By Linda WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR TOWERS OF MIDNIGHTAnd now for one of the pivotal chapters of
The Gathering Storm, due to the effect its events have on Rand's character.
Semirhage POVThe Lady of Pain likes to receive physical pain as well as give it, although she much prefers the latter. She’s not that tough on blows to the ego though: the humiliation of her treatment made her cry and according to the Dark One has broken her. It didn’t take long. Semirhage’s ego is over-inflated and fragile. Mengele, one of her parallels, was just as psychologically brittle when captured (see
Semirhage essay).
Semirhage mistakes rationalising for rational reasoning, but then she isn’t honest with herself, as her hypocritical claim that she experiments on people, while others merely abuse them, shows.
The Dark One confirmed that Semirhage was ordered to capture Rand and that she is judged to have failed greatly. She doesn’t dare lie or make excuses to Shaidar Haran, yet Moghedien did so, in the Pit of Doom, no less, and Graendal lies and makes excuses to Shaidar Haran at the end of
Towers of Midnight.
Semirhage says the Dark One’s punishment for failure would make anything Aes Sedai could think up seem childish. Childish was exactly what worked on Semirhage and she found that it wasn’t that childish at all…
When Semirhage sees the three Aes Sedai sprawled on the floor she assumes they are all dead. So much for her Healing talent. Elza tells Semirhage that she must remove Verin’s compulsion (and it is referred to as such, despite Verin’s modest disclaimer). Semirhage is delighted because of the opportunity to observe the nasty effects. Afterwards Elza is dazed looking from having the Compulsion removed, but is coherent enough. Had Semirhage listened to Elza they would both probably be alive.
Shaidar Haran removed Semirhage’s shield but didn’t remove Elza’s Compulsion. Someone told where the a’dam was and how to get it. As reported on Terez’ Interview Database, Shaidar Haran has limitations:
Brandon hinted at some severe limitations on Shaidar Haran to affect the physical world. He says that a lot of actions that people assume to be those of Shaidar Haran in the book in one particular scene were physically carried out by Elza. He further indicated that Shadar Haran would have been incapable of physically placing the collar himself.
Q: You mention that Shaidar Haran has quite a few limitations on his power. Can you give us a few concrete examples of these limitations?
A: Shaidar Haran needs a minion to do most of his work for him. Elza was essential to Shaidar Haran in getting things done.
Q. How did Elza defeat the wards on Cadsuane's plain wooden box?
A. Elza had been given knowledge of several rarely known weaves, and in other ways made into a tool of Shaidar Haran. Not all of it was pleasant for her.
The simplest way would have been for a saidar channeller who witnessed the weaves to demonstrate them to Elza. Sorilea is the only one we know of that fits. But Elza was also given other knowledge as Sanderson says above.
Shaidar Haran appeared in black with a red light. Moridin claims red and black as his own, but it is the Great Lord’s livery.
Rand POVThe Blight is advancing very quickly. However the lack of Shadowspawn raids is very unusual. And ominous.
Bashere is aware that Tenobia could well be angry with him for following Rand and not asking her for orders. Rand admits that bringing 50 thousand soldiers into a nation was an act of war, but the rulers have left their nations under-defended. He wants Domani forces in Saldaea rather than Dragonsworn Saldaeans because they will be less of a problem, not of disloyalty to Rand, but of upsetting other Saldaeans. Ituralde had problems anyway in
Towers of Midnight with being regarded as an invader.
Rand promises Ituralde 100 Asha’man by the end of the week. Lews Therin is convinced that no Asha’man can be trusted and that they will turn on him and Rand. I guess we’ll see if he’s right in
A Memory of Light.
Rand wonders why Moridin helped him in Shadar Logoth against Sammael. Moridin only wants Rand dead beforetime if he thinks the Shadow is losing, otherwise he’d rather Rand save himself by removing a disobedient and unreliable Forsaken (who is also a rival of Moridin).
Rand is frightened that his dreams are no longer safe due to his link with Moridin. The Shadow let his dreams alone long enough for Rand to get over this, and then Cyndane breaks through…
Lews Therin says Min is right about needing to break the Seals. He explains the little he knows about Sealing the Bore. Something has to touch the Dark One, to bridge the gap, but then the Dark One is able to taint it. Therefore if something has to bridge the gap it must be something the Dark One can’t taint, like, say, the Shadar Logoth evil.
