d rank Asmodean right behind Demandred and Ishamael as most impressive. Far more so than Lanfear and Semirhage, the two most fandom-overrated jokes in the bunch.
Regarding the OP:
“But there is still room for interpretation, I think, and room to misinterpret.”
It is so good to finally see someone else say this in the context of St. Moiraine the Great and Wise.
The stuff about Frodo was very on-point too. I think there is a strong one-to-one comparison between the five Emond’s Fielders and the five Hobbits in LotR (Lews Therin Telamon is Bilbo). Rand is Frodo, Nynaeve is Sam (comes along strictly out of loyalty to and love for her neighbors), Perrin is Merry (better diplomat & people handler) & Mat is Pippin (touches things he’s not supposed to, becomes professional soldier). But after years of tedious fandom debates about WWW a particular channeling contest/duel/military battle, it’s nice to see someone gets the important stuff. Someone on another site speculated how much better things would have gone if Rand had been born a noble, with all the assets and training from the getgo. He would not have needed all of Lan’s sword training, or Moiraine’s & Elayne’s political tutelage and he’d have been trained to lead armies and rule from birth. But he would not have the connections to people, and maybe not the capacity for love that he does. And he’d be intrinsically a part of the power structure that has led the world into such a state where the Dark One’s triumph is imminent. The Dark One isn’t breaking free at this point because his sentence is almost up, he’s getting loose because of debased state of the world Siuan and Ingtar describe in The Great Hunt. Because people are losing sight of what’s important, and pulling away from each other. The dwindling of nations is not a political failure or a simply due to a population decline (rather the population decline is another symptom of the same indifference and loss of connections), it’s the loss of common ideas and a sense of unity among people that creates a nation in the first place. Even when it’s not because there are no people anymore, we see other things separating them, like the people of the Two Rivers feeling no affiliation with their countrymen in Andor and Andorans not caring about the Two Rivers people, but taking their allegiance for granted. The civil wars in Arad Domon & Tarabon show the divisions that existed before Rand and the Shadow gave them things to fight over. The Children’s hegemony over Amadicia has created a dual state within the nation, Logain seemingly found Ghealdan a ripe ground for recruitment, Altara & Murandy’s divisions are established in the narrative, and the Tairens don’t even identify with their fellow citizens from different districts, to say nothing of their ruling class. In Cairhien, there is no sense of national cooperation, since the Aiel War, many have given up and simply hung about the capital for the bread and circuses, while their king spends the nation’s substance to buy himself a little more time of domestic peace. The minute he’s taken out, the country falls to war and chaos harder and faster than anywhere else (without Dragonsworn, Seanchan or Forsaken exacerbating it, no less). Apres moi, le deluge might have been said with them in mind.
Oh and:
“I’m skeptical that skirts are that much more of a hamper to moving through snow than carrying another person.”
If the snow is much higher than your hemline, you’re dragging the skirt against the snow, it’s like trying to walk straddling a snow plow. Aviendha’s skirts go all the way down. Also, she’s never walked in snow before either, and isn’t used to the necessary motions. Picking up your feet, rather than just swinging them forward is even harder with a long skirt on. In fact, you notice Elayne is often described as gliding, because that’s how she’s learned to walk in gowns and dresses on floors and pavement, whereas Egwene or Nynaeve would be more likely to pick up her skirts or tie them out of the way for manual work. Long skirts work better with small steps instead of full strides, let alone lifting your foot clear of a considerable depth of snow.
One more thing I almost forgot. Why does this chapter never come up in discussions of sexual assault in the series? I’ll give you a hint. Male-female double standards. I mean, read this:
Just a bit rapey, no? All I did was flip all the gendered words in the text.
OP:
I once had a nutty theory that Galad, and his “perfectness”, would be the one to die on the rocks of Shayol Ghul, and Rand would somehow use that to heal the Bore.
OP:
Aiel mating rituals, as described to us in the last book by Gaul, Bain and Chiad to Perrin and Faile. Its not really the sex Avheindha is worried about. It.s being seen as intentionally attracting Rand’s interest, and that getting back to Elayne. Even that wouldn’t bother her so much if she didn’t secretly want to attract Rand’s interest. That’s the part that is pressing up against her honor in regards to her promise to Elayne.
