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 30: To Heal Again
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Nynaeve al’Meara
Nynaeve shields, binds, and gags Logain while berating herself for being so careless and Healing him. He is almost too strong for her. Elayne rushes off to get help. After a while the door opens, and a flood of Sisters and Sitters enter the room, staring pointedly at her and the weaves she has woven until she loses her anger and loses saidar altogether.
Romanda Cassin then appoints six sisters to hold the shield on Logain. Sheriam and Myrelle then set about trying to get Nynaeve angry enough to channel again by first believing and then not believing that Nynaeve has done what she claims. They succeed, and Nynaeve gets so angry, she almost walks up to the assemblage of Sisters and slaps them.
Finally, Siuan and Leane are hustled in. Then Nynaeve channels and Heals them. Expecting praise, she only hears criticism. When Carlinya points out that they cannot again gentle Logain, she receives many murderous glances. Sheriam tells Nynaeve to leave, and she does so.
Outside, Nynaeve is cornered by many Yellow Ajah Sisters who want to see her redo the weaves over and over. Nynaeve shoots Elayne a frightened look, but Elayne can’t do anything, and only shrugs. Then Nynaeve is hustled off.
Point of view: Siuan Sanche
Siuan resists the temptation to embrace saidar and hold it, while accepting her friends congratulations on the restoration of her ability to channel. Seeing Gareth Bryne, she rushes up to tell him that she has been Healed. He seems unimpressed. Siuan tries to lift him to drive the point home that she cannot be his servant anymore, but she fails and realizes that she is much weaker than before.
When Gareth leaves, she starts to weep over the loss of her dead warder, Alric, and then sees Leane standing nearby, looking at her sympathetically. Leane describes her experience when her warder, Anjen, died. The two of them then discuss their renewed status and their unusual weakness in the One Power. After that, the two of them go to do battle with the Hall of the Tower to see if they can be Amyrlin and Keeper again.
Point of view: Elayne Trakand
Elayne Trakand sits on her bed when the door bangs open, revealing a distraught and furious Nynaeve al’Meara, who has just gone through several efforts to make her angry enough to channel and demonstrate the weave for Healing stilling. Nynaeve starts ranting about the worst ever Yellow sisters. She also mentions that she only had a roll for dinner.
Then Siuan and Leane come in with a big bowl of soup. They sit down and have a discussion with Elayne and Nynaeve. They also mention that they want Nynaeve to try Healing them both again, as they are not at full strength, unlike Logain. Nynaeve loses her temper at them, but does not channel―she is too tired to do so anyway. But Leane cools down her temper, and the four of them make a pact. During the discussion, Elayne and Nynaeve learn that Aes Sedai govern themselves most of the time by who is stronger in the Power. Siuan and Leane being very weak, now, will have very little influence with other Sisters.
The next day, Siuan and Leane wake up Nynaeve, who loses her temper yet again, but she cannot Heal them further―she can’t Heal something that has already been Healed.
Point of view: Delana Mosalaine
The next morning Siuan comes to visit Delana and ask her for help. Siuan is trying to make arrangements so she can use a Dream ter’angreal to meet with the Aiel Wise Ones. Delana promises to do what she can by using her influence with the Sitters. Siuan leaves.
A novice arrives and announces a woman to see Delana, Halima Saranov, who is already acquainted with Delana. Delana is about to deny knowing anyone by that name when she receives a signal from Halima. Halima gives a signal identifying her an Aes Sedai of the Black Ajah, even though she clearly is not able to channel.[1] This angers Delana. When Delana argues against taking orders, Halima mentions she has another name she uses sometimes: Aran’gar. This name frightens Delana because it has been mentioned to her in her dreams.
REACTION:
Nynaeve does the impossible. The fact that she is not held in complete AWE by every Aes Sedai alive just makes me really dislike their entire organization. They storm into where she is, deny that she did anything, shield Logain anyway, and then Myrelle and Sheriam march her off. I have seen absolutely nothing from the White Tower in Tar Valon or Salidar to impress me. If the world wasn’t on the line, I’d think they deserved to be conquered.
One thing I like about Nynaeve is that despite being orders of magnitude stronger than any other non-Forsaken alive (so far at least) she never thinks of using her strength against the other women. She just lets Sheriam and Myrelle march her off, when she could easily shield them both and just leave… provided that she was angry, I guess. Sheriam switched her with air multiple times and they interrogated her like she did something wrong, rather than like she cured the magic equivalent of cancer.
Of course, we learn that most of this was a ruse to make / keep Nynaeve angry enough to try again with Siuan and Leane. I maintain there had to be a better way than this. She figures out that they are manipulating her, which is finally the thing that actually infuriates her.
She wanted to smack all of their faces. She wanted to dose them with a concoction of herbs that would make them sit down a floor and cry like babies just from the smell.
I love Nynaeve.
The writing here is great. The transition from Nynaeve’s internal fury to a room gasps and joy is legitimately moving and emotional.
