Imager’s Battalion

never ended, even in darkness, but worse were the wailings, oh so many of them, voices … cries … so many of them, all pleading, questioning … as if … as if …

He could not go there, not after what he had done, and did not resist as the swirling storm of tiny white ice needles and lacy flakes swirled around him, then enfolded him even as it sliced away who and what he was, carrying him off in bits of whiteness until he was no more …

Then … as if in the eye of that storm, all was quiet, and he opened his eyes and beheld … whiteness, more whiteness everywhere. He looked down … what he wore was white. His arms were white … as were his hands … and even his fingernails … but before he could think about what that meant, or even where he was … the howling blizzard of white ice knives carved him into chips of ice and flakes of snow and swirled his being back into the storm.

Yet when the tempest subsided into intermittent flakes, burning flakes that buried him in chill, somewhere beyond the whiteness, he heard words, sounds carried on the howling storm that buffeted his ears, blinded his vision …

“… he’ll eat … drink … but … not hear…”

“… and at night…”

“… as always…”

“… the doors hold?”

“… so far…”

He winced as the storm grasped him again … and the blinding white turned to darkness out of which hurled white spears of ice that crashed against his shields, shields that were so difficult to hold, so tiring … but so necessary to keep out the worst of the wailing that assailed him …

“… Bhayar insists…”

“… how could he not…”

Bhayar … Bhayar? The name … it should have meant something, as once it had, but the meaning disintegrated under the assault of the ice and the white flakes that should have been soft and cold, but were not, as they cut and then burned his skin wherever they touched, they burrowed into his flesh and turned it to ice.

And … again … the voices, so close and yet so far.

“… Subcommander, sir…”

“… did what you had to…”

Did what you had to? Done under the sun, under the clouds, done for the crowds … to the crowds …

His eyes clinched shut, as he recalled the voices, the thousands of voices … and their pleas … or had they even had a chance to plead?

He let the storm carry him away, bearing the burning cold so much more easily than those voices he could not help but hear across the devastation of whiteness that stretched in all directions away from and around him.

“… here but not here…”

“… weeks now … Quaeryt…”

Quaeryt? Another name he should recall … so familiar, but did he want to remember it? Had there not been …

Once more he surrendered to the swirling storm before those forlorn wails surged over him.

82

Amid the swirls of ice and the endless snowflakes, there was a voice … a gentle voice, a voice pleading … and the words tore at him, yet did not burn or cut as did the snowflakes or the ice knives that flensed him into the ice mist where he did not have to think … before he once again stood in the tempest, to be cut apart once more.

He peered through the storm … but how could he, a man who had become nothing but swirling bits of ice and snow, even peer?

The voice faded as the storm rose once more, drowning out both the insistent wailings and the gentle voice.

But when it subsided into a mere flurry of white, that voice, a voice he should recognize, returned, and there was something … something beyond the wailing and the pleading of the other voices. He tried to look beyond the storm and whiteness that swirled in and around him, and then for a moment, he saw a figure seated beside him. “Who…?”

“Are you here, dearest, really here?” Warm arms wrapped around him. “Please be here. Please stay here this time.”

This time? Had he gone somewhere?

Then his eyes, eyes that had been open and seen nothing, saw her-saw Vaelora. Icy tears oozed down his cheeks. “You’re … here.”

“I’ve been here for days, dearest. You’ve so worried everyone. I’m here. I’m with you.”

He looked around the room, a chamber whose walls were shimmering white stone, where even the single chair on which Vaelora sat was white, as was the one where he was seated. Even the bed and the coverlets were white, as was the ceiling, the stone floor, the square rug … everything …

“Where…?” His voice was rusty.

“In a tower chamber of a High Holder’s summer residence,” replied Vaelora. “It’s three milles north of the Chateau Regis.”

“But … it’s all white…”

“It is,” she said, gently clasping his left hand.

As her warm grip tightened, he could feel something strange, wrong about his hand, as if he had but a thumb and two fingers. He looked down. All his fingers were there, but when he tried to tighten his own fingers around hers, the little finger and the one beside it, the ring finger, for all that he had never worn a ring, did not move.

“My fingers…”

“That’s all, dearest,” Vaelora said warmly, squeezing his hand tightly. “Everything else is fine. And they may yet recover.”

“But…?” He looked down at his forearms, bare below the elbows. Every single hair was white, brilliant snow-white, not the blond-white of his hair, not brown or black. Snow-white, white against his honey-gold-colored skin.

“Your hair is white, too, but it looks good on you,” Vaelora said quickly.

Quaeryt looked at his right hand. His fingernails were white as well. Someone had trimmed them, but they were solid white. Snow-white. Not painted in the Antiagon fashion. Just … white. He didn’t want to think about that. Not when considering it might call back the storm. “How … how did you get here so quickly?”

“It … wasn’t so quick. I had a farsight vision. You were surrounded by sheets of white rain. That was what it looked like, but I found out when I got here that it was ice. Then I had to persuade Aelina-and some of Bhayar’s officers-to let me go. They feared a squad would not be sufficient protection, but I dared not take more.”

Quaeryt had a sinking feeling. “Are matters that bad in Solis?”

“Not any longer. That’s because of you and the imagers. Once word came about you…”

“Me?”

“Bhayar could explain that better than I.”

Quaeryt could see she didn’t want to talk about that, and as long as whatever difficulty had eased in Solis … but that raised a more urgent question. “What date is it?”

“The nineteenth of Feuillyt.”

“Almost a month … a month?”

“Yes, dearest.”

“When did you arrive?”