OP:
Does he? His mom died when he was young, and he lived with Tam, alone, out in the country. Emond’s Field was several hours from the farm. He probably got around the people in town less than once a month, and only for a few hours at a time, and probably mostly around kids and menfolk, given how life in the Two Rivers works. He may not have seen, and understood, that context or a woman’s protective side.
Brent@1:
See, to me, as a musician, this is part of Asmodean’s tragedy—he’s Robert Johnson, standing at the crossroads, selling his soul to the devil to be a better musician. But he doesn’t get to be. He makes a bad deal. He gets eternal life to practice, but he’s got all these other duties to attend to during the War of Power…and now when he plays, the people who have heard Thom just sort of go “Eh, he’s ok, I guess. I’ve heard better.”
It makes me laugh.
sun_tzu@3:
I refuse to believe that film wasn’t historically accurate. Next thing you’ll be telling me that William Wallace didn’t really sire Edward’s heir.
KAne1648@7:
Or, more probably, he was willing to align himself with powerful females, and link with them, allowing them to control the circle. This would make him valuable to some pretty powerful people who might want to keep him alive.
William@10:
I believe the OP was trying to say that she doesn’t see how carrying Avhiendha, who is 5′ 10″ and chisled with lean muscle (i.e, not a lightweight) would allow them to make better time than Avhiendha fighting her own way in skirts. It’s a fair point. Rand is big and strong, but one would presume they would still move faster without him carrying her. Although there is also the likelihood, since they were not traveling on a road, that she was getting caught in the underbrush that was buried beneath the snow.
@@@@@ 10 – I think you have a slightly warped view of the setting.
The Dark One isn’t breaking free at this point because his sentence is almost up, he’s getting loose because of debased state of the world Siuan and Ingtar describe in The Great Hunt. Because people are losing sight of what’s important, and pulling away from each other. The dwindling of nations is not a political failure or a simply due to a population decline (rather the population decline is another symptom of the same indifference and loss of connections), it’s the loss of common ideas and a sense of unity among people that creates a nation in the first place.
This really doesn’t track with what we know about Randland. Rather, it’s very strongly implied that the Shadow has been working behind the scenes for 3,000 years to divide nations, to slow progress, to fracture humanity. This is why Ishamael is a favorite – the evidence suggests he’s been free at various times since the Breaking and has managed to thoroughly wreck any chance humanity has had for arresting their own decline. The Ten Nations Compact almost managed to bring human society back to where they were in the Age of Legends, but was destroyed by a decades long war with the Shadow. Artur Hawkwing managed to unite the setting of the main story, but had his ambitions blunted by bad advice and Compulsion from an undercover Ishy.
Humanity is in decline for lots of reasons, but one of them is the direct influence of the Dark One on the world. The Seals aren’t weakening because the Dark One’s sentence is up, but neither is the state of the world somehow inviting his influence back in, as if the bonds of human compassion and understanding were barriers that keep him out. It just so happens that this is the moment that the Seal on the Bore has become weak enough for shit to hit the fan.
Nobody killed Asmo in the AoL because he wasn’t worth the trouble. If you aren’t a musician he is no threat.
Re: Asmodean and his love for music and general apathy towards doing Dark-oriented stuff without being forced by stronger people.
If anything, him being captured by Rand and the ensuing things that happen ruins the potential for hilarity in later books when the Forsaken get a leader again. Imagine the awesomeness of a Moridin-Asmodean meeting about responsibilities and duties! Or not, as it’d probably wind up a bit of a disappointment because Moridin likely would have little patience for Asmo’s “displaying sarcasm via musical selection” way of communication and would immediately soul-trap him just to avoid the hassle of things like persuasion and playing the right card to actually get him to do anything.
I agree with William. Asmodean and Moghedian were survivors. Asmo’s eventual demise was just a combination of bad luck and inability to defend himself at all due to Lanfear’s shield. As was pointed out, 5 seconds earlier and Asmo has the Access Key in both hands and is instantly the most powerful channeler in the world by a huge factor. Al the rest of the Forsaken together couldn’t have stood against him. He came much closer to winning outright than anyone else.
