Talisman of Growing

By Linda

The Talisman of Growing is a ter’angreal used by the Ogier to expand the Ways the male Aes Sedai constructed for them. The Ogier were given only one Talisman of Growing:

"When the last Aes Sedai left the stedding, they gave to the Elders a key, a talisman, that could be used for growing more.”

- The Eye of the World, Decisions and Apparitions

"The only means of opening the Gate again will be for the Elders to bring the Talisman of Growing.”

- The Shadow Rising, Care for the Living

Note that Loial says the Ogier were give a key and refers to it as the Talisman of Growing, as does Elder Haman in Lord of Chaos, From the Stedding. The Talisman of Growing is activated by certain kinds of singing, such as Ogier Treesinging.

As lost stedding were found, the Ogier grew Ways to them. The Talisman cannot create an entirely new Way between two spots, but it can make a branch “grow” from an existing Way, and the Ogier can sing this growing into a “flower”, the “flower” of the Waygate, the only part of the Ways that is actually in the world.

Waygates are worked in such intricate organic detail that they resemble a wall of living vines and flowers covered over with very fine stone dust. When activated, usually by moving the “key” sculpted as a removable Avendesora leaf, the carved foliage changes slowly to living shrubbery, and the gate’s double doors swing outward to reveal a glassy mirror-like permeable barrier. Each Waygate has two of the Avendesora leaf keys, one on the outside and one within. The gates can be locked by placing both leaves on the same side, thus preventing normal opening from the other side.

- The World of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time

If both keys are removed, the Waygate will die and the only way the gate can be reopened is if the Elders use the Talisman of Growing (The Shadow Rising, Care for the Living). (Waygates can also be destroyed by thirteen Aes Sedai using a sa’angreal).

The Waygates themselves may be ter’angreal that work for anyone, merely by moving their keys, though Loial believes the Waygates (and the Ways) are living things in some way (The Eye of the World, Decisions and Apparitions). The Ways exist outside the normal confines of time and space through the One Power (The World of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time). Within the Ways there was no Breaking. The land between two stedding might split open into deep canyons or rise in mountain ranges, but in the Way between them there is no change (The Eye of the World, Decisions and Apparitions). Perhaps the Ways retain the memory of the world as it was when they were formed.

The first Waygates could not have been made inside [a stedding], with the ability to channel blocked by the stedding itself; even when Ogier were given the Talisman of Growing, and could themselves make the Ways grow to a new Waygate, the Power was still involved, if not channeling.

- Lord of Chaos, From the Stedding

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Written by Linda, August, 2005 and updated March, 2013