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4.1: Egwene's Dreams

• The Great Hunt
• The Dragon Reborn
• The Shadow Rising
• The Fires of Heaven
• Lord of Chaos
• A Crown of Swords
• The Path of Daggers

From The Great Hunt

[TGH: 12, Woven in the Pattern, 180]

... she saw Rand sleeping on the ground, wrapped in a cloak. A woman had been standing over him, looking down. Her face was in shadow, but her eyes seemed to shine like the moon, and Egwene had known she was evil. Then there was a flash of light, and they were gone. Both of them. And behind it all, almost like another thing altogether, was the feel of danger, as if a trap was just beginning to snap shut on an unsuspecting lamb, a trap with many jaws."

From The Dragon Reborn

[TDR: 25, Questions, 233-4]

She had dreamed of Seanchan, too, of women in dresses with lightning bolts woven on their breasts, collaring a long line of women who wore Great Serpent rings, forcing them to call lightning against the White Tower. That had started her awake in a cold sweat, but that had to be just a nightmare, too. And the dream about Whitecloaks binding her father's hands.

There had been a dream of Rand, reaching for a sword that seemed to be made of crystal, never seeing the fine net dropping over him.

And one of him kneeling in a chamber where a parched wind blew dust across the floor, and creatures like the one on the Dragon banner, but much smaller, floated on the wind, and settled into his skin.

There had been a dream of him walking down into a great hole in a black mountain, a hole filled with a reddish glare as from vast fires below,

and even a dream of him confronting Seanchan.

Perrin with a falcon on his shoulder, and Perrin with a hawk. Only the hawk held a leash in her talons--Egwene was somehow convinced both the hawk and falcon were female--and the hawk was trying to fasten it around Perrin's neck.

... And that dream of Perrin--with a beard!--leading a huge pack of wolves that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Mat, placing his own left eye on a balance scale.

Mat, hanging by his neck from a tree limb.

There had been a dream of Mat and Seanchan, too, but she was willing to dismiss that as a nightmare.

...Just like the one about Mat speaking the Old Tongue.

She had dreamed of Perrin with a wolf, and with a falcon, and a hawk -- and the hawk and falcon fighting

...of Perrin running from someone deadly,

and Perrin stepping willingly over the edge of a towering cliff while saying, "It must be done. I must learn to fly before I reach the bottom."

There had been one dream of an Aiel, and she thought that had to do with Perrin, too, but she was not sure.

And a dream of Min, springing a steel trap but somehow walking through it without so much as seeing it.

... Mat with dice spinning 'round him...

Mat being followed by a man who was not there ... or maybe more than one, but in some way there was no one there

Mat riding desperately toward something unseen in the distance that he had to reach

and Mat with a woman who seemed to be tossing fireworks about. An Illuminator, she assumed, but that made no more sense than anything else.

Men and women breaking out of a cage, then putting on crowns.

A woman playing with puppets, and another dream where the strings on puppets led to the hands of larger puppets, and their strings led to still greater puppets, on and on until the last strings vanished into unimaginable heights.

Whitecloaks ravaging the Two Rivers.

Why should Perrin have a falcon on his shoulder, and what was important about him choosing between that axe he wore now and a blacksmith's hammer?

... A Whitecloak putting Master Luhhan in the middle of a huge, toothed trap for bait

What did it mean that Mat was dicing with the Dark One, and why did he keep shouting "I am coming!" and why did she think in the dream that he was shouting at her?

And Rand. He had been sneaking through utter darkness toward Callandor, while all around him six men and five women walked, some hunting him and some ignoring him, some trying to guide him toward the shining crystal sword and some trying to stop him from reaching it, appearing not to know where he was, or only to see him in flashes. One of the men had eyes of flame, and he wanted Rand dead with a desperation she could nearly taste;

Rand in that dry, dusty chamber again, with those small creatures settling into his skin.

Rand confronting a horde of Seanchan.

Rand confronting her, and the women with her, and one of them was a Seanchan.

From The Shadow Rising

[TSR: 11, What Lies Hidden, 145]

Rand as tall as a mountain, walking through cities, crushing buildings beneath his feet, with screaming people like ants fleeing from him.

Rand in chains, and it was he who was screaming.

Rand building a wall with him on one side and her on the other, her and Elayne and others she could not make out. "It has to be done," he was saying as he piled up stones. "I'll not let you stop me now."

Aiel fighting each other, killing each other, even throwing away their weapons and running as if they had gone mad

Mat wrestling with a Seanchan woman who tied an invisible leash to him

A wolf-- she was sure it was Perrin, though-- fighting a man whose face kept changing.

Galad wrapping himself in white as though putting on his own shroud

and Gawyn with eyes full of pain and hatred.

Her mother weeping.

