Steps rose before him, each standing alone and unsupported...

[Aquarius]

Here this very famous quote from tEotW that has been debated to death:

"The Light Blind you, Ba'alzamon! This has to end!"

IT IS NOT HERE.

It was not Rand's own thought, making his skull vibrate.

I WILL TAKE NO PART. ONLY THE CHOSEN ONE CAN DO WHAT MUST BE DONE, IF HE WILL

"Where?" He did not want to say it, but he could not stop himself. "Where?"

The haze around him parted, leaving a dome of clear, clean air, ten spans high, walled by billowing smoke and dust. Steps rose before him, each standing alone and unsupported, stretching up into the murk that obscured the sun.

NOT HERE.

 

We have debated over this for something close to 20 years now. But there's one sentence that seems a even more obscure to me:

Steps rose before him, each standing alone and unsupported, stretching up into the murk that obscured the sun.

I have a picture in my mind of steps drawn out of smoke/dust/whatever that create some sort of tunnel through the clouds around Rand that that stairs go up until you can't see them anymore.

 

What is the purpose of those stairs ? are they Creator made ? What if Rand had taken the opportunity to climb them (or try to climb them) ? I don't see that fiiting with the capital words (attributed by most to the Creator itself).

 

Any thoughts ?

[Evoke]

I always thought he was skimming.

[Aquarius]

I always thought he was skimming.

Was he in Tel'aranriod then ? It didn't look like it though, it was supposed to be the middle of the battle, IIRC.

[yoniy0]

No, he was Skimming. That's not the same as tel'aran'rhiod. Usually one can make the platform one stands on move on its own, but Rand didn't know how to do that back then (he learned that watching Asmodean Skim), so he created many platforms and jumped from one to the next until he got where he was going.

[Beidomon]

Rand's first major confrontation against BA at the end of the EoTW is pretty confusing - maybe intentionally so, as I'm sure it was confusing for Rand, or maybe just because Jordan hadn't yet fleshed out all the concepts like skimming, the "cords" emanating from Forsaken, etc.

 

First, Rand somehow teleports himself from the Blight to Tarwin's Gap. Most likely, he Traveled there unknowingly. We know he's there physically because the Borderlanders confirm it.

 

Next, there's the Voice, almost certainly the Creator, which we've never heard again. The quote above seems to prove that it was not Rand, but the Creator/Voice who supplied Rand with the "stairway to heaven." Thus, I'm pretty sure the stairs are not Skimming - but something entirely different and maybe not even associated with the One Power (again, because Rand didn't make them - the Creator did). The stairs are similar in concept to Skimming - suspended in thin air and forming a pathway to somewhere else - but Skimming occurs in a black void, and these stairs were going up into the smoke.

 

So Rand follows the stairs and confronts BA in his bedroom (not really) with the creepy fireplace. Is this in the real world, or in TAR, or somewhere else maybe even outside the pattern? Frankly, I don't think we'll ever have an answer to this and I really don't think it matters.

[yoniy0]

Actually, the books have this to say on the matter:

The haze surrounding him parted, leaving a dome of clear, clean air ten spans high, walled by billowing smoke and dust. Steps rose before him, each standing alone and unsupported, stretching up into the murk that obscured the sun.

Which I take to mean a Skimming Gateway has opened, and through it he was able to see the steps, while all around it the smoke he raised just before remained. This interpretation is confirmed by what he sees once he actually steps in, I believe:

Darkness surrounded him, the utter blackness of total nothing. The steps were still there, hanging in the black, under his feet and ahead. When he looked back, those behind were gone, faded away to nothing, into the nothingness around him.