Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time, #13)

by Robert Jordan

If you do not wish to lead the pack, another will.

Working with the True Power was similar, yet not identical, to working with the One Power. A weave of the True Power would often function in a slightly different way, or have an unanticipated side effect. And there were some weaves that could only be crafted by the True Power.

Like an old friend. A dear, beloved old friend that you were going to stab through the eye, open up at the gut and consume by handfuls while drinking his blood. That was the proper way to treat friends. It was an honor.

Damn. You crazy-crazy, huh?

“No. I’m not lost. Finally. It feels like a great long time since I’ve understood the path before me.”

Oh Rand, youre back!

Gawyn ripped apart as if made of sand.

thirteen black towers rose in the distance beneath a tarlike sky.

The ground shook as several more towers fell. Another tower shook and cracked, collapsing most of the way to the ground—but then, it recovered and grew tallest of all. At the end of the quake, six towers remained, looming above her.

One of the eaglets uncoiled, and it wasn’t an eagle at all, but a serpent. It began to strike at the fledglings one at a time, swallowing them whole. The eaglets simply continued to stare into the sky, pretending that the serpent was their sibling as it devoured them.

She saw an enormous sphere made of the finest crystal. It sparkled in the light of twenty-three enormous stars, shining down on it where it sat on a dark hilltop. There were cracks in it, and it was being held together by ropes.

There was Rand, walking up the hillside, holding a woodsman’s axe. He reached the top and hefted the axe, then swung at the ropes one at a time, chopping them free. The last one parted, and the sphere began to break apart,...

The seals on the Dark One's prison, which Rand wants to break!

The serpent was one of the Forsaken, hidden in the White Tower, pretending to be Aes Sedai. Egwene had suspected this was the case—Verin had said she believed it so.

There was talk of a gigantic stone from the sky having struck the earth far to the north in Andor, destroying an entire city and leaving a crater.

Al’Thor would rip you apart with the One Power, he told himself. You’re being foolish, Gawyn Trakand.

Yes abut he's also a blade master and tall as hell

“A Black sister wouldn’t seem likely to proclaim herself by wearing black,” Gawyn said. “A more ordinary assassin, though, might need the dark colors to hide.”

It's the Seanchan ninja assassins!!!

“There can be no king of a fallen people,” Lan said. “No king without a kingdom.”

“It’s beautiful, Jur,” Neald said softly. His voice bore no hint of the bravado he often displayed. “I can feel saidar. It’s like I’m more complete now.”

An open cavern, gaping like a mouth. Bloodstained rocks. Two dead men on the ground, surrounded by ranks and ranks of Trollocs, a pipe with smoke curling from it.

“Nobody walks a difficult path without stumbling now and again. It didn’t break you when you fell. That’s the important part.”

“The Car’a’carn has embraced death,” Amys said. “He has given up trying to be as strong as the stones, and has instead achieved the strength of the wind.”

Before it was like the quiet of a knife being drawn, and now it’s like the quiet of a breeze.” “He’s awakened,” Elayne said suddenly. “He’s warm now.”

“What of the story of you hanging from a tree for nine days?” “Didn’t happen,” Mat said, resisting the urge to tug at the scarf around his neck. Nine days?

Omg what???

“Well, there’s this rumor that says you stepped into death’s domain to challenge him and demand answers to your questions,” Guybon said, looking more embarrassed. “And that he gave you that spear you hold and foretold to you your own death.” Mat felt a chill. That one was close enough to the truth to be frightening.

“I wonder if,” Nynaeve said, “we sometimes put the White Tower—as an institution—before the people we serve. I wonder if we let it become a goal in itself, instead of a means to help us achieve greater goals.”

It seems to me that men who spend time making something of themselves—rather than professing their devotion—are the ones who get somewhere. Both with women, and with life itself.”

You never could tell what a man would do when he was drunk, even if that man was your own self.

You don’t get anything free if you go in the tower, by the way. They’ll ask for something, something dear to you.

“The axe only kills,” Perrin said. “But the hammer can either create or kill. That is the difference.”

“I’ve never seen so many weaves at once,” he whispered. “I can’t track them all. He’s a storm. A storm of Light and streams of Power!”

“We’re not children, Mother,” Siuan said dryly. “No, you’re Aes Sedai—nearly as bad at following directions.”

HAH, GOT 'EEM

“When change comes, you can scream and try to force things to stay the same. But you’ll usually end up getting trampled. However, if you can direct the changes, they can serve you.

He hadn’t asked to become a leader, but did that absolve him of responsibility? People needed him. The world needed him. And, with an understanding that cooled in him like molten rock forming into a shape, he realized that he wanted to lead.

“I’ll stay by you, though, just in case it looks like you might fall.” “Thank you.” “I’m fond of the horse.”

And then, with a deep sigh, he gave in. “The Golden Crane flies for Tarmon Gai’don,” Lan said softly. “Let any man or woman who wishes to follow join it and fight.”

finallyyyyyyyyyy, Lan, gosh darnit!

“The hawk is better at hunting the rabbit. But, you see, the falcon is better at hunting the hawk.

Small things were important. Seconds were small things, and if you heaped enough of those on top of one another, they became a man’s life.

If you wish, you may call me Rand Sedai. I am, so far as I know, the only male Aes Sedai still alive who was properly raised but who never turned to the Shadow.”

“Sometimes, a man just likes to do what he wants, without someone telling him what’s wrong with it and what’s wrong with him. That’s all.”

In the distance—faint and almost inaudible—Mat heard laughter. A hissing, dangerous laughter. Malicious.

The Aelfinn were for questions; the Eelfinn granted requests. But they twisted those requests, and took whatever price they wanted.

They’re playing a game, Thom. I win games.” He pulled a handful of dice from his pocket. I win them most of the time, anyway.

Well burn me for a fool, Mat thought. Maybe I am a hero after all. Didn’t that beat all? “I’ll pay it,” Mat announced. “Half the light of the world.” To save the world.

“The savor!” one Eelfinn exclaimed. “So long!” cried another. “How it twists around him!” said the one who had taken his eye. “How it spins! Scents of blood in the air! And the gambler becomes the center of all! I can taste fate itself!”

“It was my choice,” Mat said. “And I had to do it, anyway. It’s one of the answers I was told by the Aelfinn when I first came. I’d have to give up half the light of the world to save the world. Bloody snakes.”

“If you ever meet a Malkieri,” Noal said, “you tell him Jain Farstrider died clean.”

“Tell the foxes I’m mighty pleased with this key they gave me. Also, you can all go rot in a flaming pit of fire and ashes, you unwashed lumps on a pig’s backside. Have a grand bloody day.”

A man was there once, when they woke me. He said I was not the one he wanted.” She hesitated, then shivered. “Sometimes I wished that they would drain me quickly and end my life.”

That had been Mierin Eronaile, a woman he had once called the Lady Selene. A woman most people knew by the name she’d taken upon herself. Lanfear.

Towers of Midnight, the: Thirteen fortresses of unpolished black marble located in Imfaral, Seanchan.