As usual all speech in italics is in the Old Tongue.
Chapter XLVI - What in the Light is a Quantum Mirror?
The morning after her somewhat frustrating conversation with the Dedicated and her deeply traumatising visit to Rhuidean, Taija roused the girls from their tents early. There was no point in wallowing in her own misery, that way lay much bigger issues. So she fell back into routine and research.
It was amazing how the Power could be used to wake up recalcitrant teenagers. Egwene too. She'd be spending her free time digging holes and filling them in again, but Taija wouldn't be allowing that to get in the way of her training. With the ways things were, there was too little time to waste delaying the girl's training to punish her. It was up to the wise ones what they did with their own training of course.
As promised, Aleksi was there too, looking as cheerful as ever. She couldn't say she was delighted with the early start, or the world in general, but Taija made an effort to match his mood, just to set an example for the girls. Unsurprisingly all three of them were less than happy to be up. Taija would say typical teenagers, but really she hated early starts too, she just forced herself.
Taija started by leading them through a warm up. Couldn't have them injuring themselves pointlessly.
Of course they looked ridiculous in their dresses, although at least Egwene's Dedicated-style cotton clothes were a bit more practical. She was going to have them dressing properly sooner or later.
A few Dedicated gathered while she was doing it, watching with unabashed curiosity. Perhaps they'd never seen a proper warm up before?
Once Taija thought everyone was suitably warm it was time to get going. "Right girls, we're going to start easy because you're new to this. I don't expect you to match me straight away, but I do expect you to do your best. Try to look less churlish Nynaeve, it doesn't suit you." Taija gestured forward, "follow me!"
She started to jog, setting a slow, easy pace. They shouldn't have been completely unfit. They were young and they had been training with her after all.
However, it quickly became clear that she was over optimistic. Aleksi had no trouble keeping up with her and, more surprisingly, neither did Egwene. However, Elayne and Nynaeve were quickly left gasping as they floundered along in their dresses. The watching Dedicated completely lost interest when they realise they were just going for a run.
That all contrasted with young Aviendha. She came jogging up to the five of them when they'd been going for a little while.
Elayne and Nynaeve seemed to be completely dead although they were soldiering on with admirable determination, so Taija told them they could take a break, they'd need time to improve after all.
"Can I help you Aviendha?" Taija wasn't sure why she was there. She thought she'd seen her hanging out with Elayne a fair bit though, so maybe that was why.
"I see you Taija sedai." Dedicated were so formal sometimes. "Amys suggested that I join you and your apprentices."
"Oh, well you're welcome of course. Although it's a bit mean to come and show up an old woman in front of her apprentices." If Taija was honest with herself, she doubted she could keep up with Aviendha, the girl had basically spent her life training to fight. However, Taija did exercise hard most mornings and Egwene had been looking too smug about keeping up with her, so it was time to up the pace. She was barely sweating in the cool morning air anyway.
Aviendha smoothly matched Tajia as she accelerated to what she thought was a more reasonable jogging speed, although she did see a smile tugging at the corners of Aviendha's mouth. "I would not wish to question the word of an aes sedai, but you are very young to call yourself an old woman Taija sedai."
Taija laughed, "I'm over 180 years old Aviendha, I could be your… very great grandmother."
Aviendha stumbled a bit at that, but quickly pulled herself together. "Will I next find that Elayne is old enough to be my mother?"
Taija glanced back at the spot where Elayne and Nynaeve had splayed out in the dirt. "Oh no, she's practically a baby."
The four of them jogged on, but Taija could see Egwene was flagging. "Egwene, you can take a break if you need one."
"No Taija sedai," she gasped between panting breaths. "I can keep going."
Good girl, "alright, but don't overstrain yourself." Aleksi seemed to be keeping up without any real problems.
"I had not thought the aes sedai trained their bodies in this way." Aviendha's tone was musing.
"Soft wetlanders are we?"
Aviendha flushed, "I apologise aes sedai, I have obligation."
Taija smiled and upped her pace a couple of notches. "Nonsense, I was asking for it." They were both sweating by then, but Aviendha smoothly matches her. Egwene stumbled and nearly fell before she recovered herself. "Take a break Egwene!"
Taija ran along with Aviendha and Aleksi setting a fairly hard pace. The Dedicated girl was sweating, but she still looked annoyingly relaxed, with a bit of a cheeky smile. They made a wide loop before coming back. As Taija passed the girls she called out cheerfully to them, "rest time's over, make loops of the camp at your own pace. If I think you're slacking you'll regret it!"