Plus who was the only one left standing at the end? Moggy. Yeah she was collared but not dead yet. There is a lot of skill required to remain in the background and yet continue to survive.
I found one typo this time: “Goshein” should be “Goshien”.
I’m sure Rand can recognize anger. The question is why Aviendha is angry. It’s not too hard to figure out. Aviendha is back to trying not to be in love with Rand. She gave in once, so in her mind she now has toh to Elayne. Doing it again would accumulate more toh, which Aviendha is determined to avoid. Therefore she disapproves of how she feels at the thought of Rand pinned to the ground by a spear. She’s angry with herself for caring more about Rand than she would care about any other brother-in-arms.
@17: Re: Goshien–fixed! Thanks.
@13
Our versions are not incompatible. The Dark One’s increasing influence as the Seals weaken is the reason for the exponential collapse of order we see over the course of the series, but he couldn’t do that before they started to give. Ishamael as Baalzamon was engineering all the things you mention to cause humanity to fall apart. Yes, the Ten Nations pushed back against societal entropy, and Ishamael directly went after it. Artur Hawkwing was too good to be defeated in the same way, so he manipulated the natural rivalries and created disunion, between Hawkwing and the Tower, and through that conflict, between Hawkwing and his people. And he kept playing his game with others of Hawkwing’s aspiring successors, trying to maintain disunity. It’s why he switched from Dreadlords to the Black Ajah, because overt attacks gave people something to fight together against, while the Black Ajah’s very existence made people suspicious of the Tower, made the Tower defensive against outsiders (and willfully blind to the reality) and made the Children morally certain of their own righteousness and intractably hostile to the Aes Sedai.
And the division between the Tower and Hawkwing made the Aes Sedai suspicious of any future such figures of power, committed them to an institutional preference for any status quo where they were clearly the top of the heap. Look at what Siuan’s & Moiraine’s conversation reveals of the Tower’s view on Hawkwing – they are appalled at the idea of a strong leader who can unite the known world and create a benevolent state. Moiraine hastens to reassure Siuan that none of the boys have any such aspirations! The Tower knows they were in the wrong in their conflict with Hawkwing, because they stilled the leader who instigated it and refused to raise any sisters for her Ajah for 1000 years, but they are still adamantly opposed to another one, and the potential for another Hawkwing is a danger sign in their eyes. That’s the mechanism by which the world finally reached a nadir that the warfare and destruction of the great millennial conflicts failed to bring about – stagnation. It’s why, as soon as the Tower’s back is turned, Rand’s schools create a scientific revolution. They have been suppressing change and innovation for at least the last thousand years, by trying to preserve a faulty status quo.
The irregular shape of the Tower-ruled state at the time of Hawkwing’s rise suggests that for all their primus inter pares status, the Tower was involved in the game of nations as a player and competitor, not just an arbiter or overlord, and that, I think, is why the world in general was much more vibrant. You need a burgeoning population to sustain the level of warfare for first Guaire Amalsan’s campaign and then Hawkwing’s wars of conquest. And the fact that the military sciences reached their peak suggests there was plenty of conflict for them to hone those arts. It might have been chaotic, but it was still an aspirational chaos. Not as good as the unity of the Ten Nations, but still vibrant and striving. The Tower was not suppressing the Game, because they were playing to win. After Hawkwing, they were afraid of the Game (I am not referring to the Game of the Houses, but the general course of international competition), because Hawkwing finally won, so they took steps to prevent it from ever being played again to completion. Rather than lead the world on a common quest, the Tower became obsessed with making sure no one went on a quest they didn’t control. Not that they did all this fully conscious of what they were doing, but the general fear of losing control turned into an institutional mentality with regard to anything new. The structure of the Tower doesn’t help, where the people who make the important decisions are the ones holed up in a literal ivory Tower, isolated from the world (the difficulty of those sisters who served in Hawkwing’s government and tried to work with him probably further hardened the Tower against external influences and agendas as well), while those who run around actually helping and doing the sort of service they all should, are rather cut off from the administration.
