The Dragon Reborn Read-Through #10: Mat, from Inn to Inn

Mat, from Inn to Inn

by Dominic

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Jordan offered us a first POV of Mat in The Dragon Reborn, Mat freed from the taint of Shadar Logoth. For obvious reasons, he couldn't introduce this character's POV during EOTW or even less TGH, when it was certain to make him appear very unsympathetic and annoying.

I wouldn't even say more unsympathetic and annoying for me, as it's not before TSR and even more TFOH that I sarted to like the Mat character and find him somewhat funny (later 'very funny' - and hilarious once Tuon joined his story line, though I'm a even bigger fan of the humour surrounding Nynaeve). The POV in The Dragon Reborn was something of a shock, as it turned out Mat was even worse than how the other characters saw him: self-centered, obsessed with riches and money (and even after all the woes it caused, he is still musing on getting back the ruby from the Shadar Logoth dagger to sell it), lazy, judgemental and always keen to see the bad sides of other people first (and often only), immature - altogether grumpy, whinny and cutting to others and by a long shot a worse travelling companion then any of the girls to each other. The list of his annoying sides early on could be long, some perhaps aggravated by the Shadar Logoth taint - like his extreme suspicion, especially of Aes Sedai and Rand. Many people blame Egwene for the distance that has grown between her and Rand, but it is Mat in this book who turns his back to Rand, even to their friendship, with the most vehemence, while all the rest of the Emond's Fielders will struggle with much at times, but will always strive not to abandon Rand and not to lose Rand al'Thor behind the Dragon image. For Mat, it goes from 'best friend' back in Emond's Field to 'a nice enough fellow, but who could be friend with a man like him?". It's amazing how Jordan was able to turn the character of Mat around over the course of the series. He's still a bit of all that, but along the way his true valour, his true heart as well, started showing and his bad sides started becoming sources for humour. He is among my favourite characters now.

In The Dragon Reborn, Mat's journey truly begins after the 'false start' of Shadar Logoth. A counterpart to Perrin, Mat became in this book a major player, with his own story line. As I mentionned in an earlier post, in this book the focus of the Inns shifted to the two secondary ta'veren.

The Tremalking Splice could refer to many things. Much later in the series, Mat would seal the Sea Folk to Elayne and Nynaeve. He would also have unpleasant encounters with ropes and nooses. This could eventually refer to his thread in the Pattern and dying and living again. But my favourite way to interpret the Inns' name is that it heralds the beginning of Mat's journey, and his belief that he is escaping 'everything': the Aes Sedai, his destiny as ta'veren etc. In truth, he is escaping Siuan Sanche yet tying himself to the Pattern even more strongly - going back to Rand and Moiraine, to the underworld of the Finns that would bring him to Rhuidean. This Inn where it begins also sees the true emergence of Mat's Luck. Mat thinks he's cut the rope, but it's only for it to be spliced and hold him much stronger.

The Woman of Tanchico is an interesting one too. In the Dragon Reborn, Mat is merely beginning to assemble around him the people who would become his companions/followers. Mat is a trickster and like many gods of war, a kind of Carnival figure, able to twist the odds around him, turn the world upside down. By the Last Days before Tarmon Gai'don in Knife of Dreams, he will have gathered around him the strangest crew of characters of the whole series, people in the oddest situations, who aren't what they seem to be : an imperial heiress and a figure of Judgment turned into a 'thieving servant', a lady's maid who is actually a lethal assassin and bodyguard, a motherly Innkeeper playing matchmaker and almost an accomplice to Mat's 'lively' character who is in truth a very serious Brown Ajah Aes Sedai scholar who burned herself out, sul'dam caught in a wagon with a bunch of Aes Sedai forced to be 'grateful' and obedient to Mat, a gleeman who was in truth lover to a Queen long ago, who has quite a few assassinations on his book including one (Galldrian) that sent a whole nation into chaos, a Tairen thief-catcher who's becoming quite good at freeing or kidnapping noblewomen, a once naval officer elevated to the Blood, cast out of the nobility and ordered to become a shea dancer if she wants to return to the Seanchan fold, who is in love with her slave who leads her by the nose but who is forced to pass herself out as Mat's girlfriend, a scout who is actually a master thief, the once Panarch of Tanchico now passing for an humble servant in love with a mere thiefcatcher (it should be funny to see the reunion of 'Thera' and Elayne), mini-Mat himself, Olver, a maker of fireworks - displays of beauty for aloof noblemen - performing with a circus and who has turned herself into the inventor of gunpowder artillery - and of course the strange old man with his tall tales who is actually the hero Jain Fastrider in disguise. And that,s without including the odd group of the Band of the Red Hand, with once idle and do-no-good noblemen's sons in top positions. Together, Mat's little carnival was right at home at the circus.

So, who is the woman of Tanchico? First, she could be Amethera/Thera. By the end of the book, Mar will 'recruit' Juilin the thief-catcher - her future mate and saviour. She could be Liandrin, one of the two important Tanchican in this book, though unrelated to Mat. Lastly, and most probably, she is the dual Illuminator/Armorer Alludra, who will cross Mat's path in The Dragon Reborn before joining his 'dark carnival' much later in the series. Her duality might be represented by the two sisters owning the Inn. It is noteworthy that at this Inn Mat recruits his first 'follower' in Thom.

There isn't much to say about The Riverman, unless perhaps it alludes to yet a third important future companion of Mat, Bayle Domon.

The Good Queen, where Mat meets Alludra, is an ironic nod to Morgase who, compelled by Rahvin, is making a mess of everything. It is, beyond that, an allusion to the future Queen of Andor, Elayne, whose ties to Mat begin in this book and would, later, have her label him 'a most valuable subject'. This theme is also carried through at the Queen's Blessing, Mat's next stop. Jordan has developped an humorous running gag around those two, slowly turning Mat into her knight-servant through twisted, amusing episodes alluding to the classical tasks Knights accomplish for Ladies in the Arthurian and French 'courtly love' traditions. It begins by challenging her two champions, her brothers, to a duel. By chivalric tradition, Mat has made himself the new champion of Elayne by defeating in fair fight her two knights. And the parallel continues: soon after, Mat has to brave all sort of dangers on a quest to carry an important message for his Lady: a letter to his mother. From the palace, Mat has to embark on an even more dangerous quest, to go save the Lady for the evil Knight holding her captive in his fortress. And it doesn't end there... Mat later gets charged by the King Arthur figure, Rand, to escort the Lady to safety - an other archetypal task. In Ebou Dar, the stakes are raised, and Mat has to save Elayne by fighting the monster (a dragon image, the Gholam) that threatened her and her treasure. That is all, for now... there is one more very important chivalric task Mat has not performed for Elayne: defending her castle from assieging enemies. But with part of the Band already heading for Caemlyn, let's say this isn't over yet. ;)

The White Crescent may allude to the Stone, a 'fortress of the Moon' or to Lanfear, who set much in motion in this book.

The Golden Cup is an allusion to Mat's Luck, that emerges in this book.

In complement to this post, we are publishing today The Dragon Reborn entry of the Dew Drop Inn: Wheel of Time Accommodation article.


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- Got any nagging question about a topic from The Dragon Reborn? Send them to 'Ask Zemaille' and the librarians will do their best to answer it.

The Dragon Reborn Read-through #9 -The Importance Of What Is Important

The Importance Of What Is Important

by Linda

After spending some time looking through the Great Holding of Tear, Moiraine finally mentions Perrin and the possibility he and his companion were in danger to the girls. Egwene wants to know who Perrin’s companion is, Nynaeve wants to know of the danger he might be in.

Moiraine found a Seal unbroken in the Holding and thinks it is significant, more important than Perrin. The three previous Seals were broken. Mat thinks the Seals are not important. Everyone has different ideas about what is important:

“And this time unbroken,” Nynaeve said. “For the first time, the seal is unbroken. As if that mattered, now.”
“You think it does not?” Moiraine’s voice was dangerous in its quiet, and the other women frowned at her.
Mat rolled his eyes. They kept talking about unimportant things.

- The Dragon Reborn, People of the Dragon

Only Moiraine wonders about why the Seal isn’t broken this time and why this time is different to the other times. (A notable difference is that this time Ishamael died.)

Mat asks pertinent questions about prophecy being fulfilled. Are they the People of the Dragon? Moiraine says she wasn’t trying to fulfill prophecies, only to keep Rand alive:

“Perhaps,” Moiraine said slowly. “I came to stop Be’lal from killing Rand. I did not expect to see the Stone of Tear fall. Perhaps we are. Prophecies are fulfilled as they are meant to be, not as we think they should be.”

- The Dragon Reborn, People of the Dragon

Yet in the next book she will try to fulfill a prophecy – that of the city lost and forsaken – and gets it wrong. It takes quite a while before she accepts to leave the Pattern alone.

Moiraine also reasons out that Rand didn’t kill the Dark One and that Ba’alzamon was human, since he left a body. Egwene then corroborates that with what she saw in Verin’s piece of ancient manuscript that linked Ba’alzamon with Ishamael. The women strengthen their resolve to continue the war. Berelain’s message from Lanfear helps.

Most uncharacteristically, Moiraine gives out the information to this small group that Mat is the Hornsounder. Mat assures them they can count on him while privately thinking of doing a runner. The trickster in him is suddenly uppermost.

