not_only_wisdom | (no subject)

It's a bizarre place.

That doesn't matter.

It's the chaos after a battle -- after a slaughter -- and that, at least, is instantly and utterly familiar.

Lan is aware of exactly where Moiraine is and what she's doing. (But only by sight and sound and knowledge, no more; there's no bond between him and either Aes Sedai in this room, and his bond to Myrelle is muffled and quiescent as in the bar. He's used to it, and yet every time it's jarring.)

He's aware of Moiraine, through and under the blood and stark light and the moans of the dying, but it's Nynaeve he stalks after.

It is harder than she had expected, to see things slip from her so, and to know that it is best that it be this way; that it must be this way.

There is a tightness around her lips as she glides obediently after Nynaeve, but that could easily be accounted for by the horror of the surroundings in which they find themselves. Everywhere, there are wounded-- and many of them are dying.

Nynaeve's eyes are narrowed as she steps purposefully toward a small group of men, two of them blank-eyed and almost panicked.

"I don't-- Who-- Did you see--?"

One of the others is very badly burned.

The rest of them--Nynaeve has no immediate idea about the rest of them.

"Moiraine, have you dealt with burns before?"

She doesn't wait for the other woman to answer, but goes to the panicking men, voice brisk but low.

"Hush, now. I need to you stay very still."

It's odd, almost, not to see those around her reacting to the sudden corona of bright gold light that springs up around her.

Almost.

So embracing saidar is still visible in this world.

A lifetime of not seeing any sign but the results; he still finds it weird. It's also very much irrelevant.

Lan is very good at ignoring irrelevancies.

One hand on his sword-hilt, resting lightly. His gaze flickers about the room, taking in strangely dressed guards and women, a few healers and many times the wounded; the motley group that came with them from Milliways, spreading out across the room; Yuna, a giant creature a little like a blue Ghraem'lan Trolloc (but, like Chur, with intelligence in its eyes and no sense of foulness, and standing with Yuna like a Warder), a tall hard-faced man who could change his clothing and fit in any Borderland.

His place is here: watching for danger, and watching for exhaustion.

She nods once, crisply, and sinks to her knees beside the burned man, already beginning to glow as she opens herself to saidar. As she has found to be the case in other worlds -- save one -- there is no difficulty for her in reaching the Source, although a small part of her abstractly notes something that feels like a rush of water in the balance of the whole.

Moiraine shakes her head and reaches out, placing both hands upon the man's chest.

A second later, as bright silver explodes from her hands and races over him, Delving and seeking, the Aes Sedai is frowning.

"The burns -- how is it possible?" she murmurs, softly, but clearly enough to be heard. "He is burned from within as well as without!"

Blue and white fire flickers and dances in a complex spiraling rush, washing over him-- and washing into him, as well.

Nynaeve listens to Moiraine with half an ear, but the majority of her thoughts are far, far too busy with what lies under her hands.

Namely two men who do not appear to know who they are. Or where they are.

And she can find no cause for it, nothing but a faint sense of wrongness when she Delves, and even that might be coming from herself. She can't--she cannot be sure. And there are other hurts aplenty to take care of.

This may explain why her scowl is so fierce when she surfaces, the glow of saidar fading quickly. The scowl fades, too, as she looks at them.

"I'm sorry, I can't--"

She shakes her head, digging into her belt-pouch for one of her teas.

"Lan? Can you fetch me some hot water. They chiefly need rest, now."

These two, at least.

She's mostly ignoring their bewildered panic, though her hands are gentle on their shoulders.

"Let me finish with the rest of it, and then you can sleep. It should do you both a world of good."

Hopefully. Again the glow of saidar springs up, and she draws it deep, sending a rush of blue-green-red through each of them, taking care of the bruises and scrapes and several particularly deep slashes that she can find.

It is not enough, but it will have to do, Light burn it.