So yeah. The world is in the state it’s in because of Ishamael’s efforts, but Ishamael is no fool. He engineered the disunity and stagnation to make the world the sort of place more hospitable to the Shadow, and thus giving the Shadow more power to erode the defenses. It’s a downward spiral, which is why the Pattern created Rand, Mat & Perrin ta’veren, to shake up the odds and create the one-in-a-million chance for the world to break the cycle.
With regard to Barrett’s speculation on ta’veren, the odds of improbable things increase to create a general environment where the things that need to happen, can. Ta’veren are like pushing on a swing – the more they swing the odds to wild extremes, the easier it is to swing further and further until you come to the greatest improbability of all – a victory over the Dark One.
And as for the changes they wreak in people’s lives, it’s almost all to jolt them into action. Sometimes it’s bad action, because there are lots of Gawyns in the world, but getting everyone moving at least increases the chances that some of those people will step up and effect necessary changes. Like Elaida or the Bornhalds. Without meeting Rand or Perrin, they might have been content to go on their merry way, following orders and doing what they had been doing all their lives. But meeting a wolfbrother disturbs Geoffram and makes him more inclined to push back against the Questioners and eventually challenge the Seanchan. If Dain has not had his certainties and superiority shaken by his repeated encounters with the Emond’s Field gang (every time with a ta’veren present), he never loses his faith in the order he was basically raised in to reveal the news that spurs Galad into action. Much less side with a man challenging the LCC to a duel. And if Elaida never meets Rand, she has less reason to be suspicious of Siuan and bring her down. Maybe if Tallanvor is not the one who arrests Rand and meets Mat, he doesn’t take the actions that save Morgase.
It’s not as cut and dried as “ta’veren make everything happen for their benefit, they can’t get killed and everyone cooperates with them”, rather it increases the chances that they will do a particular thing within their possible choices or courses of action, it seizes on the smallest chance they might decide to do X instead of Y. The Pattern doesn’t simply make ta’veren win all the time, it turns the world into such a flux that improbable occurrences which can lead to victory are much more likely. It sets up plot twists down the road, it doesn’t just randomly have impossible twists come out of nowhere to save them, except for when Mat’s luck is going ridiculously crazy.
And that’s how the Pattern pushes back against the machinations and self-sustaining nature of the Shadow. It destabilizes the structures and institutions that uphold the status quo that is gradually tilting the world in the Shadow’s favor. And that status quo is one of disunity and malaise.
I hadn’t realized the “share body heat to stay warm leading to sex” was a trope at all, but I find it hilarious that it is because it actually happened to me in real life on a Spring Break camping trip when it suddenly decided to drop 25 degrees and snow on the second day.
@@@@@ 19 – I agree, in part, but we’re also talking about three millenia of breakdown. So when you say:
The Dark One’s increasing influence as the Seals weaken is the reason for the exponential collapse of order we see over the course of the series, but he couldn’t do that before they started to give.
I don’t know that this is accurate at all. Why are we led to believe there is an “exponential collapse of order”? By all accounts, any such collapse collapse is due to the actions of people on Team Light. Obviously once the Seals literally start breaking you see more direct influence, but a lot of the perceived break in the social order is due to the fact that four small town yokels begin upending the traditional hierarchies, not because the Shadow is undermining them. A lot is made, especially early on, of Rand’s small-town origins when he deals with nobles who assume he’ll be easily manipulated, and their resentments seem to stem in large part because he is an outsider in more ways than one. As of the Eye of the World, Randland seems to be functioning quite normally in the context of the last several centuries. We’ll see in later books that the decay of civilization is an ongoing process that certain longer-lived groups are tracking with real sorrow.
