As usual all speech in italics is in the Old Tongue.
Chapter LI - Even Cuan Garuin Couldn't Have Done That
The next day Taija was already regretting suggesting that Cadsuane brought Savriti along to observe her efforts with the taint.
"It is impossible girl and I have no wish to associate with darkfriends." Savriti crossed her arms, defiance painted across her face.
Cadsuane made as if to intervene, but Taija stopped her with a gesture. "Fine. If that's how you see it, then your life's work is pointless, but far be it from me to try to correct the childish behaviour of yet another of this time's 'aes sedai'." Taija reminded herself that Savriti had just been kidnapped by Cadsuane before she went further.
Turning away from her she spoke to Aleksi. "I'm going to try something on you. I'm sure it's safe, but it might be uncomfortable and you'll need to release saidin. Do I have your permission?" Taija doubted any of the modern aes sedai would bother asking, consent seemed to be a distant concept to them.
"Of course, anything." He nodded firmly. "I'm ready."
"Thank you." She took a moment to think. This might not work, but she thought it would. She'd certainly modeled it enough in her head. If it did… Well she'd wipe the smirk off that infuriating woman's face!
With a breath Taija started to spin the web, uninverted so the others could see. She went much more slowly than normal, this took serious precision, even by her exacting standards, and she really didn't want to get it wrong. First came the heavier framework of spirit, laid over her friend, then she tweaked the flows just so. It looked like a shield, until closer examination anyway, when an observer would realise there were thin patches in it that wouldn't hold a determined channeler back.
Then Taija started on the hard part, interweaving the other four elements into her framework. Thick strands went around the solid bands of spirit, but the intricacy was in the thin parts. There it felt like she was spinning a microscopic multicoloured carpet multiple times over, all at the same time. That was fine, it was just a concept, she'd do it faster next time.
After a few seconds Taija finished the web, all of the women were looking at it fascinated, even Savriti. Moiraine broke the silence. "That is… extremely complicated. Most impressive, but what is it meant to do?"
Taija gave them a faint smile, trying to ignore the tension in her shoulders. Please let this work! "Aleksi, please could you try to seize the Power, slowly, don't draw more than a trickle and describe what you feel."
He gave her a slight bow. "I'm visualising the void, emptying my mind. I can feel the Power just outside it." He frowned slightly. "There's something odd about it, it's harder to reach, but I think I still can…" There was a pause and then his eyes widened.
"What? What is it?" Taija leant forward eagerly.
Aleksi suddenly smiled, the most relaxed, beatific smile she'd seen from him since he'd found he could channel. "It's clean… There's nothing… Just pure saidin…" There was a heavy hint of wonder in his voice.
Taija wanted to explode with joy. Fuck you Savriti. Fuck you aes sedai! Can't be done they'd said. She restrained herself from shouting, although she couldn't stop the grin from growing across her face. "Brilliant. Just brilliant. Just don't do anything for now, hold where you are."
She went over her web minutely looking for weaknesses, anything that could go wrong. When that was done she continued, trying to keep her voice level and the excitement out of it. "Alright then. Now I want you to spin something small. Just a trickle of Power. Maybe pick up that rock there with air," Taija waved over to a pebble lying on the dusty ground. At the same time she fed more strength into her own web. Enough that without the angreal it would be a strain.
Aleksi gave her an eager nod and a second later the rock floated into the air while he stared at it wide eyed, as if he'd never channeled before. "It's clean!" He sounded stunned, looked stunned too. The rock fell to the ground and he spun to face Taija. Suddenly his arms were round her and he was spinning her round laughing happily.
Despite Taija's discomfort at being grabbed by the bigger man, she was still grinning. This once she was willing to put up with it.
The only fly in the ointment was the three stony faced aes sedai. Savriti just sniffed, but Cadsuane seemed to be willing to voice their doubts. "This is no doubt good news, but how can we be sure that Aleksi can truly tell?"
Taija sighed, having fended Aleksi off her. Trust them to bring things down. Still, to be fair, they had 3,000 years of cultural inertia. "Have you linked with Aleksi to feel the taint for yourself?" She was pretty sure none of them had. "If you had you'd realise it's hardly something you can mistake."
When Cadsuane confirmed she was right, because of course they hadn't, Taija continued. "Fine, it's easy enough to demonstrate. Aleksi, would you be willing to link with Cadsuane? I suppose Moiraine too so that they can lead the circle." He nodded. "Great, thank you. I'm going to release my web so that she can experience the taint first."
There was a bit of shuffling around, Taija kept her eye on Savriti. Cadsuane had tied off the shield on her and Taija wasn't sure any of the modern aes sedai knew how to break a tied off shield, but she was ready to act if she was wrong about that. Savriti wasn't very strong anyway.
