Stranger in a familiar land

[Helena]

Talin

“If he was one of your sheep, you would have put him out of his misery.”

The stench from within was enough to water her eyes. Talin refrained from curling her nose, but frankly she’d smelled more fragrant corpses. The farmer who’d led her to the barn startled a little, which she duly ignored as meaningless sentimentality. Man or beast, it made no difference. It was only the unusual circumstance that kept her rooted in the threshold, for she was not best pleased with the evident waste of her time, and neither did she wish to linger in this place of bubbling evil. She could hear the shallow scrape of the body’s breathing from here. He would expire on his own if they left him much longer, but it would not be a kind death. Talin knew which she’d prefer, and it wasn’t an end burning in delirium.

“I suggest you find somewhere better for me to work. Tell your goodwife to ready water and clean cloth, and inform her I expect her assistance. I have the rest of the supplies I will need.”

His skin was furnace-hot under the palm she crouched to place across his forehead. A dexterous net of saidar sank deep a moment later, and curious intensity filtered the feedback. Broken bones, twisted ligaments, punctures, burns, and an interesting stab wound to his ribs – mostly for what was still buried inside. The list went on, both gruesome and fascinating. She’d seen things she could never have imagined in the north, but this was something else; it was sadistic and intentional, a body pushed to its very limits before the inevitability of death. The internal damage was substantial. Her hand retracted the moment it was able, and her lips puckered for the disgusting film left against her skin.

“You won’t survive Healing,” she told him matter of factly. If he was even conscious enough to hear her judgement, his ears were so damaged it would be as muffled as if someone held his head underwater. Who in the Light was he? Someone important, clearly, else why waste the time and resources on such morbid work. And perhaps a channeler, given his miraculous arrival in the middle of the Tarien countryside. Escaped or dumped? For now she did not care, beyond consideration of retaliation. She did not want to be confused for his torturer.

She stood without a notion to offer a comforting word. There was a fair chance the fetched water would end up as a cleansing for funerary rites, yet Talin had nothing in her with which to soothe a dying man. The calculation of her thoughts was only on the practicalities. If he could grip to the power, it might provide the necessary energies to sustain him through the work, but she doubted it would be enough, even if he rivalled the strength of the Dragon Reborn. Neither did she wish to encourage something that might be used against her if he proved mad. There were other ways to lend fortitude of course, but they weren’t ways Talin considered performing on a stranger. Not when the energies borrowed would be hers. There might be no real benefit in saving his life. It was the challenge of it that charmed her. She’d never seen anything like it.

---

Talin would have liked to douse a few buckets of water over the filth of his ragged skin, to work with a cleaner canvas, but she thought the shock of it would only be detrimental to the slow work of piecing him back together. His pulse was fluttering faster than it ought, a poor sign. It would be a shame if his heart seized now, just because she couldn’t stand the smell. She set the woman to the task with warmed water, a cloth, and patience. Her husband dutifully replaced the buckets and disposed of the old, disappearing from the threshold almost as quickly. Talin caught Kaori in her periphery a few times too, but he kept his distance. He’d seen her work before, though nothing quite like this. She kept the connection between them muted; his grief was a tiring drain at the best of times, though he was otherwise pliant to her needs. Generally she was pleased with the arrangement.

She kept half an eye on the goodwife while she set herself to other necessary work, for the woman flinched or grimaced every time she discovered evidence of some new injury. Neither her nor her husband had been best pleased with Talin’s decision to use the farm’s kitchen, but it was as close to an infirmary space as she was likely to find in this backwater, and denying an Aes Sedai was simply not an option. Old blood crusted deep across his wasted body, and the wounds oozed afresh when their armour was soaked loose. A rural wife had to be used to preparing meat surely? It seemed no different; he barely looked human if you avoided the face. Light send the woman couldn’t work a little bit faster?

“The filth will only speed the infection inside him. Your care for his pain does him no favours.” Talin glanced up, expression sharp. The medicinal tang of the brewing tea was stronger now than the abrasive stink of filth. A small blessing.

If she could get him stable, it would be a foundation. Though no amount of Wise Woman witchery was going to tip the balance, it would buy the time she needed. She couldn’t attempt anything with saidar before she removed the leech buried in his side, and she couldn’t do that while he was still coated in his own excrement. But she also needed to control the fever. The rest of his injuries, even the internal ones, were negligible, though assuredly agonising. Infection would be the thing to kill him. It had reached the blood. If he survived there would be long months of convalescence ahead, just from that alone.

When the brewing was done she lifted a cup to his lips. She expected the woman to move out of her way, and did not address her. Stretched out on the table, he had been drifting in and out of consciousness, but any hoarse babbling had been ignored. Once in the flicker of his eyes Talin frowned at something perceived. But it was a consideration for later. “Drink this," she instructed bluntly.

Then the work would begin.