Wheel of Time Reread - The Eye Of the World Chapter 2

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Six member of the village council, counting Tam and Bran are already sitting in the common room of the Winespring when Rand and Mat bring the first barrels in. And I must start out with a small correction: in part 2 of my discussion of Chapter 1, I referred to Jon Thane as the cabinetmaker and and Samel Crawe as the miller - neither of those is accurate, and I honestly don't know how I got turned around on this. Jon Thane is the miller, and Master Aydaer, no first name provided, is the cabinetmaker, and Samel Crawe's profession is not specified. Sorry about that. In any case. There they all are, silent and presumably worried, worry being the common occupation of village councils in the Two Rivers these days. Here, we meet Scratch, one of only a few named cats in the series. He's described here as "yellow", which isn't really a color cats come in. Cats have basically three coat colors: black, red (orange/ginger), and white. Every color is a version of one of those. Black has two rarer variants, chocolate and cinnamon, and all non-white colors have a dilute: blue (dilute black), lilac (dilute chocolate), fawn (dilute cinnamon), and cream (dilute red). Everything else is down to how the color genes interact with each other and with the ones for patterns - most of the brown on cats, including the stripes on a brown tabby and the ears and tail of a seal-point Siamese, are interactions of this sort, the way one or more pattern genes "interpret" these colors. (There is also the "dilute variant" gene, but that's not likely to just show up.) My guess is that Scratch here is either fawn or cream, although "yellow" may just be a regional construction of red/ginger. 

We're introduced here, briefly, to Jon Thane the miller, who isn't really gonna matter going forward, and to Haral Luhan, who is. Both of them look at Mat and Rand coming in, although Rand doesn't know why, and when he slows down, Mat kicks him. Apparently Master Luhan knows, or as good as, that Mat was the one who told several of the younger boys, including Ewin Finnegar (that's two "John" variants so far, for those keeping score) that some farmers had seen "ghost hounds" in the area, white and breathing fire, and then floured two of the Luhan's dogs and set them loose. The dogs ran straight home, of course, filling the Luhan's house with flour. I note here, as the boys apparently do not, that this was incredibly dangerous. Flour, suspended in the air in any quantity, has a tendency to explode if ignited, not a situation you want in a house with a forge attached. Likely, this very real risk is why the formidable Alsbet Luhan responded by chasing her husband out of the house with a broom. Very little short of what would get The Man Who Attends Council Meetings In His Apron to stop working until the flour could settle or be cleared out, and the risk of explosion reduced to an acceptable level. 

Marin al'Vere appears with a tray of crusty bread, cheese, and pickles. Pickled what, I'm not sure. Most vegetables can be pickled, so our strongest candidates here, based on what vegetables we know are grown in the Two Rivers, are peas, beans, or beats. There is also cabbage, so this could be sauerkraut, but I would expect that to be "pickled cabbage", or even "pickle" as an uncountable noun, rather than "pickles" plural. Unless perhaps they're removing the immature heads as soon as they start to form and pickling those. Or if "cabbage" is a broader term here, and some of what's called "cabbage" throughout the series is actually Brussels sprouts. In any case, they seem unlikely to be pickled cucumbers, since as far as I can recall, cucumbers do not appear anywhere in the series. 

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Apparently Mistress al'Vere is one of the only women in the Two Rivers who doesn't try to "play matchmaker" with Tam or Rand, even if she sometimes seems like she might like to with Rand. This is interesting, given that I don't think "matchmaker" is a role or job that's confirmed to exist anywhere in this setting, although it almost certainly does among the Seanchan, since they have both "breeding books" and customs for marriage in absentia, potentially allowing people to marry before they meet each other. The Andoran nobility practice arranged marriage, and the wording of the Dragon's Peace suggests that this may be a thing among a lot of the royalty and nobility, but I don't think they use matchmakers either. At a guess, and this is a guess, Rand may know about matchmakers from the description of the Sharans in The Travels of Jain Farstrider, whose channeler breeding program, if it's described to us accurately, must require some kind of coordination. 

