Reading The Wheel of Time: Tarabon Is Secure as Seandar in <i>Knife of Dreams</i> (Part 2)

This week in Reading The Wheel of Time we’re continuing on through the Prologue of Knife of Dreams, covering the section with Ituralde’s attack on the Seanchan camp and Suroth’s section, in which she learns about said attack, stresses over Tuon’s disappearance, and has a very interesting visit from Semirhage.

Deep in the heart of Tarabon, Rodel Ituralde waits with a force of Domani and Taraboners, considering the town of Serana through a spyglass. Next to the town a Seanchan supply camp has been erected. Ituralde considers that he himself would never have put the camp so close to a village; fire could easily spread from one to the other, and the soldiers guarding the camp would have easy and quick access to the ale and wine in the village. However, he admires the Seanchan efficiency in keeping their soldiers supplied.

Most of the soldiers are Taraboners in stripe-painted armor, and Ituralde had to change his plans the day before when more arrived.

Exactly as arranged, Tornay Lanasiet, one of the Dragonsworn, leads two hundred mounted men out of the trees, pretending to be an attacking group of raiders. They feign disarray, giving the soldiers in the camp time to gather their defenses and ride out to meet them. Lanasiet doesn’t hold his forces back quite as Ituralde ordered, but it is enough to lure the Seanchan forces out to meet what appears to be a disorganized, easily defeated foe. When they come into range, Ituralde’s men loose their arrows, aiming carefully to take out the sul’dam and damane on the first volley; Ituralde feels a little guilty about this, but he knows that the damane is by far the most dangerous person on the field. After more volleys of arrows strike into the Seanchan-sworn Taraboner forces, the line breaks and men turn their mounts to flee, taking them out of bow range.

Despite previously-issued orders, Lanasiet and his men ride after the fleeing soldiers. Ituralde doubts he’ll ever see the man again, but he never really expected the Taraboners to return to Arad Doman with them, in any case. They head down to burn the Seanchan stores, and Ituralde considers the other blows that will be struck at the same time against other Seanchan camps and other Seanchan forces all across Tarabon.

Of course, they might see the trap, but Ituralde has another plan in that case, and another behind that. He always looks ahead, and is confident that his plans will work, unless the Dragon himself appears in front of him.

In Ebou Dar, Suroth is spending yet another sleepless night worrying about Tuon’s disappearance. The fact that the Atha’an Miere escaped from the damane kennels the same night that Tylin was murdered suggests to Suroth that Tuon was probably also killed—and Suroth thinks it would have had to have been one of the Seanchan who murdered her, since no one else knew she was anything more than a Seanchan noble woman. Tylin must have been murdered by one of the escaped damane, using the One Power, which means that at least one sul’dam is also a traitor, though Suroth doesn’t believe that Renna or Seta would have done such a thing. She does believe that they ran off with Egeanin, who Suroth can’t connect to the other events. She assumes Egeanin couldn’t handle her new position as one of the Blood.

Before it comes to that, Suroth will kill herself and leave a note explaining that she did so as part of the apology, in hopes of lessening the dishonor to her name. There is, however, a chance that Tuon remains alive, that she organized her own disappearance as some kind of political move. The fact that Tuon’s der’suldam has taken the damane out into the country “for exercise” and that Captain Musenge has taken his men out of the city as well suggests that they are all looking for Tuon, gives Suroth a small sliver of hope. She knows, however, that if Tuon isn’t found soon, Suroth will be pressured by the other members of the Blood to go make that apology.

The door to her room opens and Liandrin slips in. Suroth’s lopar, Almandaragal, stirs, ready to pounce, and Suroth slips her hand under her pillow to find her knife, but when she speaks she startles Liandrin, who begins insisting that she would never harm Suroth. When she eventually reports that she was sent to wake Suroth to receive a message from General Galgan, Suroth is as angered about Liandrin’s delay in reporting it as she is about the way the woman looks her in the eyes and doesn’t behave as a proper da’covale should.