From The Fires of Heaven

[TFOH: 15, What Can Be Learned in Dreams, 214]

Rand sitting down in a chair, and somehow she knew that the chair's owner would be murderously angry at having her chair taken

...Perrin, lounging with Faile on his lap, kissing her while she played with the short-cut beard that he wore in the dream. Behind them two banners waved, a red wolf's head and a crimson eagle. A man in a bright yellow coat stood near to Perrin's shoulder, a sword strapped to his back; in some way she knew that he was a Tinker, though no Tinker would ever touch a sword. And every bit of it except the beard seemed important. The banners, Faile kissing Perrin, even the Tinker. Every time he moved closer to Perrin it was if a chill of doom shot through everything.

...Mat throwing dice with blood streaming down his face, the wide brim of his hat pulled down low so she could not see his wound

while Thom Merrilin put his hand into a fire to draw out the small blue stone that now dangled on Moiraine's forehead.

Or a dream of a storm, great dark clouds rolling without wind or rain while forked lightning bolts, every one identical, rent the earth.

From Lord of Chaos

[LOC: 15, A Pile of Sand, 258]

Twice, right on top of each other, she dreamed of taking [Gawyn] by the shoulders and trying to turn him to face the other way against his will. Once he brushed her hands away roughly; the other time she was somehow stronger than he. The two blended together hazily.

In another, [Gawyn] began swinging a door closed on her, and she knew if that narrowing gap of light vanished, she was dead.

Perrin came and stood before her, a wolf lying at his feet, a hawk and a falcon perched on his shoulders glaring at each other over his head. Seemingly unaware of them, he kept trying to throw away that axe of his until finally he ran, the axe floating through the air chasing him.

Again Perrin; he turned away from a Tinker and ran, faster and faster though she called for him to come back.

Mat spoke words she almost understood - the Old Tongue, she thought - and two ravens alighted on his shoulders, claws sinking through his coat into the flesh beneath

He seemed no more aware of them that Perrin had been of the hawk and the falcon, yet the defiance passed across his face, and then grim acceptance.

In another, a woman, face shrouded in shadow, beckoned him toward great danger; Egwene did not know what, only that it was monstrous.

Several concerned Rand, not all bad, but all odd. Elayne, forcing him to his knees with one hand.

Elayne and Min and Aviendha, sitting in a silent circle around him, each in turn reaching out to lay a hand on him.

Him walking toward a burning mountain, something crunching beneath his boots. She stirred and whimpered; the crunching things were the seals on the Dark One's prison, shattering with his every step.

From A Crown of Swords

[ACOS: 10, Unseen Eyes, 195]

...that she [Egwene] would bond him [Gawyn], she knew from interpreting her dreams...

On bare feet, Gawyn walked [toward her] across a floor of broken glass, shards breaking at every slow step....she could see the trail of blood left by his slashed feet.

...a man riding on a black stallion. Gawyn. Then she was standing in the road in front of him, and he reined in. Not because he saw her...but the road that had been straight now forked right where she stood, running over tall hills so no one could see what lay beyond. She knew, though. Down one fork was his violent death, down the other, a long life and a death in bed. On one path, he would marry her, on the other, not. She knew what lay ahead, but not which way led to which. Suddenly he did see her, or seemed to, and smiled, and turned his horse along one of the forks...

She stood before an immense wall, clawing at it, trying to tear it down with her bare hands. It was not made of brick or stone, but countless thousands of discs, each half white and half black, the ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai, like the seven seals that had once held the DO's prison shut...the wall stood strong however she beat at it. She could not tear it down. Maybe it was the symbol that was important. Maybe it was the AS she was trying to tear down, the White Tower. Maybe....

Mat sat on a night-shrouded hilltop, watching a grand Illuminator's display of fireworks, and suddenly his hand shot up, seized one of those bursting lights in the sky. Arrows of fire flashed from his clenched fist, and a sense of dread filled her. Men would die because of this. The world would change.

Straps at waist and shoulder held her tightly to the block, and the headsman's axe descended, but she knew that somewhere someone was running, and if they ran fast enough, the axe would stop.

Logain, laughing, stepped across something on the ground and mounted a black stone; when she looked down, she thought it was Rand's body he had stepped over, laid out on a funeral bier with his hands crossed at his breast, but when she touched his face, it broke apart like a paper puppet.

A golden hawk stretched out its wing and touched her, and she and the hawk were tied together somehow; all she knew was that the hawk was female.

A man lay dying in a narrow bed, and it was important that he not die, yet outside a funeral pyre was being built, and voices raised songs of joy and sadness.

A dark young man held an object in his hand that shone so brightly she could not see what it was.

From The Path of Daggers

[TPOD: 15, Stronger than Written Law, 308]

Rand, wearing different masks, until suddenly one of those false faces was no longer a mask, but him.

Perrin and a Tinker, frenziedly hacking their way through brambles with axe and sword, unaware of the cliff that lay just ahead. And the brambles screamed with human voices they did not hear.

Mat, weighing two Aes Sedai on a huge set of balance scales, and on his decision depended....She could not say what; something vast; the world, perhaps.

Recently, all of her dreams about Mat were pale and full of pain, like shadows cast by nightmares, almost as though Mat himself were not quite real.

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