Dred's arrival at the Cleansing

[Hybrid]

"If he could undo what al'Thor had done at the source, Demandred thought as he stepped through his gateway into Shadar Logoth, undo it sharply and suddenly, that might well kill the man, or at least sear the ability to channel out of him."

 

The plan was not to Channel AT Rand but to channel something within the confines of SL that would cause the Cleansing weave to crash and/or bounce back at Rand.   He did not need to See Rand to do this and the warding weaves that were protecting Rand would not be likely to protect him from his own weave bouncing back at him.   With all the saidin & saidar power that he was using it would have probably created a massive backlash that could well have burned out everyone that was even with Rand.    Dred might well have burned out all his Forsaken buddies as well - if they were too close.   -  Although that is just a guess on the last part.    If he had only had the guts to stay a little longer & do it.

 

Good catch.  I missed that quote (been a while since I read that part).  However, the point is still that Demandred steps through the gateway and immediately comes under a powerful attack.  Trying to weave something to disrupt Rand's weaving while attempting to fend off an attack on the magnitude of Callandor is certainly not going to be easy, even for a Forsaken.  He did the logical thing.  Retreat and counterattack.  One of the reasons I like RJ's battle scenes is that he brings up an excellent point.  The pinnacle of strategy is not the heroic charge into superior enemy lines, no matter how often it is portrayed in fiction.

[wvlr]

Agreed!   

 

My interpetation was he abandoned SL not just because of the Callandor attack but because SL was starting to become "unstable".    If it was soley because of Callandor he should have traveled far enough away to avoid  Callandor attacks & quickly pre-weaved his backlash spell, then traveled back to SL & dropped the backlash weave & gated away before the next Callandor attack.