Contemplating that it might be time to have Liandrin collared—she’d have to find a Darkfriend among the sul’dam—Suroth sends Liandrin to present herself for a beating and goes out to meet the messenger from Galgan. But the messenger tells her that Galgan wishes to communicate the information directly, and so she goes to where Galgan and the other officers are gathered.

Galgan arrived with Tuon and the Return, and Suroth is confident that the man thinks of himself as higher-ranking than her, although in fact she, as commander of the Forerunners, has the higher rank.

After a formal greeting, Galgan informs her of reports that have been coming in for the last few hours. Supply camps and supply trains throughout Tarabon are being attacked and burned, outposts have been overrun and patrols have disappeared, and there have even been a few attacks against Seanchan settlers, though the focus is on destroying supplies and only a few have been killed. The message that the Seanchan must leave Tarabon has been the same everywhere. The attacks have apparently been organized by a Domani general named Rodel Ituralde, who is said to be the greatest general on this side of the ocean.

Though Galgan seems composed and not overly concerned, Suroth is furious at the man’s apparent admiration for Ituralde, and directs that anger into demanding Ituralde’s head. She also insists that nine in every ten raken be sent into Tarabon. Galgan says he has no objections, angering Suroth even further by sounding like he is agreeing to a suggestion rather than receiving an order. She insists that a message be sent to Lieutenant-General Turan stating that he is to send Suroth Ituralde’s head “if he has to hound the man across Arad Doman and into the Blight.” Galgan remarks that Turan sometimes needs a fire set under him, and agrees to send the message.

Suroth regrets displaying anger, and she’s so infuriated by Galgan’s attitude that she has to leave the room. Back in her own chambers she is surprised by the sudden appearance of Semirhage, wreathed in fire. Suroth drops to her face and kisses the carpet, declaring that she lives to serve and obey, but Semirhage orders her to look up, declaring that she dislikes the way Seanchan don’t meet her eyes, as if they’re hiding something. Suroth looks up to Semirhage’s mouth, and hopes that will be enough.

The Forsaken tells Suroth that she has killed the Empress and the Imperial family, as well as half the Imperial Court, that Seandar is in the hands of looters, and that at least fifty nobles are contending for the Throne. She tells Suroth that she can be the new Empress, if she can kill Tuon. It takes Suroth a moment to get her mind around the fact that anyone, even one of the Chosen, could do such a thing to the Imperial family, but eventually she overcomes her fear, and starts making plans about how she can find Tuon before anyone else, and how to have her killed.

I love that when Najirah reports that there’s news from Tarabon, Suroth’s internal reaction is to wonder what could possibly be so important, since “Tarabon [is] as secure as Seandar.” This is a hilarious bit of foreshadowing: She’s wrong about Tarabon being secure, but as it turns out, she’s even more wrong about Seandar being secure.

In the last post for Crossroads of Twilight, I theorized that Semirhage was the Forsaken behind the fake Tuon that Rand is going to have to meet, since Semirhage was the only Forsaken we haven’t seen much of yet. I’ll be interested to see if she disguises herself as Tuon or sends someone else to attempt to capture Rand for her; she probably won’t want him killed, given her reference to the Dark One’s order not to kill Rand, and to “let the Lord of Chaos rule,” which she refers to in her conversation with Suroth. She could send some other agent of the Dark to do whatever it is she wants done, of course, but she isn’t Moghedien, and after taking a direct hand in assassinating the entire ruling order of the Seanchan Empire, I feel like she might be ready to do more hands-on work. (And, to be fair, it would be the most narratively interesting and dramatic for the reader if we got to have that little bit of dramatic irony and to watch Rand have an encounter with a disguised Forsaken. Who knows, maybe he’ll figure it out.)

We know that the Dark One ordered the Forsaken not to kill Rand, and to instead spread as much chaos as possible and basically frame Rand for it. The Dragon Reborn is called the Lord of Chaos in the Prophecies, probably because of all the changes he is to bring to the world, so it makes sense that people would easily believe he was responsible for things like Morgase’s “death,” the actions of the Dragonsworn and renegade Aiel, etc. But it’s interesting that all these incidents are actually caused by agents of the Dark, given that the Dark One himself is chaos in a way no one who is part of the Pattern could ever be. He is the antithesis to creation, after all, the opposite of the natural order, chaos in the sense of the destruction of everything. What Rand does might seem like chaos to human beings, might seem like destruction, but it is still part of the Pattern, an agent of the Pattern, and the chaos and destruction he brings is only transformation and reorder, when viewed from a macro perspective.