The cider, ale, and brandy in the cellar of the winespring are virtually all local, and some of the latter two made by Bran himself. I don't know whether "ale" refers here to warm-fermented beer or to beer made without hops. There is hopped beer in Wheel of Time, it's mentioned once, in Winter's Heart, and not all beer in this setting is ale. The cool-temperate climate and high-enough-for-wetlands water table of the Two Rivers means that a person so inclined could grow hops, although it's susceptible to late frost and might not be doing great this year. If our Two Rivers ale is unhopped, it opens up some interesting questions about what bittering agents they use in the gruit. Most of the real world herbs used for this don't appear in Wheel of Time, not even the relatively fantasy-common yarrow and heather, although ground ivy, unaccountably, does - Nynaeve uses it in a healing salve. Perhaps boiled catfern and powdered mavinsleaf play a role. Occasionally, peddlers bring in ale or brandy from other places, but it's expensive, and generally not as good, so Bran doesn't bother with it. He does, however, buy wine, and the wine barrels in the cellar are marked with the year they were purchased, what peddler he got them from, and in what city they were made. That the wine doesn't come with any of this information already on the container suggests to me that this setting does not have a whole lot in the way of what you might call wine culture, as does Rand, at least, not having the word "vintage". Bran's notes reflect an awareness that not all wine is created equal, but there don't seem to be many social structures, or much vocabulary, around it. 

When they come back upstairs, the six Village Council members present have gone from sitting around awkwardly to serious conversation. Tam is talking too quietly for Mat and Rand to hear, and everyone else is listening. Once again, Rand wants to stop and listen, but Mat it still hoping to avoid Master Luhan's attention if he can, and in any case Mistress al'Vere left tehm a tray in the call, with honey cakes and mulled cider. 

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No sooner have they got the last of the casks put away, then Ewin Finnegar rushes into the cellar to  announce that there are strangers in town. Mat and Rand naturally assume the worst, and start tripping over each other asking questions to determine whether it was the myrddraal. Instead, we get our first description of a Warder's color-shifting, camouflaging cloak, as well as the sky blue one of a newly introduced and as-yet unspecified "her" - Moiraine, of course. In some ways, this brief description of Lan and Moiraine's outerwear perfectly captures the liminal space in which the early Wheel of Time books exist. The Warder's cloak has its origins in the cloaks of Lorien, given to the Fellowiship in The Lord of the Rings, and has successors in at least two series about wizards named Harry, one of which I have a whole reread series about, and the other of which will not be mentioned by name here in the forseeable future. In one, the camouflaging properties are escalated to true invisibility, while in the other they are merely grey, impervious to bloodstains, and worn by Wardens rather than Warders. Moiraine's sky blue cloak has a similar source, tracing its literary origins at least as far back as the sky blue hood of Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain, son of Thror, King under the Mountain. But as best I can tell, hers bore no successors, save perhaps a distant echo in Briar Moss's offer to have Sandry make his dying friend Flick a cape to match the sky blue hat she stole, and since it doesn't function there as a symbol of status or importance, even that faint trace may not mean anything. That was in March of 2000, 1 year and 9 months before the first of the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies, which I think may have fundamentally altered the relationship fantasy had to Tolkein's work. The movies' starting with Fellowship, rather than with The Hobbit, and indeed not getting to The Hobbit at all until 2012, centered the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a way that absolutely was not the case previously. (Not to say that it wasn't centered before that - it definitely was, but not anything like so drastically.)

Mat actually already knew the strangers were there, but he got sidetracked before he could tell Rand about it. He adds that Lan wears his sword like it's part of his body, and corroborates Ewin's report that Moiraine looks like a highborn lady. He also enthuses about the height and quality of their horses, which is the beginning of establishing Mat's interest in and knowledge of horses as something that sets him apart from the other two Two Rivers boys. Is Mat basically just a horse girl? I mean, kinda, yeah. Is this the first piece of evidence that Matrim Cauthon is perhaps something other than a cis man? Well, you have to want it, but I certainly think so. 

