Below is an excerpt from some material Brandon Sanderson excreted wrote which was deleted from his WoT books, and which is being released for some reason in a sequel to the anthology in which "River of Souls" appeared. I have linked the title so you can read it on Tor.com without my commentary, which I will be annotating to this excerpt. I will try to steer away from stylistic issues, as he his a professional writer and I am not. I am a mere WoT-pundit. I am not a person like Brandon Sanderson, Kevin J Anderson, EL James or Stephanie Meyer. I certainly have no business criticizing someone like that on his area of expertise. I'll try to stick to factual stuff, like WoT details, grammar and vocab issues, or, IDK, logic and facts?

According to Sanderson, this was an alternative plot to what actually happened, where Perrin is leading a group to infiltrate the Ways and deny them to the Shadow, to prevent another Caemlyn incident.

A Fire Within the Ways
Chapter 1: The Gate
Perrin stepped through the gateway into Cairhien, gripping his hammer, and looked right and then left down the narrow, cobbled alley. It was night, and the alley was dark—though lantern light shining through the gateway painted the cobbles golden at his feet.

The city was rank with the smells of men: smoke from nearby chimneys, the lingering aroma of powders and perfumes, even the scent of paint on the wooden boards of the alley—long dried and gone stale. Missing was the scent of rotting food so commonly associated with cities. Not even the smallest scraps were left to rot in Cairhien these days.
Except all the food should be rotting. Is there absolutely no food, at all, that there is none to rot? Maybe the garbage doesn't smell any different, but for a few books now, spontaneously rotting food has been a big thing.

Part of him fixated on the smoke first, then tucked its presence into the back of his mind. Fire was the simplest and often the first way for a wolf to know that men were near.

I think he means "noticed", not "fixated". Either that or the rest of the sentence should be worded differently. This is not a style critique, this is "meaning of words" issue, which is one of my immersion-breaking problems with Sanderson.

Perrin prowled down the empty alley, waving for his group to follow. The still air was strange—for wolves, noise was the other sign of humankind. People were often oblivious to how much noise they made. A man in the woods was usually a thunderous, crunching, snorting, grumbling affair. That cacophony should have been magnified many times, here in the city.

And yet, it was still. Unnaturally still. Cairhien should not have been a quiet place, even at night.

Shouldn't Perrin be contrasting this to other times he's been in Cairhien? That's been three times, twice staying for several days, and every time has been since he got his wolf-senses.
Perrin doesn't think like a wolf, he does not prioritize things as wolves do. He occasionally comments on the differences between human and lupine perceptions, but he's a human being, first and foremost. That's a huge aspect of his character arc.

Perrin reached the mouth of the alley and scouted the larger thoroughfare that it intersected, his eyes piercing the darkness. That's not what "scouted" means.To his left, across the street, a building flew the Lion of Andor beside the Rising Sun of Cairhien. A few people passed by out here, smelling of wine and unwashed bodies.

“Where is everyone?” Arganda asked, slipping up beside him, holding a shielded lantern. First Captain of Alliandre’s guard in Ghealdan, Arganda was a compact man, like a lean and powerful jackrabbit. He was a good one to have along on a hunt.

“Elayne has pressed most of them into one military division or another,” Perrin said softly.
Even if the division has been introduced into military organization, and Elayne has instituted it into her TO&E, Perrin's kind of been away and would not be using the term. Also, it's a pretty impossible draft if it's going to depopulate a city. That's like, Nazi ghetto sweep levels. Is she drafting children, women, physically unfit and old men? Did she relocate all the industries to equip supply and feed them? You'd think military mobilization would have the city more busy, not less.

“Farmboys with kitchen knives and hay rakes,” Gallenne said, coming up on Perrin’s other side in his well-polished breastplate and helmet with three plumes, his single eye peering down the street. He could be a useful man too, if he could be kept in check. “They’ll be cut to pieces by the first Trolloc they see.”

“I think you’ll find, Gallenne,” Arganda said, “that some farmboys can be dangerous. Particularly if cornered.”

