[Shh]: 58.A Nymerian Knight Story-line. The End

   He ran out of the house, gagging, sick to the core of his being, his mind reeling with the horror of what he had just witnessed. He fell to his knees on the flagstone beyond the front door of his house and he threw up, again and again. And then the pain hit him, the loss of everything, everyone who had ever meant anything to him. It hit him, and his heart wrenched in agony and his stomach twisted and he doubled up on himself, his nails digging through his shirt into the flesh in his side as a silent scream rose up in him. A scream of rage and anger and denial, a scream of pain and soul-wrenching loss. And it was so deep, and so painful, and so powerful, that he could put no sound to it and he clasped his arms around his stomach and screamed silently to himself to block away all thoughts, to block away Time, to block away the truth.

   And he saw again his family’s twisted, mangled bodies and he gagged again; and suddenly he couldn’t bear to be by the house and he stumbled to his feet, blinded by his tears and pain. And he ran, into the forest, away from the house; till, breathless, he could run no more, and he collapsed under the pine trees, ignoring the needles and the twigs and the cones poking painfully through his trousers.

   They were dead. Dead. All of them. Gone for ever. He would never see them again, never see his mother’s gentle smile, never hear his father’s laugh, never again hear little Jinny’s incessant chattering. They were dead.

   His teeth clenched in anger and pain, Kay dropped his head into his palms and wept, soundlessly, tearlessly, breathlessly, till he must breathe or die; and he wanted to die. Oh, how he wanted it! To forget, to sink into blissful oblivion, or perhaps…perhaps, to see them again. But he couldn’t do it…couldn’t do it; and he gasped for air at the last possible instant, filling his burning lungs, and prolonging the agony in his soul.

   And he cursed everyone and everything; and he wept, for them, for the lives they would never live, for the happiness they would never again know, for himself, for the life he didn’t want, for the aching emptiness in his soul.

   Why? Why did they have to die? Why did they have to die? he screamed in his soul, over and over, demanding an answer, of the gods, of anyone. And there was nothing. Nothing. They were gone. They were dead. And there was nothing. No reason.

   He didn’t know how long he stayed that way. Time was inconsequential; time was meaningless. He stayed on his knees, under the boughs of the forest, the fresh scent of the pines strong all about him, reminding him of his mother, of the love she’d had for the woods, and deepening the pain. Yet he stayed, because somehow, it was something of them. And he cried; he cried all the tears he could possibly cry and more. And the shadows around him lengthened; and the day turned into night; and still he stayed on his knees, the pain in his legs numbed by the pain in his heart.