This Week in Reading The Wheel of Time, we are covering Chapters One and Two of The Path of Daggers. These are from Aviendha’s perspective, which is nice because we get fewer chapters from her than we do from Nynaeve or Elayne. Min and Aviendha are central characters in the story, but slightly less main characters than Elayne and the Two Rivers folks. Aviendha is so interesting as a character, too, and she is undergoing a lot of changes in short order, rather like the Two Rivers crew did in the first few books.
Chapter One opens as all chapters open, with a wind that blows across the island of Tremalking, home of the Amayar, a peaceful people who follow the Way of the Water. The wind blows east across the sea to Ebou Dar, where Aviendha walks the halls of the Tarasin Palace feeling unaccountably anxious. She tells herself that it is a day for imagination and nerves, but can’t shake the sensation that someone wants to kill her. She is also worried about Olver, although she can’t figure out why she’d be troubled over the fate of a treekiller. She is also nervous about making the weave for gateway.
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She listens to Nynaeve upbraid Lan for promising to take care of her, and to Lan’s quiet response that protecting Nynaeve is both his duty to her as a Warder and his heart’s desire as a husband. Aviendha notices how different Nynaeve has become since she married Lan, only one day ago, and wonders how women manage being married to men.
Rounding a corner, Aviendha almost crashes into Teslyn Baradon. Teslyn informs Nyenave and Elayne that “whatever mischief” they are up to, she and Joline won’t interfere or tell Elaida about it. She tells them that they will pay dearly for some of the other things that they have been doing, but that it can wait.
Elayne responds by telling Teslyn that what they are doing is none of Teslyn’s business, and that she has no right to interfere with any of their doings. Teslyn starts to leave, but Nynaeve pulls her back to warn her about the Black Ajah being in the city, as well as Moghedien and the gholam. Teslyn is dismissive, telling them that they will learn, when they are back in the Tower wearing white, not to waste time with fantasies or bother sisters with them. Elayne and Nynaeve are incensed, though curious about Teslyn’s motives in not informing Elaida about them.
In the stableyard they find the Windfinders, the Aes Sedai, and the Kin. There’s obvious tension between the three groups. The Kin are also shielding Ispan, who Nynaeve has also drugged heavily. Both the Kin and the Aes Sedai think Ispan should be given to the sisters, while the Windfinders are more concerned with the Bowl of the Winds. A shouted argument breaks out between the three groups and looks ready to explode into a physical fight as well, with women grabbing belt knives and embracing saidar.
It’s Nynaeve who puts a stop to it, shouting at and scolding each group in turn. Aviendha is surprised that works. Elayne tells Aviendha it is time, and Aviendha makes a gateway. Aviendha manages it, but she is dissatisfied with the results.
Elayne could make this weave with only a part of her strength, yet for some reason it required all but a fraction of Aviendha’s. She was sure she could have woven a larger, as large as Elayne could, using the weaves she had made without thought while trying to escape Rand al’Thor what seemed a very long time ago…”
But Aviendha can’t remember the weaves she used, and she is ashamed of that failure. She holds the gateway open as the Kin and the Warders start through, followed by the Aes Sedai. As the Windfinders follow, something makes Aviendha look up towards one of the towers, where she sees the figure of a man silhouetted on a walkway. She tries to tell herself that it is just one of the Palace servants, but she knows that the danger is real and that she’s not imagining it. She gives one of the Windfinders a cryptic message for Elayne and is grateful that a few warders have stayed behind with her to guard the gateway. She draws as much of saidar as she can and wishes that the rest of the party will hurry up.
On the other side of the gateway, Elayne is thinking about how proud she is of Aviendha, her bravery and determination. She stays close to the open gateway, just in case Aviendha needs help, but also to study the Windfinders as they come through. She is measuring their strength against her own, and is pleased to discover that none of them would stand particularly high among the Aes Sedai—except for one young windfinder named Rainyn and two apprentices.
Elayne is a little irked that Nyenave has gone off with Lan instead of staying to help Elayne manage the other women, but she considers how she might feel if Rand were in Lan’s place, mostly likely to die unless she could find a way to save him. And then it occurs to her that Rand is going to die, and there is nothing Elayne can do about it. She finds herself close to tears, suddenly, and has to remind herself of one of Lini’s sayings to refocus on the present.
Once the servants and packhorses start coming through, Elayne embraces saidar and starts sorting through the items recovered from the storehouse. There is a lot of useless junk, but she also begins to find items that almost seem to resonate with the saidar she is holding.
Nynaeve comes by eventually and asks if this is the right moment to do the sorting, while the Windfinders struggle to mount and stay on their horses and the Kin and Aes Sedai wait impatiently. Elayne remarks that she’d rather find any angreal before Moghedien finds them. Eventually she finds a small amber brooch that, when she carefully channels through it, allows her to handle about twice as much power as Nynaeve can currently handle. She’s excited to have one to study so she can possibly make more.