“Quiet, you two,” Perrin growled.

“I mean no offense, Arganda,” Gallenne whispered. “This is not a matter of class,Gallenne has been with Perrin longer than Arganda. His respect for Perrin & his origins should not be a question and WoT society has not developed the sort of self-consciousness to express this notion like that. but of training. A well-trained soldier is of equal value to me in battle, farmboy or lord, but pressed armies have no training at all. Queen Elayne should not rely upon them.”Yes, explain to the other professional officer how fighting works...

For that matter, why are these two on a small-unit operation? That's not what senior commanding officers do, and that's a point repeatedly made in WoT. At least until Sanderson took over and Gareth "an army is a general's sword and a general who uses another blade has mistaken his job" Bryne became a blademaster who led commando raids into the White Tower, leaving his army behind while a battle was taking place in the vicinity.

“I don’t think she’s going to,” Perrin said. “But what would you have them do, Gallenne? Sit and hide in their houses? This is the Last Battle. The Shadow will hurl everything it has at us. Better that the people should be armed and ready, if the soldiers fail.” But this is not a condition that is arrived at by drafting them into a military organization, where they are a burden on the supply system and command structure, who are forced to babysit instead of preparing for the most critical fight ever. Rand had 10% of the wealth of Tear & Cairhien to pay for transforming a group of picked civilians into a fighting force, and no immediately-pressing military concerns for Bashere & his cadre.

The man quieted as, behind, the rest of Perrin’s force moved through the gateway. Perrin wished he could still the clanking of armor and the fall of boots; if the Dark One discovered what they were up to, they’d find a force of Trollocs waiting for them in the Ways. And yet, to go without at least some troops would have been foolhardy.

Right now, we know Perrin's force includes two men who should not be there, and some people with armor and boots. Some details might have been better suited than the smells of Cairhien. Especially since RJ never thought that was sufficiently important for Perrin to mention before this.
Also, he's worried that the Dark One will detect them by the sound of their boots. Because the Dark One is listening to Cairhien with human ears.

It was a careful balance. Enough men to take care of trouble, if encountered, but not so many as to draw their own trouble. He’d settled on fifty.Including two older men with better things to do elsewhere. Was that the right number? He’d stayed up nights, carefully going over this plan a hundred times, and was confident in it—but this mission still had him constantly second-guessing his decisions.

The Ways were no careless jaunt through the forest. He suspected he knew that better than anyone.

Last through the gateway, crowding the alleyway, were six pack mules laden with supplies. In addition, each soldier carried a kit with extra water and food. Gallenne had questioned the need for so many much supplies, but Perrin had been firm. Yes, the pathway they’d planned looked like it would take only a few days, but he was taking no chances. While he couldn’t plan for everything, he’d not have the mission fail because of something as simple as supply problems.
I am reminded of Uno cursing once every other sentence around Nynaeve, except Sanderson is doing the same thing with the word "supply".

That said, other than the pack animals, he’d brought no horses. You can't just say they brought only those horses, or that they brought no mounts? Bridges in the Ways could be narrow, particularly when broken or worn. It was better to rely on feet. Stupid horses with their wings.

That suited the Aiel just fine. Perrin had brought ten of them, including Sulin and Gaul. Ten Ghealdanin including Arganda, ten Mayeners including Gallenne, ten Whitecloaks including Galad, and ten Two Rivers men including Tam put him at exactly fifty soldiers. On top of that, he’d added Grady, Neald, Saerin, Edarra, and Seonid and her two Warders.And if things go to shit, FOUR different armies will have lost their commanders-in-chief! Not to mention the senior-most Sitter in the real Hall (and arguably most competent one in either). If you need her level of strength, Sashelle, who's actually loyal to Rand, matches it, and so does a Wise One who was at Dumai's Wells.

Five channelers. Light send he wouldn’t need to rely on them much.

