New Spring

Serpent and Wheel

The world of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time lies both in our future and our past, a world of kings and queens and Aes Sedai, women who can tap the True Source and wield the One Power, which turns the Wheel and drives the universe: a world where the war between the Light and the Shadow is fought every day.

At the moment of Creation, the Creator bound the Dark One away from the world of humankind, but more than three thousand years ago Aes Sedai, then both men and women, unknowingly bored into that prison outside of time. The Dark One was only able to touch the world lightly, and the hole was eventually sealed over, but the Dark One’s taint settled on saidin, the male half of the Power. Eventually every male Aes Sedai went mad, and in the Breaking of the World they destroyed civilization and changed the very face of Earth, sinking mountains beneath the sea and bringing new seas where land had been.

Now only women bear the title Aes Sedai. Commanded by their Amyrlin Seat and divided into seven Ajahs named by colour, they rule the great island city of Tar Valon, where their White Tower is located, and are bound by the Three Oaths, fixed into their bones with saidar, the female half of the Power: to speak no word that is not true, to make no weapon for one man to kill another, and never to use the One Power except as a weapon against Shadowspawn or in the last extreme of defending her own life, or that of her Warder or another sister.

Men still are born who can learn to channel the Power, or worse, who will channel one day whether they try to or not. Doomed to madness, destruction, and death by the taint on saidin, they are hunted down by Aes Sedai and gentled, cut off forever from the Power for the safety of the world. No man goes to this willingly. Even if they survive the hunt, they seldom survive long after gentling.

For more than three thousand years, while nations and empires rose and fell, nothing has been so feared as a man who can channel. But for all those three thousand years there have been the Prophecies of the Dragon, that the seals on the Dark One’s prison will weaken and he will touch the world once more, and that the Dragon, who sealed up that hole, will be Reborn to face the Dark One again. A child, born in sight of Tar Valon on the slopes of Dragonmount, will grow up to be the Dragon Reborn, the only hope of humanity in the Last Battle—a man who can channel. Few people know more than scraps of the Prophecies, and few want to know more.

A world of kings and queens, nations and wars, where the White Tower rules only Tar Valon but even kings and queens are wary of Aes Sedai machinations. A world where the Shadow and the Prophecies loom together.

The present story takes place before the first volume of the series. It was first written as a novella published in Legends, and then rewritten as a full length novel. The events in the novella take place from chapter 15 to the end of the novel. Take your pick as to which version you choose to read. The succeeding books should be read in order.



The Novella

New Spring


The Novel

  1. The Hook
  2. A Wish Fulfilled
  3. Practice
  4. Leaving the Tower
  5. The Human Heart
  6. Surprises
  7. The Itch
  8. Shreds of Serenity
  9. It Begins
    
  1. It Finishes
  2. Just Before Dawn
  3. Entering Home
  4. Business in the City
  5. Changes
  6. Into Canluum
  7. The Deeps
  8. An Arrival
  9. A Narrow Passage
    
  1. Pond Water
  2. Breakfast in Manala
  3. Some Tricks of the Power
  4. Keeping Custom
  5. The Evening Star
  6. Making Use of Invisibility
  7. An Answer
  8. When to Surrender
 

Prequel to The Wheel of Time

Robert Jordan