KRUSHITA LOOKED DOWN AT the hordes of deadwalkers rushing away from her, back toward the camp. There were so many, and yet more kept coming. Miles and miles of nothing but deadwalkers swarming across the desert like an endless army of ants boiling up out of an anthill broken by a gaja’s foot. She shuddered and issued a scree from the throat of the buzzard. The bird was scared of the stench that rose from below. Even its primitive brain sensed that although the smell was one of rank decay, it was off. Not even the odor of a million dead bodies ought to smell like this.
She flew through the dust cloud raised by the rushing of the deadwalkers across the sands, feeling sick to the stomach—both her own back at the camp and the buzzard’s.
Finally, the end was in sight.
There, about a half mile ahead, she could glimpse bare red sand dunes again.
It was a relief. She had begun to fear that the entire Red Desert was swarming with urrkh. That was impossible of course: the Red Desert was more than twenty thousand miles from coast to coast, and none were quite sure how far it extended northward. No mortal soul had ever gone northward and lived to tell the tale: the Red Trail, which extended from the White Kingdom of Aqron, her mother’s homeland, to the Desert Kingdoms of Reygistan, was treacherous enough to navigate. If there was an explorer or adventurer foolish enough to venture northward, their adventures and discoveries remained unknown and untold.
She dipped the buzzard’s wings and flew lower, beating them to slow her forward progress, then tilting and turning to hold her position. She drifted on a hot current, neck bowed, gazing intently at the sand below.
Boiling was an accurate description.
The sand bubbled and erupted like thick hot broth in a cauldron over a campfire. One of Bulan’s treacly Vanjhani concoctions perhaps.
But there was nothing appetizing about this phenomenon. The sand bubbled and boiled, pimpled and dimpled, breaking open to release the swarms of deadwalkers.
Krushita circled the spot, trying to see beneath the sand, but the dust, the heaving sand, and the hordes of deadwalkers made it difficult to see anything clearly.
She thought furiously, feeling frustrated. She couldn’t ride the deadwalkers: they had no real thoughts to speak of, knew and cared nothing of what was happening or how it was happening. They were purely machines, their minds filled with a solitary thought: feed!
In truth, she was scared that if she slipped into one, she might . . . Well, she didn’t care to think too much about what might happen. There were some things she simply couldn’t do, whatever the circumstances or need.
But she had to do something.
People were dying. A great many people. The attack was very bad, too much for Bulan and the brave travelers to fight. Their only hope was Krushita. If she didn’t do something, in a few more hours, the camp would be nothing but a great slaughterhouse filled with rotting corpses and lurching deadwalkers.
She’d had an idea. It was a good idea, she knew. She felt instinctively it would work. But to implement it—to even attempt it—she had to get below the sand. And how would she do that?
There were no shvan anywhere in sight. She had looked around, scanning the desert with the buzzard’s sharp gaze.
The brave creatures, valiant and fearless as they were, had known that the deadwalker menace was something beyond their ability to cope with. They had fled the camp. She could sense the mind of the shvan prima she had inhabited earlier today, confused and frightened, sick with guilt at abandoning her human companions, but relieved to be with the pack again, to be alive, to be away from those awful urrkh. She knew there must be a history there: perhaps sometime in the distant past, maybe even as far back as the Age of Myth, shvan must have fought repeatedly with deadwalkers. Their fear now—the shvan female’s fear—was primal, instinctive, deep-rooted, and unshakeable.
Krushita could have slipped into the pack’s hive mind. Taken control of all the primas that controlled and led the pack. Forced them and the rest to return to the camp and engage the deadwalkers.
But what good would that do?
The shvan might bite or use their needle dart quills against the deadwalkers, but there were still many times more deadwalkers already than the total number of shvan and humans combined. All would be killed eventually. And all that would achieve was the extermination of the shvan along with their human masters.
Perhaps that was something a general or commander might do. Perhaps what one of the Krushan, those despotic tyrants of the Burnt Empire, might do.
Krushita knew her history, knew how her father’s people would resort to any means necessary to win a battle, even expending all their mortal soldiers and animals.
Krushan themselves were empowered by the strange, deadly stonefire, and so long as there was some of that living black rock nearby, could be healed of almost any injury or wound. That might be why they could be so megalomaniacal in their campaigns of conquests, their dreaded legendary ashvamedhavaryas—the Ashcrit term for a military journey that involved capturing every foot of ground covered by the Krushan emperor. It was how they had expanded the Burnt Empire across most of the north and west of Arthaloka to create the largest united empire in the known world.
