Reading The Wheel of Time: The Gathering Storm (Part 8) - Reactor

We definitely don’t get enough sections from Aviendha’s point of view in The Wheel of Time, so I’m really excited to cover chapter 11 of The Gathering Storm this week. I feel she’s largely been a background figure in comparison to the other leads, supporting Elayne, hanging around Egwene when they were both living as apprentices, interacting with Rand as his teacher (and as they fell in love with each other), but so much of that took place in sections from the other person’s point of view. However, we’re getting more of Aviendha now and I’m really excited to get into this section, this week on Reading The Wheel of Time.

As she works at another useless task as punishment for whatever she has done wrong in the eyes of the Wise Ones, Aviendha notices a few Maidens talking about Rand, and how he refuses to learn how to treat them respectfully. They are upset because he went to see Rodel Ituralde without bringing his honor guard, and discuss whether to give him another beating.

Because Aviendha is no longer a Maiden, it is not appropriate to acknowledge that she understands the handtalk. The Maidens do not acknowledge her because it would be dishonorable to do so while she is being punished.

Aviendha has been tasked with digging rocks out of the river, and she is sore and tired from carrying the heavy burdens. She feels shame for not succeeding in teaching Rand the proper way to behave as an Aiel.

As she deposits her stones beside the manor, she overhears the two guards having a conversation. Despite the cool day, one continually complains about how warm it is, prompting the other to worry that his companion might be ill. Aviendha ponders the strangeness of wetlander ways, and the much more alarming oddity of the Wise Ones’ behavior towards her.

When she comes back, Aiden, the sick man, looks even worse. Aviendha is about to offer Healing when suddenly the man starts tearing at his skin, opening gashes that ooze a heated, charcoal-like substance. The man’s clothing bursts into flames right before the eyes of Aviendha and his fellow guardsman. The other man thinks it is an attack by channelers, but Aviendha recognizes the source as something much more evil.

She sends the guard for help and tries to extinguish the blaze now consuming the entry to the manorhouse, but her weaves dissolve when they get near the flames. So she uses the One Power to throw earth on the fire to smother it. Then, hearing others calling for buckets, she remembers that in this land there is enough water to use it to fight fire, and makes a column of Air and Water to pull from the river, directing it onto the enormous flames.

Her column is joined by another, and she notices an Asha’man, Naeff, standing in a second story window, arm outstretched to channel.

Eventually the water stops turning into steam and Aviendha lets her flow of water dribble to a stop. The entryway is a destroyed mess of charred wood, and the guard’s body has been reduced to a hard chunk of dark matter, like obsidian.

It takes Aviendha a few tries to break through Rand’s shouting and catch his attention. Once she does, Rand quickly retreats back into the house.

One of Ituralde’s officers asks Aviendha if this sort of thing happens often around Rand, and she confirms that it happens everywhere, but more often around Rand. Later, as Aviendha is helping clean up, Merise tells Aviendha that it is a shame she will never go to the White Tower, and calls her skill with weaves rough but impressive. This is overheard by Melaine.

After a brief staring contest, Merise retreats, and Melaine informs Aviendha that of all the women channelers present, probably only Cadsuane could have managed what Aviendha did with the river, and that she has such great talent. But she also refuses to learn.

Melaine asks Aviendha for her opinion about Rand’s plan to kidnap the Domani merchant council, and the two discuss how Rand still fails to treat the chiefs with proper respect, and how he has no idea how hard the Wise Ones work behind the scenes to maintain the Aiel’s loyalty. Melaine worries over what will happen to the remnant of a remnant that survives the car’a’carn.

She sends Aviendha to get some rest, but not before promising a new punishment for not finishing her previous punishment with the stones, and “for not learning quickly enough.” As Aviendha heads back to her tent, feeling confused and frustrated, she briefly considers visiting Rand. But she won’t, not until she has become a Wise One and has her honor back.

It’s a short little chapter but there’s a lot of really good information in here, I feel, especially on how the Aiel think, and how Aviendha thinks as one of them.

