The Wheel of Time: Book Nine, Winter’s Heart

Today we’re talking about Winter’s Heart. Let’s get the summary out of the way so we can dive into some details.

As a reminder, this is a response to the book. Think of it as a companion, something to read after reading the book, if you want to spend more time thinking about it. There will be spoilers. If you haven’t read the book yet, go do that before reading this post.

Summary

• Tar Valon
  • Talene, who was revealed to be a Darkfriend in the last book, sincerely believes that Elaida is Black Ajah and tells Seaine, Doesine, Yukiri, Saerin, and Pevara as much. She bases this belief solely on the fact that the Supreme Council knows everything Elaida does. As we know that Alviarin is Black Ajah and we haven’t seen any evidence that Elaida is, we should probably assume that Talene is wrong.
• The Black Tower
  • Toveine Gazal is one of 51 Aes Sedai bonded to Asha’man. The others all blame Toveine for their state.
  • Logain has been protecting his bonded Aes Sedai. He even burned Elaida’s orders to Toveine.
  • Gabrelle is willingly sleeping with Logain. She’s gathering information, but also seems to enjoy it. She wonders whether Logain is really a villain.
  • Gabrelle sees political factions and fissures among the Asha’man. In particular, Logain and Taim seem to be at the centers of two different – and opposing – factions. The Asha’man may be Powerful, but they don’t have anything like the Aes Sedai’s experience with manipulation. The bonded sisters have some options here.
  • Toveine intends to destroy the Asha’man, but first she intends to use them to bring down Elaida.
  • There’s a general impression given that Logain isn’t as haughty as Taim. He lives in a relatively modest home.
• Elayne
  • Elayne is not yet queen, but she has made her claim known and currently holds Caemlyn.
  • Taim has seized a large portion of land for the Black Tower (and surrounding city) which is growing rapidly due to the use of the Power. The Asha’man are building not only buildings but an imposing wall. Elayne can’t expel them, but she can obstruct trade for them, which would waste a great deal of manpower (but not threaten them further, as they can simply Travel to secure food and other resources.) The tentative agreement they reach is for Elayne (or a delegate) to perform regular, unobstructed inspections of the Asha’man’s city in return for permitting trade.
  • Elayne and Aviendha become first-sisters in a rebirth ceremony. The ceremony is really interesting: they truly did experience being born together as sisters and are bonded in a way that’s not quite a Warder bond but does involve the Power.
  • Caemlyn is facing a serious crime problem due in part to Elayne ejecting the Aiel and Saldaeans from the city before replenishing the guard. Birgitte is rebuilding the guard as quickly as she can, but the rough times are causing delays and hiring unreliable guards would cause more harm than good.
  • An assassination attempt on Elayne is thwarted by “Doilin Mellar.” Elayne makes him the captain of her guard as a reward. Mellar is actually Daved Hanlon, the Darkfriend working for Shiaine Avarhin (recall that this is Mili Skane’s current alias.) It appears that the assassination attempt was orchestrated entirely to get Hanlon into position.
    • Dyelin proves her loyalty during the attempt, taking a wound for Elayne.
  • Naean and Elenia are taken and the men with them are killed. Elayne doesn’t know which of them orchestrated it, but knows that it must have been one of them.
  • The Darkfriend who killed Ispan and Adeleas must have been one of Merilille, Sereitha, or Careane.
  • Nynaeve’s marriage to Lan is going well. She wears a ki’sain in the middle of her forehead, which is a Malkieri custom for married women.
  • Nynaeve sent 18 of the Kin into Seanchan-held lands to look for Kin who haven’t yet gotten away.
  • The Kin are trying to force the captured sul’dam to confront the fact that they are capable of sensing the weaves. They plan to send them back to the Seanchan once they’re properly convinced, but it’s difficult to persuade them, even with incontrovertible evidence.
  • Alivia, an exceptionally powerful damane captured at 14 and held for 400 years, wants freedom. After deliberation, Nynaeve asserts that they’ll grant it (or else they’re no better than the Seanchan.) Alivia becomes a powerful ally throughout the book.
  • The Borderland armies are spotted in the Braem wood, tens of thousands strong. Elayne meets with them and makes a deal: she tells them, vaguely, where Rand currently is (knowing that he’ll likely move before they reach him.) She will allow the armies to pass through Andor, towards Rand, without conflict. This benefits her by giving her political leverage to gather more allies to her side, in fear of the foreign army. The Borderland rulers accept.
  • Nynaeve and Elayne figure out that the reason the Kin live so much longer than the Aes Sedai is because they don’t take the three oaths. Nonetheless, Egwene asserts that anyone who wishes to call themselves Aes Sedai must take the oaths, once they retake the White Tower.
  • While meeting with Egwene in Tel’aran’rhiod, the women are spied on by multiple people: Luc/Isam and Temaile (one of the Black Ajah who had served Moghedien.)
  • Four small armies approach Caemlyn from the east. The combined forces add up to twenty or thirty thousand men. They’ll arrive inside a week. Elayne prepares for the siege.
• Perrin
  • Perrin convinced Masema to travel – mundanely – with Perrin’s forces to meet Rand. He agrees to only take 100 soldiers and to arrive that same day, but instead arrives later and with thousands of men. Perrin continues to smell pure madness from Masema.
  • Perrin notes that, in Masema, Aram sees a man “who had given his life and heart and soul to the Dragon Reborn. In Aram’s view, the Dragon Reborn ranked close behind Perrin and Faile.”
  • Chaos ensues in Perrin’s camp when news arrives that Faile and Alliandre (among others) were taken by the Shaido. The Ghealdanin want to put the Aiel in their own camp to the Question but the Two Rivers folk don’t allow it. Violence is narrowly avoided. Perrin is beside himself with fear for Faile.
  • Perrin’s forces will divert from their mission to rescue Faile from the Shaido. Masema begrudgingly agrees to Travel just one time so they can approach the Shaido more quickly. They are aware that they are facing a large number of Aiel, perhaps more than a sept and many Wise Ones.
• Faile
  • Faile, Maighdin, Alliandre, Arrela, Lacile, Bain, and Chiad are taken gai’shain. They are marched and carried a long distance away into the Shaido’s camp, which is much larger than Faile had expected.
  • Sevanna takes Faile, Maighdin, and Alliandre as her personal gai’shain, set apart from the rest with a belt and collar.
  • Therava commands the three to spy on Sevanna for her. If they refuse, she’ll have them killed. If they cooperate, she’ll see that they’re freed. They are wise not to believe her.
  • Galina, called Lina by Therava, has an offer of her own: steal the oath rod from Therava’s tent for her and she’ll set them all free. Galina learns that Faile is married to Perrin: she threatens to tell Sevanna that one of her gai’shain is connected to the Dragon Reborn if they don’t cooperate.
• Seanchan
  • Corenne, The Return, has begun. The first settlers arrive in Ebou Dar from Seanchan, prepared to build new lives on this continent.
  • The Seanchan solidify their gains, installing a new Panarch and King in Tarabon and making Tylin one of the Blood to rule Ebou Dar for the Empress. Amador is fully conquered and King Ailron has been taken in battle, so Amadicia has no remaining nobility of note.
  • For most ordinary people, the Seanchan haven’t changed things all that much, except for the better. Refugees are back at their farms and crime is dramatically reduced, even in Ebou Dar. Those who resist are dealt with very harshly. Of course, anyone who can channel is enslaved or killed.
  • Tuon Athaem Kore Paendrag, Daughter of the Nine Moons, arrives in Ebou Dar. She travels with Selucia, her bodyguard and head maid, as well as several sul’dam and damane. She also has Anath, her Truthspeaker, with her.
  • Tuon is very interested in omens and prophecy. One of her damane read her fortune the previous day and it upset her so much that she had the damane caned – an act that she now regrets and spends the entire book wearing a veil in penance. We don’t learn what the prophecy was, but she hated it, and it seems likely that it has something to do with Mat’s prophecy that they’ll marry.
  • Tuon has the male a’dam that Egeanin and Domon had intended to hide. She intends to capture Rand so he can be made to kneel before the Crystal Throne.
• Mat
  • Mat was severely injured when the building fell on him two books ago, but he’s mostly recovered now (though he still can’t run or ride for very long.) He is still Tylin’s prisoner. Thom, Juilin, and the surviving members of the Band that accompanied Mat to Ebou Dar are still free, living comfortably in the palace.
  • Mat has been seeing Aludra, the Illuminator he met way back in The Dragon Reborn. He’s trying to learn her secrets, but he needs to solve a riddle first: why would she need a bellfounder? My guess is that she wants to build a cannon: she isn’t happy with the Seanchan, given that they eliminated the Illuminator’s guild.
