Γει? σου! Welcome back to the Wheel of Time Reread Redux!
Today’s Redux post will cover Chapters 7 and 8 of The Eye of the World, originally reread in this post.
All original posts are listed in The Wheel of Time Reread Index here, and all Redux posts will also be archived there as well. (The Wheel of Time Master Index, as always, is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general on Tor.com.)
The Wheel of Time reread is also now available as an ebook series, except for the portion covering A Memory of Light, which should become available soon.
All Reread Redux posts will contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series, so if you haven’t read, read at your own risk.
And now, the post!
Chapter 7: Out of the Woods
Redux Commentary
If nothing else, this chapter is an excellent depiction of the kind of numb shock that descends upon ordinary people when disaster strikes in places formerly considered “safe.” Intellectually, of course, we all know that no place is truly safe from catastrophe, but still somehow many of us don’t seem to be able to process that viscerally, until it actually happens.
This is a phenomenon which, I would venture to propose, Americans in particular are prone to. I sometimes wonder if people who are not from this country truly understand how… unconnected to the rest of the world many Americans feel themselves to be, unconsciously or otherwise. I mean, to some extent that’s just pure geography. It’s sometimes very hard to truly worry about what’s happening on the other side of the planet when you yourself can (in many circumstances) travel a thousand miles in almost any direction and still never leave a land that is basically exactly the same as yours—a land which hasn’t seen true war within its own boundaries in over a hundred and fifty years.
The people of the Two Rivers may not be exactly analogous to that situation in reality, obviously, but their isolation and insulation from the happenings of the wider world definitely rings that same bell, to me. It’s sort of like, then, imagining the reaction of a small town in Kansas to being suddenly invaded by Nazis, or something. There’s all the normal reactions to death and devastation, but there’s also this added layer of stunned WTF—like, how did this even happen?—that you probably wouldn’t see elsewhere.
The closest understandable analogy, then, for most Americans, would be not war but natural disaster. I read the description of Rand’s dull incomprehension of what had happened to his home, and remembered the way I felt watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and what it had done to my New Orleans. And maybe that’s not exactly the same thing as seeing your childhood home torn apart by demonic supernatural monsters, but it’s kind of close, if you ask me.
“An Aes Sedai,” Rand muttered, trying to make the woman who had smiled at him fit the stories. Help from an Aes Sedai was sometimes worse than no help at all, so the stories said, like poison in a pie, and their gifts always had a hook in them, like fishbait. Suddenly the coin in his pocket, the coin Moiraine had given him, seemed like a burning coal. It was all he could do not to rip it out of his coat and throw it out the window.
Still the most striking and memorable (and damning) summation of Aes Sedai the series ever provided, in my opinion. It’s very difficult for me to remember now what I thought of the Aes Sedai thing at this point on first reading, but I suspect there was a lot more awe and a lot less eye-rolling involved.
Possibly undeserved eye-rolling, too. Over the course of the series we get very intimately acquainted with how the Aes Sedai were distinctly not all-knowing all-powerful pinnacles of perfection, but perhaps credit is deserved, in retrospect, for how well the White Tower held together for however many thousand years even with the canker of the Black Ajah gnawing away at them from the inside out. I guess it’s a matter of perspective.
In the original commentary I used the above quote as a jumping-off point to talk about the adulteration of stories over time and how that is a major theme of WOT, but I think it still stands pretty well for itself, so I’m not going to get into it again at this time. Later, perhaps. It’s not like it doesn’t crop up again, after all. (Major themes tend to do that.)
“Death comes sooner or later to everyone,” the Warder said grimly, “unless they serve the Dark One, and only fools are willing to pay that price.”
Huh. I don’t think I realized before that the whole Villain Resurrection Jamboree that happened in LOC and beyond was foreshadowed this early. It… doesn’t reconcile me to all of that, exactly, but it does make me impressed at how much Jordan had apparently hammered out about his basic WOT plot (ha ha, “WOT plot”) in advance.
But then, I am amused by “WOT plot,” so maybe what I’m impressed by isn’t all that… er, impressive. OR MAYBE IT IS. Or maybe I’m just very punchy right now, YOU NEVER KNOW.
Chapter 8: A Place of Safety
Redux Commentary
“That’s of no consequence now,” Moiraine said. “I will not have the boy thinking he is to blame for something when he is not. I am as much to blame. That accursed raven yesterday, the way it behaved, should have warned me. And you, too, my old friend.” Her tongue clicked angrily. “I was overconfident to the point of arrogance, sure that the Dark One’s touch could not have spread so far. Nor so heavily, not yet. So sure.”
What I especially enjoy about these early chapters—especially with the benefit of hindsight—is that they are a great example of what someone I read or listened to (Jo Walton? Steven Brust? Someone) called “in-cluing.” By which, he or she meant, the process of giving the reader information about the world and background of your story in a way which is organic and (hopefully) non-info-dumpy, and gives just enough information to make it possible to follow along while leaving the full picture tantalizingly incomplete, with the promise of full understanding to come if one just keeps reading. Gratification and lure both, it is, and it’s fun for both the reader and the writer if done right.