Rand is peeved that Lews Therin doesn’t have an answer on how to seal the Bore, but if he did, Lews Therin would have done things differently then and now. Rand seems to only tolerate Lews Therin for his knowledge. While Rand thinks that maybe if women had been included there might have been a successful outcome to the sealing of the Bore, we know from what RJ said that this wouldn’t have worked:
The result of this was that Lews Therin carried out his plan with only male Aes Sedai, so there were only male Aes Sedai channeling there, which was a lucky thing, because if there’d been women as well, then both saidin and saidar would have been tainted.
RJ at a booksigning
It would have been worse if anything. Rand is right; there surely is more to it than including women.
It is interesting that Rand thinks he could break the rules by killing the Dark One just as it is necessary to break the rules to win against the trickster Finns.
Rand wants Min’s approval and holds back a little from being too hard:
Except that Min didn't want him to be hard. He didn't want to frighten her, of all people. There were no games with Min; she might call him a fool, but she did not lie, and that made him want to be the man she wished him to be. But did he dare? Could a man who could laugh also be the man who could face what needed to be done at Shayol Ghul?
The Gathering Storm, The Last That Could be Done
He thinks:
It would take a hard man to face his own death, to fight the Dark One while his blood spilled on the rocks. Who could laugh in the face of that?
The Gathering Storm, The Last That Could be Done
Rand doesn’t need to laugh; he just doesn’t need to be hard or brutal either. As usual, balance is the key.
Rand is crushed by all his duties and impending sacrifice. Going one step further, Lews Therin is expressing a wish for nothingness like Moridin:
We die. You promised we could die!
Only if we defeat the Dark One, Rand said. You know that if he wins, there will be nothing for us. Not even death.
Yes . . . nothing, Lews Therin said. That would be nice. No pain, no regret. Nothing.
Rand felt a chill. If Lews Therin began to think that way . . . No, Rand said, it wouldn't be nothing. He would have our soul. The pain would be worse, far worse.
The Gathering Storm, The Last That Could be Done
Rand says that to frighten Lews Therin off from wanting nothingness. Is Lews Therin infected by the link to Moridin? Or Moridin by Lews Therin’s despair? Whichever way, Lews Therin, being the madder part of Rand’s personality, is showing the effects sooner than Rand is.
Rand says:
He had worked hard to make them think he was a man without affection. At times, he feared that his ruse had become reality.
The Gathering Storm, The Last That Could be Done
He’s right; this is a dangerous ploy because an act can become real if it is done often or really convincingly.
Rand thinks a moment of running to his father would be a fatal weakness to him and to Tam. He’s wrong about this as he shows in
Towers of Midnight in Tear. It’s an indication of how much he changed over the two books.
The prophecy of Rand living by dying is interpreted by Rand to refer to his legacy of memories and histories. At his most negative he believes this will be war, famine and chaos; when he is more positive, he hopes his schools will be effective. Either way he thinks he can’t worry about afterwards:
To do so would be to take his eye off the goal. And what is the goal? that voice seemed to say. Is it to survive, or is it to thrive? Will you set the groundwork for another Breaking or for another Age of Legends?
The Gathering Storm, The Last That Could be Done
Indeed, his spiritual state is important as Cadsuane has said from early on.
The Gathering Storm shows what happens when Rand reaches a spiritual nadir: despair, violence and contemplation of genocide.
Min encourages Rand to relax but he brushes her off saying it is not a time for laughter:
"You would have me be happy while children starve and men slaughter one another? I should laugh to hear that Trollocs are still getting through the Ways? I should be happy that the majority of the Forsaken are still out there somewhere, plotting how best to kill me?"
The Gathering Storm, The Last That Could be Done
He makes a nonsense of her suggestions by taking it to its extreme. He did something similar when he suggested that laughing was the alternative to being hard.
Rand becomes suspicious when Min mentions Cadsuane and accuses her of manipulating him on Cadsuane’ behalf. Then he feels he went too far by distrusting Min and backs down. At that moment Semirhage strikes with the male a’dam.
Semirhage tested the male a’dam previously and has apparently spent a lot of time working with the female a’dam. How and when?