The Dragon Reborn Read-through #8: A Map of the City of Tear

A Map of the City of Tear

by Dominic





About the map of the City of Tear:

No map of the city of Tear has appeared in the books of the series so far. One was however commissioned to Elisa Mitchell (who also designs the books' maps) for the out-of-print RPG book. My map of the city was inspired by her layout, with some changes. The accuracy of Mitchell's map has often been called into question for its apparent conflicts with the books. It was worth investigating further, as there are other obvious errors on the colour maps from the RPG book, for example on the Caemlyn map: Mitchell corrected various problems with the design of the Inner City, as her black-and-white map published in EOTW did not depict it accurately, neither the Queen's oval plaza in front of the palace, nor the streets that meandered on the biggest hill on which the palace is built, up to very close to the palace's walls (as the episodes where Rand and later Mat climb up a slope visible from the street to the top of the wall showed). She also corrected problems with Lower Caemlyn, not depicted accurately on her original map.

However, she also introduced some new inaccuracies: by making the streets layout of New Caemlyn more realistic (and the buildings better in scale - Caemlyn on the original map was mostly empty spaces, parks and over-large buildings, with nowhere near enough smaller buildings for its size and population) she also introduced major errors, for instance she got rid of the straight wide boulevard with a row of trees in the middle that runs from the Whitebridge Gate to the Sunrise Gate (to Aringill), described exactly like this in The Dragon Reborn, notably - and appearing on her original layout.

And what about the map of Tear? Two main points about the map have caused problems to readers, and those who've participated in 'WoT map making' discussions before are familiar with them: the location of the city on the Erinin and the location of the Stone of Tear within the city.

The conflict with Robert Jordan's book begins with this quote from Egwene's POV of her arrival in Tear:

"As the Darter wallowed toward the docks of Tear, on the west bank of the River Erinin." (The Dragon Reborn, Following the Craft)

Mitchell rather located the city on the Eastern bank. However, this isn't a mistake from Mitchell, the error is Jordan's (or his editor's - or he gave Egwene a poor sense of orientation) own in that passage of The Dragon Reborn, as a survey of a few further episodes in the city will demonstrate. To the best of my knowledge, this error has not been corrected in newer editions, though apparently Robert Jordan acknowledged it to some readers at book signings (others say they could not remember if he said the map or the books were wrong, but that he acknowledged the conflict).

The first problem with Egwene's description of her arrival is that it contradicts Perrin's arrival in the same book. Moiraine's group has travelled over land from Illian. If Tear stood on the Western bank, they would have entered it directly through a Gate in the walls. They rather took a ferry and docked in the Maule, the port district, just like Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne (and Mat and Thom) did earlier, which means the city has to stand on the Eastern bank:

The afternoon sun was hot as the ferry docked in Tear; puddles stood on the steaming stones of the dock, and the air seemed almost as damp to Perrin as Illian's had. (The Dragon Reborn, The Hammer)

But how can we decide which description is right between two conflicting ones? There is of course the matter that with Egwene it's a simple editing error, west bank for east bank, while with Perrin it's a major scene construction blunder. Further episodes confirmed the editing error in the Egwene chapter:

In The Shadow Rising, Perrin leaves the Stone through an eastern gate, rides through the city and take the Eastern Gate, travels some leagues to the location of the old Ogier Grove and use the Waygate there. This indicates, of course, that the city is on the Eastern bank of the Erinin, and that Perrin took the road to Godan). Rand will take the same direction with the Aiel later, and reach the Portal Stone.

In The Dragon Reborn itself, there is a further bit of evidence (form a Mat POV), but we'll look at it further down the line. For now, it's established that Elisa Mitchell placed the city on the correct side of the Erinin.

The second problem the map has caused readers concern the location of the Stone within the city. The evidence of its location is clear, but Robert Jordan used 'left and right' instead of 'north or south', and with the erroneous Egwene quote it sparked a confusion.

First, we know for certain that the Stone is on the waterfront and has its own docks on the Erinin. It is thus to the west of the city. But is it north or south?

The most reliable evidence comes again from Perrin's POV. We established he took a ferry on the eastern shore and docked in the Maule, when he further observed:

As soon as the ramp at the end of the barge was lowered, he led Stepper up to the dock after Moiraine and Lan. The huge shape of the Stone of Tear lay off to their left, shadowed so that it looked like a mountain despite the great banner at its highest point. (The Dragon Reborn, The Hammer)

To have the Stone to his left as he led stepper down the ramp, it had to be situated to the North.

Finally, yet another confirmation comes from Mat, in Lord of Chaos. Intent on joining Rand's forces on the plain of Maredo, Mat and the Band are travelling on the eastern bank of the Erinin from the city of Maerone in Cairhien toward Tear. In the episode when Rand visits Mat to tell him he will be diverted by Gateway to Salidar instead, Mat mentions his original intention, which was to reach Tear and take there the ferry to the plains of Maredo. This is again a solid indication that the city is on the eastern bank.

I have not found further quotes to corrobate the location of the Stone (Perrin's and Mat's, however, are conclusive enough), but all the other quotes mentionning directions (in or out of the Stone) are compatible with Perrin's observation that the Stone is at the north-west corner of the city. For example, this quote from Mat's POV:

Whether the thing was a street or a plaza, he had followed it all the way around the Stone since nightfall; the only place it did not go was on the river side, where the Erinin ran right along the foot of the fortress, and nothing interrupted it except the city wall. That wall was only two houses to his right. So far, the top of the wall seemed the best path to the Stone, but not one he would be overjoyed to take. (The Dragon Reborn, Into the Stone)

Mat was within the city walls, more precisely just south of the northern wall, with the wall to his right, as he was turned to look at the Stone.

So, Elisa's Mitchell's basic layout of the city does not contradict the descriptions by Robert Jordan. There are a few details which are wrong and some I have sought to correct on my map:

- Mat clearly mentions (quote above) that the the 'wide plaza' surrounds the Stone on all sides except on the river front, and is interrupted only by the city walls. On Mitchell's RPG map, the plaza stops a the city's wall and doesn't appear on the north side. Rand confirms Mat's description in Knife of Dreams, commenting that the plaza surrounds the Stone on three sides.

It is likely there is some sort of 'low city' on that side (and that this lower city extends quite a bit further from the walls), and there's very likely a street from the Stone to the main north road (Semirhage sent Shadowspawn that way). In doubt, I did not depict them.

- Mat was able to walk the city's walls from rooftops all the way to the Stone and used explosives to create a breach. On Mitchell's map, the city's walls stopped quite short of the Stone's.

- In the episode of Sammael's attack, we have the confirmation that the Stone has its own docks. Mitchell had omitted them.

Another dubious element os the floor plan of the Stone that is hard to reconcile with the books, but the descriptions are so partial I left it as is.

The shape of the Stone may also be inaccurate. Jordan leaves the impression it is more squarish, but it is not fully conclusive.

I found no other obvious layout error (the city of Tear beside the Maule and the areas near the walls and gates is actually never described in much detail), so the rest of the map's elements follow Mitchell's layout.

That leaves the issue of the city's size. There is no scale on the map, but if the layout is accurate, then we can simply take Rand's estimation of the Stone's size ("a square mile of more", in Knife of Dreams, Within the Stone) to guess the city's size at roughly 7-8 square miles "or more". However, this contradicts Egwene's estimate (at first glance) that Tear is "easily as big as Tar Valon" (roughly 8 miles long and averaging 2 miles wide, less near the harbours, more in the south part where the Grove is) "or Caemlyn" (Elayne mentions in KOD that its outer walls run for 6 leagues, so twenty four miles of outer walls). According to Mitchell's layout ans scale, Tear would be significantly smaller than either. It may well be Egwene who, watching the city for the first time from the river, misjudged its size or that for her 'big is big' - or perhaps RJ revised the size of Tear years later, turning Egwene's comment into an error. In KOD, Rand mentions that from the Erinin the Stone reaches all the way to the heart of the city, which, at a square mile, wouldn't quite be the case if the city was as big as Caemlyn or Tar Valon. The description of his relatively short trip riding at a slow pace from a gate to the east to an inn in the city's center in KOD also suggests Tear is smaller than Caemlyn or Tar Valon.

Another possibility is that the 'lower city' outside the walls is considerably bigger to the north, south and east than what Mitchell depicted, as is the case with the Foregate of Cairhien (before its destruction) and the Lower City of Caemlyn that both stretch for some miles.

This map of the city of Tear was one of the first maps inspired by WOT I created, around 2007. I used a watercolour painting for the background, combined with a photograph I made of a blank 18th century book page, and elements inspired by those found in a 18th century Dutch atlas. Everything was composited and finalized using Illustrator and Photoshop.

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- You're welcome to leave comments about this post below, or to use The Dragon Reborn Round-Table open thread to leave a commentary of your own about any aspect of the book.

- Got any nagging question about a topic from The Dragon Reborn? Send them to 'Ask Zemaille' and the librarians will do their best to answer it.

The Dragon Reborn Read-through #7: Three Times Makes True

by Linda

Other Forsaken think Ishamael lies without thought to gain an inch or a second. That’s quite an endorsement coming from them.

Ishamael had hidden himself like a bat above Callandor and hovers in the air above Rand. He is wrapped in blackest shadow; this is probably the True Power. Strangely, he slowly descends hovering. This is an ability we haven't seen before or since. The other Forsaken don't show any such ability to lift themselves off the ground with the One Power. Another True Power manifestation?

In Tel’aran’rhiod, Ishamael sent/made Trollocs and Myrddraal, turned air to soot, made flames, unravelled reality to send Rand into a world of nothing, flooded the halls, changed gravity, turned air to rock, then lava then a vacuum, and made soul-eaters.

He sprang each trap and ran on; what Ba’alzamon twisted to destroy him, he made right without being aware of how. Vaguely he knew that in some way he had brought things back into natural balance, forced them into line with his own dance down that impossibly thin divide between existence and nothingness, but that knowledge was distant.

- The Dragon Reborn, What Is Written in Prophecy

The theme of balance again. Rand and his opposite Ishamael duel. Ishamael wants to upset the balance, Rand to right it. The two are pretty equally matched.

