Potential
Spoilers Below
I keep telling everyone that
similarities between The Wheel of Time (TWOT) and A Song of Ice and Fire
(ASOIAF) are vast even if there are those out there that say otherwise.
What
happened when Callandor was first wielded:
He
stumbled suddenly, not seeing the dead man at his feet until he was lying on
his back atop his flute case on the stone floor.
Be’lal raised
his blade of black fire, snarling. “Take it! Take Callandor and
defend yourself! Take it, or I will kill you now! If you will not take it, I
will slay you!”
“No!”
Even
Be’lal gave a start at the command in that woman’s voice. The Forsaken stepped back out of the arc of Rand’s sword and turned his head to frown at Moiraine as she came striding through the battle, her eyes
fixed on him, ignoring the screaming deaths around her. “I thought you were
neatly out of the way, woman. No matter. You are only an annoyance. A stinging
fly. A biteme. I will cage you with the others, and teach you to serve the Shadow with your puny powers,” he finished with a
contemptuous laugh, and raised his free hand.
Moiraine
had not stopped or slowed while he spoke. She was no more than thirty paces
from him when he moved his hand, and she raised both of hers as well.
There
was an instant of surprise on the Forsaken’s face, and he had time to scream
“No!” Then a bar of white fire
hotter than the sun shot from the Aes
Sedai’s hands, a glaring rod that
banished all shadows. Before it,
Be’lal became a shape of shimmering motes, specks dancing in the light for less
than a heartbeat, flecks consumed before his cry faded.
There
was silence in the chamber as that bar of light vanished, silence except for
the moans of the wounded. The fighting had stopped dead, veiled men and men in
breastplates alike standing as if stunned.
“He
was right concerning one thing,” Moiraine said, as coolly serene as if she were
standing in a meadow. “You must take Callandor. He meant to slay you for it,
but it is your birthright. Better by far that you knew more before your hand
held that hilt, yet you have come to the point now, and there is no further
time for learning. Take it, Rand.”
Whips
of black lightning curled around her; she screamed as they lifted her, hurled
her to slide along the floor like a sack until she came up against one of the
columns.
Rand
stared up at where the lightning had come from. There was a deeper shadow up
there, near the top of the columns, a blackness that made all other shadows
look like noonday, and from it, two eyes of fire stared back at him.
Slowly
the shadow descended, resolving into Ba’alzamon, clothed in dead black,
like a Myrddraal’s black. Yet even that was not so dark as the shadow
that clung to him. He hung in the air, two spans above the floor, glaring at
Rand with a rage as fierce as his eyes. “Twice in this life I have offered you
the chance to serve me living.” Flames leaped in his mouth as he spoke, and
every word roared like a furnace. “Twice you have refused, and wounded me. Now
you will serve the Lord of the Grave in death. Die, Lews
Therin Kinslayer. Die, Rand al’Thor. It is time for you
to die! I take your soul!”
As
Ba’alzamon put forth his hand, Rand pushed himself up, threw himself
desperately toward Callandor, still glittering and flashing in midair. He did
not know whether he could reach it, or touch it if he did, but he was sure it
was his only chance.
Ba’alzamon’s
blow struck him as he leapt, struck inside him, a ripping and crumpling,
tearing something loose, trying to pull a part of him away. Rand screamed. He
felt as if he were collapsing like an empty sack, as if he were being turned
inside out. The pain in his side, the wound taken at Falme,
was almost welcome, something to hang on to, a reminder of life. His hand closed
convulsively. On Callandor’s hilt.
The
One Power
surged through him, a torrent greater than he could believe, from saidin into the sword. The crystal blade shone brighter than even Moiraine’s fire
had. It was impossible to look at, impossible any longer to see that it was a
sword, only that light blazed in his fist. He
fought the flow, wrestled with the implacable tide that threatened to carry
him, all that was really him, into the sword with it. For a heartbeat that took
centuries he hung, wavering, balanced on the brink of being scoured away like
sand before a flash flood. With infinite slowness the balance firmed. It was
still as though he stood barefoot on a razor’s edge above a bottomless drop,
yet something told him this was the best that could be expected. To channel this
much of the Power, he must dance on that sharpness as he had danced the forms
of the sword.