Yes, Krushan would force the shvan pack back into the fray, expending them all to bring down as many of the enemy as possible before their own forces were exterminated. That was the Krushan way. That was her father’s way.
She was not her father.
Krushan blood flowed in her veins, but she did not share the cruelty of her lineage.
Aqronian blood also flowed through her. The blood of her mother and her grandfather, both kind, wise, fair, and just. Aqronian kings fought alongside their people, sharing their food, their facilities, and their fate. One law for all, one dream together.
That was the tradition she had been raised in. A tradition where social justice mattered more than conquest, wealth, and power.
She would not force the shvan.
She would find another way.
And she had to find it quickly.
She knew her mother was alive. She could feel Aqreen’s brain still active, her heart still beating, but could sense that she was at the end of her strength. Even Bulan and their Vanjhani, those tall, proud, hulking two-bodied warriors, were beginning to feel fatigue, something she would not have dreamed was possible. The battle was lost. The camp, the train, everyone in it, was lost. Total massacre was only a short time away.
Krushita had to do something now.
She reached out into the desert, seeking something, anything that she could slip herself into, use its eyes and senses to see below that boiling sand. She needed to see the source of the deadwalkers.
No.
It was more than that now.
She needed to be at that source.
But how?
She could sense only the insects, worms, and other tiny denizens that lived inside the sand. Nothing with a brain intelligent enough for her to use. The snakes, vermin, sand hogs, and similar reptiles and mammals had been dislodged from their tunnels and burrows and fled the disruptive anomaly as fast as they could slither, crawl, or run.
There was no living creature that she could inhabit and use below the sand.
Far away, some thousand miles away, she sensed the reptilian brain of a sleeping dragon, burrowed deep below the surface where the sand was closer to the water table and cooler, away from the heat of the sun. It slept the days away and emerged by night to rove the desert, seeking hot-blooded mammalian prey.
She could slip into its mind if she tried hard, but the effort required to rouse it from its deep slumber, wrest control of its consciousness, then fly it all the way here only to burrow down in this spot would take precious time.
People could be dying every minute she hovered here indecisive. Her mother. Bulan. Dor and Niede and their little children, the eldest of whom, Afranus, was a year younger than Krushita herself. They depended on her. Even her own life depended on what she did next.
Her vulnerable body lay back in the camp, inside the wagon. She had no idea what would happen if she were to be killed back in the camp while still inhabiting the mind of the buzzard. Would she still be conscious, a disembodied soul like in a campfire ghost story? Would she remain part of the buzzard as long as the buzzard lived? She didn’t know and didn’t want to find out.
She came to a decision fatalistically.
There was simply no other way.
It had to be done, and it had to be done now.
With a final scree of protest, the buzzard flapped its wings, trying to fly upward, away from the horrific, unnatural stench, struggling against the mind that was forcing it to do something that no living animal would knowingly do.
Then she folded her wings, dipped her sharp beak, and dove.
She fell like a stone from the clear green sky.
Landed right in the midst of the turmoil.
In the heaving sand.
In the writhing masses of deadwalkers boiling up from below.
In the portal.
The buzzard screamed.
The poor bird was terrified of the foul stench of the deadwalkers. Bonded as she was with the bird’s senses, the odor threatened to overwhelm Krushita too. Even her unconscious body back at the camp shifted uneasily, repelled.
Worse than the smell was the fear that came from being so close to the mindless insanity. Krushita could sense it seeping into her own mind, like the overflow from a cesspool. She knew if she didn’t resist it with all her might, it would drown her. The long-dead brains of the deadwalkers functioned solely at the level of predators, like the sharks of the sea they told tales of in Aqron. All they knew was hunger, all they understood was feeding. Even the fact that they must kill in order to feed didn’t quite penetrate their dehumanized consciousness. To them, the living were no different from a plant or a fruit. Food. The concept of life itself had no meaning for those who had already survived death. Hunger was all that mattered.
She was in the ground now, under the desert surface. The buzzard screeched pitifully, afraid of the darkness filled with unknown dangers. Sand flew everywhere, swirling, billowing, rising and falling in sheets and waves. It was something like being in a sandstorm, except there was no desert below. No ground. Only darkness, and a howling, deafening wind. Even the buzzard’s primitive mind could sense that.
The wind terrified the creature too. This was not a wind that ruffled the bird’s feathers or could carry it high above the desert, like the air currents it was accustomed to riding.
It was an absence of wind. A sucking, howling thing that had no actual body of its own, no substance, only absence.