  • Mat plans to leave Ebou Dar via Luca’s show, which is currently in Ebou Dar. Recall that this is the same show that Nynaeve and Elayne traveled with in The Fires of Heaven. Luca doesn’t plan to leave until spring, but Mat thinks he can persuade him to leave sooner.
  • The gholam attacks Mat again and he’s narrowly saved by Noal Charin, a mysterious old man who’s been on many adventures, tells many stories, and happens to share a surname with Jain Farstrider.
  • Mat walks in on Tylin meeting with Tuon and Suroth. Tuon assures Tylin that she doesn’t need to be afraid and that she’ll be one of the Blood and rule more territory than she did before.
  • Tuon notes Mat’s signet ring – a running fox and two ravens in flight surrounded by crescent moons – and she immediately tries to buy Mat. This is likely related to her fortune. Tylin refuses to sell Mat, as he’s a free person (well, free to be her prisoner.) Tuon stalks Mat through the rest of the book. She also finds his ashanderei, noting that ravens are an imperial symbol to the Seanchan.
  • Joline Maza is still trapped in the city, having been poisoned by Teslyn before the attack. Teslyn, who is now a damane, is the one who gave Mat the note, warning him that Nynaeve and Elayne were in danger. The note wasn’t actually useful, but Mat winds up agreeing to rescue Teslyn, Joline, and Edesina Azzedin, who is also damane. Mat tries to form a plan to rescue the Aes Sedai, but gets stuck finding someone who can pose as a sul’dam, as he needs someone who can actually hold the leash of an a’dam.
  • Egeanin was promoted to Captain of the Green. She also owns Domon, who is now so’jihn.
  • Bethamin Zeami, the sul’dam we first met in chapter 38 of The Shadow Rising when Egeanin freed her from an a’dam, is approached by a Seeker for Truth. He demands her cooperation in an investigation into Suroth that he began at the request of Turak, who suspected that Suroth is a “danger to the Empire itself.” He believes that Suroth gave the order for sul’dam who managed to reach Tanchico after the loss at Falme to be killed. The Seeker suspects that Suroth might not be the head of the conspiracy but he strongly suspects that Egeanin is involved. He either doesn’t know the details or doesn’t provide them, but it has something to do with marath’damane. He doesn’t want to risk arresting Suroth outright in case she isn’t the head, so he wants more information first, which is where Bethamin comes in. He wants her to spy on Egeanin for him.
  • Bethamin agrees, but immediately tells Egeanin about the Seeker. Either person, if arrested, could rat out the other.
  • Egeanin knows that Suroth is hiding the fact that sul’dam can channel. As far as Egeanin knows, there’s no greater conspiracy: Suroth is hiding this fact for the good of the empire, as the empire’s strength is built on sul’dam and damane; learning that there’s no fundamental difference between the two could be an existential threat to the Empire.
  • Egeanin tries to free Domon, but he refuses. Instead, he decides to approach Mat – whom he saw earlier – and see if he knows a way to sneak Egeanin out of Seanchan controlled territory.
  • Egeanin’s need provides Mat the missing piece in his plot to rescue the Aes Sedai: Egeanin can provide real sul’dam to help sneak the damane out. Egeanin uses Renna and Seta for this, as she can trust them to keep quiet because Egeanin knows that their secret: these are the two sul’dam that Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne left in a’dam back in Falme.
  • Thom, Juilin, and the rest of the Band will come too. The whole scheme is plotted out. Juilin is also rescuing a girl that he likes: Thera. Yes, that Amathera, former Panarch of Tanchico, though nobody actually mentions this directly. Beslan will also play a small role in getting some friends to start fires as a diversion.
  • During the getaway, Mat alters the plan a bit, setting Nestelle din Sakura South Star, an Atha’an Miere damane, free and asking her to wait three hours before setting the others free and escaping.
  • Just as Mat is about to leave, Tuon stops him. Noal shows up to hold her still. Egeanin is horrified when she sees this, as laying hands on the Daughter of the Nine Moons means death by torture. Mat immediately declares that she’s his wife and they’re kidnapping her and her maid.
• Rand
  • In the aftermath of the incident in the Sun Palace, Rand takes Min and prepares for another risky scheme. Rand Travels all over, making inquiries into different locations and leaving trails to throw off pursuers. For a while, it seems that nobody knows where Rand is, where he’s going, or what he’s planning.
  • The sickness in seizing and releasing saidin has not improved at all.
  • Rand has the two ter’angreal that access the greatest two sa’angreal, known as the Choedan Kal, and plans to use them with Nynaeve to cleanse saidin. But, Rand knows that this process will take time and a great deal of the One Power, so he needs to ensure his safety during the cleansing. To this end, he intends to hunt and kill the five renegade Asha’man.
  • Rand Travels directly to the the palace in Caemlyn with Min and disguises himself. Rand’s intent was just to tell Nynaeve of his plan to cleanse saidin, leave the Choedan Kal with her, and quickly leave to hunt down the renegade Asha’man.
    • Min tells Elayne that he’s there. Elayne enacts a weave to bond Rand as a Warder that includes herself, Aviendha, and even Min. Min can’t mute the bond like the other two can, but all three are bonded to Rand.
    • Elayne and Rand (finally) have sex. Min sees that Elayne will give birth to both a boy and a girl from this.
    • Nynaeve is unwilling to simply wait for Rand to go on his dangerous mission. The morning after Elayne and Rand have sex, Nynaeve, Lan, and Alivia accompany Rand to Far Madding, where he hopes to catch the renegades.
  • The Forsaken don’t know where Rand is, but they know that he plans to use the Choedan Kal to cleanse saidin. They know this because Dashiva, who knows that Rand plans to cleanse saidin, is Osan’gar. Cyndane is also Lanfear, who gave Rand the idea to use the Choedan Kal for something like this in the first place. The Forsaken don’t need to know where Rand is: when he uses the Choedan Kal, they’ll be able to Travel directly to him.
    • Note that Demandred isn’t sure whether Cyndane is Lanfear, given that she’s much weaker than Lanfear was, but she’s definitely just a weakened Lanfear. We don’t learn the specifics, but we do learn that she was somehow weakened by her time with the Aelfinn and Eelfinn.
  • Rand lures all of the renegades except Dashiva to Far Madding, which is under the protection of three ter’angreal that make it impossible to touch the Source within the city and point in the direction of anyone who tries to channel. This gives Rand an advantage, as he and Lan are much more skilled with swords than the Asha’man. However, this also means that Rand needs to be wary of the guard, as Far Madding would send him to Elaida if they caught him.
  • Cadsuane and her allies, including three Asha’man who willingly became Warders, also go to Far Madding, as Alanna knew that Rand was there. Cadsuane needs to direct Rand, but believes (correctly, it would seem) that she needs Rand to approach her or else he won’t listen to her.
  • Rand manages to kill Rochaid, but Kisman gets away – or so Rand believes. In truth, Fain is in Far Madding, and he kills Kisman.
  • At around this time, we learn that Isam and Luc are sort of combined, serve Shai’tan, and are hunting Rand, Luc’s nephew.
  • Fain sets a trap for Rand, luring him to where the other Asha’man are staying. Nynaeve uses a Well ter’angreal to channel enough to lift Rand and Lan up to the room. Inside, they find that the Asha’man are already dead and Fain is waiting along with Torval. Fain escapes while Rand and Lan are caught by the guard, brought to the building by Nynaeve’s channeling.
  • The prison cells are dark and small. Rand suffers from the trauma of being locked in a box and Min feels him changing, becoming even more hardened.
  • Cadsuane uses another Well ter’angreal to intimidate the Counsel into releasing Rand and Lan into her custody and they leave.
  • Working together, Rand and Cadsuane’s groups prepare to cleanse saidin. Rand and Nynaeve will use the Choedan Kal to channel a great tube, of sorts, of saidar and then force saidin through it. As saidin and saidar cannot mix, he’s able to force pure saidin (plus the taint) where he wants it. Just as the wounds on his side, one of Shai’tan’s evil and one of Shadar Logoth’s evil, oppose one another, Rand hopes that forcing the taint into Shadar Logoth will skim it from saidin. However, the process will take a long time and the channeling will be a beacon to the world, so everyone else separates into small circles (except for Alivia who takes most of the angreal and ter’angreal) to defend Rand and Nynaeve.
  • The cleaning works as expected, slowly forming a great dome of darkness that absorbs light over Shadar Logoth. Over several hours, the dome grows to two miles in height. But, also as expected, the Forsaken try to interfere. In the fighting, Osan’gar, Kumira, and Eben are killed. We also learn that Elza is a Darkfriend, though she does sincerely believe that Rand must live until Tarmon Gai’don.
  • Rand and Nynaeve are unconscious when we last see them, but the cleaning worked and the surviving Asha’man comment that saidin is clean. The female Choedan Kal is destroyed in the process. The Amayar followers of the Water Way living in Tremalking, where the female Choedan Kal lied, begin spreading word that the Time of Illusions is at an end.

