Imager’s Battalion

81

No matter where he seemed to be, or where he looked, there was first the chill, and the whiteness that 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.