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 28: Letters
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Rand al’Thor
Rand worries that Lews Therin has been silent in his head recently. He resolves to quit running from problems that confront him, like his feelings for Aviendha. He decides to return to Andor and receives a letter from the Sea Folk just before he leaves. When he arrives, Aviendha says he must allow her to go with him when he Travels and gets the Maidens guarding him to agree.
Reene Harfor arrives to announce a number of nobles that have entered Caemlyn, but not come to the palace. Another letter from the Sea Folk is waiting for him. He opens both letters to find that Zaida is displeased he missed the meeting he scheduled in Caemlyn and Harine will receive him on her ship in Cairhien. Another letter has arrived and it is delivered by Sulin, wearing a servant’s dress. Rand asks her what the servant business is about but she won’t answer. The letter is from Alliandre, the Queen of Ghealdan, pledging her support, but not publicly, to avoid Aes Sedai censure.
A Gray Man enters the room. Even though Rand saw the door open and close, he didn’t noticed the man until he smelled the stench he gives off. Once Rand became aware, he was able to focus on the Gray Man and bind him. As Rand captures him, a bar of fire eliminates the Gray Man, channeled by Taim. Taim had just arrived by Gateway to let Rand know a male channeler, born with the spark in him, has arrived at the Farm. Lews Therin almost takes control of saidin from Rand, in an attempt to kill Taim.
Point of view: Padan Fain
Fain is handling his dagger from Shadar Logoth, while thinking about Rand. He has a Myrddraal under his control in the room with him. Somehow he can sense the bond Rand has with Alanna, but he doesn’t know what it is or what it means. Fain’s contamination has brushed Pedron Niall and Elaida, ensuring that the Whitecloaks and the Tower Aes Sedai will never trust Rand. The Darkfriend Fain is staying with and her son come in to the room. Fain set the ambush with the Whitecloaks he commands, but now he has only a few left. Fain uses his power to harm the child and then assault the woman.
REACTION:
Rand starts this chapter in a tizzy about Lews Therin being real. His encounter with Egwene proved it to himself. In hindsight, that moment where he started talking to himself (Lews) with Eggy in the room *really* startled him. Lews told him how to hide her and that confirmed to Rand that he is real. He rushed her and everyone else away as quickly as possible because he needed to be alone to mutter to himself.
Then he went right back to Caemlyn the next morning. And once there, he and Lews Therin start talking to each other for the first time. Lews is still insane, but they address each other. This is an important step forward in Rand’s madness. Rand notes that this conversation left him feeling unclean – like the taint on saidin. I mean… it almost certainly is the taint on saidin. Even if the voice is real, he still has a voice in his head, that is himself, and he’s talking to it. Not good. Useful, but not good.
Rand has been giving letters from the Sea Folk, both in Cairhien and Caemlyn. He has avoided audiences with them in both cities. They’re both angry with him. It’s still totally unclear how they will fit into the wider story. With this amount of build-up though, there needs to be a pretty big payoff. Eventually.
Sulin is dressed as a palace servant in Caemlyn. She is meeting the toh which she incurred for speaking to gai’shain as Maidens (just before leaving for Shadar Logoth.) As it’s Sulin, and she’s Super-Maiden of the Spear, she’s doing it in the most over-the-top way imaginable (for the Aiel, at least.) Rand is always talking about how the Maidens treat him like a son or a brother, but I think his relationship with Sulin is the epitome of that dynamic. This is a fun twist on the circumstances. This is Rand’s fault, and he has to work out how to make it better without unintentionally making it worse.
Rand gets a letter from the Queen of Ghealdan and essentially offers him her support. Rand also interprets her letter as an indication that she needs his help with the Dragonsworn in her country. So that’s another big chunk of the map under his influence. Just after getting this news, Rand is almost the victim of a Gray Man assassination attempt. Taim is mysteriously on site to watch it play out – almost as if he was the one who sent the man. Lews Therin is insane, but he’s also 100% correct about Taim. It was arguably a smart thing to have him start the school, Darkfriend or not, but it would be smart to “remove” him from the school, and pick someone else to run it, now that it’s up and going.
Does it make sense for Taim to show up in Rand’s apartments to tell him about one new recruit? Not at all. Rand would realize that if he wasn’t so busy dealing with the insane voice in his head. Rand already should have realized that Taim had to learn the trick to testing someone for the gift of channeling from someone else – and the only “someone else” would be a Forsaken.
Now that I know what’s going on in Avi’s head a little bit more, her interactions with Rand are funnier. She was furious with him for shaming her with his lack of knowledge of Aiel honor and obligation. Then she was super hot for him, when he killed the Gray Man and helped the two Maidens avoid dishonor. Then she was confused by how quickly those two things happened, back to back, and started getting hot for him again and ran away… because Elayne?
Side note 1: How much of Rand’s life with Aviendha would be different if he had shown her and Egwene the second letter from Elayne while they were traveling together in the Waste? Of course, if he had, Lanfear probably would have found out Rand and Avi (or Rand and Eggy?) and murdered everyone.
Side note 2: “Gray Man” was actually a real life CIA term. In both the fantasy story and the CIA, it described a person so average-looking that you just fail to notice them. I don’t know how widely well-known that term was when Jordan started writing the series, but his use of it has always made me wonder if Jordan’s military service included some military intelligence work, too. Of course, George R.R. Martin’s “Faceless Men” also always reminded me of the CIA’s use of quick-change hyper-realistic silicone masks. Martin, to my knowledge, is much more difficult to name a spook. Maybe these terms and programs were just more widely known in the 80s than I assume.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen Fain. We are reintroduced to him in this book. So… Sammael, Taim, the White Tower Embassy (Mesaana), and now Fain pose a serious immediate threat to Rand. Fain being able to sense that Alanna bonded Rand is interesting – as is the fact that he felt like it took away some of his own feeling of Rand.
The subtext of the Fain section at the end of the chapter is that Fain found out about the Gray Man attack on the same day it happened. In a world where news does not travel that quickly, it seems impossible for Fain to be getting this report from the boy unless there was a Darkfriend very near to Rand when it happened. That could be Taim – and the report Taim made to someone higher up might have been heard by other Darkfriends. Or it might be one of the Aiel. Taim is by far the more likely explanation. Fain is mad that anyone else would try to kill Rand, becomes enraged, injures the Darkfriend boy messenger with a mere touch of his fingers, and then rapes the boy’s mom after. That’s all awful and gross and a reminder that Fain is evil, but we have to keep in mind as the Readers that Fain has a type of magical power that isn’t the One Power. Or the True Power. It’s a form of evil that is unique to himself and that also hates the Dark One’s evil. That will be complicated to sort out from a story-telling standpoint.
We’re halfway through this book and we still don’t know who Rand’s end-of-the-book fight will be against. He’s got a long list of enemies and a long list of problems.
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