#I don't even cover Alanna getting Lightning!!

[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read The Dragon Reborn! Chapter 22: The Price of the Ring

Everyone always wonders why heroes in fantasy stories are so reluctant to get the cool magical artifacts and stuff. This chapter justifies why you should be a little cautious around free doodads, especially when they're enchanted! Anything else would be spoilers though, and if you don't want spoilers for the whole Wheel of Time series, you shouldn't keep reading.

This chapter has the Flame of Tar Valon icon because we're seeing the Accepted ritual again and because Egwene is going to be the Flame of Tar Valon for a hot minute or two. Also the Amyrlin's voice is heard at the end. Lots of meaning, this chapter icon.

But Sheriam seemed to have dismissed the papers from her mind as soon as she asked.

Since the first word out of Egwene's mouth was "Verin," Sheriam probably dismissed them for that reason. She either knows Verin's allegiance or buys the cover that she's a distracted old wmoan.

“I listened to the lectures,” Egwene protested, “and I remember them, but . . . can’t I have a night’s sleep first?”

It's funny to consider that when Egwene gets raised next time, she'll spend a night traveling through the world of dreams.

An Aes Sedai sat cross-legged on the bare rock before each of the spots where arches joined ring, all three wearing their shawls. Alanna was the sister of the Green Ajah, but she did not know the Yellow sister, or the White.

Sadly, we don't know them either. I wouldn't at all be surprised though if they were significant players though, since Sheriam, Elaida, and Alanna all are too.

“She should not be given this chance.” There was iron in Elaida’s voice, and her face was scarcely softer. “I do not care what her potential is. She should be put out of the Tower. Or failing that, set to scrubbing floors for the next ten years.”

Elaida's just bitter that Moiraine has outmatched her in recent all-star recruitment. Cute that their animosity starts so early.

She sounded as if she had said this many times. There was a light of sympathy in her eyes, but her face was almost as stern as Elaida’s. The sympathy frightened Egwene more than the sternness.

If a member of the BA is feeling sorry for you, you know your life is about to suck hardcore.

“There is some sort of—resonance.” She never took her eyes from the arches. “An echo, almost. I do not know from where.”

Two T'A'R access points conflicting with each other?

“Then let her face what she fears.” Even in its formality, there was a note of satisfaction in Elaida’s voice.

Already Elaida thinks Egwene can't survive the punishments coming her way. And already she's wrong. A remarkably pig-headed woman.

Of course Rand was her husband—her handsome, loving husband—and Joiya was her daughter—the most beautiful, sweetest little girl in the Two Rivers. Tam, Rand’s father, was out with the sheep, supposedly so Rand could work on the barn but really so he could have more time to play with Joiya. This afternoon Egwene’s mother and father would come out from the village. And probably Nynaeve, to see if motherhood was interfering with Egwene’s studies to replace Nynaeve as Wisdom one day.

Egwene's first archway takes her to the closest equivalent of a fluffy high school/coffee shop AU that the setting can allow. A true hell for Egwene, who needs shit to do.

Egwene knew—she thought she knew—Whatever it was, was gone.

Egwene's Seanchan trauma is so strong that she can almost recall it across timelines. I think the only reason she doesn't spend any of the three arches in the damane collar is because she's already faced that fear as thoroughly as possible.

When Rand’s head hurt, strange things happened soon after. Lightning out of a clear sky, smashing to bits that huge oak stump he had been working two days to root out where he and Tam were clearing new field. Storms that Nynaeve did not hear coming when she listened to the wind. Wildfires in the forest. And the deeper his pain grew, the worse what followed.

Huh. After my migraines we get sudden thunderstorms and those cause forest fires. Am I the Dragon Preborn? I fucking hope not, though getting channeling as a reward for suffering through the headaches would be fucking fantastic.

But three times now, Egwene had cured someone Nynaeve had given up for dead. Three times she had sat to hold a hand through the last hour, and seen the person get up from a deathbed. Nynaeve had questioned her closely on what she had done, what herbs she had used, in what blending. Thus far, she had not found the courage to admit that she had done nothing.

It's interesting to note that in a world where the EF5 never leaves town, Egwene eventually becomes more capable at Healing than Nynaeve. It might just be that their blocks are different, I suppose, or that Wilders are prone to implausible feats in the initial period that they can't necessarily replicate after the fact, though Rand's channeling outbursts are things he'd do quite easily later.

She halted, looked back at Joiya gurgling in her cradle, at Rand still pressing hand to his head and looking at her as if wondering where she was going. “No,” she said. “No, this is what I want. This is what I want! Why can’t I have this, too?”