The Stone rings three times as Perrin swings his hammer Thor-like (he is a parallel of Thor) to free Faile.

Ishamael weaves balefire at Rand and Callandor parts the flow:

a blazing shaft like the one Moiraine had made shot out of the shadows among the columns, straight toward his chest. His wrist twisted the sword instinctively; it was instinct as much as anything else that made him loose flows from saidin into Callandor, a flood of the Power that made the sword blaze brighter even than that bar streaking at him. His uncertain balance between existence and destruction wavered. Surely that torrent would consume him.
The shaft of light struck the blade of Callandor - and parted on its edge, forking to stream past on either side. He felt his coat singe from its near passage, smelled the wool beginning to burn. Behind him, the two prongs of frozen fire, of liquid light, struck huge redstone columns; where they struck, stone ceased to exist, and the burning bars bored through to other columns, serving those instantaneously as well. The Heart of the Stone rumbled as columns fell and shattered in clouds of dust, sprays of stone fragments. What fell into the light, however, simply was not, anymore.

- The Dragon Reborn, What Is Written in Prophecy

Neither Rand’s weave nor Callandor was affected by balefire. Later in Winter’s Heart, Aginor expected Callandor to survive his balefiring of the hilltop where Rand’s party were cleansing saidin. A logical conclusion would be that Callandor is made of cuendillar.

Rand sees Ishamael’s black connecting cords to the Dark One:

Black lines like steel wires seemed to run off from Ba’alzamon into the darkness mounding around him, vanishing into unimaginable heights and distances within that blackness.

- The Dragon Reborn, What Is Written in Prophecy

Only Rand’s action in cutting these cords prevented Ishamael, using the True Power, from winning the fight.

Finally Rand kills Ishamael, the Heart of the Shadow, by stabbing his heart with Callandor in the Heart of the Stone in Tel’arah’rhiod. As he lies dying Ishamael still insists the Dark One cannot be defeated. Of course that could be a lie. :P

Both Ishamael and Rand materialise in the waking world Heart of the Stone. All very symbolic stuff. Compare with this verse in the Karaethon Cycle:

Soul of fire, heart of stone, in pride he conquers, forcing the proud to yield. He calls upon the mountains to kneel, and the seas to give way, and the very skies to bow. Pray that the heart of stone remembers tears, and the soul of fire, love."

- A Crown Of Swords, Opening prophecy

And this time, the third time he duels Ishamael, he kills him. The third time something happens or is attempted in The Wheel of Time series it has greater potency or is ‘made true’.

Rand believes he has killed the Dark One (even though Ishamael just finished telling him otherwise) and won the Last Battle. He aims to end the breaking and killing, and not break the nations and the world. With this on his mind, I think one of his questions to the Finns in a few days’ time is about this.

This is the third and last time that all three ta'veren are in one place and have a major win against the Shadow. Do I detect a strategy here?

With the end of The Dragon Reborn, we have the end of Ishamael masquerading as Ba’alzamon and the end of the uncertainty about whether the series would continue. The books become more complex, with (gradually) more explanation about what the Forsaken are up to (though not enough to convince us that the Shadow is way ahead of the Light in the war), and to my thinking, a lot more interesting.

New Article Released: Dice Games: It's Time to Roll the Dice

It is in The Dragon Reborn, after his rebirth in the Tower that we finally get a POV from Mat Cauthon. Shorn of the Shadar Logoth evil, Mat begins his journey to adulthood.

There are two articles in the Reference Library about aspects of Mat's experiences in The Dragon Reborn, the Fool and Joker essay already published which looks at the development of his character and skills, and an article on the Dice games I originally wrote for Wotmania and is now republished here. It was the dice games that revealed to Mat and the readers the extent of his extraordinary luck and what it would mean for his life.

There is also an essay on the different real world influences used to create the complex Cauthon personality in preparation that will be posted here soon.

The Dragon Reborn Read-through #6: Perrin Out of the Woods

Moiraine and Perrin Out of the Woods

by Dominic

In The Dragon Reborn, the focus shifted from Rand to Perrin and Mat. Similarly, the symbolism surrounding the Inns turned to Perrin and Mat, who visited them, while Rand and the girls roamed the 'wilderness', so to speak.

I will make a survey of a few of the Inns featured in the book while looking at Perrin's story arc, and at Mat's in a future post.

While his character doesn't shine as much in The Dragon Reborn as he will in book four, an highlight of The Dragon Reborn for me is the temporary shift of perspective from Rand to Perrin, and the return of Moiraine again as an ambiguous half protagonist and half antagonist, which is perhaps most effective and balanced when Jordan showed it through the eyes of Egwene and Perrin, both extremely critical of her, but without the excesses about her (bordering delusions and bad faith) of Rand and most of all Mat and Nynaeve.

The juxtaposition of Perrin, who strives to hang to his humanity, and Moiraine, who gives to the world and her entourage the image of a cool and heartless manipulator, who rarely allow herself to show she cares about anything other than her cause (ironically, as she strives to save humanity but rarely allow herself to show her own humanity to anyone) and can still see people as human beings and have feelings for them, is very interesting.

I love the character of Moiraine, don't get me wrong. She is in my opinion one of Jordan's best drawn characters, or she becomes so in this book and even more in TSR and TFOH, after being in TEOTW introduced as the classic mentor figure (à la Gandalf in LOTR), with a massive twist: her 'charges' gradually turn against her, and she only gradually shifts from trying to control them to helping them to find their own way, the way a real mentor does.

As much as I like the character, however, I was never able to like the woman much - admirable in many ways, she's quite the hero, but she's in no way for me a very likeable figure. One of the facets of the character I enjoy most is that her story arc is one of being forced to release her grip, eventually surrendering her notions to pull the strings and keep the characters on a leash, her sudden urgency when she realises in Rhuidean her time is running up and she has failed to properly prepare Rand, failed to teach him what she could and instead kept him too much from secrets she feared him to learn (about Prophecies etc.) and tried to manipulate and lead him too much, struggled too much against the Wheel pulling Rand where he must really go, not where she, who isn't the ta'veren, thought he must and mustn't go. The Wheel doesn't wait on Moiraine's wishes, as she gradually came to understand and accept. Moiraine is the first character who must face (and accept, which she eventually does) that big plans for a smooth path to the Last Battle as she conceived of with Siuan Sanche won't work, that for all her years preparation the coming of the Dragon Reborn won't be much as foreseen, the ripples he sends out far worse than expected, and the efforts to control him pointless, as the Wheel pushes and pulls its ta'veren. And one of the most admirable thing about Moiraine is that in the end she understands and accept this with humility - accept, which may even be worse for her that her time near Rand is soon over, that she won't be at his side for much of what's ahead, that being at the Dragon's side in the years leading to Tarmon Gai'don - the cause she devoted her life to - isn't for her. She needed to go on another path (seemingly to return to him for the Last Battle itself) and she did.
And she prepared her exit with as much fortitude and dedication as she took her mission, when she imagined herself as the guide and mentor to the Dragon. In Rhuidean, Moiraine would truly gain Wisdom to complete her knowledge, and afterward finally she finds the way to play the role of teacher, with much humiliation for her, a consequence of the antagonism between her and Rand she largely was responsible for sparking: not easy to trust or like a woman who seems obsessed with making sure you die according to prophecy, and not only that but seems intent on bringing you to the slaughterhouse blindfolded, keeping from you as much as she knows of your fate in fear you bolt. Not an easy woman to have around. In TSR after Rhuidean she would also finally do what she probably should have done long before, warming up to Egwene and Rand on a personal basis. Part of it is still a touch manipulative - she 'remembers how to control saidar' she tells Egwene (though this may be in part a way for Moiraine to save face, to make Egwene believe she wasn't just accepting what must be but actually was still the puppet master), ie: controlling it by surrendering to it first, but most, the core of it is a genuine surrender, a genuine recognition of her real role in events, of her real place as a guide and teacher. With Egwene she will even attempt t the end to amend what she did in Tear by scheming succesfully to separate Rand from all his personal friends and scant trustable allies like Thom. It came a bit late, however, when Egwene and Rand have put great distance between them, him associating her to a schemer/puppet master like Moiraine, Egwene seing already more the Dragon than Rand al'Thor.

Moiraine appears, which isn't always the truth or the full truth, to dispose of people as she sees fits, as she decides the Pattern must be woven, and ironically she often achieves the real will of the Wheel through 'unintended consequences' of her actions: driving Rand away from the mountains, sending the girls and Thom away to their real destinies in an attempt to send remove them from Rand's entourage, leading Rand to puzzle out, crucially, important prophecies by her own refusal to share her knowledge of them with him openly, to bring him to share in the decisions affecting not only the Pattern, but also his own life.

On the one hand, we see her save Lan's life by arranging to pass his bond to Nynaeve. On the other hand, for all her good intentions, it's an extremely hard and cold decision, taken without even consulting the man who has given him his loyalty for nearly 20 years, nor Nynaeve for that matter. Moiraine played the matchmaker for both and made the decision for both. In The Great Hunt, we even saw betraying his trust and his loyalty, by hiding from him that Isam Mandragoran could possibly be alive. Again, two faces to the coin: by doing this she prevented Lan leaving her cause (and Nynaeve) and going back to his private war to avenge Malkier, which would most likely have killed him (which was probably the intent of this verse of 'dark prophecy', a bait for Moraine's warder that wasn't taken). On the other hand, this Oath is for Lan as meaningful and strong as his Oath to Moiraine, and hiding the mention of Isam from Lan was a poor way to repay his service and his trust, especially when the decision to pass the bond only at her death and to keep Isam a secret was a lot motivated by Moiraine's wish to keep Lan at her side. This would be mirror with stark contrast later by Nynaeve, who out of feelings she has for Lan, true selfless love, will find a much better balance between doing something that might save him while still letting him go away from her to fulfill what he sees as his duty. Nynaeve achieved the balance between duty and dedication and humanity Moiraine in the early book was not capable of.

