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butterflydm · 10 months

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wot reread: a memory of light (chapter 37)

spoilers for the last book, a memory of light

I am going to do this enormous chapter a little differently than the previous chapters (basically so that I can refer to this post later and understand all the various threads and not get them mixed up with each other). Instead of going in chronological order by each event presented to me, I'm going to have different PoV sections and then have my thoughts under each of those.

Egwene & Gawyn (& Galad)

Gawyn is exhausted, despite the week that they all just took to prepare for this last push of the battle. That's not a good sign. Pretty sure that's the Bloodknife ring sapping his strength. Yeah, when he puts the ring on again "his strength returned". (From TGS: "One never committed Bloodknives unless one was very serious, for they did not return from their missions." "The incredible abilities came at a cost, however, for the rings leeched life from their hosts, killing them in a matter of days. Removing the ring would slow that process slightly but once activated - done by touching a drop of one's own blood to the stone ring while wearing it - the process was irreversible.") He's already dead. He's just still walking around. Oh, hon.

"[Egwene] hesitated for a moment, looking through the gateway to Mat's command post. Egwene met the eyes of the Seanchan woman across the table, where she sat imperiously on her throne. I have not finished with you, Egwene thought." A very mean thing for Sanderson to write here, considering.

From her sense in the bond, she believes that Gawyn has gone off "to join the Andoran army" and sends Bryne to fetch him. Then she assigns Siuan to go "join Mat and the Seanchan Empress and listen with ears accustomed to hearing what is not spoken". Siuan calls Egwene a legacy that will shape "what is to come".

"I'll help watch this Seanchan woman for you, maybe help poor Min crawl out of the fang-fish net she's found herself in." Good luck, Siuan!

Egwene realizes, too late, that she's sent Bryne off to the wrong place, as once she travels to her own new location, that Gawyn is actually "on the Heights themselves, where the Shadow held the strongest."

Honestly, using the Special Assassin Rings to try to commit a Special Assassination on the leader of the Shadowspawn forces sounds like... a good idea? Gawyn knows that the original Bloodknives were doing a very good job specifically murdering Aes Sedai, because that was the crime that he was investigating when he found them in the first place. I also wonder if a lot of people forgot or missed that this attempt to go kill Demandred is not when Gawyn first activated the ring and signed his own death warrant (I bet that I missed it during my first read too). That he first activated the ring back when he and Egwene were pinned down by the Sharans and death seemed right around the corner for both of them. Gawyn's death has been irreversible since chapter 23.

"Once, perhaps, he would have done this for the pride of the battle and the chance to pit himself against Demandred. That was not his heart now. His heart was the need. Someone had to fight this creature, someone had to kill him or they would lose this battle. They could all see it. Risking Egwene or Logain would be too great a gamble. Gawyn could be risked. No one would send him to do this -- no one would dare -- but it was necessary."

He isn't able to get the assassin's blow off on Demandred and it looks like a key element is because Demandred detected the 'weave' that the ter'angreal is using on him. He calls it Night's Shade and confirms that it "leaks your life away".

I wonder why Demandred's face seems "eerily familiar" to Gawyn? I can't think of why that might be. lol, why does Demandred call everyone "little"? "Little man." "Little queen". "Little swordsman". What is your obsessions with everyone's heights? (wait, is he the one that was SLIGHTLY shorter than LTT and pissed off about it? as opposed to Sammael, who was considerably shorter than LTT and pissed off about it?)

haha, Demandred is CONVINCED that Lews Therin is the one directing the battle on the other side, either using Mat's face as a Mask of Mirrors or by sending messages through Mat. He has a spy in Mat's camp, probably, but is convinced that Rand is there somewhere, hiding. I mean, I kinda wish he were, just so that Rand and Mat COULD HAVE A REAL SCENE TOGETHER, but Demandred and I will both have to be disappointed. But it's kinda funny that it feels like Gawyn was rejecting the idea that he is "following" Rand in, like, a philosophical way, but Demandred meant "Lews Therin is literally your battle commander".

Gawyn loses the duel. And I like Gawyn this time around, so I'm much more emotionally affected by it. That's so rude. 😭

Egwene fights to reach Gawyn, feeling how close to death he is. 😭😭

Galad is on the Heights, fighting against Sharan channelers on Mat's orders, wearing a copy of the foxhead medallion. Galad also keeps getting confronted with things about 'his' Children of Light that are making him go 'yikes'. He's killing the Sharan channelers because it makes sense for the battle and he was ordered to do it... but the Children are happy to have an excuse to kill channelers and have some... real strange beliefs that kinda make channelers akin to vampires (...burying the head separately or they will rise again?).

One of the Children finds Gawyn, near death, and brings Galad to him. As he dies, Gawyn is talking over his regrets, starting with regretting staying at the White Tower back in book 4. He tells Galad to tell Egwene that he loves her, and Galad reassures him that Egwene already knows. Galad gets very cold inside when he realizes that his brother is dying. "He had seen men die, he had lost friends. This hurt more. Light, but it did."

When he tries to tell Gawyn that he needs to leave, so that he doesn't leave Galad without a brother, Gawyn tells him about Rand. And he tells Galad not to hate Rand. "I always hated him but I stopped." And Gawyn dies. 😭😭😭

Egwene feels it when it happens. After sending out a burst of flames at the nearby enemies as the pain consumes her, she collapses for the moment (there is a group of Whitecloaks nearby so she was very very close to reaching Gawyn before he died. That is heartbreaking).

Egwene wakes up after having been removed from the battlefield. She feels empty and heartbroken but, especially after she overhears how badly the battle is going, she knows that she does not have the time for grief or mourning, not now. "Egwene al'Vere lost a man she loved, and she felt him die through a bond. The Amrylin has sympathy for Egwene al'Vere, as she would have sympathy for any Aes Sedai dealing with such loss. And then, in the face of the Last Battle, the Amrylin would expect that woman to pick herself up and return to the fight." It's interesting how (as Rand's foil), Egwene is both the same kind of hero that Rand is, but she's also the kind of hero that Rand expected himself to be but actually ends up not being. Rand's Last Battle is philosophical; Egwene's Last Battle is physical (which is to say, the show gets another point right in how they decided to distribute episode eight out to its protagonists -- with Rand's fight ultimately being in his head while Egwene's is out on the battlefield; that's what Rafe & co meant when they said they were doing a whole-series adaptation and not just adapting book-by-book. they looked at the actual endgame needs of the characters and put in the work up-front to make sure that those would vibe with the set-up).

18. In order to keep herself balanced on the battlefield, Egwene decides that she needs to bond a Warder, though she is far from emotionally ready, and she asked "Leilwin Shipless" if she will accept the duty, getting immediate agreement. And Egwene goes back out to fight again.

19. "Egwene led an assault the likes of which had not been seen in millennia." There's some intense fighting and then Egwene comes face-to-face with Taim, who calls himself M'Hael now. There is an intense battle scene. The battle involves a lot of balefire being tossed around by Taim and, in the back of her mind, Egwene ponders the notion of whether or not the weave really is impossible to counter. Egwene didn't need the help of anyone else's ancient memories in order to rediscover Traveling, after all. That was all her, figuring it out from basic principles.

20. Egwene and her Aes Sedai have been fighting on the Heights for hours. Taim reappears, pouring balefire into her line of Aes Sedai and killing dozens. Egwene thinks again about what Perrin said in TAR about balefire -- "it's only a weave" -- and considers how balefire is considered a one-of-a-kind sort of thing. But what if it isn't? What if it works like any other weave? With the One Power, there are always two halves. Logically, balefire should have an equal and opposite counterpart, just as saidar has saidin. "If a weave exists, so must its opposite". And when Taim strikes again with balefire, she counters with this idea of this weave that she has created, one that is the opposite of balefire. Something that will reinforce the Pattern instead of unraveling it.