All around the room kettles are being set to boil with what Lan assumes are the local equivalent of weaves of Fire. The figures around them, mostly in complicated green-and-orange, are ripping up cloth into piles of bandages. And all around, always, the dead and dying and the frantically healing.

He doesn't need to speak to acknowledge Nynaeve's request; just turns away, striding on long legs towards the nearest kettle.

She notices Lan's departure out of the corner of her eye, in response to Nynaeve's instructions.

Moiraine does not dwell on it, being busy with her own work. It is more complex than she had initially expected from the sight of him, as the burns from within attempt to grow and spread again once Healed. By the time she finishes both Healing and eradicating the strange source that she thinks is the cause of the recurrence, her tiny frown seems well-established.

She rises to her feet and waves one of the monks to the now-sleeping patient's side, giving quick instructions for further care, and then turns away in search of the next.

Nynaeve, temper now quite high at being unable to really help her previous two patients, takes the water from Lan wordlessly, and prepares the tea for both men, pressing it impatiently into their hands when they balk.

Then she turns to the next ma--no, woman, who is tossing and turning fitfully on her narrow pallet.

Nynaeve steps forward, silent, and rests her hands on the other woman's shoulders, drinking saidar in deeply. Frown lines form between her brows as she Delves, searching deeply for the cause.

"Light, but this is--"

She breaks off, spinning a quick weave of blue-green-yellow, which seems to take care of the problem quite--

Wait.

Nynaeve huffs out a sharp breath, one hand letting go of the woman to tug hard at her braid. She scowls fiercely, bending back to her work, jaw clenched tight. Again the blue-green-yellow weave flashes into existence, and a bare moment behind that red-green-yellow-white strands weave themselves throughout the woman.

Eventually Nynaeve steps back, one hand coming up to pinch the bridge of her nose.

"I do not like the way that happened. I do not like it at all. Moiraine?"

After twenty years as a Warder, Lan knows a great deal about what is and isn't an expected part of Healing. About how it works, and about what isn't normal at all.

But it's not his job to figure it out. He's no channeler.

His job is to watch and to ward, and he does.

She turns away from a woman, one who a few minutes before had deep gashes down her face and whose arm and shoulder had been frostbitten, and meets Nynaeve's glance.

"Yes."

It is both acknowledgment and agreement.

Nynaeve closes her eyes briefly and bits off a bitter curse--one that might blister even Mat's ears.

Perhaps.

"Well, then."

She pauses a moment, scanning the crowd. Light, she hates this.

"Best get to it."

And she turns back to her work, bandaging and splinting where the wounds are merely physical, adding a bit of saidar to help mend bones, but--bed rest won't do any harm, on the whole. And there are others that appear to be wasting away even as she watches.

She won't have that. She won't.

The bodies blur together, after a while. They always do. This one burned too badly to save, that one dying even as Moiraine reaches for him. The bleeding, the frostbitten, the bodies scorched from the inside out. Some are stone, others crazed or babbling or blank and bewildered. Moiraine and Nynaeve heal, or they can't, or they bandage, and they move on.

And Lan watches the room through narrowed eyes, and watches both women work themselves gradually closer to exhaustion.

Moiraine trades a silent look with Yuna as she comes to attend yet another death, and turns away from the lifeless corpse as the Lady Summoner begins her work.

She pushes her hair back out of her face, leaving a small smudge on her cheek, and starts toward another of the fallen-- and then pauses, glancing toward a disturbance among a small group of patients and monks.

Nynaeve, too, looks up from her most recent patient, face drawn and exhausted.

"Oh, Light, what now?"

Her hands are still careful as she finishes winding up bandages, pressing a cup of tea into a man's hand to help with the pain.

For some of them, it's really all she can do.

The woman in the center of the small group is shouting, striking out wildly at the people trying to subdue her. Two monks and a nun are on the ground, and the scuffling cluster is uncomfortably close to Moiraine. Not close enough for true danger yet, but Lan's hand is tight on his sword hilt.

