Moiraine and Siuan double down on their risky Dragon Reborn plan, Bornhald arrives to cleanse the Almoth Plain of anything suspiciously alive, Liandrin goes full Sith Lord, and Padan Fain… waits.
The Wheel of Time universe has different terms for permanently severing men and women from the One Power. Do it to a man and he has been gentled. Do it to a woman and she has been stilled. This sounds suspiciously like the distinction between spaying and neutering. Only instead of health benefits and population control, it’s a punishment that leaves the victim hollowed out and barely functional. Like a Dyson vacuum, but even sadder.
I mention it because Siuan is skittish, worried they’ll be discovered for meddling with the Dragon. So Moiraine reminds her of the plan:
MOIRAINE: Nearly twenty years ago, we decided to find the boy, keep him safe, guide him.
SIUAN: In Tar Valon! Not on the Dark One’s doorstep.
MOIRAINE: Did you hear about what happened to the Eye of the World?
Moiraine shows Siuan the broken pieces of a seal on the Dark One’s prison. Throw in the discovery of the legendary Horn of Valere, and what you get is confirmation that Last Battle is practically here. It’s official: the world is ending. The two people responsible for saving it are now in a room, arguing about who’s freaking out more.
So here is Moiraine’s new plan: send Rand, Mat, and Perrin off to Illian. Why? Because Rand is going to present the Horn to the nation’s leaders and somehow gain a massive army. The best part? She can’t go with them! They have to believe they are making their own choices. That’s her brilliant strategy — point them in the general direction of chaos and hope for the best. It’s like a parent telling their kid, “Go play with matches, but make sure you don’t burn the house down.”
Geofram Bornhald has brought an entire legion — two thousand Children of the Light — to the small village of Alcruna near the Almoth Plain. He’s kind of pissed, because he got called away from a perfectly good coup attempt in Andor for a mission so secret, not even he knows what it is.
His contact turns out to be Einor Saren with the Questioners, who are a faction within the Children of the Light that specializes in the use of torture. Even Bornhald, not exactly a poster child for restraint, thinks the Questioners are sadistic creeps. Saren is the kind of guy who gleefully murders an entire village and declares that it has been “pacified,” which is exactly what has befallen Alcruna.
Saren tells Bornhald he is here to go around “rooting out Darkfriends” from “grubby villages” scattered throughout the plain. As an afterthought, Saren suggests that the legion may be called upon to deal with some strangers who have arrived from across the sea. You know, just in case a conquering army shows up.
In Chapter 4, Liandrin came off as a kind of a bitch, but that could have been because of her affiliation with the Red Ajah. In this section, she’s tired of people not worshiping her, so it’s time to go full villain. She barges into Lady Amalisa’s chambers, where Amalisa and her friends are just chilling, reading a book about how men and women should treat each other. Liandrin commands everyone but Amalisa to get out, and in a moment of pure, petty villainy, throws the book into the fire!
I didn’t notice it during Chapter 4, but half the stuff Liandrin says sounds like it came out of Yoda’s mouth:
LIANDRIN: Truth only, speak to me.
LIANDRIN: Of the Black Ajah have you heard?
It almost seems like the more evil she gets, the more scrambled her speech patterns are. Sometimes she even mixes it up:
LIANDRIN: Any Aes Sedai in the halls you pass, a Black sister could be. I cannot tell you which they are, but my protection you can have. If in the Light you walk and me obey.
And me obey? Lady, that’s where I draw the line between quirky speech patterns and baby talk. Liandrin uses a compulsion weave that feels suspiciously like the one the Blues use — just with more malice and less finesse. She uses it to coerce Amalisa into commanding her servants to search for Rand, Mat, and Perrin.
Outside in the corridor, Liandrin feels the same eyes on her that were watching Rand. Shrugging it off, continues about her business she does. A good little Darkfriend, she shall be.
In the depths of the dungeon, Padan Fain receives a visitor.