Rather than lead the world on a common quest, the Tower became obsessed with making sure no one went on a quest they didn’t control. Not that they did all this fully conscious of what they were doing, but the general fear of losing control turned into an institutional mentality with regard to anything new. The structure of the Tower doesn’t help, where the people who make the important decisions are the ones holed up in a literal ivory Tower, isolated from the world
This is a far more interesting point, to me, and I agree in most respects. Given what we know about the Aes Sedai, and the penetration of that organization by the Shadow, it makes a lot of sense that they are actively working to fossilize the status quo in order to maintain their hegemony. After all, weak states rely on outside assistance to maintain primacy over the social order, so allowing stronger nations to come together like the Ten Nations or the pre-Hawkwing order would be detrimental to Aes Sedai political aspirations. One gets the sense, as you seem to, that post-Hawkwing the Tower was so weakened, and then so busy with saving what they could from the wreckage, that they never regained the kind of prestige and power to re-enter the diplomatic stage openly. It also would make sense if they were held partly to blame by the common people for opposing Hawkwing, and thus the disintegration of his empire. So yeah, Tarmon Gai’don aside, the Aes Sedai have a vested interest in stagnation and keeping the social order from progressing, lest more dynamic political models shake off the need for their soft hegemony.
The Seanchan have a deeply dysfunctional, utterly fascinating civilization that seems set up to produce psychotics but also has complete gender equality and enough mobility to guarantee it’s lasted this long.
@22 — Yeah, their culture is just weird when you consider how overall stable and regimented it is (barring minor details like one of the Forsaken creating all sorts of chaos in it). The upper tiers of their society are so full of assassinations and back-stabbing, and anyone can lose prestige for even making the wrong comment to the wrong person (like the unfortunate noblewomen who got on the wrong side of the Seeker in this installment) — or gain it for being in the right place at the right time (Tylee Khirgan becoming of the Blood for being the commanding officer sent against the Shaido and Masema’s faction, allowing her to work with Perrin). In my personal re-read, I’m in The Gathering Storm and Tuon’s POV chapter around midway or a bit before has her noting that she has to handle business very intelligently because General Galgan might decide to “remove” her and become Emperor if he doesn’t deem her worthy of following.
It’s this weird combination of people being super-ambitious and aggressively trying to see how far they can go, but at the same time, being respectful and subservient to higher-ranked people who’ve shown they’ve earned that status. A “if you let me down, I will destroy you; but if you do good, you’ll be well-rewarded” concept where the general mindset is “I’ll put everything I have into getting that reward, then!” without the paranoia and resentment you’d expect to see from people put into those sink-or-swim situations — just a sort of calm professionalism about things where it seems like everyone is really competent because if they weren’t, they’d have been “removed” from their position one way or the other.
@22 – it’s interesting in a way that it shows how egalatarianism alone isn’t enough to create a truly just/ethical society. I certainly think it’s a critical element of it (I’m not arguing for some kind of secret message against it, heh), but it takes more than that.
This is the only time we visit the Seanchan continent. I wish it wasn’t. I don’t love what we’ve seen of Seanchan high society, but it’s an interestingly vast and varied land, which I expect has given rise to some cultural variation. Not to mention its native flora and fauna.
I wonder what this noblewoman, who had been to Falme, was doing in this random forested spot. I presume it’s in the southern hemisphere, given its wintry conditions while the Westlands are in summer.
So now Rand knows that some sul’dam can channel. But he thinks they were a lucky few who evaded the people searching for damane. He knows the great secret, but misinterprets its meaning.
Poor Rand, feeling a need to apologize for messing up probability. I thought I had it bad in the self-shaming department. Among other things, I feel vaguely guilty about embarrassing, annoying, or otherwise unfortunate things that happen to people in my vicinity. Rand might actually be at fault for anything bad in his vicinity, especially if it’s improbable. (And when bad things happen as a definite result of his actions, he really feels guilty.)
He had never imagined that her legs were so long. What? He knows how tall she is. And didn’t he ever see her in cadin’sor?
If he ever saw [Min] again, she would run a hundred miles to get away from the Dragon Reborn. No she won’t.
If they did not freeze to death, there was always the big cat whose tracks he had seen. Where there was one, there must be more. What? Most cat species in our modern world are territorial and solitary.
“Egwene has told me of Healing, but she knows little, and I less.” Elayne can’t Heal either. So the only Supergirl who’s any good at it is Nynaeve, who’s prodigiously good at it.
AeronaGreenjoy@25:
Without becoming crass…my wife wore jeans almost exclusively while we were dating. Seeing her bare legs without those jeans for the first time was a radically different experience, and I remember thinking a similar thing—and not because I had read this book! It’s just not something you really ponder until you are in the moment. She is 4 inches shorter than me, but her inseam is two inches longer than mine. I never noticed before that moment.