And yet, for all her grating and ambiguous sides, Moiraine is vital to the Light, and she played a major role in forming Rand and Egwene into future leaders, though very often she achieved that by trying to prevent them from going their own ways, forcing them to become stronger to stand up to her and make their own decisions... unintended consequences again, at least before Rhuidean made her see things a bit differently.

In the Dragon Reborn it was most interesting to see Perrin start to challenge Moiraine and her methods. While he sometimes misses or fails to see the whole and fairer picture about Moiraine, if not as often as Rand, Mat and Nynaeve do, he often hits bullseye in his criticism (notably of her distanciation from her humanity), a role Egwene will pick up in The Shadow Rising. Moiraine in The Dragon Reborn teached a lot, by her own example, about dedication and duty and the hard sacrifices that may lie ahead for the boys. But for Perrin it's by mirroring that she achieves the most, unintentionally: Perrin hangs to his humanity in this book a lot in reaction to Moiraine's own distanciation from personal feelings she may very feel but refuse to show.

The story have him come out of the 'wild life' of the Mountains. As the book begins, he isn't quite an hermit like Elyas, yet lives somewhat like him in the woods, with the wolves around but kept at bay as he fears them too much and still refuses his nature as wolfbrother (and is confronted again with the Tinkers and the Way, a parallel again to The Eye of the World). Another interesting 'hidden layer' for Perrin in this book is that he starts his path to parallel Artur Hawkwing. Here, this is reflected by his 'hunting' of Rand, which mirrors almost exactly the path of Guaire Amalasan, who proclaimed himself the Dragon Reborn in what is now Almoth Plain, who advanced through what is now Ghealdan and Altara, Illian and finally Tear, where he failed to take the Stone, all the way pursued by Hawking. Berelain and Faile parallel Hawkwing's two wives, but with a funny twist: Perrin unlike Hawkwing has to deal with the two at once, and they fight it off.

As Perrin gets out of the wilderness, he returns gradually to human civilization. First, after the episode of the attack in the mountains were he almost became wolf, he is given a warning at Harilin's Leap in the form of Noam, the wolfbrother who became wolf completely: Noam's fate confirms to Perrin his concerns about being a wolfbrother and losing his humanity are real. The Inn sign show a man jumping on one foot, his arms up in the air. It probably refers to a local legend, which isn't very important. The symbolism of the picture here is what counts - it is a leap to freedom for Noam, and it is also a reference to Hopper, the leaping wolf who dreams of freedom and soaring like the eagle.

Perrin's return to civilization progresses in Remen, which shows him the path to salvage his humanity with The Wayland's Forge Inn and its sign, a blacksmith with his hammer, that Perrin sees as 'a good omen'. The Wayland Forge is to Perrin what the Stag and the Lion was to Rand's character in The Eye of the World. For Rand, it was the encounter with prophecies and Min, for Perrin it is the first encounter with Faile and his destiny to pick up the Hammer again. At this inn, Perrin is surrounded by guests from wedding ceremonies. He also finds Gaul, and confronts more Whitecloaks, other important things on his path. Perrin has sought all his youth to tame his strength and impulsive side, fearing them. Tarmon Gai'don needed him to learn to find and unleash his physical strength and confront his capacity for extreme, murderous violence and - aspects he needs to fight the Shadow and become the Wolf-King. This is why he needed to pick the War Axe first and learn to use it, why he needed to become a wolfbrother and distance himself from his nature as a quiet, gentle boy. Blacksmithing gives him a taste of the end of this path, when he will have reached the point when his violence and wolf-ish nature become dangerous, when he will need to find balance again, and is ready to look back at what he once was and carry the blacsmith hammer, still a formidable weapon, but also a constant reminder of his true, complete self: half a builder and shaper of tools (also humans, as leader/ruler) as the Blacksmith, but a blacksmith who can use his hammer as a weapon to protect his people and destroy the Shadow. What begins at Wayland's Forge ends at The Star in Tear. A similar 'guiding star' in Shadar Logoth lead him to safety and toward his destiny of becoming a wolfbrother. The Star in Tear reveals to him his love of Faile, and standing between a smithy and a weaver's shop (two opposite images of the Pattern: the weaver relating to the Wheel weaving ta'veren tightly, the smithy representing a ta'veren like Perrin's ability to shape the pattern around him). At the Star, Perrin will save Faile's life for the first time, and give up the axe for the Hammer for the first time. Things come full circle to close the 'first act' of Perrin's story arc in a way that echoes strongly Rand getting his first sword at the beginning of EOTW and his second at the end of TDR; Perrin gets his axe from the hands of Harral Luhhan, and in Tear another blacksmith, Demrid Ajala, not only judges him ready to be a full blacksmith, but gives him the hammer that will one day become an hammer mentionned in prophecy, the Hammer of the Wolf-King. Both Faile and the Hammer are the keys for Perrin to retain his humanity, both Faiel and the Hammer are keys for him to play his role in the Last Battle, if Perrin manages to avoid the perils, manages to walk the fine line between hanging too much to his humanity, give in and not being ready to make the necessary sacrifices to save the world, and losing his humanity, not becoming the Wolf-King but a feral wolf, running with the pack in truth.

The Dragon Reborn Read-through #5 - A Little Something About the Wine: Perrin's Dreams

A Little Something About the Wine: Perrin's Dreams

by Linda

Perrin has a couple of dreams in The Dragon Reborn, Shadows Sleeping. They are not the predictive dreams he has later in the book, but they are crucial nonetheless, particularly since Jordan chose to show little of what the Forsaken are up to.


Dream the First:

Ishamael tries to lure Perrin into giving up the axe. Perrin says not yet.

Murmuring from wolves makes the room flicker, or details chaLnge. The wolves protect Perrin from the dangers of Tel’aran’rhiod, even Ishamael’s weavings to a degree. Only when Perrin forces them away does the dream, controlled by Ishamael, stabilise.

Ishamael wants Perrin to ‘go back to the hammer.‘ I don’t think this means that Ishamael knows that Perrin is the Wolf King and needs to take up the hammer in the Last Days. Ishamael seems to think it is an advantage for him if Perrin goes back to the hammer and what he is after is for Perrin to give up his ta’veren and Bannerman role and return to blacksmithing. Perrin has not got a hammer of his own yet; he will do so later in this book.

Perrin refuses because he is ta’veren and it is his duty to use the axe for a while. Perrin is sure that Ishamael knows he is ta’veren (Perrin doesn't know it, but Ishamael can find ta’veren in the Pattern and may well have the rare Talent of seeing ta’veren.) Ishamael grimaces and suggests Perrin could avoid his duty:

“There are ways to change things, boy. Ways to avoid even fate. Sit, and we will talk of them.”

Symbolically, Perrin takes “a step back, keeping well in the light.” This can be taken on many levels. Throughout this scene, shadows and light levels in the room symbolise the battle between evil (Ishamael) and good (Perrin). For example: "Darkness molded the man [Ishamael] like a caress.”

Ishamael then tries to get Perrin to accept his offer of a drink. With a toast (or vow) "to years past and years to come” and a promise to "see things more clearly after." The blood red wine in a silver cup is meant to seem like a kind of sacrament and is an allusion to the Black Mass. Things made in Tel’aran’rhiod to be ingested can do or taste like pretty much whatever the maker wants. It might have only made Perrin sleep for a hundred years, but it could have made him a tool or a slave or even a devotee of the Dark One. If they wanted to kill Perrin, either Ishamael or Lanfear could have, wolves or no wolves. Both Ishamael and Lanfear are masters of Tel'aran'rhiod. Most likely the wine was to bind Perrin to the Shadow, of his own volition, even if he didn’t know what the consequences of drinking would be. IE he was to freely take what was offered and ingest it. Those consequences being that some things done in Tel'arah'rhiod are stronger than in the real world. I think it's a very bad idea to freely take something the Shadow offers you in Tel'arah'rhiod. Especially something you ingest. It would seal the deal for signing up in Shaitan’s service. And no coercion.

The wine is meant to remind you of Communion wine; only you end up communing, shall we say, with the Shadow. It is thus the antithesis, and a mockery of, Communion wine and therefore similar to something out of the Black Mass. Moiraine tells us that Darkfriends perform rites that are disgusting and depraved, so the Black Mass parallels are there.

It's the symbolism of the act that counts. Drinking a toast with the Shadow is allying yourself with them. Moiraine described Fain as having performed rites in dreams that bound him ever more tightly to the Shadow. Since this was in a dream the deeds were not literally performed; they were symbolic. It was the effect that was real.

Ishamael tried this previously: he offered a cup of wine to the boys in their dreams back in Baerlonin The Eye of the World,. Had any of the boys freely taken what was offered to them by Ishamael (the drink) they would have been tied to the Shadow if not fully (and that's definitely possible, given the Black Mass type parallels), then at least enough to be followed/located easily by various Shadow henchmen or influenced by Ishamael or the Dark One. Ishmael didn't get disappointed for nothing. It was obvious that he hoped to gain something from them drinking.

Having failed with temptation, Ishamael resorts to threats.

Perrin feeling heat as he leaves reminds us of Ishamael’s flaming eyes and mouth, which are often described as furnace like, and of the Pit of Doom/Fires of Hell, etc


Dream the Second:

After Ishamael, Perrin is taken by Lanfear. Was she waiting in line?