In no time they'd left the girls behind again. Taija thought she ran for about an hour with Aleksi and Aviendha. By the end of it all three of them were sweaty messes. The other two looked annoyingly like they could do it all over again without even trying though. Taija on the other hand was panting for breath. She could do it again, but certainly not without some effort.
As for the girls… Well they had a lot of work to do.
"Good job girls, go clean yourselves up. Maybe later we can discuss appropriate exercise clothing." Taija saw their faces at that, "or maybe not…"
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After training with the girls Taija cleaned herself the quick way, with the Power. She was amazed the Dedicated don't all stink after days out in the desert.
With her mind cleared a bit and the girls suitably exhausted it was time to get onto her real work. She'd have another training session with the girls in the evening, something less physical.
Taija had already decided to accept Cadsuane and Moiraine's offer of help and she'd been thinking about what they could do. They were almost certainly clueless about the sorts of things she needed, so she'd have to teach them for scrath, but hopefully they could be useful.
With that in mind, Taija got her new 'research team' assembled outside the camp. Cadusane, Moiraine, Nynaeve and Aleksi.
Aleksi would provide the tainted saidin. There was no way she was trusting Cadsuane or Moiraine to link with her. So Nynaeve, or Elayne when its her turn, would join the link with her and Aleksi so that she c0uld lead and maybe they could learn a bit too.
"Right, thank you for coming Moiraine sedai, Cadsuane sedai, here's what I want to do today."
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Cadsuane listened to Taija with an impassive face. So the woman wanted her to weave something new to allow her to do the real analysis? Well, much as it galled her, she supposed Taija must have some expertise. The Age of Legends had clearly taught her things that had been long since forgotten. Whether those skills had anything to do with the taint was a different question.
Really she thought the woman was barking mad thinking she even had a chance at cleansing the taint, but she wanted to get close to Taija and supporting her in this was the best way to do it. Who knew, vanishingly unlikely as it seemed, she might even succeed.
"If you want to feel the taint for yourselves, I'd advise you to ask Aleksi if he's willing to link with you. It's entirely his choice." Taija glanced at him and gave him a small smile. They were sleeping together, they must be. She had been wrong about a lot of things with Taija, but all the signs were there with Aleksi. It also explained her determined focus on the taint.
Taija continued on, oblivious to Cadsuane's thoughts. "Cadsuane sedai, I'm going to show you a web that I would like you to spin." As usual there was no light of saidar around the woman, but this time her weaves were visible. A storm of saidar came together in front of her, a curved sheet of intricately woven threads of all five elements.
Cadsuane goggled at it despite herself. "That's… very complicated."
"Oh? I suppose so." Taija did not sound much like she thought so at all. "Normally I'd use a ter'angreal for this but since that's not an option I've done my best to recreate the effect through a web. It's fairly specialist I'll admit. It's called a nach'endarshi tebout shaani cloriol." She understood most of the individual words, but together they meant little to her. Something about measuring the reflection of quality?
"Please could I see it again, perhaps a bit more slowly?" It galled her to have to ask.
Taija visibly stifled a sigh. "Of course Cadsuane sedai." Her weave faded and then she wove it again, threads coming together with exaggerated slowness. Cadsuane winced internally, this was going to be harder than she'd thought.
After a few more demonstrations she thought she had it. "Very well, I will try now." She embraced saidar and wove the ridiculous tapestry that Taija had showed her. She was quite proud she had picked it up so fast, she doubted any other women in the Tower could have.
"Hmmm." Taija's sceptical noise did nothing to improve Cadsuane's mood. "A good first try." Light, the woman truly was sounding like a teacher, right down to providing comforting words before criticism, "but if this is going to be useful the flows need to be more precise. Observe."
Taija wove again, splitting her weaves two ways. Two versions of her… weave, whatever it was called, came together in front of her. In one case the threads were a little larger, seemed less precise and in the other they were tiny, finely woven threads fitting together perfectly. How could she even weave two of those at once? "This is a precision instrument and any wavering or gaps in the web will leave it worse than useless. I realise this is difficult, if it's too much for you then I completely understand."
Cadsuane gritted her teeth, the bloody woman even sounded like she meant it. Was she actually that nice, that soft or was it just an act? "No, it is fine. I just need to practice a little."
"Fine, you give it a few more goes while I show Moiraine what I need from her." Taija wove another intricate weave. "This is called a miere wakhatu obram." An increase in wave impulses? She had thought she understood the Old Tongue well!
