As usual all speech in italics is in the Old Tongue.
Chapter LXII - The Village People
The next day Taija needed to go and visit Siuan and her aes sedai. She wasn't particularly happy about it, but Moiraine had told her that she wasn't sure she could convince them to help by herself. At least she'd finally been told where they were, not knowing that had been irritating.
In the evening, after another day of working to refine her taint-destruction web, Taija spun a gateway to a little way outside the village they'd taken over before trudging through the snow to it. She spotted one or two men in the woods by the road shadowing her as she walked, which meant there might well have been more she didn't see.
Taija was very conscious that she was going somewhere with at least a hundred aes sedai, very few of whom actually knew her. Elaida's proclamation of her status as darkfriend weighed heavily on her mind. Surely Siuan would have corrected that though. Moiraine had assured her that she'd be expected.
Nevertheless, she drew deeply on saidar through her angreal. She'd really rather not have come alone, but who else could she have brought? Aleksi would have been a nice trump card, but he was still growing into his strength and if they realised what he was his position wouldn't give him any protection against aes sedai looking to sever him. Taija shivered at the thought and it had nothing to do with the cold.
Given the way aes sedai behaved, they'd probably just try to treat the girls as runaways if she'd brought them. Guaranteed conflict there.
Obviously Rand couldn't come, putting that kind of temptation in the aes sedai's laps would be idiotic. Wise ones would hardly have been helpful either, Taija might like them better than the aes sedai, but they were hardly discrete or able to show humility when necessary.
The obvious solution would have been Tel, but he was just… Taija sighed, just no.
When she reached the edge of the village a pair of armed men stepped out, active camouflage cloaks wrapped around them and hard eyes looking her over. "Can we help you mistress?"
Taija met their eyes, "My name is Taija Kosola Miranen, I'm here to see the Amyrlin, I'm expected." She wondered if she should have just called herself Taija sedai, but who knew what the people here knew about her.
Their eyes narrowed at that. However, they bowed and one of them hurried off further into the village, presumably to pass on news of her presence. "If you could just wait here Mistress Miranen, you will be attended to shortly."
Taija had a few minutes of waiting awkwardly in the snow. The guard resisted her attempts at striking up conversation and as time passed she started to get irritated, although at least the cold wasn't a problem with some surreptitious webs. The trick was getting them just right so that she wasn't obviously steaming.
Eventually a harried looking young woman came trudging through the snow. Taija could see the banded hem of an accepted's dress poking underneath her thick coat. "Mistress Miranen? Please could you follow me." Taija resisted the urge to correct her on the naming conventions of her time or to demand her title and duly followed. She was here to be diplomatic after all.
Taija headed deeper into the village after the accepted and was led to the common room of an inn. At least it was warm inside with a roaring fire, but again she was told to sit and wait. Was this some kind of power play? There were a fair few armed men casually sitting around in the common room along with a couple of aes sedai. Perhaps they were their warders. They were all chatting to each other, while the accepted sat slightly awkwardly to the side, but Taija still felt watched. This was feeling a bit too much like she was being treated as a threat rather than an honoured guest.
They were probably just paranoid. Taija knew Elaida's faction outnumbered them significantly and they'd be worried about the Forsaken. Still, some precautions wouldn't go amiss. She started spinning inverted webs and tying them off with complex, contingent triggers. It took her a couple of minutes, but by the time she was done, most of the stone floor and wooden ceiling beams were set up to explode violently if she released the Power for more than five seconds. Or just if she touched them with the right web. If this was a trap they shouldn't have left her time to prepare, everyone knew that if you let a skilled channeler set the battleground you were at risk of running into nasty surprises. Then again, maybe they'd forgotten that in this time.
More time passed and Taija ended up gesturing the accepted over from where she was talking to one of the armed men. "What exactly is going on here? My time is extremely valuable and currently it's being wasted. Siuan was expecting me, so why is there a delay?"
The accepted gasped and Taija resisted the urge to groan as she realised she'd referred to Siuan by her first name. She'd probably offended the whole room now. Both of the aes sedai stood and came over to her. "You would be wise to show proper respect girl. The Amyrlin is not a patient woman and will not tolerate being spoken of like that, let alone in front of aes sedai. Now sit down and be silent or you will find that our forbearance is limited."
Taija stood too, ready to give them a piece of her mind. Annoyingly they were both taller than her. Then she thought better of it. She wanted to take out the stress of the last few weeks on a couple of rude, modern aes sedai, but she shouldn't. However, tempting it was. So after a moment Taija sat back down and looked away.
