New Spring

I picked up New Spring because I had finished the main Wheel of Time run and felt that odd hollow after book fourteen, where you miss the world but do not want another thousand page siege. A friend told me this one was short and sad and mostly about Moiraine when she was young. That sounded right. This is New Spring by Robert Jordan, a prequel to The Wheel of Time, published in 2004 by Tor Books. The edition cited here runs 334 pages. It sits before The Eye of the World by about twenty years and explains how Moiraine Damodred met al'Lan Mandragoran and why she was waiting in Emond's Field when the Trollocs came.

My reading was quick but uneven. I read the first half in two evenings, then slowed down in the middle where the names pile up, then finished the last third in one sitting on a Sunday. Spoilers follow. I will walk through the plot in order and keep channeling talk plain where Jordan gets technical. Where I lost track of a minor Aes Sedai, I will say so instead of bluffing.

A Foretelling in Tar Valon

The book opens in the White Tower with war pressing in from outside. The Aiel have crossed the Spine of the World after King Laman of Cairhien cut down Avendoraldera, and now they are fighting Illuminers and Cairhienin and a shifting coalition of nations all the way to Tar Valon itself. Inside the Tower, two Accepted named Moiraine Damodred and Siuan Sanche are summoned to attend Gitara Moroso, the Keeper of the Chronicles, who is old and often vague and feared when she is not vague.

Gitara has one of her sudden lucid moments. With Moiraine and Siuan in the room, and with Tamra Ospenya the Amyrlin Seat present, she Foretells that the Dragon has been Reborn on the slopes of Dragonmount, that he will be born again at that moment as the war ends. Then she dies in the same breath, clutching at Siuan. Only four women hear it. Tamra swears Moiraine and Siuan to secrecy and sends them back to their studies as if nothing happened.

What I liked here is how small Jordan keeps it. No burning sky. No choir. An old woman sits up, speaks clearly for once, and falls still. Tamra, who is practical and tired and running a wartime Tower, understands at once what this means. If the child can be found and guided, the Last Battle might be winnable. If the Shadow finds him first, everything is lost. She does not tell the Hall. She does not even tell most of her own staff. She starts a quiet list of Aes Sedai she trusts, all sworn to find boys born in that narrow window near Dragonmount and watch over them.

Moiraine at this point is twenty or so, Cairhienin nobility, niece to King Laman whose pride started this war. Siuan is her best friend, a fisher's daughter from Tear who is blunt and funny and better at figures than anyone in her year. Both are close to the shawl but not yet raised. They promise Tamra they will help, and they mean it, though neither understands yet what the oath will cost. I believed their fear in this scene. The Tower teaches Accepted to control their faces. Both girls fail completely.

Two young women and a secret too large

The next stretch follows Moiraine and Siuan through the end of their Accepted years into the shawl. Jordan spends time on Tower routine, which will test your patience if you came only for battles. There are lessons, chores, visits to the kitchens for gossip, tests for the shawl that I will not spoil in detail, and a lot of whispered meetings. Tamra gives them money and a cover story and asks them to use the Blue Ajah eyes and ears, since both girls lean Blue and both are stubborn enough to work alone.

Siuan stays mostly in Tar Valon and becomes the anchor of the network. She copies names of mothers, talks to midwives, pays clerks for birth records around Dragonmount villages, and reports to Tamra. Moiraine is sent out into the world because her face is less known and because her temper needs room. Before they separate, they make a pact to meet again in ten years at a certain inn if they are both alive. It reads like schoolgirl drama, except the stakes are the world.

I found this part slower than I expected, and I mean that as fair warning, not dismissal. Jordan introduces a dozen Aes Sedai by first name, Ajah, and attitude, and you are supposed to track who is in Tamra's confidence and who might be Black Ajah. Cadsuane Melaidrin passes through, already a living legend, already rude to everyone, and I laughed at her one scene even as it added little. Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan appears as a young advisor full of Foretellings of her own, mostly about the Andoran succession, and her certainty already grates. Myrelle Berengari shows kindness to Moiraine that matters later. If you have not read the main series, this parade will blur. Even having read it, I had to flip back to remember which Red was merely proud and which was dangerous.