The gilded lion helmet she offered him is similar to Macedonian armour in classical times and is a reference to Alexander the Great. There is the hint that Perrin was Alexander the Great in a former incarnation, and could have been led to be Alexander again. This would lead him astray from the Pattern of his life for this Age as Lanfear knew very well. Lanfear is luring him back along that path. And that would weaken Rand's cause and thus aid the Shadow. It didn't work, which is why we haven't seen it again. Lanfear wanted Perrin to go for glory. Wolves aid Perrin in rejecting glory and the helmet.

The axe is linked to Perrin, maybe from past lives, or maybe Lanfear is trying to prevent Perrin from taking up the hammer.

Lanfear puts an image in his mind :

The Horn rang out, and the wild charge began. Death rode at his shoulder, and yet she waited ahead, too. His lover. His destroyer.

Instead of openly trying to get Perrin to turn away from his fate, Lanfear tries to substitute the ‘wrong fate’ in Perrin’s mind:

”You must not listen to those who would try to turn you from your destiny. They would demean you, debase you. Destroy you. Fighting fate can only bring pain. Why choose pain, when you can have glory? When your name can be remembered alongside all the heroes of legend?”
“I am no hero.”
“You don’t know the half of what you are. Of what you can be. Come, share a cup with me, to destiny and glory.”

She too tries to get Perrin to drink, but the wolves aid Perrin again and the cup changes from silver to gold.

Lanfear’s threat is to haunt his dreams like a succubus:

“The night is always there, and dreams come to all men. Especially you, my wildling. And I will always be in your dreams.”

Each Forsaken wants people who serve only them. The more powerful or talented the person, the better. Someone whom the Wheel spun out to be crucial to the Light's cause? Better still. A Forsaken would gain great kudos from that, and also power to affect events to his or her own gain.

The Dragon Reborn Read-through #4 : Celtic Roots and the Stone of Tear

Tara and the Stone of Destiny

by Dominic


The culture of Tear has a distinct Hispanic flavour. But like the Crescents of Tear may be a nod to Spain's Muslim heritage, there are traces of Iberia's antique Celtic roots still to be found in Tear.

Some key Tairens characters have Celtic parallels. Siuan (pronunciation Swan, which gives us the key to her parallel as a Fairy/Swan Maiden), the 'Fairy Queen' of the Aes Sedai is one of them. The name itself is derived from the Aes Sidhe, ie: the Fairies of Celtic Folklore, who were derived from the ancient Irish deities, the Tuatha Dé Danaan or People of the Hills - Jordan transformed that name into his Tuatha'an and gave the translation to the people who are obviously Da'shain Aiel descendants in Seanchan: The Hill Tribes. The character of Juilin the thief-catcher has roots in the Fenian Cycle and becomes a companion of the 'Fenian hero' figure of the series, Mat.

In the topology, the river Erinin, which mouth is in the nation of Tear and that flows through Tar Valon, evokes one of the poetic names of Ireland : Erin. Tear itself could be a derivation from the Hill of Tara, on the west coast of Ireland, near the mouth of the Boyne river. Tara was the ancient seat of the High Kings of Ireland (High Lords of Tear here) and the site of a great citadel even in myth. The most ancient name for the area of Tear, the nation of Essenia, may be linked to the town of Essé, famous for its Roche aux Fées (Fairies' Stone or Rock), "the finest megalithic monument in any Celtic country [where] a low ceilinged corridor […] opens to a large, high compartmental room" [dcm]

The central point of interest for us is the Stone of Tear itself, built with the One Power shortly after the Breaking. The primary Celtic association is with the Arthurian legend of the Sword in the Stone but an older Irish parallel exists with the Lia Faìl, the Stone of sovereignty found at the heart of the fort at Tara that was part of the kings' ascension ritual and sang, shrieked or cried under the lawful ruler or the right candidate for kingship. Christianized legend had the Stone break according to prophecy at the moment of the birth of Christ (symbolizing that Christ was the King of Kings and ended the power of the pagan kings). In The Wheel of Time the Stone fell for the Dragon and the ground shook with a terrible noise when Rand drove Callandor back into the Heart of the Stone.

The ancient Irish used Tara as a ritual meeting place and in myth and legends this is often where the heroes or gods assemble. In The Wheel of Time Tear was the last time (so far) our three ta'veren were reunited, and around them a unique meeting of all the main supporting players (with the exception of Min, no complete meeting of the full main cast has taken place in the series at this point, but in Tear we came closest) : Lan, Moiraine, Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, Aviendha, Thom Merrilin - even Lanfear and Ishamael, the main 'evil couple', showed up.

The Lia Faìl translates as "Stone of Destiny", a nickname that could fittingly be applied to the Stone of Tear as the events there in TDR and TSR were a crucial early turning point for so many characters. Rand, Mat, Moiraine, Egwene and Aviendha got a call from fate to go to the testing ground of the Waste Lands, for all of them it's a spiritual and personality changing quest with overtones in Arthurian Legend, specially the old and very spiritual version of Chrestien de Troyes, rooted in esoteric christian symbolism. We will return to this association of Rhuidean with the Castle of the Fisher-King during the read-through of The Shadow Rising.

Perrin got in Tear the Hammer of the Wolf-King that links him symbolically to two Celtic-inspired predecessors : Luthair the Hammer and Artur Hammer of the Light; there his two incarnations of his 'Sovereignty Goddess' clashed - Berelain the Hawk - a second connection to the Paendrags - and Faile the Falcon whose name may well derive from Faìl, "destiny" (Faile, second in line to the throne of Saldaea is also widely speculated to confer on Perrin political kingship eventually, the wolves likely conferring him a spiritual one as Wolf King).

For those unfamiliar with the goddesses of sovereignty, I will summarize it briefly. A more complete explanation of this concept will be found in an upcoming essay by our good friend Marcia (MJJ Sedai) exploring the Arthurian roots of the series: For the ancient Celts, the King was one with the Land and the people through a spiritual wedding to a goddess of the land that confers Sovereignty on him. These goddesses came in triads, studied by the French scholar of Indo-Europeanism George Dumézil, and associated to three aspects of the same woman: the Warrior-Maiden, The Queen and The Crone. This concept is central to Jordan in the creation of Rand's character (Aviendha the Warrior-Maiden, Elayne the Queen, Min the Seer/Crone), and carries in more subtle variations to Mat and Perrin. The concept is also reflected, of course, in the belief that 'The Dragon is One with the Land', in the Arthurian 'Three in a Boat' foretelling and its mentions of the warrior-maiden (The Dedicated Spear), the Queen (the Lion Sword) and the Crone (She who Sees Beyond) . The wedding of the King and the Goddesses (who are the Land, Mother Earth) gives birth to the People.

For the Celts, hawk and falcon were two solar birds linked to sovereignty - a symbolism more frequently assigned to the Eagle (following Imperial Rome) in other western cultures. Perrin has in fact the full triad of these sovereignty birds with the Red Eagle of Manetheren. As a wolfbrother (and shape shifter in the World of Dreams) capable of entering battle frenzy, Perrin is a kind berserker figure associated to important Celtic heroes, most of all Cuchùlain.

For the Celts, the fourth bird of sovereignty denotes the warrior, instead of ruling, aspect of kingship : it's the Raven or Crow of Battle that belongs with Mat and Tuon. The Stone of Tear was also a turning point for Mat's destiny. With his first 'companion' Thom in tow from Tar Valon, he met at the Stone future hero-companions in Juilin and some key figures of what would become the Band of the Red Hand; Mat accomplished his first "knightly" deed with the rescue of the girls and saw his first association with the solar power of explosives in a warfare context; Mat also had a crucial encounter in the Underworld of the Aelfinn to set him on his path toward his own sovereignty goddess : Tuon, who by marrying him would make him a Prince of the Ravens. The Band itself has very strong Celtic associations, not only to the Bloody Severed Hand of the O'Neils which inspired the banner (and probably its origin in Manetheren) but also to the similar Celtic bands of Heroes, like the Fianna Ered that ties Mat to the Celtic trickster and warrior Hero Fion MacCumhail (We will also return to this in a later book's read-through).

Most of all, Rand - more often associated to - or trapped with - lunar powers in the first two books of the series - got his first solar hero attribute with Callandor that to the world proclaimed him the rightful Dragon Reborn; he met Aviendha, a solar 'goddess of sovereignty' who came to Tear with the People of the Dragon and his second solar goddess, Elayne, declared her love to him with the blessing of his previous lunar consort Egwene. Mirroring Egwene's attitude, Lews Therin/Rand, associated to the naive but virtuous Welsh hero Llew Law Gyffes best known from the Mabinogion, met openly in Lanfear his malevolent mother Arianrhod, queen and moon-goddess of renown beauty (and the almost certain source for the name Tel'aran'rhiod, that Lanfear claims as her domain). Arianrhod had cursed her son Llew thrice. He was to have no wife of any race known on earth (with Lanfear, no consort but herself), he would have no name unless she gave it to him (Lanfear insists to use the name Lews Therin for Rand) and he would bear no arms unless she equips him (Lanfear's insistence that only she could provide Rand with a teacher so he could learn to defend himself from attacks from the other Forsaken, and who try to tempt him with using with her the combined Choedan Kal). The episode of the same Branch of the Mabinogi where Math and Gwydion make Blodeueed the magical flower-woman for Llew is even evocative, in the typical way Robert Jordan likes to twist details of the legends, of the failed attempt of Rand to make a "magical flower" of feathers and the One Power for his lover Elayne in Tear. Rand/Lews Therin also made a grand display of his magnified solar-sky god powers during the attack sent by Sammael.