The Domination Band (see
A'dam article for more on both types) prevents movement and channelling unless the controller allows it. It is more enslaving than the female a’dam. While being abused by Semirhage through the a’dam Rand has a flashback of his captivity by Elaida’s embassy. It was in the box that Rand split Lews Therin off from himself more:
Rand could remember communicating with the madman; Lews Therin had started to respond to him only shortly before that day. Rand hadn't been willing to see Lews Therin as part of himself.
The Gathering Storm, The Last That Could be Done
He doesn’t acknowledge his Lews Therin fragment until he is at least as bad as Lews Therin and fully realises it.
When he tells Semirhage that she can’t do anything more to him she reacts as though Rand has challenged her. She makes him attack Min instead. Rand refuses to kill Semirhage as Lews Therin urges; instead she forces him to torture Min. It was a futile suggestion anyway because Rand can’t do what Semirhage won’t allow while the a’dam is being used on him.
Semirhage should be taking Rand to Shayol Ghul but decides to play with him first. She tries to make him kill Min physically. This, plus a flashback of Lews Therin killing Ilyena, drives Rand to draw on the True Power through his link to Moridin. First he went emotionally cold, then dead. When Asmodean was teaching Rand how to seize saidin in the void, Rand always went emotionless. Asmodean said Rand could or would go beyond that in time:
Aviendha began dividing them while he seized saidin, filling himself with life and death, molten fire and liquid ice.
“Split them equally,” he told her. He knew his voice was cold and emotionless. Asmodean had said he could go beyond that, but he had not managed to so far.
The Fires of Heaven, A Short Spear
but Rand took a very long time to do so and may only have fully achieved this in
Towers of Midnight. Rand has always had this tendency to suppress his feelings - the heart of stone.
The unseen face would be that of Moridin. We know from earlier chapters how closely they are tied now.
Lews Therin thinks the True Power/Dark One - they are the same in his mind - is death and betrayal. Semirhage thinks the Dark One betrayed her by allowing Rand to draw the True Power rather than let her be disobedient and put her little games first above the Dark One’s commands.
The True Power is totally addictive as we soon learn. The modest amount Rand uses to kill Semirhage and Elza rivals in seductiveness what Rand can draw through the Choedan Kal. The Dark One = overkill. Not just kill.
Rand knows how to use the True Power, so the knowing must be part of its access:
Rand raised a hand and, filled with the power he did not understand, wove a single weave.
The Gathering Storm, The Last That Could be Done
The bracelets were not destroyed by True Power balefire, but the weave did not hit them directly.
Lews Therin thinks he and Rand are damned by using the True Power, especially True Power balefire.
Rand is still emotionally numb. Now he knows what it is like to kill a loved one while fully aware thanks to Semirhage. He thinks the worst has been done to him and he can make himself strong enough to withstand it now:
Once, weeks ago, he had decided that he must become stronger— where he had been iron, he had decided to become steel. It appeared that steel was too weak. He would be harder, now. He understood how. Where he had once been steel, he became something else. From now on, he was cuendillar.
The Gathering Storm, The Last That Could be Done
But he isn’t making himself stronger. Cadsuane was right when she told Sorilea that Rand confuses strength and hardness. In fact he does so in the quote above. At this point Rand is not strength, only hardness. Perrin is strength (see
Perrin essay). Rand is making himself harder and more brittle just as Fain found Elaida was compared with Siuan:
He had been surprised to find Elaida on the Amyrlin Seat. Better than what he had expected, though. In many ways she was not so tough, he had heard, as the woman who had worn the stole before her. Harder, yes, and more cruel, but more brittle, too. More difficult to bend, likely, but easier to break.
The Fires of Heaven, Prologue
Rand is now staying emotionless in a different void. A void is nothingness just as Lews Therin and Moridin advocate. Rand states that
they can’t bend or break him and thinks he’s safe from that. But he’s not safe because he can break himself as we shall see.
Posts
There are quite a few trickster figures in the Wheel of Time series and they are some of the most popular characters due to their daring and subversive, yet very human natures, and their power to enchant other characters and the reader. I’ve wanted to write an essay on them for over a year now and have finally done so. In it I describe the typical characteristics of trickster figures in myth and legend and how Jordan has incorporated them into his trickster characters Mat, Thom, Noal, Vanin, Fain, the Aelfinn and Eelfinn, and of course, Verin. Without their almost accidental abilities to twist events, dodge disaster, or get past boundaries, the Pattern of the Last Days and the books would be far worse off. 
