As we return to Lan’s viewpoint, we learn he not only distrusts Moiraine, he suspects she’s not a real Aes Sedai, since she doesn’t act at all like the others he has seen.
It seems that she tortured and tormented our poor Lan, with all manner of pranks and unpleasant surprises, in payback for his throwing her in the lake. He also mentions his less than positive feelings about his frenemy Ryne being totally obsessed, scared, fascinated, and besotted with this so-called Aes Sedai. We also learn that she is still searching for the magic baby and asking after the names on her list, but always away from them where they can’t find out what she’s after. After about a week of hard riding and daily torturous pranks that almost drive Lan to lose his temper, they reach the outskirts of their destination, Chachin.
As they navigate through the city gates, Lan immediately dismisses Moiraine as being safely delivered to her destination and rides aggressively through the crowded streets to claim a spot at the castle. He is recognized as a VIP, given a nice royal suite, and settles in awaiting invitations. After ignoring a direct invitation to Edeyn’s rooms he is brought to a proper royal welcome. Him and his Edeyn have a short meeting that gets the crowd all excited, but ends up spending most of his time talking to prince Brys and his 8-year-old with lots of questions.
After making the appearance him and Brys go to his special thinking place, a nice balcony near a 200-foot drop. There they speak for a while, afterwards Lan returns to his rooms, finding Edeyn awaiting. First she tells him she wants to arrange his marriage to her daughter, then she takes him to bed – for old times sake maybe?
And then we break back to Moiraine’s viewpoint. So this passage is lovely. The woman E claims power and influence over Lanny because she took his virginity when he was a young pup, now she still wants to share a bed with him, but also wants to set him up to take her daughter’s maidenhead. This might be more twisted than some of the blatant incest, rape, and violence found in the Game of Thrones stories. Didn’t know RJ had it in him.
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