The Irish "Book of Invasions" offers two explanations for the origin of the Stone of Destiny, both of them relevant. One says that it was brought to Tara by the god-king Nuadu, along with his shining-sword of great power. Nuadu, who is a maimed-king and an analog of Rand (especially after the events of Knife of Dreams), the second explanation is that the Stone of Destiny was brought to Tara from Spain (thus Tear, twice) by the Gaels (We will explore this further during The Shadow Rising's Read-through).

In the Irish oral tradition, the phallic Stone of Destiny is also called "Fergus' penis", an allusion to the great virility of yet another Rand Celtic analog, the Ulster hero Fergus MacRoich who needed not three but seven lovers to satisfy him. Beside providing this name for the Stone at Tara, Fergus is known as the owner of the Lightning-Sword called Calandbog, a very likely source Callandor, like it's Welsh cognate Caledfwlch that belonged to Arthur in the Welsh tradition and, according to scholars, both are prototypes/predecessors to the better known Excalibur.

[DCM] James MacKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, Oxford University Press, 1998

The Dragon Reborn Read-through #3 - Masema, Perrin and the Way of the Leaf

Masema, Perrin and the Way of the Leaf

by Linda

Masema thinks Tinkers are useless cowards because they won't fight. Later, when he becomes a preacher, we see Masema’s followers – the Dragonsworn - and their extreme violence. The mob at its worst.

Following on from what Masema said, Perrin wonders that the Tinkers get involved in the War against the Shadow:

Finally he said, “I was surprised to see one of the Traveling People, believing as you do.”
“It is possible to oppose evil without doing violence.” Her voice held the simplicity of someone stating an obvious truth.
Perrin grunted sourly, then immediately muttered an apology. “Would it were as you say, Mistress Leya.”
“Violence harms the doer as much as the victim,” Leya said placidly. “That is why we flee those who harm us, to save them from harm to themselves as much for our own safety. If we do violence to oppose evil, soon we would be no different from what we struggle against. It is with the strength of our belief that we fight the Shadow.”
Perrin could not help snorting. “Mistress, I hope you never have to face Trollocs with the strength of your belief. The strength of their swords will cut you down where you stand.”
“It is better to die than to - “ she began, but anger made him speak right over her. Anger that she just would not see. Anger that she really would die rather than harm anyone, no matter how evil.
“If you run, they will hunt you, and kill you, and eat your corpse. Or they might not wait till it is a corpse. Either way, you are dead, and it’s evil that has won. And there are men just as cruel. Darkfriends and others. More others than I would have believed even a year ago. Let the Whitecloaks decide you Tinkers don’t walk in the Light and see how many of you the strength of your belief can keep alive.”
She gave him a penetrating look. “And yet you are not happy with your weapons.”
How did she know that? He shook his head irritably, shaggy hair swaying. “The Creator made the world,” he muttered, “not I. I must live the best I can in the world the way it is.”
“So sad for one so young,” she said softly. “Why so sad?”

- The Dragon Reborn, Waiting

Leya knows why Perrin is sad; she just wants him to admit it to himself in the hope that he will change.

Doing no violence also means Tinkers aim to not speak in anger and violence. And in fact Leya makes her points very effectively with her calm manner. Her point about the danger of doing violence in the name of good is well and truly borne out by Perrin, Mat and, above all, Rand. Some are going out of their way to see Rand step back from becoming very dark like the Shadar Logoth evil and regain the humanity he has lost.

The Tinkers are at one end of the violence spectrum, the Shadow, Mordeth and Masema's Dragonsworn extremists at the other, with Rand towards the Shadow end. RJ is saying there is a fine balance here between what is necessary to counteract evil and what is evil in itself. If all did nothing, those who were unscrupulously violent would take over the world. (In The Great Hunt we saw what the world would be like if the Trollocs won.) But if people felt that any violence or crime was justified against evil, the world would be like Ghealdan when Masema was there, or like Shadar Logoth. Balance, as usual, is the key.

The Dragon Reborn Read-Through #2 - Looking back on books 1-2-3 and at back and forth at Rand al'Thor

Looking back on books 1-2-3 and at back and forth at Rand al'Thor

by Dominic

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In The Dragon Reborn, a bit ironically considering the title of the book (perhaps the most generic of the series, as far as titles go), the focus of the action shifts a lot from the central protagonist of books 1 and 2, the Dragon Reborn, to the rest of the main cast. However, helping Rand, hunting Rand remain a major aspect of the book and this first post will focus on Rand in this book, after a look back on the initial 'trilogy'

The structure of the first three books works as acts 1, 2 and 3 of what was once planned as a single 'first book', before Jim Rigney realised it would need to be split then expanded as three full novels (reminds you of something?) has left strong marks on The Dragon Reborn.

A lot of things come full circle in this book, mirroring themes/events from The Eye of the World, creating storyline 'patterns', a technique of story building Jordan seemed very fond of. The change from the original plan may have come at a price. Opinions among readers of The Wheel vary a lot on how succesful Jordan was with this, and the first three books in general. For many, these three more linear books were and are still the best. For others, the first three books aren't in some way the 'real' Wheel of Time yet, the really good stuff begins with The Shadow Rising, while books 1-2-3 feels a bit like a slightly overstretched prologue (I feel about the first three myself quite a bit like many feel about Crossroads of Twilight, curiously enough).

By expanding each act into a full book of its own, Jordan slowed down the main story development to the profit of 'adventuring'. Books 1-2-3 are certainly eventful and action-packed in an episodic kind of way, which many fans love (and many miss in the later books), but in other ways they merely set the stage, while character and theme developments advance at a fairly slow pace - Mat's 'journey' doesn't even really begin before book 3, for example. They are also a tad repetitive, as if (it is my theory on how Jordan expanded his original plan) RJ decided that since he had to split the original outline to make three full books, he would mirror in each the original ending, the confrontation and defeat of Ishamael at the Stone, by having two variations of the same as climax for books 1-2. Another repetive aspect, which might have come out more natural and flowing in a single three-acts novel, is that the basis of the three books revolve around a hunter and prey/chase story: the whole group is hunted in The Eye of the World, in The Great Hunt the tables are turned and the heroes hunt after the Shadow, and in The Dragon Reborn we get many variations of both.

For many readers, the excitement of events, the episodic nature of the first books, is a great strength of these books. To me, I'm afraid it became a bit tedious after a while, though it makes the masterpiece that is The Shadow Rising, the book with which I really fell in love with Jordan's series, shine in comparison. In all fairness, the quality of books 4 and up forcibly must owe a very great deal to the fact that with writing the beginning as a trilogy instead of a long single book, Jordan got the time and book space to really get into each of the main characters and their voice, got very good at handling each of them, before getting to the 'good stuff'. It may well be that the big 'explosion' of the series, with the numerous story lines and the multiplications of POVs that to many of us are the real Wheel of Time would not have been the success it has become had Jordan attempted it with TSR as his second book in 1991, not as book 4.

My personal opinion is that Jordan succeeded remarkably well at expanding his act one into what became The Eye of the World, with the exception of the weirdness of the Rand/Ishamael confrontation at the end. I didn't think that way on the few first reads. I hated book 1 and found it way to derivative of Tolkien at first - what Jordan intended, to give the readers something familiar before going elsewhere - actually put me off a lot. It's a little miracle I not only finished it after three failed attemps over a year but went on with book 2. But the book grew on me over time, and though I would hardly call it captivating even now, I see a different richness in it that wasn't apparent on the first complete re reads of the series I did.

I think Jordan did a fairly good job with The Dragon Reborn too, though the book feel stretched in places and it is, IMO, undermined a bit by the opacity of its 'mysteries', that RJ never returned later to solve. It worked well enough on first read, it created the impression of possibly competing schemes and a greater picture that we would only understand later, that not everything that went on could be understood. But this becomes an handicap for me on re reads, when the reader is fully aware the Forsaken are competing, and all too aware the mysteries aren't solved later on. Incomplete and/or corrupted information is a big theme of the story, but in my opinion it's only mid-series, with The Shadow Rising, that Jordan found his balance between keeping elements open ended/unresolved and satisfying the readers by giving enough clues or straight revelations.

I think the interest of the plot of The Dragon Reborn would have benefited a very great deal in the long run from having, for example, Lanfear explain what really went on in the first two books through reminescences in TFOH or TSR, when it was no longer a mystery the different Chosen were competing. As it turned out, what's been solved has been so in the books themselves (with rare exceptions, like Isam's solving part of the 'Grey Men in the Tower' mystery in Winter's Heart) but through Q&A, which I found most disappointing and a bit lazy on Jordan's part - certainly a flaw in his storytelling not to have planned better to give bits of resolution to the reader along the way, bits he didn't mind revealing in Q&A.

Of course, books 12-13-14 will reveal how many of these old loose threads he actually intended to tie up by the end, but with his revelations in Q&A and on his blog I fear it doesn't bode well for him having planned ways to resolve early stuff with no incidence on the plot anymore (and exception is of course the murder of Asmodean, which he didn't plan to resolve but decide to, because the mystery has become a phenomenon among the fans). One of my other gripes with The Dragon Reborn is the weakness of Be'lal as a character. After offering us a very good (if in placea unoriginal) twist on the satanic clichés with Ishamael, and a even better Moon Goddess/Lilith with Lanfear, Jordan fell way short of that in The Dragon Reborn with Be'lal, almost just sketched and underused not to spoil the opaque if fairly thin main plot. Be'lal, uncharacterically for Jordan, is barely characterized, barely present in a few scenes and is in the end but a sideshow to the plots of Ishamael and Lanfear, little more than a guard dog Rand needs to bypass to get Callandor, and as a 'Shadow's General, former companion of LTT' a thematic prelude to the far more interesting Sammael, and in a lesser measure to the elusive Demandred. Jordan would repeat this device by turning Moghedien into a prelude to Semirhage, very succesfully, but with Be'lal he largely failed. Even his mythological parallels are fairly boring and incidental (the most of all the Forsaken's), forcibly so because the character isn't developped enough for them to have much resonance.

