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apocalypticavolition · 2 months

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Let's (re)Read The Dragon Reborn! Chapter 27: Tel'aran'rhiod

If you don't want spoilers for the whole Wheel of Time series, don't keep reading.

This chapter starts with the twisted ring icon because we're going into T'A'R.

Verin had come into the kitchens after the midday meal, blinking as if she were not sure why she was there.

Is Verin genuinely confused or just acting? Does she know about the library incident last chapter? What's her deal?

Alanna came to the kitchens after midday, too, collecting a bowl of big green gooseberries and a pitcher of wine, and Elaida, then Sheriam, appeared after supper, and Anaiya, too.

Alanna's definitely trying to get in good with the Two River girls, and I think that Egwene's evaluations for why the others are present (Elayne, it's her job, and Egwene respectively) are mostly accurate. Since she doesn't know Sheriam is Black, she's of course missing that she's likely checking in on them from that angle too.

“I might choose Green Ajah myself, Egwene. Then I can have three or four Warders, perhaps marry one of them. Who better for Prince Consort of Andor than a Warder? Unless it is. . . .”

This of course sets up Elayne, who seems to find that the two Warders she has are more than enough when she gets them. There's also the irony in Elayne recommending Gawyn as Warder to Egwene when his time with her will only prove disastrous.

They were valid reasons, and she believed them, but there was another, closer to her heart. “Besides, I’ll feel better knowing both of you are watching over me, in case. . . .”

The narrative is ambiguous as to whether it's the extra reason Egwene adds that is the "another reason" or if perhaps it's outright selfishness, so I'll leave that as an exercise to you. I will note though that it's fucking fantastic on those rare occasions when your selfishness is entirely logical. I hope everyone gets to enjoy at least one such moment in their life.

Nynaeve began to hum softly. Egwene recognized a nameless, wordless tune her mother used to hum to her when she was little.

Nynaeve may hate being put on guard duty but dammit she's going to be the best sleep-watcher there ever was.

She looked at her dress, and laughed delightedly. Exactly her favorite shade of sky-blue silk, slashed with white in the skirt—that changed to green as she frowned momentarily—sewn with rows of tiny pearls down the sleeves and across the bosom.

Egwene is of all Ajahs, but since blue and green are the two that seem to be her best fits it's interesting that white shows up in her preferred outfit as well. Could White be an Ajah she might pick in some other life, a less likely outcome but still more plausible than the other four?

A large, shaggy-haired young man sat leaning back against the pillar in only his smallclothes, head lolling as if asleep. A massive black chain ran around the pillar and across his chest, the ends gripped in his clenched hands. Asleep or not, his heavy muscles strained to hold that chain tight, to prison himself against the pillar.

It's stuff like this that makes Jordan's refusal to do anything with Perrin's skills across eleven books more frustrating because it shows that he himself thought Perrin was getting in his own way.

A whirring sound, and she jumped before she recognized a cricket. A frog gave a bass croak in the darkness, and a chorus answered it. As her eyes adapted, she dimly made out trees all around her. Clouds blanketed the stars, and the moon was a thin sliver.

Rather unfortunate that even in T'A'R you have to get used to different light levels.

“Who’s out there?” he demanded loudly. “You’ve rustled enough leaves to wake the dead, so you might as well show yourself.”

Egwene's arrogance is definitely on display in that she thinks she was being very stealthy indeed.

“My mother gave me honeycake,” he said in a tight voice, “with the smell of poison rank on it. My father had a knife for my ribs. She—she offered kisses, and more.” Sweat slicked his face; his stare seemed enough to set her afire. “What do you bring?”

She being a fake Egwene, Elayne, or even just Lanfear outright? Also I'm pretty sure Rand and Egwene never compare notes to realize that it was both of them being entirely (okay for Rand only mostly) lucid and that he wasn't dream-dreaming and she wasn't a fake. More Team Light issues.

“Take me where I need to be.” She shut her eyes and concentrated on the ring. It was stone, after all; Earth should give her some feeling for it. “Do it. Take me where I need to be.”

Can't blame a girl for trying, though naturally Lanfear will make sure that this scheme which normally would work doesn't quite.

An old woman stepped out of the shadows of the column, bent and hobbling with a stick. Ugly did not begin to describe her. She had a bony, pointed chin, an even bonier, sharper nose, and it seemed there were more warts growing hairs on her face than there was face.

Points to Lanfear for being absolutely willing to commit to the bit. This even foreshadows for readers her disguise in the next book which is also very much not "Most gorgeous woman alive."

“The High Lords don’t sweep and mop. But who sees a servant?”

This level of class consciousness seems almost out of character for Lanfear. Perhaps back in the day she cared more about the Aiel than most or something.

