Knowing what Travelling is does not equal knowing how to do it. I'm not saying it's impossible that Taim already knew the weaves, since his backstory and motivations have yet to be revealed (i.e. when we met him he could have been anything from a fully-trained disciple of Ishamael to a darkfriend wilder who can channel to a relatively good man who had not yet been turned to the shadow), but you can't say for a fact that he did.




Whether or not it is a good idea to hunt a channeler with 9,000 cavalry is irrelevant. Bashere was ordered to do so by his sovereign. Perhaps it's because that task was so dangerous that he decided to join Rand.

Besides, it's not actually impossible to take out a channeler with regular troops. You just need to avoid doing stupid things like lining up in tight ranks and charging across an open field. There are numerous examples in the books of channelers being threatened by or concerned about the threat of archers. A cagey commander (like say, Bashere, one of the "great captains" of the westlands) can probably find a way to create the necessary favourable tactical situation. Losses will be high, but that would be considered acceptable to take out such a dangerous false dragon.




Perfect...ly stupid timing, maybe. I mean, what, Moridin gates Bashere in and then waits around with his gate open for twenty minutes?

Even IF Bashere is indeed a DF and servant of Ishy (which I don't believe for a second), why would Ishy bring him in to the palace via a Gateway anyway? Why take the chance that someone would notice that Bashere never came through the palace entrance and put two and two together? It's a pointless risk. There's absolutely no reason for Bashere not to enter Caemlyn normally.




And you accuse me of making silly arguments?

The denoument of TDR demonstrated that Ishy had an inflated sense of his own self-importance and several characters speculated that he was starting to believe he was the DO. His claims in the first three books, even those he made to himself, were discredited. There was nothing in TSR or TFOH to suggest otherwise. To the reader of the series to that point, Ishy was dead, and there were no obvious clues that he would return.




To be honest, I'm not even sure the term "Nae'Blis" had been thrown about by the end of TFOH, but even if it had been, there was no reason to think of it as anything more than "Senior Chosen". Given that the Chosen were starting to drop like flies and were clearly in the throes of villain decay by that point, the title wouldn't seem like such a big deal.

By now we have a much better picture of Ishy's significance as the only Forsaken who really "gets it" and how that makes him far more of a counterpart to Rand, but that wasn't as clear back when TFOH came out. Back then he was just one more dead Forsaken.




There is nothing in Bashere's conversation with Rand that makes him appear to be a Darkfriend (although I admit that there's nothing there that proves he isn't, either).