Thursday, February 28, 2002

Statues and Figurines


By Linda

Black and White Bird Figurine

This figurine of a bird with long wings held in flight is for talking to people a long way off (Knife of Dreams, A Different Skill) and could have been used in the Last Battle, but they could not figure out how to make it work. It was found in the Ebou Dar cache and was taken to Caemlyn, but it is not known if Elayne kept it with her or whether it was destroyed in the sacking and firing of Caemlyn.


Blue Woman Figurine

A palm-sized blue figurine of a woman in an oddly cut skirt and coat was found in the Ebou Dar cache and was taken to Caemlyn. It is for talking to people a long way off (Knife of Dreams, A Different Skill) but they could not work out how to make it work. It is not known if Elayne kept it with her or whether it was destroyed in the sacking and firing of Caemlyn.

Bronze Statue of a Man Holding a Book

A two-foot-tall heavy bronze statue of a stout bearded man with a jolly smile holding a book, was found in the Ebou Dar cache (The Path of Daggers, Unweaving) by Elayne and is now in Caemlyn. Jordan has confirmed the statue represents himself. This statue holds thousands and thousands of books from the Age of Legends written in the Old Tongue. The books pre-date the drilling of the Bore (A Memory of Light, Eastward the Wind Blew). If thin flows of Fire and Earth are touched to a particular place on the figure, the words Ansoen and Imsoen (Fiction and Non-Fiction) in black appear above the statue (Knife of Dreams, A Different Skill).

This was one of the few ter’angreal we know of from the cache that Elayne definitely took from Caemlyn before it was sacked by the Shadow. She gave it to the Aes Sedai for use. It caused quite a stir.

Glass Man Figurine

A foot tall glassy figurine of a man with his hand raised as if to signal stop will chase away vermin (Knife of Dreams, A Different Skill). It was found in the Ebou Dar cache and was taken to Caemlyn. It is not known if Elayne kept it with her or whether it was destroyed in the sacking and firing of Caemlyn.

Crystal Statue

A crystal statue of a nude woman clasping a child to her breast was in Rhuidean (The Shadow Rising, The Traps of Rhuidean) and may be with the other Rhuidean ter’angreal or taken to Cairhien on Kadere’s wagons.

Various Statues

Other statuettes and figures of birds and animals and people were found in the Ebou Dar cache by Elayne ( The Path of Daggers, A Quiet Place) and taken to Caemlyn. Some of the statues made even Aviendha blush and the servants snicker according to Robert Jordan’s notes (although this was edited out of the published book). It is not known if Elayne kept them with her or whether they were destroyed in the sacking and firing of Caemlyn.

Robert Jordan’s Aes Sedai notes describe a statue of a too slim figure of a woman about a foot tall stretched on her toes, with arms raised and two fingers pointing upward, in Elayne’s and Nynaeve’s part of the Ebou Dar cache. It made a pair with an equally thin man pointing downward. The resonance in each statue of the pair was different, and the two statues would not do the same thing.

In the White Tower, there are small exotic statues in the storeroom for smaller items of the Power (The Gathering Storm, The Tower Shakes).

Wooden Hedgehog

Liandrin’s group stole a wooden carving of a hedgehog, no bigger than the last joint of a man’s thumb, from the Tower. One of its properties was known to Aes Sedai: any woman who tried to channel through it went into a peaceful, dreamless sleep for half a day (The Dragon Reborn, Questions). Unbeknownst to the Tower, the hedgehog could be used in an evil way. Liandrin’s group were instructed by a Forsaken, perhaps Be’lal, to set a trap for Moiraine in Tear using the hedgehog. The trap was woven with pure Spirit (the Power used for Dreaming). It sent the entire consciousness of whoever entered the room in which it was placed into Tel’aran’rhiod so strongly that they would die after a short while. (A Dreamer or Dreamwalker, by comparison, only sends part of his or her self into Tel’aran’rhiod (The Dragon Reborn, A Flow of Spirit)). The trap worked multiple times; anyone who entered the room would be caught in it. The only warning was a sharp tingling of nerves upon entering the room.

Faile was caught in the trap and her entire consciousness was sent and literally bound in Tel’aran’rhiod so that she had to be found and freed by someone with some skill in the Dream before she died. Perrin was forced into Tel’aran’rhiod by the trap strongly enough to die after a short while, yet he was not bound, perhaps because of his Talent for the Wolf Dream. He roamed Tel’aran’rhiod looking for Faile and freed her by breaking the reflection of the hedgehog carving in Tel’aran’rhiod. This broke the ter’angreal in the real world and destroyed the trap (The Dragon Reborn, What is Written in Prophecy).
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Written by Linda, August, 2005 and updated March, 2013 and May, 2016

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