Winter's Heart, Chapter 35 - With the Choedan Kal
(THIS PROJECT IS SPOILER FREE! No spoilers past the chapter you click on. Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index and a primer on The Wheel of Time, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)
(Aes Sedai icon) In which this really is happening already and we get no denouement at all.
PERSPECTIVE: A newly retraumatized Rand and co leave Far Madding, and Cads has arranged for all of them to be blotted from the records, as if they never came or left. Rand retrieves Callandor from where he buried it under an inverted illusion weave, and tells everyone he plans to cleanse the taint, with Nynaeve and the Choedan Kal access keys. Some of the Aes Sedai try to argue, even Lews Therin’s voice in his head protests that they were never tested, but Cads just asks where he plans to do it. He says Shadar Logoth, and opens a gateway near that blighted city.
They all move through, and the Aes Sedai redistribute the available angreal in preparation. Rand and Nyn sit down, and each gets to feel the other's power as they try to figure out how to link. Rand takes control in the end, and starts passing saidin through a conduit of Nyn's saidar, filtering the taint into Shadar Logoth.
PERSPECTIVE: Elza Penfell watches the proceedings start, as Cads comments that the amount of the Power being channeled will be felt at least as far as Tar Valon. The group forms defensive rings around the hilltop.
PERSPECTIVE:
Riding his cart down the snowy road to Tremonsien, Barmellin wondered whether old Maglin at The Nine Rings(1) would pay what he wanted for the plum brandy in the cart behind him. He was not sanguine. She was tight with silver, Maglin was, the brandy was not very good, and this late in the winter, she might be willing to wait until spring to get better. Suddenly he realized that the day seemed very bright. Almost like summer noon instead of a winter morning. Strangest of all, the glow seemed to be coming from the huge pit beside the road where workmen from the City had been digging away until the previous year. There was supposed to be a monstrous statue down there, but he had never been interested enough to actually look for himself. Now, almost against his will, he reined in his stout mare and climbed down into the snow to trudge to the brink of the pit. It was a hundred paces deep and ten times as far across, and he had to put his hands in front of his face against the blinding glare that came from the bottom. Squinting through his fingers, he could make out a glowing ball, like a second sun. Abruptly, it came to him that this must the One Power. With a strangled yell he lumbered back through the snow to his cart and scrambled up, flailing Nisa with the reins to get her moving even as he was trying to jerk her head around to head back to his farm. He was going to stay in his own house and drink that brandy himself. All of it.
PERSPECTIVE:
Strolling lost in thought, Timna barely saw the fallow fields that covered all the hillsides but one around her. Tremalking was a large island, and this far from the sea, the wind carried no hint of salt, yet it was the Atha’an Miere that troubled her. They refused the Water Way, yet Timna was one of the Guides chosen to protect them from themselves, if possible. That was very difficult now, with them all in an uproar over this Coramoor of theirs. Very few remained on the island. Even the Governors, always fretting at being away from the sea as the Atha’an Miere did, had set sail to search for him in any craft they could find. Suddenly the one unplowed hill caught her eye. A great stone hand stuck out of the ground clasping a clear sphere as large as a house. And that sphere was shining like a glorious summer sun.(2) All thoughts of the Atha’an Miere gone, Timna gathered her cloak and sat down on the ground, smiling to think that she might see the fulfillment of prophecy and the end of Illusion.(3)
PERSPECTIVE: Cyndane feels saidar and knows Lews Therin found someone to use the female access key. She's angry: if he hadn't spurned her, she would have faced down the Dark One and the Creator with him. She feels Moridin touching her cour'souvra, and she weaves a gateway to near where Rand is working.
PERSPECTIVE: Cads holds a shield over Rand and Nyn, and lightning starts to strike it. Rand's eyes are glazed over, and she wonders if he knows what's going on around him.
PERSPECTIVE: Rand struggles to keep control, wondering how much longer he can hold on.
PERSPECTIVE: Demandred arrives in Shadar Logoth intent on stopping Rand, and hopefully killing him in the process. He realizes those protecting Rand have a ter'angreal that can locate those who channel in the vicinity, men or women, something his age never managed.(4) Two beautiful women and an old man show up, and the man attacks Demmy, who runs so he can come back somewhere else.
PERSPECTIVE: Cyndane is gatewaying around, hoping to get to Lews Therin first, hoping she can see him die.(5)
PERSPECTIVE: Osan'gar has been masquerading as Corlan Dashiva, but never considered himself to be a soldier. He doesn't want to be here, but Moridin will kill him anyway if he flees, and if Rand succeeds, the Dark One might kill them both.
PERSPECTIVE: Verin sees a woman in a colour-changing dress,(6) that sometimes even seems transparent, who must be Forsaken. Verin uses her small circle's power to try to shield the other woman, and ends up in a fight for their lives as the woman shrugs it off and counterattacks.
PERSPECTIVE: Eben Hopwil and his small circle of Aes Sedai encounter a woman wandering in the woods, holding saidin.(7) He attacks her physically, since he's linked his Power access to Daigian.