It, too, was a kind of hunger. A bottomless, infinite craving.
From this pitch-black emptiness, the deadwalkers were being flung up onto the surface of the desert and deposited in the crimson dunes.
The buzzard could see them scrambling up, stumbling, lurching, then stepping out into the gaudy sunlit daylight.
From here, in the darkness, they were little more than silhouettes, like figures seen leaving a shadowy room as they stepped out into the afternoon sunlight.
Once in the open, they sensed the frenzy of those ahead and immediately began running, picking up speed, sensing live food ahead. Driven by the herd instinct, they poured out over the desert in the frenzied racing hordes that were headed for the wagon train’s camp, only a few miles away. Food! So much food for the taking. Run! Feed!The hammering of their bony feet, thousands upon endless thousands, created a distant thunder that the buzzard sensed in the fine, sensitive tips of its wings. It shrieked again, protesting at being in such an unnatural place, under the surface of the world, in a place that was somehow not of this world.
Krushita turned the buzzard’s attention away from the sight of the deadwalkers and forced it to look down into the abyss, keeping its wings moving constantly to stay afloat. The buzzard fell silent, its sense of terror shocked out of it as it viewed the madness that lay below its belly. Above was death and madness; below was so far beyond its comprehension that it could form no response to it at all.
As Krushita and the buzzard descended lower and still lower, plunging impossibly through what seemed like hundreds of yards of emptiness, they approached a vista both familiar and unbelievable.
They were above a battlefield. High up, above the clouds, above a vast, infinite plain that stretched in every direction as far as the buzzard’s sharp eyes could see—which was quite a distance.
And far below them, glimpsed as a scattering of ants upon a great panoply, were the remains of what must have been a terrible battle.
We’re in the sky again, Krushita thought, trying to make sense of the view through the buzzard’s eyes. We went down below the desert’s surface and somehow emergedaboveanother place.
How was that possible?
It didn’t matter now. What mattered was that she was here in this other place and the source of the deadwalkers was in sight.
She forced the confused buzzard to fly lower, dropping down several hundred yards. The battlefield came sharply into focus. She could now make out individual details. A great battle had been fought here some time ago. Days, perhaps even weeks ago. She could tell that from the buzzard’s senses as it responded to the scents and sights of decaying corpses.
Bodies lay strewn in the grass like sand grains on a beach. Millions, perhaps tens of millions. She had never heard of such a battle.
Except perhaps in the Age of Myth. Everything back then had been in the millions or billions, be it the number of kine owned by a lord, or soldiers in their armies. Even urrkh, who the myths claimed were infinite in number.
Her mother had cautioned her that the ancient sages who had recorded the myths—verbally at first, using the time-honored tradition of Ashcrit rote recitation, then on bits of bark and leaves, and finally on the scroll-books that were used in this modern era—had a tendency to exaggerate. All it took was the addition of a shunya, the ever so-useful-zero digit, or even more than one shunya.
But this was no exaggeration. What she was witnessing here was the detritus of a battle so enormous, she couldn’t begin to comprehend its vastness. Without physically counting the numbers of dead, she suspected it ran into the hundred millions.
But that would mean almost every living soul in Arthaloka.
No such battle had been fought in known history.
Unless . . .
The thought came to her with the same instinctive insight that had helped her adapt so quickly to being here in this other place.
Unless this is a battle that has yet to happen.
In the future.
Incredible as that might seem, it somehow made more sense than what she was seeing. Yes, she felt, that must be the explanation.
This was a time yet to come, the future. And this was a great battle that would be fought someday, involving all the nations and tribes of the world. The Mother of All Wars. Such a war had been foretold in the legends, and all the sages insisted solemnly that it would come to pass. But none were clear about the when or where or why and how of it.
She didn’t dwell on it.
All that mattered now was that she was here, and that this was the source of the deadwalkers.
She could see the place where the portal extended down to the ground below. It was shaped like an enormous funnel, one of those spinning clouds that touched the ground and caused great devastation in some parts of the world that she had heard of in Bulan’s campfire tales.
What did the Vanjhani call them? Tornadoes?
The portal had assumed the shape of a tornado, extending down from the sky to touch down on the battlefield below. There it sucked up the corpses of the dead soldiers from both sides, drawing them up through the funnel, up to the sky and beyond the dark, brooding mass that hung high above. From there, up through the surface of the Red Desert. Somehow, during that journey, the corpses were reanimated, brought back to a grotesque parody of life. The dreaded urrkh creatures of myth that rose from their graves and fed on living flesh and blood.