Rand is deeply confused as to what strangers would be doing in Emond's Field. Apparently they haven't had  a stranger here in about five years, and that was just some guy trying to escape some unspecified trouble in Baerlon. Now, suddenly, they've got somewhere between two and four, depending on whether you count the gleeman, and whether, as Rand darkly considers, Lan's color-shifting cloak ever turns black. Of interest here is the distinction Rand makes between strangers and outsiders. The merchants and peddlers mostly come every year, they're known, and so while they're outsiders, they're in a different category from strangers like Lan, Moiraine, and the mysterious hooded figure. The gleeman doesn't quite seem to be in either category - he hasn't been here before, and isn't likely to be again, but maybe the fact that his presence is an event, more along the lines of the fireworks than a real person, or the fact that he was invited, changes things. 

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Highly novelty seeking Mat, meanwhile, is mostly just excited. Between the strangers, the gleeman, and the promised fireworks, this is going to be the best Bel Tine ever. Although Nynaeve already does not like Moiraine. Moiraine called her "child" before realizing she was the Wisdom, and even after she apologized, Nynaeve answered her questions about how old people were, and how long they'd lived where they live, with an expression like she'd bitten into an unripe sweetberry. Fewer plants are called "sweetberry" than I would have expected. Both plants bearing this name, Viburnum lentago (better known as nannyberry, sheepberry, or sweet viburnum) and Lonicera caerulea (sweetberry honeysuckle) seem to have earned the epithet "sweetberry" by bearing fruit edible to humans while belonging to geni (genuses?) that mostly don't. The honeysuckle has a longer and more consistent history of use by humans, and is therefore the stronger candidate, but I do sort of hope for the viburnum. In addition to its being called "sheepberry", its status as a cold and drought tolerant survival food, and its history of use as a medicinal plant or tonic gives it that Two Rivers feel. 

By the time they get back upstairs, the entire Village Council is in the common room of the inn, listening to something Bran is saying. I note here that Abel Cauthon does not seem to be among them. Virtually every other named adult man in Emonds Field, excepting the Coplins and Congars, seems to be on the Village Council, but not him. Not Perrin's father either, technically, but not only does he live a ways out, Perrin's parents are not, narratively peaking, really his parents, the Luhans are, and they aren't named in this book in any case. The Coplins and Congars are, of course, known to be useless complainers and a general pain in everyone's butts. Abel Cauthon's absence from the Council may, therefore, imply something similar about him, lending credence to the way he's presented in the show, especially given that his characterization in the books is scanty at best. 

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They're back outside and wondering if the Gleeman is ever going to wake up, when Rand feels someone watching him. He looks around and sees a raven perched on a nearby roof, and it's looking at him. Rand and Mat throw rocks at it, virtually in unison, and it sidesteps them in a decidedly unbirdlike manner. It doesn't fly away until Moiraine comes up behind them and observes that ravens aren't to be trusted, startling the shit out of Rand, Mat, and the bird. They all take a minute to watch it fly away, and then Rand turns around and we get our first description of Aes Sedai agelessness. It's a bit odd that neither Mat nor Ewin mentioned this, but we've already seen from the discussion of the Myrddraal in Chapter 1, and the more recent conversation in the cellar, that Mat dislikes trying to describe things when he doesn't have good words for them, and Ewin is excitable enough that he might not have noticed.We also get our first of many descriptions of dresses. Unlike the description of agelessness, this one is actually somewhat less detailed than many of those that follow, but we nonetheless learn quite a lot about her sky blue velvet cloak, with its silver embroidery of leaves and vines, and her blue dress slashed with cream, the stone dangling over her forehead, and quite a lot of gold jewelry. Rand observes that the dress "seemed to shimmer" but is unable to attribute a cause to this. I don't think he's ever actually seen silk before, which raises the question of where he's seen velvet, since he has no trouble identifying that. He also accurately identifies the Great Serpent ring, "an even older symbol for eternity than the Wheel of Time", but does not realize its significance. 

