#under this image? i have put both spoiler tags just in cases regardless

[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read The Eye of the World! Chapter 44: The Dark Along the Ways

Spoiler warning: The first paragraph of this post contains spoiler warnings. Particular spoilers warned of include those for the entirety of The Wheel of Time series, not merely the first book. The most efficient way to avoid spoiler warnings is to block the spoiler tags below, but of course the constant influx of new users and fans means that every single post must have a warning regardless just in case. Very silly. In an ideal world my posts would only be visible in order.

Anyway, our chapter opens with the icon of the leaves on the vine. As the Waygates are super associated with the Ogier, generally whenever they're relevant we're going to get this icon.

“We don’t go running about in the dark in the stedding. I’m an Ogier, not a cat.” Rand had a sudden image of Loial’s tufted ears twitching irritably.

Content warning: Loial is far too adorable for human minds to comprehend.

“Perrin’s making me nervous,” he muttered. Rand looked at him sharply. “Well, he’s acting strange. Don’t you see it, too? I swear it’s not my imagination, or . . . or. . . .”

Ah yes, the awkward, "I know I'm magically compelled to be hateful and paranoid but I think I'm objectively right in this instance," moment. Luckily for Mat, Rand is actually pretty reasonable about this.

“Remember, good innkeeper, if you fear any trouble from this, write to Sheriam Sedai, of the Blue Ajah, in Tar Valon, and she will help. I fear my sisters and I have a good deal to put right already for those who have helped me.”

Meanwhile Sheriam is laughing at every letter that mentions Moiraine and either tossing them into the fire or sometimes rolling them up to whack stupid but not especially disobedient novices upside the head with. It really says a lot about how corrupted the White Tower was that even Moiraine can't manage to pick all her allies effectively.

The panniers bulged with supplies for the journey, most of it clay jars filled with oil. A bundle of poles was lashed lengthwise down the horse’s back, and each had a lantern swinging at the end of it. In the Ways, Loial said, it was darker than the darkest night.

The Ways in fact have that exciting trope of "darkness that literally swallows light", which is hopefully just the taint and not some warning that the local space-time continuum is slowly coming undone. That would be bad for anyone who gets caught in it in the Fourth Age or so.

Loial appeared to be following the most direct path to the Waygate, wherever it took them. Sometimes they trotted down broad avenues, empty save for an occasional dog skulking in the dark. Sometimes they hurried along alleys as narrow as the stable run, where things squished under an unwary step.

Just Robert Jordan predicting the awkward paths of people following minimaps and indicators in 3D open world games ages before they became a thing.

Moiraine studied the lock intently for a moment. Suddenly she gave the rusty iron a tap with her staff, and the lock fell open neatly.

I'm sure that there's just a generic "open lock" weave that Moiraine used here, but I like the implication that perhaps Moiraine is super familiar with most kinds of locks so that she knows how to get the various tumblers and bars in place depending on the make. That's totally a weave that twenty years hunting for a kid would get you.

The Ogier was angry, Rand realized with a shock. “Once trees stood here. Every kind of tree that would grow in this place, every kind of tree that Ogier could coax to grow here. The Great Trees, a hundred spans high. Shade of branch, and cool breezes to catch the smell of leaf and flower and hold the memory of the peace of the stedding. All that, murdered for this!”

Loial, we both know you're perfect and are never wrong ever, but have you considered the possibility that maybe at some point in the last three thousand years a fire broke out that the people here couldn't contain, or that the groves weren't able to sustain themselves over such a long period? Trees can get fucked by weather or plague too you know! Not saying it wasn't asshole people necessarily but it does seem premature to get yourself worked up about it.

“Avendesora,” Moiraine murmured, resting her hand on a trefoil leaf in the stonework. Rand scanned the carving; that was the only leaf of its kind he could find. “The leaf of the Tree of Life is the key,” the Aes Sedai said, and the leaf came away in her hand.

A nice bit of information loss here: we know that Avendesora wasn't one of a kind back in the day, and there's little reason to think that the Aes Sedai who made the Ways knew of it in particular. They modeled the Waygate keys after chora trees as a general concept.

Lan went past her, leading Mandarb, poled lantern in hand. His shadowy reflection approached him, leading a shadowy horse. Man and reflection seemed to step into each other at the shimmering surface, and both were gone. For a moment the black stallion balked, an apparently continuous rein connecting him to the dim shape of his own image. The rein tightened, and the warhorse, too, vanished.

You really have to give the male Aes Sedai props for managing to create something that is entirely out of a horror story even before getting into the decay.

“You could walk all the way around it, and you would not see a thing from the other side. I would not advise it, though. The books aren’t very clear about what lies behind the Waygates. I think you could become lost there, and never find your way out.”

"We Ogier used to understand, but a few generations back we ran out of particle physicists because no one wanted to practice a science they couldn't actually do any work in. From what little we can still parse from their notes, there was a high chance of... becoming noodles? But don't worry. Our walking around on the inside surface of an 'event horizon' should be completely safe otherwise! Events are fun! We're pretty sure all that stuff about getting crabs inside you was a myth because that doesn't make any sense."

Finally only Moiraine was left in the cellar, dimly lit by the lantern she had taken. The Aes Sedai still moved in that dreamlike way. Her hand crept as it found the leaf of Avendesora. It was located lower in the stonework on this side, Rand saw, just where she had placed it on the other. Plucking it free, she put it back in the original position.

And just like that, Moiraine doomed Caemyln to fall. It really is a shame she didn't have the usual ruthless drive at this point (she's very tired and who can blame her). If she'd been in Taren Ferry mode, she would have had Loial tell her how to destroy Waygates here and now.

The bubble of light around them could as well have been a cave surrounded by stone, completely surrounded, with no way out. The horses might have been walking a treadmill for the change around them.

The singular path here compared to the more open design of the Ways proper may well reflect this Waygate's late addition to the system: awkwardly patched in rather than part of the original design of Islands of the male Aes Sedai who connected steddings.

After an interminable climb, curving continuously, the ramp let off onto another Island just like the one where it had begun. Rand tried to imagine the curve of the ramp and gave up. This Island can’t be right on top of the other one. It can’t be.

Frankly, that's a much less upsetting outcome than the possibility of tracing Islands around in such a way that you should have ended up exactly where you started but didn't.

I suspect that the Ways is one of those exciting physics things wherein you can use a two-dimensional surface to emulate a three-dimensional space, so I also suspect that if you tried to extend a ladder down from the upper island you might not ever find the one you started below.

The Ways were almost boring. Then the silence was broken by a startled grunt from Loial. Rand stood in his stirrups to peer past the Ogier, and swallowed hard at what he saw. They were in the middle of a bridge, and only a few feet ahead of Loial the bridge ended in a jagged gap.

I hope that we're all in agreement that this particular catastrophe is entirely Rand's fault. If he just hadn't gotten bored right there, they would never have had these troubles.

As for this reread, I'm afraid each chapter break is a jagged gap in our attempts, so I'll be stopping here. Next time: the Ways get increasingly horrible.