The Point: Culmination

More than any other book in the series thus far, Winter’s Heart kept me glued to the page and left me hungry for the next book. The amount of realized foreshadowing in this book is just crazy and it was incredibly… fun to read. The last chapter of Winter’s Heart might be the most thrilling chapter we’ve seen thus far. For today’s analysis, I’m mostly going to focus on these awesome reveals and on speculation as to what we’ll see next.

But, before we get into that, I do want to spend just a few minutes considering how Winter’s Heart fits into the series as a whole and what this book accomplishes. I honestly kind of struggled to come up with a good theme this time around. I was going with “Payoffs” for a while, then “Clearing the Table.” Then “Setting the Table.” But none of those felt quite right. I finally ended with “Culmination,” which I like because it works on two levels.

First off, there are the cool reveals and such that I just mentioned. The culmination of foreshadowing. I could imagine giving this analysis a title like “Lore Reveal: What you missed about Noal Charin,” “Fading Words: What Moiraine’s letter didn’t say,” or “Aran’gar and Osan’gar: Does anyone actually care who they were?”

But, this is an epic fantasy series, not a light novel or a video game, and we can dig a lot deeper. I probably won’t ever make a video version of my review of Elden Ring, but if you want the tl;dr, the fact that Winter’s Heart is more than a simple collection of isolated lore dumps and reveals is why I love these books so much. Don’t get me wrong, I love lore. I have physical copies of all the Destiny grimoires on my bookshelf. I’m currently working on a series of posts covering Dragalia Lost before the game hits end of service in a couple of months. I basically learned Japanese just so I could read light novels… though, if I’d known when I got my degree that basically every light novel series would be translated into English by the 2020s, then I might not have bothered. Good worldbuilding and clever references to mythology are kind of my jam, but if you want to truly impress me, you need to give me something with deeper, synchronic meaning.

In military usage, culmination refers to the point at which the attacker no longer has sufficient advantage to continue pushing forward. Now, our heroes have been finding some little victories since the very beginning, when Moiraine found Rand before Ba’alzamon in The Eye of the World, but until The Path of Daggers, it really didn’t seem like Shai’tan had suffered any real defeat. It’s always been hard to tell whether it was all actually according to its grand plan. With the return of natural weather and the cleansing of saidin, we’re finally seeing what “appears” to be a real turning point in the war between light and dark.

To be perfectly honest, I had no idea that saidin was going to be cleansed this early. I mean, I’ve noted that Nynaeve would probably take a crack at it since she first Healed severing, but I could’ve seen this happening much later, and I couldn’t have said whether it would actually work. It’s almost hard to grasp that The Wheel of Time is no longer a story about a world where men who can channel eventually go mad. Of course, it’s not as though the characters in-universe are going to accept that easily, so we still have a long way to go, but this is a huge blow against Shai’tan.

It’s not just about the epic magical war either. Our characters aren’t all where they need to be yet, but they’re coming pretty close to being who they need to be.

Remember when I couldn’t go ten minutes without talking about how stupid Egwene was? Or how immature Elayne was? This used to be a story about a bunch of kids.

Egwene might not sit in the White Tower yet, but she’s the Amyrlin Seat now. “Aes Sedai to her toenails.” Note the sharp change in how she views the three oaths. I’ve specifically criticized her in previous books for wanting all of the power of the Aes Sedai without any of the restrictions, and now she’s come to see the two as inseparable. Far from trying to dodge the oaths, she’s now going to enforce them.

Similarly, Elayne isn’t the Queen of Andor yet, but she holds Caemlyn and, when we last see her in Winter’s Heart, she’s preparing to command Caemlyn through a siege. So far, she seems to be doing a great job. I’ll honestly be kind of surprised if she isn’t officially queen by the end of the next book.

