As usual all speech in italics is in the Old Tongue.

Chapter LIII - To Infinity and Beyond

A week's work showed good progress for Taija. It would all be much easier if she could make ter'angreal, but sadly that was one of the areas of the Power where someone needed to have the Talent to be able to do anything and she simply didn't. It was a thought actually, maybe she should see if one of the girls had it. She'd assumed they must have been checked at the White Tower, that was what would have happened in her time, but thinking about it, Taija wasn't sure the 'modern' aes sedai actually knew how to make ter'angreal. Something to worry about in the future.

Anyway there was something different that day. Cadsuane looked almost expectant, while Savriti looked even more uncomfortable than before.

When Taia had greeted everyone, Cadsuane gave Savriti a look and she winced before stepping forward. "Taija sedai, I wish to apologise for my unhelpful behaviour. I have… reconsidered my actions and I have realised that it would be better if I assisted you with your efforts."

Taija blinked, surprised at the sudden turnaround. She'd been so determined to be unhelpful that Taija had just assumed she'd never change her mind. "Oh… Well thank you Savriti sedai. I appreciate it. I'm sorry again for Cadsuane sedai's removal of you from the White Tower. Hopefully at least the more civilised experience here has helped?" She shot Cadsuane a look. The woman was looking particularly smug. What in the Light had she done?

"It is of no matter." Why had Savriti winced at that? "Perhaps we could speak after you have finished your work here?"

"Yes, that would be good, thank you."

As Moiraine and Cadsuane spun their analytical webs Taija shrugged to herself. She'd like to think reason had triumphed, but given Savriti's behaviour she suspected Cadusane had done something to the woman. However, she couldn't really bring herself to care. She'd put up with far more rudeness than she normally would because Savriti had been kidnapped and Taija felt bad about it, but when she'd offered to remove Savriti from Cadsuane's care, the bloody woman had told her not to meddle in the business of true aes sedai. So meh.

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After Taija had finished a productive session, she thought she was virtually there and would be able to start imbuing clean saidin into the rods in the next few days. It was just a case of making sure that it was completely safe. After what Moiraine had told her about the Eye of the World, she'd redoubled her already semi-obsessive approach to safety.

Taija stretched up towards the sky, trying to work out some of kinks in her aching muscles, she might have pushed herself a bit hard on her morning run. Still it was important to keep the girls progressing so she needed to make sure she was faster than them despite being shorter. Although if she was honest, that was just an excuse. Really she should probably stop trying to compete with Aviendha, she needed to just accept she wasn't going to beat her. Ha, or not. She'd get her one day. Perhaps if she slipped something into the girl's drink…

As she reached up and then bent down, Taija noticed Savriti watching her, with a look of mild disapproval, presumably it was unladylike or something. Fuck her.

Still, she'd said she was ready to help, so Taija straightened up and gave her a smile. "So, what can you tell me about the taint?" She thought for a second, "maybe start from the beginning. What do you know about what was done to try to cleanse it during the Breaking. Even with the chaos there, surely they must have tried. Why didn't they succeed?"

Savriti briefly looked up at the sky as she thought, before taking on a lecturing tone. "Well, as you know, records are scant. Hmm, you are already aware of the Eye of the World?"

"Yes, Moiraine told me about it."

"Very well, little enough is known there. I doubt that I can tell you more about that than you have already heard from Moiraine. There was one other principal effort that I know of. Records suggest that it was the main one, with as far as I can tell, the most resources. I am afraid there is not much I can tell you from it though. I know that they used an outpost of the Emar Dal Institute of Scientific Research." She stumbled a little over the words, but Taija nodded. It was a respectable organisation. "The efforts were led by Matin Kesharan Veliros."

Taija's eyes widened at that. "They put Matin in charge of it? Why?!"

Savriti looked at her in confusion. "What do you mean why? Was something wrong with him?"

"No… He was a lovely man, but… How can I explain it. His specialism, his area of knowledge, it doesn't really line up with this." The poor bastard, how bad must things have been? "He was a better communicator than scientist and his specialism was more astrophysics. Was he really the best they could find?"

Savriti didn't answer for a second, instead replying with a question of her own. "You speak like you knew him. Why do you insist on persisting with your lies…" Cadsuane raised a single finger and her mouth clamped shut. That bloody woman had definitely done something to her.

"Enough with the insults. You've already been told I'm from the Age of Legends." Taija didn't even bother getting angry, ignored her dislike of the modern term for her time, it was too important. "Now keep talking. Tell me everything. What did they find?"