What holds it is the friendship. Moiraine is prickly about her family name, since Laman's Tree sin has made Damodreds unwelcome everywhere. Siuan teases her about Cairhienin manners and her refusal to cry. When they are finally raised to Aes Sedai, the relief is real. Then Tamra gives them their orders, and the relief ends.

My complaint here is that Jordan keeps Moiraine a little too perfect. She is clever, pretty, brave, and right about almost everyone. Siuan gets the jokes and the mistakes, which makes her easier to like.

Chachin and the last Lord of the Seven Towers

Moiraine's search takes her north to Kandor, to the city of Chachin, because Tamra's list points to women who might have information about the Borderland fighting and because rumors of Darkfriends cluster around Lord Aleshin and his rivals. This is where the book wakes up for me. Snow, fur cloaks, street bravos for hire, Aes Sedai trying not to be noticed and failing because even disguised they walk like Aes Sedai.

In Chachin she crosses paths with al'Lan Mandragoran, uncrowned king of Malkier, now a sellsword who rides with a small company. He is with his old friend Bukama Marenellin, who helped raise him after Malkier fell to the Shadow when Lan was a child, and with a younger man named Ryne Venamar who wants glory. Lan is twenty or so, already famous among Borderlanders, already carrying the weight of a dead nation in the way he refuses fees from Malkieri refugees and picks fights he does not need to pick.

Their first meeting is awkward in a good way. Moiraine tries to hire Lan's sword without saying why. Lan tries to refuse work from an Aes Sedai without saying why. Edeyn Arrel, a Kandori noble with her own claim on Lan through old custom, adds pressure by offering Lan a crown of sorts if he will marry and lead her armies. Lan wants none of it.

Jordan writes Kandor well. The inns smell of lamp oil and wet wool. The bravos posture with oaths to duels they will not fight. The Aes Sedai who are already in the city, including Myrelle and her Warder, move through markets pretending to shop for silks while watching Moiraine. I could see the breath in the air. After the Tower chapters, which are all stone corridors and whispers, the cold felt like a relief.

Lan is the last of the Malkieri kings, his land swallowed by the Blight, his people scattered. He wears the hadori, a braided leather cord, to mark his vow to fight the Shadow alone. He is not moody for effect. He was raised by a man who watched his king die and who decided the boy would live only to oppose the Dark.

The Black Ajah starts killing

Back in Tar Valon, Siuan learns that Tamra's quiet search has sprung a leak. Aes Sedai on Tamra's private list start dying on errands or vanishing on the road. One is found dead in a way that looks like an accident until Siuan checks the details. Another simply stops writing. Tamra herself grows careful, then frightened, then still shows up to meetings with ink on her fingers as if routine will protect her. It will not.

This is the strongest thread in the book for me, because Jordan plays it as a hunt where the hunters do not know they are being hunted. Siuan, still new to the shawl, tries to warn Tamra without naming names she cannot prove. Tamra, who has survived decades of Hall politics, understands the danger and keeps the list narrow anyway, because widening it would spread the secret. Both women are right and both are trapped.

The Black Ajah here is not a vague menace. It has faces. Merean Redhill, who teaches in the Tower and smiles at Accepted, is patient and watchful and far more central than she first seems. Jarna Malari and Chesmal Emry move through the background with plausible reasons to be everywhere. The book does not give them cackling scenes. It gives them committee work, travel orders, and soft questions that turn out to be traps. I found that chilling. An enemy who files paperwork is harder to spot than one who sneers.

Moiraine, far from Tar Valon, hears pieces of this through coded letters and does not grasp the full shape until late. She is busy surviving Chachin, where someone hires bravos to kill Lan's party. A night attack in an inn stairwell left me more shaken than any battle in the later books, because no one can channel freely in that tight space. Lan fights with a sword in a hallway. Bukama holds a door.