Vandene comes over, commending her for being careful but suggesting it might be better to wait until she is back in the Tower. Elayne reminds her that she is the only person living who has made a ter’angreal, and that she knows what she is doing. Vandene responds by telling her the story of the last sister who really studied ter’angreal, one who also knew what she was doing and was extremely careful, until one day she was found burned out. The sister never remembered what she had been working with, and no one dared touch any of the ter’angreal in her rooms again. She too, was incredibly careful, and in the end it did her no good.
They are interrupted by a terrified scream from Merilille, but instead of seeing enemies, they turn to see that Aviendha has come through the gateway.
The gateway trembled as Aviendha carefully picked apart the weave that had made it. It shivered and flexed, the edges wavering. The last flows came loose, and instead of winking out, the opening shimmered, the view through it of the courtyard fading away until it evaporated like mist in the sun.
Not to do what Aviendha had just done is one of the first things that Elayne learned as a novice. Vandene calls Aviendha a fool, pointing out that a single slip and anything could have happened, even destroying everything within five hundred miles or more. Aviendha replies that it was necessary, and asks if this is yet another thing Aes Sedai can’t do. The Aes Sedai try to make her promise not to do it again and declare that she should be made a novice or that at least Aviendha should let herself be guided by them. Elayne interrupts to ask why Aviendha did what she did.
Aviendha did not quite include her in the exasperated look she gave the other sisters. “This leaves no residue,” she said patiently. Too patiently. “The residues of a weave this large might be read two days from now.”
The Aes Sedai scoff at this, but Aviendha insists that a few Aiel have the Talent to read the residue left by a weave, and she is one of them. It is entirely possible that at least some of the Forsaken have the ability as well. She tells them about the man she saw watching her, and most of the Aes Sedai dismiss it, saying that it must have been Beslan or a servant. Nynaeve appears to think otherwise, but all she says is that it’s time to get moving.
As they ride, Elayne gently brings up the trouble Aviendha is having with the gateway weave. Aviendha admits to her that she once Travelled to run from a man who she hoped would catch her. She feels great shame in that, in wanting to be caught like a hunted rabbit, and Elayne is empathetic, even as she has to push down her jealousy. Aviendha insists, again, that she knows the watching man wasn’t a servant, and that he frightened her. Elayne promises that they are safe now, and they ride on, thinking that for once they have gained a real advantage against the Shadow.
Moridin watches as the tall young woman disappears through the gateway. He thinks that Sammael was foolish to risk so much for such an uncertain cache, and doubts that they are carrying away anything that would be very useful to him. He’s about to turn away when he sees the gateway seem to flex and tremble, then melt away. He can’t imagine what the woman did to produce such a result,
These barbarous rustics offered too many surprises. A way to Heal being severed, however imperfectly. That was impossible! Except that they had done it. Involuntary rings. Those Warders and the bond they shared with their Aes Sedai. He had known of that for a long, long time, but whenever he thought he had the measure of them, these primitives revealed some new skill, did something that no one in his own Age had dreamed of.
One of the Palace servants reports to him what he has learned of the rumors surrounding the Aes Sedai’s finds. Much of the report is nonsense about jewels and riches, and Moridin’s mind is still caught up with his questions about the gateway. He wonders if the woman had actually unraveled the web, successfully. Suddenly he catches what the servant is saying about a Bowl of the Winds.
Moiridin seizes the True Power and destroys an iron grating with it, thinking of how angry the Dark Lord will be if the women have found a way to influence the weather. Moridin knows how angry the Dark Lord will be if his ability to touch the pattern, fixing the seasons in place, is interfered with. A moment before Moridin hadn’t cared where the women had gone, but now he must know. He decides they would have fled very far, as people who are fleeing always go far. He makes a list of places where he imagines the Aes Sedai would feel safe—he has spies in the White Tower, in Caemlyn, near Rand al’Thor.
Elsewhere, the gholam creeps carefully into a room. It has never met anything that could harm it until that man with the medallion. It peers curiously around the room, but there is only the crushed corpse on the floor and the feel of something that makes it itch. The itch is a little familiar but the gholam can’t remember.
The One Power had been used below, and miles to the north. To follow, or not? The man who had wounded it was not with them; it had made sure of that before leaving the high vantage place. The one who commanded it wanted the man who had wounded it dead perhaps as much as he did the women, but the women were an easier target.
The gholam needs to kill, and it experiences ecstasy when it does. But it also needs to feed, so it settles down to feed on the blood of the corpse.
