Welcome back to my re-read, recap, and reaction to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. This post will only have spoilers through the current chapter.
You can find my previous chapter recaps HERE.
Chapter 25: Dreams of Galad
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Egwene al’Vere
Egwene is in the part of Tel’aran’rhiod where sleeper’s dreams reside. She notes that Amys and Bair are asleep, otherwise she would leave immediately. She then moves herself to her old novice room in the White Tower to meet Elayne. Egwene asks about Birgitte, but Elayne will only say she can not talk about it. Egwene wonders if the fight Nynaeve had with Latelle will cause problems for them with the circus. Elayne believes it will not since Nynaeve actually apologized to Latelle and has been muttering and talking under her breath about Egwene lately. Elayne has learned that Moghedien may be searching for her and Nynaeve.
Egwene goes to Elaida‘s study to look through the papers. After finding out much of the current status of the White Tower Egwene moves to the Keeper‘s room to look for something new. As she enters there is a flicker and Galad comes into the room. Leane is Keeper and Siuan is Amyrlin again, so it is a dream and she flees. She goes to Emond’s Field and finds some changes from when she lived there. There are two large poles with banners on the green, a red eagle and a wolf’s head. There is a flicker again and she is back in a dream, this time with her mother coming out of the inn. Her mother mentions her husband, just as Gawyn begins to ride near. Her mother brings out a baby—their baby. She realizes her memory is working wrong and flees from Tel’aran’rhiod.
Point of view: Moghedien
Moghedien is displeased that her attempts to trap Egwene in a dream did not work. She has found out that Birgitte is helping Elayne and Nynaeve and resolves to capture all three of them.
REACTION:
Any time something flickers in The Wheel of Time, watch out. We’ll get to that.
Elayne was fast on the uptake with Egwene’s hint re: meeting up. I liked the small plot detail of Egwene checking to be sure that the Wise Ones had left The World of Dreams, too. That’s just good world building. It wouldn’t have made sense for Egweneto do this brazenly and without checking. Too much was at stake otherwise.
Elayne obviously won’t tell her about Birgitte. Egwene eventually accepts that she must have promised that she wouldn’t say anything but begins puzzling out that Birgitta lives in the World of Dreams. We learn that Nynaeve – however the message was delivered – took Egwene’s lecture to heart and is trying to grow and be better. This is of course why she’s my favorite. Egwene, meanwhile, still seems ignorant of the arrogance beam in her own eye, so much so that Elayne laughs about it. (This is one of the few times in the series where I wholly took Elayne’s side of anything with Eggy.)
We also learn that Lanfear was right about Egwene. She’s dreaming tawdry dreams about Galad and Gawyn. Egwene clarifies here that her interest is mostly in Gawyn. Why didn’t Lanfear note the preference before? What if she mind-controlled Egwene to prefer one of them over Rand, but didn’t care which one, so she left it open-ended?
Per my multi-book long theory, was Egwene’s shifted interest away from Rand organic or did Lanfear give her a nudge with the One Power and some mind control? Difficult to say. She certainly had the ability, opportunity, and the motive to give Egwene that nudge. Most of the prior interactions between Egwene and the royal Andor boys were with Galad. Her interest previously seemed to point in Galad’s direction. It’s interesting to me though that she ended up preferring the very tall red haired guy.
Moghedien is overtly hunting Nynaeve, as well as Elayne and Birgitte, too, as a consequence of that. I guess she is now to Nynaeve as Ba’alzamon was to Rand. You can’t leave someone like that free to fight another day or you’ll eventually be fighting them again.
How did the dream trap work? I… don’t know. By her own account, she didn’t know Egwene. How did she know who Eggy was attracted to? Somehow she was able to pull that information from her from within the Dream. It was interesting how what she did to Eggy was so much like the Accepted test. Egwene was steadfast and got away, though. The whole “Flicker” thing was very similar to the portal stone phenomenon, too, which also had Accepted Test vibes to it, with alternative lives and whatnot.
Interesting side thought: Could Perrin see or access this alternative version of the Two Rivers via the Wolf Dreams? The actual world of dreams isn’t populated by people. When he visits the Wolf Dream, he wouldn’t have seen a village and an entirely separate reality. He probably wouldn’t have seen Egwene, either, unless the mechanics of whatever Moggy did had her there, wandering around, but not seeing actual people. Could one of the Wise Ones have found her? Where was she really? I’m imagining her essentially unconscious in the World of Dreams’ White Tower, dreaming within a dream.
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