So lets set the stage here. It's pitch black out. Nobody can see there hand in front of there face. Lan points out the Whitecloak camp to Nye and tells her to go cut the picket line ropes. Nye can barely see the tents in the camp let alone the picket lines.

 

Perrin is inside a tent with two lamps on having a sit down with Byar. Byar wants Perrin to escape and be killed.

 

Wait a minute..... Two oil lamps in the tent? Wouldn't that cause the tent Perrin is in to be lit up and easily seen from a distance? Not to mention the camp fires in the camp. Because after the put the Whitecloak cloaks on the stand in the shadows out of the campfire light waiting for Mor to make a diversion.

 

This book has holes in the plot that you can drive a truck through.

Having lived for a year in a tent (in Iraq) I can tell you first hand it's entirely possible to have all the light you want on inside the tent and not be able to tell from outside. It just depends on what the tent is made of. In the case of the Whitecloak tents they are most likely thick canvas, which will absolutely keep light from leaking out.

 

As for the campfires, they wouldn't exactly have giant blazing bondfires, and as long as they have tents around them you wouldn't be able to see them unless you were had a direct line of sight. If they were in a dug in pit and not very big you would probably have to be right on top of them.

 

It's not as if the Whitecloaks would not know how to keep their camp hidden from casual observation if they wanted to. It isn't that hard. The Whitecloaks may be zealots, but they aren't idiots.

 

I wouldn't call either of those a plot hole at all, much less one you can drive a truck through.

If you make a tent from synthetic materials like you do now, light can pass though it quite easily in consumer models. If you make them from canvas it is a lot harder to see through, if you make them from something non synthetic that will still hold the heat in during a snowy winter, you wouldn't see anything through it at all.

If the camp fires are small (and only a few I presume) you can see them and only a small area around them. In fact it may make all the other areas that much harder to see by ruining your night vision. I would have to re-read that section to verify my assumptions.

yea with fires you cant see other things, without any fires you can see kindof even with just starlight with a moon things are quite easy to see but any bright light would ruin that.

 

Oh and the whitecloaks probably dont have their fires near the picket lines.