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 6: Threads
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Elayne Trakand
Using the Bowl of the Winds has let the Seanchan know where there are some channelers so everyone at the Farm has to leave as quickly as possible. Elayne has decided to head for Andor so she can claim her throne. Elayne is very satisfied that she is leading and everyone else is following. There are one hundred and forty-seven Kin at the Farm plus some other women and everyone that Elayne brought from Ebou Dar. Alise has had everyone getting ready to leave based on information Birgitte was able to give her.
Elayne makes a gateway to a manor two weeks travel from Caemlyn but it is also very isolated from other villages. Finally everyone is through and Elayne asks Nynaeve to lead everyone to the farmhouse since she plans to unweave the gateway and she doesn’t know what will happen if she fails to do it right. After everyone but Birgitte and Aviendha are over the hill from the Gateway, Elayne begins the work to taking the weave apart. The Seanchan arrive with several damane who start to channel through the gateway. Aviendha and Birgitte defend Elayne from the soldiers that are coming through the gateway. Crossbow bolts start flying, injuring Aviendha in the arm and Birgitte in the leg. Aviendha uses her angreal and channels fireballs through the gateway preventing any Seanchan from coming through. Elayne tells them to flee but instead they mount Elayne backwards on her horse and gallop away from the gateway. Aviendha finally tires too much to channel and a damane comes through the gateway and shields Elayne causing a huge explosion.
They are all injured from the shock of the explosion. They slowly move up the hill to see what has happened. The whole meadow is devastated even knocking down trees on the sloped beyond. Elayne asks Aviendha to be her first sister since they both know enough about the other that there is no need to wait longer, except they will need Wise Ones for the ceremony.
Point of view: Chulein
Chulein is watching for any trouble aboard her raken, listening to her partner, Eliya, chat about buying an inn with her “share of the taking gold” (plunder from the invasion). Chulein grins because every flier talks like this, but very few really want to stop flying.
Suddenly Eliya shouts ‘The farm!!’ and something like a hard blow hits the raken, causing them to tumble from the sky. They barely pull out in time but Eliya’s straps gave way during the fall and she was killed. As they climb back into the sky Chulein sees that the farm is completely gone. She believes something has to be done about the Aes Sedai that have such a powerful weapon available.
REACTION:
Elayne accidentally creates the first bomb of the Third Age. It’s interesting to consider the fallout of this. The Seanchan flier at the end of the chapter is going to report back that the marath’damane have an incredibly dangerous weapon. They’ll go to the site and see the proof. The Seanchan just lost a lot of damane and soldiers in one big event. This should probably freak out the entire Empire. And it was all by accident.
The Wheel Weaves as the Wheel Wills
By the way, “the Fists of Heaven” is just a cool name for a military order.
The comedy of this chapter is how competent Alise is and how Nynaeve (and everyone else but especially Nyn) doesn’t know how to deal with her. Jordan writes Alise – a woman who is the epitome of coolness and competence under pressure – like she’s the rarest woman ever born. It *is* funny, but this has to be insulting on some level to Jordan’s female fans, right? [I’ve said it before, but people who read this series and come away from it claiming it’s radically feminist need to read the series again.]
The Avi and Elayne relationship is odd to me, on the surface at least. Avi spent pretty much all of Book #4 telling Rand that he belongs to Elayne. She barely knew Elayne at that point. She was Eggy’s friend. She attached herself to Eggy in the Stone and in the Waste, IMO, because she had insta-attraction to Rand and Eggy was Rand’s girlfriend. If she were to have Rand, Egwene had to issue the invitation. She then made a big deal about Rand belonging to Elayne because Egwene had told her that they were together now, and (IMO) because she wanted to be on good terms with Elayne. She wanted to figure out what she needed to do to give herself a shot at being a sister-wife for Rand and to whoever he ended up with. Once she actually got to go spend time with Elayne, her actions were all in service to that goal.
Elayne’s feelings for Rand were also basically “insta-love” back in book #1 and she more or less did the same thing with attaching herself to Egwene that Aviendha did. Unlike Avi, who was trying to figure out a way to share Rand… Elayne subtly but consistently implied her interest in Rand, to Egwene, and she also consistently suggested hooking Egwene up with her brother as an alternative (for Egwene) to Rand. So she was trying to break them up. But the whole effort was always a little bit weird, forced, and I think a lot of Egwene’s feelings for Elayne are not positive beneath the surface. (I went over that in my recaps of The Shadow Rising.)
The mystery of the Avi-Elayne dynamic is Elayne’s affection for Aviendha. She quickly “forgives” Aviendha for sleeping with Rand. I mean, she considered stabbing her for a second but got over it quickly. She also readily accepts Min. Elayne has spent most of her time with Aviendha trying to make the Aiel woman proud of her. She was so consumed with impressing Avi that she failed to see Mat with open eyes (he had to literally save her life, again, in a one-on-one combat with an unstoppable monster to break through her Mat fog.)
I think it is implied that Elayne has fallen in love with Aviendha, or maybe that they are in love with each other. I don’t know if that means they’re in love with any kind of sexual undercurrent (“pillow friends” if you will), but the kisses on the cheek were the Aiel version of a lewd public act and they both knew it and did it anyway. Elayne as a character looks at the world through a lens of her royalty. Everyone is her subject. That’s how she’s most comfortable being treated. Her love language is someone accepting her station (it’s also the thing Elayne is most insecure about.) Avi’s willingness to self-sacrifice so dramatically in service to Elayne (the cost of channeling, her life, setting aside a possibility of not having to share Rand with Elayne b/c Elayne is dead) won Elayne over. Avi’s actions were a kind of submission. She put Elayne first, above all other considerations. In turn, Elayne letting her do that without trying to talk her out of it won Aviendha over. She’s been trying to win Elayne over and this was Elayne showing her an incredible amount of honor.
As a 21st century Westerner, and a product of the 1st Age, it would be easier for me to understand their behavior a little better if there was an unexpressed physical attraction component to all of this. I don’t think it’s wrong to guess that exists. But I won’t assume it’s there if Jordan doesn’t tell me it’s there. (He may have an opportunity to do so later.)
And now everyone is in Andor. FINALLY. I’m guessing that Elayne waited so long to show up that claiming the Crown will prove more difficult. Her mom turning into a Compulsed sex slave of Rahvin probably complicates matters, too. I look forward to seeing how that goes.
All in all, this is probably Elayne’s best and most heroic chapter in the series so far. She was willing to die to save the world from the Seanchan getting Travelling. It was pretty adorable how self-effacing she was after, too, suggesting that maybe she should have practiced on something smaller first. A few more chapters like this one and I might finally like her.
2 thoughts on “The Path of Daggers (Chapter 6): Threads”