A Crown of Swords (the Wheel of Time, #7)

The seventh installment of Robert Jordan's fourteen-volume epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time opens in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Dumai's Wells, where the Dragon Reborn, Rand al'Thor, a young man prophesied to fight the Dark One in the Last Battle, has been freed from Aes Sedai captivity by Asha'man and other allies. Aes Sedai are women who wield the One Power, a supernatural force; Asha'man are men who channel the same force in Rand's service. Multiple storylines branch outward from this crisis as Rand and his companions struggle to unite a fractured world.

In the White Tower, the seat of Aes Sedai power, Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan, who seized the title of Amyrlin Seat (leader of all Aes Sedai) through a coup, reads a coded message confirming Rand's capture, unaware he has already escaped. She clashes with Alviarin, her Keeper of the Chronicles and chief deputy, who holds leverage through the divided Hall of the Tower, the Aes Sedai legislative body. Elaida experiences a Foretelling, a prophetic Talent, declaring the Tower will be made whole and the Black Tower, where male channelers gather, will be destroyed. Alviarin secretly serves Mesaana, one of the Forsaken, powerful channelers from a previous Age who serve the Dark One, hiding within the Tower itself. Elsewhere, Pedron Niall, Lord Captain Commander of the Children of the Light, a militant organization opposed to channelers, is assassinated, and Eamon Valda, a Lord Captain in that same organization, seizes command.

At the battlefield, Perrin Aybara, a blacksmith from Rand's home village in the Two Rivers, observes dangerous tensions: Aiel warriors eye Cairhienin soldiers with hostility, and Asha'man watch the Wise Ones, Aiel women who channel and advise their clans, with open suspicion. Perrin worries about his wife Faile's safety in Cairhien, where the noblewoman Colavaere has crowned herself queen in Rand's absence.

Rand leads his forces through a gateway, a portal created with the Power, to Cairhien. The situation has deteriorated: Rumors claim he submitted to the Tower, Aiel desert in droves, and rebel nobles have gathered an army outside the city. Entering the Sun Palace, Rand strips Colavaere of her crown and titles after Faile testifies to her treachery and evidence links Colavaere to two political murders. Rather than executing her, Rand exiles her to a small farm. He then sends Perrin on a secret mission to Ghealdan to neutralize the Prophet Masema, a fanatical preacher whose followers terrorize the countryside, staging a public confrontation to provide cover. Perrin gathers Two Rivers men, Aiel, Aes Sedai, Asha'man, and Berelain sur Paendrag, ruler of Mayene, and departs through a gateway.

Rand consolidates power in Cairhien and Caemlyn. Cadsuane Melaidhrin, a legendary Aes Sedai, arrives and treats Rand with blunt authority, probing whether he hears voices and unsettling him deeply. Min Farshaw, a close companion of Rand's who possesses the ability to see prophetic visions, breaks through his isolation, confesses her love, and shares a troubling vision of him merging with another man. At the rebel camp outside Cairhien, a bubble of evil, a dangerous disturbance caused by the Dark One's influence, descends as a deadly fog. Padan Fain, a longtime enemy of Rand, stabs him with a dagger tainted by the corruption of Shadar Logoth, an ancient ruined city. The wound interacts catastrophically with an older injury tainted by the Dark One. The Asha'man Damer Flinn seals the two competing evils away from each other inside Rand's body with a new form of Healing, keeping him alive.

Far to the south, Egwene al'Vere, another young woman from the Two Rivers raised as a rival Amyrlin Seat by the rebel Aes Sedai, fights to transform her position from figurehead to genuine leader. Sitters, senior Aes Sedai in the rebel Hall, manipulate proceedings, while her Keeper Sheriam tries to manage her. Moghedien, one of the Forsaken held prisoner through an a'dam, a collar that allows one channeler to control another, escapes after a man channeling frees her. Egwene pressures Sheriam into revealing that 10 sisters were secretly sent to infiltrate the White Tower and discovers that the Aes Sedai Myrelle holds the Warder bond—a mystical link between an Aes Sedai and her sworn warrior protector—of Lan Mandragoran, a legendary warrior whose Aes Sedai Moiraine died fighting a Forsaken. Egwene sends Lan to protect Nynaeve al'Meara, a fellow Two Rivers native recently raised to Aes Sedai, in Ebou Dar and compels Myrelle and Nisao, an Aes Sedai of the Yellow Ajah (which specializes in Healing), to swear personal fealty, building a core of loyal followers.

