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As she soared, Bükrek glanced down at the ebrens gathered by the Rōd. Most looked exhausted, lying full-length on the grass. Though she desperately wanted to gift them with riders, she could only hope she was doing the right thing. Even for an immortal, it was sometimes hard to tell.
During her last three visits to Gehān spaced every millennium, she had not called on her special gift. Sangal had been quiet in his lake of fire, while the cave cities endured: surely not a heaven, but not in jeopardy either. Across the rest of the world, zands made their way from place to place and empires rose and fell. Gehān continued to turn; people intermingled and killed one another in war. In other words: more of the same.
The one cruelty that always disturbed her—made her flinch and look away—was the fate of the Axwaš. Bükrek had tried her best—she had after all saved Shāhpuhr—but was afraid to save all lest Sangal emerge from his lake. But that hardly mattered at present: he was here, he was chaos, so what could be the harm?
Bükrek lifted her face to the clouds as she flew to her heavenly home. If only Tengri, great sky god, could give her a sign that what she sought was holy! Still, she rose higher, past light-bringer Mihr, to a cloudless patch where the air grew chill. She hadn’t been up this far for five hundred years, and, in five hundred more, to this place she would return.
After giving a final push, Bükrek tucked in her wings, buoyed by a strange current even she couldn’t feel.
I must still my mind, she thought, concentrating her power. She began to loop in a circle which became steadily smaller. Intent, she reminded herself.
“Time,” she spoke aloud, “unravel your weave on my air-wheel. Allow me to work my gift.”
She saw she was now at the center of a raging tornado, but rather than dirty-white, its funnel was multicolored, with swatches of blues and reds straining to escape.
“Spin,” she commanded, and the funnel reversed its motion, swirling so fast that all its colors merged. Bükrek kept a calm mind as she thought of the Axwaš, conjuring newborns and those of all ages who tossed inside bending air walls.
“Undo,” Bükrek said, “the evil that has been done.”
The helpless human forms hovered upon their backs, driven down by that wind which Tengri alone could control.
She and her Axwaš now floated, free of the funnel’s constriction.
Again, she passed Mihr, who warmed the air around them; then flapped over the trees of Razūr with its ribbon river and clearing.
Bükrek landed on its green space, followed by drifting Axwaš gently down. She wondered how they’d react to the soft feel of grass.
