Three Oaths

The Three Oaths run through The Wheel of Time from The Eye of the World, where the strange exactness of Aes Sedai speech first hints at them. Before an Accepted of the White Tower attains the shawl she swears three vows on the Oath Rod, a ter'angreal that makes them physically unbreakable: to speak no word that is not true; to make no weapon with which one man may kill another; and never to use the One Power as a weapon except against Shadowspawn or Darkfriends, or in the last extreme of defending her own life, her Warder's, or another sister's. The Oaths are old, adopted piece by piece in the Tower's early millennia to quiet the fear the Breaking left behind, so that thrones and villages alike could deal with Aes Sedai without terror of the Power. Their most quoted consequence is that an Aes Sedai cannot lie, yet the truth she tells may not be the truth you hear.