Then of course we move right back into the Yellows critiquing this brand new and miraculous information and trying to improve upon it. Did they apologize to her? Praise her? Let her stop scrubbing pots for a while? Create a continent wide Feast Day holiday in her name? No. They should have, but they didn’t. This is probably the most significant moment with the One Power since Lanfear created the bore into the Dark One’s prison.
The reaction to Siuan is fascinating. Even though she’s been there the entire time, they are greeting her as though she’s been away for a long time. I didn’t understand this when I was younger but I get it now. Being stilled is kind of the Aes Sedai equivalent of becoming disabled.
I speak from some experience on this. *Most* people do not know how to communicate with (in my case) a blind person. When I had good vision, I was pretty universally well-respected. Now – and I understand that it’s well intentioned – a lot of people speak to me as though I am a child. That’s just kind of the default human point of reference for someone who is not entirely able to care for him or herself. And if you are a child in the area of needing help navigating a room, or reading a menu, you can become categorized as a child in other areas also. It happens subconsciously for the people who do it. It’s born out of thoughtfulness and trying to anticipate my needs. But it’s really difficult to respect as an equal someone for whom you are actively caring. So life ends up being a back and forth between being pitied/cared for or feeling as though you are a burden to someone. That creates *space* between you and everyone else, even if you are literally in the room.
From the disabled person’s POV, or Siuan’s, you still exist. You need to find things to do, purpose, etc., and you just have to put up with how you are treated, despite being well aware that you often need to be treated that way. When Siuan is Healed, she is back on even footing again for the first time. The space between her and her former peers has closed.
If you think of a person as a consciousness, with our bodies as a conduit for connecting us other consciousnesses, then humans usually have five tethers – sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. If one of those tethers stops working, you become less connected than you were before. It’s like you’ve gone away to some degree. That often means (it’s at least the danger) you end up using the remaining tethers less often, too. You might stop inviting people to do ____, so they don’t have to take care of you while doing it. Or they are the ones who stop issuing the invite. If you are around people less often, you talk less often, hug less often, eat food together less often, etc.
Siuan and Leane have been the Aes Sedai equivalents of disabled. They literally call them both “child” (and everyone else who cannot channel.) For Aes Sedai, non-channelers have the 5 normal consciousness connecting senses. The Aes Sedai also have saidar as a 6th sense. It’s not different than someone with 5 senses reacting ot someone who has only 4. Siuan and Leane’s lack has been equivalent to them both becoming blind or deaf. It doesn’t really matter that they used to be the two most powerful women on earth. Getting that 6th tether healed means they can be in *full* connection again. It really is as though they have been away, in a metaphysical sense at least.
“It is so good to have you back.”
Anyway.
Gareth Bryne’s reaction to Siuan’s healing is perfect. He shows her the utmost respect by acting as though nothing changed. He suggested that being able to channel might make her better at cleaning his shirts.
We now know that Siuan and Leane are not as strong in the One Power as they were before. I guess this is like being healed from total blindness to being healed well enough to see, but to require the wearing of thick lensed glasses.
Siuan thinks she might be Amyrlin again, but is disabused. She does get to be Aes Sedai. Siuan has to join the Blue, but has to ask. Leane decides to switch to being Green. I think Jordan is going to continue playing up Leane’s sultry side. That’s a curious choice, though. It’s like choosing a different family. Maybe there were some hard feelings for her with respect to the Blues.
We learn as the chapter nears the end that the Salidar Aes Sedai are meeting with the Wise Ones, and that Egwene will finally be there. That meeting has been discussed for a dozen chapters, so it should be a relatively momentous meeting.
The chapter ends with the introduction of Halima. Given her description, and the name Aran’gar, that is Balthamel in his new body. We also now know that Delana is Black Ajah. Do we have any other confirmed Black Ajah in Salidar? Surely there are more but this is the first I can remember who is confirmed.
Halima refers to Cabriana Sedai and her Warder dying. Those two were tortured to death by Semirhage earlier in the book. So Balthamel/Halima is working with Semirhage. It’s tough to keep up with the Shadowy alliances. Now this camp has two of the Forsaken inside its tents. Never forget Moggy is here, too.
Sidenote 1: I really liked Logain’s off-handed mention of seeing Rand from a distance, when he was being paraded through Caemlyn as a prisoner. He apparently has the ability to see ta’veren. I think Siuan has/had/has that gift, too. We saw that moment from Rand’s POV in Book 1.
Sidenote 2: Am I supposed to believe that the Aes Sedai have not observed or talked with Nynaeve about Healing until they watched her in this moment? She hasn’t been in the Tower much, but she’s been there enough, and has talked with Yellows before. Even if they never had a reason to see / watch her Heal someone, she never questioned how they do healing during class lectures?
Sidenote 3: It’s crazy that Siuan had not felt the pain of her Warder dying all this time, until now. I guess it makes sense that she didn’t notice it while stilled. But it also seems weird that this did not dissipate while she was stilled (I’m not sure why it had to dissipate, though.) Or maybe it was dissipating, but she got restored before it had healed fully.
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