Welcome back to my re-read, recap, and reaction to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. This post will only have spoilers through the current chapter.
You can find my previous chapter recaps HERE.
Chapter 48: Leavetakings
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Nynaeve al'Meara
Nynaeve gathers the things that will not be left behind, including their gold, letters of rights, the gems from Amathera, her herbs, the letter from Siuan, and the Seal on the Dark One's prison. The Seal is emanating an evil aura but Nynaeve thinks she might be imagining it. She leaves the a'dam, the silver arrow, and other things for Elayne to take. Elayne comes in and there is still tension between the two, mostly shown by stares and silence. Thom and Juilin are outside when they leave the wagon, with much smaller bundles. Birgitte does not bring as much, either. Various performers come over to say goodbye and wish them well. Luca comes over last with flowers and flowery words for Nynaeve which infuriates her. They meet up with the rest of the Shienarans and head toward Samara and the ship waiting at the docks.
In Samara the mob has destroyed buildings, set fires, and killed people, but initially there is no one visible as they enter the gates. Then the mob comes into their street and immediately charges. Nynaeve and Elayne are prepared to channel, but do not for fear that Moghedien might be able to find them if they do. The Shienarans, Thom, Juilin, and Birgitte easily defend Nynaeve and Elayne, but Galad plows through the mob and finally breaks their will with his excellent swordplay. They finally reach the Whitecloak perimeter, then the docks and the boat.
There is a large group of refugees on the docks and Nynaeve insists to the ship captain that they be allowed to board. Elayne and Nynaeve thank Galad for his help. As he leaves, he warns them to stay away from Rand al'Thor because he will break the world again.
REACTION:
Jordan does some good writing from Nynaeve's thoughts early in this chapter. He shows she is finally accepting of the disaster of what happened with Birgitte. Jordan also mentions again that they are carrying around one of the Dark One's prison seals. Nynaeve berates herself for thinking that it feels evil but I'm guessing she is not wrong and that the fact they have this is going to be relevant. Most importantly, Nynaeve is starting to lose some of her fear of a third encounter with Moggy, remembering to herself - albeit cautiously - that she did beat the Forsaken head to head in Tanchico. Can you feel it? Round Three is on its way! It's time to squash the Spider!
Before that though, we get one last round of silent bickering between the two SuperGirl channelers. I hate reading about this. I am so ready for this sequence to be over. It's one thing to portray characters in a very realistic way (which this does.) It's another to make your readers suffer through it endlessly.
In contrast, I highly enjoy Nynaeve's discomfort with Luca. What's the difference? In both cases a large part of the situation is built around lack of self-awareness. She is unaware of how much her actions are encouraging Luca. It's funny because we get to read and understand in her mind that she is intending the opposite. Her misunderstandings with Luca are endearing and come from a lack of experience in the world - particularly the world of love. Her misunderstandings with Elayne (and vice versa) don't have an endearing explanation. Both women are willfully choosing not to see their own contribution to their frosty situation, when they aren't simply knowingly vindictive.
The fight with the rioters was... disturbing. It's easy to forget that the people rioting are human beings, with human motivations. Jordan describes them as howling and rabid. It's an easy thing to find and watch online. Real life rioting often ends up looking that way. It is discomforting to think that the thin barrier between humanity and wild animal savagery can be lost or breached. The lack of humanity among the rioters was so strong that Nynaeve does not even fill pity, or a desire to heal them, after the fighting is over. That's not a small thing. Wanting to heal is her entire identity. What drove this mob? Religious zealotry, hunger, greed, and perhaps the innate savagery that lives in iextra abundance within the sort of people who would be drawn to what amounts to a violent cult.
Nevertheless... it's something to sit with for those humans who have not lost their sense of humanity. Do the people who survived all of this become human again? Do they eventually shudder to remember when they acted as less than human?
It's worth noting that Nynaeve and Elayne both embraced the True Source during the riot. That means that if Moggy or one of the Black Ajah was within eyeshot, they both gve themselves away despite not actually channeling. Women holding the source visibly glow to other women who can channel. I'd guess Moggy saw them, and chose not to act, given the build-up to her rematch with Nynaeve. She prefers sneak attacks or to be on her strongest footing - the World of Dreams.
Galad gets one of the best lines of the chapter.
"Yet if they held the mob, it was Galad who broke them."
You don't set up someone as a super swordsman without that leading somewhere in the plot, eventually. Gawyn beat the guy in the White Tower who trains would-be Warders. Galad is better than Gawyn. (Mat beat them both, simultaneously, with a quarterstaff against their practice swords, while he was significantly weak from recent sickness.)
It's interesting to see, in stark terms at the end of this chapter, that what Elayne has always said about Galad is true. He never counts the cost of doing the right thing, either for himself or for others. He started a war, left a town in ruins, and many people dead, just to keep a promise about obtaining a ship. He also won't make the ship captain lower his boarding charge. There's an entire moral philosophy discussion somewhere in the midst of this. How much is the correct moral choice in a given situation bound to the surrounding circumstances? It's difficult to say but he forces the reader to think on it. Galad justified starting the war in that it was bound to happen anyway and that it was necessary. He justified not stealing from the ship's captain because he could not justify it. Is he morally in the right? Is the problem that he has made himself arbiter of what is right?
The book is in the home stretch and the team and some refugees are now on their way to Salidar.
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