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 55: Dumai’s Wells
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Gawyn Trakand
Gawyn is observing the landscape near Dumai’s Wells while most of the Younglings have been positioned at the rear. He spies a horse galloping back toward the group. It is one of his men who dies moments later. Gawyn immediately orders battle preparations. He argues with Galina, but she finally gives in about stopping and making preparations when she sees the dead man.
Point of view: Rand al’Thor
Rand has been kept folded up in a chest barely large enough for him. He has been baking in the hot sun every day. He can tell Alanna is close but doesn’t know what that means. When the wagon stops and the chest is taken down, Rand expects to be let out to be fed. When the chest stays closed he fears they will leave him in there all night and starts shouting to let him out but all he hears is a laugh.
Point of view: Perrin Aybara
Perrin looks from the top of a ridge and finds a scene from a nightmare. Forty thousand Shaido completely surround a camp of wagons. There is a lot of channeling and some wagons are on fire. There are several hundred Shaido Wise Ones channeling. The fight appears hopeless but Perrin is determined to try to free Rand anyway. As they begin their charge, Perrin calls out to the wolves to come now. Perrin’s only thought during the fight is they have to reach Rand. Bera, Kiruna, and the other Aes Sedai join the fight, even though they were not supposed to. Perrin hears a loud boom, then a Gateway opens nearby, and black-coated men pour through and join the battle. Even with the additional help, Perrin believes the fight is almost lost and thinks sadly of Faile.
Point of view: Rand al’Thor
Rand is still doubled up in the chest when first one, then three more of the shields on him are tied off. With guidance from Lews Therin, he begins to work on those four knots. He breaks one knot, so now there only five and the shield is thinner. Then he breaks another. A third Aes Sedai joins the shield. Frantically Rand gets through the third knot. He pushes at the shield to reach saidin and finally succeeds. He crushes the remaining three ‘soft points’ in the shield with Spirit. Then he uses Air to explode the chest apart. Nearby are two women who are unconscious and a third who is screaming. A few paces away Min is on the ground and Rand crawls to her to find she is alright and glad to see him. He feels men channeling and sees that Taim and the Asha’man have arrived to rescue him. He begins to shield and knock unconscious the Aes Sedai, beginning with Erian. Gawyn arrives and offers to take Min out of the battle. When she refuses, he rallies the Younglings to cut their way out, vowing that he will see Rand die.
The Asha’man create a barrier of Air with Rand and some of Perrin’s remaining forces inside. He notices Alanna and the Aes Sedai with her, noting that there are nine. Rand tells Taim to disperse the Shaido, which the Asha’man do with ruthless efficiency by slowly expanding the dome of Air and exploding Shaido as they come inside the dome. The slaughter is so horrific that the Shaido turn and run away. Bera and Kiruna come over to Rand to take charge but he orders them to kneel with the Tower Aes Sedai because they brought nine instead of six. The Salidar Aes Sedai fulfill prophecy by swearing fealty to Rand beneath the ancient banner of the Aes Sedai.
Epilogue: The Answer
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Falion Bhoda
Falion receives a note from a Darkfriend in Tarasin Palace livery. Like Mat, she is trying to watch Elayne and Nynaeve so she can find the angreal cache Moghedien sent her to Ebou Dar to look for. She doesn’t know why they are there, but she suspects that they will lead her to the cache. Unfortunately, they elude her watchers as well as they elude Mat’s.
Point of view: Narrator
A gholam squeezes under the door to Herid Fel‘s study and tears him limb from limb. When Idrien finds the remains, she faints.
Point of view: Seanchan rider
The Seanchan man that heard Mat’s comment about the Daughter of the Nine Moons while in The Wandering Woman is leaving Ebou Dar to report. He hopes the city resists the Return so there will be loot to be had.
Point of view: MoghedienSetting: Salidar
Moghedien is dissatisfied with her situation, being held by an a’dam. Egwene is a terrifying mistress and Siuan is worse. Aran’gar enters her tent and frees her. Aran’gar channeled a light, but Moghedien cannot see the flows. It is Halima, but she must be channeling saidin like a man. Moghedien has been summoned to Shayol Ghul by Aran’gar. Aran’gar frees her from the a’dam.
Point of view: Egwene al’Vere
Egwene feels the necklace being removed and hastens to Moghedien’s tent, but she is too late. The pain of the a’dam coming off tells her that it was removed by a man who can channel. She worries briefly that it could have been Logain, whom she helped to escape.
Point of view: Demandred
Demandred believes he has done well and tells that to the Dark Lord. For once, he does not care that Shaidar Haran is watching him.
REACTION:
The chapter opens from Gawyn’s POV. I’ll admit that I’d kind of forgotten about his promise to Egwene not to hurt Rand. I will be *very* curious to read whether or not his not trying to help ever comes up again, between the two. I can’t imagine that Eggy would be okay with Gawyn’s emotions on this topic. It definitely comes across like Gawyn didn’t like that they were torturing Rand, but it didn’t bother him *that* much, either. He was much more concerned that Min was a prisoner. I mean, he knows Rand has been brutally tortured for days on end and his parting words to Rand as the chapter/book/battle ends, is that one day he will see him die.