I’m not sure where, exactly, I’m going with this, but it’s interesting to muse on after what has happened in Seanchan. I wonder if there’s more to Semirhage’s actions than the edict to cause chaos; after all, what the Forsaken want more than anything is power and control over others, and they’re as focused on that goal over the Dark One’s edicts as they feel they can get away with. Semirhage can have little control over anything that happens in Seanchan when it is in the midst of a civil war between over fifty noble houses. That might be great for the Dark One’s plans to destabilize the world before Tarmon Gai’don but it doesn’t give Semirhage any power she can leverage against the forces of Light, or against the other Forsaken.

The traditional Forsaken move is to take over leadership of a nation, destabilizing it where it suits them but also shoring up their own power, either posing as that nation’s ruler or finding a place at the current ruler’s right hand. Perhaps Semirhage tried this, first, but found it difficult to control the Empress; I’d buy that Tuon’s mother is every bit as tough and canny as Tuon herself, and even Compulsion has its limits, as we saw with Morgase. Perhaps she decided to take out that entire Hawkwing bloodline and find someone she can control more easily.

If that’s true, however, I wonder if she cares more than she wants to let on about having Suroth, rather than Tuon, become the new Empress. Everything I know about Tuon says that she will be difficult for even a Forsaken to control, whereas Suroth has sworn to obey the Dark One and all those members of the Dark who rank above her. With Suroth in charge of the Seanchan forces, all Semirhage would have to do is issue orders orders directly to Suroth. With Tuon, she’d still be trying to manipulate and influence from the shadows, and would probably still be relying on Suroth to try to direct the new Empress in ways the Shadow wished her to be directed. So it would absolutely make sense if Semirhage wanted Suroth to think that she didn’t care if it was Suroth or Tuon who took the throne, when in fact she would much prefer Suroth to be the new Empress. In addition to the fact that Semirhage would never reveal even the slightest vulnerability to Suroth, Suroth will now be incredibly motivated to find and kill Tuon, since Semirhage apparently won’t be bothered. If Semirhage really wants Tuon dead but doesn’t know where she is, it would make sense to motivate Suroth as strongly as possible.

It’s fascinating to me to consider how the Pattern is protecting Tuon here, and it makes me wonder again about that dolphin she saw and interpreted as an omen to keep her veil on. Every part of the incident, from the event that caused her to don the veil (her poor reaction to a damane telling her about her future with Mat) and her arrival under the veil, plus her foreknowledge of Mat, all led to Tuon being missing at the point when Semirhage murdered the rest of her family, and I really do think it likely that Tuon would have been killed too, if Semirhage could have found her. The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, but I think we might also say that the Pattern works in mysterious, and fascinating, ways.

There’s also something darkly funny about the idea of the Seanchan Empress having such absolute control over her own continent, then sending a powerful force overseas to reclaim lands that were once ruled by her (supposed) ancestor, only to be assassinated and have her own lands fall into the same chaos that erupted after the death of Artur Hawkwing. It’s not quite ironic, since there was a Forsaken involved, but then, there were probably Darkfriends involved in Hawkwing’s downfall, too. So maybe it is ironic? Or at least it’s very symmetrical.

But let’s talk about Suroth for a moment.

She’s not the most interesting character, really, but I have been really curious to learn more about her because I want to know what it’s like to be a Darkfriend from Seanchan. Their culture is so rigid, not just in social order but also in its belief system. The hierarchical society is more than just a class structure; it’s a way of thinking about existence that includes a deep sense of obligation, honor, and the correct way for human beings to understand their place in the world. The Empress and her family are viewed almost as being more than human, something holy to be worshipped, while on the other end of the spectrum, some categories of people are property, practically objects or animals. When Suroth learns of the death of the Empress and her family, she reflects that assassination isn’t unheard of among members of the Imperial family, but the idea of anyone else being able to touch them in such a way, even the Chosen, is horrifying to the point of almost being unthinkable.