And then -- a moving form, a wordless furious shout -- he spins sharply, lashing out with a fist at the wounded man lunging at Nynaeve.

"Lan!"

Nynaeve's voice is sharp with exhaustion and exasperation both, instinct rising in her as she wraps both her assailant and her husband in bands of Air.

The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rise, and she shakes her head as if to clear it, still holding tightly to both men.

"Don't. He's hurt badly enough already."

She sounds so bloody tired, pinching the bridge of her nose even as she releases Lan and steps forward to do what she can about the man who attacked her.

It takes her longer to Heal him than it should, she knows it, but--

It's been a long night, and it's nowhere near over yet.

"If he's conscious to hurt his healer, Aes Sedai, it helps no one."

No emotion in his voice. The words are pitched low enough that few besides Nynaeve could hear, but firm for all of that.

His eyes flick from Nynaeve to Moiraine to the struggling woman (finally, successfully grabbed by a burly Crusader with one leg bloody from a healed wound) and on around the room, never settling.

She has observed this, of course, all of it, and without a visible reaction-- even when Lan turns instantly away from the threat to her to defend Nynaeve.

His path leads apart from mine; now he has accepted it. It is better so; he could not have remained a man so divided, not to mention what yet lies ahead of him....

Moiraine sighs, very slightly, and then turns away as someone plucks her sleeve-- one of the acolytes who has been running back and forth with supplies, now looking very young indeed, and worried.

"Lady, if you would-- there are more wounded-- please--"

She nods, and there is nothing but calm in her serene tone as she answers,

"Then lead the way, child, and I shall do what I may."

Without a backward glance, the Aes Sedai glides after the acolyte, into one of the side rooms, and there begins her work anew.

Nynaeve looks up at Lan, hands neatly tying off a bandage.

She's not scowling, but there are strain lines around her eyes.

"Well I know it, Lan. But I just--it's already so difficult, here."

Her voice is very quiet, and she looks down and away, concentrating very hard on her task.

"I'll be needing more hot water."

She has to be even more sparing of her energy, now.

It hurts to have to avoid fights she might not be able to win, to avoid healing those she cannot definitely save.

But it must be done, and so Nynaeve presses on, sending for summoners when her own hands fail.

He can see Moiraine setting to work in the side room, another Healing weave flaring around her hands. Farther than he'd like, but still enough to see the level of strain in her posture. He'll be able to tell when she's pushed herself to exhaustion.

He knows, for her and Nynaeve both, that's a question of when. Not if.

He bows his head silently to Nynaeve, and goes for hot water.

Nynaeve works in grim, focused silence while Lan is gone, and continues in much the same fashion when he returns. After his third trip to fetch more water and bandages, her motions have become repetive and almost mechanical.

This helps, some, against the headache that is beginning to pound at her temples.

When Lan returns, she is seated at a patient's bedside, hands fumbling for her beltpouch and the herbs sitting within.

Surely she has enough for her own headache.

Surely. She needs to be able to keep channeling, or more will die than have already been lost. She knows that, deep in her bones.

But it is so hard to think, let alone form weaves.

Lan is gone longer than usual.

When he returns, it's to take one look at Nynaeve and cross swiftly to her side, his face darkening.

Low, "You need to rest, Nynaeve."

"I can't, Lan!"

Her voice, too, is low, but fierce all the same.

Even if it does make her wince in pain.

"There's still so many, I can't--"

Lan sets the kettle of water on the floor in front of her.

"You can't help them if you're too exhausted to see straight, my heart."

His voice is pitched for only Nynaeve to hear. But this, too, is a Warder's duty, and a husband's.

She doesn't sob, just buries her face in her hands for a moment, eyes squinted shut against the pain in her head.

"I know. I do know that. Just--"

She unfastens her belt pouch, holding it out.

"Can you give these to someone, please, I--they should be used."

"I will."