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After a few hours Taija was feeling nearly as exhausted as Moiraine and Cadsuane looked. She hadn't managed to get any practical work done, just trying to get them trained doing things that no sane person would try to do manually.
She'd do it herself of course, but she just couldn't focus well enough to hold a quantum mirror, wave-pulse amplifier and do her own analysis at the same time. There were limits.
The two women had made good progress across the day, Taija thought they'd get it soon, but it didn't help the bubbling frustration inside her at the lack of progress.
She'd also asked them for any insights they had into the taint and had been shocked at how ignorant they were. Cadsuane had said she'd 'dealt with' more male channelers than any two other aes sedai. Of course Taija knew that when she said 'dealt with' she meant dragged off to be severed and it made her feel sick to your stomach. However, neither of them had any idea about what the taint actually was. They'd never even felt it themselves. How could they be so disinterested? Moiraine had an excuse, but Cadsuane claimed to be a specialist!
The only vaguely useful bit of information was what Moiraine had told her about the 'Eye of the World'. Apparently a pool of clean saidin that had been created by 100 male and female aes sedai working together. It would have been more useful if Moiraine had been totally sure it was actually clean, had had any idea how they'd done it and hadn't told her that every single one of them died doing it. So about as useful as a chocolate teapot. A, possibly mythical, solution that killed the people using it was no solution at all.
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Over the next few days Taija fell into a pattern. She had no doubt that they'd all be moving on soon, but apparently the wise ones were waiting for a candidate for clan chief from the Shaido tribe to return from Rhuidean, or possibly not if he failed. Apparently three quarters of candidates did, which was insane. Misusing dangerous ter'angreal! If only she had the mental energy to be more than quietly disgusted.
Each morning Taija took the girls and Aleksi for a run and calisthenics, often joined by Aviendha. Then she spent most of the day working on the taint, or at the moment, trying to train Moiraine and Cadsuane to the point of usefulness. Late afternoons and evenings she spent with the girls, training them in the Power or talking about history or philsophy.
It was exhausting and she wasn't sleeping well either. She know she was pushing herself too hard, but she couldn't stop or slow down. She owed it to the world.
A couple of days ago she'd found out that young Dedicated men who could channel went to the Blight to commit suicide by shadowspawn. They said they were off to kill the Dark One. In the wetlands they were simply severed. Cadsuane and Moiraine had looked at each other and simply refused to tell her what the Seafolk did when she'd remembered they existed and asked.
Each night Taija spun a ward against eavesdropping around her tent, not to keep the sound out, but to keep the sound in. She hadn't had a proper night's sleep since she went through the glass columns. The nightmares were unrelenting. She was waking up thinking she was one of the Dedicated to Peace, abandoned by the aes sedai and about to die. Or just seeing Jaric Mondoran's empty eyes staring into hers as he spun death.
After a few days of this Taija was just getting through each day forcing herself forward and ignoring Aleksi's worried looks. However, one thing did look brighter. Cadsuane and Moiraine had finally reached the point where they could spin what she considered to be a barely adequate web. Surely that would help. At least she thought she'd be able to try again with actually detecting the taint the next day. It felt like all she was really good for as she settled down for what would no doubt be another night of disturbed sleep.
The next morning Taija woke up, feeling as tired as when she went to sleep, and hauled herself up. She went for her run with the girls and Aleksi, but her heart wasn't really in it. Aleksi disappeared immediately afterwards while she cleaned herself up.
He returned when Taija sat down for a brief, bland breakfast with a cloth bag of something. Something that smelt familiar. Tantalisingly familiar.
Taija's apathy faded and she looked up suddenly interested as he came and sat cross legged in front of her with a happy smile. "Rand gave me these, he said he'd traded them with one of the Dedicated, apparently they trade all over the place, and he thought you might like them."
Aleksi opened the bag and Taija poked her nose in to see a pair of buns, sugar dusted across the top of them and was that… Was that chocolate?! Without even thinking her hand snaked out and she took a bite out of one of them. It was chocolate. Oh Light it was chocolate!
Before she knew it the first bun was gone and with horror she realised she was already munching on the second. "Oh fuck, Aleksi I'm so sorry I just took them and…" Her face heated as she wondered whether to try to offer him the half eaten bun or if that was just weird.
He just waved Taija's concerns away. "Oh no no, it's fine. These are for you. I just thought you were under a lot of stress and Rand said…"
She couldn't help but tune him out as she finished munching her way through the second one. She'd thought chocolate had been lost, she hadn't seen it in any of the places she'd visited in this time and yet here it was. Just what she needed to cheer her up. A long-lost and very much missed taste of home.