“There is a place of safety,” Moiraine said softly, and Rand’s ears pricked up to listen. “In Tar Valon you would be among Aes Sedai and Warders. Even during the Trolloc Wars the forces of the Dark One feared to attack the Shining Walls. The one attempt was their greatest defeat until the very end. And Tar Valon holds all the knowledge we Aes Sedai have gathered since the Time of Madness. Some fragments even date from the Age of Legends. In Tar Valon, if anywhere, you will be able to learn why the Myrddraal want you. Why the Father of Lies wants you. That I can promise.”
“In-cluing” amid a whole lot of horse manure, of course.
I wonder if either Moiraine or Lan ever felt any guilt for how much they blatantly manipulated Rand in this scene, and lied to him without actually lying to him as well. ‘Cause, yeah, Rand could learn why the Fades want him in Tar Valon—or, you know, Moiraine could have just told him herself, right there in that inn, because she already knew. I mean, I get why she didn’t tell the Superboys the actual reason why she was more-or-less abducting them at this point, but that doesn’t really change how deliberately misleading she was being. And we wonder why Rand developed trust issues later down the line.
I even love how Moiraine avoided saying outright that Tar Valon would be safe for Rand specifically. Because we know, of course, that it would most definitely have not been, once the Aes Sedai found out he could channel. Again, I get the reasoning, but I would defy anyone not to be at least a little angry when discovering how they’d been played like that, no matter how worthy the cause.
Though I do give Rand props for at least partially verifying Moiraine’s story about which farms had been attacked, even if he only did so after agreeing to go, which was kind of foolish of him. But then, I don’t think Rand’s upbringing exactly primed him towards the inherently distrustful mindset that the Cold War-like atmosphere of the Game of Houses (not to mention the White Tower itself) engendered in Moiraine for her entire life. Still didn’t keep me from cringing a bit at how he so easily accepted her word on both what the Trollocs were after and how his departure was the only solution for the problem.
Also, it’s still amusing to me to remember that after all of this build-up, Rand never once set foot in Tar Valon until the very last book in the series, and then only for a hot second.
And last but not least, from my original commentary:
In other words, if Zeus decides to turn himself into a duck or whatever and swoop down and have his way with that shepherd over there, it really doesn’t have much to do with whether the shepherd’s a nice kid or not.
*snort*
(Context schmontext, because that’s probably not an argument worth having again, but let’s just say that the Ancient Greeks appeared to be quite firmly in the habit of not expecting much in the way of leniency or mercy from their gods, and while this may be regarded as being a rather cynical outlook, it probably kept unpleasant surprises down to a minimum. So there’s that.)
And that’s what I got today, kiddos! Have a lovely week, and I’ll see you next Tuesday!
Lan’s heron mark sword reveal remains one of the coolest bits of “Oh wow” text in the entire series. I heart it.
Leigh – nice point re Moiraine subtly (or not) misleading Rand at this point. Hadn’t thought about it in this context. Of course, had she known Rand was an actual channeler at this point, it would have been an outright lie IMO.
Rand needed to leave the Two Rivers to progress into the Dragon. Would he and others have left without the push from Moiraine regardless of her intentions? A kick in the rear is still a step forward and Rand seemed determined to stay by Tam’ s side. I’m a bit confused as to how Rand would have left otherwise. Wouldn’t he have been overwhelmed if Moiraine told him all the details about his future?
Re: Rand’s blindly going along with Moiraine’s suggestion that he leave… there was also very prevalent in the Two Rivers a negative connotation that came with disagreeing with any of the women. The men that were constantly questioning the Women’s Circle or the Wisdom were ostracized and looked at suspiciously. I think this is further seen in Rand, Mat, and Perrin’s unwillingness to kill women (or even punch a woman sometimes). All this, plus the fact that Aes Sedai were super powerful womminz that could magic you into obeying them… I’m not surprised he took her at face value.
Re: the point about how the White Tower did a good job of keeping itself together despite being loaded with Dark agents, one could make the leap and say that having so many Black Ajah in the ranks may have played a big role in that.
First, through the time setting up the events of the series, it’s not likely that many Black Ajah were being overtly evil due to minor things such as there being no Forsaken around to give them order and no nearly-freed Dark One making his presence felt. Which makes it easy for them to nudge things in a direction they want without arousing suspicion.
Then, you take the general Aes Sedai view, where they sort of like being considered these very powerful and very cryptic people who are highly influential among regular people who don’t necessarily know or trust their motives to the degree that many rulers (Morgase and Berelain off the top of my head) have AS advisors.
To me, that seems to be the perfect situation for a Black Ajah member. Because, on one hand, being aloof and seemingly far superior to regular people, from peasants to royalty, is a great way to maintain your influence over a populace that, due to the absence of Dark-like threats in recent centuries, probably would be getting tired of your authoritative presence eventually. But on the other, that image is doubly useful when you want to steadily and gradually work towards an agenda without having to worry about outside factors getting in the way (because would a normal person question an Aes Sedai too closely or would they simply receive one of their patented raised eyebrows and decide to make themselves scarce before being turned into a toad or whatever they feel would be their fate for angering one?).