He
turned to face Ba’alzamon. The tearing within him had ceased as soon as his
hand touched Callandor. Only an instant had passed, yet it seemed to have
lasted forever. “You will not take my soul,” he shouted. “This time, I mean to finish it once and for
all! I mean to finish it now!”
Ba’alzamon fled, man and
shadow vanishing.
For
a moment Rand stared, frowning. There had been a sense of—folding—as Ba’alzamon
left. A twisting, as if Ba’alzamon had in some way bent what was. Ignoring the
men staring at him, ignoring Moiraine crumpled at the column base, Rand reached
out, through Callandor, and twisted reality to make a door to somewhere else.
He did not know to where, except that it was where Ba’alzamon had gone.
“I am the hunter now,” he
said, and stepped through.
With a jerk, he came awake, lying there shivering in the dark
heat. Sweat soaked his smallclothes, and the linen sheets beneath his back. His
side burned, where an old wound had never healed
properly.
He traced the rough scar, a circle nearly an inch across, still tender after
all this time. Even Moiraine’s Aes Sedai Healing could not mend it completely. But I’m not rotting
yet. And I’m not mad, either. Not yet. Not yet. That said it all.
He wanted to laugh, and wondered if that meant he was a little mad already.
ASOIAF:
A little backstory
“Burnt,”
said Salladhor Saan, “and be glad of that, my friend. Do you know the tale of
the forging of Lightbringer? I shall tell it to you. It was a time when
darkness lay heavy on the world. To oppose it, the hero must have a hero’s
blade, oh, like none that had ever been. And so for thirty days and thirty
nights Azor Ahai labored sleepless in the temple, forging a blade in the sacred
fires. Heat and hammer and fold, heat and hammer and fold, oh, yes, until the
sword was done. Yet when he plunged it into water to temper the steel it burst
asunder.
“Being
a hero, it was not for him to shrug and go in search of excellent grapes such
as these, so again he began. The second time it took him fifty days and fifty
nights, and this sword seemed even finer than the first. Azor Ahai captured a
lion, to temper the blade by plunging it through the beast’s red heart, but
once more the steel shattered and split. Great was his woe and great was his
sorrow then, for he knew what he must do.
“A
hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it
glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. ‘Nissa Nissa,’ he
said to her, for that was her name, ‘bare your breast, and know that I love you
best of all that is in this world.’ She did this thing, why I cannot say, and
Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that
her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but
her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the
steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of
Heroes.
“Now do you see my meaning?
Be glad that it is just a burnt sword that His Grace pulled from that fire. Too
much light can hurt the eyes, my friend, and fire burns.” Salladhor
Saan finished the last grape and smacked his lips. “When do you think the king
will bid us sail, good ser?”
“No,”
the old man said. “It must be you. Tell them. The prophecy . . . my brother’s
dream . . . Lady Melisandre has misread the signs. Stannis . . . Stannis has
some of the dragon blood in him, yes. His brothers did as well. Rhaelle, Egg’s
little girl, she was how they came by it . . . their father’s mother . . . she
used to call me Uncle Maester when she was a little girl. I remembered that, so
I allowed myself to hope . . . perhaps I wanted to . . . we all deceive
ourselves, when we want to believe. Melisandre most of all, I think. The sword is wrong,
she has to know that . . . light without heat . . . an empty glamor . . . the
sword is wrong, and the false light can only lead us deeper into darkness, Sam.
