The Wheel Of Time “A Place Of Safety”

In episode one, Nynaeve was dragged away by a Trolloc.  In episode two, she popped up alive and well, threatening a sick Moiraine and a healthy Lan for information.  In episode three, she may have become my favorite character.

OK, she’s not my favorite character.  That’s mostly because by this point, all the different characters are kinda awesome.  Nynaeve just gets points for escaping the Trollocs.  And what brilliant plan did she have to escape?  She ran like hell!

OK, it is a bit more complicated than that.  She ran when the Trolloc who took her decided to murder an injured cohort, and then she ran like hell before killing the beast with its own sword while hiding in a pool of water.  And from there, she found Moiraine and Lan.  Yes, she’s not in Lan’s league, but she is a professional enough Wisdom to do what she can for a sick and injured Moiraine.  But it takes some real guts to escape some Trollocs and then threaten an Aes Sedai and her Warden.

I mean, compare that to the others.  Perrin and Egwene went one way, and they’re being chased by wolves.  Or maybe guided by wolves.  They get lucky and find some friendly Tinkers.  But that doesn’t mean the Dark One isn’t chasing them with bad dreams and stuff.

Mat and Rand are less lucky.  They find a village on a river, and it can’t be good because there’s a guy called a gleeman there.  He’s like a singer and entertainer, and somehow, with a job title like that, you’d think that he must be a jolly fellow, but his song is, like, gloomy.

He also takes all of Mat’s money, forcing the two to work for the barmaid to pay for their lodgings.  She seems cool.  What can go wrong there?  I mean, yeah, Mat is acting out of character and just wants to go home.  That gleeman seems helpful.  That barmaid…oh maybe not.  She’s a Darkfriend!  Those are bad!  Hence the name!  But then Rand manages to bust through a solid ironoak door like…like a super-strong guy with magic might be able to do?  Since he wants to go to the White Tower, and Mat wants to go to Two Rivers, will they separate when they escape that crazy barmaid who…um, doesn’t seem to have any special powers or anything?  I mean, she has the power to die when the gleeman Thom Merrilin stabs her through the throat.

You know what’s neat about shows like this?  You have these naive heroes away from home for the first time, and just about everyone they meet knows more than they do.  They’re either secretly evil, not so secretly evil, or they’re even more secretly part of some secret society that just wants to help.  Anyone who says more than three words to these people might make a good ally or a deadly foe.  No one is just hangin’ around.

I’ll leave whatever that other Aes Sedai is up to when I learn more next episode.  Just seeing someone in red to Moiraine’s blue tells me they probably don’t get along.