The Great Hunt, the middle act (and the first WOT novel Jordan completed, before writing The Eye of the World), is the one I think most suffered from being expanded, and remains the only weaker book of the series for me. The plot, a long chase with episodes, is thin, and he didn't master the world building yet. In The Eye of the World, he had cleverly used the familiar, early modern England and America, with a solid dose of Charleston. In The Great Hunt he has introduced his first 'exotic mix' with Cairhien, a schizophrenic and often illogical wedding of the extravagance and grandeur of Louis XIV and XV's France and the Zen influenced Tokugawa Bakufu Japan, a very strange cocktail that resulted in the weakest culture of the series, despite some efforts to soften the rough edges and recenter it in The Fire of Heavens and Lord of Chaos.

The Dragon Reborn corrects this with the Tairen culture, a return for Jordan to the familiar, having strong overtones of Vietnam and South East Asia he knew well, with the Spain of the conquistadors and the Inquisition. And that time, he made sure to discard cultural elements that clashed - and it worked.

The expansion of the three acts into a trilogy, on the other hand, no doubt let Jordan set the stage with tons of preparatory details that made the greatest books of the series, like The Shadow Rising and The Fire of Heavens, possible.

And with this let's now return to The Dragon Reborn and the more positive stuff, to all the foreshadowing and 'repeating patterns' the expansion of books 1-2-3 allowed RJ to create, and in this second part of the post I will look at Rand with one example among a few present in the book:

In The Dragon Reborn, Rand is forced to go off the 'main road' alone, hunted by bad dreams, giving the reader the impression he's beginning to struggle with madness (an effect Robert Jordan sought to create intentionally, as he mentionned in a Q&A). He has a wound in his side that might kill him, he seeks a Sword, kept in The Heart of the Stone, with Lanfear still shadowing him and inducing him to come to the 'monster's lair' (here Ishamael in truth, Be'lal being a very secondary element - part guard dog, part spider in his web), her goal still to seduce him to the Shadow and her side. And there's still 'the stranger', the one whose real name isn't ever mentionned (a parallel to Shai'tan. Jordan frequently link Ishamael, Myrddraal and the Dark One, a triad that persists even now, with Moridin, Myrddraal and Shai'tan) hunting for him, who in this book is finally revealed as an unknown Forsaken.

All this story line go back to elements evoked first in the early chapters of The Eye of the World, with some symbolic parallels and some mirroring (inversion). In The Eye of the World, Rand doesn't escape from the Mountains of Mist, it's evil that comes from the Mountains (the Waygate near Manetheren). With Tam, he takes the Quarry Road (the road to the Quarry, to the stones) and he gets his first sword, which had been hidden for many years - since the death of Tam's wife, in a chest that Tam hides under his bed and that Rand mentions Tam has never touched in his memory. As Tam gets wounded, Rand is forced to pick this sword from him, and to kill the monster with it. In the end, Rand is given the sword by Tam, the sword that will 'set his path' and 'make him true'.

We have seen some elements resurface in The Great Hunt: the wound on Tam's side Rand gets from Ishamael, and it becomes his path to become The Fisher of Moridin's game of sha'rah, a parallel to Orpheus the Fisher, to Christ the Fisher and far more directly to the Arthurian Fisher-King and his unhealable wound. Rand lost his first sword (and got his wound) by driving it into the Heart of the Dark - literally the meaning of the name Ba'alzamon.

In the Dragon Reborn, we get the rest of the paralleling/mirroring: Dreams of the Sword set Rand's path from the mountains to Tear. Like he did in the Eye of the World avoiding the main road seeking to escape the Myddraal, in The Dragon Reborn he went cross-country, trying to avoid his pursuers. He doesn't have a rambling 'madman' at his side, rambling about sins, the horrors of war and his death wife (the delirious Tam in EOTW). Later on, this rambling madman will become Lews Therin's voice, but in The Dragon Reborn it is Rand struggling with himself, becoming paranoid, and fearing the Power will kill him. He discovers a new weapon, balefire, which risks destroying the pattern as surely as the Breaking did. It is notable that on this road, he not only kills the woman that will haunt him more and more and lead to the infamous 'list', but he also his haunted by fake/TAR-created women of his life that he has to kill (attempts by Ishamael), alluding to the Kinslaying, and he nearly kills Egwene in a bout of paranoia.

At the end, Rand has to take up the Sword. He doesn't pick it up from Lews Therin, as he did from Tam, but the symbolism is the same: he needs to pick the sword because he's the only one who can, and because it is his turn, neither Tam (who symbolized LTT) nor Lews Therin. The Sword is from Lews Therin's Age (we do not know if it was ever meant for him - probably, but we do not know), and had been put away, hidden after the War of Shadow - as Tam has put the away the sword after returning to the Two Rivers.

Callandor that is to mark Rand as the true Dragon to the world after going for it set his path to Tear (completing the symbolic link to the prophecies about the markings with the first sword), and Rand had to use it to kill the monster again, driving the sword of light into the heart/chest of the Heart of the Dark. In The Eye of the World, these scenes happened with the full moon like "about to fall on their heads", with several mentions of moon shadows hiding Rand and moon beams threatening to expose him - the role the "moon goddess" of the series, Lanfear, plays in this book. Lanfear managed to lure 'the rising sun', the Prince of Dawn/Lord of the Morning to the Stone of Tear, the 'fortress of the Moon', with his moon crescents banner.

The name 'Callandor' itself is interesting. A 'Old Tongue-ified' variation on Calandbog and Excalibur, Robert Jordan never gave us the keys to fully decipher the Old Tongue meaning. We do know that 'Cal' can mean red (perhaps with the connotation of "the red of the flame/fire"), as in The Red Eagle, 'Caldazar' of Manetheren, in a few ways a kind of Fire Eagle/Phoenix. We do not know for sure the meaning of Andor/Ande. There are some clues, however. Andor is the Realm of the Rose Crown, and Ellisande means 'the rose of the sun'. The actual meaning of Callandor could be the Red Sun, or perhaps more interestingly, The Red Rose. Not only Rand found the Sword in the Heart of the Stone, but he also found Elayne of Andor's Heart - future wearer of the Rose Crown in the Stone.

I will look in a similar fashion at the travels of Perrin and Mat in The Dragon Reborn in upcoming posts, a kind of unplanned (and somewhat ironic) homage to RJ's splitting the original outline of book 1 into three books. :P

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- You're welcome to leave comments about this post below, or to use The Dragon Reborn Round-Table open thread to leave a commentary of your own about any aspect of the book.

- Got any nagging question about a topic from The Dragon Reborn? Send them to 'Ask Zemaille' and the librarians will do their best to answer it.

The Dragon Reborn Read-through #1- The Fortress of the Light: Once More Unto the Breach

The Fortress of the Light: Once More Unto the Breach

by Linda

According to Niall, no man had previously held office of Lord Captain Commander before his hair is all white. Valda is therefore yet another young leader in these troubled times, since he is described as dark-haired, never grey. He’s perhaps around his 40s, since he refers to Niall as an old man and Dain Bornhald as a young one. Galad, in his late 20s, is younger still.

Carridin and Niall between them set the conditions for an extreme and rapid reaction to the news of Rand’s fight at Falme:

”It is a worse madness than any false Dragon I’ve ever heard of. Thousands have declared for him already. Tarabon and Arad Doman are in civil war, as well as at war with each other. There is fighting all across Almoth Plain and Toman Head, Taraboner against Domani against Darkfriends crying for the Dragon - or there was fighting until winter chilled most of it. I’ve never seen it spread so quickly, my Lord Captain Commander. Like throwing a lantern into a hay barn. The snow may have damped it down, but come spring, the flames will burst out hotter than before.”

- The Great Hunt, Prologue

It is treason and blasphemy for Whitecloaks to allow a false Dragon to roam free. Yet Niall knowingly does and pays for it in the end.

Niall’s summary of the situation:

Chaos multiplied; what was unheard of, happening again and again. The whole world seemed to be milling, stirring near the boil. It was clear to him. The Last Battle really was coming.

- The Great Hunt, Prologue

He knows about the wars, Illian, Falme, etc. He receives very good intelligence and mostly uses it well.

However:

All his plans were destroyed, the plans that would have secured his name among the Children of the Light for a hundred generations. But turmoil meant opportunity, and he had new plans, with new objectives. If he could keep the strength and will to carry them out. Light, let me hold on to life long enough.

- The Great Hunt, Prologue

shows that despite believing that the Last Battle is imminent, Niall is thinking of his own ambition as much has anything. Rather like Elaida.

Niall’s original plans, now destroyed, were:

”Your task was to seize Almoth Plain! An empty bucket that no one holds except by words and claims, and all you had to do was fill it. The nation of Almoth would have lived again, ruled by the Children of the Light, with no need to pay lip service to a fool of a king. Amadicia and Almoth, a vise gripping Tarabon. In five years we would have held sway there as much as here in Amadicia. And you made a dog’s dinner of it!”

- The Great Hunt, Prologue

Events prevented the Children from beginning an empire.

Niall doesn’t believe in the Tarmon Gai’don of Prophecy. He thinks it will be like the Trolloc Wars again:

Pedron Niall was a man of cold logic, and he had reasoned out how Tarmon Gai’don would be. Bestial Trolloc hordes rolling south out of the Great Blight as they had in the Trolloc Wars, two thousand years before, with the Myrddraal-the Halfmen-leading, and perhaps even new human Dreadlords from among the Darkfriends. Humankind, split into nations squabbling among themselves, could not stand against that. But he, Pedron Niall, would unite humankind behind the banners of the Children of the Light. There would be new legends, to tell how Pedron Niall had fought Tarmon Gai’don, and won.

