“The Shadow shall rise across the world, and darken every land, even to the smallest corner, and there shall be neither Light nor safety. And he who shall be born of the Dawn, born of the Maiden, according to Prophecy, he shall stretch forth his hands to catch the Shadow, and the world shall scream in the pain of salvation. All Glory be to the Creator, and to the Light, and to he who shall be born again. May the Light save us from him.”
-from Commentaries on the Karaethon Cycle
Sereine dar Shamelle Motara
Counsel-Sister to Comaelle, High Queen of Jaramide
(circa 325 AB, the Third Age)
Before the beginning in which the Wheel of Time turns once more and a wind rises somewhere (this time the Caralain Grass) and there is not beginning or ending but there is a beginning, there is this beginning. The Wheel of Time is a fantasy series comprised of a several novels of which this is the fourth and as a fantasy series that means one can expect lots of repetitive and recurring things. Such as, for instance, the template for how the books open. Chapter One always sets the stage with basically the exact same first paragraph featuring only one major modification: where the wind rises. Interesting as a result of its inexplicably unusual quality, this book does not feature an extended Prologue or, for that matter, any Prologue at all. It does stick with the plan by offering a quote from one of its fictional mythic texts from ancient civilization as the, technically speaking, the first words. Considering the title of the book, the focus of this “ancient” text being a Shadow looming over the word should not be surprising. This sort of connection between the epigraph and the narrative focus tends to be a coherent part of the construction.
“Tear! It’s Callandor, then. Moiraine means him to take the Sword That Cannot Be Touched out of the Stone of Tear. I swear I’ll hang her in the sun to dry! I will make her wish she were a novice again! He cannot be ready for that yet!”
You have to love the fantasy novel mystique. Decoded: Tear lies west of the Spine of the World and east of the Plains of Maredo while it is situated between the Sea of Storms down south and (clearly the coolest of all these names) the woodsy Haddon Mirk due north. Callandor, meanwhile, is the name given to a weapon that, curiously enough, already has a pretty cool name: the Sword That Cannot Be Touched, a masterpiece of fine crystal forging. To retrieve Callandor (which seems like it might be a really difficult thing to do considering it cannot be touched) one must head to Tear, obviously, and once there, located the Stone of Tear while on the lookout for crystal sword hanging from the the Heart of the Stone.
These things are relatively common knowledge, at least to Siuan who knows instantly by the message which has been imparted that Rand, our fantasy series protagonist, is fast on the way to Tear. This kind of stuff never happens in the mystery genre or Southern Gothic, though occasionally it will pop up in romance and even on rare occasions vampire fiction. Fantasy is the domain of swords lodged firmly into stones until they aren’t and that can’t be touched until they are. Or even, for that matter, swords that have been given names.
“To believe a thing is not to make it true.”
This almost sounds—close, but not quite there—like an echo of Yoda in its semantic construction of a fundamental truth too easily forgotten. Within any context, this philosophical contemplation that might even be worthy of the term “wisdom” would have a place among the memorable quotes of a text. Its wisdom speaks to everything from larger issues of confusing faith with fact down to the insanity of believing conspiracy theories on the basis that nobody can prove it isn’t true. But within the context of this specific text, the Stone Dog of the Imran is essentially voicing a major thematic element of the book. Gaul is far from the only character who speaks about the concept of truth. In fact, it is very much a recurring theme whether an actual variation of the word truth is spoke or not.
Characters are constantly asserting things to be true, questioning the validity of something be true, and making decisions based on considerations about the probability of a truth. At times, in fact, the reader might well wonder whether the Shadow of the title and the ancient quotation in the epigraph is a metaphor for the inability to determine the truth and the consequences that come from making the wrong assumption.