With that taken into consideration, I think the Black Ajah had a very big interest in maintaining the White Tower and its prestige/authority throughout time. The fact that the Dark had more sway there than any other organization, with virtually every single member completely oblivious (the non-Black to the fact the Black has a legit presence and the Black to just how many sisters they had on board) to that just makes me think it’s very clear that the Dark wanted a whole and powerful White Tower with a very powerful Black contingent waiting undercover to be sent out on missions when the time comes.
So, what was Moiraine’s plan here anyway? I know she was being misleading to the boys to a degree, but it always seemed like she was actually planning on taking the proto-Dragon Reborn to Tar Valon. The same place she had been largely avoiding for nigh onto twenty years due to some very dangerous political games going on. Maybe RJ handn’t worked out all the sordid details of New Spring yet, but given that it seems like she would have been serving up Rand & co. on a silver platter to the Black Ajah. Not to mention risk getting sidelined/disciplined by the Hall/Ajah leadership. She really had a lot of (naive, if that could ever be said of Moiraine) confidence in her and Suin’s ability to handle the situation. I really like Moiraine as a character, but her really great fault is her belief in her ability to dictate and control events, or even that she actually knows the best way to guide events. For all her philosophical talk about the ‘Weave of the Pattern’ and no one can know the full design of fate, etc., she sure does try to prove that wrong a lot.
On another note, Leigh, I thought I remember way back when this re-re-read was just a gleam in someone’s eye, it was put forth that we could use the new e-book artwork. I guess that didn’t pan out? It would be nice to use the newer artwork as something different to discusss, but se leve.
I was born in the early 70’s (so I missed Pearl Harbor and the Cuban Missle Crisis) and I first read these chapters in the early 1990’s. September 11 had yet to occur. For those who live in America (especially NY or DC) and read TEotW for the first time, did anybody relate with the Two Rivers folk who could not comprehend an attack on their seemingly isolated homeland? If so, I would be curious to hear your thoughts on this subject.
Had I read TEotW for the first time after 9/11, I doubt I would have had a reaction that this must have been what people in New Your felt after 9/11. When I read fantasy, I typically am able to remove myself from real world issues while I am immediately reading something for the first time. But others may not divorce themselves so.
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewB
@5 The plan was to lose the pursuers, train the Dragon in a safe location, and have Siuan slowly bend the Hall into supporting him.
Fan fiction challenge: what would have happened if Morraine had delivered Rand safely to the White Tower (in book one)?
Incluing is TM Jo Walton; see e.g. this blog post.
@8 – result: a WOT series that is shorter than the original by 13 books, ending with a DO victory. ;)
Comment on your original commentary: I believe Rand mentally enumerates the represented Trolloc bands (far more than seven) during the big attack in KoD, though I’m not sure how he knew what so many (but not all) of the sigils meant. Lews Therin’s knowledge? But yeah, they were rarely mentioned. Sigh.
Unanswerable Shadowspawn Questions of the Day:
How are the Dha’vol the “worst” of the Trolloc bands? Are they bigger, smarter, more organized, or what?
The BWB lists “wildcats” among the animals used in creating Trollocs, yet we never see any cat-ones. So why did it say that?
How do Trollocs make those lacquered pins? I can (and happily do) picture them sewing leather clothes and forging armor, but that’s intricate little handwork. They must be more dexterous than they look.
@7 – That actually would have been a smart plan, but I see no evidence that the ‘safe place’ envisioned by Moiraine & Suin was anything other than a safehouse located somewhere in Tar Valon itself. I believe they even disucss it briefly when they meet in the next book. I don’t see how they could manage to keep things under wraps with the most powerful Ta’veren ever just chilling in an Inn/house somewhere in the city; with all the intrigue and spying that goes on in and around the White Tower they would surely be discovered. This especially doesn’t jive with the later back filled plot revealed in New Spring, with that knowledge, Tar Valon would have been the last place to bring the boys, short of Shayol Ghul.
It would have been smart to set up a place, far from the intrigues of Tar Valon, to take the boys and get them trained up a bit and start to find their place in the world. Then, once things had developed to a point where the Dragon could proclaim himself, Suin could have been preparing the Hall to accept or acknowledge him. I think this is the ‘plan B’ they settled upon in the next book.
It is amazing the details Jordan already had at this point, since Rand “shivered and rubbed his arms” when Moiraine was delving and then healing Tam. We don’t explicitly find out Rand’s reaction to women channeling until Carhien in the The Shadow Rising, but the seed was already planted here in Chapter 8!
Of all the Superboys (hey, if the other team can be the Supergirls…) only Perrin, who has nothing to fear and no major Aes Sedai issues (genetic or acquired) has never actually set foot on Tar Valon.
The funny thing about how early we see Rand reacting to Moiraine channeling (and we see this several more times very early on) is that I have always had a sneaking suspicion RJ wanted to change that. There are several early examples — through TDR, if memory serves — in which references are made to the possibility of men sensing women channel, or vice versa, in ways we know they couldn’t possibly do so. I think there was even an instance of Moiraine avoiding channeling in some crucial moment while they were traveling in TDR where she said something like, “And what if Lanfear senses it? Or Ishamael?”, when we later understand that it would have been clearly impossible for a man to sense a woman channel from that distance.
I always thought the scene in TSR was an attempt to minimize what had originally been planned as an inchoate ability to sense channeling in the opposite sex that would sharpen later, before he decided to change it so that channelers have virtually no ability to sense opposite-sex channeling. Something of a retcon.