"Wise of you girl, the Amyrlin will hear of your disrespect, but you are sensible not to make things worse."
They went back to their seats while the accepted stared at Taija as if she was completely insane. Perhaps she was given she'd come here.
Another couple of minutes passed and then the door to the outside world slammed open with a bang and a well-wrapped aes sedai stormed in. She was holding saidar, that was enough to get the other two looking up at her as well.
She scanned the room until her eyes landed on Taija. "Are you Taija Kosola?" Her voice was as haughty as her face.
Taija nodded and prepared herself, this wasn't a friendly reception.
"You are under arrest for…" At the word 'arrest' Taija was already moving, rolling out of her chair and spinning as she went. Shields were slammed into place on the two sitting aes sedai and the accepted, the other aes sedai barely had time to say her next word before a bar of air slammed into her stomach, folding her in half hard enough that she lost her connection to saidar. A shield followed a moment later.
Impressively the men were already out of their chairs with swords drawn, but that didn't stop Taija from binding them in air.
A storm of shouts and protests erupted from around the room, the aes sedai had gone white faced, but were just as demanding as the men. Taija let it wash over her for a few seconds before she gave in, they were giving her a headache. "Quiet!" Her shout actually shut them up, briefly. "I've had enough of this. You will refer to me as Taija sedai and show proper respect or I will make you regret it. Now shut up, while I think about what to do."
"How dare you! Why I shall…" Taija cut off the sound from the outraged aes sedai with a small ward against eavesdropping. She didn't seem to realise Taija couldn't hear her as her mouth was still working behind it.
Clearly something was wrong here. This wasn't the greeting that someone gave to an honoured guest. Equally, if Siuan was actually trying to arrest her, she'd have ambushed Taija with a circle of thirteen, not a trio of pompous women who had no idea what they were dealing with. Perhaps it would be better if she just left. Trying to involve the modern aes sedai had been a mistake.
Actually, calling them modern aes sedai was wrong now. Rand and Nynaeve were modern aes sedai too. White Tower aes sedai perhaps? Maybe she could establish a Black Tower, just to annoy them. No, it was a silly idea. If she was going to do something like that, which she most certainly wasn't, it would be a new Hall of Servants. No more stupid towers.
Taija reached a decision. She was going to leave. If Siuan wanted to talk she could come to her. Good luck to any of them that tried to stop her. First though, she needed to make a point. Well, need was too strong a word. She wanted to make a point.
Taija started with the one who tried to arrest her. She respun the shield on her with uninverted saidar and tied it off with a more complex knot. Not something they'd be unable to undo, but a bit more challenging. That done, she picked her up with air and rotated her so she was upside down and stuck her to the wall with yet more air, which she tied off too. Then , spinning inverted saidar this time, Taija wrote in glowing letters in the air over her, "I am an idiot who attacks guests without thinking it through first." Finally, feeling particularly annoyed, Taija added a complex knot of saidar to the web forming the words. No doubt they'd figure out how to destroy the inverted web eventually, but for now the letters would follow the woman around for anyone to read. At least anyone who could read Taija's language anyway.
The other two aes sedai hadn't actually attacked her, but she was still pissed off with them too. Again Taija replaced their shields with visible saidar and tied them off before giving them their own captions. "I should be more polite to guests" and "To be aes sedai is to be a servant not a master."
Taija surveyed her handiwork for a few seconds before deciding that for the men and those two aes sedai she'd tie off the webs of air, but with a knot that would dissolve after an hour or so in case no one came to free them. She didn't want to hurt anything more than their pride. Finally she spun another web so that the words "I should choose my masters more carefully" hovered above the men. The accepted she left alone, she was just a girl.
Taija was turning to leave when another aes sedai burst through the door in as much of a hurry as Tower aes sedai ever seemed to be and came to a dead stop. Taija was about to shield her too when she recognised Anaiya. Maybe she'd actually behave like a civilised person. The slightly dumpy aes sedai looked around at the scene wide eyed before focusing on Taija.
"Taija sedai, what in the Light has been going on here?"
Taija shrugged and point to the upside down aes sedai, "that one tried to arrest me, the rest were going to help her."
"Blood and bloody ashes, it's worse than Siuan said," she muttered. Taija wasn't sure she was meant to hear that. "I am sorry Taija sedai, I came as soon as I heard you were here, but it seems that the message was delayed. As for the attempt at arresting you, Sorase here has just come from the White Tower, I can assure you that those aes sedai who have been here for longer have heard that you are no darkfriend."