We’re not completely there yet though. Rand may have cleansed saidin, but he’s at a real low point. I really want to wrap up this review so I can crack open the next book and see what sort of shape he’s in when he wakes up. There would be a great irony in Rand going mad cleansing saidin, but that’s still on the table.

You know, it’s really interesting how the boys surged past the girls, in terms of character growth, for several books, but now it seems like the girls have mostly become the women they need to be while the boys aren’t quite there yet. Rand still needs to relearn laughter and tears. Perrin still needs to decide whether to put down his axe. Mat… well, Mat actually made some real progress this book. Simply accepting that Tuon will be his wife was actually a huge step for him. Still, he hasn’t fully accepted that he has it in him to be a great general, perhaps the most important general of Tarmon Gai’don.

Note that I don’t think there’s any intentional comment about maturity and gender here. I think the girls’ arcs were just a bit simpler, so they were able to start later yet end sooner.

Of course, there are still several books yet and it’d be silly to think that Shai’tan’s forces have truly reached the point of culmination. For all we know, maybe the cleansing of saidin was also part of Shai’tan’s master plan. Or maybe Moridin’s. Or maybe it doesn’t matter nearly as much as we think. Thinking that we can count on the Asha’man now that they won’t go mad from the taint would be ridiculously naive. We still need Logain to find that glory that Min saw for him. So long as Taim is M’Hael, the Asha’man are an enormous ticking bomb, regardless of the taint.

That’s not even taking the issue of getting the world to accept that the taint on saidin is gone into account. I’m not even talking about just Elaida here: I’m not even sure if Egwene will be able to treat the Asha’man the same as women who can channel. Bear in mind that people only tolerate Aes Sedai when they’re somehow shackled, either via a’dam or the three oaths. Even without the taint, I don’t expect society to trust the Asha’man at all. If we ever want the Asha’man to be treated the same as the Aes Sedai, we’ll probably need to have them take the oaths.

But, our heroes don’t know how many books are left in the series. From their perspective, fixing the weather and cleansing saidin must feel like a real chance of victory. Tarmon Gai’don still needs to be won, but it’s starting to truly look like everyone will be who and where they need to be when the battle starts.

Revelations

Alright, let’s get into the real juicy stuff: which theories were confirmed or denied this book and what new theories can we start to spin?

Polygamy

Let’s start off by talking about some polygamy. Min’s been talking about Rand’s love life since they fist met and Elayne expressed her intention to bond him a long while back now. Well, now Rand is bonded to Elayne, Aviendha, and Min.

For the most part, this felt like some light, rom-com fluff, particularly the risque shenanigans with Elayne and Rand finally having sex… which is also how we learn that people who can’t channel can’t block the bond from their end. So, Min and Birgitte just need to live with it. Again, this was some fun stuff. It felt really silly, but it was kind of nice to get a little break, given how dark and serious the rest of the book was. Frankly, I was still kind of reeling from Fedwin.

But, the way the bond was done was also really interesting. Elayne got the idea from the first-sister bond, which was also absolutely incredible. I don’t really have anything else to say about that scene. It was just fantastic writing. I think what I liked most about it is that, since we saw it from Elayne’s perspective, we don’t actually know what happened. Was the whole experience mental, or were they actually born again? They had a surrogate mother, so I’m really not sure, and I love that bit of ambiguity. Leaving a little ambiguity in the magic is something that Robert Jordan really excels at and it really demonstrates how books are still a unique medium for stories. The first-sister ritual would be cheapened by a visual representation.

Applying the same basic idea, combined with the Warder bond, to include Min in the weaves was a neat touch. I’ve talked before about how much I like Min, so on that level, I’m just glad that she was included. Truly, it was touching to see how everyone reacted to it.

Min starts off by breaking down at feeling Rand’s pain, asking aloud how he isn’t crying – which is something she also did when he euthanized Fedwin. Aviendha’s response to this is one of my favorite lines from her ever: “‘He is the Car’a’carn,’ Aviendha said, laughing, ‘as strong as the Three-fold Land itself!’ Her face was proud.” Aviendha is also touched, and relieved, at seeing the “veins of gold,” indicating that Rand does, indeed, love her.

Then there’s Elayne, who just sits back, staring at him, and loving the love they’re sharing. It really was a beautiful scene.

Within the context of the series, I expect that his bond will play a larger role than simply a conclusion to the love quadrilateral. I’m guessing that we’ll see this bond used as a lifeline to pull Rand back from the brink.

Daughter of the Nine Moons

Moving on, we finally! get to meet the Daughter of the Nine Moons. How long has Mat been wandering around asking random women whether they’re the Daughter of the Nine Moons? Well, he can finally stop asking.

So, Mat’s reaction to learning that Tuon is the Daughter of the Nine Moons was absolutely hilarious. He just straight up says “She is my wife” and then digs in when everyone else reacts, predictably, as though that’s completely insane.

Well, everyone but Tuon, who smiles “as if she suddenly knew a secret.” Note the bit where she had a damane punished for reading a fortune she didn’t like? We didn’t get to see what that fortune was, exactly, but she was definitely stalking Mat all book and she doesn’t seem all that surprised now.

Also note that Tuon’s interest in Mat starts after she sees his signet ring and deepens after she sees his ashanderei. Mat’s ring, which he picked up purely by chance, is a fox running with ravens in the air surrounded by crescent moons. Well, ravens are a symbol of the Seanchan imperial family and Tuon herself is the Daughter of the Nine Moons. Even without his foxhead medallion, it’s not hard to guess who the fox is. I’m not sure whether the ring was mentioned in the fortune or if it was just an omen. Tuon takes her omens very seriously.

Actually, I want to call that little detail out too. Tuon takes omens very seriously, and this isn’t treated like a quirk. Very serious and successful societies throughout history have treated omens as a rational and legitimate source of information. They’ve fallen out of style recently, and it’s hard to imagine why we’d ever go back to relying on omens in light of the scientific method, but I like seeing characters in a fantasy or historical context who rely on omens without it being treated the same as modern astrology.

This blacksmith has picked up a spear

Did anyone else get chills when Perrin said “this blacksmith has picked up a spear”?

I don’t have much to say about Perrin today, as his plot was kind of cut short, likely to be picked up in the next book, but I think we can make a couple of predictions.

Elyas showing up seems meaningful, not just because Elyas is an interesting character, has wolf powers, and is a convenient excuse to mention that Warder bonds can be muted, but also because he’s the person who told Perrin, way back in chapter 30 of The Eye of the World, “You’ll use [that axe], and as long as you hate using it, you will use it more wisely than most men would. Wait. If ever you don’t hate it any longer, then will be the time to throw it as far as you can and run the other way.” Perrin’s response felt a bit over-cautious at the time, but it feels relevant now: “What if I wait and then can’t throw it away?”

So far, Perrin still hates that axe. He hated using it to avenge Hopper. He hated using it as Dumai’s Wells.

