In “The Road to the Spear,” the fourth episode of the third season of The Wheel of Time, Rand ventures into the mysterious city of Rhuidean. Inside a strange forest of glass-like pillars, he sees glimpses of the past through the eyes of various male ancestors, and in the process, learns about his own history, the history of the Aiel, and some very important facts about how the Breaking of the World came about.
All in all, the episode does a good job condensing the lore of what is a much more involved and longer series of flashbacks in the chapter of The Shadow Rising from which it derives its name. However, because the story is revealed in reverse, starting with the most recent events and ending with the most chronologically distant, it might have been challenging for viewers to piece together all these world-building details in a clear picture. A few extra pieces of information that were left out of the episode might also have served to further clarify the story of the Aiel, where they come from, and what it really means when they are called “oathbreakers.”
The following piece contains spoilers for “The Road to the Spear” and one or two minor details from the relevant parts of The Shadow Rising that were not included in the episode. It contains no major plot spoilers for the book series that have not already been revealed within the show.
To proceed in an ordinary, chronological order, let us begin with who the Aiel were during the Age of Legends. One thing the episode didn’t tell the audience, but which might be of interest to viewers, is that most of the Age of Legends was a prosperous, almost utopian time (at least on the surface) in which material needs were met for every human being, and social status was achieved primarily through service to humanity. At this time, there was a group known as the Da’shain Aiel. They served the Aes Sedai and also followed a peaceful way of life known as the Way of the Leaf, a philosophy of humility and of non-violence so strong that the idea of harming any human being, even by accident, was abhorrent to them. For example, in one flashback, an Aiel experiences distress after accidentally bumping into someone and knocking them down, even though the citizen was unhurt.
Their adherence to the Way of the Leaf and their sworn service to the Aes Sedai were both very important to the Da’shain Aiel. This service, of course, included serving the Dragon, Lews Therin Telamon, and so the Aiel were known as the People of the Dragon. During this time of prosperity, there were Songs of Growing that the Aiel and others employed to help crops and other plants grow strong and healthy.
We see a glimpse of people singing to their crops (although it’s during harvest, not planting) in the final vision Rand experiences. He sees through the eyes of an ancestor who is unnamed in the show but called Charn in the books. Charn serves an Aes Sedai named Mierin, a researcher who works in a floating, sphere-shaped university. Mierin has discovered a new source of power, one that can be wielded by anyone, and is not limited to channelers or to a specific gender. This power, which she names the “True Power,” exists outside of the Pattern—the fabric of reality that is spun out by the Wheel of Time and in which human lives are the threads. Mierin intends to drill a hole in the Pattern (in the books she had a colleague also involved in this endeavor) to reach this Power. Working in the fields alongside his family, Charn witnesses the disaster that unfolds when Mierin’s efforts breach the Dark One’s prison. The university falls from the sky and a hole is left in reality, through which the Dark One can exert his influence on the world.
The Dark One’s ability to touch the world led to the outbreak of war. Some powerful Aes Sedai swore fealty to the Dark and became the Forsaken, including Mierin, who took the name Lanfear, and Lews Therin’s rival, Elan Morin Tedronai, who took the name Ishamael.
As the situation grew more desperate, Lews Therin came up with a plan to lead an assault on the Dark One himself and reseal the Dark One’s prison. In an event that was adapted in the season finale of season one, “The Eye of the World,” Latra Posae Decume believed this plan to be too dangerous, and refused the help of the female Aes Sedai. During the attack, the Dark One’s prison was sealed—but the Dark One’s counterattack left a taint on the male half of the One Power, which drove every male channeler into a violent insanity.
In Rand’s second to last vision, he sees the fallout of these events. This ancestor, Jonai, is charged by Latra Posae to carry away a cutting of the great Chora tree and a female-attuned sa’angreal called the Sakarnen. Jonai and some of his fellow Aiel swear to keep the Sakarnen safe, and to always keep the Way of the Leaf. At the end of the vision, thousands of wagons are seen departing. It is implied that each wagon carries such a cutting, and possibly other angreal as well.
In the books, it is specifically stated that the Aiel were given many angreal and charged to carry them to a place of safety if possible, and to keep them until Aes Sedai came to claim them.
In an earlier vision (but later chronologically), Jonai is an old man. The wagons have been attacked and many Aiel have been killed. Because they keep the Way of the Leaf, they do not fight back, only bury their dead and move on. It is revealed that Jonai’s daughter has Dreamed of a place on the other side of the mountain range known as the Spine of the World, where the Aiel can build a great city and be safe. However, everyone in Jonai’s party, except for his grandson, decides not to follow that Dream but to turn south, in search of a palace where they can plant crops and sing the Song of Growing again. Jonai begs them not to abandon their oath, but allows them to leave. He and his grandson, Adan, pull their wagon alone, carrying the Chora cutting and the Sakarnen towards the mountains, and the desert beyond.
It is here where the story of the Aiel may have gotten a bit confusing for audience members to follow.
Those of Jonai’s party who turned south were the ancestors of the Tuatha’an, the traveling people who have been featured in other episodes and other seasons of the show. Like the original Da’shain Aiel, the Tuatha’an remain committed to the Way of the Leaf. However, in abandoning their duty to protect the cutting of the Chora tree and the Sakarnen, they broke their oath to the Aes Sedai. The Tuatha’an remember that their ancestors once sang a special song, though the song itself, and its exact purpose, has been forgotten. They remain ever in search of that lost joy, asking anyone they meet if he or she knows the song, and believe that finding it will bring peace to their people.