“Do you sense anything, Goldeneyes?” Seonid asked. Because that's how Seonid talks to Perrin. Except she never did when RJ scripted her dialogue, despite multiple conversations in three different books. Also, with the Power and ability to sense Shadowspawn, she's one of the people who least need to ask Perrin.Fair-skinned and dark-haired, the Cairhienin woman reminded him of Moiraine—but she was more severe. Though… he’d thought of Moiraine as severe too, when he’d traveled with her. Odd that he’d look back now and imagine her smelling of fondness when she spoke to him. Perhaps he was just remembering the past as he wanted to, like old Cenn Buie claiming the pies at Bel Tine had tasted better when he was young.

Either way, of the Aes Sedai who had traveled with him in the south, Perrin trusted Seonid most. At least she hadn’t gone to meet with Masema behind his back.See, this makes it sound like Perrin trusts them all, and her the most, instead of saying he trusted her slightly more than the other two with whom he was most familiar.

Perrin peered at the street, smelling scents on the air In this case, he should just be "smelling the air". There's a reason it took 3 books to write what RJ intended to put in one. Even at the best of times, that phrase is stupidly redundant, because what else would you smell? What else do you do with scents? You don't need both words close together like that.and listening for anything out of place. Finally, he shook his head in answer to Seonid’s question. He placed two men as scouts at the mouth of the street and alleyway, then joined Seonid to walk back through the alley, her two Warders following.

Their goal wasn’t the street, but the dead end of the alley where it intersected a large wall surrounding what had once been the palace of Lord Barthanes Damodred—a Darkfriend, and coincidentally a cousin to Moiraine.

His palace was now Rand’s school. Perrin had never been there, but he found the back gate into the grounds just where it had been described. He knocked softly, and a stocky gray-haired woman pulled the gate open.

“Idrien Tarsin?” Perrin asked. She's Cairhienin. Shouldn't she be reminding Perrin of Moiraine?

The woman nodded, smelling of worry as she ushered them in. She was headmistress of the school, and had been told to expect their arrival. Perrin waited as the others entered, counting off his men and women—one more time, for good measure.

Finally, when all were accounted for, he pulled the gate closed behind him, then hurried along the line of soldiers to the front. Here Idrien hissed at them to be quiet, then glanced at the sky and pulled open the back door to the school proper.

Perrin stepped through it and into a place full of odd scents. Something acrid he couldn’t place mixed with the aroma of flowers that had been crushed.or crushed flowers? Odd scents that he associated with baking—the sodas and yeasts—but none of the comfortable smells, like those of baking bread, Yes, we got it. Baking. that should accompany them.

As the others of his group entered, he stepped forward, sniffing at a room that reeked of a tannery. What was happening in this strange place, and why did he smell old bones from that room across the hall?Does anyone else remember Perrin being so easily distracted when he's on a mission? Or is laser-focus on his goal, to the exclusion of all else, dismissing trivia from his attention, more of a character trait? I suppose it's just as well BS missed that quality, or he'd have had a character use the term "laser-focused" to describe Perrin.

He would have expected the scholars to be sleeping, but as the headmistress led them down the broad hall, Perrin passed several rooms with lights burning. In one, an extremely tall man with long hair and fingers worked beside a… well, a contraption of some sort. It had wires and coils and pieces growing out of the floor like some kind of metal tree. Lights burned on the table in front of the scholar, inside of little glass globes. They were steady lights that didn’t flicker at all.

“Is that an Asha’man?” Galad asked, stepping up beside Perrin.A question better coming from an ignorant and unsophisticated hick, than a royal-born military officer who's been all around the world and met Asha'man. Rather, Galad might have asked "Is he channeling" because he understands how the terminology works. And has better grammar than Sanderson.

“I see no weaves,” Grady whispered, joining them as Arganda moved his troops through the hall behind.

“Then… he’s figured out how to harness the One Power using only metal and coils?” Galad asked, smelling troubled. He seemed to consider the idea to be very disturbing.I hate you, Brandon. Grady should be saying that he can't sense the Power or even definitively stating that the Power is not involved. This world has chemistry and technology, which the ignorant mistake for Aes Sedai work, but educated people, like Galad, are aware of other explanations for various human accomplishments and would not use the One Power as the go-to explanation for anything he can't understand! Rand did something similar in WH, when he heard a loose description of electrical experiments, and jumped to the wrong conclusion, which Idrien corrected. But there is no reason for an intelligent man who spent more than a year in the White Tower, and whose sister and sister-in-law can channel, to make the same mistake after being told otherwise.

