Rex Regis

37

In time, Quaeryt left the front porch, carefully closed the front door, and made his way up the steps to the end bedchamber on the second level, not without smiling as he passed the closed door where he heard the muffled voices of three young imager officers, with only a few clear phrases. For several moments, he paused and listened.

“… be a muddy ride tomorrow…”

“… not going anywhere … rain for days this way…”

“… be clear by tomorrow…”

“… no farsight in him…”

With a last smile, he turned and walked toward the end of the hall, and the bedchamber where he’d left his gear. That room was clearly the favored guest chamber with an overlarge bed, a writing desk and chair, as well as an armoire and even an adjoining washroom and jakes, for which Quaeryt was grateful. He undressed methodically, still half wondering why he’d been impelled to mention what had happened to Vaelora, even the little that he’d mentioned.

Tiredness … worry, he told himself as he climbed under the single sheet, certainly enough in the warm damp air. Outside, beyond the inner shutters of the room, the rain continued to fall, and he finally fell asleep.

Sometime later, he turned over, half aware, and realized that the rain was falling more heavily and that the air was cooler, then much colder, and that, outside, the wind was building into a low moaning. That became a howling, and the inner window shutters blew open with explosive force and icy rain sprayed into the room, coating everything.

Quaeryt struggled against the icy gale to get to his feet, and suddenly he was back on the mare, with ice pelting down on him, yet each sleeting pellet burned as if it had been a white-hot coal. Trying to escape the rain of ice and fire, he urged the mare forward, but she only reared as a curtain of rubble poured down toward them from somewhere unseen, even while the fire- and ice-fall intensified.

The mare reared again … and the ground opened up beneath her and Quaeryt … and Quaeryt could feel himself falling into the depths, the mare beneath him, as a tidal wave of ice and fire and rubble poured down on them … burying him in endless burning rock and rubble.

Abruptly there was stillness …

… and Quaeryt shook himself, struggling awake.

As had happened too often, he was surrounded with chill and whiteness. Everything in the room was coated with a thin film of brilliant white ice, even the sheets that half covered him. He sat up all the way and flicked the sheets, spraying icy fragments away from the bed. Then he stood and brushed the remaining thin fragments off the bed.

After a moment he walked to the window, ignoring the icy fragments beneath his bare feet. He eased open one of the inside shutters, then pushed the window open slightly, and stood in the warm moist air that flowed past him into the chill room.

Outside it was pitch-dark, but he could hear the unceasing heavy patter of rain, rain that fell as if it would never cease.

Like some nightmares.

For a time, he stood there letting the warmer air remove the chill from the room and from his skin, hoping, futilely, that it would remove the chill from within. He did his best to image away the ice fragments, glad that the rain he had felt had been part of his dream, and that the room had not been drenched. Finally, he closed the window and shutters and walked back toward the wide bed.

He just hoped he could get back to sleep.