In the book, this split is given far more weight. It occurred not during Jonai’s time but slightly later, and Rand witnessed the events through Adan’s eyes. Also, there was not one but in fact many angreal in the Aiel’s possession. Having dwindled in number, with many of their horses stolen and wagons burned, the Aiel no longer had the ability to carry all the angreal with which they were entrusted, and many no longer believed the Aes Sedai would ever come for the objects, anyway. Tired and despairing, many abandoned the angreal, more concerned with finding safety and being able to rediscover the songs their ancestors once sang. Adan declared that those who abandoned their duty to the Aes Sedai were no longer Aiel, while they argued that they remained Aiel, since they kept to the Way of the Leaf.
Later chronologically (but as an earlier flashback), Rand experiences an important event in the life of Lewin, Adan’s grandson. When his sister and another Aiel girl are kidnapped, Lewin and his two friends attempt to sneak into the bandits’ camp at night and rescue the girls. When they are discovered and attacked, the boys end up defending themselves and killing the bandits. Shunned by their families for abandoning the Way of the Leaf, Lewin and his one surviving friend dedicate themselves to protecting the Aiel, who cannot protect themselves.
This scene teaches Rand, and the audience, how the Aiel became a war-like people, and also why they use spears to fight but despise swords and will not carry them. Despite becoming someone who has killed and is willing to do so again, Lewin makes a distinction between carrying a sword, which is made only for killing people and has no other purpose, and using a spear, which can also be used for hunting. While killing a human being with a spear is still against the Way of the Leaf, the act of carrying a spear is not, at least in the mind of Lewin and those who join him.
We also learn why the Aiel veil themselves if they intend to kill—because Lewin’s mother told him to hide his face from her. The viewer may remember seeing Aiel veil themselves at the mere prospect of battle, as when encountering the Shaido clan, but Avienda does not veil herself when fighting with Lan, as this is a sparring session to see who is the better fighter, not a fight with the intent to wound or kill.
In the books, there were several visions for Rand between Lewin’s experience and Mandein’s visit to Rhuidean. In them, he witnessed how the Aiel slowly began to differentiate between those who took up the spears and those who did not. The latter, called the Jenn Aiel, or “true Aiel,” remembered the origins of their people better than the spear-wielding counterparts did, and continued to shun and ignore the fighting Aiel, even as the Aiel continued to defend them, albeit from a distance. At one point, several Jenn came to Lewin and his men to ask for help after members of their families were kidnapped. Some of these, including a woman named Morin, decided to stay with the Aiel and take up the Spear. Angry that her husband cared more for the cutting from the Chora tree than their kidnapped daughter, Morin declared that the spear was her husband, becoming the first Maiden of the Spear and setting the precedent that Maidens do not marry unless they give up the spear.
Two Aes Sedai also began traveling with the Jenn Aiel at some point before they crossed the Spine of the World and into the desert.
A man named Garam and his father allowed the Aiel to take water from their lands—the only people who ever did so. In the glossary of The Dragon Reborn, the fifth book of the series, it is stated that Garam and his father helped found the city that became Cairhien. Centuries later, in repayment for the gift of water, the Aiel gave the Cairhien people a cutting of Avendesora and granted all Cairhien safe passage through their lands. This lasted until King Laman Damodred, Moiraine’s uncle, cut the tree down and precipitated the Aiel War.
In the episode, Moiraine tells Rand about the great tree in Cairhien and her uncle’s actions, though she does not know all the details behind why the Aiel gifted the tree in the first place.
In Rand’s second vision of the episode, he sees through the eyes of Mandein, a clan chief who has been summoned, along with all the other Aiel chiefs, to the half-built city of Rhuidean. He witnesses the city being shrouded in mists, and stands under Avendesora with the other clan chiefs as a very old Aes Sedai explains that each of them, and anyone who ever wishes to be a chief, must pass through a forest of columns which she erects with the use of the Sakarnen. She tells them that the Aiel have forgotten where they come from and that the columns are there to give them this information. She also prophesies the coming of the car’a’carn, also known as He Who Comes With the Dawn, who will lead all the Aiel, not just an individual clan.
This scene is similar to the one in the books, but lacks certain details, including the fact that the Jenn Aiel, those who still kept to both oaths and still remembered the history of the Aiel, were dying out at this point, and the Aes Sedai foresaw that there would eventually be no Jenn left. The columns of Rhuidean were therefore necessary to keep memory alive once the Jenn were gone.
We see the character of Muradin in the show, who is so overcome by what he sees that he gouges out his own eyes before collapsing, dead. We also see other corpses within the forest of columns. The episode does a good job of visualizing psychic pain, but viewers might not have picked up on exactly why the revelation of their true history might cause some of the Aielmen who venture through this ter’angreal to experience shame to the point of self-harm, or even death. The Aiel sense of identity is so powerfully attached to their warrior culture, and their sense of honor is so strong, that many cannot face learning the truth:that they were once pacifists, and that they have abandoned the covenant of their ancestors, both to the Way of the Leaf and the duty charged to them by the Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends.
Rand’s first vision, in which he sees his father, Janduin, fighting on the slopes of Dragonmount and discovering his mother’s body, isn’t in the books, but it is a powerful scene, and a great way to remind the audience that there is still a little mystery for Rand as to his mother’s identity, as the Wise Ones have recently told him that his mother was not actually Aiel by blood.
All in all, “The Road to the Spear” is an entertaining and informative episode. I am excited to see how Rand and the other Aiel respond to his branding as the car’a’carn and the changes that have been prophesied to come. And for those new to the story, I hope this piece serves as a helpful guide to understand what we have seen of the Aiel so far, and what is yet to be explored in the rest of season four.
Looking for more on The Wheel of Time? Find all of our episode recaps and discussions here, plus additional articles and news about the television series. You can also follow along with Sylas’ read-through of the books!