The Wheel of Time Reread: A Memory of Light, Part 51

And we get at the start of this section the fulfillment of Egwene’s Dream about the crystal just before the meeting at Merrilor, which Leign wondered about. It is indeed a shame it didn’t get to survive as a monument, but then with how battered and fragile the Heights had become thanks to all the balefire it makes sense it couldn’t stay together. And the later destruction made Logain’s sacrifice to do the right thing more meaningful, and got rid of the temptaton of Sakarnen.

Also something I forgot to mention last week: remember how Min saw a white flame around Egwene way back in TEotW? And we all thought it just meant the White Tower? How much you want to bet it actually called forward to this moment and her Flame weave?

I don’t know about anyone else, but I was quite surprised Berelain of all people turned out to be crucial in helping save the day by getting the medallion back to Mat and Lan. Nice bit of subtlety, having Mat wonder about Healed men from Mayene, and Lan going to check for him, to explain how he suddenly has the medallion in his next scene.

The fact Demandred was calling out to everyone to die so Rand could feel their pain makes me wonder just how much the Dark One had passed on through Moridin…since that’s exactly what Rand is going through right now, courtesy of the Dark One’s visions. I also have to laugh at Mat thinking what we all were about Demandred: “Somebody kill him and shut him up already!”

I have to say I admit to being rather ashamed I didn’t guess where things were going with Olver. There really was no other reason to keep showing him than to have him suddenly blow the Horn, but I must have still been deluded by Jordan’s clever misdirection about Mat’s death and his link to the Horn. Or maybe I thought in the upcoming battle Mat or somebody could still come upon Olver and rescue him.

I had to be amused, if in a bitter gallows way, that Loial was the one who was to witness “the fall of the last king of the Malkieri”, since that line seems to parallel to me Treebeard’s line about “the last march of the Ents”…and the Ogier are the WOT equivalent of the Ents. I also remember being rather worried for poor Erith, and very much afraid Loial was going to die too. (If that had happened, I’d have cried as much as I would have for Perrin if he’d died.)

And people are still deriding the amazing skills of Two Rivers bowmen. But I guess in his defense, he’s just a mercenary so would have no way of knowing, and the things they can do are as seemingly impossible in-universe as out.

Detail of note: in Min’s tiny POV, as she is riding toward the battlefield, she sees “bonfires and torches shone in the distance, fireflies illuminating scenes of valor and determination. She watched the lights flicker, the last embers of a fire that would soon be extinguished.” This is not only a sadly beautiful literal fulfillment of her vision of fireflies in the darkness around Rand and the others from way back in TEotW, it makes it come true in an even more meaningful way–it turns out it isn’t just Rand and the others from the Two Rivers, or Thom, or Lan and Moiraine, it’s ALL the forces of the Light coming together to fight the Shadow. Which as we’re about to see when Rand completely tears down the Dark One with his Reason You Suck Speech is exactly why the good guys can win–because they won’t ever give up, and because when the chips are done they finally can unite and fight as one. Awesome.

And of course the most badass awesomeness of all is Lan. I have to give a shout-out to Mandarb rearing and kicking the Sharan lines apart so his master could get to Demandred–between this and Bela it seems someone wanted to show how even the horses of Randland are great heroes. Now all we need is Aldieb to round it off. But then she was never described as much of a fighter. I also love how Lan starts off thinking to himself that he’s doing exactly what he told Rand not to do. It not only makes us worry about whether he’ll suffer the fate everyone else who’s gone up against Demandred has, it shows how desperate and dire things are. And in the end it shows that sometimes, breaking the rules or doing things differently than they are taught in the books is an effective way to win.

I know a lot of people were annoyed with the number of people lining up to try and take Demandred out. And I admit I would have been quite happy with any of the previous combatants winning–Gawyn to redeem himself; Galad because of the dream of him wrapping himself in his own shroud and because it would be truly noble and heroic, showing he really could do the right thing (not to mention a Whitecloak doing it!); Logain because of his prophesied glory. On the other hand Gawyn’s failure and what it does to Egwene is almost inevitable due to the mythological parallel to Sir Gawain at Camlaan, while what Logain’s glory turns out to be is in my opinion just as awesome, emotional, and powerful, albeit of a quieter nature–not the glory of battle, but the glory of redemption, kindness, and morality.

And in the end, it really does make sense the medallion would help the greatest swordsman most, and the fact Lan had been fighting the Shadow for so long, that he has more reason for vengeance than most because of the fall of Malkier, makes his victory here sweeter and all the more fitting. I especially adored his line about coming to kill him rather than to win, and of course the call back to Sheathing the Sword was perfect.

Part of me agrees he should have actually died to make it a true sacrifice and show the Light losing a major male figure to go along with Egwene (and in fact I’m not even sure how he survived other than his sheer willpower and determination–Rand didn’t yet have the power to make things happen just by willing them). I actually thought, despite the timing not working, that him getting up again was because the Horn had summoned him. But her great strength aside, I’m not sure Nynaeve could have survived his death–which is why, despite the foolish danger of Lan’s charge which so many others have pointed out, they didn’t kill him off. That and the readers would have rioted. And, well, if one of the others had killed Demandred, that wouldn’t have left Lan much to do.

In the end I can only say I thought the fight was still badass and awesome, incredibly cathartic…and that him getting to live not only allows for the return of Malkier, but it provides him with happiness and a reward he never had or dreamed of, something the readers would surely want him to have. And having “just a man/One Man” defeat the greatest of the remaining Forsaken (and second only to Rand and Moridin in Power) was a delicious irony indeed. His death would have been acceptable as “what a way to go”, but I’m happy he got to live.