“Just a thing poor folks say, my Lady. It turns the Forsaken’s power, calling them fools. Makes you feel good, and safe. Even the Shadow can’t take being called a fool. Try it, my Lady. Say, Ba’alzamon is a fool!”

Lanfear might be absolutely playing Egwene to minimize her slip up here but it's so fun to imagine her likely genuine enjoyment in getting someone else to diss Ishamael with her.

The Sword That Is Not a Sword, though there’s precious few knows what it is. But none can touch it save one. They saw to that, who put it here.

I doubt that even Lanfear fully understands what it is and I am fascinated by the idea that there's a weave out there that can identify someone by their very soul. It has so few useful applications that I wonder how they discovered it in the first place.

There were gaps in that weave, spaces where her probe should slide through. When she tried, it was like fighting the strongest part of the weave head on. It hit her then, what she was trying to force a way through, and she let her probe vanish.

Egwene has a really quick mind to grasp the nature of this so quickly - this weave is her first actual exposure to freestanding saidin, after all. It's a shame they get interrupted because it would have been interesting to see Lanfear's reaction.

“You don’t know the way out,” Sylvie said flatly, then went on in a near whisper, ingratiating and mocking at once, an old retainer who felt she could take liberties. “Oh, my Lady, this is a dangerous place to come into, if you don’t know the way out. Come, let poor old Silvie take you out. Poor old Silvie will tuck you safe in your bed, my Lady.”

Lanfear getting some clue that Egwene is just a newbie who doesn't fully understand anything is likely part of why Lanfear never fucks her up so badly. You know she hates other dreamers.

“Was it bad?” she asked worriedly. “You never stirred. You never mumbled. We did not know whether to wake you or not.”

Just another bit of demonstrating how entirely out of their depth they are, though at least Egwene immediately comes up with a way to refine the process.

Of it all, the only thing she left out was about Perrin talking to the wolf. She left the wolf out altogether. She felt a little guilty about keeping secrets from Elayne and Nynaeve, but it was Perrin’s secret to tell, when and if he chose, not hers.

Normally I love giving Team Light shit for not communicating but Egwene is absolutely in the right here to not spread news of Perrin's lycanthropy to every princess she meets.

“The best way to catch whoever set a trap is to spring it and wait for him to come. Or her, in this instance.”

Nynaeve are you listening to yourself? You live in an era where most traps are going to be little contraptions left out in the woods checked on a semi-regular basis because the trappers have no idea which traps, if any, have been sprung and just want to get there before somebody else does! The best way to catch a trapper is to find a trap on their route and hide nearby so you can see them when they come. Under no fucking circumstances should anyone go, "Wow, bear traps are illegal out here, guess I'll put my leg in it and wait!" Shit hurts!

“I will not work in the kitchens while you two are off adventuring, either. I just have to tell my mother than I am out of the Tower on the Amyrlin’s orders, so she won’t become furious if she hears rumors. I do not have to tell her where we are going, or why.”

Nynaeve puts forward a bunch of sensible objections to this, but might I point out that the best plan for relaying the info to your mother would be to tell Gawyn and Galad you're going back to Caemlyn, get Galad to promise to explain what's going on to Morgase so he'll feel duty-bound to do so, and then trick them to get off the boat at Aringill and ditch em. Elayne's failure to consider her brother and stepbrother as potential tools here really only ensures both of them go off in disastrous directions once she's gone. Though I suppose if she had done that one or both of them would have ended up Rahvin's thralls or worse. But still, it's sad that she's still not even thinking of them.

“We will give the Amyrlin one more chance to seek us out. When we finish with breakfast, you both pack what you want to take, but keep it light. We have to leave the Tower without anyone noticing, remember. If the Amyrlin doesn’t reach us by midday, I mean to be on a trading ship, shoving that paper down the captain’s throat if need be, before Prime sounds. How does that sound to you two?”

Nynaeve is a bit better at plans than Elayne (*looks at my earlier notes about ego/superego/id and then glares at anyone who wants to talk about these obvious contradictions*), but thinking there's any chance of Siuan talking to them in the next twenty-four hours is very silly.

“I just thought of someone who’d be happy to carry Elayne’s letter for her. Happy to leave Tar Valon, too. In fact, I’d bet on it.”

Get it, because Mat's a gambler?

Next time: Three cats and a finch!

#let's read #wheel of time #wot #robert jordan #wheel of time spoilers #wot spoilers #egwene al'vere #nynaeve al'meara #elayne trakand #verin mathwin #alanna mosvani #elaida do avriny a'roihan #sheriam bayanar #anaiya carel #perrin aybara #hopper #rand al'thor #lanfear #be'lal

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