It's only a few moment's work to find a monk and press the belt pouch into his hand, explaining in a low voice how to brew and administer the pain-killing teas. Lan is no healer, but he listens.

Then to collect the two Aes Sedai. Moiraine, in the other room, has been watching her limits more carefully; though she has less power at her call than Nynaeve, she's little worse off. (Lan suspects he knows why. He's seen her exhaust herself to unconsciousness; if she didn't today, it's much more likely to be for his sake than any sudden discovery of self-preservation. He'll take what he can get.)

It's a slow progression they make, Lan with an Aes Sedai on each arm, supporting them in a way that's more like discreet half-carrying. But, slowly or not, they make their way across the room -- Lan meets Kimahri's eyes briefly, once -- and out the door.

There's not very much Kimahri can do tonight. Not nothing--his nose is keen, and he's sniffed out one or two internal injuries that would have passed for simple bruises.

His nose is keen--and as he lurks on the steps between two statues, he waits for the opportune moment. At one point in the evening, when Lan detaches from his (Kimahri thinks summoner) Aes Sedai, he finds himself with a silent blue-furred shadow.

It's easy enough to do; his Aes Sedai needs hot water and bandages often, and Lan is the one to fetch them.

He glances up at the blue cat-creature, silent and expressionless.

...And up. Kimahri is tall.

Kimahri is also quiet; he can appreciate a human with a Ronso's taste for silence.

However.

He leans down, his voice a low rumble that doesn't carry any further than he wants it to. "You. Otherworlder."

He points a long, furry finger at a small room off the main. (There's a claw at the end. They're retractable. They're not retracted.) "Talk."

Lan studies him for a moment.

The blue Ronso is with Yuna, and Lan knows a Warder's -- Guardian's -- protective shadowing when he sees it. And the middle of a field-hospital's not the place to ask for unnecessary chats, or stretch necessary ones any longer than needed.

He inclines his head slightly in acquiescence, and turns his steps towards the small room.

There are monks in here. They don't stay long.

"Otherworlders help. Tomorrow, otherworlders leave." Kimahri shrugs; it's a slight gesture given exaggerated importance by scale.

It says, I don't care about any of this.

"Yuna, otherworlders, have same smell. Place-smell. Kimahri no see this place. Yuna goes, Yuna comes back."

His arms are folded.

"Yuna safe?"

Lan considers that, and Kimahri.

Milliways isn't safe. But there are degrees.

"She has friends there, and no enemies I know of," he says after a moment. Lan is a tall man, but he has to tilt his head back to meet the Ronso's eyes. "It is another world, where Sin has never attacked."

"Nowhere is entirely safe. But Yuna has more sense than many, and she is in no immediate danger there that I have seen."

Kimahri--rumbles. It's not a purr, certainly; it isn't a growl, either.

Apparently it's enough, because he turns silently, his tail twitching, and stalks back out.

Lan respects a man -- well, cat-man -- who has a Warder's perspective, and who doesn't waste time.

He follows, in a swift predatory stalk that, for a human, is remarkably similar to Kimahri's. He came this way for hot water, and Nynaeve will be waiting for it.

Visit us now to see more information and facts regarding to

[url=http://www.mega-power.pl/bsn-no-xplode-1025g-nowa-formula-avtp-p-2335.html]BSN NO Xplode[/url]

Hi

What do you thing about below diet supplement? I'm going to buy something good for muscle growth. Please give me a piece of advice.

[url=http://www.najlepsze-bialko.pl/co-wplywa-na-nasze-miesnie.php]Proteiny[/url]

Get in our website and know more about
[url=http://www.skuteczne-odzywki.pl/kreatyna-dla-zaawansowanych.html]Odzywki[/url]

Get in our website and read more about
[url=http://www.wedki.info.pl]wędki[/url]

Visit our site and read more about

[url=http://www.nauka-jezyka-angielskiego.com.pl/kilka-slow-o-jezyku-angielskim/]Jezyk angielski[/url]