@25, 26 – I remember being more thrown by the description of her being surprisingly pale under her clothes. My mind just naturally put Aiel as dark-skinned, despite the oddity of red and blonde hair colors. It wasn’t until later in my fandom that I found out that RJ wrote them as desert Irishmen. Then my mental image started to change.
@AeronaGreenjoy (25):
Yes, either they’re on the southern hemisphere, or the weather in Seanchan is much worse messed up than it ever gets in the Westlands.
I think Rand also gets the compass points wrong. The sun can’t possibly rise over Seanchan a few hours before it rises over Cairhien. It must be setting. There’s also the fact that Rand can see well enough to follow Aviendha through the storm. Winter nights are dark in an age without electric light. With a cloud cover blocking any moonlight, and the air thick with snow, Rand shouldn’t be able to see anything at all if it were night. There must be some daylight, though dim because it’s a winter afternoon, and made even dimmer by thick clouds. A few hours later the sun is setting somewhere in the west to northwest. That places them on the western coast of southern Seanchan.
@28:
That’s not really something you can mess up. You’ve only had to see one sunrise and one sunset in your life to tell the difference. It’s not just which side of the sky it happens on. If the world map in the Big Book of Bad Art is accurate, the Seanchan continent sits almost on top of Shara…but Shara is a big place. It depends on what you want to call “a few”. The West Coast of Seanchan is closer to Cairhien than the East Coast of Seanchan is, by a lot, even if the map is wrong (there’s a whole post on this website about that Map, and the dimensions of the globe Rand is on).
The sun would likely rise in Seanchan less than ten hours and more than 5 hours before it rises in Cairhien… but, if they were using our time zones, the sun would be rising on the previous day in Seanchan a few hours before it rises on the next day in Cairhien. Seanchan is that far West.
There’s a whole discussion in the fandom about what is west of Seanchan (and east of Shara) that made the Seanchan decide to sail eastward to the Westlands, when the Westlands are much closer if you sail west.
The high northern latitudes of the Seanchan continent are largely filled by the Lesser Blight snd the Mountains of Dhoom, so the southern hemisphere seems more likely. But yeah, we don’t appear to know much about the climate zones on that weird set of peninsulas. (I’m going by the WoT Wiki, lacking reference books.)
@anthony Pero (29):
Asmodean says two hours. The time it takes to walk back to the portal should be added to that. How long could it take to carry somebody one or two miles through deep snow? (And how long can Rand’s arms hold such a burden?) Maybe one or two hours, so three to four hours in total. That would mean 45° to 60° difference in longitude near an equinox, but somewhat more to account for the difference between northern summer and southern winter.
The only map I’ve seen that is useful for this discussion is this one:
If the squares on that map are 15° wide, then the map covers nearly the whole world and the Morenal Ocean is rather narrow. (If the squares are also 15° high, then the Land of Madmen extends all the way to the south pole and the icecaps are infinitesimal.) In that case the map shows the eastern coast of southern Seanchan 180° west (or east) of Cairhien, so the sun will rise there around the time when is sets in Cairhien, and four to five hours later on the western coast. They could more plausibly see a sunrise from the eastern coast of Shara, 60° to 70° east of Cairhien – if it were summer and there were no Seanchan people there.
If the squares are instead 12° by 12°, then the icecaps are about as large as ours, some 78° of longitude are omitted, and the Morenal Ocean is almost as wide as the Aryth Ocean. In that case southern Seanchan spans from 150° to 210° west (or east) of Cairhien. Then they could maybe see a sunset from the eastern coast, but not from the western coast, and certainly no sunrise. The map doesn’t agree with these chapters either way.
That doesn’t help if you can’t point me to that post.