Daenerys is our hope. Tell them that, at the Citadel. Make them
listen. They must send her a maester. Daenerys must be counseled, taught,
protected. For all these years I’ve lingered, waiting, watching, and now that
the day has dawned I am too old. I am dying, Sam.” Tears ran from his blind
white eyes at that admission. “Death should hold no fear for a man as old as
me, but it does. Isn’t that silly? It is always dark where I am, so why should
I fear the darkness? Yet I cannot help but wonder what will follow, when the
last warmth leaves my body. Will I feast forever in the Father’s golden hall as
the septons say? Will I talk with Egg again, find Dareon whole and happy, hear
my sisters singing to their children? What if the horselords have the truth of
it? Will I ride through the night sky forever on a stallion made of flame? Or
must I return again to this vale of sorrow? Who can say, truly? Who has been
beyond the wall of death to see? Only the wights, and we know what they are
like. We know.”
ASOIAF
- What I do know:
A lot of people think that Dany is
Azor
Ahai and her dragons are
Lightbringer. The problem I see with that is if the dragons
were Lightbringer why didn’t the White Walkers flee before them? As a matter of fact during their first
encounter the Night King himself set a trap. Click here to
see how his trap relates directly back to TWOT.
I don’t see the Red Sword of Heroes being a weapon that could be so easily turned upon it’s
master.
We saw neither the White Walkers nor the Wights flee from the dragon's fire. This was a trap that the Night King planned and he got his prize. |
I also see if playing out more like
TWOT. A little disclaimer: I write my
theories based upon what I think is going to happen in the books and not the TV
show. I use what I learn from the TV
show and apply it towards my theory.
How
I see Lightbringer in action:
In the books I believe Lightbringer
will be Dawn. In the TV show as they haven’t had time to
explain the significance of Dawn, they just may make it Longclaw. After Jon Snow forges
the sword it will then in the presence of the White Walkers and Wights burn bright enough to burn the eyes. Click here to
see my theory on the forging of Lightbringer.
Sure, the dragons are powerful weapons but from everything we have seen they
aren’t enough to defeat the Army of the Dead alone.
I see the dragons more like balefire, although not as powerful, similar
to the white bar of light Moraine used to defeat Be’lal. If they are Lightbringer why do the living
have to mark a line in the sand in an attempt to hold them back? When it is forged, I don’t think it will immediately
glow in Jon’s hands like Callandor. I
think when he brandishes it after they are defeated at Winterfell and are
forced to fall back and encounters Melisandre one
last time and kills her will it then and only then become the weapon it was
meant to be. I only hope their retreat
is on par with the retreat that took place in TWOT in its epic
storytelling. Click here to
see my blog on that. It will most likely
be Sam saving
the day and blowing the Horn of Winter. He has had the horn in his possession since
Jon gave it to him hopefully, he still has it and awakens the Kings of Winter in the Winterfell crypts. Maybe he passes it to Podrick Payne, in an attempt to get it
to Jon, and he blows it as I have always thought he would. Click here to
see my theory on that. Moirane searched
20 years for the Dragon
Reborn and helped him claim Callandor in an effort to
defeat the Dark One. Melisandre has also
been searching for the Prince that was Promised for years in
an attempt to defeat the Great Other. I think she has been led astray however as I
believe R’hllor to be their true enemy. Rand has a wound that never healed that
Moiraine could never heal; likewise, Melisandre brought Jon Snow back but his
wounds as of now have never fully healed either. I see the White Walkers fleeing like Ba’alzamon
before Callandor. It is fitting that the
Night King is Ba’alzamon in his Moridin form
after the Dark One brings him back from death yet once again. I see those wights caught up in the very
presence of Lightbringer bursting into flames and those out of range retreating
for the first time taking a cue from their masters; the White Walkers. How do you see it playing out?
Comments encouraged. Love to hear the idea’s of
others. Most believe that since I present my idea’s as “fact like” I’m
not open to change my viewpoints which is far from the truth. I simply
look at the information presented and go from there. If you can shine a
light on another way of thinking that opens the door to debate.
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