Actually it really was a taste of home. The buns weren't quite the same, but they were very similar to the ones Tel used to bake when he was feeling domestic and she was down. It wasn't like it was an obscure recipe, she could think of several shops in Jalanda where she could have bought something similar. Still though, that was… odd.
"Where did you say you got these again?" Taija kept her tone casual.
"Rand gave them to me. Like I said, he told me he traded for them with the Dedicated. Presumably it's something from Shara? I know the Dedicated do a lot of trade there."
"Of course, that makes sense," Taija nodded. "Please do thank him for me." It didn't really. She hadn't seen the Dedicated baking anything like this before and it was just too close to what she used to love. It as a very strange coincidence. Still, it had made her day and worrying about it was something for another time. She had the taint to solve now. Funnily enough, chocolate buns for breakfast had drastically improved her mood.
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It was frustrating trying to get Cadsuane and Moiraine to work helpfully. They were trying, Taija had to admit that, but they just didn't have the training they needed. Light only knew what rubbish they taught them in the White Tower. They'd managed to spin adequate webs, after a lot of practice, but they were wavering, struggling to hold them in place sufficiently well. Still it was progress and despite the lack of success so far, she was at least feeling a bit more confident that they might get somewhere.
Through her link with Elayne and Aleksi Taija drew on sadin, feeling the filth of the taint flow past her, wrapped around the flows of the male half. She sent tainted saidin into the concave hollow of Cadsuane's web and nodded to Moiraine. A second later Moiraine spun her own web linking into Cadsuane's at key points.
It was crude, but Taija gave herself a smile of satisfaction. She'd managed to cludge together a proper quantum analysis system using a pair of half-trained channelers and webs that she'd made up from scratch. Credit was due to them too for overcoming their lack of training and skill.
With saidin in place Taija drew hard on untainted saidar, spinning her own web, even more complex than Cadsuane and Moiraine's. Alemhok Tissa was out, this was purely her own invention after weeks of thought and more days spent experimenting once she had the two modern aes sedai trained up. She filtered it through theirs, all five elements blurred together, connecting to their webs at key points and then settled down in the shape of a net spread over the flow of saidin.
Now came the real work. Taija brought her web together and in her mind's eye a multifaceted image of the flows in front of her sprung up. She could see saidin, break it down into its constituent parts at a nanoscopic level without any trouble with this kind of set up, but the taint was still infuriatingly undetectable with saidar, even though she could bloody well see and feel it without any assistance. Still, that was fine, nothing came immediately. She'd spent days trying this and really was only just getting started.
"Cadsuane, please could you add a small amount of fire to the clump in the lower left of your web. Moiraine, add the spirit flows we discussed." Taija altered her own web, twisting spirit and air through it. Saidin blurred, the resolution of what she was perceiving failing, still nothing from the taint.
Next iteration, she shifted the flows slightly.
It was exhausting work for all of them. After a couple of hours Taija was sweating profusely. That amount of complex channeling quickly left her feeling ground down even when she was at her best and Cadsuane and Moiraine looked little better. They'd all been channeling large amounts of the Power without a break and the focus needed had been intense.
Taija was just about ready to give up for the day, they needed to pace themselves after all, when it happened. Another tweak to the webs and suddenly it was there! Those oily strands appearing in her mind surrounded by various parameters. It was poor resolution, vague imagery with little detail, but it was there!
Taija let out a yip of surprised delight and almost lost her connection to saidar.
"What? Has something happened?" Cadsuane looked both bored and stressed from the strain of holding her web.
"Yes! I detected it, it worked! I detected the taint!" Taija shouted, wanting to get up and dance. She was a fucking genius! Without a lab, without a proper team! Yes!
"But I thought you could see it anyway?" Elayne sounded confused, poor girl, she'd learn.
"Yes, but I couldn't detect it! Don't you understand? If I can detect the taint, specifically the taint using saidar then that means I can interact with it and if I can interact with it then I can affect it!" Taija wanted to get up and dance even if the others seemed oblivious to the significance of what she'd found. Well more fool them. If she'd had someone from her time there they'd have understood. Well a scientist would have anyway.
"So you can cleanse it?" Aleksi sounded excited at least, but then it was more personal to him. Still the question brought her down a bit.
"No… Not yet." She perked up again, "but I'd been thinking it was impossible." Well impossible to do without killing herself with the resources she had. "Now, with this I think I could actually do this!"