In Ebou Dar, the capital of Altara, Mat Cauthon, the third young man from the Two Rivers whose presence bends probability and whose head contains memories of long-dead soldiers, searches for a powerful ter'angreal (a device powered by the One Power) called the Bowl of the Winds, which can repair the unnatural drought gripping the world. Nynaeve and Elayne Trakand, the Daughter-Heir of Andor, need the Bowl desperately but have kept Mat at arm's length. Queen Tylin of Altara pursues Mat with aggressive, unwanted attention that leaves him humiliated. Nynaeve and Elayne discover the Kin, a secret organization of nearly 1,800 women who can channel, founded by women expelled from the White Tower and operating in Ebou Dar for over 2,000 years. Through the Kin, the Bowl's location is identified.

During negotiations with the Sea Folk, whose Windfinders—women channelers specializing in weather—possess Talents essential to using the Bowl, Moghedien attacks Nynaeve's boat with balefire, a forbidden weave that erases what it strikes from existence. Moghedien is now controlled by the mysterious Moridin through a mindtrap, an object granting absolute control over its victim. Moridin commands the True Power, drawn directly from the Dark One. Nynaeve's bodyguards are killed, but Lan rescues her. Nearly drowning and unable to summon anger, Nynaeve surrenders completely to the One Power, and her lifelong block, which prevented her from channeling without anger, shatters permanently. Learning that Lan's Warder bond is held by Myrelle, Nynaeve insists they marry immediately; the Mistress of the Ships, the Sea Folk's supreme leader, performs the ceremony.

Mat leads an expedition into the Rahad, a dangerous district, to recover the Bowl. Black Ajah sisters (Aes Sedai secretly serving the Dark One) attack, and Mat confronts a gholam, a creature from a previous Age designed to kill channelers, immune to the One Power and inhumanly strong. The gholam kills Mat's companion Nalesean, but Mat's silver foxhead medallion burns the creature on contact and drives it away. The Bowl is recovered, and plans are made to relocate everyone to a Kin farm outside the city.

Sammael, one of the Forsaken ruling from Illian, manipulates the Shaido, a hostile Aiel clan led by the ambitious Sevanna, scattering tens of thousands of warriors across the continent to sow chaos. Galina Casban, former head of the Red Ajah and secretly Black Ajah, is captured by the Shaido. The former Queen Morgase, imprisoned in Amador by the Whitecloaks, witnesses the Seanchan invasion. The Seanchan, invaders from across the ocean, use collared channelers called damane and flying beasts to overwhelm the garrison. Morgase secretly abdicates the Lion Throne in favor of her daughter Elayne, then escapes with her retinue.

Rand wakes after two days of unconsciousness. Learning that Sammael is away from Illian, channeling against Rand's advancing army at the border, Rand opens a gateway into the capital's central square. Davram Bashere's Saldaean cavalry—Bashere commands Rand's forces based in Caemlyn—and the newly formed Legion of the Dragon pour through. Sammael flees to Shadar Logoth, an ancient city consumed by its own evil. Rand pursues alone, aided briefly by a mysterious stranger who wields balefire from an undetectable source before vanishing without trace. Rand mercy-kills Liah, an Aiel Maiden of the Spear (a female warrior), whom he abandoned in the city months before, now driven mad. Sammael is consumed by Mashadar, the sentient evil fog haunting the ruins. Returning to Illian, Rand accepts the Laurel Crown from the Council of Nine, the nation's ruling body. Its hidden sword points prick his scalp, and the crown receives a new name: the Crown of Swords.

In the final scene, Mat searches for Olver, a young orphan boy in his care, in Ebou Dar as the Seanchan invade the city. Winged beasts disgorge soldiers, damane unleash channeling against the defenders, and armored columns charge through the streets. A blast collapses a building wall onto Mat, burying him under rubble. The sensation of tumbling dice—an omen of danger that Mat has experienced throughout the book—finally stops.