#alsfkejalse the Aiel story

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 11

Literally and metaphorically, everything is on fire. Also newsflash: I’m still not over Rhuidean.

Chapter 11: The Death of Adrin

Who’s Adrin?

The Maidens seem to think Rand needs to be beaten again, and Aviendha is carrying rocks. So everything’s off to a good start.

Aviendha doesn’t understand why clouds are a bad thing. Someone introduce this girl to the whole world of pathetic fallacy. She also doesn’t understand why wetlanders complain so much. Someone introduce this girl to London.

There had to be some hidden honour in it. Perhaps the wetlanders exposed their weaknesses to their companions as a means of offering friendship and trust. If your friends knew of your weaknesses, it would give them an advantage should you dance the spears with them. Or, perhaps, the complaining was a wetlander way of showing humility, much as the gai’shain showed honour by being subservient.

She had asked Elayne about her theories and had received only a fond laugh in return. Was it some aspect of wetlander society that she was forbidden to discuss with outsiders, then?

Ha. It seems a bit silly, sure, but it’s not all that unrealistic. Some elements of culture and behaviour are relatively easy to explain or understand. Some, though, can be entirely unnoticed by those within that culture, and appear completely and inexplicably bizzare to those outside, and it’s all but impossible to adequately explain. So you can actually end up with something like this – an ‘outsider’ like Aviendha coming up with very defined, neat theories…and the people she’s theorising about looking at her like ‘what are you even talking about’. Because to them, it’s not even a part of their ‘culture’ the way something like, I don’t know, how to celebrate certain holidays would be. It’s not something they’d think about, or consider as a defining attribute, much less as something that serves a particular purpose. So when an ‘outsider’ does try to posit an explanation – or even ask a question – it can seem ridiculous. And yet when you are the outsider, it’s anything but. Culture is fun like that.

I live in a place where complaining is absolutely an element of ordinary conversation. We’re known for it and it’s weird once you’re aware of it. And then we start complaining about the manner in which other cultures complain, because as it turns out there are specific formulas for how a complaint should look. Except no one can actually explain what those are, and would look at you very strangely if you were to ask, because what do you mean we complain in a specific way? Huh?

I also lived in a weird multicultural bubble for a few years and oh man some of the conversations about ‘why do you do X’ and the responding bewildered looks. Not to mention the awkward dances that happened every time two people tried to greet each other.

So anyway, I’ve always rather enjoyed watching Aviendha’s attempts to figure out wetlanders. It’s also a good way to implicitly reflect back on or convey information about the Aiel, and to add some variety to the other characters’ thoughts about how strange and incomprehensible the Aiel are.

She still can’t figure out what the Wise Ones want from her, though.

She was growing frustrated – not with the Wise Ones, but with herself.

Except, Aviendha, maybe you need to grow frustrated with the Wise Ones, and trust in yourself. I think that’s very probably the point.

The Wise Ones were angry at Aviendha for not “learning quickly enough.” And yet they didn’t teach her. They just asked those questions. Questions about what she thought of their situation, questions about Rand al’Thro or about the way Rhuarc had handled meeting with the Car’a’carn. 

Aviendha couldn’t help feeling that the questions were tests. Was she answering incorrectly? IF so, why didn’t they instruct her on the proper responses.

Because she isn’t answering incorrectly. It seems like they’re basically treating her as a Wise One – asking her questions a Wise One would be expected to answer or deal with – and she’s not seeing it, and that’s the problem. She can answer their questions and understand these situations, but she doesn’t…see herself as a Wise One? So she thinks she is being punished for some fault, when really she’s being punished because she’s allowing herself to be punished. They’re trying to get her to…see herself as a Wise One, I think. Is that the deal here? That seems to be the deal here.

Aviendha wished for her spears back so that she could stab something.

Fair.

“Adrin?” one door guard asked his companion. “Light, you don’t look well. Truly.”

Uh oh.

The man reached up suddenly, scratching at the skin of his temples.

Beetles?

His eyes rolled up in his head and his fingers tore gashes in his flesh. Only, instead of blood, the wounds spat out a black charcoal-like substance.