Perrin shook his head and ushered the other two forward, worried about drawing the scholar’s attention. The man didn’t even look up, however, as if oblivious to the footfalls and hushed conversations in the hall.

Perrin hurried onward, passing underneath a model hanging from the ceiling—it looked like a wooden man with wings attached to his arms, as if they were intended to make him fly. Oh, is THAT what wings are for?Another room smelled of old dust and was filled entirely with bones—but from no animal Perrin recognized.Are they fake bones made out of dust? Why doesn't Perrin smell the bones? Wouldn't his apparently dominant tonight wolf brain have latched onto the bones, like, from down the hall?

Eventually, Idrien led them through a very small door—perhaps a servants’ door—out into the mansion’s gardens. Perrin knew what to expect, as Loial had explained—at length, of course—about his trip here with Rand. The Waygate was in its own walled enclosure within the gardens. Sitting on the ground there was a balding fellow with a heap of star charts, staring up at the sky. What he expected to see through the cloud cover was beyond Perrin.

“I thought you were told to keep everyone away,” Perrin said, hurrying up to the headmistress.

“Oh, don’t mind Gavil,” she said. She had a musical voice. “He’s not right in the head. He… well, we let him study the Ways, you see…”

“You let someone in?” Perrin demanded.

“We are here to study and learn,” she replied, voice hardening.Idrien Tarsin's primary, if not only, established character trait is her practicality, espcially in comparison to the head-in-the-clouds intellectuals and scholars on whom she was assigned to ride herd. Idrien's main job, as she sees it, is telling them 'no'. Of the School's bosses, Rand is the permissive one. If Rand says "This is a danger," no way in the Blight does Idrien let them open it, ever! “He knew the risks. And he… well, he only stuck his head in for a brief moment. That was enough. When we pulled him back out, he was staring and mumbling. Now he rants about a sky with no stars and draws star charts all day. But they’re nonsense—at least, he charts a sky that I’ve never seen.”Credit where it's due, that's sort of cool.

She glanced at Perrin, then—smelling of shame—looked away. “We’ve never opened it again, not since that Ogier showed up and chastised us for what we’d done. Of course, we couldn’t have opened it on our own anyway, as he took the key with him when he left.”See, the priority here should not be rehashing the differing human and Ogier attitudes toward the dangers of the Ways, it should be about unworldly scholars willing to accidentally let an invasion of monsters destroy the city because they are curious! Even if Perrin is too nice to point that out, because it's not currently a danger he should have at least thought of that, because that's what Perrin does, he thinks about implications and stuff. This would be a great place for him to feel somewhat dismayed that he's more concerned with abstract security risks than compassion for a man afflicted by a horror he's faced himself and recognize what these end times are doing to everyone.

Perrin said nothing. He led his group into the small enclosure, and there was the Waygate, a portal of stone worked with incredibly intricate vine and leaf patterns. Perrin hadn’t done much work in stone—the closest had been a fanciful attempt at molds for casting silverI could have sworn I read somewhere that Perrin doesn't like silver, that iron work is his preference. Is carving silver molds from stone anything at all like decorative stone carving?, at which Master Luhhan had laughed. As if there would ever be enough silver in the Two Rivers to waste on an apprentice’s practice molds. See, Sanderson knows what he did wrong here, but rather than just editing, he tries to lampshade it with this nonsense. Sanderson doesn't understand Perrin further than "crafts" and "wolf" so in his mind, anything vaguely connected to Home Depot is a topic of expertise for Perrin; he's also a detail nerd who can't resist showing off his knowledge but lacks RJ's skill to make it organic, and comes up with a ridiculous anecdote about a village blacksmith's apprentice wasting a huge amount of time carving stone molds for silver casting, and then has to admit at the end just how implausible this memory of Perrin's actually would be!