PERSPECTIVE: Cyndane sees a woman in the woods,(8) holding saidar. The woman is much stronger than Cyndane was before the Aelfinn and Eelfinn held her, and seems to have an angreal as well. Cyndane fights her, determined to see Lews Therin die.
PERSPECTIVE: Moggy is on a hill not too near the action, and sees a black dome growing over Shadar Logoth. She doesn't care who lives or dies as long as she lives, and she would like to see Graendal or Cyndane gone. She retreats to watch the action.(9)
PERSPECTIVE: Rand is sure that he and Lews Therin are both screaming, but all he can hear is a roar as the Power flows through him.
PERSPECTIVE: Cads asks Min how Rand is doing, and she thinks he's in agony. Nyn looks very weak, after hours of channeling more than the whole White Tower could channel together with every angreal and sa'angreal in their possession, so Cads Heals her.(10)
PERSPECTIVE: Osan'gar can see Narishma holding Callandor, near Rand. If he can kill Rand and take Callandor, he believes he will be named Nae'blis. He starts weaving Balefire.
PERSPECTIVE: Elza regrets fighting the Chosen but hopes the Great Lord will forgive her. She sees Dashiva on a nearby hilltop, casting balefire. Drawing on Callandor through her link with Narishma, she vaporizes the top of the hill, not realizing he's one of the Forsaken himself.(11)
PERSPECTIVE: Moggy feels no more channeling except the access key, and assumes the battle must be over. The black dome is like a mountain two miles high, and she doesn't understand why she's not afraid of it. Suddenly, something writhes up out of it, like a flame if flames could be vantablack, then it collapses in on itself and vanishes.(12) She thinks if she survives this, she'll never be afraid again.
PERSPECTIVE: Cads examines the female access key, melted and broken. The male key is intact in her saddlebags.(13) There's a hole in the forest where Shadar Logoth used to be. Rand and Nyn are unconscious, but alright, and need to recover on their own. Eben and Kumira are dead, and Sarene is in shock, but everyone else is healable, and the surviving Asha'man say that saidin is clean, though Cads wonders if the taint is totally gone. She doesn't want to lose Rand now.(14)
PERSPECTIVE:
Night fell. On the hilltop, the wind blew dust across the fragments of what had once been a ter’angreal. Below lay the tomb of Shadar Logoth, open to give the world hope. And on distant Tremalking, the word began to spread that the Time of Illusions was at an end.
The End of the Ninth Book of The Wheel of Time
=====
(1) A pretty callback to where Rand and "Selene" stayed when they found the male statue being dug up in book two. (2) So, we already knew that the female statue was on Tremalking, Rand heard it from Bayle Domon all the way back in book one. But, we've never seen it til now. More on them in a sec, but for now, interesting that a man noticed the male CK and a woman saw the female CK. Are they channelers who could learn? Or is it just coincidence? (3) So, the people of Tremalking. A sort of sub-culture to the Atha'an Miere, like the Tuatha'an to the main peoples of Randland. Something has happened, something they had some prophecy about, something related to the female Choedan Kal statue. The "Time of Illusions" coming to an end has a curiously ominous ring to it, don't you think? Haven't we seen the Aiel speak of life as if it were a dream to be awakened from? Interesting to have more than one culture relate to death in something like the same way. Only, what does it mean that it's all coming to an end? (4) Now that's a fascinating admission. (5) If we needed any further confirmation that she's Lanfear reborn and renamed, I think we have it here. GIRLIEPOP DID NOTHING WRONG EXCEPT EVERYTHING SHE DID WRONG IT'S LITERALLY FINE. (She also thinks about having been held by the 'Finn later, so, no illusions left here.) (6) Graendal's the only one whose description and mannerisms match up. (7) Aran'gar. EVERYBODY was told to show up and stop them. (8) Alivia. (9) Of course she's too much of a coward to actually put herself out there on the battlefield. (10) For all that's likely worth. (11) Literally a Darkfriend, a Black Ajah no less, killed a Forsaken to save the Dragon's life for Tarmon Gai'don, so that he can be there to fulfill the prophecies and let the Dark One win. Robert Jordan, you and your twisty mind. Hope she's right about the DO forgiving her for it. It was nice to have finally got confirmation of what was up with Dashiva and where Osan’gar was chilling, but I think it’s also worth pointing out that Elza was one of those who Verin worked her Compulsion on. So Verin has literally saved Rand’s life. Do you think she’d appreciate that? She has outright lied to us, and continued to be sus as hell, but when Cadsuane seemed to genuinely want to help Rand in her own way, Verin refrained from drugging or poisoning her. I swear she lived rent-free in my brain over all this on my first read. (12) The way the dome collapses, it seems that was the filtered-out taint. (13) YET ANOTHER instance of RJ and his "we can't just let the women be PROPER EQUAL to the men, that'd be silly". Why should the women's access key have broken? Why is the men's key still functional? That's bullshit. (14) There's literally only two pages of denouement here and that's being generous about the meaning of the word, to me. This isn't really something that happens so much as something that doesn't happen at all. Properly used, a lack of unwinding at the end of a story can be a great dramatic effect in a series. But that properly includes another caveat: sparingly. RJ typically has denouements that amount to the shortest chapters in his books, and this one goes even further than that.