That might even be worse than beetles. Though I suppose from the perspective of the one dying, it probably makes very little difference. But if we’re trying to measure entropy here (shut up, I’m a scientist), this is definitely worse, because there isn’t even a form this time. No order, just chaos and black fire.

Or black boiling tar. That works too. Um…yikes?

Aviendha shrugged off her shock, immediately weaving Air in a simple pattern to pull the unaffected guard to safety.

I kind of love how Aviendha is so good in a crisis when it involves someone else, but when it involves her she opens a gateway into a snowstorm on another continent.

“We…we’re being attacked!” the man whispered. “Channelers!”

This is like the ‘bloody ashes’ thing: seeing ‘channelers’ used this way is disproportionately jarring. It’s a small thing really, just a slight shift in phrasing, but it stands out and throws me out of the story more than some other – arguably larger – changes have.

I certainly wouldn’t say it’s an unforgivable error – after all, I tend to use ‘channelers’ fairly frequently because it’s a convenient noun, and there’s no particular reason the characters wouldn’t – and I don’t actually have a problem with it. At least, not in the sense that it’s something I would criticise, were I to focus on examining the differences between the authors. But I also can’t help noticing it, and so it becomes an interesting look at how such very small changes in diction or phrasing can stand out so dramatically. Maybe it’s because they’re easier to quantify?

I do wonder, though, why certain little things like this weren’t flagged in the line- or copy-editing stages. Again, not because it’s actually a big deal, but because it would help smooth out the overall ‘feel’ of the transition. As is, this kind of minor-but-noticeable change could essentially prime readers to be more wary of and less sympathetic towards other changes.

And now the house is on fire.

Magic fire.

Aviendha tries to smother it, because of course her first instinct would not be to dump precious water all over it.

In the distance, she heard people – perhaps the guard among them – calling for buckets.

Buckets? Of course! In the Three-fold Land, water was far too valuable to use in fighting fires. Dirt or sand was used. But here, they would use water. Aviendha took several steps backward, searching out the curling river that ran beside the manor.

She deserves a lot of credit for this. Not everyone can take in, consider, and implement new information in the middle of a crisis. She’s just seen a man turn into a pile of black tar, and now she’s facing a fire and people inside are screaming, and she has the presence of mind not just to start dealing with the problem but to take in a suggestion as indirect as a distant call for buckets. They’re not even talking to her. And it’s not something she’s familiar with at all, this idea of using large amounts of water to fight fire. Many people would struggle even if they were directly told ‘use the river’, just because of the way panic usually works. It tends to narrow a person’s focus and ability to perceive – or rather, to analyse and interpret – information external to that narrowed focus, as well as causing people to either freeze or else fall back on familiar or instinctive patterns. So in the face of a burning building – and also, you know, creeptastic signs of the end of the world – the ability to hear a distant shout for buckets, make the connection from that to ‘oh, okay, people here would pour water on a fire rather than dirt and sand’, and then go ‘ah, yes, there’s a river nearby, I could use that’ and then to immediately start doing it is to be commended.

Aviendha wove a massive column of Air and Water, pulling a spout of crystalline liquid from the river and drawing it toward her. The column of water undulated in the air like the creature on Rand’s banner, a glassy serpentine dragon that slammed against the flames.

Of course, it helps that she is powerful enough to literally grab a river and throw it at the house.

Then there was a sudden explosion as another column of water burst from the river and slammed into the fire. […] The other column was being directed by weaves she could not see, but she did notice a figure standing in a window up on the second floor, hand forward, face concentrating intensely. Naeff, one of Rand’s Asha’man.

Cooperation! Unspoken cooperation, even. He saw what she was doing, and immediately joined in, and together they’ve put out the fire. An apt metaphor, all things considered.

Rand comes out of the now-damp mansion and goes full-on ‘old man yells at cloud’.

No, really.

He stared at the sky, shaking his fist. “I am the one you want! You will have yoru war soon enough! […] I will stop you” Rand roared, causing calls of fright from both servants and soldiers. “Do you hear me? I am coming for you! Don’t waste your power! You will need it against me!”

