As the final third of the book begins, things are finally looking up, with the main character having arrived in an honest-to-God city, where plotlines are set to converge and there's danger and intrigue lurking in the distance. This is where my own personal bias comes into play, as I have always found cities more interesting than the open wilderness. Don't get me wrong, unspoiled vistas of forests and mountains and even deserts are breathtaking to look at, and breathing in fresh air with a pine scent is a nice sensation, but those joys are ephemeral and I tend to get bored of them rather quickly. A city, by contrast, is full of interesting people and a myriad of different cultures interacting and sometimes clashing with one another. Even if privacy is hard to find sometimes, you can always find something interesting going on in a city, especially a fictional city. It's really just a personal preference; The Lies of Locke Lamora and Perdido Street Station each took place entirely in one city and I'm going to have to put them several levels higher than Eye of the World.
This being Rand's first real city, he's as happy to see it as I am, or at least in complete awe of the sheer enormity of the place. His mind tries to grasp how many Whitebridges or Baerlons would fit inside Caemlyn, and sees the crowd he remembers seeing back home at Bel Tine repeated thousands of times over. Mat, meanwhile, only sees threats to their safety multiplied:
- "How are we going to hide in this?" he demanded loudly when he saw Rand looking. "How can we tell who to trust with so many? So bloody many. Light, the noise!"
Rand looked at Bunt before answering. The farmer was caught up in staring at the city; with the noise, he might not have heard anyway. Still, Rand put his mouth close to Mat's ear. "How can they find us among so many? Can't you see it, you wool-headed idiot? We're safe, if you ever learn to watch your bloody tongue!" He flung out a hand to take in everything, the markets, the city walls still ahead. "Look at it, Mat! Anything could happen here! Anything! We might even find Moiraine waiting for us, and Egwene, and all the rest."
Thank you, Rand, you are entirely correct! Mat's sullen paranoia is starting to get on my nerves at this point, as it's been pretty one-note from what I can remember, and I still don't have a definitive answer as to why Mat's personality changed so suddenly after Shadar Logoth. But he does have a point in that the city is so big they barely have any idea of where to go next. Fortunately, they do have one lead: the inn that Thom directed them to before he died.
They head off, but not before Bunt advises Rand not to carry his sword where people can see the heron mark. Yeah, he pretty much figured out that they were the people his sketchy friend told him about, but he just shrugs it off and walks away, leaving well enough alone. Because he wants to be loyal to Tam, Rand resists the idea of putting the sword away despite the fact that it would be a really smart move, and as almost soon as I thought of a compromise that Rand could use to solve this problem - covering up the heron mark with cloth - Rand himself thinks sees swords with hilts wrapped in cloth and goes to buy cloth to do the same thing, naturally getting scalped by a cynical local businessman who insults and threatens him. What was that Bunt said about Caemlyn being the grandest city in the world again?
After passing by a ton of people on the streets, they do get to the inn, and I have to admit that I find it amusing that Rand finds fat innkeepers far more trustworthy than skinny ones. But then if the only skinny innkeeper I ever met was a creeper like Saml Hake, I'd probably make the same association no matter how illogical it really was. This fat innkeeper, Basel Gill, is an old friend of Thom's, and manages to fill in some things about him:
- "I'll believe he's dead," the innkeeper said slowly, "when I see his corpse." He nudged the bundled cloak with his toe and cleared his throat roughly. "Nay, nay, I believe you saw whatever it was you sawl I just don't believe he's dead. He's a harder man to kill than you might believe, is old Thom Merrilin."
Interestingly enough, we get a little backstory for Thom from Gill, which surprised me, because what I knew about Thom was simple, but seemed complete in itself. Not that I'm complaining to get more character development, unless perhaps it's for a character who's legitimately dead and might not actually affect the series anymore. When I think of characters who get more focus after their death than before, I think of the Comedian from Watchmen, which is just about the best way a writer can do it. Of course, if Thom is alive after all (which might not be as much of a copout as I thought at first, I dunno), this talk is moot, but I'm keeping an eye out for more of this subplot. I'm adding it to the list, as it were.
NEXT TIME: Rand hunkers down, meets a new friend.
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