#oh except teslyn!

[luxolin]

No spoilers please, but I really hope Pevara is as trustworthy as she appears because I am very excited to see a Red that isn't comically evil or stupid

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: Towers of Midnight ch 9

Mat catches up with an old friend. Or an old not-friend catches up with Mat. 

Chapter 9: Blood in the Air

Well it opens with Mat literally screaming bloody murder, so we’re off to a good start.

He threw himself backward to his feet, hauling the ashandarei up, then spun and slashed—not at the form moving through the tent towards him, but at the wall.

I don’t know why this is so amusing to me, but I’m laughing at the ashandarei being used once again in conjunction with a rather unconventional exit, given that it was granted to him in the first place as, I’m fairly sure, part of his request to be out of the land of the Eelfinn. And then going back for it almost stopped him being able to leave Ebou Dar.

Anyway, somehow he then manages to pull the medallion off his neck and tie it to the blade of the ashandarei all before the inhumanly fast gholam can catch up. Sounds fake but okay.

Though apparently it’s still trying to avoid notice, and also is not immune to a little bit of villainous monologuing, so okay I suppose that buys a little bit of time for some speedy knotwork.

“The one who now controls me wants you more than anyone else. I am to ignore all others until I have tasted your blood.”

I mean, I’m not sure if the gholam plays by the same rules as Aes Sedai but there’s definitely some wiggle room in that command. Just have a quick taste and then you two can be friends. Or Mat can keep it as a pet, depending on how we’re defining personhood.

Or sparring partner? Could be useful to have something absurdly fast and virtually invincible to train against.

Mat agrees on the fighting point, at least, and goes for the attack, because I’m sure this will end well.

Really? Of all the people this thing has killed, including some of your friends and members of the Band, Tylin is the one you’re upset about? Sigh. Fine. That’s a dead horse I don’t particularly need to beat any further, I suppose.

“You didn’t want her; you wanted me!”

Well technically Mat didn’t want her either so they have something in common there.

Okay, sorry, couldn’t resist one last dig.

“A bird must fly. A man must breathe. I must kill.”

That’s a mood. Points for self-awareness, I suppose, though in this series that’s a pretty low bar.

How is the gholam controlled, I wonder? I don’t see this happening, but given that it seems to serve a single master rather than the Shadow in general, it would be cool if there were a way to suborn it to Mat’s will instead, and unleash it on the Shadow’s own armies. That would fulfil its need to kill, and it would actually sort of fit with its dark-trickster kind of nature. But I doubt it.

“I’ve been told to kill them all,” the gholam said softly. “To bring you out.”

Someone needs to give this thing a copy of the Evil Overloard List. Though in fairness I suppose this is less ‘revealing its plans via monologue’ and more ‘delivering a rather chilling threat, given that it knows everyone’s identity’.

And also as a distraction because Mat hesitates for just a second on realising that it knows about Tuon, so all in all a pretty effective gambit.

Or it would be, if not for Teslyn, because she’s still surprisingly awesome. Lifting Mat out of the way with Air—because he’s no longer wearing his medallion and the gholam can’t be affected by the One Power—is some pretty damn clever quick thinking.

And then she attacks it with a chair. Iconic. Is that three times now that chairs have been used as improvised weapons in this series? Four? Whatever the number, I sort of love it. Especially because the image is hilarious every single time.

The object—a chair!—crashed into the hillside beside them. The gholam spun as a large bench smashed into it, throwing it backwards.

This invincible creature of Shadow and nightmare, immune to magic and virtually impossible to fight, being hit by flying furniture.

Credit again to Teslyn though, for immediately coming up with pretty much the only way she could possibly help in this fight. Sure, she’s had time to figure out the loopholes with Mat’s medallion so it’s not completely on the fly, but that’s still some impressive adaptability and problem-solving right there.

Seems the gholam is still avoiding attention, though, because it runs off, pausing only to tear out a pair of throats for good measure on the way.

And now Mat remembers the bloody murder in his own tent that started it all, which turns out to be Lopin, and two random NPCs. Aw, poor Lopin, he just wanted to do laundry in peace.

The gholam had proven itself practically unstoppable. Mat had the suspicion that it could cut down the entire Band in getting to him, if it needed to.

This, and honestly this entire scene, seems very deliberately placed to basically remind us that the gholam is still an unsolved problem. A bit of tag-you’re-it (murder tag? That’s a game, right?), popping up to tear some throats and then run off again, because Our Protagonist hasn’t yet worked out an actual solution but clearly now he needs to.

Which of course begs the question: what is the solution here? How do you defeat something faster and stronger than you are, that also happens to be invincible to magic and indestructible but for a single known weakness?

I suppose that single known weakness, then, should be the starting point here. Which—oh. Mat’s in Caemlyn. And he hasn’t been able to get in touch with Elayne yet, but… Elayne is also in Caemlyn. And knows how to replicate and make ter’angreal. Could she possibly make a weaponised version of Mat’s foxhead medallion? One that could kill rather than maim? Or make copies of it?

Except she can’t even channel reliably at the moment, and also I’m not sure how well she’d be able to study a ter’angreal that by its very nature blocks the use of the One Power on it, so that could present something of a challenge. Still, it’s pretty much the only idea I have.

Unless you could trap the gholam somewhere? Lure it through a gateway? Leash it with the medallion like Gollum with the elvish rope and drag it to the Tower of Ghenjei as a gift for the Aelfinn and Eelfinn?

Hey I’m just tossing out ideas here.

Mat’s worried about Olver, but apparently he’s fine; I suppose it was too much to ask that the gholam might have got to him. Okay, okay, fine, sorry, I’m a terrible person etc. I just… really could not give less of a shit about this kid if I tried, but I suppose that’s a me problem.

Seems like the gholam’s diversifying its skillset, getting into the interrogation business as well as the murder and vampirism one. Always good to have a fallback, I suppose, especially in this economy.

“We’re going to hunt it,” Mat said softly, “and we’re going to kill the bloody thing.”

Cool, sounds fun, what’s the plan? Oh! Maybe you could dissolve the medallion and then inject it into someone’s bloodstream and then get the gholam to eat it…

Sorry, I’ll stop.

Well no, I won’t, but.

“Burn me, I still need to talk to Elayne. I want Aludra’s dragons started. I’ll have to write her another letter. Stronger, this time.”

This does feel like a setup for Elayne helping with the gholam problem somehow via her ter’angreal abilities and Mat’s medallion, given the intersection of all these people and places and events.

Also, Elayne does have a history with multiple letters of varying strength, so I am sort of entertained by the notion of her being on the receiving end this time. And if an epistolary version of Elayne and Mat’s weird friendship is all I get, I’ll take it.

Mat’s plan for now involves sleeping in town in a different inn each night, so… you’d better hope the gholam’s orders regarding avoiding notice don’t change, Mat, or you’re going to end up with a hell of a lot of blood tangentially on your hands. I mean, I’m all for it in the name of self-preservation, but Mat’s a better person than I am.

Oh hi Joline. Can’t say it’s good to see you, and you know it’s bad when Mat and I agree on something. Though she’s come to say her goodbyes, so at least I don’t have to put up with a) her and b) Mat in her proximity anymore.

Mat’s last few lines in this chapter feel… a little more like TGS Mat than like the Mat of the rest of the series, but I can forgive that; it’s a pretty small slip and the rest of this chapter and last have, indeed, been better than last book.

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