Fucking Wheel, making women choose between families and careers no matter what position it's in. How depressing.

She stiffened her back and kept walking, but she could not keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks. Rand’s groans built to a scream, drowning Joiya’s laughter. From the corner of her eye, Egwene saw Tam coming, running as hard as he could.

Really the fact that Joiya is laughing hysterically while her dad is having a horrible meltdown is good evidence that these possible timelines aren't entirely real but are specifically designed as a trap.

“Every woman I have ever watched come out of there has asked that question. The answer is, no one knows. It has been speculated that perhaps some of those who do not come back chose to stay because they found a happier place, and lived out their lives there.” Her voice hardened. “If it is real, and they stayed from choice, then I hope the lives they live are far from happy. I have no sympathy for any who run from their responsibilities.”

And what about your responsibilities to not be an evil witch, Sheriam? Pretty hypocritical of you to judge the women trapped in the ter'angreal when you aren't even a true believer but only joined for political power!

She stared down at her dress, blue silk sewn with pearls, all dusty and torn. Her head came up, and she took in the ruins of a great palace around her. The Royal Palace of Andor, in Caemlyn.

This is of course foreshadowing the eventual destruction of Caemlyn as the central location of the Last Battle that never does quite come to pass under Brando Sando's work.

Once she stepped on a woman’s arm, sticking out from under a mound of plaster and bricks that had been an interior wall and perhaps part of the floor above. She noticed the arm as little as she noticed the Great Serpent ring on one finger. She had trained herself not to see the dead buried in the refuse heap Trollocs and Darkfriends had made of Caemlyn. She could do nothing for the dead.

It's for the best that real Egwene never quite has to steel herself in this way.

“The madness, Egwene. I am—actually—holding it—at bay.” His gasping laugh made her skin prickle. “But it takes everything I have just to do that. If I let go, even a little, even for an instant, the madness will have me. I won’t care what I do then. You have to help me.”

A lot of people think that Egwene judges Rand way too harshly in later books and while I definitely don't think she's as good as a friend as she should have been, I think we can blame this vision for some of it. The Rand of later books becomes more and more like this madman, laughing at inappropriate, mood swinging violently, not always able to channel reliably or effectively. Egwene gets to see the end of the road before everyone else does and even though he's still relatively stable in LOC, she's definitely seeing him take the first steps down it.

“If they take me—the Myrddraal—the Dreadlords—they can turn me to the Shadow. If madness has me, I cannot fight them. I won’t know what they are doing till it is too late. If there is even a spark of life left when they find me, they can still do it. Please, Egwene. For the love of the Light. Kill me.”

While the arches do seem to be psychologically manipulative, they are also great teaching tools. This scenario is clearly built out of Egwene's fear of Rand's channeling ability, but it has to up the stakes even beyond that and so pulls more facts for her to learn from.

It is a thing not done, so far as I know—Light send it has not been done!—since the Trolloc Wars. It took thirteen Dreadlords—Darkfriends who could channel—weaving the flows through thirteen Myrddraal. You see? Not easily done. There are no Dreadlords today.

But there are members of the Black Ajah, who are Dreadlords in all but name. And Sheriam can lie. But like I said, she's not a true believer, she did it for the opportunity. Is she being truthful to Egwene here, both in that the technique has not been done in two thousand years and in that she hopes it has never been done? Is that one of the reasons she holds her position, to recruit naturally and hope that things never turn to filling out the numbers in a different fashion?

Egwene stared into the standing mirror, and was not sure whether she was more surprised by the ageless smoothness of her face or the striped stole that hung around her neck. The stole of the Amyrlin Seat.

Like Nynaeve, Egwene's third vision is of a very similar future to the fate she actually gets. Is that common to all of the women who go through these arches, or is it just that their fates are so firm there's nothing to pull from but the truth?

There was an Aes Sedai at her elbow, a woman with Sheriam’s high cheekbones but dark hair and concerned brown eyes, and the hand-wide stole of the Keeper on her shoulders. Not Sheriam, though. Egwene had never seen her before; she was sure she knew her as well as she knew herself. Haltingly, she put a name to the woman. Beldeine.

"Not Sheriam, though." Fun foreshadowing for Egwene's first Keeper and her removal, that.

That thought shook her. Not that she had been Green Ajah, but that she had to reason it out.

Another question is whether the ring broke this vision but not the other two because of repeated exposure, or if the future-predicting aspects of both ter'angreal was the thing that let the resonance grow out of control?

