Knife of Dreams Read-through #6: New Article on Weaves and Talents

By Linda



Knife of Dreams contains a few new things regarding channelling.

A new talent was described in the chapter A Different Skill: that of ‘reading’ ter’angreal, and new weaves for use in battle were revealed when Lews Therin seized the source during the Trolloc attack. Logain angrily and unjustly accused Rand of withholding knowledge, having had a gutful of dark cliques at the Black Tower. Rand could hardly explain that it wasn’t his knowledge, but some other guy in his head’s...By early in the next book Logain might have some idea of what happened.

Men and women linking to channel became far more widespread in Knife of Dreams, and we see early signs that the saidin and saidar used together do more than either power alone:

It was pure Fire, and the blazes were ferocious, fiercer than she [Nynaeve] would have expected from Fire alone.

- Knife of Dreams, The Golden Crane

The rebels make a big production out of linking or Bonding with men, as we saw with all the talk in the rebel Hall (influenced to a degree by the Black Ajah there), but Cadsuane’s group just got on and did it. Then they made the best of the situation. Elaida’s Hall never considered the matter at all. Nynaeve, who admittedly was exposed to the worst of tainted saidin for hours on end, strongly indicated she has no wish to experience saidin again:

But of course they would be using saidin as well, and who could say what they were adding from that murderous chaos? The little she could recall of being linked with Rand left her with no desire ever again to go near that.

- Knife of Dreams, The Golden Crane

Could be "famous last words".

I’ve written quite a few articles on channelling, including one on Weaves and Talents now republished here on the blog in updated form. It discusses the mechanics of channelling in general and details each of the Talents plus all the different weaves we see in the books. There is also a section on linking.