She could see the tornado moving steadily across the great plain, sucking up hundreds and thousands of corpses everywhere it touched ground. It had denuded a sizable patch of the vast battlefield, but there was still a plentiful supply to draw on.
If it continues this way, the camp will be overrun, everyone wiped out, before I can even return to my body.
If I can return to my body.
She forced the buzzard to fly closer to the tornado, close enough that the bird could feel the power of the spinning dervish in its wingtips. She felt its heart flutter with fear and forced her will over it. She dropped down until she was close enough to view the spot where the funnel touched ground, sucking up the corpses. She didn’t know what, if anything, she was looking for, but she had a feeling she would know it when she saw it.
The sound of the tornado grew louder, enveloping her. It was like nothing she—or the bird—had ever heard before. The growling, grinding roar of a mindless giant. It filled her senses and made rational thought seem impossible. This was like a force of nature, something beyond mortal understanding.
Yet she knew it was not so. No. This was her father’s doing, the work of his powerful Krushan sorcery. She had to figure out how it worked before she could try to stop it.
She flew around the howling funnel, careful to keep a distance—in the buzzard’s judgment, that was about a half mile, to be on the safe side. Any closer, and she risked being drawn into its maw.
She completed a full circuit, returning to the place where she had started with no new knowledge or insight. It was a tornado, that was all she could make out. Grey-black as a monsoon cloud, spinning at impossible speed, drawing up everything from the ground, and hurling it miles above into the dark brooding mass which masked the way to the other world, her world.
After two more such circuits, she was none the wiser.
She screeched a cry of frustration through the buzzard’s beak. It was lost in the howl of the tornado.
She flew faster, venting her frustration by doing another full circuit of the tornado. She had to adjust her flight trajectory because the tornado was constantly shifting, and at one point, the bird squawked in dismay as it felt the vicious tug of the storm.
She flapped its wings fiercely, driven by the anger she now felt, breaking free with an effort. The buzzard emitted a sound more like a mewling complaint than a bird’s cry. Its simple animal brain could no longer make sense of its own actions: they went against the very grain of its survival instincts.
She ignored it, her temper rising as she completed yet another circuit and started round again. She must find a way; she simply must. If she’d been on solid ground and had use of her feet, she would have stamped them and tossed her head.
She remembered her mother admonishing her. Krush, getting mad never made anything better.
But she was mad now.
She was mad as hell.
She was mad at her father for doing this. For being such an awful man. Did he think that by massacring the entire train, he would win Krushita back? All he had done was make her even more determined to fight him. She would not let him win. Even if it killed her to resist. She would fight him till her last breath.
She was screeching with rage now, driving the buzzard faster and faster, beyond all physical limits, powering its flight with her own power.
The bird felt the raw power rushing through its body, felt the energy flowing all around it.
In its own way, it understood this.
This was a river of energy, not very different from the river of wind that flowed through the skies of Arthaloka.
The buzzard knew that such rivers, and their currents, could be used to hitch a ride for vast distances. This was part of its skill set.
It rode the Flow, letting the raw current carry it even faster, and faster still, until it was able to fold its wings back, lower its beak, and dive headfirst into the wildest spin of its entire existence.
It spun round the tornado shape of the portal, zooming round and round at a speed so great, there was no way to even estimate it.
Krushita sensed a change.
She expanded her senses beyond the consciousness of the buzzard, sending tendrils of perception out into the flow.
In the visionless dimension of the Flow, the tornado was a dark void, spinning in one direction at a tremendous speed.
She and the buzzard were spinning in the same direction.
And they were matching the speed of the tornado.
As their speeds equaled, the tornado seemed to disappear.
In its place was only a black funnel. Not the color black. A void. An emptiness, an absence of light, a negation of vision.
At this incredible speed, the portal seemed curiously still, silent, passive.
A sentient nothingness.
It hung in the Flow, an absence of energy, of power.
Just . . . there.
Krushita reached out to touch its periphery, throwing caution aside.
She had come this far, this close, she could not go back having failed.
She must succeed.
She felt an electric sensation as her expanded consciousness made contact with the portal itself.
Then a numbness that seeped into her mind, her heart, her entire being.
She floated in the void, blackness overwhelming her, filling the world, blocking out all thoughts of the living, of life itself, of the physical normal world she knew. The world of laughter and living, love and family, childhood and death, hunger and sleep, everything disappeared. All that remained was the void.