Which is interesting considering that she’s, you know, a Darkfriend.

I’d sort of been assuming that those Seanchan who turned to the Dark probably didn’t believe in much of the Seanchan brainwashing. There are always people in any society that don’t believe what the majority believes. There have always been atheists in Christian cultures, even when that religion was very dominant. There have always been people who didn’t believe that their monarchs were deities or were put in those positions by a god or gods. I am sure there are Seanchan (not all Darkfriends, either) who don’t feel the same worshipfulness towards the Imperial family, who might even wish that someday the system would change, though of course they would keep those opinions very much to themselves. We saw how easily Egeanin was affected by learning the truth about the sul’dam and by making friends with Aes Sedai. It didn’t take much to change her worldview about channelers; although some cultural impressions remain—like her discomfort at the idea of marrying someone who was once property—for the most part, it seems to have been pretty easy for her to shed her Seanchan identity.

Although her reaction to Tuon, her acceptance of being symbolically demoted, and her fear of being seen without the wig on does seem to be more than just a reasonable fear of consequences, which is important to note. 

(The new name wouldn’t have been symbolic for Tuon, of course, but if Egeanin never goes back to Seanchan-controlled territory, it doesn’t matter in any functional manner).

In any case, Suroth’s attitude seems about the same as Egenain’s. She is horrified at the idea of the Imperial Family being touched by outsiders, but there doesn’t seem to be that much actual loyalty, or love, for the Empress or for Tuon. Suroth’s concern is entirely for her own skin, and her investment in Seanchan cultural norms and demands is entirely selfish as well. She wants power, prestige, and to live forever, just like every other Darkfriend we’ve met, save Ingtar. 

I felt pretty judgy of Suroth and her constant meltdowns in this section. It’s not really surprising that she would have a lot of anger and little self control. I kind of expect that from the sort of mid-tier Darkfriends like her—Liandrin fits this category as well, come to think of it. She’s one of those Darkfriends who I feel doesn’t really understand the commitment she’s made, and what it really means to swear allegiance to the Dark. And the only reason we’re given for her swearing is that she wants to be immortal, though we can infer the usual ambition given her reaction to learning that she could be Empress. In any case, it doesn’t take her long to go from being horrified at even the idea of speaking the words “kill the empress” aloud to mulling over exactly what it would take to find and execute Tuon. But while I can certainly understand why someone would be terrified of the apology Suroth knows she will be required to make if she messes up—most of existence in Seanchan seems to be fear of messing up and getting tortured, sold into slavery, or some combination of the two—I kind of think someone who would ally themselves with the Dark One, who is willing to commit the kind of atrocities asked of the Friends of the Dark, ought to have more of a backbone.

Speaking of backbone, there is a lot of justice in Liandrin’s fate in being made da’covale and possibly having a collar in her future, since she was the one who tricked Elayne, Nynaeve, and Egwene out of the tower and gave them to Suroth to be collared, way back in The Great Hunt. She’s also someone who was full of bluster and self-importance and a belief that she was better than everyone else, but who seems to have little to back it up.

Not that I blame her for what a mess she has become under Suroth’s thumb—the Seanchan are very specific about how they condition and break their slaves. And of course we are seeing her from someone else’s perspective—the perspective of someone who hates her—which isn’t going to make her look good to the reader. But I somehow doubt she still has the kind of backbone we’ll see from Galina next week, just knowing what I know about Liandrin. And although she’s a pretty pathetic character, it’s not much fun to see anyone be treated like this, just as it is unpleasant to see Galina enslaved, or Moghedien put under the control of the cour’souvra. Some things are too dark, too dehumanizing, even for the bad guys who deserve it.

I think that, too, shows a theme that Jordan is exploring throughout the series. We see the “good guys” do terrible things sometimes, choose dark paths and heavy deeds because they feel they have no choice, or because the ends justify the means. We see karma come for some of the “bad guys” and realize that it’s not always as satisfying to see as we might have thought. We see that humanity has much darkness in it, before we even get to Dark with a capital D.

