Rand’s group makes it to the stedding, and there’s all the usual Scenery Porn as a female Ogier named Erith leads them to a town. Unfortunately, they’re also hosting three Aiel women, so there’s a whole standoff that also includes Mat declaring he Would Not Hit a Girl. Oh boy, I can tell that’s going to be very annoying at some point. It’s broken up by an Ogier named Juin, and then the Aiel just disappear, so we’ll have to get what promises to be a quite interesting conversation later.
Mat and Perrin tell Rand about the Aiel searching for him, which of course gets him going again about how he can’t possibly be Aiel, which sounds more pathetic than ever. And we find out why Loial’s been avoiding other Ogier: they have Arranged Marriages where males never have any say, and if he was forced into one, he couldn’t travel anymore. It’s a neat and unexpected bit on its own, but then its followed by an Unfortunate Implications rumination about how human relationships work the same way. Suddenly I’m quite curious what Jordan’s relationship with his wife was like.
It’s a neat bit of parallel construction that we met Loial at about this point in book one, and now we get more Ogier, and really find out about their culture. That unfortunate ending aside, it’s pretty cool stuff and refreshingly free of the Can't Argue with Elves that I feared these pacifist nature freaks would be. We’ve still got the Tinkers for that. And now that Rand has personally seen some Aiel, I can dream that his denial about his heritage is mercifully drawing to an end.
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