Transcript of Chapter One Reading From ComicCon

[Luckers]

 

If anyone wants to make corrections, that would be appreciated. Deadsy, Terez and I transcribed it, but we couldn't get a couple of spots no matter how we tried.

 

________________________________________

 

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

 

Eastward the wind blew, descending from lofty mountains and coursing over desolate hills, it passed a place known as the Westwood, an area that once flourished with pine and leatherleaf. Here, the wind found little more than tangled underbrush, thick save for an occasional towering oak. Those looked stricken by disease, bark peeling free, branches drooping. Elsewhere needles had fallen from pines, draping the ground in a brown blanket. None of the skeletal branches in the Westwood put forth buds.

 

Northward and eastward the wind blew, across underbrush that crunched and crackled as it shook. It was night, and scrawny foxes picked over the rotting ground, searching in vain for prey or carrion. No spring birds had come to call, and it was telling that the howls of wolves had gone silent across the land.

 

The wind blew out of the forest and across Taren Ferry—what was left of it. The town had been a fine one, by local standards. Dark buildings, tall above their redstone foundations, the cobbled streets built at the mouth of the land known as the Two Rivers. The smoke had long since stopped rising from burned buildings, but there was little left of the town to rebuild. Feral dogs hunted through the rubble for meat; they looked up as the wind passed, their eyes hungry.

 

The wind crossed the river eastward, near clusters of refugees carrying torches aloft along the road from Baerlon to Whitebridge despite the late hour. They were sorry groups, with heads bowed, shoulders huddled. Some bore the coppery skin of Domani, their work clothing displayed the hardships of crossing the mountains with little in the way of supplies. Others came from farther off. Taraboners with haunted eyes and dirty veils. Farmers and their wives from Northern Ghealdan. All had heard the rumours that in Andor there was food, in Andor there was hope, but so far they had yet to find either.

 

Eastward the wind blew along the river that wove between farms without crops, grasslands without grass, orchards without fruit, abandoned villages, trees like bones with the flesh picked free, ravens often clustered in their branches. Starveling rabbits and sometimes larger game picked through the dead grass underneath. Above it all, the ever-present clouds were pressing down upon the land. Sometimes that cloud cover made it impossible to tell if it was day or night.

 

As the wind approached the grand city of Caemlyn it turned northward, away from the burning city, orange and red, violent, spewing black smoke toward the hungry clouds above. War had come to Andor in the still of the night. The approaching refugees would soon discover that they had been marching toward danger. It was not surprising; danger was in all directions. The only way to avoid walking toward it would be to stand still.

 

As the wind blew northward, it passed people sitting beside roads, alone or in small groups, staring with eyes of hopelessness. Some lay as they hungered, looking up at those rumbling, boiling clouds. Other people trekked onward, toward what, they knew not. The Last Battle—to the north, whatever that meant. The Last Battle was not hope. The Last Battle was death. But it was a place to be, a place to go.

 

In the evening dimness, the wind reached a large gathering far north of Caemlyn. This wide field broke the forest-patched landscape, but it was overgrown with tents, like fungi on a decaying log. Tens of thousands of soldiers waited beside campfires, and were quickly denuding the area of timber. The wind blew among them, whipping smoke from fires from the faces of soldiers. The people here didn’t display the same sense of hopelessness as the refugees, but there was a dread to them. They could see the sickened land; they could feel the clouds above. They knew the world was dying.

 

The soldiers stared at the flames, watching the wood be consumed. Ember by ember, what had once been alive instead turned to dust. A company of men inspected armor that had begun to rust despite being well-oiled. A group of white-robed Aiel gathered water, former warriors who refused to take up weapons again despite their toh having been served. A cluster of frightened servants, sure that tomorrow would bring war between the White Tower and the Dragon Reborn, organized stores within [?] tents shaken by the wind. Men and women whispered the truth into the night: “The end has come. The end has come. All will fail. The end has come.”

 

Laughter broke the air. Warm light spilled from the large tent at the center of the camp, bursting around the tentflap and from beneath the sides. Inside that tent, Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, laughed, head thrown back.

 

“So what did you do?” Rand asked when his laughter subsided. He poured himself a cup of red wine, the other one for Perrin, who blushed at the question. He’s become harder, Rand thought, but somehow he hasn’t lost that innocence of his, not completely. To Rand that was a marvelous thing. A wonder, like a pearl being discovered in a trout. Perrin was strong, but his strength hadn’t broken him.