Taija resisted the urge to grumble, she wasn't trying to start a fight with Siuan. "Alright, well then, shall we get moving?"
Anaiya looked around at the furious looking aes sedai. "Taija sedai… Could you please release them, I understand your frustration, but this would be… unhelpful to your relations aes sedai as a whole."
Of course she'd be worried about her own dignity as an aes sedai. "Oh alright then fine, but the shields are staying. Someone else can fix that for them." Taija quickly undid the various tied-off webs and lowered Sorase to the ground. In a burst of generosity she even put her down feet first. "If any of them bother me again, I'll make the words permanent though." That was a lie, while she could certainly make them difficult to remove, they'd work out how to get rid of them eventually.
"I am sure they understand Taija sedai," Anaiya shot them a warning look at the same time as she bustled up to Taija and started urging her out.
In no time at all Taija was taken into a stone house. There were guards outside it, although they didn't try to stop the two of them. Her thought that it must have been where Siuan was was quickly confirmed when she was shown into her study.
"Taija sedai, it has been a while."
Taija gave her a polite bow. "Siuan sedai, it's nice to see you again." She was at least a familiar face.
As was her wont, Siuan didn't waste much time on small talk. "So Moiraine tells me you believe you can cleanse the taint and you need the White Tower's help?"
Taija resisted the urge to point out that Siuan hardly had the White Tower there. Instead she just nodded. "It's not a matter of belief. I can do it. Moiraine will have told you that too. What I need is defenders. When we do it, it's going to take hours and it'll be felt over the entire planet err world. That means the Forsaken are going to turn up and they'll be desperate to stop it. Obviously Rand has his allies, but we need as many channelers as possible to stand between us and the Forsaken while it's being done. Having a few circles of thirteen aes sedai as part of that would make me feel a lot better." She wasn't going to tell her about all the other preparation she was doing. Operational security was a thing after all.
Siuan stared at her uncomfortably long and hard. "What you and Moiraine are saying should be impossible. Your entire civilisation failed to do this as did everyone else for 3,000 years afterwards. Why should I believe you can?"
Taija suppressed her anger, Siuan had a point, from her perspective it was impossible. "Why would I lie to you? I've got nothing to gain from it. Yes, my people did fail, but their efforts were constrained by the War and by the Breaking itself. I suspect everyone who could successfully have done it was dead before the taint appeared or soon after. As for it being impossible, before you met me you'd have said that Traveling and inverting webs was impossible. I've spent months working on almost nothing else and I've found a solution, I can do it. Rand believes me, Moiraine and Cadsuane believe me. What more do you want?"
Siuan leant back and rubbed her temples. "Very well. You will have my support. However, if we are to fulfil your desires we will need the approval of the Hall of the Tower. You will need to be revealed to them."
"You haven't told them about me?"
"They know that you are not a darkfriend and that you can channel and have been a valued ally of the Tower, little more. I felt that having the full extent of your abilities would be a valuable trump card."
"Well…" Taija really didn't want to have to make a speech, especially to those women, but if needs must… "Fine. At least then maybe they'll stop denying that I'm aes sedai."
"There is that," Siuan nodded.
"I suppose I should probably dress up for it too."
Siuan looked her clothes over and nodded. "Going dressed as a man will not help your case. They are not as used to your… quirks as I am."
Taija didn't take the bait, she already knew how she was going to dress. "When should I come? I've got a lot of work to do, so I'd appreciate it if we could avoid wasting my time next time."
Siuan's eyes tightened, but she didn't snap back. "Tomorrow, at 5th bell."
Taija worked out what that meant after a second and nodded. "I'll be there. Now, I also had another proposal for you, one that I think you might find quite helpful…"
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The next day Taija headed back to Siuan's village. This time she was wearing the full official regalia of an aes sedai of her time, just like she had two days ago. The long black coat perfectly laundered, the badge of the aes sedai proud on her left breast and the golden globes on her collars.
She rather wanted to bring Nynaeve too, but the last thing she wanted at that point was an argument over the newly promoted aes sedai's status. In the end Taija settled for Cadsuane coming with her. Moiraine was of course already there.
Apparently Cadsuane was practically a legend among the Tower aes sedai, so having her there should hopefully brush aside any irritations. Taija also trusted her reasonably well not to stab her in the back and with her angreal and array of ter'angreal she was a dangerous combatant in her own right. It also helped that, reading between the lines, Cadsuane didn't appear particularly keen on submitting herself to Siuan's authority.