That seemed an odd thought, too. Part of her remembered something called the Great Purge. Part of her was sure no such thing had happened.

A much less important question is if the Great Purge of this timeline was more or less successful than the main timeline, considering how things turned out.

The Flame of Tar Valon lay centered in the floor, surrounded by widening spirals of color, the colors of the seven Ajahs. At the opposite side of the room from where the ramp entered, a high-backed chair stood, heavy and ornately carved in vines and leaves, painted in the colors of all the Ajahs.

Our first look at the hall, even if it is fake. Note the emphasis both in-text and in-universe on all seven Ajahs. Even though there's definitely some problems and changes to come, all are consistently treated as an integral part of the Tower until the breaking.

One of the Red Sitters stood. Egwene was shocked to recognize Elaida. At the same time she knew that Elaida was foremost of the Sitters for the Red, and her own bitterest enemy.

Lucky of Elaida to not get taken by the Seanchan. Perhaps the arches neglected that detail specifically to fuck with Egwene more, or perhaps it was an inevitable consequence of whatever butterfly effect we're dealing with here.

One of the Green Sitters was on her feet, anger bright through her calm. “Shame, Elaida! Show respect for the Amyrlin Seat! Show respect for the Mother!”

Obviously this could be virtually any non-Black Green, but I like to think it's Farnah specifically. Could be Faiselle though if it's one of the three actual Sitters Egwene gets, probably not Rubinde since she's an Elaida loyalist in the real timeline.

As Egwene opened her mouth, Beldeine moved beside her. Then the Keeper’s staff struck her head.

No surprise that Beldeine, one of the women who will be sent to box Rand, would betray Egwene to Elaida even as her Keeper.

The pain in her head made thinking difficult, but it seemed important to count them. Thirteen.

Would being 13x13ed here have truly changed Egwene, I wonder? Was Sheriam hoping it might and trying to play towards it, or is this entirely of the resonance and thus not an outcome she could have predicted?

Flames burst from Myrddraal skin, ripping through black cloth as if they were solid daggers of fire. Shrieking Halfmen crisped and burned like oiled paper. Fist-sized chunks of stone tore themselves free of the walls and whizzed across the room, producing shrieks and grunts as they thudded into flesh. The air stirred, shifted, howled into a whirlwind.

Either Egwene is able to throw around way more power than she should be able to (our girls will later find out that setting Halfmen on fire is actually a rather bad choice, all things considered), or the arches are just playing along with her.

Egwene’s mind put a name to the face. Gyldan. Elaida’s closest confidante, always whispering together in corners, closeting themselves in the night.

We do not ever meet a Gyldan in the main timeline. She may be a real Black who just doesn't get up to much in reality, or perhaps the real Gyldan is even more unremarkable and in this timeline Mesaana replaces her, not the Brown (in which case, good on you for punching her out Egwene!). Perhaps she doesn't exist at all, though Beldeine certainly does.

It was unnerving, trotting through empty hallways. The White Tower no longer held the numbers it once had, but there was usually someone about.

Consider that the White Tower is already at its lowest membership count ever and that in this timeline we have no evidence of the reforms that lead to the Rebels having a larger roster. It may well be that with the Blacks mostly purged (or victims mostly purged, since obviously 13 are still running around), the Tower has virtually no one left at this point.

“What would you have done? What? Nothing! There’s nothing you can do. But they said they could give it back to me, with the power of . . . the power of the Dark One.”

So apparently Nynaeve never cured stilling in this timeline. She and Elayne, and really a wide variety of Aes Sedai who you'd think would be a bit sympathetic to our girl here, all seem to be gone. Has the resonance up and put Egwene in a T'A'R nightmare, is that why things are so incoherent? Can she not remember what happened not purely by glitch in the system but because there's no logical way to arrive at this scenario, so there's no memories to give her?

“More than anyone suspects,” Egwene said. “I never held the Oath Rod, Beldeine.”

This of course should technically be another bit of early installment weirdness where Jordan hasn't decided that the Oath Rod is what causes the ageless look, not channeling as a whole, but since we're in a resonance cascade or whatever it might as well be just another mismatched puzzle piece in the mystery that is this timeline.

It would need to be done quickly; there was no point if Rand was gentled while she was still wrapping Warders in Air. Even Warders would break if she loosed the lightnings on them, and balefire, and broke the ground under their feet.