"That is the problem, records are so scant. It is known that they ultimately failed, I can only assume that this Matin died in the attempt, perhaps like the men and women at the Eye of the World." Why did Savriti's lip curl at the mention of men? Come to think of it, Taija had noticed she always refused to look directly at Aleksi. Another unpleasant character trait to add to the pile she was sporting.

"There must be something!" Before Taija realised it she was almost touching Savriti, staring her in the face. "Think woman, think! You can't call yourself a scholar and know so little! Even theories. Speculation!"

Savriti recoiled from her, fear in her eyes. "I I do not know. Let me think… There was… there was…" She really seemed far too nervous, Taija hadn't meant to frighten her.

Savriti launched into an explanation of how she thought the taint affected men's minds. It became clear pretty quickly that she had no idea what she was talking about there, Taija wasn't sure she even realised that people thought with their brains not their hearts. Alright, maybe that was a bit too harsh, but much of what she was saying was patently ridiculous. Still, Taija settled down to listen. She might have something useful to say, hidden amidst all the crap.

Taija must have listened to more than an hour of useless information put forward by this or that scholar from the last three thousand years. She was starting to be unsure whether Savriti was deliberately feeding her rubbish or if the level of knowledge really was that bad. Cadsuane had told her Savriti was the most knowledgeable woman in the world when it came to the taint though and surely that had to be worth something.

Just when Taija was starting to consider calling it a day Savriti finally said something interesting.

"Of course it is generally considered that the taint is finite, so in theory it might expire by itself in the distant future."

"I'm sorry, what? Please could you repeat that." Taija was suddenly alert.

"The taint may expire by itself in the distant future, I do not see why that is use…"

"No, before that. You said the taint is finite?"

"Oh yes, that is the generally accepted view among scholars." Savriti had the cheek to sound like Taija was a fool for not knowing that. Still, that was interesting. If the taint was finite then that changed everything. Possibly. Maybe, just maybe.

"Is there some kind of basis for thinking that? Or is it just speculation?" Taija couldn't just rely on an unsupported hypothesis. The stakes were simply too high.

Savriti leant back, almost offended at being questioned. The woman was in no way a scientist. "Well. I dare say some of the most knowledgeable scholars of the last three thousand years have said it."

"Yes," Taija sighed, "but what is their reasoning for it."

"Well there have been theories about the speed at which men go insane from the taint, you see…" Light the woman liked the sound of her own voice, but at least this was interesting and potentially relevant.

Taija listened carefully to her rambling through the thought processes of various scholars. It did sound like there was some circumstantial evidence, but was it enough for her to go on? Then she hit pay dirt.

"Of course Melene Aldada spoke of incomprehensible notes that she had seen preserved from the Eye of the World which were said to prove the theory."

"The team that created some clean saidin but died? I thought you said that you had nothing to add about them?"

Savriti didn't allow the question to break her aes sedai composure. "As I said the notes were incomprehensible, useless!"

"What do you mean by incomprehensible? Were they preserved!" Taija wanted to grab her and shake the answers out of her.

Oh she looked smug at that question. Too smug. "As a matter of fact they were, just a few meaningless sentences in the Old Tongue." Her smugness faded. "However, as I said they defied comprehension, no scholar could decipher them. I have tried extensively."

Of course they couldn't. "Where can I find a copy of these preserved notes? In the White Tower?" Taija was already starting to plan how she'd break into the library there, who she should impersonate. What to do if she needed to fight her way out. It would be very risky, but some risks would be worth taking.

Savriti might have seen something in her eyes because she hurriedly assured Taija, "I have spent long enough poring over them I am sure I can recite them for you!"

Taija waited a second as Savriti smiled, clearly pleased with herself. "Well go on then." She carefully keep the growl out of her voice. Savriti really was a deeply irritating woman!

Savriti took a deep breath, paused again, at that point Taija was fairly sure she was doing it deliberately, and then slowly started to speak, clearly reciting from memory.

"The 13th dye mensinial barrier twen saidin and standard fourth dye mensinial spess deemntrits a split of proximat 33 mycrotres sitting across the dye mensinial junctn for a distance of 1.556 vision years in all directions. Drawing on saidin thru said gap results in the tuchng the taint. We have been unable to dytct the taint dyrctly; however, that gap was not present prior to Lews Therin's attack. The space allows us to ndyrctly measure the quantity of the taint and… that is all that was recorded."

Her accent was appalling, particularly when it came to more technical terms and Taija strongly suspected that there had been some transcription errors across the years, so it took her a few seconds to parse out what Savriti actually said. When she did she found she was smiling.

Yes… Yes! It was what she needed. The terms she was hearing from Savriti would be meaningless to anyone from this time. There was virtually no chance they'd just been made up and if they were measuring in micrometres then they clearly had some solid measurements.

