Imager’s Battalion

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?”

“A week ago Lundi.”

“You’ve been here more than a week?”

She nodded. “At first you didn’t hear me, but the last few days, something was different, and I kept hoping. Then you would stop listening and murmur about the wailing and the pleading…”

“What happened? Why can’t I remember?”

“That’s because you didn’t see what happened,” she said. “Khalis told me that when the ice flakes fell from everywhere you sat in the saddle and never moved. They had to pry the reins from your hand, and three of them had to lift you out of the saddle.”

“You haven’t told me what happened.”

“You secured a great victory for Bhayar.” Her words were even.

“How great a victory?” Even as he asked, he feared that he already knew. Still … he had to know. He disengaged his hand from hers and stood, twinges running through his bad left leg, then slowly walked, his legs shaking under him, even with Vaelora supporting him, toward the window, its interior trim white, the glass set in small panes suggesting that the frame was old and belonged to someone of wealth. But then, High Holders seldom lacked for golds.

“Dearest…” Vaelora stopped him before he could reach the window.

“What?” He looked into her warm brown eyes and saw only love and concern.

“Remember it is now fall, not harvest.”

Why would she say that? Then, as he turned back to the small tower window, his eyes took in the seemingly endless brown and gray, the trees without leaves, and the few evergreens that he could see from the height of the tower even looking beaten down, he understood … and swallowed. “How much…?”

Vaelora was silent.

“How much?” he repeated.

“A great area around the Chateau Regis, all the way from the isle of piers to a mille west of the chateau, nothing north of your battle lines within a mille survived. That is what Khalis said. All was ice for days. Even the river froze solid.”

The river he understood, but so much else? “You saw this?”

“Most of the ice had melted when I arrived.”

Quaeryt did not have to ask how many had died. “What about Rex Kharst?”

“He and all his family were in the Chateau Regis.”

“Where is Bhayar?”

“Somewhere below, waiting, doing what he must, and hoping that you will be yourself again. I told him you would be.”

“You saw?”

She smiled. “I know what I know.”

As he turned from the window, he caught sight of an image in the wall mirror-a man with light honey-gold skin and snow-white hair, and white eyebrows, yet the face was yet that of a man young and in his prime, if haggard, except for the darkness in the black eyes, a darkness that went beyond mere black. For a moment, if only a moment, he wondered who that man might be, that man of winter.

Who indeed, to have done what has been done?

“Dearest … you have me … and you have our daughter.”

Quaeryt stopped, then turned back to her, forcing a smile, sad as he knew it to be. “Yes, I do.” And I will need you both … more than even you know.

“And we have our dreams…”

Ah, yes, the dreams of what will be … He kept smiling, hard as it was. “For them, for our daughter … there is tomorrow.” When all will change, change utterly.