Elaida discovers that staging a coup is easy, but running the White Tower is a nightmare. She grants an audience to Padan Fain and discovers that they have a mutual interest in taking Rand al’Thor down a peg or two. Meanwhile, Rahvin feeds false information to the White Tower’s spies in Caemlyn. Lanfear, Sammael, and Graendal drop by to discuss the “al’Thor situation.”
Elaida is holding a staff meeting, but things aren’t working out like she hoped. As it turns out, if you become the Amyrlin Seat by way of a coup, you only have a mandate if all colors supported the revolution. But every single member of the Blue Ajah fled when Siuan was deposed, and the rest of the Ajahs supported the coup by a hairline majority rather than by a landslide. Remember, the Ajahs are “cliquey” at best. Now, with leadership gathered in her office, being top dog doesn’t feel the way it should. They don’t respect her authority. They don’t defer to her judgment. The Amyrlin should command a healthy mix of fear and respect, but clearly she has neither. That has to change.
Elaida pops her top and randomly lashes out at various sisters at the table, then ends the meeting when her guests are suitably shaken. Afterward, Elaida’s Keeper of the Chronicles sends Padan Fain in. I’ve never thought much about it before, but she and Fain share an obsession: The Dragon Reborn. Elaida and Fain are the Edward R. Rooneys to Rand al’Thor’s Ferris Bueller. Rand doesn’t even know he’s ditching school; he just keeps accidentally ruining their careers. Hobbling Rand al’Thor is what they both desire more than anything. Shakespeare put it best when he remarked that “misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,” and you couldn’t get much stranger than Elaida and Padan Fain.
The two begin plotting and scheming together.
Meanwhile, Rahvin is having no such crisis of authority. Thanks to the Compulsion weave, nobody disrespects or disobeys him. Not Queen Morgase, and not the White Tower’s spies, one of whom Rahvin sends away after filling her mind with disinformation. Yes, nobody tells Rahvin what to do — except, perhaps, the other Forsaken.
A doorway in reality opens and Lanfear steps through. She warns Rahvin not to be alarmed when the others come. For a moment, Rahvin is confused. But then Sammael and Graendal enter the room through their own Power-wrought doorways. Rahvin is not happy to see any of them, and why should he be? If a bunch of murderous, psychopathic criminals escaped from a maximum security prison, do you think they would enjoy a socializing? This is no different.
Luckily, Lanfear has an agenda. Lews Therin Telamon has been reborn as Rand al’Thor, and his actions have already caused the death of four of their peers. Who among them might be next? With fear properly sown among them, they listen as Lanfear lays out her plan for delivering the Dragon Reborn to the Great Lord of the Dark on the day of His return.