How will he feel about using it on the Shaido? He’d better not even think that they’ve raped or murdered Faile when he catches them, or we might see him come to enjoy that axe a bit too much. There’s been a lot of foreshadowing that Aram is going to go too far, but I have a suspicion that even Aram might be horrified at what Perrin’s capable of if he’s pushed too far.

Aran’gar and Osan’gar

“I was too close to this world in my captivity, I and Balthamel, too close to the grinding of the Wheel, but soon the Great Lord of the Dark will be free, and give us new flesh, and the world will be ours once more.”

Aginor, The Eye of the World chapter 50

We found out way back in The Eye of the World, long before Aran’gar and Osan’gar became characters, that Aginor and Balthamel expected to be given new bodies. At the time, we didn’t really know what this meant, but we later met Aran’gar and Osan’gar, who were both Forsaken given new bodies (well, “new” to them, but they were taken from other people.) We technically didn’t know that Aran’gar and Osan’gar were Balthamel and Aginor, but the list wasn’t very long, as some of the Forsaken were killed by balefire and we knew that Aran’gar and Osan’gar were both men before they were given new bodies. It would’ve been pretty weird if Asmodean had been given a new body before Aginor and Balthamel. Granted, Aginor and Balthamel weren’t particularly effective, but they were working with freezer-burnt bodies, and neither were taken prisoner.

We learned that Aran’gar was Halima a while back, but we didn’t hear anything at all about Osan’gar after his first appearance in Lord of Chaos. I did speculate in my analysis of The Path of Daggers that it would make some sense for Dashiva to be Osan’gar… but this was really just a shot in the dark, based purely on the idea that, since Aran’gar was hiding out among the Aes Sedai, Osan’gar was probably hiding among the Asha’man, and Dashiva seemed to know just a little too much about the One Power.

Well, now we can conclusively say that Dashiva was always an alias of Osan’gar. Further, we know that Osan’gar is Aginor, as we learn in chapter 35 that “The trollocs were his making, and thus the Myrddraal that had sprung from them, and many other creatures that had rocked the world and made his name famous.” Aginor was credited with creating most of the shadowspawn a long while back, at least as early as Lord of Chaos, if not earlier. So Aginor became Osan’gar who pretended to be Dashiva.

Osan’gar was killed during the fighting in chapter 35, “With the Choedan Kal,” so we’ll just have to wait to see whether Shai’tan wants to give him another chance. Given that his only real talent seems to be in making monsters, it’s… well, actually, it’s hard to say whether he’ll be back. I’ll be kind of surprised if we see Aginor sent on any more spy missions, but I could see him playing a significant role in preparing Shai’tan’s armies for Tarmon Gai’don. The only Forsaken that I’m pretty sure won’t get another chance is Lanfear.

This leaves Aran’gar/Halima/Balthamel. All we really know about Balthamel is that they “remember much of [the pleasures of the flesh],” which seems about right given that the main thing we know about Halima is that they’re promiscuous. I hope this character gets fleshed out a bit more; there’s some good potential here, given that Egwene really likes Halima.

Cyndane and Moiraine

“‘Daughter of the Night, she walks again.'” That line, from a prophecy of shadow, written in blood on a wall in Fal Dara back in The Great Hunt, is how we first learned that Lanfear had broken free. At that point, “only one thing for certain was known of Lanfear beside the name: before she went over to the Shadow, before Lews Therin Telamon met Ilyena, Lanfear had been his lover.” Our first confirmation that we had met Lanfear in person was when she spoke to Min while Rand lied unconscious after battling Ba’alzamon. She’s described as “the most beautiful woman Min had ever seen, with pale, smooth skin, and long, black hair, and eyes as dark as night.” Of course, we get a similar description when Rand first meets her as Selene. Tall, only a hand shorter than Rand himself, with ivory-pale skin and long, night-dark hair and black eyes. The Forsaken sure do seem to love having multiple names: Mierin, Lanfear, Selene.

But, that’s all old news at this point. Last time we saw Lanfear, Moiraine threw them both into the weird door ter’angreal when Rand hesitated to strike a woman. “Suppressing a small bubble of hope-she could not allow herself that luxury-Moiraine balanced upright a moment on the wagon tail, then embraced the True Source and leaped at Lanfear. The Forsaken had an instant’s warning, enough to turn before Moiraine struck her, clawing the bracelet away. Face to face, they toppled through the doorframe ter’angreal. White light swallowed everything.”

Then she, and Moiraine, were gone, and we were all supposed to assume that they died when the ter’angreal burned. That assumption never really sat right with me. I’ve noted in multiple places that characters seem to die without a definite confirmation in The Wheel of Time. Popular media has trained me to look for a body or else expect a return, but Robert Jordan isn’t quite that predictable. Sure, Thom came back, but it sure seems like Sammael is actually dead.

Still, though, this isn’t just a case of not seeing the body: we really only saw Lanfear and Moiraine fall into the ter’angreal and we know that this isn’t necessarily a death sentence (though dealing with the Aelfinn and Eelfinn is pretty dangerous.) Assuming that destroying the ter’angreal would mean destroying the world inside of it also seems like a weird jump to me. That Lan couldn’t feel his bond to Moiraine might just mean that she’s cut off, in another world. We know that Warder bonds weaken over distance: perhaps they snap when stretched across worlds without any open portal to maintain the connection. Or maybe she just cut the bond, knowing that she couldn’t return and wanting to spare Lan the impossible task of finding her.

Reading Moiraine’s letter to Rand carefully, note that she doesn’t use the word “die,” she says that she and Lanfear will be “gone.” Moiraine, of all Aes Sedai, could get some real leverage out of even the most common euphemisms.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself here – why all this talk of Lanfear and Moiraine?

When we first met Cyndane, in The Path of Daggers, she was described as “a short young woman with long silver hair and vivid blue eyes.” Pretty, and with an “impressive bosom.” So, she’s hot, and Lanfear was hot, but Lanfear was also tall with black hair and black eyes. Still, the line “a beautiful doll carved from ice, with hidden fires” immediately made me think of Lanfear. She’s also very strong in the One Power – stronger than Graendal, at least.

In Winter’s Heart, Cyndane is the Forsaken’s specialist on the Choedan Kal. She also refers to Rand as “Lews Therin,” which is kind of a dead giveaway. But, then we see Demandred’s thoughts on her. “At first he had thought she was Lanfear reincarnated.” “Until Mesaana told him the girl was weaker than Lanfear.”

Then, in chapter 35, we get the last piece: “[Alivia] was stronger than Cyndane had been before the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn held her! That was impossible; no woman could be stronger. She must have an angreal, too.” Frankly, it seemed kind of stupid for Demandred to assume that Cyndane couldn’t be Lanfear simply because she wasn’t as powerful, given that we know there are ways for people to become less powerful (such as being severed and then Healed by someone of the same gender.) Though, the Forsaken don’t really understand Healing severing, so maybe this oversight is forgivable in Demandred? In any case, it was the Aelfinn and Eelfinn.

So, why does Cyndane look different? We know that she was held by the Aelfinn and Eelfinn: did they change her appearance? Did Shai’tan find a new body for her… still finding one that’s shockingly pretty, but without Lanfear’s specific features? Is it just an illusion?