These snippets have to be some of the best parts of any reread, so much depth and foreshadowing/hints strewn throughout the books.
I always took Moiraine’s hesitance to channel because of Ishy being there to show us that Aes Sedai don’t know everything. To be fair, they would have very little chance to interogate male channelers about whether they can detect a female channeling, I doubt they’d be very open to discusion after gentling :p. It seems more like simple caution on her side.
Haha, Rand’s thoughts that if what he’d heard of Aes Sedai were true, Moiraine “should look more like a Trolloc than a more than handsome woman whose dignity was not ruffled by kneeling in the dirt.” He’ll soon learn that truly horrible people can look beautiful and act normal.
@16 — I thought of that, but too many Aes Sedai have experience with male channelers (after all, this is just after they captured Logain) for me to accept that it was Aes Sedai ignorance.
@18 I’ll agree that they have plenty of knowledge with how they can detect male channeling (i.e. not at all) but I don’t think they would have much, if any information going the other way. I think the logistics are just too complicated. It would require
A) An Aes Sedai wanting to learn more about male channelers and whether they can detect female channeling
B) A male channeler that was willing to cooperate despite knowing what was going to happen, which while possible, I expect would be rare. Also, the Aes Sedai would have to trust his word about what he did/did not feel.
C) The big one, the male channeler would have to be exposed to NO saidar before there would be detection by goosebumps. I can’t imagine them leaving any male channeler unshielded to test this.
Have just been rethinking, is it possible that Moiraine was referring to wards to detect channelers? We know that Sammael at least used these very extensively, and Moiraine has shown plenty of aptitude with wards previously so she could well be aware of these, or at least suspect that they could be in place.
While I’ve never experienced a war or natural disaster on the scope of what happened to Emond’s Field (or New Orleans), I did at least know something about the sort of things that could happen to a small, isolated, seemingly safe place due to growing up in Iowa. Not only did we have tornadoes there fairly regularly (I never suffered the direct effects of one, though I did see one in the distance, and saw its aftermath in person and on TV), but the particular town where I lived was one of those to get flooded on a regular basis. And I was still living there during the huge floods of 1993. So…yeah, I think I have at least a small inkling what Rand and the Emond’s Fielders were feeling.
Good analysis though of what a lot of Americans feel and why, I think you’re right on the money.
A bit amusing in a grimly ironic way that there’s Rand worrying about what Moiraine might have done to that coin, when we know (courtesy of what she says later and what’s revealed in KoD) that all it did was let her track him and (try to) subtly influence him…though if the surmises from last week are true about the light Compulsion involved, he’s quite right to be afraid.
*chuckles* Damn, now that’s a bit of early foreshadowing I missed too. And I’ve even re-read TEotW a lot more than most of the books. Ah, nice to still find these hidden gems though.
In-cluing: I’ve used it in some of the writing I’ve done, but since much of that has been fanfic it’s a lot easier to not infodump for the reader when you write assuming they already know all about the world the fic is based on. Then again, I’ve still created OCs, and succeeded in not infodumping too much on their histories. Hopefully I can keep that up when I get back to my original works.
I know Moiraine is bullshitting Rand as far as him being safe in Tar Valon and how unassailable and perfect the White Tower is (even if they never actually attacked the Tower, she was there for the Aiel War, and of course she also knows of the Black Ajah), but is she really to blame for not knowing there were other times in the Tower’s history when it suffered defeats or attacks by the Shadow? She knows the story of Manetheren (most likely researched when she figured out where the Dragon Reborn was living), she knows about Malkier, but I don’t think she knows about what all happened in Hawkwing’s time or any other failures–since those would all be in the Thirteenth Depository and I doubt Siuan shared everything in them with her. So yeah she’s toeing the party line (and, I think, wishing beyond all hope that despite the Black Ajah the Tower can still be the great weapon of the Light it needs to be for the world to be saved), but I think at least some of her words here are simple ignorance, not omission or deception.
And yeah, she’s manipulating Rand and the boys, as is Lan (at this point he doesn’t care about them–later he might perhaps feel guilty, at least about Rand, but right now they’re just tools to help him bring down the Shadow). But it really is a case of the ends justifying the means. And if things hadn’t gone so pear-shaped, I imagine Moiraine would have clued them in later–not on everything, of course, but enough to explain why she needed to get them out of there ASAP but couldn’t tell them why. “One of you is the Dragon Reborn, whom the Shadow wants to destroy, whom the Red Ajah wants to gentle, and who will go mad from the taint unless the Last Battle comes first. Surely you can see why these are things I would not wish bruited about, which I thought you would not believe or would drive you away.” And if the events of TGH and TDR hadn’t gone as they had, I think Rand at least might have been more inclined to listen to and trust that explanation. The Wheel weaves as it wills, however…
Nitpick: it’s the penultimate book when Rand goes to Tar Valon, not AMoL. :P
Side note: We never do find out what happened to Moiraine’s angreal, do we? On the one hand I’d presume that after what happens at Fal Dara and how unhappy the Hall is with Moiraine, they’d have wanted Siuan to order her to give it back (in fact I believe they did ask for that), but the fact she still has it to partially Heal Mat in TGH and again to Heal the wounded after the attack near Almoth Plain at the start of TDR shows that didn’t happen. But that’s the last we ever see it. I suppose she could have put it with the stash of angreal from Rhuidean that got warded in Cairhien, but the only other option is she had it on her when she fell through the doorway and the Finn took it from her. (But if she did, why didn’t she use it against Lanfear? Because the rings warned her not to?)