Still, the masterwork sculpting on the Waygates had always struck Perrin. The creators had made this stonework look almost as if it were alive.Robert Jordan wrote 12 novels, almost all of which featured Ogier stonework and many the observation that it looks lifelike, without needing digressions into a possibly faulty backstory to express as much.

“Thank you, Mistress Tarsin,” Perrin said. “This will get me to the Two Rivers quietly, without anyone knowing where we’ve gone.”

Perrin glanced at Galad—who blessedly didn’t say anything. The man could be perniciously honest at times, and hadn’t liked the idea of lying about their destination. Galad has no problem with deception, and while he doesn't like lying, he wouldn't make an issue of someone else doing it when it's a life and death issue like this.But Perrin figured he should do anything he could to point the Shadow in the wrong direction—even starting deliberately false rumors.Isn't the point of false rumors that they be plausible? He has at least two channelers more than strong enough to make a gateway in his party, one of whom has been observed doing that very thing quiet often in his presence. The only people fooled by this false flag are going to be irrelevant, because they are so far out of the loop on preternatural issues they can't possibly interfere with the mission

“You may go,” Perrin told the headmistress. “But forbid anyone from even entering this garden—barricade the doors. And don’t worry about us. Remember the warning you got earlier. The Shadow might very well be planning to send troops here through this portal. It might feel quiet in this city, but you’re actually sitting right on the front lines of the war.”So the city being empty because everyone's in the military is actually sort of a stupid thing, isn't it?

She nodded, though she didn’t smell as concerned as she probably should have. Well, perhaps she was just good at controlling her fear of the Waygates—they’d long known that the Shadow was using them, and Rand had stationed guards here during most of the school’s existence.

A few guards wouldn’t do much more than a locked door, unfortunately. This Waygate needed channelers who could Travel watching it permanently—whom Rand would send once he could spare them.

Or… well, if he could spare them.

Mistress Tarsin retreated out the door, locking it behind her. Not that a lock would do much to stop Trollocs—indeed, far stronger precautions had proven useless. The Waygate in Caemlyn had been locked tight like this one, behind the wall of stone that protected the entrance.

Perrin moved his soldiers back, leaving only the channelers and his attendants near the Waygate itself. Then he nodded to Grady. “All right, Grady,” he said. “Bring it down.”

Saerin folded her arms, and Perrin braced himself for another objection. The Aes Sedai—and Saerin in particular—hadn’t liked this part of the plan. The fierce Brown sister had objected to the destruction of such an ancient relic.Relic of what? Unless you mean relic in the sense of "very old object" in which case ancient is redundant.

Fortunately, she said nothing as Grady stepped up and adopted a look of concentration.Did experienced channelers ever give visible indication of the process to non-channeling PoV before Sanderson took up the series? Apparently Perrin’s explanations had satisfied her: The barrier had meant nothing to the enemy in Caemlyn. It might as well not have existed, for all the good it had done the people there.

Right now, the only chance this city—and Caemlyn itself—had was for Perrin to find a method of shutting these Waygates permanently, from the inside.Didn't it say a couple of times before this that Caemlyn had already fallen?

“All right, my Lord,” Grady said. “Brace yourself.”

With that, the Asha’man blasted open the Waygate’s stone covering.

The explosion ripped the barrier into several pieces, though the resulting pop was muted, as if it had come from many paces away. The chunks, rather than spraying chips of stone across the soldiers, hung in the air, then floated down and settled onto the path right in front of the Waygate.Why not just cut it like Moiraine did back in EotW? Why would Perrin, who thinks about mundane details of a job not have brought that up?

Perrin felt a pang at the destruction, more so because he had ordered it. But no smith could be so attached to a piece that he couldn’t see the need to melt it down when its time came.

Now that the stone covering was gone, Perrin’s breath caught, and he took one of the lanterns and raised it high.