Taija released her web on Aleksi and a moment later the light of saidar sprung up around Moiraine and Cadsuane, merging together. It didn't take long before Cadsuane's face twisted.
"Light! They have described it to me before, but this… it is everything I expected and yet worse." A moment later Moiraine had the same reaction, Cadsuane must have passed control to her.
Taija nodded, it was still unbelievable that a self-professed expert on dealing with male channelers never tried to find out more, but that didn't matter now. "All of you release the source and break the link. I'm going to replace my web now." She started to spin.
She really needed to think of a good name for the web actually, something catchy. The Kosola De-tainter? No, that was terrible! Taija's Great Filter? It sounded like a part for a pretentious washing machine. Tel was always better at that kind of thing than she was. Light why did she have to think of the bastard?
With an effort Taija yanked her thoughts back on track. "Right, it's in place, you can link again. Then just channel a trickle, this is still experimental."
Saidar's light appeared around Moiraine and Cadsuane again. After a second Cadsuane gasped, her composure broken and a look of wonder that Taija had never seen before in her eyes. "Oh Light you were right! We were not just wasting our time!" She suspected Cadusane hadn't meant to say the last bit.
Suddenly there was pressure on her web and Aleksi's eyes widened. "Wait, slow down!" Several rocks started to rise around her and in a panic Taija drew hard on saidar through her angreal, putting everything she had into the web.
A moment later it flew apart, shattering under unseen pressure and she felt a stabbing pain in your head, bad enough to drive her gasping to her hands and knees, saidar fleeing from her. "Fuck."
Aleksi was by her side almost instantly, helping her back to her feet. The pain in Taija's head subsided rapidly and she rounded on Cadsuane, "what the fuck do you think you were doing you idiot woman?! I said a trickle! Are you trying to burn me out?!"
Only Aleksi calming hand on her shoulder kept Taija from saying more. "It's alright Taija, she drew more, but it wasn't much more, honestly. I don't think she realised."
Cadsuane had gone white and released saidar her hands held palm out in front of her. "I am sorry Taija sedai, it was only a relative trickle, I did not think I was doing anything dangerous."
Taija wanted to keep shouting at her, but that might just be the pain in her head. If Aleksi said it wasn't much then she believed him. Cadsuane shouldn't be able to lie anyway. "Alright, I'm sorry for shouting. I was just shocked."
Savriti sniffed again in the background and Cadsuane suddenly whirled to face her. "I do not know why you are so insistent on this unhelpful attitude. You have just seen what is possibly the greatest miracle of the last 3,000 years. The taint was gone. There is no way anyone could mistake it. You love your history books so much, you should be taking notes for your own book because you are seeing history being made."
Perhaps Cadsuane was a bit more stressed by that than Taija had thought.
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Over the next couple of days Taija started to carefully test and refine her web. The first thing she needed to do was to make sure that if it failed it didn't do any damage to the person holding it. Even if it didn't risk burning them out, or doing any permanent damage, inflicting crippling pain was bad enough.
She thought that was solved by a tweak to the way that the flows wound around each other. It should make the web more flexible, so that it would bend and come apart gently rather than shattering under pressure.
Taija's euphoria at her success was tempered by the limitations of her web. She quickly found that it took hugely more strength to hold the web compared to the amount of clean saidin that it allowed to be channeled.
Aleksi wasn't particularly strong, yet anyway. Who knew how strong he'd become if she could solve the taint as an issue. However, even after making refinements to the web and drawing fully on her angreal Taija found that she couldn't hold the web when he tried to do anything significant. She even tried linking with Nynaeve, Egwene and Elayne to add their strength to her. To her surprise, Moiraine was actually willing to lend Nynaeve her angreal for the test. However, Aleksi was still just about able to break the web.
It was depressing, but she eventually had to conclude that her taint filter was only a partial success. Still, it was a proof of concept. She'd been able to come up with it. There must be other things that would work.
Unfortunately it was also tiring to hold the web. Even for Taija it was hugely complex, but to be effective it had to be held. When she tried tying it off it seemed to lose much of its effect shattering under even the tiniest strain from Aleksi channeling.
Even amongst the other women only Nynaeve could spin it usefully. It was partly a question of strength in the Power, but much more so one of fine control. The others' best efforts let the taint seep through and Nynaeve, for now anyway, didn't have the strength or control to be anywhere near as effective as Taija.
Ultimately the conclusion Taija had to come to was that while her web was a nice idea, genius in fact, its practical utility was limited and she might have to go back to the drawing board. Still, she wanted to show it off to Rand and Edram. They were the ones, along with Aleksi, suffering under the burden of the taint. Even if this wasn't the ultimate solution, it would give them hope for the future. She was also proud of what she'd achieved, particularly without any proper support or infrastructure. In her heart she could even think to herself that she wasn't sure anyone else from her time could have done this much, certainly not so fast, but she'd never be so immodest as to say that out loud.
