I felt that he hadn’t ruled out the possibility of a glimpse of Shara—he had only implied that nothing major would happen there on screen. Team Jordan agreed, and I set to work writing these scenes. My goal was to show a different side of one of the Forsaken. Demandred had been building himself up in Shara for months and months, overthrowing the government (Graendal helped with that, unwittingly) and securing his place as a figure of prophecy and power.
He had his own story, which could have filled the pages of his own Wheel-of-Time-like series. He had allies and enemies, companions who had been with him for years, much as Rand, Egwene, and company had found during their adventures in the west. My goal was to evoke this in a few brief scenes, at first not letting you know who this “Bao” was. I wanted to present him sympathetically, at least as sympathetically as a man like him could be presented. It would only be at the end of the sequence that the reader realized that Bao was indeed Demandred, and that everything he was doing here was in preparation for destroying the heroes.
It was also important to me that we see Demandred for what he is—an incredibly capable man with a single overriding flaw. Everything about him, including his ability to feel affection, is tainted by his supreme hatred of Lews Therin. The narrative was to hint that it never had to be that way. He could have made different choices. Of all the Forsaken, I find Demandred the most tragic.
The sequence accomplished these goals—but it did so too well. In threading this sequence into the rest of A Memory of Light, we found that the Demandred scenes were distracting. The worldbuilding required to make Shara distinctive felt out of place in the last book, where the narrative needed to be focused on tying up loose threads rather than introducing a multitude of new questions.
Harriet—Robert Jordan’s widow and editor of every Wheel of Time book—felt that the scenes’ evocation of an entire untold series of books was too overwhelming. It didn’t feel enough like the Wheel of Time. If this had been book eight, that would be wonderful—the scenes would add variety to the series. In book fourteen, however, they offered a taste of something that would never be sated, and served only to make promises we could not fulfill.
My biggest worry in cutting these sequences was that Demandred’s arrival later in the book would feel abrupt. However, test readers didn’t feel this way—Demandred as a character had been a proverbial gun on the mantel long enough that everyone was waiting for him to show up. His arrival felt dynamic to them, rather than unexplained.
So, in the end, we left these scenes on the cutting room floor. I’m quite fond of them, and do consider the general outline of events within to be canon. However, the specifics of the worldbuilding are not canon. We cut these scenes before Team Jordan’s Maria Simons, queen of continuity, had a chance to go over them with her fine-tooth comb.
I hope you enjoy this last taste of Wheel of Time storytelling. Thank you for reading.
— Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
RIVER OF SOULS
Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
Bao slipped into the Oneness as he sat with legs crossed, surrounded by darkness.
During his youthful studies, he had been required to seek the Oneness in the midst of a crashing storm, while being towed on a sled behind a horse, and finally while enduring the pain of a hot coal against his skin. He had once considered that training to be extreme, but life had since required him to find the Oneness during war and agony, during tempests and earthquakes. For today, for this moment, a dark quiet room would do.
The Oneness was lack of emotion. Bao took all of his feelings—all of his thoughts, all that he was—and pressed them into a single point of darkness in his mind. That darkness consumed the emotion. He felt nothing. He thought nothing. He did not sense satisfaction at this, for there could be no satisfaction in this state. He was the Oneness. That was all.
The tent flap lifted, allowing in filtered sunlight. Bao opened his eyes. There was no surprise when he saw Mintel. One could not be surprised in the Oneness.
A thought did hover on the edges of his consciousness. The thought that this man should have been miles and miles away.
“How?” Bao asked, releasing the Oneness.
Mintel stepped forward. It had only been six months since Bao had seen Mintel, but the old man seemed to have aged a decade. His face was all folds and furrows, like a tablecloth taken in two hands and crumpled together. Completely bald, he wore a short beard, all gray. Though he walked with a cane, his steps were sure. That was good to see. Mintel might have grown old, but not frail.
“I rode the caprisha through the City of Dreams, my son,” Mintel said, taking Bao by the arm.
“Dangerous.”
“I could not miss this day.”
“I would not have had you lose your soul to come see me.”
“Not just to see you,” Mintel said, smiling. “To see the fulfillment of prophecy, after all of these years. To see the coming of angor’lot, the True Destiny. No, I would not risk the City of Dreams for my son alone, but to attend the crowning of the Wyld…I would risk anything.”
“Not a crowning yet,” Bao said. Emotions were insignificant. “Not unless I survive.”
“True, true. You held the Oneness when I arrived?”