And it’s also interesting because I do think my theory, expressed a few posts back, that Aviendha’s seemingly random punishments are a test, is correct. When Melaine says Aviendha refuses to learn, I don’t think she means that Aviendha refuses to learn what she did wrong, or how to behave properly as an Aiel. I think what she means is that Aviendha still hasn’t realized how to behave as a Wise One.

The whole point of Aviendha’s training is to teach her how to think and act like a Wise One, but what does that mean, exactly? It partly means learning to channel, of course, but not all Wise Ones can do that. The thing that Aviendha is actually learning is how to lead, how to stop looking to the Wise Ones for guidance and start providing that guidance to others. That is what Wise Ones do for the Aiel.

Aviendha herself recognizes that in this very chapter, when she observes how hard the Wise Ones are working to maintain the Aiel loyalty to Rand and to manage the chiefs, who he is rarely properly respectful with or loyal to in his turn. She considers that one of Rand’s great weaknesses is not being able to see how other people hate being used, and how he doesn’t realize that the Aiel clans are not normally so tightly connected—that the putting aside of blood feuds and agreeing to follow one man is basically a miracle.

However, when she is considering all of this, Aviendha also thinks about how even most Aiel don’t know how much work the Wise Ones do in so many different areas of their lives, and how back when she was a maiden she herself would have been “dazzled” to know how much was going on behind the scenes. And this, I think, is where Aviendha’s lesson is. At some point, she has to stop being an apprentice and start being a Wise One, which means being one of those people working behind the scenes “in a dozen different areas” rather than one of those people who works in their own specific area and follows the directions of clan chiefs and Wise Ones.

So I’m wondering if these punishments aren’t a test, to see if Aviendha is willing to stand up to the Wise Ones, if she is willing to trust her own judgment and realize that she hasn’t done anything wrong. That she is, in fact, capable of making that determination without guidance. After all, while there is a loose hierarchy among the Wise Ones largely based on age and personality, they are mostly a very democratic body, making decisions through conversation and collective agreement. Any new member added to their ranks might sometimes have to yield to those with more seniority, but she will still be expected to contribute and to hold her own in conversations and decisions.

This is why they keep grilling Aviendha on her assessment of Rand’s actions and motivations, and of her observations of the clan chiefs’ disposition. They are making sure she has the understanding to be a leader, to help manage the chiefs and to help her fellow Wise Ones’ make the hard decisions necessary to help that remnant of a remnant of the Aiel to survive.

I think we can see how good Aivendha’s decisions in these matters are. I’m especially interested in her thoughts about Rand not being able to “see that Aiel, like other people, did not like being used as tools.” Since we the readers have been in Rand’s head so much, we know that it’s not really about whether Rand thinks people like being used as tools or not—he is even disgusted with himself for using people in such a way—but rather that he thinks that he has no choice, that the only way to achieve his goal of uniting the world in time for the Last Battle is by using everyone, and not having a thought for anyone’s feelings, or even their lives.

If Aviendha is able to realize she is being tested and becomes a Wise One, she will feel able and willing to have a romantic relationship with Rand, which means she might start to get a bit more of a sense of how he thinks, and that could be helpful both in changing his perspective on the Aiel (and perhaps even people in general) as well as in guiding the Wise Ones in managing him and his relationship to their people. Because as we the readers know, while Rand has developed a lot of arrogance, it’s not quite the type that people around him assume, and knowing that his attitude comes out of pain, and a lack of ability to handle pain, rather than a dismissive nature, might be really helpful.

Although if Aviendha is going to start spending more time with Rand, she’s probably going to be spending more time with Min too. Which is good and needed at this point, and also might lead Aviendha to some further insights about Rand, as I would argue that, of the three women who bonded him, Min knows Rand the best.

There’s also some really interesting information here about how Aiel think. We have learned a lot about their customs, especially how ji’e’toh works and how rigid they are in their social customs, roles, and expectations. They are far from the only culture in the story that is baffled by the ways of those from other lands and other nations, but they are probably the most confused, and the least able to put their minds for a moment into the perspectives of other peoples.

This is no doubt in part due to the isolation of the Aiel. In the westlands, trade and travel across borders is going to bring at least some familiarity with other cultures, even if you always find their ways strange, and even the Sea Folk have a lot more contact with the shorebound than Aiel do with the wetlanders.