There’s a bit of a timeline muddle here, but I think Chapter One, at least, takes place a few hours before the end of A Crown of Swords, basically while Mat is out looking for Olver but before the Seanchan show up. Which is very good for all those ladies who can channel! I was wondering, while Mat was getting caught up in the battles, if they had all gotten out before the hubbub began. Thankfully, none of our heroines are going to end up as damane… Teslyn and Joline probably will, though.
I’m so curious about what Teslyn’s deal is. Is it really just her anger at Elaida that motivates her to let Elayne and Nynaeve leave Ebou Dar, even though she clearly thinks they are traitors and should be returned to the Tower, and to novice white, immediately? I can certainly understand why she and Joline are angry, and Elaida has clearly alienated pretty much all of her allies by this point. But it’s one thing for Teslyn and Joline to decide to keep an eye on Nynaeve and Elayne but not let Elaida know about it, and another thing altogether to decide to allow them to leave Ebou Dar—in the company of the Kin and other Salidar Aes Sedai and a bunch of Sea Folk women who can channel, no less—for parts unknown.
Although, now that I’ve written all that out, I can see that there’s a far more obvious explanation for Teslyn’s attitude towards the girls: How exactly are she and Joline going to stop them from going? I believe Joline and Teslyn are the only two representatives of Elaida in Ebou Dar, so they were outnumbered by the Salidar Aes Sedai even before the Kin and the Windfinders were involved. It is a very Aes Sedai move for Teslyn to try to make them think that she and Joline are letting them go intentionally, choosing not to interfere, when the truth is that they know they can’t do anything about it anyway.
Teslyn’s little speech to Nynaeve after Nynaeve tried to warn her about the dangers definitely didn’t endear me to her at all (and once again I am reminded of how many people in this world still don’t know that the Forsaken are loose), but nobody deserves to be made damane. Not even, like, Elaida. Or Liandrin.
Speaking of what people don’t deserve, who just got murdered by the gholam? It seems like it is in Mat’s rooms, so maybe the one servant girl who was looking after Olver? Surely it wasn’t Tylin. The way the narration is written makes me feel like Jordan is hiding the identity of the corpse for a reason, but maybe that’s jumping to conclusions. Maybe the point is just to illustrate how the gholam sees things; the narration doesn’t describe anything about the appearance of the murdered person because the gholam doesn’t note any of that.
I’m not certain whether it was the gholam or Moridin that Aviendha saw up on the walkway, but I think it was the gholam. It makes a reference in its section to being up on a high place, while Moridin seems to be hiding behind a screen—which makes sense, Moridin isn’t going to let himself be seen so carelessly, while the gholam probably doesn’t really care about that sort of thing. But it’s a little ironic, since Aviendha was apparently moved to unpick her weave because she was so scared by the feel she got from the distant watcher. The gholam will be able to track them anyway by feeling saidar, but Moridin won’t know where they went.
And Moridin wants to know. Again, we get that good, good irony of Moridin watching Aviendha hold the gateway, watching Nynaeve and Elayne and their companions leaving, fully capable of stopping them but not caring to—and then only learning after they are gone that he really needs to stop them from using the Bowl. But Aviendha unpicked her weave, so he won’t have any idea of where they went. I’m sure at least some of the Forsaken can read the residue of a weave, though I did find myself wondering if he would need a woman’s help, since this gateway was made with saidar. Either way, he would have been able to follow them if Aviendha hadn’t done what she did. There’s some hubris there on Moridin’s side for sure. He assumed he had nothing to worry about from the primitives and their cache of junk, but his quick thinking once he finds out about the Bowl of Winds proves that he knows what they are capable of. Even if it was unlikely there was anything in the cache, all they needed was one unexpected item that Moridin knew could exist, even if it was unlikely. And he knows that if these women made a circle, they could use the item to great effect.
I love seeing a fantasy version of climate control—it’s a fairly common feature to see in science fiction, but less so in fantasy.
I was also really interested in Moridin’s impressions of the channelers of this Age, and the fact that they have discovered some skills/Talents in weaving that weren’t known even in the Age of Legends. I would never have guessed that folks in Lews Therin’s time couldn’t heal severing. I did imagine that the Aes Sedai/Warder bond wasn’t something that was done in that time, either; instead, I assumed that it was just an unconventional use of linking and would seem weird to Moridin only because of how they used it, not because of the type of weave itself.
I wonder if the ability to safely examine and figure out angreal and ter’angreal would be another skill or Talent that might exist among some of the new channelers of this Age. We don’t really know how it was in the Age of Legends; there were plenty of people who could make these objects of Power, but did they need to carefully label everything so other people knew what they were dealing with? That seems unlikely. It would make much more sense if there were some way of testing or deciphering them that was common knowledge back then. It also makes sense to suggest that humanity’s connection to the One Power would evolve and change over time, and that some abilities might fade while new ones arise. This would have nothing to do with technology, just with the passage of time.