I did enjoy Suroth’s failed attempts to figure out how everything happened the night the Atha’an Miere escaped and Tuon disappeared. The fact that everyone thinks Tylin was murdered by the One Power makes sense, since her death was supernatural in cause. I can’t imagine Beslan is doing well—it’s mentioned in Suroth’s section that he is king now, and I wonder if that has altered his perspective when it comes to his desire to fight the Seanchan. I could see him feeling the same responsibilities to keep his people safe, at any cost, that his mother does. I could also see his passion to free Ebou Dar being bolstered by the horror of his mother’s death and the fact that he is now responsible for leading his people.

But yeah, Suroth has all the information but none of the context to make sense of what happened the night Tuon disappeared, and because she’s such an awful darkfriend of a person, it’s fun to watch her try to logic her way through events and get nowhere. The idea that only a sul’dam could have freed the damane makes sense, of course: Not only is it difficult for anyone else to gain access to the kennels, but the secret of how the a’dam opens and closes would be closely guarded by all the sul’dam, and I doubt anyone outside their group knows how they work. Possibly a very few high ranking members of the Blood might have the authority to order a sul’dam to show them, but I can’t really imagine that not being a horrible cultural faux-pas for anyone other than maybe a member of the royal family. (Tuon, since she has actually trained damane, probably knows, of course.)  In any case, no one around Suroth would be likely to know, and she can’t possible be expected to surmise that some outsider got their hands on an a’dam to study, snuck into the kennels with Egeanin, Renna, and Seta, and was struck by a sudden idea to also free Atha’an Miere while he was up there freeing Aes Sedai.

She is right about Renna and Seta, of course. They only helped with the plot to free damane because Egeanin was blackmailing them, and Suroth has no reason to suspect anyone else other than her knows about Renna and Seta’s secret, especially now that Alwhin is dead. By the way, it is wild to me that Liandrin took it upon herself to murder Alwhin just because Suroth complained about her sometimes. Serves Suroth right to have Questioners all up in her business now; I guess “I murdered someone to gain your favor” is a very Darkfriend move, but wow.

As I said last week, Rodel Ituralde has my favorite name in all of The Wheel of Time. Jordan is really good at writing his generals. He has a very strong sense of who they are and how they think, which makes for a really atmospheric read whenever one of them is doing his strategy thing. I have to admit, I’m always a little bit of a sucker for guerrilla warfare in fiction because it’s usually used by the good guys and against terrible odds. It also brings up my childhood love of Robin Hood—an outlaw living in the woods isn’t the same as a general leading raids and burning supply camps aren’t the same thing in function, but in thematic execution in a story, it a very similar vibe.

Perhaps he and Galgan will develop some kind of long distance rivalry, each admiring the skill and knowledge of his foe while growing more and more frustrated with his own ability to beat the other. Maybe someday, after Rand has united all the lands in preparation for Tarmon Gai’don, they’ll meet on the battlefield, not as rivals but as allies. Maybe they’ll kiss.

Sorry. That got away from me a bit.

What I’m saying is I love the way Jordan writes his generals. I also think that Ituralde won’t need his backup plans now that Suroth has given the order for Turan to chase him back into Arad Doman and as far as he needs to to bring Suroth his head.

She really shouldn’t have let her anger get the best of her.

Next week is Aes Sedai business. We’ll head to the White Tower first to catch up with Pevara, and then with Alviarin, and then we’ll see Perrin, Berelain, and the Asha’man through Galina’s eyes. Until then, I leave you with my final thought, which is that we finally got to see a lopar! I’ve been wondering about them since the mention of the one Tuon had as a child, and nothing about Suroth’s Almandaragal (Not al’sandragoran, which is how my ears first heard it when listening to the audiobook) has dispelled the way, in my mind, a lopar is exactly like the pet some Star Trek Vulcans have. Those beasts were called shelats, and while Spock’s mother compared his childhood pet to a teddy bear, they’re actually quite large and fearsome, and I think they were probably very much like the lopars of the Seanchan world.

That’s my headcanon, anyway. I hope everyone is having a good week, and I’ll see you soon for some interesting Aes Sedai action.