But I also think the simple fact is that Aiel society is incredibly rigid, and the precepts of how people are and aren’t supposed to behave and the roles they are supposed to fill are so specific that the idea of a culture that is more individualistic in its approach to right and wrong and how one fits into society just doesn’t compute for them.

We see this in Aviendha’s musings over the guard, Adrin, and his complains about the heat. Aviendha has noticed that wetlanders complain a lot about discomfort and petty frustrations. She has even observed this in Elayne, who in Aviendha’s eyes complains a ridiculous amount about the symptoms and side-effects of her pregnancy. But Aviendha knows that Elayne would never behave dishonorably, so she assumes that in wetlander culture, complaining serves some kind of honorable purpose.

It doesn’t occur to Aviendha that maybe the wetlanders just aren’t as concerned with these details as the Aiel are, or that there could be a wide variety of opinions among them, with some wetlanders finding excessive complaining to be dishonorable while others don’t have a problem with it. The idea of a culture with subjective interpretations of things like honor, duty, or proper behavior would be anathema to any Aiel, I think. 

Except maybe Sevanna, anyway.

But this is why Aviendha is stuck right now. We saw how very important behaving correctly is to her when she found out she was going to be one of Rand’s lovers and was so horrified at the idea of dishonoring Elayne that she instinctively channeled a gateway in an attempt to escape Rand. Every other time we have seen or heard of someone instinctively touching the Source for the first time has been in an attempt to save their life, or the life of someone they cared about. So I think this is very evocative of how fundamental Aviendha’s sense of honor is to her sense of self, and to her very life.

As a result, however, I think she is stuck in this test the Wise Ones are giving her because she is always so focused on making sure she behaves exactly perfectly and has her honor intact. It is not a natural impulse to question a punishment, or to evaluate a instance of ji’e’toh for herself; Aiel are expected to know these things without being told, not make judgments upon them. Aviendha is so determined to regain an honor she believes she has lost that it hasn’t yet occurred to her to question whether or not the honor has been lost in the way she fears.

She even thinks, at once point in the chapter, that the Wise Ones are behaving strangely. She hasn’t quite taken that thought to its full conclusion yet, but I kind of have a feeling that she is getting close now.

Rand’s little tirade against the Dark One was an interesting moment, and another one that shows us what a terrible burden Rand carries but also how he takes responsibility for things that he really shouldn’t. As it’s become clear that the bubbles of evil can appear anywhere but seem to appear most frequently around ta’veren and/or Rand himself, no one can blame Rand for feeling guilty over what can happen to the people in his periphery. But it also isn’t his fault, and I would even go so far as to question his assumption that the Dark One is targeting him at all.

It’s unclear how much direct control the Dark One has over his touch upon the world. The very first signs of his influence were the weather, and that touch has been more or less consistent since the beginning of the series, with the use of the Bowl of Winds alleviating some of its effects, but not altering the touch itself. It’s always been my assumption that the Dark One was manipulating the weather on purpose, since it is such a useful and large-scale way to affect humankind for the worse. But we don’t know that the Dark One can control how his nearness affects the Pattern at all—it could be completely random, or something to do with how his essence (or whatever you call it) interacts with the fabric of reality.

The bubbles of evil may be the same. The fact that they seem drawn to ta’veren might very well be because of the effect ta’veren have on the Pattern, rather than any kind of aiming the Dark One might wish to do. So while it is human to feel remorse and even responsibility for drawing those bubbles near to himself, and therefore to his followers, we can also see that, once again, Rand is taking something much more personally than he should, or than is healthy.

We know that Rand needs to learn “laughter and tears” again, and that the lesson Cadsuane wants to teach him about being human is so important that Min had a vision about it. However, learning to think of other people as people and not tools is almost, possibly even as important a lesson as learning to feel his feelings. Rand is still, and increasingly, thinking of this battle for the fate of the world as one that only he is fighting, rather than one that he is leading, but that everyone else is a part of as well. The Aiel aren’t tools, they are human beings who can aid him in his goals.