The reason this lack of info is odd to me is because the angreal is described as being powerful. While we learn of and encounter many powerful ones later, they’re never compared to this one so for all we know it could still have been useful in the Last Battle. I suppose we have to assume it wasn’t as strong as the later ones and that’s why it was allowed to be lost or forgotten. But it would have been rather nice, considering all the callbacks to TEotW in the last book, if Moiraine had had it and either took it to Shayol Ghul with her or gave it to Nynaeve. (There was even an opportunity to mention it, when Nynaeve Healed Talmanes and explicitly compared it to Moiraine Healing Tam–but the angreal wasn’t mentioned then, or later when she and Nynaeve meet up again. Ah well.)
@1 RobM: Well in Moiraine’s defense, while she suggested Rand would be safe in Tar Valon (not knowing yet whether he was the Dragon Reborn for sure, but based on what we saw later with the name Kari al’Thor in her book of names from NS, she had to have suspected), not only is this not a lie if the safety she spoke of was somewhere she and Siuan would put him as opposed to right in the Tower, but she never actually said she would take him there. Planning with Siuan aside, I could easily see her contriving some reason to detour and take him somewhere else (if Shadar Logoth, Caemlyn, and the Eye hadn’t intervened), and only then explain what she was doing and why.
@3 Juanito: Good point.
@@.-@ Robert: Very good analysis. And while some might question it based on the Tower split that happens later, it must be remembered that that doesn’t happen until a) Mesaana and Aran’gar are on hand to engineer it and keep it going b) Ishamael is free to direct them to do so and c) the Dark One is closer to breaking free and thus also able to make such commands regarding his enemies. I.e., prior to the seals weakening, the Black Ajah would have maintained the status quo, keeping the Tower strong and prestigious so as to retain their own power and help enable their various clandestine schemes to bear fruit. It wasn’t until the Forsaken broke free that they (or at least, Alviarin, Sheriam, and possibly Galina) were told the game plan had changed. We already know what the Blacks want (or think their bosses want) and what the Forsaken actually want rarely match up–witness Ishamael punishing Jarna Malari for nearly killing Rand before he could be turned to the Shadow. And speaking of Sheriam, note she thought the Last Battle would never come in her lifetime. Since I doubt many Black sisters thought this, they’d have even less reason to try and bring the Tower down, let alone so relatively openly. (The coup and civil war would have been a lot harder to pull off, or keep from being suspected of being a Shadow plot, if there hadn’t already been so many false Dragons and chaotic happenings across the land to provide distractions and keep people from examining it too closely.)
@5 and 12 gadget, @7 Narvi: Off-hand I’d nominate Tifan’s Well, where the Namelle sisters had gone into retirement, as a good safe spot. Out of the way and isolated, protected by the Power and Warders, lots of information for study and education, and it’s in Arafel so they’d be on hand whenever the time came for any battles against the Shadow in the Blight. Also, any ta’veren effects would not be noticed by the public or the Shadow in such a place–and I don’t think at this point Moiraine suspected Rand would be one, since Lews Therin being one wouldn’t necessarily mean his reborn self would be. (Though considering how key to the Pattern the Dragon Reborn is, she’d have to be stupid not to think he would be…)
@11 AeronaGreenjoy: Just because we never saw any Trollocs explicitly noted to have feline features doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It could simply be an oversight on Jordan and Sanderson’s part never to have mentioned it. Also, the Guide was not established as complete canon since Jordan gave the writer free rein in what to include, so that it would have the verisimilitude of real history where lack of information or the writer’s own assumptions would shape what was written.
On the pins: for some reason I immediately thought of the Fades making them, since they are described as having slender hands and digits, but that doesn’t really fit how they act toward the Trollocs–ordering them around and controlling them through fear doesn’t suggest someone who’d be involved in crafting things for them. Maybe the people who live in the Town in the Blight make them?
@14 scm of 2814: Actually Perrin does go to Tar Valon, at least in TAR when he takes the dreamspike there and fights Slayer in ToM.
@19 Francisco: Interesting point regarding wards. It’s entirely possible that could be what Moiraine was thinking of/worried about. Also, since she knows Vandene and Adeleas, she could have studied with them sometime in the last 20 years and run across mentions of things male channelers could do that would either mislead her or genuinely let her know of these things.
Moiraine did think that Rand would be ta’veren. She later says (to Loial?) that there are three ta’veren where she expected one.
Even if the Red Ajah studied if male channelers could sense female channelers they didn’t necessarily share the results with a Blue.
About the shock of sudden catastrophy – I disagree it’s only American thing. I, for one, live in Europe, about an hour driving distance from the nearest border, and my grand- and greatgrandparents survived both world wars. Yet I can’t imagine something bad happening here. It’s a quiet small town where nothing ever happens, ever, and my reaction to any kind of natural disaster or attack would be the same incomprehensive WTF as anybody else’s.