While more subtle, I’d actually suggest the link between Rand and the battle actually is there. It becomes more apparent a little later when his voice is heard on the battlefield at the same time Lan rises again and the Horn is sounded, but the beginning of the link is forged here, or at least made more prominent.

@6 Eyeless: Actually it makes perfect sense to me that Egwene, as in tune with the Pattern and the Power as she was when she created the Flame of Tar Valon, would be able to understand and intuit what it could do. Also keep in mind the weave was meant to counter balefire, something that destroys the Pattern (the work of the Creator, who is good) in such a way that it causes terrible darkness to ooze out and everything to fall into chaos and dissolution. It makes sense that the opposite weave, if it could undo the evil of balefire and the encroaching Shadow it enabled by letting more of the Dark One’s touch into the Pattern, would also have such an effect on any who were made of evil (Shadowspawn) or had totally given themselves to the Shadow (the Forsaken). Not so sure why that applies to the Sharans, unless it was because they had sworn to Demandred… Anyway, remember that not long before Egwene’s final attack on Taim, he had wiped out a huge amount of Aes Sedai with balefire, bringing back the Sharans they’d killed. So there weren’t any Aes Sedai nearby to be blasted and turned to crystal even if they weren’t as vulnerable to it as Taim and the Sharans were (note Egwene thought it would have “much less effect”, not no effect). Also, right before she destroyed Taim, Leilwin told her “the Aes Sedai have broken” implying any who were left had retreated (like Leane).

@9 AndrewHB: The mention of Asmodean is not as random an insertion as it seems. Way back in LoC when we first met Demandred, he didn’t know where Asmodean was or that he had died, a piece of evidence always cited to prove he didn’t kill him. Having Demandred reference him now just proves that, like Rand, he still doesn’t know Asmodean is dead–which I find utterly hilarious, that even in the lead-up to the Last Battle Moridin and the Dark One didn’t bother telling their top general everything. (Though his being so weak in the Power wouldn’t have made much of a threat, so they probably figured, like Jordan himself did, that his death was only a footnote. And if not knowing he was dead still kept Demandred on his toes, so much the better.) But there’s also an in-story reason why he would think of Asmodean. Not only is Demandred desperate at this point (and we know he’s become completely unhinged), but as you yourself noted, he’d be likely to think Lan was someone in disguise, someone from his time period since of course no Third Ager could possibly defeat him. But at this point, other than Lews Therin, there’s no one else left–the only male Forsaken still alive from the Second Age is Moridin, and he’s obviously elsewhere, so short of Lews Therin Asmodean is the only one he could have thought of. And note he does immediately dismiss him as a possibility because “he couldn’t have fought me like this”.

@12 neverspeakaword: There’s a trope for this, it’s called Talking is a Free Action. Obviously its use here broke your willing suspension of disbelief, and it could have been written more smoothly and believably, but the fact the trope exists at all shows there is, sadly, precedence.

@19 IrishJake: I cheered myself. It was only slightly less embarrassing for me, since I was in the hospital at the time.

@20 Wes S. You’re absolutely right, both were indeed necessary. Notice the balance elements to–a man and a woman, a channeler and a non-channeler, a mage and a fighter. There’s even the fact they both came from lands that the Shadow had destroyed or tried to destroy (Malkier/Manetheren), and while one came from the land of the main heroes, the other was one of those who came into said land to find and save them. Lots of wonderful plot parallels here.

@30 gadget: You’re absolutely right about the Aes Sedai.

@31 Crusader: Demandred believed a great swordsman had to become his sword. He didn’t follow this logic through to the conclusion that sometimes the only way to win is to sacrifice your weapon–which in this case would include yourself.

@32 KingOfFlames: You make many good points but you missed one important thing Insomnia mentioned above–at this point everyone (both Rand and the Light’s forces on the field) believes they are going to lose and die. If that is the case, it doesn’t matter what Lan’s death might do to Nynaeve because they’re all about to die anyway. And if he succeeded in killing Demandred, that morale booster would be enough to rally both the armies and Rand, while Nynaeve herself is incredibly strong and Lan knows this. Not to mention she’d already been given a vision by Min of herself bent weeping over someone’s corpse, so she had to have known the possibility was there and had steeled herself against it (she’d have done that since she sent him on his journey across the Borderlands, actually). Egwene, despite Gawyn’s history of foolhardy thoughts and actions and her own Dreams, hadn’t prepared herself for the possibility he might die.

@33 Andyc: I admit Demandred getting to find out just how Mat had outmaneuvered him and won the battle would have been delicious, not to mention just plain seeing more of Mat fighting an awesome one-on-one battle. (His fight with the gholam was great but too short, and we never got to see the Couladin battle.) But getting defeated by another ‘normal’ fighter, and this one aided only by the medallion rather than Pattern-enhanced luck, was still pretty ignominious for him. Also of course while killing Demandred was critical to victory, this is neither the end of the battle nor even how they win–there’s the death of Taim and wiping out the Sharan channelers as was pointed out above by Wes, Perrin killing Slayer and Lanfear, Mat killing Fain, Olver blowing the Horn, Elayne rallying everyone, what Aviendha does to Graendal, the return of the Seanchan, and of course everything Rand does. It was a decisive moment, but not “how they win”. “How they win” was…by everyone having a role, everyone doing something to bring down the Shadow.

@34 scm of 2814: LOL! The same thought actually crossed my mind.

@36 alreadymad: Good points re: Nynaeve vs. Egwene. Also, the Obi-Wan parallel came to my mind too.