After a round of dazzlingly awkward introductions, Moiraine says that she might need some small tasks done while she's in Emond's Field, and hands out coins to Rand, Mat, and Ewin. Ewin got a silver penny, while Mat and Rand get silver Tar Valon marks (although the boys don't recognize them beyond "high value silver coin"), the first indication we get that Moiraine is aware of anything special or unusual about these two kids in particular. These are, of course, also the coins she uses to keep track of them, and handing them out as soon as possible is a sensible precaution against unforeseen separation, but I am wondering now what Moiraine's original plan was. Moiraine always has a plan, and it's usually a pretty good one (except in New Spring), it just gets disrupted by the Shadow doing something she didn't see coming. She must, by definition, have been telling the truth about maybe needing someone to run errands for her. So what was the plan? How, when she laid this out all pretty and careful in her head, was this going to go? Show up, and tracking devices to all the plausible candidates, and then narrow it down by asking people for their family history under the guise of "Oh, Manetheren is just so interesting" until she figures out which one is the Dragon Reborn, I guess (a project she would have completed, incidentally, if Nynaeve hadn't lied to her about whether anyone was born outside of Emond's Field), and then...what? Presumably she can't just leave him there. Given how long it took her to tell the boys what was really going on, I can't imagine she intended to say "Surprise, you're the Dragon Reborn! Now come along to the White Tower." It must have been immensely frustrating when she realized that the Dragon Reborn was now old enough that he would need to persuade him to leave, rather than his mother. I've been trying to figure out what Three Oaths compatible half-truth she would use, and I suspect the more workable option would be "The Amyrlin Seat wants to see you." It's true, it's simple, it isn't something you can legitimately question, and even Rand "If you move to the next town over we will never see each other again" al'Thor isn't going to refuse. No one refuses a summons from the Amyrlin Seat. 

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When Rand asks, as politely as he can manage, what she's doing here, she says that she's always been interested in Manetheren ("this place you call the Two Rivers). Given that I have personally read canonical descriptions of Moiraine not paying attention in history class, I'm not sure how the The Oaths let her get away with this one, but I suppose it's possible that at some point she took and interest in Tetsuan and Eldrene, especially after Siuan took the stole, given that their rivalry is a dark mirror of her friendship with Siuan). (Two girls, unusually strong and more or less equally matched in the one power, one nobility and the other working class, arrive at the Tower very close together. The working class one becomes Amyrlin. Egwene's friendship with Elayne is, of course, a closer parallel, since Egwene, y'know, explodes, but I think that actually reinforces Siuan and Moiraine's relevance. Plainly, however Tetsuan and Eldrene's story was supposed to go, the pattern is gearing up to tell it again, and it's tried casting two pairs of girls, at least, without finding exactly what it needed. This, and similar parallels, will be discussed more in a later post). The similarities would not be lost on Moiraine, and it would be consistent with her established skills set and characterization to look into the matter.

Moiraine turns to go, and we finally get a description of Lan. This...pretty well established the way the story as a whole handles Warders - not worth mentioning as long as their Aes Sedai is in the scene. The only really noteworthy thing here is that the hadori is not described a braided. We do get some foreshadowing here, as Ewin opines that Lan must be a warder, and Mat dismisses the idea since Warders are always up in the Blight, fighting trollocs, and do we have trollocs in the Two Rivers? No, we have sheep. This is the first appearance of the words"Warder" or "trolloc", although we get very little on what a Warder is (no mention of Aes Sedai so far), and none at all on trollocs. But of course, we're about to have trollocs in the Two Rivers, now aren't we? Even if neither Our Heroes nor a first time reader have any reason to suspect it. 

The boys finally look at the coins they're holding, and notice an instinct not to spend them. A pity, since the peddler's wagon has just arrived.