Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

[interrupts] No. The Towers of Midnight are a place that is run by the Seekers: a political prison [RJ meant the Tower of the Ravens; see The Great Hunt Chapter 34], a place of execution at least for very high-ranking political prisoners. They can’t shed your blood, so they simply stuff you into a sack and hang you over the side of one of the towers until you die, but very careful. A sack lined with velvet so none of your blood will ever seep out and be spilled. Remember there have been times this has been done—this is not an invention of mine. There are cultures in this world where people of certain classes, it was illegal to shed their blood: you could not, even in an execution. Therefore, they would roll a man in layers of velvet and put him inside a bag and have him trampled to death by horses, but the velvet was there to absorb his blood, and the leather bag to insure nothing seeped out, so his blood was never shed. It was never spilled on the ground. You see? So that’s what the Towers of Midnight are. I won’t tell you a lot more, because I don’t know that I will ever show them in one of the books, but it’s possible, so...

[interrupts] You showed them maybe in the second book, as far as I know, only one sentence I think...

[interrupts] I’ve mentioned them, but I did not show them; you were not there. There’s a difference between mentioning and actually being there, taking a character there to see them.