Belt and sheath and sword together only weighed a few pounds, but when he sheathed the blade it seemed to drag at him like a great weight.” (TEOTW, p. When Rand first puts it on, it makes him “feel odd. Still, the narration is aware of the significance of the sword and what it portends, and doesn’t neglect to communicate that to the reader. You will probably have more need of it than I, though, the Light willing, neither of us will. He started to undo the sword belt, but Tam spoke up. “Trouble?” Rand said, and the Warder growled at him impatiently. “Say your goodbyes quickly, sheepherder, and come. There was a tap at the door, and Lan stuck his head into the room. 115)Įven the way Rand begins carrying the sword isn’t very dramatic he takes the blade as a practical measure, to defend them when Tam is wounded, and is already wearing it when the time comes to leave Emond’s Field. That blade must have traveled a strange road to end up with a sheepherder in the Two Rivers.” (TEOTW p. “There are places where the heron is a symbol of the master swordsman. “He called it useless, did he? He must not always have thought so.” Lan touched the scabbard at Rand’s waist briefly with one finger. Rand explains that it belongs to his father, and Lan observes that it is a strange thing for a shepherd to buy.
#HERON MARKED SWORD FULL#
Because Rand doesn’t know the symbolism of the heron-mark, and because Tam talks more of the burden of the weapon and its uselessness to a farmer, the full weight of what the blade means doesn’t become clear to him until later, when Lan notices it and asks how Rand came by it. When Rand first encounters Tam’s sword, he is struck by its quality but given a very simple story behind Tam’s possession of it. In this way, the heron imagery, and indeed the sword itself, at one time separate Rand from his true identity as the Dragon Reborn and at the same time irrevocably tie him to it. These, of course, are the two scars burned into Rand’s hand by wielding the sword while channeling. And as for being dangerous… well, a stranger might be deceived by the looks of a young shepherd (unless they know the Aiel, anyway) but those close to Rand certainly know better.Īnd then of course there is the verse in the Prophecies of the Dragon, which alludes to a completely different purpose to the mark of the heron, one that will identify Rand as the Dragon Reborn. The fact that Rand is neither of these things caused a certain level of danger for him, but then again, it’s not so much that he isn’t a blade master-it’s that he isn’t a blade master yet. But the heron-marked blade had a very different significance to those around Rand, drawing often-unwanted attention to him and marking him as a dangerous man and a blade master. On the one hand, Rand imbued this gift from Tam with his deep desire and need to believe that Tam was his true father-for him, carrying the sword was proof and symbol of their bond as father and son. The sword has been something of a talisman for Rand ever since he left Emond’s Field, and in a remarkably complex way. It came as quite a surprise to me when Rand’s heron-marked sword was destroyed during the climactic battle with Ba’alzamon at the end of The Great Hunt.