More importantly, what does this mean for Moiraine? It’s entirely possible for Lanfear to be alive and for Moiraine to be dead, after all. Even without the Aelfinn and Eelfinn, Lanfear could’ve just killed Moiraine after falling through the doorway. We’ll probably learn more about this soon. I mean, between Mat, Noal, Luc/Isam, and Moridin, we’re definitely going to talk about the Tower of Ghenjei, the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn, and what happened in the Borderlands a couple of decades ago. We’ll just have to wait and see whether Moiraine makes another appearance, but that’d be pretty cool. I’d love to see her thoughts on the adults our characters have grown into.

Taim

Alright, so, I’m just gonna say this right out: I’m pretty sure that we can’t actually know what’s up with Taim yet. It sure seems like he’s either Demandred or working for Demandred, but I just don’t think we have enough information to say which.

As a quick refresher, Demandred started becoming active in the narrative in The Lord of Chaos, but we didn’t actually see him do anything: we just saw him talking to Shai’tan about letting the Lord of Chaos rule. At around the same time, Taim showed up and started playing a major role for Rand. We saw that Bashere didn’t recognize Taim at first, but upon looking closer accepted that he’s the same man. We also know that Taim has been doing stuff for far longer than the Forsaken have been free in the world, so it’s not possible for Taim to simply be an alias of Demandred, like Osan’gar and Dashiva.

It’s entirely possible for Taim’s body to have been given to Demandred or for Demandred to be in disguise as Taim. It’s also possible that Taim is simply a Darkfriend… though, that doesn’t really seem likely to me. Taim is extremely arrogant. Can you really see him willingly reporting to one of the Chosen? Maybe Demandred has his cour’souvra.

What we know, now, via Osan’gar, is that Taim ordered Rand’s death.

“Kill him,” the M’Hael had ordered before sending them to Cairhien, but he had been as displeased that they were found out as that they had failed. Far Madding was to be their last chance; he had made that as plain as polished brass. Dashiva had simply vanished. Kisman did not know whether he had run or the M’Hael had killed him, and he did not care.

“Kill him,” Demandred had commanded later, but he had added that it would be better they died than let themselves be discovered again. By anyone, even the M’Hael, as if he did not know of Taim’s order.

Chapter 22, Out of Thin Air

From the wording here, again, I don’t think we can say anything for certain other than that Taim ordered Rand’s death. This doesn’t even necessarily mean that Taim is a Darkfriend: he might just want Rand out of the way so he can rule the Asha’man. Demandred knew Taim’s order… but this could simply be because Osan’gar told him, though the ambiguous wording here seems to imply that Demandred knew about Taim’s order without Osan’gar.

The one other bit of real info we get about Demandred in Winter’s Heart is from his sections in chapter 35. We see here that Demandred is extremely arrogant, much like Taim himself. “Lews Therin had always been a brilliant planner, too, if not so brilliant as everyone made out. Not nearly as brilliant as Demandred himself.” We also hear him think “He was a general, a great general, but generals did not have to fight alongside the men they commanded!” This… really, really sound like Taim.

I could try to make a prediction here, but honestly, it would just be a guess. We’ll just need to wait and see.

Noal Charin

Alright, that’s enough about Lanfear and Demandred. Let’s talk about Noal Charin for a minute.

So, we all recognized the surname “Charin,” right? No, not Charon, Charin, as in Jain Charin, later known as Jain Farstrider.

We know that Jain Charin was young but already known as Jain Farstrider when the catastrophe that ended Malkier occurred. Jain’s the person who caught Cowin Fairheart. Jain’s also a popular author and adventurer. Rand, in particular, loves Jain Farstrider stories; he even named one of his horses Jeade’en, True Finder, because that was Jain Farstrider’s horse’s name. We haven’t actually seen Jeade’en since Lord of Chaos, by the way: I think we can consider it a sign of Rand’s declining mental health that he doesn’t seem to care as much about horses anymore, seeing them as tools as much as the people he interacts with.

Anyways, we learned something else about Jain Farstrider back in The Eye of the World. Remember when Rand got a little too arrogant with Ba’alzamon and Ba’alzamon had a full-on villain moment?

“You tracked me? You slug under a rock, track me? I began the setting of your path the day you were born, a path to lead you to your grave, or here. Aiel allowed to flee, and one to live, to speak the words that would echo down the years. Jain Farstrider, a hero.” he twisted the word to a sneer, “whom I painted like a fool and sent to the Ogier thinking he was free of me.”

Against the Shadow, chapter 51 of The Eye of the World

Okay, so, Jain Farstrider is a famous hero and author, loved by people including Rand, who caught Cowin Fairheart and became a, perhaps unwitting, pawn of Ba’alzamon. He disappeared shortly after the Aiel War and is generally believed to be dead, per the glossary of The Dragon Reborn.

It really seems like Noal is just the name Jain is going by these days. The age more-or-less lines up: Jain was considered young, but already known as Jain Farstrider, when Malkier fell. I’d guess that this would make him roughly twenty years older than Lan. Mat sees Noal as old, but he’s still pretty agile, and it would make sense for someone who constantly travels to look a bit older than they are.

Noal also just immediately knows that Mat is important and wants to travel with him. Maybe we can just credit this to an accomplished adventurer having an eye for adventure. Maybe Jain Farstrider can spot ta’veren. That’s a real possibility!

Or, Noal is following orders. We know that Ba’alzamon believed that Jain wasn’t free of him, and Moridin is definitely Ishamael, so maybe Noal is following orders to track down Mat. I don’t think we have enough information to say right now, but given that Mat’s story ended on a cliff-hanger this time around, I bet that we’ll find out more in the next book.

Moridin

Oh, yeah, I kind of just snuck it in there a second ago, but Moridin is definitely Ishamael.

I mean, I had this point back in my analysis of A Crown of Swords, but at that point is was mostly just a theory, but now we have some better evidence. In chapter 13, “Wonderful News,” we get this observation via Demandred: “‘The Great Lord is sure you are all faithful,’ Moridin announced, striding in as though he were the Great Lord of the Dark himself. He had often seemed to believe he was, and the boy’s face he wore now had not changed that… A youthful face had not made him any saner, either.” Later, Osan’gar has nearly the same thought: “The fact remained that Moridin terrified him. The man had always terrified him, from the very beginning. He had been mad with power before they were sealed into the Bore, and since they had been freed, he seemed to think that he was the Great Lord.”

Recall that Ba’alzamon means “Heart of the Dark” and is the trolloc name for Shai’tan. It’s almost hard to think back to when we weren’t sure whether Ba’alzamon was Shai’tan or just a servant, but we know that Ishamael was crazy enough to be a little unsure himself. We never really discovered for sure what it meant that he wasn’t fully sealed, but it seems like he was at least partially loose in Tel’aran’rhiod for a long while, perhaps the thousands of years since the breaking. In any case, we technically haven’t had anyone outright say that Moridin is Ishamael yet, but it seems all but confirmed.