Fortunately this time there were no difficulties, although Taija was left waiting in a side room outside the inn common room that they rather grandly called 'the Hall of the Tower'. A ward against eavesdropping surrounded their 'Hall' so she couldn't even listen in to what they were saying. Trying to get past it seemed like a bad idea at that point, so Taija just sat and stewed.
She wasn't exactly happy about having to make a speech to a bunch of sitters, normal aes sedai were bad enough. Cadsuane must have picked up on her discomfort because she actually gave her an encouraging smile, "do not worry Taija sedai. After the Forsaken what is a bunch of squabbling women to you?"
Taija returned her smile after a second. "You know, you can stop calling me Taija sedai. I know you modern aes sedai don't do it with each other and in my time it would be considered extremely formal, to the point of rudeness. I've just insisted on it because… well so many of you have called me girl or been rude that I wanted to make the point." She gave her an awkward shrug.
Cadsuane looked at her for a long moment and then laughed. "Oh dear, well I suppose I… we have earnt that. You may of course call me Cadsuane."
They were probably never going to be great friends, but it was still progress.
It was a few minutes later that Taija was called to face the Sitters. She stepped through the ward into the common room and there was almost as little noise as there was from outside. Just 18 stone faced aes sedai staring at her from their chairs and Siuan and Sheriam stood in front of them. Taija didn't know Sheriam well at all, but it seemed Siuan had made her the Keeper in place of Leane. Taija still felt bad about her death, she'd always been one of the more pleasant aes sedai.
Taija put her thoughts of Leane aside and surveyed the Sitters. She refused to be intimidated by these women. They might think they were hard, but they hadn't seen half of what she had and she'd met plenty of harder people over the years. If she could be the headline speaker at a seminar at the Collam Daan as a professor from Jalanda then persuading these women would be nothing.
Siuan at least gave Taija a nod. "Welcome Taija sedai." She saw a few of the sitters frown at the title. Siuan had said she'd tell them who she was before she arrived, the sheer arrogance of these women was unbelievable. Still, she needed to be diplomatic. They should be on their knees in gratitude, thanking her for solving one of the biggest problems of their world, but instead she was going to be politely asking them if they'd deign to help her. It was utterly infuriating. This was more important than that though, she needed to keep her temper under control.
Of course Siuan couldn't see Taija's internal turmoil and smoothly turned her attention back to the sitters. "This is Taija Kosola Miranen, the woman I have spoken of. Through a miracle of the Creator she was released into our time around a year ago and since then she has worked tirelessly for the Light. She has contributed to some of the greatest victories we have seen in the war against the Shadow and has been a loyal aide to my own efforts." Taija bloody well didn't work for her! Breath.
"It is because of her that we were able to begin the process of rooting out the Black Ajah. She has personally killed two of the Forsaken, Asmodean and Rahvin, and has assisted in ending the threat of others, Be'lal, Ishamael and Sammael have all been pruned from their ranks with her help. Now she comes before the Hall to request its help and I would ask you to listen to her plea. Taija sedai, the Hall does you great honour, it is almost unheard of for non-initiates of the Tower to address it."
Taija would keep her opinion on that to herself. "Thank you Mother." She had to work to keep her facial expression neutral at calling her that.
Taija took a step forward and gave the assembled sitters a low bow, showing deep respect. She'd treat this the same way she would if she was addressing the Grand Council or the leadership of the Hall of Servants. They'd probably say she was. Ha.
"Honoured sitters, aes sedai, thank you for inviting me to speak to you. The Amyrlin has already told you a bit about me. Let me expand on that. My name is Taija Kosola Miranen, I became aes sedai more than 3,000 years ago in what you would call the Age of Legends. I fought in the War of Power and I saw the beginning of the collapse of my society."
"You wear your shawls as badges of office. I come before you wearing my own. The black coat of an aes sedai, our badge on my breast and the globes on my collar. These mark me out to people from my own time in the same way as your shawls and ageless faces do now."
"I spent long years fighting the Shadow, seeing the worst depravities that it could inflict on the world before I was trapped. Battling Ishamael," Taija ignored the soft gasps from some of the sitters, "I lost. However, through the Pattern or just sheer fortune I was locked in time until the present day, when I woke up in a farmer's field. Since then I've been fighting for the Light."
"I can't say I've made no mistakes, I've made many and would have made many more if not for the generous guidance of this time's aes sedai." Ha. "One mistake that I made was ignoring the taint on saidin. In my time there was no taint, men and women worked together. I didn't truly believe it was real. That was until I started to see its effects on the Dragon Reborn."
