Re-Reading "The Great Hunt": "Prologue-Chapter 3: The Flame of Tar Valon, The Welcome, and Friends and Enemies"

In which we met a sinister Darkfriend, and Rand has to contend with the fact that he is now snared by the Aes Sedai.

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Well, here we are. Having read The Eye of the World and offered commentary on its various chapters, I’ve now made it to The Great Hunt. While I loved The Eye of the World, it’s with the second volume in the series that things really begin to heat up, as Rand (as well as the others) have to contend with the fact that is a man who can channel and, just as importantly, he is also the man fated to be the Dragon Reborn. That’s quite a heavy burden to fall on the shoulders of a young man from the back end of nowhere. The world Jordan has created also starts to feel more expansive, as we get more and more viewpoint characters, all of whom give us important insight into how this series is going to work going forward. 

Let’s begin with the man called Bors. I have to say that this is probably my favorite of the many prologues that appear in The Wheel of Time. It’s the first time that we get to see inside the mind of one who has sworn his soul and his service to the Dark One and, through Bors’ cynical eyes, we get to see the wide range of people who have done the same. Of course, we’ve known for a while that there might be a Black Ajah lurking at the heart of Tar Valon, but this is the first time that we get direct confirmation with our own eyes that such a thing exists. 

Just as importantly, this Darkfriend Social (as it’s come to be known), skillfully establishes a healthy dose of dramatic irony. We know that there are any number of people who are now going to be on the lookout for Rand, Mat, and Perrin, and we also know that Ba’alzamon/Ishamael is indeed still alive, despite Rand’s naive belief that he was able to destroy him thanks to the Eye of the World. Bors–or Jaichim Carridin, as he will be revealed to be–makes for a very entertaining narrator, particularly since he seems to hold so many of his fellow Darkfriends in nothing less than contempt. We may not like him, we may even hate him, but he is nevertheless compelling. The fact that is revealed to be not just a Child of the Light but also a Questioner reveals the sinister extent to which the touch and influence of the Dark One has stretched. 

Meanwhile, Rand and his companions are trying to figure out what to do next and for Rand this takes on an added edge when it’s revealed that the Amyrlin Seat herself has come to Fal Dara. We can hardly blame him for thinking that she has come there exclusively for him, and we also can’t blame Lan for encouraging him to get out of town as fast as he can (indeed, it’s rather fun to watch the two of them spar, even though this is interrupted by the foul wind that seems to ensnare poor Rand). Unfortunately for Rand, however, Fal Dara is being shut down, and this leads him to ever-more-desperate attempts to get out of the city before he is summoned by the leader of the Aes Sedai.

While it’s easy to sympathize with Rand and his desire to escape the clutches of the Amyrlin Seat, these chapters already show some signs of the narrational tics that will mar Jordan’s writing for the rest of the series. Rand continues to push up against the boundaries being put on his movements by Lord Agelmar. No matter how clear it is that Rand can’t get out, he nevertheless persists in trying, far past the point when it becomes ridiculous. It’s a character trait that will only grow more irritating (and more intrusive) the longer the series goes on.

These chapters also mark another narrative device upon which Jordan comes to rely: chronic misunderstandings. Having realized that everyone around him will be in danger Rand, insufferably noble as always, decides that the best thing he can do is get out of Fal Dara as quickly as possible and that, to make things easier on everyone, it’s even better to alienate all of his friends, including Mat, Perrin, and Loial. On the one hand, this is really quite a selfless thing for Rand to do, and we know how much it costs him emotionally. On the other hand, this particular contrivance is going to get old very quickly, particularly since so many plotlines–particularly though not exclusively the romantic ones–end up hinging on a misunderstanding and/or a character’s inability/refusal to say what they’re actually thinking.

Thankfully, the women of these chapters have more sense than the men, and I give a lot of props to both Egwene and Nynaeve for not letting Rand be any more of a fool than he absolutely has to be. The former, of course, will always be fond of and loyal to Rand, even if their fortunes aren’t as romantically intertwined as they had both thought at the beginning of this journey. Nynaeve, for all of her prickliness, deserves a great deal of credit for wanting to help him in any way that she can, and she once again reveals that there’s a truly good heart under all of her stubbornness. Egwene, likewise, is a godsend to Rand, though her sympathy for Padan Fain is obviously misplaced. The scene in which she takes Rand to visit the peddler–and we see the corrosive and toxic influence he has over both his fellow inmates and his jailors–is another of those moments in which Jordan shows his acute command of the conventions of horror. Fain is undoubtedly a monster, but he’s a compelling one.

With these two chapters The Great Hunt is off to a very strong start indeed, not least because we are starting to get a stronger sense of who the Aes Sedai are. Up to this point, after all, we’ve only met Moiraine and Elaida, and both of them have been filtered through Rand’s point of view. While this is still the case in these first few chapters of this book, it’s already clear that we’re going to get a lot more of the Aes Sedai and their various machinations and for that I, for one, am very grateful.