It was like being in the space between worlds, far outside of Arthaloka, the great sun that warmed and lit the planet, like being in that infinite blackness that was simply beyond.
And somewhere in that vast space, somewhere far away in its vast, infinite emptiness, was another consciousness. Very, very faint, like the tiniest pinprick of light from a star whose presence was sensed rather than seen. The only star in an otherwise pitch-black space.
She went toward it.
The star was countless miles away. Not even miles, for the concept of distance itself did not exist here. It was simply away.
Krushita frowned to herself, thinking. She knew that the usual laws of nature did not apply inside the portal.
This was a place beyond space and time, beyond the rules and laws of the natural world.
There was no such thing as distance here. No such thing as past and present and future. There simply was, or was not.
And that light, that other consciousness, was.
And so was she.
It was like, she thought, grasping at an insight, like the way she had reached out to Ma when she was a baby. When she had been too young to use language. When her world had been only emotion and Flow. Pure, raw energy.
She had only to reach out, and Ma was right there. It didn’t matter if they were in the same room or a mile apart. And she had sensed that it wouldn’t have mattered if they had been a thousand miles apart, or even a million times a million miles. In that Flow, she had only to seek Ma, and Ma was right there with her. Close enough to touch with her mind.
She let herself slip back into that mode of connection, letting her subconscious take over, reaching out through the Flow.
With a shock, she saw the tiny pinprick of light expand almost instantly.
It grew into a blinding halo. A bright white light tinged with dark blue at the edges.
She had made contact with the other consciousness.
With the other being inside the portal.
She sensed the Other grow aware of her, turning its attention to Krushita.
His attention.
For it was a masculine presence, this Other.
She sensed that clearly.
A very powerful, old, wise Other.
The Other turned toward her, bathing her in the wash of blinding white-blue light, studying her closely.
All this happened in the fraction of a fraction of an instant.
Then the Other spoke.
Child?
Krushita didn’t respond. She didn’t know if she should respond.
She couldn’t tell if this Other was a friend or a foe. There was something . . . intimidating . . . about him. She sensed that he could be either, depending on what served his need. It was this realization that made her stay silent.
Yes, child. He seemed certain of it now. A mere child. But one powerful in the Flow. A Krushan, certainly. But something more than just Krushan.
More than Krushan? What did he mean? Krushita knew her father was Krushan, which was why she had his blood, his powers, in herself. And the Krushan were the most powerful race in the world. What could be more than that?
He chuckled. It was a startling sound in the emptiness of the portal.
There are more things in the universe than you know, little one.
She frowned. She already knew that. Her mother never stopped reminding her of this fact, especially when she made some mistake because she assumed—incorrectly—that she knew the right way to do something.
She didn’t need some strange man reminding her as well.
Now he smiled.
She sensed the amusement, rather than saw it.
The white-blue light pulsed yellow briefly.
You are far more than just your father’s daughter, little Krush,he said. More than your mother’s as well. Even I am not entirely sure of what you are. But this much I do know. You have a great destiny ahead.
She rolled her eyes. Big help that was at a time like this, rambling on like one of the cheap fortunetellers on the wagon train. She needed to know how to close this portal, not what a bright and shining future lay ahead for her. Because unless she stopped the attack of the deadwalkers, her future would die up there in the Red Desert, along with her mother. And that was the only future that mattered to her right now.
I see. Yes, yes, of course. I am being pompous. That is one of my many faults. But I do not exaggerate the importance of what you are, of who you are. In the great god-game played out on the chaupat board of Arthaloka, you are no pawn, or even a rook. You are a queen. The Queen. The Dark Queen of whom the prophecies foretold in the Age of Legend.
Krushita was silent. Was this man mocking her? No. She sensed that mockery and humor were not part of his repertoire. He meant every word.
I do. You have existed in one form or another ever since the beginning of time. Perhaps once you were Time itself. You are immortal, you are infinite, you are the all-knowing and everlasting. In every age, you take new avatars, each appropriate to the purpose at hand. For this age, this is one of your avatars: Krushita, daughter of Jarsun Krushan and Aqreen Aqron, niece of Sha’ant and Jeel. But this is not your only avatar in this era. There will be more. Indeed, I sense you will have another birth within the next several years, perhaps in a short decade or two.
She let the words wash through her, simply taking it all in, not fully processing it or even attempting to do so. There was a sense of inevitability about his pronouncements. She felt as if he was merely putting words to things she had already known, had been born knowing.
