Last time on The Wheel of Time,
we caught up with our heroes and villains six months after Rand’s battle with
the Dark One at the Eye of the World. Moiraine and Lan are staying at the
country estate of Verin, a Brown Aes Sedai (history nerd Ajah) and her Sister Adeleas.
Moiraine is doing her best to research the prophecies of the Dragon Reborn and
keep Lan at an arms distance. She meets a merchant named Bayle Domon, who tried
to sell her a fragment of Cuendillar from a broken seal near Cairhien and a copy
of a poem that was written on the broken seal. She buys the poem. Perrin is traveling
with Loial and a small army of Shienarans lead by Lord Ingtar chasing after the
Dark Friend Padan Fain who stole the Horn of Valere. They meet up with “a Sniffer,”
a woodland tracker, that Ingtar hired named Elyas that shows them to a
battlefield. They see a few dead Sheinarans and Perrin has some kind of vision
of a little girl running from the fighting with the help of a wolf. Ingtar has
them bury the dead. At the White Tower, Egwene is learning to be an Aes Sedai
and Nynaeve is actively not learning. After her near-death experience, she’s
afraid of her power and is trying to not use it. She drinks some dirty wash
water to avoid humiliating herself trying and failing to channel. She gets some
tips from the Warders Ihvon and Maksim to try to remember what she’s fighting
for. And then she’s attacked by Liandrin, who channels wind at her to force
Nynaeve to tap into her anger and channel back. Liandrin shields Nynaeve from
the source to free herself and says that she’s going to be the greatest among
them. Nynaeve and Egwene get a letter from Perrin, who tells them that next
year at Bel Tine they should all get together and toast to the people they
lost, Rand and Laila. And if they’re lucky, Mat will find their way to them.
Mat, meanwhile, is chilling in the dungeons of Tar Valon, where he’s been for
the last six months. Liandrin reads him the letter, sans the part about Perrin
hoping he finds his way back to them, to torture him. When alone, he starts
digging through the wall behind a chest of drawers. Moiraine tries to ride off in the night
without Lan, but she’s attacked by several Fades. Lan comes to her rescue, and
they kill two of them, but a third nearly murders them both, but Verin and her
warder Tomas finish it off. Before passing out, Lan demands to know what
Moiraine isn’t telling him. That’s a fun way to end an episode. Enough recap.
Let’s get to it.
Ep 10: Strangers and Friends
We open with Rand. Hey buddy, missed
you. He’s having a horrible nightmare where he’s killed Egwene, Nynaeve, Perrin
and Mat with his sword while the Man in Black laughs at him before vanishing
into smoke. So… yeah, not having a great night. We jump to him awake and stare
out into the night at his inn room. He’s shaved his head almost down to the
scalp to hide his distinctive red hair, but otherwise looks fine. Selene, his landlord
who he’s screwing, asks him if he’d had another nightmare. He lies and says
that he didn’t, he’s just getting up to get to work. She tells him that he
needs to remember to pay her for room and board for the month and there’s the
implication that he’s paying her off with the sex. Huh… Anyway, Rand gets
dressed and heads into the city. He’s been living in the Foregate, a massive
shanty town built up alongside the walls of the great city of Cairhien. He gets
flatbread from a friendly vender and crosses into the city after getting his
papers checked by a guard. He heads into work, an insane asylum. Hm… He hears someone
saying, “You are Mine, Rand al’Thor,” as he heads to his duties.
Back at the villa, Lan and Moiraine
are recovering from their wounds. Verin tells Moiraine that she, Adeleas, and
Tomas are going to join them on their trip. She assumes that they’re headed to
the White Tower. Moiraine says she’s been banished, but Verin just says she knows
and goes to prepare her horse. Lan tries to talk to Moiraine, but she ices him out,
telling him to get Tomas to prepare her horse as Lan is still weak from the
healing and she doesn’t want her saddle to slip.