She decides that it is called the Flame of Tar Valon, and she uses it to kill Taim.

21. Egwene realizes that she's reached the point of no return -- if she releases her grip on saidar, then she will burn out. There is too much inside her right now. More than she can hold. So she can let go and burn out and survive... or she can take that power and use it.

She tells Leilwin née Egeanin one last command -- find the seals and keep them until she sees 'the moment the light shines'. Then she wraps her up in Air and shoves her through a gateway, releasing their bond.

She closed her eyes and drew in the power. More than a woman should be able to, more than was right. Far beyond safety, far beyond wisdom. This sa'angreal had no buffer to prevent this.

Her body was spent. She offered it up and became a column of light, releasing the Flame of Tar Valon into the ground beneath her and high into the sky. The Power left her in a quiet, beautiful explosion, washing across the Sharans and sealing the cracks created by her fight with M'Hael.

Egwene's soul separated from her collapsing body and rested upon that wave, riding it into the Light.

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Before I move on to the next set of plot-threads, I want to ponder a question: why on earth does Gawyn get blamed for Egwene deciding to go out in a blaze of glory? He died hours ago. She bonded a new Warder. She doesn't die out of rage over her Warder's death here. To quote Gawyn: [Her] heart was the need. Egwene looked at what the battle needed from her at that moment, and she made a choice.

Once upon a time, Lews Therin stood on a mountain after losing the love of his life, and his despair created destruction around him. Once upon a time, Egwene stood on a battlefield after losing the love of her life, and her sacrifice healed the destruction around her.

Last time around, Lews Therin was fighting the wrong battle -- and the wrong person was the one fighting in the battle.

re: Egwene dying at all. I actually do think that having one of the Emond's Field Five die was a good choice. Would I have picked Egwene as the one? Probably not. otoh, it kinda seems like the other four were all mentioned as still being alive in Jordan's epilogue, so Egwene was the only one who could die (since the epilogue was considered basically sacred). idk I'm a big softie who has a hard time killing off characters so I'm not really the person to talk to about that subject, lol.

Rand (& Nynaeve)

TDO's attack against Rand starts out as an attempt to break him down and shatter him, but Rand resists. "It was as if the Dark One was shredding him while at the same time trying to crush him entirely, coming at Rand from infinite directions, all at once, in a wave."

When that fails, TDO then 'weaves' a reality for Rand to see. A world 'remade' in TDO's image, where the taint overlays everything, the Blight is everywhere, and Rand has been forgotten in his failure. TDO makes him watch his father die, and then Dannil leads him back to Emond's Field, where a Turned Nynaeve is waiting with channelers and Fades to Turn Rand too. It's an attempt to make Rand feel despair and give up, but when Nynaeve & co begin the process of trying to Turn Rand to the Shadow, he pushes back, rejecting this reimagining of the world that TDO has created. Hmm, Rand finds threads here that are more varied than the five threads of the One Power, calls them "the fabric of creation" and uses them to channel a different reality.

We now get introduced to the world that Rand reimagines. "He passed from nothingness into majesty."

Gorgeous buildings. Wide roads but nothing driving on it, only people walking around, in vibrant clothing. Now, instead of the memory of Turned Chosen enslaving and tormenting the Two Rivers, Rand has willed into being memories of Ogier coming "to the Two Rivers to repay Rand for his sacrifice, intending to build a monument here, [but] the town's leaders had wisely requested help improving their city instead".

Rand doesn't quite imagine paradise entirely -- though he's integrated the Seanchan into his vision of peace here, he doesn't know enough about the Sharans to do the same, so there are still "campaigns" there. And there is a monument dedicated to the fallen of the Last Battle with "familiar" faces that Rand isn't quite willing to look at. Like TDO had done earlier, "He'd built this reality out of the threads of what could be, of mirrors of the world as it now played out".

The knowledge that other people are out there dying and sacrificing for a potential future shakes Rand -- he wanted so much for his sacrifice to be the only sacrifice, which was always going to be impossible. But when he lets that thought enter his mind, this vision of reality starts to get eaten up by TDO and Rand has to force it back into place.

It is the anniversary of the hundred years of peace that Rand had wanted in the Dragon's Peace that he had the nations sign before (and during, in the case of the Seanchan) the Last Battle. Lady Adora, Perrin's granddaughter, is the mayor of Emond's Field. Rand slips past her and into the school. A school for anyone to come and learn, no matter what their background. TDO taunts him again for believing that he can eliminate suffering entirely. So we're kinda doing a "the perfect is the enemy of the good" argument here. Is "better" enough when it isn't "perfect"? And is "perfect" only ever a lie? TDO attacks Rand again, and this world fades back into a faint mirror of possibility. The heart of the Last Battle is a philosophical argument about the nature of reality, and of human nature.

As he stands with the great shadow of TDO, Rand can see the armies outside fighting. TDO is mostly outside of time, except wherever it touches the Pattern. There it is bound to the linear nature of time. TDO tells Rand to watch as the people fighting in his name die, and spins another vision for him.

The new world-possibility that TDO spins for Rand looks very much like the regular world, with some minor differences like steam-drawn carriages driving around. He's in Caemlyn this time, and he can still see the hole in the wall from when Talmanes blew the hole to escape from the Shadowspawn, but there's a bustle and a life around.

He goes to a fruit seller, and she mentions her fresh peaches for sale. "Peaches," Rand said, aghast. Everyone knew those were poisonous. She tells him that they are safe now; the toxin has been removed. Hey, isn't it peach blossoms that Rand made bloom back in Ebou Dar? So that was actually meant as something of a subtle threat, though Tuon took as an Important Omen. As they're talking, a street urchin steals one of the fruits and starts to run off, and the fruit-seller pulls out a rod and does something that instantly kills him. When Rand reacts in horror, she acts puzzled, asking him if "it" belonged to him. Yikes! Yeah, definitely still a very Bad World, Rand. When she asks him what faction he belongs to, he takes that as his cue to leave, very quickly.

He searches Caemlyn to find the Queen's Blessing and, with relief, sees that Basel Gill is working inside. So this one is not a hundred years in the future like the last one. Gill says that they're in the Fourth Age and that the Last Battle was won. After Gill tells him that he'll get him a faction symbol, Rand notices a nothingness that signifies TDO's presence and questions it. This is a world where TDO has tricked people into believing that they won the Last Battle.

When Gill returns, it's with guards to rob Rand for his fancy coat. Rand realizes that TDO has taken everyone's consciences/compassion. This is a world without any spark of 'light' inside people's hearts, only Shadow. Rand tells TDO that seeing this only makes him want to fight harder and now he will show TDO a world "without Shadow".

In the cavern, Nynaeve works to save Alanna's life. All her Power is still wrapped up in the link with Rand, so she has to sew and use her herbs and all her know-how from being the Wisdom of Emond's Field.

As Rand tries to weave together the possibility of a world without the Shadow, he finds that the threads resist him and he wonders if that is because of how unlikely such a world is. iirc, Rand's upcoming dreamworld is a moment that the show has already given us great set-up for with the fantasy that Rand gets from Ishamael in episode 8 and is another illustration of how far ahead Rafe & co were thinking with all their choices in the first season.