My criticism is structural. Jordan cuts between Tar Valon and Kandor at moments that sap tension. Each thread is good. The cutting makes both feel longer. You should not have to reorder chapters in your head in a 334 page book.

What Moiraine learns in the snow

The middle of the book becomes a road story. Moiraine follows Lan out of Chachin toward the Borderlands. Lan is hunting Shadowspawn that slipped around the main armies, and he is also running from Edeyn's offer and from his own grief. Ryne rides along because youth mistakes doom for honor.

Frozen boots, horses coughing, sentries changing in the dark. Moiraine, who grew up in palaces, learns to sleep in a cloak. I smiled more in these chapters than anywhere else in the book.

The search for the Dragon child narrows in a painful way. Moiraine hears of a young soldier's widow, of babes born on the mountain during the retreat, of a man from the Two Rivers named Tam al'Thor who fought at the Shining Walls and left the field with a child found on the slopes. She cannot chase every rumor. She writes them down, pays what she can, and moves on, because Tamra taught her that haste kills inquiries. The irony stung for me. The reader knows Tam al'Thor took infant Rand to Emond's Field and raised him as his son. Moiraine walks within miles of the answer and misses it by timing and weather and war. It is the kind of near miss that makes a prequel work instead of feeling like filler.

Lan's thread darkens. A fight with Shadowspawn leaves Ryne dead and Bukama wounded in spirit as much as body. Bukama blames himself and blames Lan for leading them, all in the same breath. Lan takes the blame because that is what he does.

If I have a complaint about this section, it is that Moiraine's channeling solves problems a little too neatly. A shield here. A healing that is almost enough. A weave that hides their camp. Jordan reminds us she is strong but still learning control, yet she rarely pays a lasting price. Lan pays in blood. Bukama pays in grief. Moiraine pays in tiredness that tea fixes. The imbalance makes her feel sheltered even on the road. I wanted one scene where the Power failed her completely and she had to talk or run instead.

A bond forged after loss

The end moves fast and hurt more than I expected. Moiraine finally confronts Merean Redhill, who has been ahead of her for most of the book without seeming to hurry. Merean is calm and certain and explains enough of the Black Ajah's plan to make clear how close the Shadow came to killing the newborn Dragon in his first weeks.

Bukama's death follows, in battle against Shadowspawn while guarding Lan and Moiraine. No speech. A cut, a fall, a body held until it is still. Lan tries to send Moiraine away because everyone near him dies. She refuses with purpose. She needs a Warder. He needs a cause larger than dying well in the Blight.

Lan agrees, and Moiraine bonds him as her Warder there in the Borderlands with Myrelle's help, since Moiraine has not yet learned that weave alone. The bonding scene is quiet. Pain, warmth, a sudden awareness of another heartbeat. Lan feels her resolve. She feels his grief like a stone in water. Neither is healed. Both are steadied. I closed the book thinking of how they appear twenty years later in Emond's Field, calm and complete with each other, and how much loss sat under that calm.

Then the last pages return to Tar Valon and to Siuan, now raised to higher responsibility after Tamra's murder, copying lists by lamplight and waiting for Moiraine's letters. The girls keep their pact as best they can. The Tower elects a new Amyrlin who is not what Tamra was. The Black Ajah survives, smaller but intact. The Dragon child grows up unknown in the Two Rivers, herding sheep. The war ends. The world exhales.

I recommend New Spring to readers who already care about Moiraine and Lan and want to see the cost behind their composure. As an entry point to the series, it is weaker. It assumes you know what Aes Sedai, Warders, the Blight, and the Dragon mean, and it does not pause to teach. The middle sags with names. Moiraine is too flawless to love at first. But the last hundred pages repay patience, especially Bukama's end and the bonding. This is a short book about a long duty, and it left me sadder than any battle in the main run, because here the heroes save the future by missing it, and then agree to spend twenty years waiting for a boy to grow.