On the road with Perrin, Uno is hurling
a list of Wheel of Time “Flaming, Goat-licking, burning etc) at how slow
they’re going following Elyas. He refuses to ride a horse. Ingtar goes to bat
for him, saying that it’s hard to track from a horse, but Uno points out all he’s
doing is sniffing the air, it’s not proper tracking. Elyas leads them to a river
and across the water is an isolated house. Ingtar says something doesn’t feel
right, ordering Loial to stay with the horses while the others cross and
investigate. They split up to search the house and grounds. Perrin sees a woman
in one of the buildings and he and Ingtar go to check it out. Inside they find
what looks like at first to be a family sitting down to dinner. Perrin begins
to apologize, but we see it to be an empty table covered in rotting food scraps
covered in flies, the family being just a vision Perrin is seeing. The family
is attacked by Darkfriends and a Fade, killing them all. Perrin turns all the
way around to see Elyas standing in the doorway and comes out of the vision. Ingtar
walks off and Elyas tells Perrin that it’s useful to be able to tell the
difference between vision and reality. Perrin tells the man he wants no part in
whatever he’s doing to him, but Elyas says that’s not how it works. They find
the half eating meal and deduce Fain left in a hurry, but Elyas doesn’t think it
was because of them. They find a Fade dead and nail up to a wall. They
determine it had been alive when the nailing started and ask what could have done
that to a Fade. Ingtar orders the men to move out and they’ll camp at a village
down the river.
Returning to Rand, he visits his primary
patient, an old man named Errol. Errol immediately accuses Rand of being an
Aielman, but Rand doesn’t seem too put off by this behavior as this seems to be
part of the routine. Errol asks for his sword, but Rant just tries to keep him
calm. He asks Errol if he wants to go for a walk and gets him his shoes. He
gets Errol his cane and they go for a walk. Errol tells Rand about how vicious
fighters the Aiel are, how he saw one take out a small platoon by himself and
that the women are even fiercer. Rand has clearly heard all of this before and teasingly
says that he’s shocked Errol survived. Errol tells him not to test him, as once
a blademastser, always a blademaster. He laments not having his Heron marked
Sword and Rand offers to sneak his in again so Errol can see it and show him a
few sword forms. Errol shows a few forms with his cane, but then another orderly
intentionally drops a pile of stuff to trigger Errol’s PTSD and make him drop.
Rand tells him to back off, and the orderly brags about how he’s such a better
orderly than Rand is, as he works in the garden with the more interesting
patients while Rand cleans up all man waste. Rand goes to help Errol up and asks
the old man how he’d handle the orderly given the chance. He says start with
parting the silk to throw him off balance, then reaping the Barley, straight to
the heart.
That’s a thing in the Wheel of Time,
by the way, very flowery names for sword attacks.
At the Tower, Egwene wonders where
Nynaeve is at, but another Novice tells her that Liandrin grabbed her personally
for something. Liandrin brought her to Yellow Ajah’s healing ward to show her
how they handle the sick. An Accepted uses the power to heal a sick child’s
breakbone fever as Liandrin pockets a vial of Crimson Thorn, it’s a poison that
works as a pain killer in small doses. Liandrin tells Nynaeve that Accepted
take classes with each of the Ajahs to learn from each of them and learn about
their skills. And it’s part of her pitch to try to convince Nynaeve to join the
Red Ajah. She claims that she came from a small village like Nynaeve and while
it took her a while to figure it out, she says she concluded that she could do
more good rooting out the “disease” that is men who can channel vs. the “symptom”
that is the sick child. She says that with the Aes Sedai being able to live
hundreds of years due to the One Power slowing the aging process, they can save
hundreds of people by rooting out these men. I’m surprised Nynaeve doesn’t
point out that that child would be sick with Breakbone Fever regardless, but
there you go. Liandrin reveals that she asked that Nynaeve’s training be turned
over to her. Nynaeve says she’d heard Liandrin isn’t allowed to teach Novices.
Liandrin tells her to agree when the Sisters come and ask her to take the
Accepted test, as after going through the Arches, the real work can begin. Because
she’s allowed to teach Accepted. She buys some food at a vendor and walks off.
We see her arrive at Mat’s cell and
give him some sweetcakes. She says she’s was feeling generous. Mat asks if they
are poisoned, but Liandrin tells him that if she wanted him dead, she could be
far more creative about it. Mat asks her why he’s still here and she says it’s to
make sure there’s no lingering effects from the dagger. Mat obviously doesn’t
believe her, but she walks off. When alone, he hungrily eats up the cakes,
pulls his chest of drawers from the wall and starts tunneling again.