- The Great Hunt, Prologue

Therefore Niall will unite nations behind the Children and win Tarmon Ga’don. His daydreams of going down in legend as winner of Tarmon Gai’don are rather like Elaida’s. I’m sure they’d be greatly comforted to know how similar they are.

Niall tells Carridin to keep Rand alive and kill any Aes Sedai come to capture him: the tactic is to scare nations with the threat of a false Dragon so that they ask for help from the Whitecloaks and ultimately depend on them to lead them.

If Carridin had not been ordered by the Shadow to muck up Niall’s plan, the Seanchan would have met greater resistance from the Whitecloaks. (The Seanchan would probably still have been able to destroy them though). The Shadow wanted the Seanchan to invade the mainland.

Carridin claims that Bornhald only took half his legion to their deaths at Falme and he will use the remainder to hunt down Rand.

Niall frightens Carridin with threats of sending Carridin to the Questioners as a scapegoat. (It was amusing when he said that Carridin would name himself a Darkfriend once the Questioners got hold of him.) Niall threatens Carridin with death if Rand dies before Niall orders it, or if Rand is taken by Aes Sedai. If Niall dies, Carridin will also die soon after (this actually happened - Rand was taken by Aes Sedai, and Niall was assassinated - but it was coincidence. Niall’s threat was not carried out).

Preview of the Dabels' The Eye of the World #1

Newsarama has posted a 7 pages full colour preview of issue #1 of The Eye of the World comic.

First look at the character models for the main cast and at Emond's Field.

The issue is set for release on June 24, 2009.

On a related note, issue #6 of New Spring was released last week. We will review it in the next few days.

The Great Hunt Read-Through #13 - Blowing the Horn

Blowing The Horn

by Linda

When the Horn was blown a white fog appeared. Rand sees through the fog to a remarkable degree. Falme is both beneath him and above:

Falme floated somewhere beneath him, its landward border black with the Seanchan ranks, lightning ripping its streets. Falme hung over his head.

- The Great Hunt, The Grave is No Bar to my Call

The battle between Ishamael and Rand showed in the sky over more than just Falme as was explained by RJ at DragonCon 05:

Q98: At the end of TGH, when Rand and Ishamael were fighting in the air above Falme, they appeared in the sky over many places. And my question is whether this is something done by the One Power or something done by the Creator? How did they appear in the sky?

RJ: An effect of the Wheel, really. It wasn’t the Creator. The Wheel is more than a simple mechanism. Remember the Wheel can spit out ta’veren, can spit out Heroes as a self correcting device because the Pattern is drifting from what it is supposed to be. We are not talking about something as simple as a spinning wheel at all, we are talking something more along the lines of the most complex computer you could possibly imagine. There were at that time, two, there were False Dragons that had a chance to create a lot of disruption. By the appearance in the sky at that battle, not just in Falme but in other places, those False Dragons were taken off the board because there was only room now for one, for one Dragon.

Time slowed:

It seemed as if no time at all had passed since the Horn was first blown, as though time had paused while the heroes answered the call and now resumed counting.

- The Great Hunt, The Grave is No Bar to my Call

Rand charges in front of other Heroes; ‘charged alone through the fog‘. Red throws him off and he lands on the fog. Both Rand and his opponent walk on fog:

They were alone, only they and the rolling fog. Behind Ba'alzamon was shadow. The mist was not dark behind him; this blackness excluded the white fog.

So the white fog represents light/good. We’ve seen Ishamael’s black fog/shadow before as a representation of the Dark One’s touch and the potential availability of the True Power.

It is strange that Rand would assume the Dark One would take burns to his face, burns that took months to heal. But then Ishamael assumes or believes Rand blew the Horn, even though he can hear somebody else (Mat) using it in battle. Neither of them is thinking straight.

Their fight is linked: Rand with the Heroes versus Ishamael and the Seanchan. Tuon would not like that if she knew!

Ishamael claims the Power is killing Rand, implying that Rand is holding too much and will die or burn out. He is still trying to convince Rand he needs him as teacher. Ishamael tells of his plan for the girls:

"They will not save you," Ba'alzamon said. "Those who might save you will be carried far across the Aryth Ocean. If ever you see them again, they will be collared slaves, and they will destroy you for their new masters."

- The Great Hunt, The Grave is No Bar to my Call

This plan has been a thousand years in the making, since Ishamael (in his role as Hawkwing's advisor Jalwin Moerad) encouraged Artur Hawkwing to send his son to Seanchan.

'Those who might save Rand' are Egwene and Nynaeve, who Liandrin was ordered to take to Suroth. Ishamael and a lot of others mistakenly ignore Elayne (and Min) in their plans.

Ishamael says he is Rand’s only salvation, yet the Horn was Rand’s salvation – as the Prophecy of the Horn says : ‘ think not of glory, only salvation.‘ Rand thinks of what he saw in the Portal Stone and says he has never served the Dark One. The Falme battle is spiritual as well as physical. The Last Battle will probably be even more so.

And Three rather than One were vital for the Battle. RJ uses a lot of number symbolism, and this is probably the most important. It’s not Rand alone, it’s the three ta’veren together supporting the world between them that will win.

Perrin and Mat contrast each other. Perrin, the more mature of the two, listens carefully to what Rand says and questions him to make sure he is clear about meaning. Mat assumes Rand is leaving them because of his doom of insanity. Perrin is the first to notice the Seanchan forces gathering. He accepts the supernatural phenomena of the Horn and merely trots off to cut a pole for the Banner. Perrin is the Bannerman. Mat, wringing wild cries from the Horn is both Hornsounder and Trumpeter: the Horn represents both the Horn of Norse mythology, sounded by the Norse god Heimdall to herald Ragnarok, and the Trumpet which will sound the Last Trump.

As part of The Great Hunt read through, an article on the Horn of Valere, detailing all that is known about the Horn and the Heroes, written by long-standing Wotmania member Scalius and myself for the Wotmania FAQ is now re-published here in the Reference Library: The Horn of Valere.

New Article Released: Lanfear Parallels

By Linda

At the end of The Great Hunt, Lanfear appears to openly claim Rand as hers. She also probably Healed him when she drew the dragon fang on his forehead in Falme. At least someone Healed him and it wasn’t Nynaeve.

Lanfear is based on many mythological and historic characters, even a literary character – that of the arch villain in Alexander Dumas’ novel The Three Musketeers. Cairhien too has the flavour of Dumas about it: it was meant to resemble the court of the Sun King Louis XIV in France. I think Lanfear is the better piece of work. She's brilliantly drawn.

As part of The Great Hunt Read Through, my essay on Lanfear's parallels originally written for Wotmania is being republished here in the Forsaken Parallels series of the Reference Library, indexed and illustrated. It details all the different figures that may have gone into creating this dangerous woman. Lanfear was the first character I dissected in this way, back in 2004. This essay is also memorable because Dominic kindly made some very useful suggestions to me about Lilith and Lanfear, the first of very many discussions between us about The Wheel of Time, and which has led to our inspiring, productive and most enjoyable collaboration at wotmania and now here at the Thirteenth Depository.

So do go and read about 'er ladyship - or as Dumas called her: Milady. She's a dangerous woman to reject!

Nice new interview with Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson took some time off his BEA schedule to speak with Damon from BSCReview (formerly Bookspotcentral).

Damon let us know the result, a 20 min video interview, is now uploaded and available.

It's a very nice interview - no earth-shattering new information about the WoT for those who follow Sanderson closely, but he's often approaching things from a different angle in this one (and of course it's fun to see him had fuel for my personal theory that RJ was bringing things full circle and scenes in EOTW hold keys to scenes in the last book ;)). There's also a great and funny anecdote about RJ's notes.

Thanks again to Damon for the info!

The Great Hunt Read-Through #12 - 'Lesser' events at Falme

A couple of the 'lesser' events at Falme

by Linda

I just thought I'd take a quick look at a couple of interesting side-issues. They're not unimportant: particularly Verin ensuring events were consistent with the Karaethon Cycle. Not that I'm that keen on self-fulfilling prophecies! But still.


The Whitecloaks at Falme

The Whitecloaks rushed on the Seanchan because he believed that Perrin would warn them that Whitecloaks had arrived. Bornhald led the Whitecloaks into what he knew was a hopeless charge and one he would not survive:

It was too soon, the town too far, but he drew his sword - a clatter of scabbards ran down the rank of his half legion - and called, "The legion will advance at a trot."
The fog covered everything, now, but he knew Falme was still there, ahead. The pace of the horses picked up; he could not see them, but he could hear.
Abruptly the ground ahead flew up with a roar, showering him with dirt and pebbles. From the white blindness to his right he heard another roar, and men and horses screamed, then from his left, and again. Again. Thunder and screams, hidden by the fog.
"The legion will charge!" His horse leaped forward as he dug in his heels, and he heard the roar as the legion, as much of it as still lived, followed.
Thunder and screams, wrapped in whiteness.

- The Great Hunt, The Grave Is No Bar to My Call

This charge of the Children of the Light parallels the famous charge of the Light Brigade.


Verin's Input

The consequences of Verin being in Falme: if Verin had not been there, Rand would not have convinced only five to go to Falme, and there would have been no extra Aes Sedai to take Mat and the girls back to Tar Valon. Mat would have died. Verin helped shape the Pattern and fulfill prophecy by making sure only five went to Falme. Their raid was successful and they were able to drive the Seanchan back, allowing the women to escape.

I wonder whose idea it was for Verin to take the Horn of Valere back to the Tower? Verin seems most likely.