White.
Sound stopped. The music. The shouting. Gone.
Whiteness filled my vision with nothing to break the relentlessness of it. I coughed, feeling blood in my throat, hot blood welling out of my mouth and down my face. Blood ran into my ears, across my chin, down my neck.
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 lay on the ground, if there was ground, on something. The firmness of it pressed against the back of my head, but nowhere else. My head rolled to one side of its own accord, blood pouring out of my mouth. I wanted to sit up, to stand, to reach up and touch my face, but my body did not respond. Numb. I was numb. Paralyzed. Gods, I can’t move myself.
Everything was white. I have been here before. This is where it started. Or ended. I don’t remember which.
Everything around me is white. I lie on my back, staring into a nothingness of white. I am here again. This place. Above me, I see two vast shadow shapes. Powerful shapes speaking with words I do not understand. They move closer.
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.
Dylan swims up into my sight again. My head hurts with a ringing as loud as a clock tower. I hold my hands to either side of the knife, not touching it. Blood blossoms on his shirt, deep red blood against a deep red shirt. He doesn’t move. He stares at me and stares at me and stares at me. Terror in . . .
My mind blinked.
They move closer and resolve into people. A man, yes, a man and woman. Their vast shadow shapes are a wash of gray against the white. Huge and tall, he’s taller, but she . . . she is . . .
My mind blinked.
Briallen looks at me in surprise, glowing in the white, a golden Briallen in a sea of white. She lifts her hands, something in her hands is moving, swaying with essence in a rainbow of color.
My mind blinked.
Briallen looks at me in surprise and rushes toward me as I lean over Dylan.
“Tell me what to do.” I hear myself. I hear myself and I hear fear.
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 one who leads. He follows, reluctant in his step. The blood fills my mouth, burns in my chest, and I cannot breathe anymore. I try not to breathe. I do not want any more blood in my lungs. Try not to.
They stand over me, huge figures, white on white, then faint wisps of essence coursing over them in pale, pale color. He looks at me with a storm in his eyes, and she . . . she is beautiful. She leans down, leans a long way down, her hand outstretched, reaching down. She touches my chest and the pain . . . stops.
“What are you doing, Mother?” he asks.
She straightens up, so far up and away, her face a light of glory. She stops. Everything stops. I stop. Everything . . .
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.
“I can’t do this, Briallen,” I shout.
Briallen kneels by me. Something is not right. Or different. She doesn’t look right. She reaches out but stops.
“You must. I can’t,” she says.
I close my eyes and see white and something black, far, far away. Black like a seed in the white. Briallen sings and then she screams and then I know what to do.
My mind blinked.
My mind blinked.
My mind blinked.
. . . stops. Everything stops. Even me.
“Thinking,” she says.
“You interfere with the Wheel of the World,” he says.
“I am the Wheel of the World. So are you. So is he. So are we all. The all of it is one,” she says.
He leans toward me, ranks of hair cascading down, wild and wind-wet. “He seems familiar to me.”
The light of her face moves with her nod. “He is and was and will be.”
He withdraws, a slow receding of immensity, but I can see his face. “I know what you are thinking,” he says to her.
“Tell me, then. I do not know,” she says.
He laughs, something deep, a rumble from the deep that sounds like time.
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.
He recedes.
My mind blinks.
“He’s dying. That is the Way of the Wheel,” he says.
“I am here. That is the Way as well,” she says.
He laughs again. “Yes,” he says.
“Yes,” she says.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out for the staff.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out for the knife.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out for the ring.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out . . .
My mind blinks.
She extends her hand again, down, down, down, it comes, glowing with light, with essence, with her. My hand reaches out for her hand. We touch. Sensation returns. I scream and
everything
goes
white