I’ve mentioned before that I have a theory that Gawyn might be under compulsion. Same for Eggy. Lanfear had access to both Gawyn and Eggy and it would absolutely not have been beneath her to help Rand become single with some help from the One Power. Getting Gawyn to irrationally hate Rand would have helped to keep Eggy with him, and against Rand.
Rand is being SEVERELY tortured when his POV section starts – kept in a box barely large enough for his body to fit inside, taken out to be beaten severely, then put back inside… for days on end. Surely some of the White Tower Aes Sedai, the ones who weren’t in charge, were growing in opposition to this treatment… but if so, we didn’t really hear about it. Even if you assume that some of the group is Black Ajah, surely they can’t all be, right? The ones who bought into this plan kind of embraced the idea that he’d be leashed, and then unleashed for long enough to fight the Dark One. How are they imagining that this will happen after this treatment? The whole world and reality itself is at stake.
As expected, the Shaido betray the Aes Sedai… which makes the job for Perrin & Co. a little bit easier in one sense, and more difficult in another. If they’d waited a couple of days to attack, Perrin might have overwhelmed the Aes Sedai. On the other hand, Perrin’s group was very close to being caught between the two groups.
One interesting factoid about their attack was that the Shaido sent two or three hundred Wise Ones who could channel against the Aes Sedai. This dwarfs the large number of Wise Ones sent by all the rest of the Aiel. So… if this was a Sammael plot, it absolutely would have worked if Sevanna had simply called for him using the ter’angreal he gave her. He was in a position to cut Elaida’s legs from beneath her, via a catastrophic public disaster, ravage the strongest non-Shaido Aiel channelers in one blow, AND capture Rand.
Sammael was *thisclose* to winning. If he’d been there, I don’t think the Taim and his Ashaman show up, or if they do, I don’t think they aid Rand. (I still maintain that Taim is a Darkfriend.)
This battle is GORY. This is the first time in the series where we really begin to see the potential for carnage with the One Power. I don’t have any idea if or how this battle will be depicted by a visual medium. It might also need to be anime. The Ashaman were making… people… explode. They weren’t just making people explode. They were making the people who had previously been the most powerful fighters on the continent… explode. The Shaido were broken and they ran for their lives.
So far in the series, we’ve had battles, both between humans and trollocs, and multiple times against the Forsaken. However, it was only in this chapter where it feels like the world fundamentally shifted. The Aiel have been surpassed by the power of the Black Tower. The White Tower has been surpassed by the Black.
“Kneel and swear to the Lord Dragon… or you will be knelt.”
Was it a little bit satisfying to see the smug Aes Sedai put in their place? A little. Well, maybe more than a little. Did they deserve their treatment? That’s hard to answer. I guess we’ll see how they’re treated going forward. Does this all bode badly for the future? Almost certainly. I’m sure Eggy will LOVE learning that Rand made Aes Sedai kneel to him. She might understand better than anyone his feelings post-torture, though. We’ll see which version of her that we get. The world needs the Book 1-3 version of her that used to hurl her body at Rand in a hug when she was worried about him. We’re probably going to get the version of her that thinks she knows more than he does and scolds him.
The Epilogue gives us the first ending wherein it feels as though that maybe the bad guys might have won in this book, even if it was not in an obvious way. If we keep in mind that Ishy’s goal with Rand, since Book 1, was to turn him to the Shadow… it feels a little bit like Rand took a big step toward Darth Rand in this book (this last chapter in particular.)
The Epilogue also tells us that Nynaeve and Elayne are going to be fighting the Black Ajah again in Ebou Dar. Ebou Dar is in imminent danger of a Seanchan attack. Herid Fel is torn limb from limb (he was on the verge of giving Rand some answers about the Dark One’s Seals.) Moggy is freed from the a’dam by Halima. Demandred celebrates recent goings-on in the Pit of Doom itself, with the Dark One.
Why would the Dark One celebrate how this book ended? He/She/It had Rand in hand and he escaped. This answer feels like it gives us a window into the metaphysics of the story. The Dark One revels in disorder and chaos. The more the better – even if the short term result is Rand’s escape. The Dark One’s nature is chaos, disruption, and disorder. As a result… it seems very unlikely to me that the Dark One would allow any of the Forsaken to actually rule anything. The Dark One wouldn’t let there be anything to rule. But perhaps the Forsaken haven’t spent much time thinking about philosophy. I think Ishy did, though, which is probably why he was their leader and why he’s likely to be coming back soon.
How close is Rand to unifying the world and readying it to face the Last Battle? Not very. He may need to reconquer Cairhien and Andor. Tear is in rebellion (though outside the city for now.) Rand went a long way toward getting rid of the Shaido, but the Seanchan have quietly returned to the mainland (I suspect they won’t be quiet much longer.) Rand also might have created the most powerful One Power team on the planet.. but it now feels like he’s holding a rabid wolf by the ears.
I loved the ending of this book, but it definitely did not feel like as complete a victory as this series has usually provided. There’s an ominous cloud hanging over everything.
We shall march onward to Book 7 and see how things shake out! Rand is increasingly insane (he and the voice in his head talk to each other now) and he just spent a couple of weeks being tortured. What could go wrong?
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