He chooses to create Caemlyn, to wash the taste out of his mouth of having seen the horrible vision that TDO showed him last time. Trees are in full bloom, there isn't a cloud in the sky, and children don't recognize what a sword is. He asks to visit the queen and is directed towards the gardens, though he first travels through a hallway of magic mirrors, letting him see this paradise reflected in other lands: a peaceful meadow in the Mountains of Mists, the Stone a museum instead of a fortress, the rebuilt towers of Malkier, the Chora Fields of the Age of Legends surrounding the city of Rhuidean as he hears Aiel voices lifted in song. No locks on the doors. No more need for money -- "a nearly forgotten eccentricity". Channelers create food for everyone and Aes Sedai heal anyone who suffers injury.

His own grave in the Blasted Lands, where his body had been burned after the Last Battle, overgrown with leaves, grass, and flowers. Rand pauses at this window for a long moment before he moves onward into the gardens.

Elayne sits alone in the gardens, not too far from the garden wall where he once fallen in and met her for the first time. "Elayne was as beautiful as she'd been when they'd last parted. She was no longer pregnant, of course. A hundred years had passed since the Last Battle. She appeared not to have aged a day." When Elayne sees him, she greets him in surprise.

18. She wonders if her daughter is using the Mask of Mirrors to play a prank on her, but Rand sinks down to one knee before her and tells her that he's real. And, as he looks into her eyes and listens to her voice, he realizes that "something was wrong".

19. "That simpering tone, that vapid reaction... Elayne had never been like that." He gets more disturbed as she continues, talking about Aviendha spending her week off from singing to do "nursery duty". "Aviendha. Tending children and singing to chora trees. There was nothing wrong with that, really. Why shouldn't she enjoy such activities? But it was wrong, too. He thought Aviendha would be a wonderful mother, but to imagine her seeking to spend all day playing with other people's children..."

20. When he looks into Elayne's eyes, he sees the same kind of blankness that he's seen in those forcibly Turned to the Shadow. He accuses TDO of having done something to her. But TDO asks him, "Did you think that removing me from their lives would leave them unaltered?"

21. "She was not herself... because Rand had taken away her ability to be herself." Again! This resonates so well with what was set up in episode eight! Rafe is playing the long game!

22. I do have to... interject a side note: this scene really couldn't be done with Min because... this horror that Rand accidentally did to Elayne, stripping her of her autonomy in an attempt to create a world without Shadow... is basically what Min did to herself in LoC.

He’ll have to take me as I am, [Min] thought, twitching the reins irritably. I’m not changing for any man. Only, her clothes would have been as plain as any farmer’s not that long ago, her hair had not been in ringlets almost to her shoulders, and a small voice whispered, You’ll be whatever you think he wants you to be.

Honestly, that's a big part of why I dislike how prophecy is used in a couple of the romances (Min->Rand and Mat->Tuon) because it feels like it's been used to strip away their autonomy and yet this loss of their self doesn't get treated like a horror even though their 'choice' to chase Rand/marry Tuon was done because they believed they had no choice.

23. Rand weeps in despair at all the loss of life that is going on in the Last Battle outside of Shayol Ghul. "He should have been able to protect them. Why couldn't he? Against his will, the names began to replay in his mind. The names of those who had died for him, starting with only women, but now expanded to each and every person he should have been able to save - but hadn't." But he refuses to give in to TDO's offer to 'stop fighting and rest'. And TDO spins another possibility for him...

24. The next offer that TDO makes is 'nothing'. Aka oblivion for all of existence. He claims that it is the same as the 'peace of the void' that Rand seeks so often. Rand gives the offer due consideration, and then rejects it.

25. Rand feels Egwene's death and it shakes him hard. Egwene's name is added to the list in his mind, and despair claws at him as TDO gloats that the dead belong to him.

26. Rand is watching the whole battle play out -- he sees Elayne (captive and alone), he see Rhuarc (his mind forfeit), Mat (desperate, facing down horrible odds), and Lan (riding to his death).

Demandred's words dug at him. The Dark One's pressure continue to tear at him.

Rand had failed.

But in the back of his mind, a voice. Frail, almost forgotten.

Let go.

Elayne & Mat (& Fortuona & Min & Galad)

Elayne is heading into the main Seanchan camp to talk to Mat about why he appears to be changing the battle plans without letting her know. Along the way, they deal with some Draghkar and Elayne deliberately deafens her side so that they will be able to ignore their song. After this, she's approached by a sul'dam and damane pair and, reluctantly, allows the damane to heal her ears. Elayne is, btw, wearing sturdy boots.

Elayne has also been paying attention to how the Seanchan behave, and so she does not talk to any of the sul'dam herself, because she's noticed that they care a LOT about who talks to who. This sul'dam in particular is highborn, Elayne suspects from the shaven sides of her head, so she'll definitely feel insulted by Elayne not being willing to speak to her. <3

Elayne also notes here that the Seanchan highborn seem to dislike the idea of being healed with the Power ("Why any of you would want to be Healed by an animal is beyond me," the sul'dam says). But she also points out that there's a gap between what the Seanchan claim is true and what they actually seem to do -- they say they disapprove of healing but are having their damane learn the weaves.

Mat and Elayne's relationship seems to be fairly healthy here which honestly is fascinating given... you know. Tuon and the whole Seanchan defection. Elayne insults Mat when she greets him, but he finds it amusing, just as she suspected that he would. He's made up a throne for her in Andoran red-and-gold, extra cushioned, and with a still-steaming cup of tea waiting for her! Husband behavior! Not the kind of ~husband behavior~ that Mat derided all throughout TGS but actual "I care about your comfort" behavior.

She notes that his clothing "smelled of some kind of compromise" -- Tuon agreed to let Mat wear clothing in the style that he preferred as long as it was silk? Elayne also notes that he's wearing a pink ribbon around his hat. And that is also fascinating because Mat had two very specific memories about Tylin's (pink) ribbons in his second chapter in this book (right before he saw Tuon again), and they were both extremely negative. The first time was when his scarf around his neck reminded him of "a ribbon that felt like a chain" and the second was his flashback to the pink ribbons when he saw Tylin's headboard/bed. So for Mat to put a pink ribbon around his hat is... interesting. A reminder of the chains that he's still wearing? We're not in his PoV, so we don't get his reasoning, and I don't think he ever thinks about it in his own PoV.

"All in all, Elayne was impressed by how easily the scout mixed his obeisance and his report. She was also sickened. No ruler should demand such of her subjects. A nation's strength came from the strength of its people; break them, and you were breaking your own back."

I am also really really curious by what (silent) Fortuona might be thinking of the casual & intimate way that Mat and Elayne are talking to each other here, given how jealous she's gotten in the past. Elayne noted when she entered the tent that Fortuona was present ("dressed in enough green silk to supply a shop in Caemlyn for two weeks" and with Min standing silently at her side) but has not engaged with her at all.

"You spent this whole week planning with us, and you knew the entire time you'd throw [the plans] out with the dishwater." Anyway, Mat says that he didn't know the entire time, but that he needs to keep the plans in his head if they want them to be safe from the Forsaken. Also, Elayne, in contrast to most of the people who have interacted with Mat recently, is able to figure out what he's thinking just from a couple of micro-expressions.

But it's interesting/frustrating the implied changes that have happened over the course of this week of off-screen planning -- aka Tuon compromising with Mat. Because it happens off-screen, we don't actually find out why Tuon was willing to compromise - is it because, with all his friends around, she's realized that it would be impossible to control him with the methods she would use if they were alone, because he could just... walk fifty feet away and hang out with his powerful friends instead of being stuck with her if she pushes him too far (as he did in the previous chapter when she was trying to force him to sit in judgement)? Has she actually had off-screen character development (if so, stop having important emotional moments happen off-screen!)? We just don't know.