 

“Well,” Perrin said. “You know how Marin is. She somehow manages to look—and even sound—as if you were a child who needed mothering. Finding Faile and me on the floor like two fool youths. I think she was torn between laughing at us and sending us to the kitchen to scrub dishes. Separately, to keep us out of trouble.”

 

Rand smiled, trying to picture it. Perrin—burly, solid. Perrin! So weak he could barely walk. It was an incongruous image. Rand wanted to assume that his friend was exaggerating, but Perrin didn’t have a dishonest hair on his head. Strange how much a man could change while his core remained exactly the same.

 

“Anyway,” Perrin said, after taking a drink of wine, “Faile picked me up off the floor and set me on my horse, and the two of us pranced about looking important. I didn’t do much, Rand. The fighting was accomplished by the others. I’d have had trouble lifting a cup to my lips.” He stopped, his golden eyes going distant. “You should be proud of them, Rand. Without Dannil here, your father and Mat’s father, without all of them, I wouldn’t have managed half what I did. No, not a tenth.”

 

“I believe it.” Rand regarded his wine. Lews Therin had loved wine. A part of Rand—that distant part, the memories of the man that he had been—was displeased by the poor vintage. Few grapes in the current world could match the favorite wines of the Age of Legends. He took a small drink, and then set the wine aside. Min still slumbered in another part of the tent, sectioned off with a curtain. Events in Rand’s dreams had awakened him. He had been glad for Perrin’s arrival to distract him from what he had seen.

[Terez]

Was just going to bump this with my comments on the Theoryland thread. Two issues: 1) Rand and Perrin talked about all this back in LOC; Rand heard about it first from the Two Rivers girls. One could argue that they didn't talk about this specifically, though. 2) less debatable, Moridin says 'The vintners of this time produced some excellent wines.'

[Luckers]

*nods* The Wine thing bothers me a little more than Terez, as I've the feeling that another Forsaken also makes a comment about the quality of modern wines--I'm feeling Graendal--but I haven't had a chance to look it up.

 

Aside from which this scene felt a little... cloying.

[skyfirex]

Ah, but the cloying conversation is contrasted by the background of lurid horrors of war.

 

"Some [several uncertain words?] hungered," What I heard: Some placethey hungered? Perhaps "In some places they hungered" is what he meant but slurred it together.

[Terez]

I was thinking 'thundered' instead of 'hungered', but that doesn't make much sense either. Perhaps Peter will be willing to fill in the blanks for us later today. Or perhaps Jason will get permission to post the actual text from Brandon.

[Wolf505]

As I recall, when Rand and Perrin spoke in LoC it was very rushed since at the time Rand was obsessed with killing Sammael and was trying to convince Perrin to go to Tear for him. Rand was in the first stages of trying to be as hard as possible. There's also no real indication they had time to just sit around chatting at that time. Even if they did Perrin might not have mentioned that particular story. This is the first time they've had a chance to just talk in a very long time and the first time since Rand had his epiphany and learned laughter and tears again.

 

As far as the wine goes, he said few grapes in the current world could match the Age of Legends, not none could. So I don't see what the big deal is. Seems kinda silly to complain about.

[Terez]

It wasn't exactly rushed.

 

For a long while they talked about the refugees and all the new things they had brought, new kinds of beans and squash, new varieties of pear and apple, the weaving of fine cloth and maybe carpets, making bricks and tiles, stonework and furniture more ornate than anything the Two Rivers had seen in a long time if ever. Perrin had grown used to the sheer numbers of people who had come across the Mountains of Mist, but it seemed to stun Rand. The advantages and disadvantages of the wall some wanted to put around Emond’s Field, and the other villages, were gone into in depth, and stone walls versus log. At times Rand sounded his old self, laughing over how all the women had been so hard against Taraboner or Domani dresses in the beginning, and now were divided into those who would wear nothing but good stout Two Rivers dresses and those who had cut up all theirs for rags. Or over how a number of the younger men were growing mustaches like Taraboners or Domani, occasionally with an Almoth Plain goatee as well, which made the unwise wearer look as though a small animal had latched on under his nose. Perrin did not bother to add to that beards like his own were even more popular.

 

It came as a shock, though, when Rand made it clear he had no intention of visiting the camp, though there were any number of men there he knew. "I can’t protect you or Mat," he said softly, "but I can them."

 

After that the conversation naturally lagged, until even Rand realized he had draped a blanket over it. Finally he stood with a sigh, scrubbing his hands through his hair and looking around in a disgruntled way.