I think we can give Moiraine a pass for not being completely honest with Rand here vis-à-vis his dragony-ness. For one she suspects him to be the Dragon Reborn but as of yet lacks definitive proof.
More importantly though, being like “Oh, bee-tee-dubs, you’re totally the Dragon Reborn, yo! Sucks to be you, right? But hey, at least you’re not crazy yet.” would not have gone over well. Even with Rand’s slow realization he went through several emotional meltdowns and quite a lot of running from (and to, ironically) destiny. Three full books of it, in fact. Imagine she’d have given full disclosure here.
Mucho catastrophe, as the French put it, would have ensued…
@22. birgit
I think, several times in fact, she underestimated how strong ta’erven are, or at least these ones. Knowing about something intectually and all that. At this early stage, and maybe not even until the end of Great Hunt could she have realized what a bad idea it would be to have Rand anywhere near Tar Valon. She knew the Shadow was looking for him as well, which meant the Black Ajah were looking for him anyway. In her mind, who better to defend him than other Aes Sedai. I am sure she had given much thought on how to reveal them given her New Spring story.
gadget @12
I don’t believe they had discovered Rand’s ta’veren abilities at this point yet. The original plan was for Moiraine and Siuan to find the Dragon Reborn together. That just kept getting rewritten. And no, considering they were attacked by Blacks in Tar Valon itself, I don’t think Tar Valon itself was ever in the plan. Between Moiraine’s highborn contacts and Siuan’s working class background I suppose they thought they had quite a few options.
Purple Ajah @15
Being careful of channelling in case Lanfear or Sammael detects it only makes sense. Moiraine is after all assuming that the two ancients are in possession of ancient knowledge(duh). It might not be inborn, like Rand feeling the chills, but the Guardian of Far Madding could do it, and like most ter’angreals, it was likely intended to simulate a weave that a channeller could do.
@21 Yeah, when things changed, it was after Forsaken started moving their Black Ajah pieces around the chessboard, so to speak. And one of the really fascinating things about that was that you got to see just how intricate their Tower hierarchy was. When you had the POVs of the sisters rooting out Black influences shortly before Egwene was captured, I remember them detailing that the first one they found only knew 2-3 other sisters that were in her little group and when they got one of those, they only knew another additional name or two.
Considering that the White Tower is loaded with extremely powerful people who often have extremely massive egos, that had to be by design to not only prevent one person screwing up from bringing down the entire organization, but also to prevent anyone trying to rise above themselves. If you only know a tiny handful of cohorts, you’re not going to be able to do anything other than play the role you’re told to play.
And like you said, not all Black Ajah were like Sheriam, where they essentially made a Faustian “I’ll get more power and influence and it’s not like anything crazy like a Dragon Reborn and climactic battle of good vs. evil will happen in my lifetime, so it’s all good!” deal. You about need that sort of checks-and-balance system with agents like the ever-so-lovely Liandrin on staff, as her combination of pettiness, petulence and power-hunger are the sorts of things that make one a liability when they get any more authority than absolutely necessary. Which is how she got herself removed from being any sort of player in the proceedings fairly early in the series.
And thus is revealed the continuing story of the lack of trust by the general population in the Aes Sedai. And they have no one to blame but themselves, particularly in how they constantly evade the First Oath.
I have to agree with the idea that here in America we tend to believe nothing bad can happen (until it does, at least). I just wish the media, especially TV, would get a clue. We just had a tropical storm/Cat 1 hurricane (just barely: 80 MPH) pass by to the south of the Hawaiian Islands. Even the Big Island of Hawaii, which was closest to the hurricane, got only rain with very little wind. Here on Oahu we got rain from late Saturday night through early Sunday night (never really heavy), there was very little flooding. In fact, we’ve had much worse flooding from non-storm related rain. HOWEVER, in typical fashion the local TV talking heads totally over reacted: You would have thought the Apocalypse was upon us. The station I ususally watch devoted their entire news portion of their regular half-hour news show to the approaching storm, usually saying the same thing over and over again.
Another station had a 3 1/2 hour program scheduled on the hurricane on Saturday, which would have pre-empted one of the bigger college football games of the year so far. (Of course, if you believe the local sportscasters, nobody here is interested in a college or NFL team unless they have a player with Hawaii ties on the team.) And they planned this show far enough in advance to get it onto the local cable channel guide! I cannot begin to imagine what they could have talked about for 3 1/2 hours but luckily they realized by Saturday that there was no point in putting that show on the air. /end rant
When Moiraine talks to Rand about going to Tar Valon:
Why would anyone who has dealt with Aes Sedai (which of course, Rand has not) assume these two statements are related? Just because she said them together does not mean they refer to the same place.
Also in TEOTW Trolloc weapons are said to come from Thakan’dar. Later in the series, I believe this is more often changed to Myrddraal weapons only. Since we see a human die for each weapon forged, that would be a lot of dead humans (at least to equip trollocs for the last battle.)
@22 birgit — I’d say that concealing knowledge of that magnitude seems outrageous even by the standards of an Aes Sedai (unless she were Black Ajah, of course.) But it’s not as though only Reds have had contact with male channelers anyway — Cadsuane seems to have more direct experience than any other living Aes Sedai with male channelers, at least at the beginning of the story, and she’s Green. And plenty of other non-Red Aes Sedai must have, at one point or another.