Yes, you know this already. It is part of your journey, the knowledge of things yet to come. Yet remember one thing, little Krush. Even the gods have free will. As do all living things. Even though destiny be carved in stone, fate decreed, fortunes set, yet then too the living can shift mountains if enough force is applied. How? Because of the Flow. The great river of energy that is perceived on Arthaloka as Jeel is in fact the Mother Goddess of All. The source and end of all life, all energy, all matter. It has no beginning, middle, or end. It is simply . . . the Flow. An endless cycle of energy creating and uncreating. It has had many names in many cultures, many worlds. Ouroboros. Kala. Omega. Chukwa. Ganga.
He fell silent then. In the absence of his words, she waited.
In this age, you shall be known as Krushni. But that is only one of your names and forms.
She thought then that she knew what he would say next. That she would also be known as Krushita, since she already was. But instead, he said:
Krushni. The life that comes after this one, little Krush. You know as well as I do that Krushita will never live to see a full life, middle age, old age. That is not your destiny. Your fate lies elsewhere.
An image coalesced through the light.
It formed out of the light itself, the color turning from white-blue to yellow, then deeper, darker, fiercer shades, until it pulsed yellow, red, scarlet, saffron, a cycling range of hues. She sensed within that fiery kaleidoscope an object, something large and ominous.
A great black throne in a vast chamber.
The black stone of which it was made pulsed and throbbed with raw power, a living awareness.
It glowed, then burst into flame.
Come, it said, come unto me, you are mine.
She felt its pull like a nail drawn toward a lump of magnetic ore.
Upon the Burning Throne, said the voice again, tinged with sadness now. The weary acceptance of a mind that had seen much pain and suffering and would see much more yet. That is where you belong. It will call you, and you will go. You cannot resist its summons. That is what is meant to be.
Come, said the Burning Throne, its call louder and more urgent as the flames roared around her, inside her, through her. We belong together, you and I. We are one and the same.
And when that comes to pass, great things will follow.
Another pause, this one briefer than the one before.
Great, terrible things.
She knew then with a flash of insight: This battlefield. The corpses. The Mother of All Wars. She would be a part of it somehow. She would be one of the combatants. No, not just one of them. She would be the main initiator. It would be on her command that this war would occur, that this enormous conflict unfold, that this unimaginable price be paid. She did not yet know why, or how, or when, but she knew this much for certain. This would be a war of her own making.
Free will, he said, reminding her gently. It is what differentiates us from stones and sticks. What fuels our lives. Even the stone gods were overthrown once, not by other gods, or even the urrkh, their eternal enemies. But by mere mortals. That is the power of free will. You have it, little one. Use it when the time comes. Remember, you are no pawn in the God Game. You are a queen. The most powerful queen of all. You are the Dark Queen herself. When the time comes, you must rise. You alone can do it, and when you do, then destiny itself will alter to match your path.
His voice was fading now, the large halo of light retreating rapidly into the black void. Now it was barely a hand’s width; now it was the size of a thumbnail.
Remember, Krush. You are only one half of a great and powerful equation. Find your other half. Unite. And discover what you are meant to become.
Now he was only a pinprick again, the tiniest star in an infinite cosmos.
The star winked out.
Krushita drifted in the void for an unknown time.
She sent her consciousness out in all directions, but it was no use.
The old wise one was gone. She sensed that she would find him again someday, that she even knew who he was, where he was. A name floated up from the pool of her memories. Vessa. A name spoken by her mother, and by Bulan in the campfire tales. A name linked with many tales, many other great names, great doings. But it mattered not now.
All that mattered now was that she knew.
She knew what she must do to save her mother.
She could not stop the portal.
It was eternal and infinite. Like a door that had always hung on unseen hinges. Simply there.
She could not stop it any more than she could stop light or time.
But she could mold it.
As her father had molded it into the shape of a tornado to funnel up the corpses and transform them into deadwalkers.
As he had moved the portal, placing it between this future time and her present back in the Red Desert.
She could do the same.
He had already done the hardest part.
He had set it up, leaving it to run on its own.
Then he had gone on some other errand or mission. Something more important and urgent than the killing of her mother and the slaughter of all those innocents. Something that required his physical presence in the natural world.
With him gone, she had no opposition.
He had not expected that she would find a way to come through the portal and beyond it, into the Flow, into the void itself, the place from which the portal itself came.
He had not even conceived of such a possibility.
That was his mistake.
She worked her will, reaching out to the void, connecting with the cold, mindless power of the portal.
Talking to the tornado.
She told it what she wanted it to do.
And miracle of miracles, the tornado listened.
Then obeyed.