I love how balefire isn't even the final option here. "I'll shoot them with lightning, and if that doesn't work I'll retroactively remove them from existence, and if THAT doesn't work I'll stick their legs in a rock because if they refuse to be balefired they obviously can't be killed, only slowed down."

Twelve Aes Sedai surrounded him, and another—who Egwene knew had to be wearing a seven-striped stole, even though she could not distinguish it—stood before Rand.

You've got to hand it to Elaida. Very few people have a destiny so set in stone that it comes true in an alternate timeline that isn't really even a timeline, but dammit every variation of her that has ever existed is going to usurp the Amyrlin Seat, and that includes nightmare versions.

Thirteen Aes Sedai. Twelve sisters and the Amyrlin, the traditional number for gentling. The same number as for. . . .

No Egwene, focus on that thought. Sure it's really only because of the metaphysics that everyone's arrived on the same number, but what does it say about the White Tower that its court system is only a mirror image of the Black Ajah's most despicable ritual?

There on the tower top, tilted to sit flat against the sloping tiles, was a silver arch filled with a glowing light. The arch flickered and wavered; streaks of angry red and yellow darted through the white light.

Are they having troubles keeping the door open because of the resonance alone, or because Egwene's scenario is so far off the map it's not normally where the arches point to? I know we'll never know, but both answers provide such rich potential for how the arches work at all. Alas.

Light plucked her apart fiber by fiber, sliced the fibers to hairs, split the hairs to wisps of nothing. All drifted apart on the light. Forever.

Pardon the math joke, but isn't that being a bit hyperbolic, Egwene?

Next time: Egwene recovers from her sorority hazing!

[agardenandlibrary]

Alright I spent so long thinking about shields and knights in Tortall that I needed to sit down and re-read Song of the Lioness.

Alanna: The First Adventure

First off, I see where the title "First Test" came from. Or maybe I'm making that up. Just seems like it was a purposeful callback to the OG lady Knight books.

Here they go!!

Use your healing magic. Use it all you can, or you won’t cleanse your soul of death for centuries.

Maude has a lot of wisdom. And she and Coram basically raised the twins! I love the bit where Alanna’s in Roger’s magic class and she thinks “Maude taught us all of this magic, and more complex versions of it, when we were kids.” Maude has seen some stuff. Maude backstory when?

With all his heart Coram Smythesson wished now, as he had in the past, that Alanna were the boy.

He was about to get his wish, in a left-handed way.

All these damn dudes thinking "if only you'd been a boy" and Alanna and Kel going "what does that have to do with anything"

Literally everyone who hears about Lord Alan says “wow, he sucks as a father”. EVERYONE.

Jonathan commands the pages and squires and assigns mentors to show newbies around. He’s used to getting his way and you see that continue throughout this book and series. Even when he “asks” Alanna to be his squire he already told his uncle that she would say yes without ever actually asking her.

Ralon of Malven. Listen. Obviously he’s a bully and literally beats Alanna every chance he gets. He is also completely ostracized by his prince (who he will one day have to serve!) and all his fellow pages and squires. Jon says “I told you never to talk to me.” in the first interaction between them we see. Jon and his gang actually hold him down and beat him as a punishment. Can’t believe re-reading this made me feel bad for Ralon.

George and his collection of ears aljsdfalj. Dude where do you keep those. Do ears dry out? Do you have like... an ear-tanner so they’re not all oozy and gross? does your mom do it for you please i have so many questions.

The Gift! Everyone who has it ignores it! Except Thom and Roger and their attitudes toward their magic is kind of unhealthy, honestly.

The gods really are showing up in this one. Maude has her visions in the fire, Alanna is protected from Roger, Myles has a dream about taking Alanna to Olau, etc. I think Pierce did a really good job of making Kel’s knighthood journey very different.

From a technical standpoint, Pierce peppers in a lot of different perspectives. We jump into Jon’s, George’s, Duke Gareth’s, Myles’, Coram’s - LOTS of points of view, but just for a second and just as a way to show how Alanna is perceived by those around her.

JONATHAN you big dummy. “Roger dared me, a 17 year old, to go to this evil city that kills everyone who enters it because he believed I could take care of it and rid the country of evil :) he’s my favorite cousin and only has my wellbeing in mind :) love that guy :)” me and Alanna, in the background: “that’s what i thought you’d say you stupid prince”

Okay, SO MUCH HAPPENS IN THIS BOOK but I’ll just end with... it’s so funny to me that first-year knights are taking squires. Please. That’s an 18 year old and a 14 year old. First year knights know basically nothing. What are y’all doing.