Well, that's partially the point I'm bringing up. - Edit 1
Before modification by RugbyPlayingAshaman at 09/02/2011 03:22:03 PM
In ToM, when Rand is destroying the Trolloc horde, he raises his hands, and then bends them into fists to finish the weaves.
It seems to me that combat weaves do have some gestures, since it may be difficult for people in a fight to keep their hands still. But it may well be that all those hand gestures aren't strictly necessary, and Semirhage could throw a fireball without hand gestures if needed. Maybe the fireball wouldn't be very precise, though.
It seems to me that combat weaves do have some gestures, since it may be difficult for people in a fight to keep their hands still. But it may well be that all those hand gestures aren't strictly necessary, and Semirhage could throw a fireball without hand gestures if needed. Maybe the fireball wouldn't be very precise, though.
It seems to be quite a leap to infer that a non-combat weave, such as a wall of Air, would require a gesture, if gestures aren't necessary. I've suggested that gesturing and moving your hands are aids to concentration, but in this situation, there are so many possible ways to channel that Lanfear would not know how to react or predict to what Rand was trying to use unless she had wards up - after all, would Rands' gesture to throw a fireball look different from his gesture to create a wall of Air, and if it did, would Lanfear be familiar enough with his overall style to predict them? The fact that she was taken by surprise when the wall of Air first hit her seems to point to the possibility that she sensed him channeling, but didn't expect him to use something against her, but she wasn't shocked to the point where she lost her composure. And it is quite possible that Rand didn't gesture at all.
I think the overall best explanation is that she had wards up to detect saidin, with perhaps other wards to detect various flows, but her surprise was due to the fact that she had no warning from his body-language or how much power he had as to what he was doing (perhaps it required so little saidin that she didn't think he was attacking her) but once it was done, she could