Side note, did anyone else notice that we saw the word “Moridin” way back in The Eye of the World? It wasn’t used as a name then, but just to mean “death,” in the inscription on the Horn of Valere: “Tia mi aven Moridin Isainde vadin:” The grave is no bar to my call. This probably doesn’t mean anything beyond that Robert Jordan likes spreading bits of the Old Tongue as much as Tolkien loved sprinkling in some of his fantasy languages, but I still found it interesting, particularly given that we could now take it literally, as Ba’alzamon, later known as Moridin, was no bar to Mat’s call in Falme.

Luc/Isam

Alright, we haven’t had a reason to talk about Luc and Isam in a long time now, since The Shadow Rising. I’m not going to dig as deeply into the Prophecy of Shadow or the history of Malkier today as I did back then, as we haven’t actually received much new information. We already knew that Luc was Rand’s uncle, that Isam is from Malkier and was heavily involved, as a child, in its downfall, and that Luc and Isam were somehow merged at in the Mountains of Dhoom. We also know that Isam is Slayer and has some power to move powerfully in Tel’aran’rhiod, to jump in and out of it, and that he hunts wolves.

In Winter’s Heart, we got a quick confirmation of this when Luc/Isam steps out of Tel’aran’rhiod in chapter 22 in an attempt to assassinate Rand. “It really was a pity. He had rather looked forward to killing his nephew and the wench. But if there was time to pass, hunting was always a pleasure. He became Isam. Isam liked killing wolves even more than Luc did.”

We also get a quick comment from Moridin, in chapter 13, that Isam is trying to find and kill Fain. This helps make some more sense of what Luc and Isam were doing back in the Two Rivers. He may have been there for multiple reasons, but hunting Fain was almost certainly one of them.

This confirmation is great, but we did also get some new info. Specifically, that Luc wants to kill Rand. I mentioned back when we first talked about Luc that he’s kind of a jerk, but it was hard to tell whether he was an actual villain or just kind of mean. Well, now we know that he’s specifically looking forward to murdering his own nephew. Luc and Isam also serve Shai’tan, but it seems as though they’re perfectly willing servants.

We’ll probably learn more about them soon. We learned that Slayer has some connection to the Tower of Ghenjei back when Perrin saw him enter the tower in the dream. My guess is that the Aelfinn and Eelfinn, Noal, Luc/Isam, Mat, Fain, and Moridin are all going to have some deeper connection with each other and with the Tower of Ghenjei.

Fain

So, I don’t really have much to say about Fain, but I still want to talk about him for just a minute because his scene was really good!

In terms of revelations, we don’t get much for Fain. He’s still crazy, he still hates Rand, and he was still hanging out with Toram (who Lan may have killed? I’m not actually sure.) But, the one thing we do get is pretty wild. As far as I can tell, Fain can summon forth illusions of people he’s killed. It’s either that or Rand was starting to hallucinate, but I’m pretty sure it was Fain. I’m not sure how far this goes though. The illusion of Gedwyn said “I say we aren’t going near him until I know where the others are. The M’Hael will kill us if…”

This sounds like what Gedwyn was probably saying when Fain killed him. So, is this just an echo of the person, or is Fain eating souls with his dagger? Again, I’m reminded of Artemis Entreri’s jeweled dagger from the Drizzt books.

Revelations aside, this scene was just so damn good. Fain’s mad ramblings are truly terrifying. I think what sticks out to me the most is just how desperate Fain is.

“I want him to know who is killing him,” Fain whined petulantly. He was glaring straight at Rand, but he seemed to talking to himself. “I want him to know! But if he’s dead, then he will stop haunting my dreams. Yes. He will stop, then.” With a smile, he raised his free hand.

Chapter 33, Blue Carp Street

Note the similarity to Rand in Fain talking to himself.

He’s not just crazy or just evil. He sounds… sick. He’s addicted to hating Rand. I don’t think he’s even capable of considering what he’ll do when Rand’s gone. Would he finally be able to rest… or would he be trapped in a world that lacks the sole focus of his addiction? For his own sake, I hope he never finds out.

With the Choedan Kal

That’s enough dealing with the lesser mysteries, let’s talk about cleansing saidin.

First off, of course it had to be Nynaeve. Rand is bonded to multiple women who can channel, but Nynaeve’s the one who Healed severing and she’s the one who believes that anything can be Healed. She’s the one who started her journey to protect the kids from Emond’s Field, including Rand. She’s also immensely powerful, though I’m not sure how much that actually matters when they’re using the Choedan Kal.

By the way, is it really obvious to everyone else that Robert Jordan thought up the name “Choedan Kal” just before writing this book, wrote it everywhere where the statues were mentioned, then realized in editing that Rand needs to have a quick line about remembering it from Lews Therin for it to make sense that literally everyone starts calling it the Choedan Kal at the exact same time? This isn’t a big deal, but it actually did pull me out of the book a bit. I mean, we see the Forsaken calling it the Choedan Kal and that makes sense: they haven’t really talked to each other about the statues much before, and why would Lanfear see any reason to call them by their proper name while discussing them with “Lews Therin?”

But, despite just thinking of them as the two statue ter’angreal for several books now, suddenly Rand and friends are calling them the Choedan Kal too. Again, this is really nitpicky, but why would Rand “remember” that from Lews Therin at the same time that the Forsaken start talking about it, but not earlier or later? Why didn’t he just continue to call them the statue ter’angreal? This isn’t a plot hole or anything, but it’s a weird coincidence, and since it really doesn’t matter what they call them, you can’t really handwave this coincidence by saying it’s part of the pattern. Why would the pattern care what separate groups of people who aren’t communicating with each other call the Choedan Kal?

That aside, I’ll admit that I actually thought that Rand and Nynaeve were going to use Callandor to cleanse saidin. I thought that they’d need to use Callandor’s flaw – that it lacks a safety throttle and that the taint flows more strongly through it – as part of the process of cleansing saidin, but I suppose that Callandor will come into play more later.

I really liked the actual process Rand used. I also absolutely loved how chapter 35 managed to be frenetic and fantastic without becoming too abstract to understand. Really, the method Rand came up with for cleansing saidin was pretty basic: it’s not even really metaphorical. He used saidar to create a pipe to force saidin to a specific location, then channeled as much of saidin as he could process with the Choedan Kal through Shadar Logoth. He knew from the wounds on his side that the extra-dimensional evil of Shai’tan, that exists in all worlds and for all time, is opposed and attracted towards the man-made evil of Shadar Logoth, which is bound to the physical presence of that specific place. It’s like using a magnet to capture bits of iron in water, or using lithium hydroxide to capture carbon dioxide. (I actually really like pretending that Rand jury-rigging a capture device for the taint was an intentional reference to the crew of Apollo 13 jury-rigging a capture device for carbon dioxide.)

Using Shadar Logoth in this way has been foreshadowed for quite a while now. The wound from Fain was the most obvious foreshadowing, but it’s been hinted at since The Eye of the World that the evil of Shadar Logoth is both like and unlike that of Shai’tan. With the wound from Fain, we saw that the two evils oppose one another. Flinn’s solution to Healing Rand was almost the exact same thing: put a boundary around the two evils and force them to attack one another, rather than separating and attacking anything else. Rand’s contribution to this idea was basically just that of scale: rather than a surgical shield in one man’s side, force all of saidin into the city of Shadar Logoth and hope that the evil sticks. Just in case we didn’t put the two concepts together, Robert Jordan gives us a little hint by having the two wounds in Rand’s side pulse alternatively in his side during the channeling.