It keeps hurting those near him, and he is left…well, okay, I was going to say ‘unscathed’ but I think we can all agree that is patently false. Still… how many have to pay with me? Others always had to, even when he tried to pay alone. Or The whole world paid a price for his existence. He would die for it, but the whole world paid. Those thoughts have been with him for so long now, and it only gets worse. It’s a large part of why he’s so determined to turn himself to steel – not just so that he can do what needs to be done, but so that he can watch as others pay what he sees as the price of his existence.

And yet, the Dragon is one with the land and the land is one with the Dragon, and I have to wonder if these kinds of happenings are in some way worsened by the presence of a increasingly dark ta’veren.That would be beautifully and horribly ironic.

“Yes,” Aviendha said in response to the man’s question, “it happens often. More often around the Car’a’carn than other places, at least.”

Yeah. So. Feedback loop of tragic irony it is, then.

The Domani soldier is suddenly not so sure about his life choices.

And yet, through her bond with Rand, she felt no urgency. In fact…it seemed that he had gone back to rest! That man’s moods were becoming as erratic as Elayne’s during her pregnancy.

I’m not sure ‘erratic’ is quite the word I would use, though it’s not completely wrong. But this reminds me of when he killed the Asha’man in Far Madding and told Min about it and she was shocked and worried about how little she could feel through the bond. He has tried so hard to suppress his ability to feel. Added to that, this is his reality. He can’t let himself panic about things like this happening, because his entire focus is on Tarmon Gai’don. That’s all that matters.

Wow, Merise, condescending much?

“Your skill with weaves, it is impressive. If we had you in the White Tower, you’d have been an Aes Sedai by now. Your weaving, it has some roughness to it, but you’d learn to fix that quickly enough if taught by sisters.”

Listen, Merise, she just saved you all from a burning building; I might respectfully suggest shutting the fuck up.

It would seem Melaine shares my thoughts.

“To think, how we once regarded them!”

Oh, how things have changed. This is one I’m looking forward to seeing when I finally get to reread, because it’s a complete shift over the course of several books, but we don’t know the Aiel as well when it begins. Thinking back to how Moiraine was received, and how the Wise Ones were first characterised, and then to Dumai’s Wells and the resulting chaos, and then to everything after, there is a marked change. And it’s one that lies close to the centre of Aiel identity, in the sense that their earliest self-knowledge is as a group of people sworn to serve the Aes Sedai. That’s one of the few things that carried through while almost everyting else changed, even if it was muted and the reason for it was unknown to all but the Wise Ones and the clan chiefs. Now, that tie is broken as well, and it all felt so…natural as it was happening. Which is kind of the point.

“You have such great talent, child.”

Aviendha swelled with the praise; from Wise Ones, it was rare, but always sincere.

“But you refuse to learn,” Melaine continued. “There isn’t much time! Here, I have another question for you. What do you think of Rand al’Thor’s plan to kidnap these Domani merchant chiefs?”

There’s definitely a strong implication here of ‘we have nothing more to teach you’. The next step is one Aviendha must take on her own, and they’re pushing her to do it, but she still sees herself as an apprentice, as beneath them rather than their equal. So we get this pattern of compliment, question, praise, punishment. Telling her she’s ready, asking her questions that should allow her to prove to herself that she’s ready, and then punishing her for not realising it.

“I think the Car’a’carn should have spoken in terms of offering protection – forced protection – for the merchants. The chiefs would have responded better to being told they were protecting rather than kidnapping.”

“They would be doing the very same thing, no matter what you call it.”

“But what you call a thing is important,” Aviendha said. “It is not dishonest if both definitions are true.”

Never underestimate the power of semantics.

Also, this is a point on which Wise Ones and Aes Sedai would agree, though no doubt both would vehemently deny the similarity.

“Regardless, [Rand] needs to be reminded. Again and again. Rhuarc is a wise and patient man, but not all clan chiefs are so. I know that some of the others wonder if their decision to follow Rand al’Thor was an error.”

“True,” Melaine said. “But look at what happened to the Shaido.”

