Umm, maybe I missed it, could you quickly answer it again.

I mean I recall that I talked to you about balefire before and asked you why for example Cadsuane could not just reverse Rand's death by balefiring Gawyn and essentially making it so that Rand had not died in the first place. Cadsuane would do it considering how utterly critical Rand is.

I think you answered that Cadsuane could not balefire Gawyn, because Rand&Gawyn would basically kill eachother and therefore Gawyn would be dead and no longer available for balefiring. Am I right? This is a good enough answer.

The question that has occurred to me is that since Rand KNOWS what balefire is and what it does, if Rand were to be critically injured by Gawyn, WHY would Rand retaliate at that point rather than just hedge his bet and let Gawyn go on living in the hope that Cadsuane or someone will hopefully hunt him down and balefire Gawyn and revive him that way.

The only answer I can see to this is that either

a)Rand is an idiot who ignores the possibility of Balefire "healing" him from Gawyn's attack. I would like to think that after his revelation at Dragonmount he will act smarter in the future and as such not be an idiot.

or

b)Rand and Gawyn will injure each other simultaneously the way Rand did with Ishamael at Falme. But this explanation is weak in that given how sickly&injured Rand is, I don't really believe that Rand is capable of such a feat anymore with someone as skilled with the sword as Gawyn.


So basically, I now wonder why is it that if your theory becomes true, Rand would not just let Gawyn go DESPITE the fact that Gawyn just killed so that Gawyn would still be alive and available for balefiring and therefore Cadsuane could bring Rand back from the dead.

Unless you think that Rand is still physically capable of matching Gawyn enough to kill him the same time that Gawyn returns the favor.