@31:
Sure, I’ll do your Googling for you. You’re welcome: https://www.tor.com/2015/08/07/why-did-seanchan-invade-randland-from-the-wrong-direction/
There’s also this post to help you get your bearings on the world’s scale: https://atlasoficeandfireblog.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/mapping-the-wheel-of-time/
When Rand exits the igloo he made, it is already daylight. Dawn has already happened. I’m going from memory here, as I don’t have copies of the books to hand, but isn’t the text unclear how long ago that was? Recently, it would appear, but that could be an hour or three, depending how far south they are. I would guess the journey to be more like 2 hours to 4 hours back, based on the narrative. He didn’t carry her the whole way, only when the drifts were deep enough. That could have been 30 minutes to an hour for all we know, it could have been a quarter of the trip, half the trip, or a tenth of the trip. We don’t have enough information to speculate exactly how long the trip was. We don’t have enough information to say if dawn had been three hours earlier or 5 hours earlier by the time they got back to the gate. Or even later. In my opinion.
The math has been done, and it would appear that, if that world has the same dimensions as our planet (it should, obviously), then at the equator, the Seanchan East Coast sits less than 1/4 of the width of the world from the longitude line of the Spine of the World near Cairhien. So, that means down should be roughly 8 hours difference. Give or take an hour depending on the latitudes we are talking about. But there’s no reason to assume, at this stage, that the weather is following a reasonable pattern in Randland. The Dark One has already tampered with the weather in the Westlands, which will screw up weather globally. There’s no reason to assume they are even IN the Southern Hemisphere of Seanchan, just because of the storm. Or that they are any further south than Cairhien is north. They could literally be anywhere on that east coast, given that the DO is screwing with the weather so blatantly over a large sub-continent. We have no idea what the ramifications of that might be. Which means, for the sake of figuring out if this was some sort of gaffe on RJs part, we have to assume the lesser of those figures. So, let’s call it 7:15 between sunrises.
Asmodean says two hours until sunrise in Cairhien. That leaves 5h 15m between a sunrise that happened at some point prior to Rand cutting a hole in the igloo, and Rand jumping through the gateway. We also don’t know how long Rand spent trying to get the collars off of the damane. That could have been 10 minutes, or even an hour. The narrative makes it seem short, but that doesn’t mean it was, just that boring time was excised to keep the narrative tension up.
Maybe it was a gaffe, but I don’t think we have enough evidence to build a case that it was. It’s close enough (and the time spent in Seanchan fudged enough) that what the author says happened very well could have happened.
@anthony Pero (32):
If I had tried to guess some keywords to search for, then I wouldn’t have known whether what I found was what you referred to. To prevent confusion it actually is much better that you do the searching, verify that you’ve found what you were looking for, and then tell me either the URL or the exact title.
I agree with most of the comments on that article, including yours: The article tries to measure the width of continents and oceans in leagues and miles along the latitudes. It practically treats the planet as cylindrical. Such iffy math can’t be expected to give accurate results.
Anyway, in the end the article makes only a small adjustment to the map. It still has southeastern Seanchan as pretty much the antipode of Cairhien. That actually makes sense by the way. Aviendha panicks, says that she must get as far away from Rand as she can, and opens a gateway. The antipode is as far away as she can get and still be able to breathe. But then it would be impossible to see a sunrise. Sunrise at any point is always sunset at the antipode of that point (not exactly but close enough for this discussion).
Rand sees less than half of the sun above the horizon.
How did you get 1/4 to be 8 hours? Are you counting a day as 32 hours?
Nah, it’s pretty clear that that interaction doesn’t take many minutes.
Here’s the best I can do: The map shows two large bays in the southern coast of Seanchan. Let’s put Rand and Aviendha on the western shore of the westmost of those bays, and make the bay wide enough that they can’t see the opposite shore. The peninsula is formed by a mountain range, which is consistent with the mountains Rand sees to the west. Let’s also make the Morenal Ocean as narrow as the Mediterranean Sea (rotated 90°). That makes the difference in longitude about 120°. At an equinox that would make the sunrise eight hours earlier. Factoring in the seasons we can maybe get that down to six hours. That also makes the night in Cairhien ten hours long, dusk and dawn included, meaning that when they exit the igloo it has only been four hours since the sunset in Cairhien.
