Without hesitation the three of them—Hawk, Mulligan, and the Shadow—all hurled themselves down the path towards the pit where the Rift lay. Refugees were still coming out of it, but now they were running towards the edge without regard for each other, or even for themselves. And behind them rose, not fire or smoke, but steam. Great, unthinking billows of it in an unearthly and terrible white. Not like fires ending, Hawk thought as she ran, but like them starting, smoking and charring away the moisture before it could devour the leaves, the flowers, the flesh. And she knew the gods were behind this, because only Holia could create something so malignant out of nothing more than steam.

  “Shit, it’s one of them,” Hawk said, as the great rise of smoke began to take on a shape in its shadows. Dark billows of steam took on the shape of limbs, and a head hung heavy between them. Then swirls of mist like the folds of a garment, and Hawk knew with a sinking heart what this was…Illryis, Goddess of Water, had pushed her way through the Rift.

  And then it was gone. Collapse happened with a soft shirring sound, steam condensing down to water. Equipment turned wet and slick as the enchanted mist turned to rain. And then there came another surge, more steam, more white, and this time Hawk could feel the heat. This steam was fresh off the ashes of a fire. The face formed, an expression upon it…and then, again, it was gone.

  “It’s the time!” Shadow said, in amazement. “She can’t figure it out.”

  “You know what’s going on?” Mulligan said.

  “Yes, General. Illryis likes to announce herself and speak through forms of mist and steam. Or water, but then you’re likely to be drowned when her temper grows. But she can’t work around the time dilation. It will take hours, if not days, for her avatar to form on this side…and then she has to guess at how slowly she must speak. A single word could take hours, too. But she’s not even getting that far. She’s losing her patience as soon as the deed is done.” And he laughed.

  “Is it dangerous?” Mulligan asked.

  The Shadow sobered. “Of course it is. It means she—and we must assume, Argon and Nasheth—now know which Nexus is the right one. They’re one step closer to invading this world of yours.” And oh, his expression turned hungry.

  “They’re gonna be limited by how many people they can get up that crystal down there,” Mulligan said. “And that ain’t easy.”

  “Yes, but they’re aided by time. It doesn’t matter if they can get only one at a time up the pylon if that pace can get them a thousand men up before you’re ready. Unless you want your world overrun with our divinities, you’re going to have to move a great deal of your hardware down that hole.”

  The steam tried once more to form. This time it was detail perfect. Hawk could see Illryis’s beauty, the swan’s curve of neck, the flash of sharp eyes. The details had been crafted into this avatar with wrath, and that was the expression on the lovely face. As if time itself were defying her…and then, once more, the Earthside wind bore her shadow away.

  “She’s near,” Shadow said, and was nearly dancing with the energy throbbing through his wirey frame. “Let me go, sir. Let me face her down once more.”

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  Mulligan shook his head. “No, sir. Because I need someone these people will listen to, and my choices are Mattias and you. And Mattias isn’t well.”

  Ah, and now he remembered his friend. Hawk could see it in the pained look shadowing his alien eyes. “Where is he?”

  “Medical tent is over there. And listen…he’s saying some oddball shit. Stuff he shouldn’t know about. He insists that Henry Dyson is alive inside his head. I don’t see how that’s possible.”

  “I don’t either, but we do know that Kaiser injected him with something, and for him it hasn’t been that long. Less than an hour, I think.” She looked to Mulligan, who nodded. “If it’s some kind of drug, he’d still be high.” She sighed. “Let’s go see Mattias while Mulligan is trying to jam more troops down the hole,” Hawk said.

  The Shadow nodded, but did not look enthused. “I need to be with Mattias. At least for a moment. I may be able to remedy whatever ails him.”

  Mulligan chewed on these archaic words for half a minute. “Go ahead. Medics are doing what they can but they swear this looks and sounds like a mental break. I don’t know that there’s much you can do. Either this shit that Kaiser gave him wears off, or…” this won a shrug, a horrible gesture that exposed the general’s priorities—and they weren’t the old man who had given so much to get Hawk home safely.

  In many ways, she was still on her own.

  Mattias was being housed in a beige army tent with large red crosses on it. So recently exposed to the opulence of the Holian divine pavilions, she was a little non-plussed to apply the concept of livery and banners to the Red Cross. The world as she’d always known it felt strangely malleable, as if the Rifts were leaking through and decaying the fundamentals. Reducing her concepts of reality to beige glass ashes.

  She entered the tent and found Mattias sitting on a cot. He wore a medical gown, a lateral move from the Archon robes of his late office and another reminder that he’d given up everything to help Hawk and her friends. That the life he’d lived and the figures in it were toxic as hell was to be unremarked; the fact of sacrifice is greater than its quality. “Hawk!” He said, and tried to rise. Then he spotted the Shadow behind her and his face came alight, not entirely for the better. “My friend! What are you doing here? How can you be here?”

  “I walked, the same as any other creature. There were no barriers and quite a few people willing to tell me where to go. Tell me, old friend…what is wrong with you?” And the Shadow, powerful creature he was, knelt before the old man.

  “I do not know,” Mattias said. “I know only that I am no longer alone in my head. I remember things I cannot remember. I know what a…a television is. I have a thousand memories of the sun and stars. I remember a career—a college—a life that is not mine. And there is a voice, Henry’s, I think, howling for its freedom. But I am afraid, boy,” and now Mattias’ voice dropped hard, until it was a bare whisper above the noise of war-men driving beige vehicles to ruin. “I am afraid of the strength of this. It feels as if I am being…” he trailed off, staring at the Shadow with sudden horror.

  “As if you are being eaten,” The Shadow said, softly. And when Mattias recoiled, added, “Tell me I am wrong. That these memories that are not yours are fading?”

  “No. In fact, they and the howling voice are both growing stronger…I’m not…I’m not…” and then he reached out with work-strained hands and grabbed the Shadow by his ragged lapel. “It’s coming for me. The voice. It’s reaching it…help me! Hell…”

  His voice ran down like a broken spring, unraveling as both Hawk and the Shadow looked on. His head dropped, his whole body flinching as if strings were cut, and Hawk nearly tangled with the creature beside her in their twin efforts to catch Mattias before he fell. This seizure was almost worse than the one Mattias had suffered when Kaiser, curse the man, had injected him.

  And then he stilled. He was still awake, his head pressed into the Shadow’s mailed chest. But the hands that clenched so tight a moment ago let go, and when he sat up, he looked at the Shadow with shock and no small amount of horror.

  “Alex West?” He whispered. “What the hell are you doing here?”