Not only that, but he could see that he and Fifth Battalion, despite his efforts to keep some space, were so hemmed in by the other regiments that they had nowhere to go except continuing forward into the cannon fire.
Another gout of soil, grasses, and far worse erupted just ahead and to Quaeryt’s left.
Like it or not …
You can’t wait any longer. You can’t!
Quaeryt did not even attempt to draw in the other imagers … but instead reached out to the River Aluse, and then across the entire hillside before him, seeking any source of heat possible …
Lines of heat and cold crisscrossed over him and through him, but he continued to concentrate on three things-seeking heat, flattening and destroying everything in front of the Telaryn forces, and, just to be sure, imaging a coating of impenetrable white alabaster across every exterior surface of the Chateau Regis-the last, because he wasn’t quite certain that what he was doing would work without at least some constructive imaging. At the same time, he concentrated on holding links to the river, and to the warmth of thousands of bodies of poor hapless Bovarian troopers and officers, and even to all those within the Chateau Regis, for they too would pay … as would Quaeryt.
Of that, he had no doubt, even before the last links of his imaging all came together, and he felt himself frozen in place in the saddle, both moving and motionless, as if time itself had solidified into a solid block of ice around him, yet from nowhere he could feel the needles of ice being jabbed into him by winds that, using those ice needles, were scouring everything before them, leaving nothing standing anywhere, no trees, no bushes, no cannon, no catapults, no Bovarians, no earthworks … nothing …
Nothing except the wailing and pleading of those whose warmth he had seized, whose voiceless voices screamed in the white darkness …
And blinding bitter white wrapped itself around him and the block of ice that held him, locked to him and to his shields, shields that seemingly had done little or nothing to protect him from the devastation he had unleashed onto the Bovarians-and Eleventh Regiment and those Telaryn troopers brave and determined enough to have breached the Bovarian defenses.
With the white chill came a soaring roaring cyclone of ice needles that felt as though they had shredded Quaeryt’s uniform, all he wore, and flensed even the very flesh from his skin.
And then the flames of the Namer burned him even while he found himself in frozen agony … unable to speak or move … unable to close his eyes, unable to escape into unconsciousness …
… unable to escape the tens of thousands of wailing voices …
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.
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.