Along with the much vaguer information from post-Breaking scholars, this gave her just about enough to be confident that they were right and the taint was finite. It wasn't like she had much other choice anyway. Barely anyone would even be able to spin her filtration web.

Taija was fairly sure that she would be able to make and store untainted saidin in the next few days, without anyone dying from it, but that didn't matter if the quantities were relatively tiny. It might allow Rand, Aleksi and Edram to safely practice channeling to some degree, but not much beyond that.

Clearly the team at the Eye of the World had been well-equipped if they'd had such precise inter-dimensional measurements. Some serious analytical ter'angreal for sure. Certainly not like Taija's situation where she had a couple of talented, but half-trained women doing their best to imitate a ter'angreal for her.

However, her best guess was that they just couldn't figure out how to detect and therefore directly affect the taint. They must have ended up kludging some kind of solution together that was more dangerous than the taint itself. Perhaps they used their own bodies to absorb it? Light only knew why. If they'd had her filtration web or an equivalent then none of them needed to die.

Still, that didn't matter. They were long gone. Savriti had given her enough. She had the pieces of the puzzle she needed. Taija could detect and measure the taint. She could affect it, she'd already proven that. Now all she needed to do was to destroy it and that was trivial. She hadn't thought there was much point in trying to do that if it was infinite like saidin. But 30 micrometres over a 1.5 light year radius. That was… a sphere with a radius of roughly eight kilometres. It was a huge quantity, but it wasn't an impossible quantity.

She'd need to come up with the right web, but she'd been playing with that already in her head, more as idle thought than a serious attempt. There just hadn't seemed to be much point when there would always be more of the taint.

With a start Taija realised they were all staring at her. Ha. If only they knew. "Aleksi, Nynaeve, would you mind linking with me? I want to try something."

A few seconds later she was in control of the flows. First she spun saidar, trying something she'd been pondering in spare moments. Over the next few seconds Taija brought together a stupidly complex web, forming an oddly twisted sphere of spirit with strands of all of the elements woven together feeding through to a knot of saidar at its core. If she was right, the interactions there should convert the taint into… well not nothing. She couldn't turn something into nothing, except with balefire anyway, but she could turn it into nothing dangerous.

Mentally rubbing her hands together Taija drew on saidin through Aleksi, ignoring the stomach turning sense of the taint washing over her, then she hesitated. "Actually, please could you all just clear a bit of a space around my web, maybe ten metres should do it. Also… cover your eyes." she quickly spun a web of air and earth over her own eyes, blocking out most light.

Taija glanced around and when she was satisfied that they were taking her seriously she channeled a trickle of saidin, forcing it into her sphere. She didn't bother shaping it into any particular web, just pushing simple flows at it.

As soon as they touched the sphere they seemed to be snatched into it and a light started to glow. Taija fed more power into the flows and the light brightened. She also started to feel the heat, even at a distance. It was working!

With a grin Taija drew as much as she could from Aleksi, funneling it in. The light became blinding and she had to take a step back to avoid getting burnt. After a second she released the Power, feeling the ecstasy fade from her.

Where she'd spun her web the ground was fused into blackened, dirty glass, still radiating heat. A few of the others were blinking rapidly, presumably they looked at it even after her warning.

After a moment Cadsuane asked, Well that may have been fascinating Taija sedai, but what exactly was that?"

Now it was her turn to be smug. Taija gave her a big grin and said, "that was the beginning of the end of the taint." At her confused look, she continued. "That web was denaturing the taint, converting it into harmless light and heat." She glanced back at the melted ground. "Well, mostly harmless light and heat. All of the taint on the saidin that I channeled no longer exists."

"That sounds fantastic, but how does that help Rand or Aleksi channel safely?" Egwene sounded as confused as the others looked, but some of them Elayne, Nynaeve and Moiraine were starting to nod.

"It's simple. If the taint is infinite, like saidin, then the only way round it is to filter or block it. However, if the taint is finite, then it can be expended, every bit of it that's destroyed is less of it to trouble us in future."

Taija would have been dancing around with delight, but there was still a big problem. Lifetimes of channeling wouldn't remove all of the taint. She wasn't strong enough and she doubted many other women could even spin her web. Then there was the issue of saidin. She only knew a few male channelers and they certainly didn't have lifetimes to work on it. "The only problem is power. There's a lot of taint and we don't have infinite time or many channelers at all to do anything with it." Taija thought for a second. "I'll have to speak to Rand about Callandor, although I suspect even that won't be anywhere near powerful enough to be useful. Then maybe we can have a think about where we can get a female sa'angreal or three to match it."

It might not be an immediate solution, but now she had something to work on and maybe things could be refined.