The other thing I absolutely loved about this process was what the taint looked like. This chapter is just filled with fantastic descriptive language. “It was like oil floating on water in a coating so thin you would not notice till you touched the surface, yet covering the vastness of the male half, it was an ocean in itself.” “An immense flattened dome of black in the forest, as though night had turned to stone. [Moghedien] flinched as a ripple passed across the dark surface and the dome heaved perceptibly higher.” “Even at a distance of miles, the black dome looked immense, rearing a thousand feet at its height. And it was swelling. The surface looked like black steel, though it did not sparkle in the afternoon sun. If anything, the light seemed to dim around it.”

We see the end of the process from Moghedien (don’t worry, I’m only quoting two paragraphs here – I got the feedback last time that some people don’t like the longer quotes.)

Black no longer seemed to describe it. There was no term for it, now, but black was a pale color by comparison. It was half a ball, now, rearing like a mountain two miles or more into the sky. A thick layer of shadow lay around it, as though it were sucking the last light out of the air. She could not understand why she was not afraid. That thing might grow until it enveloped the entire world, or perhaps shatter the world, as Aran’gar had said it might. But if that happened, there was no safe place, no shadows for the Spider to hide in.

Suddenly something writhed up from that dark smooth surface, like a flame if flames were blacker than black, then another, another, until the dome boiled with stygian fire. The roar of ten thousand thunders made her clap her hands over her ears and shriek, soundlessly in that crash, and the dome collapsed in on itself in the space of a heartbeat, to a pinpoint, to nothing. It was wind that howled then, rushing toward the vanished dome, dragging her along the stony ground no matter how desperately she clawed for purchase, tumbling her against trees, lifting her into the air.

I’m actually not sure whether the disappearance of the evil, which seems to create a vacuum in its absence, is something Rand did or the result of the two great evils warring with one another. This scene of a great ball bursting into flame and exploding reminds me of Rand’s vision of the Sharom when it “broke apart like an egg and began to drive down, falling, an obsidian inferno. Darkness spread across the sky, swallowing the sun in unnatural night, as if the light of those flames was blackness.”

Blackness without reflection, as as though it’s made of a pure darkness, hungrily absorbing light is something that comes up often for Shai’tan. This is also how the Myrddraal swords are described. Shadar Haran also summons a ball like this when confronting Graendal in The Path of Daggers.

In the end, all that’s left behind is a gaping crater where Shadar Logoth once stood. I also really like this idea that Shadar Logoth played an important role, despite being a place of pure evil. This reminds me of Gollum’s role in The Lord of the Rings and of Moiraine’s lecture to Perrin that the Pattern isn’t good or evil, but weaves both in the service of a larger Pattern. Shadar Logoth was undeniably a tragedy, but perhaps a necessary one. Now, all that remains of its evil is Fain.

Rand’s Madness

With the taint on saidin cleansed, we no longer need to worry about men going mad from channeling… but that doesn’t mean that Rand is in the clear.

First off, it’s still entirely possible that Rand is mad from the taint itself. He removed the taint from the Source, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s been removed from the world entirely. Swapping out your lead pipes is good, but it won’t pull the metal out of your body. Rand was already suffering a sickness whenever he seized or released saidin, and now he’s channeled the entirety of the taint through himself. “The foul ocean of the taint was flooding through him, howling with its speed. Tidal waves of vileness crashed over him. Raging gales of filth ripped at him. The only reason he knew that he still held the Power was the taint.”

Rand hasn’t woken up yet, but there’s a real chance that we’ll find him in a much worse state than he was before cleansing saidin. I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen here at all, I’m just excited to pick up the next book and find out!

Oh, shit, Robert Jordan isn’t going to do that thing where we don’t see Rand for a whole book so we can focus on Mat and Perrin again, will he? I really hope I don’t need to wait until Knife of Dreams to find out how Rand is doing.

But, even without the taint, Rand’s still in a pretty bad place.

Cadsuane has really latched on to the phrase “laughter and tears.” A phrase, by the way, that also appears at the end of the first-sister ritual: “Elayne did not care at that moment if she did freeze to death. She clung to Aviendha in laughter and tears. She had found her sister. Light, she had found her sister!” This might just be a coincidence, but it could also be foreshadowing that Rand will need to be brought back from the brink by the bond he shares with Elayne, Aviendha, and Min, which is based on the same first-sister ritual.

But, we also know that it’s Cadsuane who needs to teach Rand, and the Asha’man, what they need to know, even if they won’t like it. I’m not really sure what this means yet, but we do know – again – that Rand ends this book in a real bad place.

Of course, he’s been ending pretty much every book in a bad place, but I really want to emphasize it here. Being trapped in the cell in Far Madding really dug at the trauma Rand had from being packed in the box by the Black Ajah.

He had to fight this, or he would be as mad as Lews Therin by the time anyone came to let him out….

“I will not surrender!” he shouted. “I will be as hard as I need to be!” In that confined space, his voice boomed like thunder….

One by one he summoned up the names on that long list, patiently forging his soul in the fires of pain.

Chapter 34, The Hummingbird’s Secret

It’s really telling that Rand thinks he’s being sane here. In an attempt to not be as mad as Lews Therin, he sits in the dark and “forges his soul in the fires of pain” by recounting all of the women who have died because of him.

I just… love how this is written. This is some real, cringy, teenage edge-lord shit. I hope I’m speaking for all of us when I admit that I definitely wrote things like that in fits of poetic angst in my youth. I can completely empathize with what Rand’s trying to do here… the problem is that it’s just kind of stupid and immature. Which isn’t a big deal when you’re just writing bad poetry to get over a breakup, but here it actually matters.

Through the bond, Min notes “I can feel him changing. If he was a stone before, he’s iron, now!”

We really don’t get to see any resolution to this by the end of the book. Rand moves directly from that cell to to cleansing saidin without any break. Even without the taint, there’s a real chance that Rand is hardened to the point Cadsuane fears, where even his victory will be as horrible as his defeat.

Outro

Alright, I think that about covers it! Again, I really liked this book, but I also need to start reading the next one. Mat left off midway through some bridenapping, Perrin seems about ready to go full wolf on the Shaido, and Rand might not wake up a sane man. I am really glad that I’m reading these books now so I don’t need to wait for the next one to come out: that would’ve been rough!

I didn’t really find a good place to fit it into the framing I had above, but I also want to mention that I really liked the little bit of genre twisting we got with Mat’s damane heist and Rand’s murder plot. I don’t think there’s any grand significance to the different tone of these sections, but I just thought it was really fun. Robert Jordan often tries to mix things up so we get a little sampler of different styles to keep us interested, and we’ve definitely had some other scenes like this – often with either Mat or Nynaeve – but the methodical plots here felt like a step up.

I’ll start on Crossroads of Twilight next, so I should have my response to that out in a few weeks. After that I’ll get to New Spring. There are still several books left, but it’s starting to feel like we’re entering the final stretch!