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

Chapter LXIV - To Change the World

A few days after her time in Siuan's village Taija was on the west coast of the continent. It felt like it had come far too soon. What was probably the biggest, most significant thing she would ever do in her life. Honestly she felt a bit young for that, she hadn't even hit 200! Still, how many people in her field got to do something like this? None.

Anyway, Rand was what, 19, 20? She should actually ask him, but the thought of such a young man being subjected to the burdens Rand faced just depressed Taija even more than everything else in this shitty time.

Exhaustive planning had been completed, well as much as they all could in the time available anyway. She'd refined her web as far as she could in that same limited time. At least now she wasn't so worried about setting the atmosphere on fire. Allies had been gathered, the battleground prepared. They were just about ready to go.

They had all Traveled to the chosen site yesterday morning to get things ready. None of them were allowed to leave while preparation was going on, the Shadow couldn't be allowed to get any advance warning at all. As far as anyone knew they were all off at different locations carrying out various chores in preparation for the cleansing in a few weeks' time. It might not fool everyone, but every advantage they could scrape together would be helpful.

A full day of setting the scene, a good night's sleep. Or at least as good as Taija could get, and then Rand sent Cadsuane and Amys to fetch the other wise ones and aes sedai. Taija trusted the two of them both not to be darkfriends, but that was possibly the single greatest failure point. If either of them had turned out to be darkfriends that would be it, failure, death. But then their roles were vital enough that if they were serving the Shadow the Light had probably lost anyway.

It didn't take long for the others to turn up and then it was just a matter of getting them organised. Taija left that to the others. She was sat cross-legged in the dugout she'd created, surrounded by cushions with her eyes closed trying to get herself calm and collected. Meditation wasn't her thing, but right now she needed it.

Taija was terrified of what she was about to do. What if she got it wrong? What if she couldn't handle it? What if the taint was infinite? What if these Choedan Kal were flawed and just melted themselves into slag halfway through the process taking her and Rand with them? Even without those worries tumbling around her head, she was deeply uncomfortable sitting there with Rand and making herself a beacon for every single one of the surviving Forsaken. She should have had a circle of 72 up on the cliff that had been chosen as the site to defend her and an army entrenched around it. She should have been doing this with the full resources of her civilisation behind her, not a random assortment of wise ones, half-trained 'aes sedai' and a former Forsaken.

Taija's mind took a mawkish turn at the thought of Tel. Every single true aes sedai was here and so was he, the only remnants left of her culture, she'd grudgingly allow him to be part of that remnant. If something went wrong they were probably all dead and with that the 'Age of Bloody Legends'.

Taija was going to be leading the circle, there was no other way. For this she might be willing to submit herself to being part of a link led by Rand, although frankly she'd rather Nynaeve did it, but Taija didn't have the choice. Nynaeve was the only woman that could spin her taint-destruction web and she was a very long way off being able to do it as well as Taija. Rand hadn't a hope of learning such a complex web using saidar in a reasonable time. So there was only Taija, the world resting on her shoulders. It was too much pressure.

She opened her eyes when she heard Rand climb down beside her and settle onto his own bed of cushions, followed shortly by Amys, she'd insisted that she didn't need cushions. Her loss.

Taija picked up the surprisingly heavy statuette in front of her. "So we're ready?" She managed to keep the sick feeling in her stomach out of her voice.

Rand nodded, he looks like he was feeling just as sick as Taija. Amys had her wise one mask on, impassive as she could be, but Taija could still feel the nervousness in her too. At least she only had to be the third wheel in their link. "Well then may the Creator have mercy on us all, because this is going to be fucking horrible." In a much quieter mutter Taija added, "I should fucking well get a fourth name for this."

With those inspiring words she reached out to saidar through the access key, carefully keeping her draw to an absolute trickle. It felt like a flood of the Power through her, more sweet ecstasy than she'd ever channeled in her life and that was deliberately holding herself to as little as possible. It was a struggle to maintain control for a second or two, not surprising with rough experimental devices, but once Taija had stabilised it she was ready for the next step.

First she reached out through Amys and brought her into the link, awareness of her springing up in Taija's head. She wasn't weak, but the strength she added was mere droplets besides the river Taija was channeling. Then came Rand and his access key. With easy practice Taija wrestled saidin under control too, balanced between the two halves of the Power and drawing just a trickle.

There was no point trying to hide this amount of the Power, so she wasn't even bothering. Inverted webs would just be a distraction and everyone outside would know the second she began. Every channeler on the planet.

Taija took a deep breath and then opened herself fully to the female access key. She wanted to scream, cheer, cry, laugh it was overwhelming. So much saidar that the whole world felt like it was going to be washed away. Taija nearly lost control, drowning in it for a brief second before she reasserted herself. She needed to do this.

Reaching out, Taija started to spin her taint-destruction web, over the edge of the cliff and out to sea, where the water was deep. She spun a sphere 50 metres across, every element coming together in thick, but precise cables of saidar, so much power going into it that it would be felt across the whole planet. Taija checked it carefully for any flaws, she was going to have to hold it through the whole process, for hours maybe, making adjustments on the fly as needed.

With that done Taija spun her protective barrier, a towering wall of air, interspersed with the other elements, this time drawing on both saidin and saidar to strengthen it. That web she tied off, she wasn't sure she'd have the concentration to hold it throughout. She made the knot as complex as possible, cable thick flows. Best of luck to anyone trying to untie that while under fire.