@29 J.Dauro — We also never seem to hear about anyone duying of the effects of a Trolloc blade. They sound like low quality iron or something similar, nothing approaching Shadowman steel.
@30 Purple Ajah — But we do know of one person who WAS dying from a Trolloc’s blade cut — Tam. Without Moiraines help he would have died.
@29 J. Dauro. — It would be interesting if the point in the series where Trolloc blades became “ordinary” could be pinpointed.
As far as I know Trolloc blades remained lethal if left untreated all throughout the series until the end.
@29: Interesting. I don’t remember that bit in TEotW. By the LOC prologue, the blades being forged at Thakan’dar were explicitly for Myrddraal. It would’ve taken many humans indeed to create weapons for all the Trollocs in AMoL, if those required sacrifice too. (Saaay…Lightbringer much?) The BWB says Trolloc weapons are hammered out of “any available metal.” That blade definitely did something bad to Tam, but it wouldn’t need to have the same source of taint.
@32: I like the username. :-D
I kind of assumed trolloc blades were lethal because they were filthy or poisoned rather then ‘magical’ like the Myddraal blades. Is anyone else sickened by a trolloc blade other then Tam?
The only other sickened person that I can think of offhand is Talmanes and that was a Myddraal blade. Or 2 or 3, Him being the bad ass that he was.
I don’t recall any others.
I do recall the scene where the Myddraal blades are forged specifically but there could have easily been other forging areas at Thakan’dar that were not specifically to make the lethal blades. I mean, you have the raw materials and the staff to pound out all sorts of things, multiple forges, an almost Shadowspawn Pittsburgh. One specialty line and many cannon fodder lines…
“Moiraine shook her head and sighed. “Not yet. I hope it is only not yet. Trolloc weapons are made at forges in the valley called Thakan’dar, on the very slopes of Shayol Ghul itself. Some of them take a taint from that place, a stain of evil “in the metal. Those tainted blades make wounds that will not heal unaided, or cause deadly fevers, strange sicknesses that medicines cannot touch. I have soothed your father’s pain, but the mark, the taint, is still in him. Left alone, it will grow again, and consume him.”
Here she is saying that only some of the Trolloc blades are of such a vicious quality and only because these specific blades soak in some of the evil that permeates Thakan’dar. Otherwise, based on this passage, they appear to be made out of metal in forges in the valley like all other Trolloc swords.
As for any ret-conning regarding Rand’s shivers and proximity vs Moiraine layer being concerned about detection from a male a Forsaken, I always attributed that to lack of knowledge of what the Forsaken were actually capable of. It would make sense to assume that they knew of many techniques that current age AS knew nothing of.
If you think the Games of Houses instils an “inherently distrustful mindset” you should see what the Game of Thrones does :P (At least Rand is less trusting than Sansa though)
~lakesidey
@36: Thanks! Don’t know how I forgot that bit.
@15, 17, 18 & 19: At the time, weren’t they in Illian? A city controlled by a male forsaken. So I always read it as she wanted to avoid using the Source because of wards. She thought / knew he had rigged the city to tell him when channeling happened. Much like Far Maddening’s system. Not that he personally would feel her channeling, but that his network could.
@14: Perrin was in Tar Valon – just the dream version. But yes, funny that he never got there in their real life.
@29: Maybe it’s a case of only some Trolloc weapons came from Thakan’dar and were poisonous. Supply and demand. The first raid could have a higher supply of the deadlier weapons. But by the end of the series and the Trollocs were stretched out everywhere, they had to supply normal weapons. Too few of the special blades were being made. Yes, it’s a stretch. But a logical one to take the Trollocs down a few pegs in the threat factor.
Re: Trolloc genders. I for one cannot tell the difference between a male and female wolf just by looking at them. Nor goats, since they both have horns. So why would the Trollocs really have features that distinguished the two genders? It’s not like our heroes spent enough time around them to really learn and understand the differences.
Sensing channeling- When the Tower AS send their envoy to Rand in LoC, one of them has a POV where she thinks that False Dragons always claim that they can sense women channeling but she believes this to be a lie. She even considers smacking Rand with the Power just to prove him wrong (bad idea). Mo’s caution in Illian about channeling may not be specifically about wards, but a lack of knowledge about the actual abilities of the Forsaken
“Place of Safety”- the first of Mo’s grand plans that sound really good but would have been disaster. On first reading, Rand’s dream seems like just a jumble of what he’s just experienced mixed with thought’s of his conversation with Mo, but……..his description of the city is way too accurate for someone who has never seen the place and the reader’s hindsight (knowing that Rand would certainly have been captured by the BA and turned) show one of the many things that RJ never said explicitly but is there if you look for the signs. Rand is a Dreamer. Which shouldn’t be suprising since pretty much all AoL channelers were.
Also, Mo may have lacked definitive proof of Rand’s origin, but come on lady…one of these things is not like the others. But then, she was looking for only one because, as she erroneously says later, “The prophecies don’t mention sidekicks” (um, yes they do)
@39: Did I miss some earlier discussion of Trolloc genders?? Trollocs clearly have little trouble discerning the difference, but according to the BWB, our heroes would’ve only seen males on the battlefields.