The opening exposed a glassy surface like a mirror—but one that reflected poorly. A shadowy version of Perrin, holding aloft the lantern, confronted him. Loial had said that once, the Way-gates had shone like bright mirrors—back when they’d had light of their own within.

The ancient portal rested peacefully as Grady dusted off his hands.Were they dirty from directing flows of Air? Perrin stepped up, listening, looking. The last time Rand had tried to use this Waygate, something had been waiting for him on the other side. The Black Wind.

Today,Tonight. No one cares what time you're actually writing, Brandon. however, Perrin heard no calls for blood or death, felt no assault on his mind. He saw nothing but the shadowy version of himself, golden eyes seeming to glow in the lantern light as he searched for hints of danger. He could spot none. It seemed that Machin Shin was not lurking in wait for them this time.

He released his held breath as, behind him, Seonid spoke thoughtfully to Grady. “That was well done, with the explosion, Asha’man. Did you use Air to muffle the sound somehow?”No, his hands. Weren't you paying attention, Seonid? Also, did you forget everyone's name?

Grady nodded, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. “Been practicing how to do that, lately. Explosions can be handy, but we can’t be shattering everyone’s eardrums with each one, now can we?”Since Taim taught them to shield against blowback in his earliest lessons, back when there were less than a score of trainees, why would that not have been part of it? Stop trying to prove your cleverness toward the Power, BS. When has the shattered eardrum thing ever happened in a controlled blast to suggest this is a new technique?

Or, conversely, he could have tried CUTTING a hole...

“The noise of the channeling is the one we must fear more,” Saerin said briskly. “We should be quick, just in case.”

“Agreed,” Perrin said. He turned back to the troops, who had watched the display with stoic faces. This lot was as used to channeling as common men ever could be, he supposed. “Arganda and Gallenne?”

“Yes, Lord Goldeneyes?” Gallenne said, alongside a simple “Yes?” from Arganda. Both smelled eager.

“You may enter. Together.”The top officers of two different national forces are going to serve as PMD. This is why you bring privates!

They didn’t seem to like that, but both stepped up to the dull glassy surface, as if approaching versions of themselves from the shadowy realm beyond. With the entire rock face removed, the opening was wide enough for two men, barely. Arganda reached up and tapped the surface, his finger seeming to meld with that of his dim reflection. He shuddered visibly as his finger stuck into it, rather than meeting something solid. He looked at Gallenne, and the other man nodded, his slotted helmet under his arm.Good place for it this far into an op, having already been in close proximity to explosions with flying rubble and now entering the most dangerous environment of the mission.

Together they stepped forward, their faces meeting those of their mirror images as they merged with the reflective surface, stepping into the Ways. A moment later, Arganda turned back, his torso breaking from the surface—causing no ripples—and leaning out.

“There is a modestly sized stone field on this side as described, Lord Goldeneyes. We see no signs of the Shadow, or of this… wind you mentioned.”

“All right,” Perrin said to the others. “In you go. One at a time, and go slowly, understand. I’ll go last.”

Galad stepped up to him as the soldiers began to file through. He watched the Waygate with troubled eyes. “I’ve been trying to convince the Children that we need not walk in dark paths in order to follow the Light.”

“Sometimes you must walk a dark path,” Perrin said, “because there is no other way forward. That doesn’t mean you need to let it get inside you. That’s something the Children never seem to be able to figure out.”

“I am not a fool, Perrin,” Galad said. “I realize that distinction. But if we intend to resist the Shadow without embracing evil methods, how can we justify using this… place?”Dammit. For one moment there, I thought Galad was making a joke. Also, his fucking inauguration speech was all about the necessity of embracing paranormal methods the Children had traditionally reviled, because it's desperate times now. This is a total reversal of character. Galad is not and never has been a superstitious idiot.

“The Ways aren’t evil,” Perrin said. “The fact that the Shadow has corrupted them doesn’t change that they were made for a good purpose. The real corruption is Shadowspawn using it to attack us.”

