It was from his blog, so it was written by RJ. (no chance for misquotes)



This is also from his blog, dated Oct. 4th, 2005:

For Sidious, when Alivia faced Cyndane, Alivia was by far the stronger because of her angreal, and had various tools (ter’angreal) to work with besides, but Cyndane was much, much more knowledgeable about channeling. Alivia, after all, knew relatively little except how to be a weapon. That was very useful in the situation, but in this case, knowledge versus strength made it an even match. Now as to Rahvin sitting on his throne and being shocked to see Rand. First off, he knew his first trap hadn’t worked, but he had others ready. He saw no reason to start jumping about. He thought he was maneuvering Rand into a series of traps, one of which he was sure would work. He did not expect Rand to simply leap into the same room with him. He did not expect Rand to know that he could Travel to somewhere in sight of himself without knowing the ground. So what he had expected to be a chess game where he knew the positions of all the pieces and Rand did not suddenly turned into a close-quarters slugging match. Surprise!


I believe the case you are pointing out here, is that they didn't know the area real well, and they were making short jumps ahead into enemy territory. IIRC, they were jumping less than a half-mile ahead to places they could see with the naked eye, so they didn't end up in the middle of an enemy encampment. (At least that's the way I interpreted it.)



IIRC, several asha'man would exit out of one gateway. If that's correct, it could account for the need to learn the area if the original maker was killed. However, I'm sure they moved around during the fighting, so they didn't stay in the exact same spot they Travelled to. Finding the exact spots they made their gateways to might have been about impossible considering the carnage.