In which Machin Shin is waiting at Lord Barthanes manor and at Stedding Tsofu (and Rand learns Padan Fain will be waiting for him at Toman Head), Thom faces another tragedy, Fain delivers the Horn to the High Lord Turak, Erith and the Maidens of the Spear are introduced, and the fellowship decides to travel by Portal Stone.
This is all a segue to getting the fellowship from Carhien to Toman Head in the most awesome way possible. Notwithstanding, it includes two very interesting mysteries, one very tragic turn, and the catalyst for one momentous event that happens entirely off-page.
Can we talk about the almost unbearable tragedy of Thom? His story is just tremendous storytelling by Jordan. He has this great backstory that is so full of pathos and that drives every decision he makes. The situation with his nephew led him to leave the court bard life behind to become a gleeman. The situation with his nephew led him to accompany Rand et al. The situation with his nephew led him to help Rand again in The Great Hunt and get pulled back into everything. Chatting with Rand for a few minutes, just because Rand was trying to escape the clutches of a few noblewomen, gets his lover killed and ruins his second chance at happiness. Poor, poor Rand is going to be getting people killed with just about everything he does from here on out. Poor, poor Dena gets fridged for being with the wrong person at the wrong time. Poor, poor Thom can’t help but find himself at the center of things, a very dangerous man, whatever his protestations to the contrary.
“‘I’m only an old gleeman,’ he said from the door. And Rand al’Thor is only a shepherd, but we both do what we must. ‘Who could I possibly be dangerous to?’”
It is a lovely bit of subtly storytelling by Jordan that all we get are hints that Thom kills Galldrian. The innkeeper thinks he won’t get within a hundred paces of the king, but Thom is a very dangerous man. He is also a very angry man, bursting with impotent rage at losing Dena, willing to start a civil war in exchange for unsatisfactory vengeance.
Rand, of course, will step right back into the quagmire of a Carhien torn by civil war when he returns three books later.
The two mysteries I referred to above are Machin Shin behavior in these chapters and Lord Barthanes’ demise. Rand et al. find the Black Wind waiting for them at the Waygates in both Cairhien and Stedding Tsofu. Why? And to what end? (Beyond just plot convenience, of course.) Fain encountered the Black Wind—and survived—back in The Eye of the World. Did he also gain the power to command it? That is possible, I think, but unlikely for a couple reasons. The Black Wind is an entity into itself, and unlikely to be amenable to orders from anyone. The Black Wind is also a product of the Taint acting on the Ways; Fain’s power mostly comes from Mordeth and, as we will see, that is a very different sort of capital-e Evil. But the bigger reason for thinking that Fain can’t, or at least didn’t, order the Black Wind to follow Rand is that it doesn’t suit his purposes. Fain wants Rand to follow him. The Black Wind almost prevents that. Fain has no way of knowing of the Portal Stone option.
This still leaves the mystery of why Rand twice found Machin Shin waiting for him. Coincidence can’t be the answer. The Black Wind doesn’t wait at Waygates, and it certainly wouldn’t by sheer happenstance be waiting at two different Waygates at just the time Rand et al. open them. Something had to have attracted it. There are three possibilities, I think: it was attracted by the presence of ta’veren, it was attracted by the presence of a channeler, or it was attracted by the presence of the Dragon Reborn. We can dispense with the first option based on what we learn later—Perrin is able to travel the Ways without finding the Black Wind waiting. If the second means any channeler, or even any strong channeler, we can dispense with the second option. Moiraine is able to travel the ways. Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne are able to travel the Ways with Liandrin a little later in this book. It may be that the Black Wind is only attracted to male channelers. It is, after all, a product of the Dark One’s Taint (*snicker*). There is a shared problem with that hypothesis and the third, that the Black Wind is attracted to the Dragon Reborn. Rand was able to travel the Ways in The Eye of the World.
The answer, I think, is tied to Fain’s encounter with the Black Wind. He did not gain the power to order its movements. But he did take something from it, and it from him. The Black Wind gained Fain’s ability to locate Rand and urge to hunt him. That is why it is waiting for him at two separate Waygates, even though it doing so does not further Fain’s ends. It is acting out of a mere compulsion.
For the second mystery, Barthanes passes a message on from Fain to Rand and gets torn limb from limb for his trouble. Who tore him limb from limb (the why is pretty obvious)? The M.O. fits the gholam. If so, I believe this is its first appearance. It will be quite some time until we see him again, so the timing makes me question whether it really was the gholam. But, at the same time, tearing limb from limb isn’t necessarily a Myrddraal’s M.O. The Myrddraal, though, like the gholam, could have gotten to Barthanes unseen (his death is only discovered by his servants in the morning). Presumably he was killed for aiding Fain and/or in the course of being questioned on Fain’s movements—once Fain takes the Horn, he is officially rogue.
I’m not going to dwell on it, but we get a nice bit of worldbuilding with our first visit to a stedding settled by Ogier.
The Seanchan are frequently presented as an ultra-competent society, and people often give them more credit than they are due, but Fain immediately recognizes that “[t]his court of Seandar sounded like a place where his plans and skills would find fertile soil.”
Fain leaves a message for Rand (through Lord Barthanes) that he will “hound your blood, and your people, and those you love until you will face him.” Fain makes good on his threat two books later with the Scouring of the Two Rivers. You can find all of my reread posts at The Wheel of Time Reread Index.
