Moiraine and Siuan are Aes Sedai undergrads working for Tamra, the current Amyrlin Seat. The Amyrlin’s secretary has a vision of the Dragon having been reborn, then promptly drops dead.
Oh hello Moiraine. How cute, you aren’t an Aes Sedai yet! This is like your college years. I hope you knew how to party. And look at you, still figuring out whether you want to join the Green Ajah with their quasi-polyamory-multiple-warders vibe or the cold and logical Blue Ajah, laser focused on trapping just one special man into that oh-so-tantalizingly-codependent relationship with a Warden. Which to choose, which to choose!
Oh hello to you too Siuan. Siuan Sanche. I always thought that was a cool name, so very alliterative and pronounceable! Siuan, let me tell you, there was a character in Chapter 1 whose name was Caniedrin. No, I wasn’t trying to spell Canadian and just fat-fingered it. Caniedrin! First of all, how much do you have to hate your child to name them that? And second, I can tell you one thing: nobody named Caniedrin is ever going to become Amyrlin Seat, am I right? But Siuan Sanche! Memorable, strong, easy to say. That’s the start of a beautiful political career! And those raised-by-a-sailor sensibilities are never going to totally leave you, are they, you adorable thing?
Moiraine and Siuan are bored, getting blasted by drafts of cold air, and suppressing yawns. And for how little is happening in this chapter, this actually made it the most immersive scene in the book yet, because it evoked the exact same feelings of torturous ennui that these two ladies felt. I truly empathized.
The current Amyrlin Seat is apparently… worried about something? Horns are blaring? And then her, uh… secretary? Her secretary starts like having visions and speaking in tongues, spewing a proclamation of the Dragon having been Reborn!, before promptly dropping dead Looney-Tunes-style. And Moiraine catches a Novice reading a romance novel – oh, how scandalous.
Yes, it really did take 25 pages for the novel to express the events described in the above paragraph.