 

That said, it doesn't bother me any more. It was just annoying to read a conversation about something that happened forever ago instead of a conversation about what Perrin has done in the meantime. But that might have already come in the prologue.

 

Another issue: there was enough of Taren Ferry left in LOC that they had a Wisdom and Mayor and the elected bodies and all.

 

I fixed a few things on my post at TL. I imagine Luckers will just copy-paste them here eventually. For one thing, it was Min at the end, not Men.

[flash_fire]

I thought that it was just the signs of eminent decay and pain upon the world.

 

I mean the wine was good a few (edit: several!) books ago, but we've had a lot of decay since then. I'd imagine that the good grapes are all filled with "weevils equivalent for grapes." I imagine there aren't many good grapes left in their world right now.

 

As for Taren Ferry I figured it was just an example of cities dying throughout their world. Without Rand, their food supplies are probably all a muck and useless Think of Tear before Rand came by and Zenned their food supply! If Tear falls into disparity, imagine how smaller towns would fair! Especially those without occasional Rand visits. Starvation would be rampant the wolves gone for the Last Hunt. I think that the ubiquity of the scarred land is hinted by how danger is in every direction. The dark one's touch on the world is ubiquitous.

 

Yes I agree about "Min" instead of "Men". I noticed that but you beat me to correcting it. (I didn't think that Rand would sleep near other men. He would want to sleep with near his wife, right? Okay maybe that's just me having wishful thinking for poor Rand)

 

Also, I'm guessing he is referencing his dream with Lanfear?

[Terez]

I thought that it was just the signs of eminent decay and pain upon the world.

 

I mean the wine was good a few (edit: several!) books ago, but we've had a lot of decay since then. I'd imagine that the good grapes are all filled with "weevils equivalent for grapes." I imagine there aren't many good grapes left in their world right now.

 

Maybe, but 1) he could have made that clearer, and 2) he could have compared it to wine he had a few months ago, rather than wine from the Age of Legends (see 1).

 

And yes, he's apparently talking about his dream of Cyndane.

[ElderHaman]

"Some lay as they hungered, looking up at those rumbling, boiling clouds." The "several uncertain words" are "lay as they." And yes, it is most certainly "Min," not "men."

[Tyzack]

So this just catches us up with the Fields of Mellinor, right after Rand's dream, and Camlyn is in flames. It's an interesting PoV from Rand to start, predictable I guess. I don't mind the working in of the AoL wine stuff, perhaps you can call it forced? I don't know, I'm not a writer.

 

Also, a big thank you to those who transcribed it.

[Sasha Grayes]

how exactly does wine spoil? Won' t it just become vinegar? and that can still be used. especially for cooking.

[flash_fire]

how exactly does wine spoil? Won' t it just become vinegar? and that can still be used. especially for cooking.

 

The wine can oxidize making it not fit for drinking nor cooking. It can also suffer from being in the light too much (hardly a problem in Rand land)!

[Sasha Grayes]

So the DO can oxidize wine? I call BS (ull hit) on that.

[theamazingape]

He would want to sleep with near his wife, right?

 

Rand and Min aren't married. That was just a cover when they were in hiding unless I'm terribly mistaken.

[Sarkimo]

For the several uncertain words bit, I think he says "Some lay as they hungered" while "stores within tents" is just that, with no words between within and tents.

 

Also, the wine thing is probably just personal taste. Rand/LTT prefers AoL wine, the Forsaken like AoL and 3rd Age wine.

[skyfirex]

Great work on transcribing, that must have been very time consuming.

 

For some fun, I turned on YouTube's closed captioning and got a completely different book: "Disney red herring costs with the ladder bibles journalists following breast"

[Luckers]

Aight done Min and the some lay as they hungered fixes. I'll take a peak at what Theoryland's done and see if I can't incorporate some of their work. :)

 

Edit: BTW good work on the 'some lay as they hungered'. That one really stumped us.

[Mashiara Sedai]

When I heard "a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist" I thought about how it's all come full circle. That's the same way Eye of the World starts. It's so emotional for me!

 

 

~Mashiara

[Luckers]

When I heard "a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist" I thought about how it's all come full circle. That's the same way Eye of the World starts. It's so emotional for me!

 

 

~Mashiara

 

Yeah I really liked the choice to bring it back to the mountains of Mist.

[Terez]

Aight done Min and the some lay as they hungered fixes. I'll take a peak at what Theoryland's done and see if I can't incorporate some of their work. :)

 

Copy-paste is easier. :p (You missed a few.)