And then there’s the unraveling of the weave, an act which seems to have been viewed the same way in the Age of Legends as it is viewed by the modern Aes Sedai—Moridin isn’t alarmed at having been within sight of an unraveling web only because he’s not afraid of dying. (Of course he’s not, he’ll just be brought back to life again!) And he’s pretty surprised that it was done successfully, as well.
I would be interested to learn more about how this dangerous trick is taught among the Wise Ones. I’m also confused as to when Aviendha had time to learn these sorts of things—I guess she and Egwene were apprentices together for a while, but that time didn’t seem to be very long.
I feel really bad for Aviendha. All the Aiel are struggling with the fact that they are changing, and being changed, by the arrival of the car’a’carn and leaving the Threefold land, but everyone else seems to be taking at least a little stability from the fact that this is prophesied change, and that the best way to handle it is to try to save what they can. The Wise Ones don’t exactly seem happy, but they aren’t fighting the inevitable or feeling guilty about the changes that are coming, at least as far as we’ve seen.
But the change is more personal for Aviendha than for most of the other Aiel, and coming from more directions. Even before Rand came into her life, she was already forced to give up the life of a Maiden, a life she loved and always wanted, even as a child, and to become a Wise One against her will. Basically on the heels of that loss and change came Rand al’Thor, revealed to be the car’a’carn, a man who was prophesied to destroy the Aiel—and a man she learned through a vision in Rhuidean was to be her husband. Even without the guilt she felt over “betraying” Elayne, Aviendha had never wanted to take a husband, and anything as permanent as the connection to Rand could have felt like a betrayal of who she saw herself to be. The whole time I was reading Chapter One, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream she had of Rand as a giant, chasing her as she ran.
It’s interesting, too, to see Aviendha worry so much that she is getting soft while everyone around her is growing harder. Of course, part of the problem with Aviendha is that she has a very specific idea of how one is strong, how one is honorable, and what it means to be a fighter. She uses saidar now, but she doesn’t think of herself as someone who uses it in a fight. Steel is still what she knows and trusts; when she realizes that she is walking arm-in-arm with Nynaeve and Elayne, she is worried about how she would reach a knife if they were suddenly attacked. She doesn’t consider that saidar is always to hand, and more useful in most situations than a knife. I mean, even against a gholam you’re probably better off hurling heavy things at it with the One Power than you are trying to stab it with a blade, especially since then you have to let it get close.
Aviendha doesn’t see it, but really, given all the change she has been through in such a short period of time, she’s actually adapting quite well! I think she should be proud of herself. And I think the way Elayne is proud of her is very lovely.
Change is a very important theme in the last few books, and continues to be in The Path of Daggers. The rulers of the Borderlands see the nations crumbling; the Sea Folk find themselves forced to go inland; the Aes Sedai are forced into alliances and bargains they would never have made before. Aviendha faces intense personal upheaval in addition to the changes made to the very existence of her people. Moridin is flummoxed by unexpected abilities in the inhabitants of a later Age.
Even the gholam is aware of change. The paragraph where it acknowledges existing in one world and then suddenly in another much different one—no passage of time in a stasis box—was actually quite striking, and in a way felt almost like a metatextural comment on what the passage of time feels like for everyone. We don’t mark it while it’s happening, and often, people feel like they have blinked and their whole lives have gone by. Rand’s world is on the brink of some kind of industrialization period as well, it seems, which means that they will see unprecedented quick progress in a technological sense, and probably a social one as well, even outside of the Dragon-delivered changes. The reader can relate to that sense of time speeding up, I think.
Last week I made the comment that Verin might be Black Ajah because she intended to keep Rand alive “until it was time for him to die” but that this might also mean that she, like Rand himself, interpreted the prophecies to mean that Rand had to die at Shayol Ghul during the Last Battle. Now, in Chapter Two, we see that Elayne also believes that Rand is destined to die. I don’t know if that is something he led her to believe when he was on his “I’m bad and dangerous to love” kick, or if it’s a conclusion she came to from reading the Karaethon Cycle herself, but it’s the first time we’ve heard that she was thinking this. I wonder if she has shared any of these thoughts with Min or Aviendha—especially Min, since her visions might possibly give her some insights.
Next week we move on to Chapters Three and Four, in which Elayne tries to manage all the women under her command and contend with politics that don’t end when they reach the farm—a farm that leaves them well within the reach of the gholam, I might add, though it sounds like Moridin’s very much on the wrong track with his search. So much the better—even a gholam is better than that particular Forsaken.
Sylas K Barrett is also interested in learning more about the Amayar and their belief that the current world is only an illusion, one that might be shattered by the coming of the Dragon Reborn. And we also know where the other giant sa’angreal is!