On the upper floor, Egwene sees a
bunch of servants moving someone into the room next to hers. Egwene goes and
meets Elayne Trakand, Daughter-Heir of Andor and her new neighbor. This is important
because the Two Rivers is part of Andor, and Daughter-Heir is the modern term
for Princess. Elayne is happy to meet a new Novice and assumes that Egwene must
have just moved in too, given how empty her room seems. And then gets it a minute
later that Egwene didn’t just move in, she’s just… ya know, poorer than her. She
smiles somewhat awkwardly, admitting she’s just happy to be living with the
other Novices as she thought that being the Daughter-Heir might have made them
put her in a whole other wing. They formally greet each other, Elayne saying
that Tower history suggests that some off the greatest pairs of women were
neighbors as Novices, name dropping Cadsuane Melaidhrin and Elena Katab as
examples. How neat.
We shift over to Alana, her Warders
and Sheriam having tea. Alana and her boys are trying to get Sheriam to agree
that it’s much too dangerous to send Nynaeve through the Arches this early,
like Liandrin is suggesting. Alana says that she thinks that more powerful
channelers, like Nynaeve, Egwene, Elayne, and False Dragons like Logain and a
new one named Mazrim Taim, are being born now because the Patter is trying to
give them weapons to fight the shadow. The Last Battle is nearing. Sheriam
reveals that Liandrin’s group has called for a vote in the hall and
unfortunately for her, in the Hall she speaks as one, not three. She sees that Alana
is packing for a trip and adds ‘if she’ll be there at all.’ Ihvon asks if she
wants to stay, but Alana tells him that Moiraine needs them.
Nynaeve reaches Liandrin’s rooms
and asks passing Novice if she’s seen her. She says just left but if Nynaeve
hurries she might catch her. Nynaeve starts following Liandrin at a distance,
clearly not trusting her, especially when she finds a secret tunnel at the end
of a dead end hallway. She keeps following because she’s curious. The tunnel
opens up into the market square and she keeps following Liandrin.
Meanwhile, Perrin and the Shienarans
arrive in a small town, Ingtar saying they’ll stay there for the night. The
soldiers all go into the inn. Perrin asks Elyas if he’ll join them, but he says
he prefers to sleep under the stars. He also warns Perrin that the Shienarans
aren’t his pack.
Moiraine and her group set up camp
a few miles from the Tower. Verin tells her that she’s and Adoleus vowed to not
return to the Tower until their History since the Breaking book was completed,
but she wants to see history wrought. She reveals she figured out one of the boys
Moiraine found last autumn was the Dragon Reborn. Moiraine goes for her knife
and asks who else knows. Verin tells her to stop walking closer and says she
just wanted to see how far Moiraine would go for the Dragon. Verin believes that
their Sister’s fear that the Dragon Reborn will break the world again blinds
them to how important he is. Moiraine tries to get an oath of loyalty from
Verin, but she says that betraying her or The Dragon Reborn might be necessary
to win the day. So they’ll just have to trust each other. Verin says she’ll
look in the Tower library for books on the Dragon Reborn and tells Moiraine to
join them by the fire.
In the Foregate a party is going
on. This is common for the area, the Foregaters seem to throw one nightly and
get drunk. Rand is stalking the orderly from earlier. He waits until he goes
off somewhere alone and attacks him. He beats him up and only stops when he
starts Channeling without wanting to. He hears a voice urging him to kill the
Orderly, but he stops and wanders off. He returns to his room and finds Selene
waiting for him. He tells the Innkeeper he’s not up for anything tonight, saying
he needs to be alone. Selene notices his bloody knuckles and says that people want
to be alone when things are tough and suggests they can be alone together. She
starts kissing him, he initially throws her up against a wall before kissing
her back. This… feels odd…
Back at the Tower, Egwene is showing
Elayne around. We learn that Elayne actually knows the Tower super well, having
summered there for six years, but she just wanted to spend time with Egwene to
get to know her. They come across Sheriam Sedai, who is livid that someone let
Elayne’s maids into the Tower, and they furnished her room for her. Elayne says
that whoever did it did it as a favor to her mother. Sheriam demands to know
who did it, and Elayne says she’ll accept whatever punishment the action demands.