With that Taija was ready to begin. She took deep breath and then pulled hard on the male access key through Rand, as much as she could. The raging torrent of saidin joining the almost infinite flood of saidar. She didn't bother with subtlety for the saidin, that was all in her saidar web. Taija just started to funnel raw saidin into that sphere, all five elements, a pouring torrent of the Power representing everything that could be pulled through the greatest sa'angreal ever made.

She was riding the wave, desperately hammering her will against the raging force of saidin and relaxing into the deep flow of saidar. A tightrope walker balancing on the edge of oblivion.

As Taija funneled the torrent of saidin into her web a new sun bloomed over the sea, indescribably intense heat boiling huge volumes of water into steam as she brought the light to the gloomy, cold winter's day.

Arshancor or, as he still thought of himself in his head, Be'lal looked up from the letter he was writing as he felt it. They were actually doing it, Lews and his pet physicist actually thought they could cleanse the taint. Madness!

He had been warned by a grim faced messenger to be ready, that the Chosen would need to act. Lews had somehow dug up access keys to the Choedan Kal and now they were trying it. If it were him, he could think of better uses of the access keys, but he supposed that he did not have to deal with the taint.

It was inconvenient timing, more and more foolish barbarians were being lured into his nets, but no matter. He had a bone to pick with Lews and his little scientist girlfriend. She certainly was not his old friend's type, but then he supposed that if you were sinking in a storm like Lews must be now, you would take hold of any log floating in the sea. Still, he would need to be wary, the two of them clearly had a certain amount of cunning between them. Be'lal absently rubbed the spot on his chest where Lews' sword had slid into his old body.

It was good that his orders were clear. The cleansing must not be allowed to succeed and that meant he had a free hand with Lews. He would enjoy demonstrating why his death had been more luck than skill.

He might be the Netweaver, the greatest strategist alive, but he was no slouch on the battlefield either. Rolling his shoulders, he strapped his sword to his belt and spun a gateway towards the flaming beacon in his head.

A moment later he emerged, a safe distance away, on top of a hill perhaps fifteen kilometres from that blazing torrent of saidin. Stepping out of the hole in the air, he immediately had to shield his eyes with an arm. Of course he knew where the cleansing was taking place, he could have pointed straight to it from the other side of the continent, but he could not see it. The light behind Lews was so bright, so blinding that looking directly in that direction risked blindness. And the sound. Even from this distance he could hear a deep rumble resonating through his very bones, the whole ground vibrating under him.

The light must be some side effect of the cleansing. Be'lal could appreciate their careful positioning, making sure it would be in the eyes of any enemies. It was good. Defeating a weak opponent was never as satisfying as outwitting the strong and clever.

He would need to get closer though, so that the slope up to the of the cliff would block the light. Then he would be able to show them the foolishness of exposing themselves to the Chosen.

As far as he could tell he was the first one there. All the better, none would share in the glory or interfere with him getting his satisfaction from Lews and Taija Kosola.

Be'lal spun a gateway into the forest below the cliffs, perhaps four kilometres from the top, and stepped through it. It would provide him with cover from whatever guards stood on top of the cliff with his two targets and he could approach more discretely then. Once he was ready to strike they would never even know what hit them.

He barely had time to react before he felt a monstrously powerful web of saidin descending from the sky, it must have been multiples of what he could channel!

Of course Lews would not have left himself undefended, he must have given Callandor to one of his followers. He knew the man's swordmaster could channel. An impressive show of trust, if foolish. What was to stop the man from simply disposing of Lews once the cleansing was complete? Judging by the amount of saidin he was channeling into that blinding ball, Lews would certainly be in no condition to fight afterwards.

With lightning fast reflexes Be'lal spun another gateway and dived through it, emerging a few hundred metres closer to the top of the cliffs, already running as towering columns of fire walked their way towards his previous location. An unpleasant surprise, but of course he had been ready. Still, the question was, how had they found him? The amount of saidin required to open a gateway was not so great that it should have been detectable from kilometres away by whoever was on those cliffs. Especially with that beacon of saidin overwhelming everything around it.

Fortunately his dedication to honing his body as well as his mind allowed him to escape those gigantic bursts of fire. In no time at all he was making his way up the slope, towards Lews. Feeling a bit safer, he started to spin his own retaliation. He could not feel where the saidin was being channeled from, not so close to the Choedan Kal, but it would be somewhere at the top, near Lews so that they could protect him. The sky was full of clouds and steam, lightning would be easy.

As Be'lal brought together his web the trees around him suddenly erupted into fire a series of detonations that send razor sharp splinters of wood and rock through his new body, shredding it in a fraction of a second. Far too fast for him to even begin to think about the unfairness of it all.

From the top of the cliffs Cadsuane looked down at the small bloom of fire in the forest below. It seemed that person, presumably Demandred or the odd woman who could channel saidin given what had happened to the rest of the male Forsaken, had been the first of them to discover the wards Taija, Rand and Tel had spent a day sprinkling around the forest. Her ter'angreal subsided with the explosion, the swallow no longer pointing towards him. In the past she would have thought he was dead, but with everything she had learnt in the last few months, she was not going to rely entirely on the ter'angreal. He might just be inverting his weaves after all, so she pointed once more, "there." It was fortunate they'd woven the ward against eavesdropping around themselves before this began. She could feel the very ground vibrating under her feet, the noise outside it must be indescribable. Without that ward it would have been impossible to hear her directions.

A moment later the location erupted as the circle next to her channeled saidin and saidar into a towering column of fire.

No further movement came from that area of the forest. Maybe he escaped, in which case it would be up to the third line of defense to deal with him, but she suspected that one was dead. Either way she would be ready. With nothing better to do, she checked over the inverted barrier of air she was holding over the top of the cliffs.