There was a thump as one of the sitters fainted and her neighbours tried to revive her. Pathetic. These women were just pathetic. "In my time I was a professor of physics. To you that would be a scholar who studied the way the universe worked. My research included subjects that are similar to the taint, my survival and presence in this time can only be something that I ascribe to the Pattern, a blessing from the Creator." Like fuck it was a blessing. Maybe for them. Taija thought back to the many times she'd sat there wishing she'd died instead.
"I've spent the last months devoting myself to studying the taint. I've consulted with Savriti sedai, the greatest expert in your White Tower, I've had able assistance from Cadsuane sedai and Moiraine sedai and I've also had the benefit of the Dragon Reborn's presence to allow me to study saidin itself." No need to mention Aleksi's help to them. The fewer Tower aes sedai knew he existed the happier she'd be.
"I don't know why the people from my own time failed, but I suspect. By the end of the War everyone with the expertise and knowledge to do anything about the taint was likely dead. The world was falling apart during the Breaking, civilisation was collapsing and organisation, unity were simply not there. One lesson from my own time is that when people worked together we could achieve things that could only be dreamt of when working apart."
"Moiraine sedai and Cadsuane sedai have both seen that my methods work. I have the knowledge of my time at my disposal and we're ready to undo the greatest failure of the Age of Legends. No more madness, no more conflict a blow against the Dark One himself. However, we, I will need the help of the aes sedai. The Forsaken will surely strike at us during the cleansing and we will need every channeler affiliated to the Light that we have to help hold them off. That is why I ask for your help, your expertise." Such as it was.
"We are still preparing, but we hope to be ready to begin in four weeks' time. I hope to see the Tower standing proudly with its ancestors, unbent and unbowed as it has stood for thousands of years!" Taija hoped she wasn't overdoing the flattery, it certainly didn't match her actual opinion of them. Still, they all had egos the size of houses so it couldn't hurt. Siuan would probably see through it, Taija perhaps been a bit too vigorously honest in the past, but she was already going to help anyway.
The Sitters descended into muttering as they considered Taija's words, but Siuan quickly called for a vote. Most stood, some were hesitant. Siuan called for the greater consensus, whatever that was and eventually all of them stood. Excellent.
Now for part two of Taija's plan. She'd already discussed it with Siuan of course. It was going to destroy her credibility with some of the Sitters, but she could live with that, she couldn't really care less what they thought of her anyway. Also it wasn't like she hadn't already lied about how long preparations for the cleansing would take. Hopefully that information would be winging its way over to the Forsaken before the next morning.
Siuan stood again. "I have one final announcement to make. Taija sedai has taught us many things from the Age of Legends, sharing her knowledge freely and generously." Well most of it, to the extent they were willing to learn. "As part of her generosity she has also shared something with me, a method to detect members of the Black Ajah. We know that they have sworn different oaths on the Oath Rod, perverting the meaning of what it is to be aes sedai. Fortunately for the Light, Taija sedai's skills in analysing the Power and ter'angreal go beyond any living sisters'."
Taija stepped forward, interrupting Siuan just as planned. "As the Amyrlin is saying, the Oath Rod was known in my time and was used by many people. However, one of the safeguards that we had against its misuse was the ability to check what oaths people had sworn. It is a complex weave," Taija made herself use their term, "but simple to apply once you know it. I shall demonstrate it."
She turned to Siuan, "with your permission Mother?" When Siuan nodded Taija channeled. She spun an uninverted web of pure spirit that settled over Siuan, making it ridiculously complex in its swirls and knots even though it had no effect whatsoever. At the same time, she spun an inverted web that created glowing letters in the air in front of Siuan.
"I vow to speak no word that is not true.
I vow to make no weapon with which one man may kill another.
I vow never to use the One Power as a weapon except against Darkfriends or Shadowspawn, or in the last extreme defense of my life, the life of my Warder, or another Aes Sedai."
As the Sitters burst into urgent conversation with each other, Taija carefully watched their reactions for any signs of panic or anything.
"The weave is tiring, so I will be teaching it to a few trusted aes sedai later and then tomorrow we will commence testing everyone. The scourge of the Black Ajah shall be ended soon."
With that Taija gave them another low bow and turned to leave. If this worked at least some of them would be taken in. Perhaps they'd be caught, that would be ideal. If they fled, then so be it. She'd rather they were running free, but known for what they were, than hiding amidst the aes sedai. The only real weakness would be if they knew she could lie and realised that, if she could actually do what she said, there was no way she'd have announced it to them in advance. She'd have to wait and see.