Sheriam tells her it’ll be a switching once a day for three months and Elayne
asks before or after breakfast. Sheriam decides before and asks where Nynaeve
is. Egwene says she doesn’t know and Sheriam tells her to send Nynaeve to her
study when she gets back. They go to Elayne’s room and see it as empty as Egwene’s.
Nynaeve follows Liandrin into North
Harbor. She finds the Aes Sedai ministering to sickly old man. The man is in
extreme pain and Liandrin gives him the Crimson Thorn for it. Nynaeve comes in
and Liandrin is furious to see her. Nynaeve tells her that the pain the man is
suffering is in his heart too, given his spasming fist, and that the Crimson
Thorn won’t help, she tries to give Liandrin a better remedy. Liandrin slaps
her and demands she get out. When alone with the man she starts crying and
begging her “beautiful boy” to forgive her for leaving him here in pain.
Mat, meanwhile, has dug a stone out
of the wall and started digging out another. He get’s it loose, only to find
another cell on the other side. The cell is occupied, though, by nonother than
Min. They decide to dig out more stones after introducing themselves so they can
have a proper chat.
At the Aes Sedai camp, Adeleas is telling
the other two how Tomas and Verin got paired up as Warder and Aes Sedai. Adeleas
asks how they met, and with just a little prodding Moiraine reveals the story. She
and Lan met on the road to Chachin, both thought the other was a spy trying to
kill them, and Lan ended up throwing her in a pond. Adeleas says that must have
been when she knew he’d be her Warder. As anyone could protect an Aes Sedai
from a Trolloc, but the right one can protect them from themselves.
Back at Mat’s cell, they dug out
enough bricks to let Min through and the two share a bottle of wine that Min
had. They exchange stories, Min reveals she ended up in town after the ship she
was on changed course in a storm, she tried to lay low but a Red recognized her
at the bar she was at and they brought her in. She reveals how she can see the
future, and Mat is honestly disappointed. He was hoping for something spicier.
Min thinks it’s time to head back but promises to “visit” him again. She heads for
the hole but has a vision of Mat stabbing Rand with his dagger and seemingly
killing him. Mat asks if she’s alright.
At Rand, he and Selene are in bed.
He says he doesn’t want to hurt her and she says he can’t. She tells him the
story about the man she loved who left her and took her heart. She says that
when she’s with Rand she can pretend that he’s him and feel whole. Rand reveals
he think about “someone he wishes he could forget,” and Selene says maybe that’ll be enough for
them, he’ll help her remember and she’ll help him forget.
At Elayne’s room, she and Egwene
share a drink of beer that she’d homebrewed. Elayne says she likes to tinker
with things and needed to fill the hours without friends or fun. Elayne asks if
the “friend” Sheriam was talking about was THE Nynaeve al’Meara. While Nynaeve
herself is looking for Egwene, Egwene airs out some of her grievances with
Nynaeve. Basically, she feels like Nynaeve isn’t really doing anything at the Tower
and it’s frustrating her. Elayne tells her that jealousy doesn’t look good on
her. When Egwene tries to deny it, Elayne says as the Daughter-Heir to the most
powerful nation in the world, she knows what jealousy looks like. Nynaeve gets
a knock on her door. She finds Liandrin there, who tells her she’d stop this if
she could, but she’s already set the wheels in motion and for Nynaeve to follow
her. They enter the bowels of the Tower, meeting Sheriam and Leane the Keeper
of the Chronicle. Turns out, Nynaeve is being put through the Test to be
Accepted. Well, crap.
In the night, Lan checks Moiraine’s
bags and finds the poem inside. He pockets sit as Moiraine joins him. He tells
her sorry, that he should have sensed the Fades coming. Moiraine tells him that
she decided he’d be her Warder after Chachin when he saw him unfazed when they
saw Trolloc heads on spikes as a warning to the monsters. He wasn’t fazed, so
she knew he could continue without her. She tells him to head to the Tower and that
she’ll head on alone. He won’t leave her and in frustration says that she’d been
wrong about everything. Specifically, at the Eye of the World they didn’t face
the Dark One but Ishamael, the Betrayer of Hope and the Dark One’s top lieutenant.