Mat is also still calling Fortuona "Tuon". And that scene ended with Elayne never, at any point, engaging with Tuon and she also never thinks of Fortuona as "Mat's wife", only as "the Seanchan Empress". Surely she has to know by this point that they're married but she Does Not Think About It. I genuinely have so many questions -- one of the primary ones being: where has Mat been sleeping this last week? Does the fact that Mat was saying "Tuon's tent" in the previous chapter mean that he has his own tent separate from hers? Tuon positioned "having sex" as a reward-type situation back when Mat first showed up in Ebou Dar, so is that time in the gardens the only time that they've had sex? Given that Tuon seems to want Min by her side constantly, if she did decide to have sex with Mat again, would she insist on Min staying in the tent with them to keep an eye out for sex-related omens? (we already know that Selucia and at least one or two other guard-slaves would likely be present) Has Mat been avoiding having sex with her or sleeping in the same tent as her so that she doesn't get another chance to steal his medallion? So many questions, absolutely nothing in the narration that gives me any hints at answers.

Okay, our first Mat PoV in this chapter is fascinating because Mat has basically the exact same thought here about Galad that he had about Tuon in an earlier chapter. Compare "[Galad] could have been a statue, with that pretty face and unchanging expression. No, statues had more life." vs "Mat shivered. He didn’t like it when Tuon got like this. That stare of hers... it seemed like the stare of another person. A person without compassion. A statue had more life to it." The Whitecloaks = Seanchan comparison is alive and well (or the Seanchan are what the Whitecloaks would be if they had the kind of continent-wide coercive power).

Min is spending all her time in the command tent whispering to Tuon. It sure feels like she swapped super-easily from being Rand's prophecy girl to being Tuon's prophecy girl (okay, okay, I'll cut her some slack since Rand did ask her to watch Fortuona). When Elayne's voice sounds "cold" here, Mat compares her to an Aes Sedai, unlike their earlier encounters. Also... it doesn't sound like Selucia is around? Did she get demoted again? Elayne also... sorta speaks to Tuon here? But then quickly swaps back to talking to Mat only lol.

Mat realizes that there's a spy either inside or just around the command tent, because of how quickly Demandred is responding to his changes.

Mat is amused by the fact that Elayne has managed to "shift" her throne around so that it's either the same height or slightly higher than Tuon's, so he hasn't ~embraced Tuon's dignity as his own~ or however the Seanchan might put it.

15. Hmm, we also have confirmation here that Mat has been... flirting (????? sexually harassing???? who knows with New Mat but probably harassing, sadly) with other Seanchan Bloods, if not in front of Tuon, then in front of people who would report to Tuon, which is another interesting piece of data to put into the puzzle. It really does seem like Mat has managed to (off the page) force a certain level of compromise into his marriage.

16. And, here, Mat slips away with just Elayne and Birgitte so that he can reassure Elayne about his plans in private, even though Tuon questions him walking away (and he doesn't even look back at her because "those eyes could drill through solid steel"). It genuinely seems like some fascinating stuff happened in that week of planning that we didn't get to see! Mat seems a lot less scared of doing things that will upset Tuon. But again, we don't know if that's actually due to a change in Mat and Tuon's relationship or if it's Mat's physical proximity to people who would unquestioningly take his side against hers that gives him new boldness.

17. He tells Elayne that he has a plan to deal with the spy that he believes is listening in at the command tent, and he goes through his entire thought process for her here, which is an astonishingly unprecedented amount of communication from Mat. So Elayne is in on his plan -- and away from the command post so that if things go wrong, she can pick another general to lead them; and he sent a message to Talmanes about his plan as well (that Talmanes signaled that he received), so the only remaining question mark for Mat is whether or not he can "coax" Tuon into doing what needs to be done.

I am going to say that I find it very interesting that when Mat is certain that there's a spy in the command tent and that their security is compromised, he finds a reason to get Elayne away from the command tent. The reason makes tactical sense, of course, but it's interesting.

18. Birgitte tells Elayne that all her older memories are gone now. Her first memories are of waking up to Nynaeve and Elayne in this world. Elayne wants to go after Birgitte, to try to comfort her, but Galad arrives. Galad isn't entirely certain why he's been sent here but he's got time to scold Elayne for being on the battlefield "in your condition". Elayne (accurately) points out that if they lose, it's gonna be a lot worse for the kids. So Elayne and Galad can talk about the kids together but Elayne and Tam can't?

19. Elayne knows Mat so well, even as she claims to despair over understanding him. "I'm convinced that Mat only acts simple so that people will let him get away with more."

20. A letter arrives for Galad from Mat, and Sanderson makes fun of himself when he has Elayne note that Mat's spelling and handwriting is much better in this letter than the one he sent her in ToM. Anyway, he's sent the copy he had of the medallion (Elayne does verify here that it's a copy and not the original) to Galad and told him to go kill as many Sharan channelers as he's capable of killing. Because he feels like "a Whitecloak" will have the stomach to go kill a bunch of channelers. When Galad agrees with Elayne that he shouldn't have a problem with "killing women" and explains that women are just as capable of evil as men are, Elayne tells him "You actually said something that doesn't make me want to strangle you." lol, ilu Elayne. Galad thinks she's joking but, no, of course not.

Characterization note: Mat never gave the medallion copy to Tuon. That was the whole reason that he'd originally held onto it after ToM, with plans to give it to Tuon to protect her. ...and then she stole his medallion and it sounds like he had to do some fast-talking to get it back. And then he never mentions or brings up the copy until this moment when he sends it to Galad.

Did Tuon's betrayal of Mat earlier in AMoL mean that he no longer trusted her with a medallion?

Did Tuon's own paranoia and mistrust screw her out of getting that extra level of protection and trust openly given from Mat, and so Mat held onto it to find another purpose for the copy instead?

21. Min apparently is still spending all her time here quietly whispering to Tuon. She's gotta be someone's little whisper, I guess. She's gotten used to it over the last few books. Anyway, Logain is here because he wants to go fight at Shayol Ghul instead of here at the "battle for the little lives of men". Or he wants to be sent against Demandred, as the "dragon's replacement". Mat finally just gives Logain permission to go fight Demandred if he wants to do it so badly.

22. Ah, here is where Mat has another willful delusion (number five? six? not sure): "What he would give to be done with all of these high heads. Mat might be one of them now, but that could be fixed. All he had to do was convince Tuon to forsake her throne and run off with him. That would not be easy, but bloody ashes, he was fighting the Last Battle. Compared to the challenge he now faced, Tuon seemed an easy knot to untie."

Made up a girl in his head, one that Fortuona will never be. Good luck with that, and all.

This does also show that Mat continues to have no interest in being part of the Seanchan hierarchy (and this is something that is backed up by his actions, like refusing to legitimize himself as the Prince of Ravens by refusing to sit in judgement of soldiers throwing themselves on the Empress's mercy). Though Mat shows signs of protectiveness and sometimes affection towards 'Tuon', he shows no signs of wanting to be involved with 'The Seanchan Empress Fortuona'. It does feel a bit like we're continuing the thread where Sanderson actually gave Mat a reason for his bizarre turnaround in CoT/KoD by having him mentally compare the fear that Tuon/the sul'dam have over channeling with the fear that Rand/male channelers have over channeling -- this is an echo of the 'Rand-friend vs Dragon Reborn-scary' battle that Mat has been having in his brain, off-and-on, ever since he first learned that Rand could channel. I wish that Sanderson had leaned into it more, but even this subtext here is more of an explanation for Mat's change in characterization in CoT than we ever got from Jordan.