I do think part of the reason Rand thinks of other people as tools, things he can use to achieve his ends, is because of that need to cut himself off from the grief he feels when other people are killed in his service, or in service of his goals. But it is also an arrogant thing, a sort of martyr complex in which he is so consumed by his own troubles and his own burden and his own duty that he discounts anyone else’s, like they don’t matter.

It’s like that conversation he had with Flinn in which he stated that everyone else in the camp had more freedom than Rand himself, and Flinn gently challenged that assumption. Rand’s burden is so heavy, he can’t see anyone else’s lives as they truly are.

I don’t know if Aviendha can help him with this, but it certainly seems like her own journey to understanding leadership might give her some helpful perspectives. She is, in a way, more like Rand than Min or Elayne, because Aviendha was also forced to leave the life she knew and wanted and become a leader simply because of an identity she was born with and did not choose. The scale is different, of course, but Aviendha also struggled with accepting who the Aiel told her she must be, and is still learning how to re-shape her sense of self around this new identity. This is different from Elayne, who understands the burden of leadership but was raised understanding herself in the role, or from Min, who has her own fated connection to the Pattern but isn’t a general or ruler of any kind.

Perhaps Aviendha can marry compassion for Rand born of her own experiences with her ability to see the Aiel as both individuals and part of a larger whole into a new perspective for Rand to take on. If he can learn to see other people, even the lowly ones serving under him, even the people he was prophesied to bring destruction too, as allies working with him rather than tools working for him—or failing too work for him—that might go a long way towards giving Rand a new perspective on this fight, and what, exactly, he is fighting for.

After all, why is he going through all this pain and anguish to save the world if not for the people in it?

Also, I just realized that this moment with Rand shouting at the Dark One and Aviendha trying to get his attention is, in fact, the one depicted on the cover. So that’s fun!

Finally, I was struck by Melaine’s assessment of how Aviendha used the flow of the river to direct the column of her weave onto the burning house. It’s a reminder of one of my least favorite aspects of how channeling work, which is not just that strong channelers can sometimes do things instinctively, but that most of their talent is not about learning. To me, it would be so much more interesting if Aviendha had to learn how to use the river’s own flow to her advantage, rather than just doing it. Or if someone like Nynaeve still had to study and practice just like anyone else to learn how to replicate a weave, instead of being guaranteed to be able to do it at once as part of her “strength,” while those with less strength take longer to learn even the weaves they are strong enough to perform.

I believe there has been mention of a talent for replicating weaves immediately despite being less strong in the power, which is kind of cool, and maybe that’s technically what’s happening all the time with people who can replicate weaves perfectly after seeing them once. But I often find the fact that so many of our heroines being able to do everything kind of without having to learn very much often feels like a sort of deus ex machina on the part either of the author, or of the Pattern itself, to get every relevant young person from knowing nothing to being the most important person in the world in the space of a few years. Egwene’s forcing is part of it, and of course when it comes to Rand there’s this sort of assumption that the Chosen One would have incredible natural ability or perhaps even be able to draw on the experiences of his past lives in some kind of soul-memory. But it just isn’t interesting to me, and I do wonder how the series would read if it took place over a longer period of time, and felt a bit more realistic.

Perhaps realistic isn’t the right word to use in an epic fantasy series, but there is so much about The Wheel of Time that feels incredibly grounded, despite the fantastical nature of the world, and I would have loved to see a little bit more of that in how channeling works.

However, at the end of the day this is a small complaint, and I am really eager to see Aviendha come into her own as a Wise One and as the third part of Rand’s trio of lovers. I’m also excited to get into chapter 12 and 13 next week, because Egwene is about to do some detective work and I am so excited to see her uncover an important mystery in the Tower!

Also, chapter 13 is Gawyn stuff, but I haven’t read that chapter yet so I don’t know what is going to happen! Love the suspense, though.

Also, I knew the maidens would be upset about Rand going off on his own again! I don’t think the beatings are going to solve anything, though; Rand takes them as a punishment, but not as a lesson. He’s not really good at learning lessons, now that he’s decided everything is fate and burden and nothing and no one matters except for winning the Last Battle.