White.
Whiteness filled my vision with nothing to break the relentlessness of it. Above me, the white simply was, as if the air itself was color. Or no color. As if nothing else existed except the white. I hung limp in the air, as if there were no air, no gravity. My head burned, like a cold fire in my mind, blazing against a blanket of night.
Everything is white. I have been here before. This is where it started. Or ended. I don’t remember which. Everything around me is white. I stared into a nothingness of white. I am here again. Around me, I see shadows of light flickering in the depths of the white. They spin and whirl, roll and stop, taunting me with patterns that disintegrate as they take shape.
Bursts of color flare in my vision, fireworks against the white, fading to darkness. More, then more, the darkness closing on me, like the slow closing of my eyes. My mind, like my eyes, closing, like my eyes blinking. Like my mind blinking.
My mind blinked.
I jerked my head up, feeling like I had passed out. People surrounded me, staring at me. Some I recognized, and some I didn’t. Their faces held a multitude of expressions—fear and horror and sadness. Then the screams began.
My mind blinked.
Rand stands defiant before me, his clothes in tatters, his face a mix of hurt and hope. “You have to trust me,” he says.
“Why? You didn’t trust me,” I answer.
My mind blinked.
Silhouettes in lavender surround me like shadows in the mist. They do not move. I cannot see their faces, but I know they are waiting, waiting for answers that I do not have, waiting for the inevitable, waiting for . . .
My mind blinked.
Eorla looks at me in surprise and rushes toward me as I lean over the body.
“Tell me what to do,” I hear her. I hear her, and I hear fury.
My mind blinked.
I stand on a plain, white grass waving against a white sky. It’s not winter, pray, what is this new madness? Where have I come? I turn in place, searching, searching across the plain, searching about the standing stones, but Maeve is not there. Was she? What is this place?
My mind blinked.
The golden-cloaked king shudders into view. “The Wheel of the World turns as It will. It is not mine to lead even a sliver of it.”
My mind blinked.
Vize is running. Everything is white. I am running. Everything is white. He looks over his shoulder at me. He looks determined . . . or crazed . . . I can’t tell. Everything is white. One minute we were facing each other, and now everything is white. He stops. He looks surprised. There is someone lying on the ground. Something about him is familiar. Everything is white, and there is no ground. There is someone lying in the white. Everything . . .
My mind blinked.
“You can’t do this,” I shout.
Something is not right. Or different. She doesn’t look right. The woman reaches out.
“I must. It’s the only way,” she says.
I close my eyes against pain, and something black blossoms in my mind. Black like a seed in the white. The woman sings; and then she screams; and then I know what to do.
My mind blinked.
My mind blinked.
. . . the inevitable. A man steps forth, faint spirals of woad pitting the skin above his wide brow, a sudden wind tugging at the dirty drape of cloth over his shoulder. “We shall be as bones, bones of the earth, steadfast and eternal,” he says.
“I promise I will try,” I say.
“We hear and hope,” he says.
My mind blinked.
The wild man returns. “The wielder wheels and is wheeled but chooses his own path. We are the Wheel and Its instrument.”
My mind blinks.
He cocks his head as he looks at me, the colors in his eyes shifting like the sea in a storm. “Have you ever met someone and felt like you’ve known him forever?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
He laughs, with a deep rumble in his wide chest.
“Liar,” he says. “Liar.”
My mind blinked.
Vize looks feverish. “It must happen this way. You must let it happen.”
“I won’t let you,” I say.
He looks frightened yet determined as I reach toward him. “I thought it was me. But it’s you. You have to destroy it.”
My mind blinks.
The robed man towers up. “The Ways seal and unseal. A needle binds as it pierces.”
My mind blinks.
Essence pours out of the sword.
My mind blinks.
Essence pours out of the spear.
My mind blinks.
Essence pours out of the bowl.
My mind blinks.
Essence pours out . . .
My mind blinks.
A blue light burns the sky, a blue so pure it burns white. It hits me in the head like a fist of flame and burns its way in. My head explodes with light and darkness, then everything goes silent. I scream and
everything
goes
white