I have to admit, the way that it's done does kinda remind me of BBC's Merlin -- in S1, Arthur and Merlin go through this entire character arc of Arthur looking past his prejudices about servants as he becomes Merlin's friend. And then the show aired and large parts of the audience went, "huh, kinda seems like they're in love with each other"; and so the show did a hard reset in S2 and Arthur basically went through that exact same arc with Gwen, who was always meant to be his canon love interest, and went back to being more of a jerk towards Merlin. And in WoT, Mat's struggle between caring about a person vs being put off by/scared of that person's public mask was first grounded in his friendship with Rand, but now it's basically been transferred over to Tuon instead. Basically "oh shit, this character arc makes this character look queer; better shift it over to his canon het love interest STAT".

(but imo this thread works so much better with Rand because the READERS know the real person behind the public mask; and I feel like we never really get that with Tuon -- there are hints that a real person exists but even in her own PoVs, it feels like Tuon is still mostly just The Mask)

23. Tuon signals that it's time for her and Mat to stage their fake fight about the Seanchan pulling out of the battle, picking "I can protect myself" as the issue she wants to fight over, which Mat thinks is kinda silly but whatever. "His plan with Tuon was to take a cue from what Rand had once done with Perrin". ...how did Mat find out about that? I guess from Min? Perrin was asleep and Rand was gone, so I guess it must have been from Min. I'm... pretty sure she knew the Rand & Perrin fight was fake? Or maybe Perrin told him about it during the dinner where Perrin laughed and laughed over how droll it was that Mat had married a slaver. Because Perrin and Mat got to have a reunion dinner.

24. A Gray Man attacks. I'm sorry... are we supposed to believe that this is the same Gray Man from Ebou Dar that escaped back in Mat's second chapter? Because I thought Shadowspawn (including Gray Men?) couldn't go through Gateways? Maybe this Gray Man also has Mat's non-channeling teleportation skills. Anyway, this time the Gray Man is attacking Mat just as channelers invade the command tent (so... literally proving the point that Mat had just made about how the tent was no longer secure) so Min... throws herself at Tuon to protect her? Why is Min's first instinct "protect the head slaver"? Why is Min in the tank for the Seanchan so quickly?

Min also manages to knock over Tuon's ten-foot tall throne, so it sounds like it's actually made of pretty flimsy materials. That kinda feels like an unintentional metaphor -- looks imposing but is basically paper mache. lol.

25. Anyway, this is the first time Tuon shows any shred of an actual... like... positive emotion towards Mat? (I don't count "laughing at him because she views him as a brainless sex toy" as a positive emotion) So I guess we should celebrate that. Because when everyone gets attacked, Tuon runs over to try to help Mat with the Gray Man, "growling softly in an almost feral way". Once again, I am deeply curious about the mysterious changes that happened in their relationship during that skipped over week of planning, that resulted in Tuon compromising with Mat and now appearing to actually give a shit that he might die (... or she might just be possessive and not want to lose her new favorite toy? But I will choose to extend the benefit of the doubt).

26. And, once again, Min's entire priority list seems to be Tuon. ?????? Why are you so obsessed with her? Since we're in your PoV right now, could you explain to the readers why you're so deep in the tank for the Seanchan and Fortuona? Would love a reason. Anyway, she can't reach her new-found love, Fortuona, so she slips out of the tent to see if she can help any other way, and runs into Siuan.

27. When Min tells her that she needs to go find Bryne because that's the only way she'll survive, Siuan says that she can't leave because "Cauthon is in danger." Hey, you were willing to call him 'Mat' back in book three. But anyway, she says, "If Cauthon falls, this battle is lost! I don't care if we both die from this. We must help. Move!" So. Siuan. The tent is on fire. Would you say that you were there to help Mat "when the flames are high?" Just asking.

28. Okay, there's a whole group of Gray Men attacking Mat, so we're not supposed to think it was the one from Ebou Dar. But that's a gun that never went off, now that I think about it.

29. MIN! Yelling at the terrified damane to help when her sul'dam is dead is pointless if you don't FREE HER from the collar. She isn't capable of channeling without her sul'dam's permission. You should know this. YOU WERE IN FALME WITH EGWENE! Egwene explained all of this to you! (also, I think Min left the poor nameless damane to die in the burning tent, since she would also be incapable of running away on her own if she's still leashed? Slave-masters always get rescued before slaves, after all, and Min has yet to actually voice any objections to slavery since she has joined up with the Seanchan)

30. Anyway, Min successfully throws a knife at the remaining Gray Man and Mat hauls an unconscious Tuon up over his shoulder, and we have sadly saved the head slaver's life yet again. "Never had [Min] been so happy to see a knife fly true." ????? I mean, I guess the idea is that saving Tuon means that Mat is willing to leave the burning tent but still... didn't she once save Rand's life during some event or other? Or maybe I imagined that and this is the first time Min's knife skills have ever been useful, idk.

31. Oh, and Siuan is dead. Happened when Min wasn't looking. So we traded Siuan's life for Tuon's. Not worth it. Min gets a break from being the Distressed Damsel because Rand isn't around and so Tuon gets assigned the role. I feel like... maybe the narrative should have focused on whatever it was that Siuan was doing to help there, instead of what Min did? Also, it seems somewhat convenient that Siuan died before she got a good look at Tuon, because Siuan has a Talent for seeing ta'veren.

32. I wish... I really wish that Sanderson had given us the compromise conversation between Tuon and Mat. I wish that we'd actually gotten that conversation on the page, instead of just implying that something has changed because Elayne notices the effects. Because then maybe I would also give a shit about Tuon instead of just kinda wishing that someone would let one of these assassins take her out.

33. Okay, our first ~Fortuona~ PoV since the week of planning that appeared to have led to compromises in her marriage with Mat. Let's see how things stand with little miss slaver. She refuses to be healed by damane herself, though she seems vaguely tolerant of the idea of other people being healed by them.

34. I have to roll my eyes over Fortuona thinking about how her slave-guard's 'honor' depends on her fatally punishing them for their failures. It's like how she pretended that she was the one who most regretted having had Selucia beaten a time or two back in her initial intro PoV, rather than the actual person who got their ass whipped. It's just toxic brain-vomit that speaks of how deeply conditioned Fortuona is by her culture. If she actually cared about any of them as people (she doesn't, of course; she cares about them as property that she owns) then she would care about trying to dismantle the part of their brainwashing culture that says that their lives should be forfeit if they have failed her.

Anyway, she assigns them to go off to be suicide troops in the battle. Oh, and Selucia is here now, in the aftermath, with an injury. So I guess she in the tent that whole time, it's just that no one mentioned her. Poor Selucia. She really has gone back to being nothing but Tuon's Voice.

35. Fortuona raises "Darbinda" aka Min to the Blood for saving her and Mat's life, and Min isn't impressed enough for her liking (I'm also not ever going to be using that name for Min again). "How like [Mat] she was. Stubbornly humble, these mainlanders. They were actually proud - proud - of their low-born heritage. Baffling." Have you- have you considered having an actual conversation with one of them about why? And about the name thing too -- both Min and Mat are people who actively choose to go by shortened versions of their names. Maybe ask them why they don't consider forcible re-naming to be an honor (and Fortuona should know that Mat feels that way, since she glared at him and willed him not to argue when she re-named him).

