The Eye of the World: Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT: A PLACE OF SAFETY

It occurs to me that my continued moaning about how predictably the story of the Wheel of Time begins might be grinding on your nerves a little. So I suppose I should probably try and ease up a little so as not to sound like a broken record. This chapter doesn't make that an easy task, though, as it follows up the cause of the attack on Emond's Field with the effect of Rand leaving town on a quest. He and his party don't know he's going on a quest, but he probably is.

Good news first, though: Tam's gonna be okay! Moiraine managed to cure him of the supernatural taint the Trolloc's weapons infected him with, which once again evokes Lord of the Rings with the Nazgul stabbing Frodo. The idol Moiraine uses to cure him (the angreal) doesn't remind me of anything, though. I am curious to know where Jordan got that idea.

• "This" - [Moiraine] took a small bundle of white silk from her pouch - "is an angreal." She saw [Rand's] expression. "You know of angreal, then. Good."

I don't. Please tell me, mysterious lady. I haven't heard all of these legends my entire life like Rand has. Guess I'll have to wait for my answer, huh?

Speaking of Tam, Lan comments on the heron emblem on that sword of Tam's. This combined with that bombshell he dropped about finding baby Rand on a battlefield makes me certain that Tam has a backstory, perhaps as a Warder like Lan. Judging by how long these books are, that backstory is coming, sooner or later. Bottom line: Tam will live (yay!), but his recuperation ensures he'll be out of the story for a while (boo!).

• Something on the Green caught his eye. He stared, then realized it was the blackened stump of the Spring Pole. A fine Bel Tine, with a peddler, a gleeman, and strangers.

I actually liked this bit of cruel irony on Jordan's part. It was a nice, subtle touch. Predictable for anyone with a working knowledge of the genre, yes, but still pretty nicely written.

But I'm missing the main point of this chapter: an infodump courtesy of Moiraine. I will give you the highlight reel here:

• "Halfman, Lurk, Fade, Shadowman; the name depends on the land you're in, but all mean Myrdraal. Fades are Trolloc spawn, throwbacks almost to the human stock the Dreadlords used to make Trollocs. Almost. But if the human strain is made stronger, so is the taint that twists the Trollocs. Halfmen have powers of a kind, the sort that stem from the Dark One. Only the weakest Aes Sedai would fail to be a match for a Fade, but many a good man and true has fallen to them. Since the wars that ended the Age of Legends, since the Forsaken were bound, they have been the brain that tells the Trolloc fists where to strike."
• "In the Age of Legends," Moiraine went on, "some Aes Sedai could fan life and health to flame if only the smallest spark remained. Those days are gone, though - perhaps forever. So much was lost; not just the making of angreal. So much that could be done that we dare not even dream of, if we remember it at all."
• "Some houses were only torched to create confusion. The Trollocs ignored them afterwards, and people who fled from them as well, unless they actually got in the way of the true attack. Most of the people who've come in from the outlying farms never saw a hair of a Trolloc, and that only at a distance. Most never knew there was any trouble until they saw the village.
• "The Trollocs did not come to Emond's Field by happenstance, and they did not do what they did for the pleasure of killing and burning, however much that delighted them. They knew what, or rather who, they were after. The Trollocs came to kill or capture young men of a certain age who live near Emond's Field.

And those young men are Rand, Mat, and Perrin! There are a few points that I'm not clear on, like how shadowy men with no eyes in black cloaks can be related to gruesome amalgamations of man and animal, or why the Dark One chose this particular time to have Rand and company killed, or how he knew the time and place in which the Dragon Reborn would be, well, reborn, but I'll roll with it for now.

Rand reacts understandably by acting completely gobsmacked that anyone could want anything with little old him, all while quietly telling himself for what feels like the tenth time that he is his father's son no matter what Tam said before. He is to move to the town of Tar Valon, farther away from home than he's ever been before. As someone who might set up shop in a different state soon, I actually do kind of feel for him here. We close the chapter with him fitfully trying to sleep, still a little bit shell-shocked from the day's events.

(Incidentally, I turned way back to those maps after the prologue to see where Tar Valon is. It's on the first map, whereas the second map is comprised entirely of the Two Rivers area. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't tell how those two maps connect at all, so I'm hoping for some directions in the chapters to come.)

NEXT TIME: A dream and a legend.