“I did not say they were right, Wise One. […] They are wrong to question the Car’a’carn, but they are speaking to one another. Rand al’Thor needs to realise that they will not accept offence after offence from him without end.”

Yeah. I have wondered where this was going to go.

The relationship between Rand and the Aiel is fascinating because in some ways it’s one of the most simple; he fulfilled their prophecies, and they declared themselves to him, and they will follow him to the ends of the earth, knowing he will destroy them. They’ve been arguably his most loyal followers and allies, dependable and competent and sure, asking nothing.

Except. They haven’t asked nothing. They just haven’t asked for anything in a standard ‘goods for services rendered’ kind of way. He didn’t buy their loyalty, he earned it through prophecy and effort and identity. But with that loyalty comes an understanding of reciprocity. They know that he will take you back, and he will destroy you, and instead of protection or riches or land, they want his acknowledgment and understanding. They want him to know them as his blood; they want him to understand what their loyalty to him means, and to understand the sacrifice they are making.

He understood, at the time, the importance of what he was doing. Not in its entirety and not in detail, certainly, but he knew ‘he needed people he could trust, people who followed from something besides fear of him, or greed for power’. He knew that would take something more than conquest, knew there was something different, something important, about this kind of loyalty. And as that progressed, he came to know them – not as well as they may have liked, perhaps – and thought about how he didn’t want to break them.  

Even later, after returning from Dumai’s Wells and facing the doubt of the clan chiefs, he knew the importance of maintaining this relationship, and understood some of the nuance of it: “Does it matter, so long as they obey?” “It matters,” Rand said. When the Maidens beat him, he understood why, even if it was difficult for him to actually accede to their demands. He did, for a time, and has acknowledged his obligation to them, as the only son of a Maiden any of them has known. And he has walked that line of balance and reciprocity.  

There has been a balance between loyalty and respect and duty and use, and it’s been a more complex dynamic than it appears on the surface, but it has never seemed truly in doubt.

But sometime between “the fifth, I give you” and “you are what I say you are,” Rand let that tenuous balance slip.

So much is fraying, and so much is held on the verge of falling apart, but this is something Rand cannot afford to lose. He cannot take the Aiel for granted, because as Aviendha says, they will not accept offence after offence. There is a breaking point somewhere, and he is dangerously close to finding it. But it has been too easy for him to slide into taking them for granted, precisely because they ‘followed him from something besides fear of him, or greed for power’. Others, he has to manipulate or command or threaten or coerce, as well as keep a close eye on. But the Aiel… they are there, and competent, and dependable. And fated to be his and to be destroyed. So, while he’s been hardening himself and withdrawing from feeling lest it break him, and trying to care about nothing except Tarmon Gai’don, it has been too easy to let his side of the obligation drop. Because his payment to them is made almost entirely of sentiment and understanding and empathy: things of which he is now barely capable.

I love how this is done, and how it’s timed, and how it plays into watching Rand spiral towards what seems to be a true low point on the horizon.

Did Rand al’Thor know how hard the Wise Ones worked behind his back to maintain Aiel loyalty? Probably not. He  saw them all as one homogenous group, sworn to him, to be used. That was one of Rand’s great weaknesses. He could not see that Aiel, like other people, did not like being used as tools.

Yes, though I’m not sure it’s that he can’t see it so much as he won’t let himself. In part it’s to protect himself: he can’t be hurt by destroying something if he doesn’t care about it. And he did start to care about the Aiel, and the individual clan chiefs, and various others, but he didn’t want to let himself because he has known from almost the beginning that it is fated to end in sorrow. It’s also iin part because he is using everyone and everything, including himself, and he has reached a point where he can’t…pull back from that single focus enough to show compassion.

It’s a mess.

The clans were far less tightly knit than he believed. Blood feuds had been put aside for him. Couldn’t he understand how incredible that was?