Hey, all. Long time Reread Reader, 1st time commenter.
I like the description of incluing, and for the most part in the early part of the series I thought Jordan did a good job of doing exactly that without employing too many long infodumps.
I agree with the above comment that the “place of safety” sentence and talk of Tar Valon are not necessarily intrinsically connected. Given her knowledge of the Black Ajah from New Spring I have to think Moiraine was engaging in a little “sidestep the first oath” chicanery here. I don’t know if Jordan had that figured out himself at this point, but surely he had at least something in mind as far as TV not being the haven it’s given to be here.
Also, I went ahead and read the first few Reread posts and I had to laugh at Leigh’s half-apologies for how long the summaries were getting even then. Oh, if you had only known!
I definitely feel America has a sense of ‘it can’t happen here’ – I was in college when 9/11 hit and it truly did change the way we view the world and life in a subtle way.
I’ve just returned from a vacation abroad and the biggest example in my head right now is the whole Ebola scare. Every single time I went on Facebook or to check what was going on in the US it was EBOLA EBOLA EBOLA EBOLA. It was this combination of a total sense of shock that some ‘African’ virus could dare infect people on American soil, and complete media hysteria making everybody freak out.
I wonder if Moirane was going to take Rand and the boys to the Tower specifically, or just some other place in Tar Valon (maybe somewhere she and Siuan would hide him).
Tish, you speak Greek
@22 birgit: Sorry, that slipped my mind. But then we come back to my original point–if Moiraine knew or suspected Rand would be a ta’veren, she likely intended to take him somewhere far away and isolated like Tifan’s Well, so him being ta’veren wouldn’t matter or attract attention. Or as others have said, she didn’t realize yet what it would be like to be around one, especially one so powerful.
@29 J.Dauro: Exactly what I was suggesting. And even if they did both refer to the same place, again pay attention to her exact wording: she said a place of safety existed, explained why Tar Valon would (theoretically) be safe, but she never said she was actually taking him there.
@30 Purple Ajah: Cadsuane was something of an anomaly though, since she was a Green who hunted more channeling men than most Reds, and at the same time showed caring and understanding for them in how she enabled them to live longer after gentling than most did.
@36 Bayoubilly: Good catch! As always, the actual text is critical. So it seems definitive only some Trolloc weapons are like the Fades’. And using Braid_Tug’s line of reasoning re: humans being needed for each tainted blade, it makes sense there’d be far less available by the time of the Last Battle, thus explaining why those Trollocs all had normal weapons.
@39 Braid_Tug: If that’s what she was worried about, she was right to–Sammael did have such wards, at least to detect saidin, as revealed at the end of ACoS.
@40 jjpuckhead: I was never sure if Rand was one or not (Lews Therin most likely was, since he knows of dreamshards and can make his own), but it makes sense. This would explain why he’s so easily able to bend TAR to his will, enter it in the flesh, and so forth, and also his other prophetic dreams like the one about Thom telling him about the Dragon being one with the land. Still, I’m not sure he’s a Dreamer the same way Egwene is, or he’d be having more Dreams like she does–and if he had those, wouldn’t we have seen or heard about them? Especially since he’s always asking Min about her viewings…if he had prophetic dreams, you’d think he wouldn’t need Min, or at least that he might mention them when talking to her.
Also, while the companions are mentioned in the Karaethon Cycle, they aren’t specifically mentioned as companions, or linked to the Dragon Reborn in any way–Mat’s passage doesn’t seem connected to anything else (just Tuon, and him giving up his eye for Moiraine) and Perrin is mentioned only as a harbinger of the Last Battle. It’s akin to any of the various allegorical figures that appear in the Book of Revelation: they’re there to signify something or mark an important event, but very few if any of them have any connection with Jesus, the one whose Second Coming and fight with Satan the book is all about.
@6 AndrewHB
This is a little late, but…reading your comment, where you asked,
“I was born in the early 70’s (so I missed Pearl Harbor and the Cuban Missle Crisis) and I first read these chapters in the early 1990’s. September 11 had yet to occur. For those who live in America (especially NY or DC) and read TEotW for the first time, did anybody relate with the Two Rivers folk who could not comprehend an attack on their seemingly isolated homeland? If so, I would be curious to hear your thoughts on this subject.”
Yep, I could. I was born in ’79 and I was a high school freshman in southern Kansas when the Oklahoma City bombing happened. It hit very close to home, especially once it came out that McVeigh and Nichols had assembled the bomb in Kansas and driven through to OKC from here. It’s not anywhere near the severe shock that being in DC or NYC during 9/11 would have been, but I distinctly remember shuddering when I read these chapters for the first time (in 96 or 97) because it brought back memories of first hearing the news.
I’m sure it’s been discussed ad nauseum but I believe at this point Moiraine was unaware of Rand’s true birth and had not worked out which of the three boys were actually the Dragon Reborn. I do remember being really surprised that the three boys just up and went with her, but since Tam had pretty much confirmed that Rand should go, it made sense to me at the time. For my latest re-read of the series I actually started with New Spring first, and the series as a whole of flowing a lot more smoothly for me.