 

Edit: BTW good work on the 'some lay as they hungered'. That one really stumped us.

 

My mom thought it was 'Some lads, they hungered..." since the second word sounds like 'plans' or something.

[Nolder]

I'm pretty sure this

 

A group of white-robed Aiel gathered water, former warriors who refused to take up weapons again despite their toh having been served. A cluster of frightened servants, sure that tomorrow would bring war between the White Tower and the Dragon Reborn, organized stores within [?] tents shaken by the wind. Men and women whispered the truth into the night: “The end has come. The end has come. All will fail. The end has come.”

 

should be this

 

 

A group of white-robed Aiel gathered water, former warriors who refused to take up weapons again despite their toh having been served. A cluster of frightened servants, sure that tomorrow would bring war between the White Tower and the Dragon Reborn, organized stores beneath tents shaken by the wind. Men and women whispered the truth into the night: “The end has come. The end has come. All will fail. The end has come.”

 

At least, that is what I heard.

[Terez]

I changed it to 'between' later, but 'beneath' works better.

 

Peter said that TOR is going to put up the correct version later.

[Barid Bel Medar]

*nods* The Wine thing bothers me a little more than Terez, as I've the feeling that another Forsaken also makes a comment about the quality of modern wines--I'm feeling Graendal--but I haven't had a chance to look it up.

 

Aside from which this scene felt a little... cloying.

 

I agree with the second point, it does seem a bit cloying, however, I think that is kinda good as well, as strange as that sounds. I like the cheesiness (that is actually a word now?) when the world around is falling apart. I don't know. It just seems fitting.

 

The wine is not an issue. I really think that, being denied substantial WoT material for a few years, plus this being the last book, we tend to get over-critical.

 

1. It is a matter of taste. Lews Therin obviously preferred AoL wines.

 

2. Moridin's comment is the same, a matter of taste. He likes torturing rats, he likes 3rd Age wine.

 

3. Rand doesn't say that they have no good wine, just that it was rare to get wine as good as favourites from the AoL. The vintage that they were drinking in the tent was probably not one of the best.

 

4. Not sure if you are referring to this, but Graendal did think about wine to herself in LoC: 23. When Sammael gives her a cup of wine.

 

Sipping her wine - and suppressing a sigh; it was from the here and now; she had hoped for a delicate Satare or one of the exquisite Comolads - .....

 

she seems to be in agreement with Lews Therin. And as a connoisseur of fine things, I would tend to think she had a more prevailing opinion over Moridin on this matter. But again, I say it is a matter of taste anyway. I really see nothing wrong with the wine thing here.

 

Edit:

 

With the LoC Rand-Perrin thing, there is a case for it, however, Perrin wouldn't have told every single story he had in a few hours. It could be argued this was one of them. I don't find it unreasonable from that point of view. Although you could say it would be one of the more important stories that Perrin would have told first, but hey.

 

From a writing standpoint, I think that it was perhaps better to have a story that we had not witnessed before, something off-screen or new, rather than a recount. However, it could be the whole point, to make us reminisce about the "good old days" when Trollocs were attacking the Two Rivers, rather than the whole world.

 

Eh, just my opinion on the matter, not that anyone cares

 

Edit again: I suppose I will say that I enjoyed the brief snippet. I can't really comment much yet, as it is the first part of the first chapter, so it is too little and too soon to form any real opinion on well..anything.

 

I will say that I enjoyed reading a bit of Rand PoV again. The ToM epiclogue was more about the dream than an actual Rand PoV. This one seems to be more about Rand's thoughts than anything else. It was good to get back into Rand's head, so to speak. I find I am looking forward to seeing more of Rand/LTT integrated from his own thoughts.

[Orderofolde]

As I recall, when Rand and Perrin spoke in LoC it was very rushed since at the time Rand was obsessed with killing Sammael and was trying to convince Perrin to go to Tear for him. Rand was in the first stages of trying to be as hard as possible. There's also no real indication they had time to just sit around chatting at that time. Even if they did Perrin might not have mentioned that particular story. This is the first time they've had a chance to just talk in a very long time and the first time since Rand had his epiphany and learned laughter and tears again.

 

As far as the wine goes, he said few grapes in the current world could match the Age of Legends, not none could. So I don't see what the big deal is. Seems kinda silly to complain about.

Good wine was already next to impossible to find in recent books even with Mat's luck, so it stands to reason that they don't have a very good wine to swap tales over.