Book One – Chapter 16

                                                                          Where?          Where?   
                                           Where?          Where?         Her thoughts reeled
            Where?                                                                 Where?          
                                            Where — ?                                    Where?                                 What?      
 Where?               Where?      What?               Where?       What?          How?
                            Where?                                      Where?                                  What?        What?                        Where?                        What?
                                       What — ?
            Where?                   What?               Where?                                              What?
                                                          Where?                    Where?

                                  What?                                               Memory returned                 Where?                                         What?
                                                                                 in splinters
         Where?                                                                                                                             What?         
      Where?                                                Where?                                      Where?  

                                                          ^{What?  
                  What?        
    Wh_ere?}                                                 
        The fight

                                      _W^hat?  

                                                                                                                                    _W^hat?    

                                          The Haraak

               ^What?    

         The scramble

               across
                                 frost-laced stone

              Starved. Withered                        ^_What?

 
                                              The ledge

                                                                                      The runt
 
                                                                                            howling beside her
 

The mountain cracking open
                      beneath them —
                                _Wh^ere?

                                          She had fallen
                                         VIOLENTLY
                                                 chaotically
                                                 Tumbled.  _Twisted

                                    Scraped along ^stone
                                        sharp ice

    and black rock _until—

 
              Something had torn   her  —   loose —   loose  —

                         from the  ork

                                                                     After that —

                                                       IMPACT

                                         Sudden — Brutal

                                                                Her body                              Her mind
                                          had  not withstood   it                                            definitely had  not
                                   in  full

                                                                               And

                                         now

                                    ?

 
                                                                Now,

                                  NOTHING

She could not see            

                                                                       She never could, not truly —

 not like THEY could       

                           Not like the witches with their beast-eyes and onsight

                        Even in daylight, her vision was dull,
                                                                            eyes near useless

       Her senses – her hearing, her smell
                                 had always lagged behind those she served.

    The world – the mountain,
        which had been her world,
  held beings she could barely perceive.
  Yes, she could connect to and control and contort some of them from within.
          If through contact.
Barbarthara sensed through contact, through touch.

                So. What could she feel now?

        Nothing.

             No sound    but silence.

        No motion.

No draft.

  No sting of open air.

Just stillness.
        Cold.     Wet.

    But the     shape
 of the   silence
         – the weight of it –
      felt familiar. Too familiar.
  It was the damp, clammy breath
                        of stone and rot,
            pressing in from all sides —