I was doing some updates to Dragonmounttoday and ran across an old image I'd forgotten about. Check this out:

It's an alternative cover to A CROWN OF SWORDS. I think I grabbed this directly from Darryl K. Sweet (the artist)'s website.

Now I'm not sure how these things work, but the impression I get is that Mr. Sweet is not the type of artist to do his work in Photoshop. As a result, I have a feeling that after the paint had tried on this sucker he either went and re-did the entire thing (not likely) or have to paint over the Rand you see there and paint the one we all know and uh... love. Notice also that the image above is flipped from the other one.

Why did all this happen? Did he make two pictures and give Robert Jordan (and Tor Books) a choice? Was he hired to do two versions? Or did he make this one and get asked to make the one which made it on the cover?

Alas, we may never know. Then again, we could just ask RJ or Darryl!