Though, of course, given that Fortuona Must Always Have Slaves Around Her at all times, having a conversation like that with Mat or Min becomes a bit trickier, because if they give good answers to her questions about why they don't care about being part of the Blood, Fortuona's slaves will hear those answers. That's a major downside to the whole "nothing is private (when you have slaves)" lifestyle that Fortuona is rocking. She probably doesn't even really understand what having privacy would be like (once again, I have to say what a huge mistake it was for Jordan to have Selucia along on the circus journey, because it meant that Tuon was still wallowing in her toxic slave-owner culture during that entire time period, because she always had a slave on tap to make sure that she kept The Mask up at all times). Because though Tuon doesn't see her slaves as people, she does always need to be The Owner when they are around (which is always).

36. Mat looks over to her and gives her a nod, to let her know that they should have their fake break-up fight now. Alas that it isn't a real break-up fight. So they fight over how Mat should have warned them all sooner that the tent wasn't safe. Interesting note: though many of the Seanchan look at Mat with "accusing" eyes after she lays her charge, Galgan frowns and Fortuona notes that he doesn't seem to agree with her accusation. "Impressive, that [Mat] had converted Galgan so quickly." Anyway, after a super-quick fight where Mat is just like "okay, fine, storm off in a tizzy if you want, see if I care"; Fortuona turns around and does just that.

37. Interesting that their fake fight actually got Mat's genuine temper up. And he wonders if Tuon was genuinely angry as well and if she will genuinely abandon the fight rather than come back as planned. Interestingly enough, Fortuona didn't have a single spark of genuine anger in her PoV. It was all her following the plan. So it sounds like the fight involved a lot more of Mat's genuine frustrations than it did Tuon's. "I've had it with you. You and your bloody Seanchan rules just keep getting in the way," does feel like a pretty accurate representation of how Mat has been feeling in a lot of the Seanchan-related scenes that he's been forcing himself to endure, yeah. But Fortuona assumed, in her PoV, that Mat was entirely acting and that none of his reactions were genuine -- "he was good at this". Mat and Tuon are still looking at each other and seeing someone completely different than the person who is really there.

38. What Mat says to Min here is also genuinely fascinating. I don't particularly like Mat & Tuon, even now, but I am finding them much more interesting (in a 'watching a bug through a glass' sort of way) than I ever found them in the Jordan books. Because Mat tells Min to "keep an eye on" Tuon and then clarifies that he doesn't mean in a "protection" way but in a "watch her" way. "She worries me, Min."

...I do kinda have to giggle at Mat saying that Tuon doesn't need protection and is a "strong one" when Mat literally just had to haul her unconscious ass out of a burning tent because she basically failed immediately when she went to go help him with the Gray Men. But, hey, I appreciate that Mat didn't let the narrative shoehorn Tuon into the role of his Personal Distressed Damsel even when it was clearly trying its hardest to force her into that position.

39. Oh, so Mat and MIN get a hug when they say goodbye. *eternal grumbles at how the ONLY PERSON who didn't get an emotionally appropriate reunion with Mat was his fucking best friend*

40. Ugh, is this where Mat starts calling her "Fortuona"? Because he's decided to take Karede's suicide troops into battle with him and Karede refuses to go with him if Mat won't call her "Fortuona"? I guess I'll wait and see if the way that he addresses her actually changes.

Anyway, Mat tells Karede to keep Mat alive "for Tuon" because he's "almost certain that she's fond of" him.

*gazes off into the distance, thinking about how everyone else that Tuon is 'fond' of is a slave that she owns and is fully willing to beat or order to their death if they fail her*

41. Bryne dying off-screen affects me a lot less than Siuan somehow managing to die off-screen in a scene that she was actively in. Elayne figures that Bryne's fit of rage that sent him running towards Trollocs and got him killed means that Siuan is dead.

Siuan and Moiraine never got to see each other again. 😭

(fingers crossed for her getting to take Thom's place as the watcher outside the cave in the show version, if we get to the ending)

42. Yeah, from what we've seen in every other PoV and perspective, Perrin is the only person who thinks that Elayne isn't good at tactics. So we can safely discount his opinion as just him being an asshole who thinks that the only woman worth listening to is his wife.

43. "The Shadow pushed with all its might. Humankind did not have days remaining, but hours."

44. A bolt of balefire attacks their camp, and Demandred loudly taunts "Lews Therin" that he is hunting "a woman you love". Of course, Rand can't respond to any of that, no matter how loudly Demandred echoes it across the battlefield with the Power. Birgitte grabs Elayne so that they can get somewhere secret and safe to regroup from, since Elayne herself is the main target now.

45. Of course, Galad can hear the threats and knows that Demandred is actively hunting his sister, so now he has twice the reason to try to kill the man -- killing his brother and trying to kill his sister. In order to get Demandred to fight him directly, Galad loudly proclaims his relationship to Rand. "[The Dragon Reborn] is not here, but his brother is!" And now Galad and Demandred will duel.

46. Mat finds out from Bashere that no one has heard from Faile. He wonders how he can possible finish off this battle without help from the Horn of Valere. ...maybe you shouldn't have deserted from the Last Battle at the start of the book, Mat? Just a thought. Mat yells at Bashere, which makes him grin and his wife give Mat a fond look -- hey, Mat, bet they'd be willing to let you be a third, especially if you yell at Bashere some more. Still healthier than your marriage with Tuon! Give it some consideration!

47. "He needed an army. And a gateway. He needed a bloody gateway. Fool, he thought. He had sent the damane away. Could he not at least have kept one? Though they did make his skin crawl as if it were covered in spiders." God, this is the first time since Winter's Heart that the narrative has let Mat openly think about how fucking creeped-out he is by damane and what the Seanchan do with them! Mat was so incredibly disturbed by the damane kennels in WH and then in CoT & KoD, he acted like it was the sul'dam who had the raw end of the deal. So, yeah, Mat's first chapter in AMoL had brain-breaking teleportation and he forgot half of his characterization until he was finally allowed out of fucking Ebou Dar (RIP any hopes of an emotionally-resonant Cauthor reunion), but we have seen, over the course of the last few chapters, the slow return of how incredibly disturbed and creeped-out Mat was over the damane system. This was the thing that Jordan essentially made Mat forget in order to get him to be willing to suck face with Tuon at the end of KoD, so it's really nice to see it coming back to life. Finally.

Maybe Min will also remember at some point how fucking awful the damane system is.

48. Oh, Mat gets to reunite with Loial now? *insert annoyed grumbles about how Mat & Rand is pretty much the only important relationship that got completely cheated by how Sanderson decided to do the plotting of AMoL*

Since I mention Rand:

Those dice kept ratting in his head. He also felt a pull from the north, a tugging, as if some threads around his chest were yanking on him.

Now now, Rand, he thought. I'm bloody busy.

No colors formed, only blackness. Dark as a Myrddraal's heart. The tugging grew stronger.

Mat dismissed the vision. Not. Now.

I feel so cheated that this ends up giving me nothing that I wanted, thanks! Why did we bother! I am vibing with so much of Mat's PoV in this book now that we're out of Light-forsaken Altara but I'm so frustrated by how much Sanderson is teasing something that I already know I will not actually get.

49. Mat gets to reunite with Teslyn here. Not that I am not thrilled to have Mat reunite with Teslyn because I am, but it does... frustrate me all over again, how shallow and limp the Cauthor reunion ended up being, all happening in the shadow of the slaver ball-and-chain. Every time Mat gets a better reunion with someone else, I feel cheated about his reunion with Rand all over again. Anyway, Mat is so happy to see Teslyn that he could kiss her. (he does not)

Teslyn is going to take Mat, Loial, & co up to the Heights. My brain wants to find something symbolic in the fact that after Mat sends away Tuon & the damane, the first channeler that he runs into is Teslyn and she is the one who is enabling all his battleground hopping as he sends out order after order.