Galad thought for a time, then nodded. “I will accept that argument. You have a good logic about you, Perrin Aybara.” You can tell he graduated 2nd grade with honors!He stepped up next and—without breaking stride or smelling the least bit worried—passed through the gate.

“Complimented by a Whitecloak,” Seonid said to Perrin, waiting as her Warders passed through. “How does that feel?”

“Odd,” Perrin admitted. “Go on in. And remember not to channel once inside.”

“You keep saying this,” Edarra said as she stepped up. The Aiel Wise One had pale yellow hair and seemed young—though of course, that was deceptive when Wise Ones were concerned. She inspected her shadowy reflection with a critical eye. “Why bring five people who can channel, then tell us not to use the One Power?”

“Never swing an axe carelessly, Edarra,” Perrin said. “The Power will be corrupted inside, almost like the taint that was upon saidin. We will probably have to use the Power to pull off this plan, but let’s not be foolhardy about it.”Shouldn't a channeler have briefed them on this, rather than counting on them to accept channeling instructions from a mundane? For that matter, should not Saerin, one of the most experienced Browns alive, have been the one to give this briefing?

Edarra finally entered, and though the Wise One didn’t bow her head or betray an anxious step, she did smell distinctly of nervousness.

Seonid, in turn, smelled of… a strange mix of emotions. Something had happened between the two Aes Sedai and the Wise Ones. Perrin didn’t know exactly what it had been, but it seemed to be over now. And strangely, Seonid seemed more respectful of the Aiel than she had of Egwene or the other senior Aes Sedai.

“Keep that Whitecloak at arm’s length, Lord Aybara,” Seonid said after Edarra passed. “His type turns on a man quickly, once he finds fault. I’ve seen it a dozen times.” She strode into the Way-gate, followed by the last of the Aiel—all save Gaul, who waited with Perrin.

“We have a saying in the Three-fold Land,” Gaul noted. “The gango lizard will happily feed on your arm while the asp bites your leg.Fuck your made-up zoology, Sanderson. Stop trying to dick with cultures you don't understand by making up nonsense aphorisms. Also, Aiel don't say "we have a saying." They just state them. But then, props to Sanderson for remembering the Aiel name for their homeland. I think that one’s advice could be applied to herself.”

“I trust them both,” Perrin said. “Seonid can be brusque, but she acts with honesty.Gaul has been traveling with Seonid exactly as long as Perrin, and he has been with him for the entirety of his aquaintance with Galad. And Galad… Galad is straightforward. If he does turn on me, I don’t doubt he’ll explain his reasons completely beforehand. I’d rather have that than a dozen attendants who tell me what I want to hear and scheme behind my back.” Perrin scratched at his beard. “Odd. Rand would always talk like that too, and he ended up with a bunch of scheming toadies anyway.”

Gaul laughed. “I would not call it odd, Perrin Aybara. Not odd at all.”

After Gaul had passed through, Perrin stepped up, as if confronting himself in the reflective surface. He had entered the Ways only twice. First, so long ago with Moiraine. Then again when he’d returned with Loial to the Two Rivers.

It felt like an eternity had passed since either of those events. Indeed, it seemed a completely different person looked back at him from inside the Waygate. A hard man, with a weathered beard—thick like the fur of a wolf whose instincts knew to anticipate a particularly harsh winter. But Perrin could look that man in his golden eyes and feel at peace with him.

Both man and reflection slid their hammers into the loops at their sides. And both knew that this time, though wary, they would not smell of fear. He stepped forward and touched the surface of the gate, which felt icy, like water washing across him. The moment stretched—indeed, Perrin almost felt as if he were stretching, like a thick piece of tar.

Finally, though, he slid through and stepped firmly on the other side, entering the infinite blackness.

I know I shouldn't be ragging on a discarded piece as typical of Sanderson's WoT problems, but this has not been dug out of his notes and published by his possibly senile son, this is something he submitted for publication with an author's note asserting his pride in it and claiming he's tried to polish it up as an independant story! "I’m always looking for places to show off scenes like these." HE doesn't see the problem with this, he thinks it's neat.

Words of Radiance my ass.