The Eye of the World: Chapter Twenty-Four

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: FLIGHT DOWN THE ARINELLE

We switch back to Rand in the middle of another dream, and once again I'm liking the sorts of things he sees in them. He wanders an endless maze of bridges, spires, and walkways that stretches as far as the eye can see in all three dimensions. This is an image I want to see in a painting, and I wouldn't mind Robert Jordan getting a little bit self-indulgent with the description of the environment here.

Rand spends his time in here hiding from Ba'alzamon, who's wandering the maze and trying to catch Rand in order to control him for his own purposes. The chase is kind of suspenseful, though I did smirk when Rand turned a corner and runs smack dab into Ba'alzamon. This raises an interesting question, though, and sort of disproves my theory from earlier. I thought at the end of the first dream that Ba'alzamon was letting him go with the seeds of mistrust sown in his mind. But if he's still searching for Rand in this dream and trying to catch him, then that means he didn't mean to let Rand go at all. Rand escapes Ba'alzamon the same way he did earlier, by waking up from the dream just in time. But much to his shock, his skin is still pricked from a thorn that cut him in the dream. DUN DUN DUN!

Rand is still on the Sway with Mat and Thom, riding with a crew that thinks he and Mat are Thom's apprentices as gleemen. Thom takes training them seriously, teaching them basic stories, juggling, and tumbling. When they complain, he has this to say:

• "I don't know how to play at teaching, boy. I either teach a thing, or I don't. Now! Even a country bumpkin ought to be able to do a simple handstand. Up you go!"

This guy's really starting to grow on me.

There also seem to be issues with the crew of the Sway, since they can't be trusted with the real reason for the guys' journey. One man in particular, Gelb, is being a complete cowardly weasel, insisting at every turn that the three are Darkfriends and should be tossed aside. Captian Domon calls him out on his bullshit right away, pointing out that Gelb's just trying to pass the buck on his slacking off and not keeping watch when the Trollocs attacked a few chapters ago. But the ever-observant Thom notes that there might be a mutiny on the horizon, from crew members who aren't as paranoid of more Trolloc attacks as the Captain, and it would be the worst case scenario for the three of them. I do hope that Jordan didn't spoil a future surprise in his own book just then.

As I read the chapter, I was beginning to notice something really off about Rand and Mat's characterization, but the chapter seemed to be trolling me in that regard, because it seems to at least acknowledge that something is wrong in that regard. Mat's treasure obsession that he caught in Shadar Logoth continue to fester, and he goes on about how there must be treasure in a mysterious metal tower that passes by in the distance, and when Rand expresses a desire to return home and never travel again, Mat whispers, and I quote, "I'll bet he just doesn't want anybody else going after the treasure."

Rand, meanwhile, gets giddy from spending a few hours in the crow's nest. The plot decides that he might as well take up Mat's reckless, fun-loving character trait since Mat's too crazy to make use of it, and so he climbs around on the rigging and almost falls to his death a few times only to steady himself and catch a rope at the last second (I think. Naval terms for parts of a ship that I don't recognize are bandied about here.). Thankfully Thom manages to get him down before he brings the book to a premature end.

That's when we discover that Mat's secretly kept around a relic from Shadar Logoth, a dagger with a ruby in the pommel, which I immediately recognized as one of the objects that Min saw in her premonitions of Min. And or course, Mat's paranoid about the crew members finding out about his precious and trying to steal it. This might be an explanation for Mat's sudden, drastic personality change, though I'm wondering how exactly that works right now.

No such explanation is provided for why Rand suddenly acted like a daredevil for a page, but they at least acknowledge that it's abnormal, when Rand suddenly realizes and remembers what he did, panicking at the thought and wondering what the hell's wrong with him. That's something, at least, and we'll probably see more in the chapters to come.

NEXT TIME: Not-gypsies and not-Klingons!