Something, something, wrong road vs right road.

Tylin... Tuon... Teslyn. Women that Mat met in Ebou Dar who have similarly rhythmic 'T' names. Tuon was jealous of Joline but it was Teslyn who started the ball rolling on Mat helping the Aes Sedai escape Ebou Dar.

idk. Maiden, mother, crone vibes, but the maiden & the mother are both abusive?

50. Demandred and Galad duel; Demandred tries to taunt Galad about Gawyn's death in order to break his focus. Galad realizes that the main purpose of what he's doing here is keeping Demandred's focus off of the armies and off of Elayne. It's in Galad's best interests to last as long against Demandred as he can. Some more fighting happens but then Galad's arm gets cut off, and he too, has lost his duel against Demandred.

51. I've seen objections to Mat personally leading the fight at this point but -- the situation is pretty dire and his command tent was blown up. Maintaining a mobile unit and darting in and out of the battle seems like the best of the bad options at this point?

52. For the moment, Elayne and Birgitte are out of the direct line of the fight. Elayne is not currently flying her banner, but she's sent messages to her commanders to let them know she still lives. Then a fake band of refugees arrives, hiding Mellar, who still has his copy of the medallion and who is here because he is still obsessed with Elayne. She thinks here that he's "the one many people still assumed fathered her children". So Elayne sent out the "Rand is the baby-daddy" press release but some people actively chose to continue to believe that slimy Mellar was the daddy? Gross. He has, apparently, been trying to track Elayne down this entire time.

53. He kills Birgitte and the loss of the bond -- and the loss of her friend -- tears at Elayne. They also have another corpse -- a woman dressed to look like Elayne, with her hair color -- that they plan to parade around to pretend to everyone that Elayne is dead. His next plan is to cut her babies out of Elayne -- ah, this must be why we jumped her pregnancy so far ahead, so that it wouldn't be quite so ridiculous that her babies could be kept alive after this -- and TDO gets the kids while Mellar gets to keep Elayne.

54. Mat has requested that the Seanchan make their return to the battlefield but instead of doing that, Fortuona is taking some time to listen to her captains debate over the subject of returning. While people suffer and die on the battlefield.

55. ...Min thinks here, with no commentary, that a Captain Yulan "had been the one to lead the strike on Tar Valon". Do you... have any opinions on that, Min? No? No opinions. Okay, noted. Her only worry is that she's started to think of her viewings as 'omens'. She really does lose herself in other people so easily. For literally the first time ever, Min uses her viewings to try to suss out a spy. Wow, Rand would have found this extremely useful, Min! She notices that one of the random so'jihn (those are slaves, Min, btw, in case you've forgotten about the existence of slavery) has a bunch of images over her head the way that normally only Aes Sedai, Warders or ta'veren do.

56. Part of her wants to just try to stab the woman, but instead she goes to confront Fortuona, asking her to please define what a Truthspeaker is. Fortuona... reluctantly... allows that it's her job to call Fortuona out in public if she screws up. So Min turns to the Blood and says, "[Tuon] has abandoned the armies of humankind, and she withholds her strength in a time of need. Her pride will cause the destruction of all people, everywhere."

She calls out the member of the Blood that the spy has compelled while throwing a dagger at the spy -- which is caught mid-air using the Power. After Moghedien (I'm assuming) escapes, Min says that this shows that the Shadow is trying to keep them from the battle. "With that in mind, will you still pursue this course of indecision?"

57. Tuon does claim here that following this mandate that Min has pressed upon her is "follow[ing] what my heart would choose". Is that true? Who knows? At least she's going back. Tuon also seems to regret slightly that she's now placed someone into the position of Truthspeaker who doesn't have the kind of trained-in deference that Selucia had. Grass is always greener.

Question: does Tuon's 'heart' matter if she still actively chooses evil unless her feet are held to the fire? That is the sort of... moral question that I feel like should have been at play way earlier in the Mat & Tuon relationship. Sanderson is actually using the basic foundations of Mat & Tuon to much greater emotional complexity than we saw at work in CoT & KoD but because it's happened after we already saw that stagnant Tuon in those two books... it's hard for this to feel earned by the narrative. It works a lot better if I close my eyes and try to imagine that we had a better lead-up in the earlier books, lol.

58. Mat learns that Egwene has died (Blood and bloody ashes, Mat thought. Egwene. Not Egwene too? It hit him like a punch to the face.) and half the Aes Sedai have exhausted themselves too much to keep channeling but all the Sharan channelers have been taken out of the picture. Then we also witness Mat's coping mechanism in action -- when his mind wanders back to Egwene, he abruptly cuts the thought off. "No thinking of that right now". Instead, he forces his mind back to business and asks if they've gotten any new troops from Mayene, healed up and ready to fight again. Lan says that he'll check.

59. Then Mat digs in his saddlebags, pulling out Rand's banner, "the one of the ancient Aes Sedai" and he tells them, "Somebody hoist this thing up. We're fighting in Rand's bloody name. Let's show the Shadow we're proud of it."

So many things that could be said here. Frustrating how late this happens? I guess that's my main feeling here, which is a shame. I wish that it could feel more triumphant for me, but this is essentially where Mat already was before he had his weird teleportation to Ebou Dar at the start of AMoL, so it's mostly just me being frustrated that none of this was allowed to exist when Rand was actually here for Mat to interact with him. Mat's friendship with Rand disappeared from the narrative just long enough to avoid us actually getting any kind of emotionally-resonant scene between them and that just... will probably always be something that I will find deeply regretful about the choices Sanderson made in this book.

But I don't want to hold onto my frustration forever, I guess. Mat really has gotten a lot better over the last few chapters. I will choose to be glad that Mat has gotten to a better place again with Rand, even if it's still bizarre that he suddenly backtracked on him at the start of this book.

60. Mat is hoping that his luck will come through when another messager brings news. The Queen of Andor is reported dead. (Bloody ashes! Not Elayne! Mat felt a lurch inside. Rand... I'm sorry.) Just like with Egwene, though, he doesn't let any of that emotion show through to the soldiers, only asking the messenger who is now in charge of the battlefield.

61. He wonders if he might not be able to win even if the Seanchan do return. If it might not be better to let the Seanchan/Fortuona hunker down in Ebou Dar and... die anyway in a few weeks or months? lol, that's not a mercy for them, Mat. But he did just hear that two people he cares about deeply are dead, so I'll give him a little slack for momentarily wishing that he didn't have to call Tuon back to her potential death too, even if he's still never given me anything he actually likes about her besides "hot enough to have sex with".

...oh, and he then learns here that Lan disobeyed his orders and went off to head towards Demandred on his own.

But Mat moves forward with his plan anyway, even though he's fairly sure it won't be enough.

Horn of Valere Team (Faile; Olver)

Faile & co run across a camp in the Blasted Lands that is being used as a supply station for the Shadow's army.

Aravine betrays the group and is a Darkfriend. I am... struggling to remember who she is. brb, will check the wiki. ahhh, she's one of the people that Faile met while she was a captive of the Shaido; a fellow captive. Anyway, Darkfriend, and she finds the Horn in Faile's bag at this point and says that she will deliver it to "Lord Demandred". Olver gets free and stabs the woman who is keeping Faile captive.

Faile grabs a horse (miraculously, it is Bela) and gives chase after Aravine, soon joined by Harnan and Vanin. She accuses them of trying to steal the Horn but they protest that they were only trying to steal the tabac that they thought she was carrying, because Mat owes them money, and seeing the Horn in there came as a huge shock to them (which is why they dropped it and didn't take it with them when they ran).