Rand seemed to have had less and less time for Taija, but eventually she got him and Edram alone. After explaining to them what she'd done Rand curtly indicated to Edram to go first. So Taija spun her web and watched his eyes widen as he channeled.
"It's clean…" He murmured before he turned to her and took a step forward, tears glistening in his eyes. She thought for a second he was going to grab her like Aleksi did and instinctively took a step back, but he just stopped and stood looking at her with eyes shining. "Thank you Taija sedai." He gave Taija a low bow of gratitude, correct in every respect. It would have fit perfectly into a formal occasion at the Hall of the Servants
Odd, but Rand was stepping forward, looking bored by the whole thing. Taija asked him to release the Power and then spun the web again. His eyes widened and she saw a small flame appear in the air in front of him. "Light…" A smile made its way onto his face as he murmured the word.
Then Taija felt the pressure increase as he drew harder on the Power, her web flexing. A second later it broke and she was glad she'd tweaked it enough that it didn't hurt.
Taija smiled at Rand, but he was scowling. With a snarl he kicked at the dust. "Typical women, about as useful as Latra Posae! Grand promises of solutions and then I get left with a lame duck like the Choedan Kal. Next you'll give me a silverwing with no engines and ask me to bomb Bel Daradea." Before Taija could reply he spun on his heel and stalked away.
Taija stared after him, horrified. What? Just… what?!
Confusion at where he'd heard those words warred with hurt at his dismissal of her efforts. She'd poured everything she had into dealing with the taint and had made more progress in a couple of months than anyone else had in 3,000 years!
Edram was staring at her and she scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. He might be loyal to Rand but she didn't want him to see weakness in her. Where had that even come from? Rand shouldn't have known any of those things. Actually even she didn't know what the Choedan Kal were, a failure by the sound of it.
"Taija…" Edram's voice was soft, hesitant, impolitely over familiar and then he seemed to remember himself, "Taija sedai. You shouldn't listen to him. He's just under a lot of stress. He knows how much you've done for him really. I do too. You should be proud of yourself. Cuan Garuin Salamon himself couldn't have done what you did."
"It's fine, you should…" Taija's mind caught up with what he'd just said. "How do you know that name?" In a world where so many names had been forgotten, Cuan Garuin was just too much of a coincidence.
Was that panic in Edram's eyes? "I… read it in a book. There are so many old libraries out there!"
Taija's mind went back to her time as the Lady Alfreda and her excuses to Bennae whenever she knew something you shouldn't have. Had she really sounded that unconvincing? "I suppose Rand also read about Latra Posae, silverwings and Bel Daradea in a book too?" Her tone was sarcastic, but at least tears no longer threatened her. She drew deeply on saidar, just as a precaution.
Edram winced, "alright alright, I'm sorry I lied to you, it's just… Rand…" He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. "This is very difficult to explain, but Rand he… Sometimes when he's stressed… He seems to remember things from the… the Age of Legends." Was that a grimace? Was it at Rand or was it the 'Age of Legends'? "Sometimes he speaks as if he was there and I heard the name from him when he was talking about what you were doing. He said it to me. Not even Cuan Garuin could succeed." He saw Taija's frown and hurried on. "I think… sometimes… he's speaking as if he's Lews Therin himself."
Her eyes widened, all other thoughts banished, "do you think it's the madness?"
Edram shrugged. "Perhaps, or perhaps it's that he's the Dragon Reborn and remembering life as Lews Therin is part of that. Either way he needs our support."
Taija nodded, her mind whirling and suspicions forgotten. If Rand really was going mad, then she needed to do more, faster. The filtering web clearly wouldn't be enough. After a moment she looked back towards Edram. "You pronounce names in the Old Tongue very well, where did you learn it?"
There was no hesitation in his response. "Thank you, but I'm just copying Rand, I suppose if he's remembering it then he must be saying it right?" He flushed slightly and rubbed his nose. Funny, Tel always used to do that when he was lying. One of Tel's tells. Heh.
Taija wondered whether the same was true of Edram, but his explanation made sense. Still, Cuan Garuin was an odd person for Rand to bring up. He couldn't have known that that was the man that had inspired her to go into science in the first place, a towering figure that she'd looked up to all her life.
Even if he was getting Lews Therin's memories, the man had hardly known her, she didn't think he'd have known that. What a coincidence. She supposed Cuan Garuin had been world famous. Anyway, she needed to be thinking about the taint not Rand, it seemed time was running out.
As Taija headed back to her quarters the weight of the world settled back onto her shoulders.