They set him free. She says that every Forsaken is incredibly powerful and that
he might be freeing the others. Lan senses that Moiraine is trying to drive him
away and says he won’t go. Moiraine tells him Rand is alive, knocking him for a
loop. Alana and her crew arrive, Moiraine telling him that Alana will take his
bond by force if they have to. Lan demands to know if she ever saw him as an
equal, and she says they never were. She rides off, and he’s clearly broken
inside.
In town, Perrin is woken from a
peaceful sleep by soldiers in skull masks and armor. He and the Shienarens try
to fight them off. They get the upper hand with these strange raiders, Loial
throwing around six of them that tried to tie him up. They’re finally beaten by
the raider’s secret weapon, four women, two in collars and clearly subservient
to the others. They Channel at the group, throwing them back with wind. They
wake up several hours later during the day. Perrin is dragged into a crowd and forced
to his knees. A woman and the man in black, Ishamael, are brought in on a giant
model throne. The soldiers all salute them. The woman asks are they ready. Ishamael
sees Perrin in the crowd and says they’ll have to be.
Rand goes into work again and hears
the Orderly, Yann, was attacked and he’s taking over his duties while he recovers.
He’s lead out into the garden to meet his new charge… Logain Ablar. Oh, Rand
you tricky red head you.
I think this was a good follow up
to last time. We got to meet a new major character in Elayne Trakand. If you
read my Rand al’Thor hero profile for a few years back, you’d know that in the
books she had a small cameo appearance in the first one when Rand went to see Logain
being brought through Caemlyn and accidentally falling into her private garden
and meeting her brothers. They obviously moved Logain’s bit to Tar Valon for
the show, so the Daughter-Heir got her first appearance delayed. I really enjoy
Ceara Coveney as Elayne. In the books, Elayne came across as a bit more
confident than her show counterpart, but I think they’re trying to play up her
social awkwardness a little to make it clear just how badly she wants friends
and to go on adventures and such. Make her more sheltered to make her desires
more obvious, ya get me? Her bit with Sheriam is great too, as it highlights
her best quality of always trying to lead by example. She let a rule be broken,
so she’ll suffer the consequences, not the person trying to please a literal Queen.
They also set up her love of tinkering and trying to figure things out.
Something the books didn’t do until like the fifth one. Jordan seemed to
struggle to find something to set Elayne apart from Egwene and Nynaeve besides
making her the rich girl. Seeing Egwene struggle a bit with Nynaeve was good too.
In the books, a big character arc for both is figuring out how they stand with
each other post being Wisdom and apprentice. Nynaeve obviously expects to be
the one in charge in their relationship, but Egwene bucks hard against that, especially
when Nynaeve’s bullheadedness gets them in trouble. Her bonding with Elayne is
good too, as they’re supposed to be fast friends. Nynaeve investigating
Liandrin is interesting… The plot line of Liandrin having a secret son that she
looks after because he aged normally and she’s still super youthful is show
only so I have no idea where this is going. I liked catching up with Rand in
Cairhien. Our Reborn hero working at an insane asylum felt a little odd but
seemed fitting to me. I thought that maybe he was trying to understand madness
a bit better to prepare himself for his symptoms to get worse. He attacked an Orderly
who was being a dick to an old man with PTSD because… well, you really should
attack people that mock the mentally ill. But then Logain shows up at the end
and then ya realize the whole plan was getting to him. Yann being an asshole
just made targeting him easy. Perrin’s story line is ramping up. The visions he’s
having are unique to the show, some of us are speculating they’ve combined his
connection to wolves with another power called Sniffing. Sniffing is a wholly
unique skill held by a character cut from the show named Hurin. He could “smell”
violence and follow trails created by violent people. It’s how they followed
Fain in the books. Take that skill and give it to someone with Wolf powers
connected to another world and you have wolf vision. Or so I take it. Him getting
caught by the Seanchan, the invading army teased at the end of season 1, is
very much not good. But more on that next time. Mat has the most chill storyline
thus far, just being stuck in a cell, trying to get out and meeting Min. The
two should be an interesting pairing this season, as they didn’t interact much
in the books but had complementary personalities there and here. The vision Min
had is worrying, but we’ll need to wait and see on that one. So yeah, good episode
2. See you next time for number 3.
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