I really, really love this. Because she’s absolutely right – it is incredible. But also…he is not Aiel, in truth, and as such cannot truly understand. He knows what he’s done, but it isn’t quite the same. There was a moment, when he brought water to the Waste – not at Alcair Dal, or by accident in Rhuidean, but when he made Rhuidean’s fountains run, just before leaving the Three-fold Land. In that moment, there was the sense of a true understanding, even if he didn’t consciously acknowledge it as such.

He saw their history through the eyes of Aiel, in Rhuidean, and while it certainly had an impact on him, it was not the same impact it would have had on one born and raised Aiel. He knows he is the son of a Maiden, and knows his obligation to them, but it is a struggle for him to accept it. He knows he has ended blood feuds and brought the clans together for the first time in memory, but he doesn’t feel it the same way they do. He changes the Aiel, and has felt sorrow at the knowledge of what the prophecies say he will do to them, but the changes he as wrought are not centred on him, and on the core of his self and identity, the way they are for the Aiel. It’s like…loking at something directly and seeing it at an angle, or through a filter.

So no, he can’t exactly understand how incredible it is. The problem, though, is that he has stopped appreciating it. Stopped acknowledging it.

Melaine stared blindly at the broken building. “A remnant of a remnant,” she said, as if to herself. “And if he leaves us burned and broken, like those boards? What will become of the Aiel then? Do we limp back to the Three-fold Land and continue as we did before? Many will not want to leave. These lands offer too much.”

Aviendha blinked at the weight of those words. She had rarely given thought to what would happen after the Car’a’carn was finished with them. […] But a Wise One could not just think of the now or the tomorrow. She had to think of the years ahead and the times that would be brought upon the winds.

A remnant of a remnant. He had broken the Aiel as a people. What would become of them.

This is lovely.

I know I say this a lot, but the way the entire story of the Aiel is done, through past and present and now hinting at future, is beautiful. A nation in exile since the Breaking of the World, fine threads of immutable identity against a history of constant change and breaking and resilience and loss. A story that continues, as the Aiel are once more without a true home and without a concrete foundation, finding a new purpose and yet trying to hold to who they are.

He broke them by uniting them.  By fulfilling their prophecy and reminding them of who they once were. That alone is such a wonderfully bittersweet way to bring a story full-circle. Yet it doesn’t end there at all. It’s like the idea of cyclical time and a Wheel of Ages, but in microcosm, repetition and variation shown through the history of a nation.

Where do they go from there? What will become of the Aiel? But there are no beginnings or endings, and this is a question that has been asked before throughout their past and present. Where do they go, what do they become, who are they?

And they keep coming back to those questions even as they move forward, as they always have, changing and seeking a place. A place of safety, a place of belonging, a place of purpose – the nature of the place changes, but the sense of seeking remains.

So they become characterised by exile and change, and beneath that a single note of determined identity – “I am Aiel!”

Part of what I love about it, I think, is how it’s just off-centre in terms of the main focus of the story. It’s ongoing – and has been since at least the Breaking of the World – but most who are not Aiel do not even see it. It’s an epic story in the true sense of the word, and it’s so central to the lives of so many, but this story is not their story. Not theirs exclusively, though they play a crucial and integral role. So that adds to the bittersweet and almost...ironic...nature of their story: a story of identity, largely unseen. 

I also like how Aviendha is now privy to this much more direct conversation, and these deeper questions and worries. She is one of the Wise Ones now – or will be, soon – and these are now her issues to think about, rather than something to be discussed only by the Grown Ups. Not only that, but Aviendha’s unique place as liaison between cultures, and the way her own character growth and struggle with identity parallels that of her people, puts her in an excellent position to be the character to consider this.

One day, I will stop butchering sentence structure.

Another thought occurred to her as she pushed that one away – a treacherous one. A thought of Rand al’Thor, resting in his room. She could go to him… No! Not until she had her honour back. She would not go to him as a beggar. She would go to him as a woman of honour.

Which is entirely understandable, and even admirable. But also frustrating. You could…oh I don’t know…talk to him? “Hey, Rand, you know I love you and I want us to spend time together but there’s also some shit I need to figure out first.” And then they could talk candidly about the things they’re struggling with and help each other and eat chocolate cake with sparkly rainbow icing and sing happy songs. Right.

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