It’s already night when the Cairhienein and Tairen soldiers meet Rand. It’s late enough that Rand hopes that Moiraine has given up and gone to bed. Then Rand needs time to talk to the soldiers and walk to the house he has claimed. I’d say it’s at the very least two hours after sunset by the time Rand opens his bedroom door. If the chase takes half an hour, then that leaves an hour and a half for the time spent in the igloo. That’s much less than Rand thinks, and also a very short time for the weather to change so drastically. If Asmodean’s estimate is a bit off, and it’s as much as three hours before sunrise when they get back, then the hike back to the portal needs to take three hours, which is a rather long time to be trudging through snow without proper winter clothes. Make the hike longer, and the chase needs to be correspondingly longer, which further decreases the time in the igloo.
All of that is quite a stretch, but that’s the best I can get the map to support. It also requires Rand to have saidin-powered radar vision to be able to follow Aviendha through the blizzard at night.
Going over the chapter again, I noticed a detail I had managed to miss before: The seeker says that it was night when a “marath’damane” channeled. That kills the sunset hypothesis. The sunrise really is a sunrise, there are mountains to the west and at least tens of kilometers of water to the east, and Rand can see in total darkness. I maintain that it’s difficult to reconcile the timing with the geography.
I’ll also note that Rand sees a white fox, clearly adapted to snow, which indicates that snow is normal in this region. It’s not an unnatural snowstorm in the tropics.
@@@@@ 33 – It is made relatively clear that while it is not a process of straight line decay, and that humanity as a whole and more specifically certain polities wax and wane, the long term trend is for civilization to regress. Before the Trolloc Wars, humanity had to recover from the Breaking and then re-establish diplomatic and culture ties. I’ve always read it as humanity only coming into it’s own and “almost recapturing the glories of a lost Age” well towards the end. Likewise, after a brief period of instability humanity began to recover a bit from the Trolloc Wars, but like the tides going out, the high water mark prior to Hawkwing was substantially below what had come before. You see it was the Aes Sedai as well, who are a bit of a proxy for humanity as a whole – Talents are rarer, numbers are gradually decreasing, the power of those that are found is less and less every year, etc.
Yeah, polities fight. Not much to see there. Tarabon and Arad Doman were engaging in what sounds like the kind of desultory recurrent fighting that plagued Andor/Cairhien and Tear/Illian, the kind where small scale engagements and crises rarely lead to a significant change in the status quo. Rand’s arrival precipated a slide from a decentralized monarchy in both nations, into full on civil war and failed state status in Tarabon, and something not far from it in Arad Doman. Saying the two were fighting and not understanding the massive paradigm shift that the entry of the Dragonsworn causes is very disingenuous. River rapids may be dangerous for a boater who isn’t prepared to deal with it, but it’s a far cry from a dam breaking and flooding an entire valley.
I mean, sure… but the King was murdered, along with some of the other most powerful nobles. Not that this is directly Rand’s fault, but that doesn’t prove that Cairhien is “unstable” so much as it exposes a fundamental flaw of monarchies and the chance of a disputed succession. Since almost all post-Breaking polities we know of are at least nominally monarchical, that doesn’t set Rand apart.
I do not agree, at all. We’re told in the strongest possible terms that the chaos that embraces Tarabon and Altara, at least, are due to people who are least putatively support Rand and are sincere in doing so. Masema attracts so many followers because Rand’s arrival is an event of eschatological importance. There are real echoes of the “take no thought for the morrow” in Matthew 6:34, where people are abandoning home and family in order to follow a prophet at the end of days. Yes, the Shadow’s insidious influence makes Rand’s efforts in various places different. But look at Tear – his strongest supporters are Darkfriends, and some of his most vocal early opponents are people genuinely opposed to his reform efforts and his decision to upend the traditional political struggles (whether that’s more rights for commoners or taking the Crown). That is Rand upsetting the political order, not the Shadow.
From what we know of the years pre-Hawkwing, these kinds of political squabbles were also common. This isn’t new – the hearts of men change but little and all that.
@37: If you’re going to draw parallels with current events/politics, it’s important to be very careful about the wording; avoid making blanket statements that can be taken out of context and potentially derail the thread. As always, let’s keep the focus on the books.
(Updated: @37, not 36–sorry!)