She throws a knife at Aravine's back and recovers the Horn. She finds Olver again, but they are being hunted by the Shadow's forces, who now know they have the Horn. She gives the Horn to Olver and tells him to get it to Mat. Then she gets back on a different horse (not Bela), making sure that the sack she carries is obvious, and heads off on distraction duty.

So Olver has the Horn. He's pretty stressed because now he's all alone again, as the Darkfriends and Trollocs chase after Faile. "How brave he had thought himself. Now, here he was, finally at the battle. He could barely keep his hands from trembling. He wanted to hide, dig deep into the earth."

A Trolloc discovers him and Olver sees Bela still there and runs for her, wishing he had a horse that looked faster. He races towards where he can see Mat's banners on the horizon, but more Trollocs keep appearing. And Bela gets shot by a Trolloc arrow and goes down. He tries racing up the mountain to reach Mat's banners but they're so far away. He finds a crevasse and wedges himself into it, trying to push deep enough that he's out of the reach of the Trollocs. Poor kid. This is all incredibly traumatizing for him.

He couldn't stop shaking. He also couldn't make himself move. He trembled, terrified, as the beasts pried at him with filthy fingers, digging closer and closer.

Other Misc PoVs

We get a Tam PoV that continues to have zero acknowledgement of the whole "Tam knows he's going to be a grandfather" thing. It's just weird at this point.

Okay, what Uno thinks about Mat ("He still didn't understand why anyone would put Cauthon in charge of anything. He remembered that boy, always snapping at people, eyes sunken in his head. Half-dead, half-spoiled.") should also have been what Min remembered about Mat. The last time they both saw him was around that same time period of Falme, when Mat was deep in the grip of the dagger-sickness. This is the Mat that Min would have met!

Perrin wakes up and is told that they were able to heal him so that he wouldn't die and will recover but that's all they can do for him. Healing needs to be saved for other people too, so "your participation in the Last Battle is over". And then he goes back to sleep, but regular sleep this time.

Graendal collects Rhuarc as one of her pets. 😭

...why am I supposed to care that Demandred has feelings for women (or, I guess, A Woman)? I really have absolutely no reason to care about Demandred's love life. Why am I being told any of this? Was someone worried that readers would think Demandred was gay for obsessing so much over Lews Therin, so a "Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?" moment was thrown in to avoid that? It does seem put in to deliberately contrast for his, uh, "burning passion that was his hatred for Lews Therin".

Another possibility is that this is a relationship meant to foil/reflect Mat and Tuon's? Shendla sounds just as willfully delusional about her future with ~her Wyld~ as Mat always sounds when he's thinking about his Fictional Tuon Girl. "Oh, just because you do evil things and control an evil army of literal horrors doesn't make you evil, darling! Just because you own slaves command Shadowspawn doesn't make you bad, sweetheart! The evil things that you do don't define you! You can do evil things and be a super-great person! I believe in you!"

We get another Tam PoV where he doesn't think at all about his impending post-Last Battle grandfatherhood.

Our third Tam PoV. No acknowledgement of Elayne's pregnancy and how Rand has been announced to be the father. We have time for Tam to run into Lan and for Lan to be all "ah, the blademaster who gave Rand his sword earned the title" but no time to think about Tam's actual upcoming grandkids. It's so weird how disconnected Elayne's pregnancy manages to be from Rand's plotline even after Rand and her entire army all know about the pregnancy and that Rand is the father! Somehow, this plotline is still only considered relevant to Elayne herself and not relevant to Rand or Tam at all????

Androl pickpockets Taim for the true seals, I think? I feel like maybe Sanderson should have leaned into the pickpocketing thing for Androl. tbh, this plotline has felt pretty pointless, lol. The Asha'man could have just been part of the army in the other plotlines and nothing of value really would have been lost.

Okay so... why are the Sharan channelers such experts in war, anyway? Because it doesn't sound like they've constantly been having civil wars, the way that the Seanchan have, so where have they been getting their experience in fighting? You can't become an expert fighter in a vacuum.

The Band has been secretly hidden in caverns deep underground so that they can work on repairing the dragons (with Aludra's expertise guiding the way, of course), waiting on Mat's order (with Asha'man and gateways to get them out again) for them to attack once more.

The Tuatha'an work as battlefield triage, going through the bodies trying to find those who are only wounded and might be saved. "The Way of the Leaf was an easy master at times, providing a life of joy and peace. But a leaf fell in calm winds and in the tempest; dedication demanded that one accept the latter as well as the former."

Raen asks Ila what they would have asked these people to do, in the face of Trollocs. Ila says that they could have run. That there was no need for them to fight here, right at the cusp of the Blight. Raen says that the Trollocs would have followed. "We have accepted many masters. The Shadow might treat us poorly, but would it really be worse than we have been treated at the hands of others?" Ila asks, but Raen disagrees. "It would have been worse. I am not going to abandon the Way, Ila. It is my path and it is right for me. Perhaps... perhaps I will not think quite so poorly of those who follow another path." Ah. They're talking about/mourning Aram. Ila says, "I shouldn't have turned my back on him. I should have tried to help him return to us, not cast him out." She had always felt as if she knew the answers in life. Today, most of those had slipped from her. Saving a person's life though... that she could cling to. She headed back among the bodies, searching for the living among the dead.

Galad ends up in the Mayane hospital. I wonder if he still has his copy of the medallion. I assume he does. Not sure when he'd have had a chance to give it back.

Ah, asked and answered. Berelain finds the medallion around Galad's neck as he whispers "back to Cauthon", so she takes the medallion and heads off at a brisk pace.

Loial and Erith take a moment to rest together before the final charge of the Last Battle. Loial has managed to take notes here and there, for a story that he'd like to pretend that he'll still get to write. "There was no harm to such a little lie."

The night grows darker as Lan charges towards Demandred and we pass our final Tam PoV of this chapter... still no mention of the fact that he knows he's going to have grandkids. (or the news going through the army that Elayne is reported dead? or anything like that?)

18. Ah, Lan was the one who received the note from Berelain with the medallion - I do not know how Galad ended up with this, but I believe he wished me to send it to Cauthon. I wish that Lan had cleared this plan with Mat tbh! But anyway, Lan does have three things here as he faces off with Demandred: one that Gawyn had (he's a Warder, with that boost in endurance) and one that Galad had (a medallion to protect him from weaves) plus he also has twenty years of experience fighting at the side of an Aes Sedai in a quest to locate the Dragon Reborn. It sounds very much like his reasoning is the same as Gawyn and Galad as well -- this is a necessary job, and I'm a person who is already here and can be risked to do that job.

19. "Lan held nothing back." He knows that he can't afford to give Demandred time to think, so he just goes for a relentless assault. Demandred does pretty quickly figure out the 'just channel things at him' trick, so Lan is dealing with dodging rocks as well. Demandred is just so certain that anyone who can hold their own against him is Lews Therin! It's honestly been kinda the comic relief of this chapter.

20. Then he uses one of the lessons that he taught Rand (that Rand used in his battle against Ishamael in Falme) -- he deliberately lets Demandred stab him so that he can get close enough to stab his own sword through Demandred's throat.

The world grew dark as Lan slipped backward off the sword. He felt Nynaeve's fear and pain as he did, and he sent his love to her.

#wot #wheel of time #wot reread #wot book spoilers #wot spoilers #wot amol spoilers #wot a memory of light spoilers #mat cauthon #egwene al'vere #elayne trakand #rand al'thor #seanchan content warning #faile bashere #olver (wheel of time)

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