Riders Of The Winds

by Jack L. Chalker

  The "petals" of the worlds had stabilized once again, and she looked back in hopes of seeing a lone and familiar wagon. She could see nothing, hear nothing, but the world that now was locked in, at least for its time, contained an entry station not that far in and with a number of uniformed men and horses there.

  It was impossible to see the sun through the cloud cover, but she had the impression that it was getting quite late in the afternoon. At least, as far as she could see inside the revealed world, the amount of light was more consistent with afternoon than any other time, and she began to worry. Was I too late? Did he have to go without me?

  She rejected that almost immediately. If Crim had dialed in whatever that world was called there would have been the same kind of thing she'd just gone through almost surely. So where was he? Stopped at the border? In some kind of trouble? What?

  She didn't want to spend a night out here, alone, particularly with those things around. Almost nobody crossed at night. Not even a Navigator could see all the landmarks and keep dead on at night, and it was generally only done when it was some kind of military or medical emergency or in the case of urgent diplomatic dispatches which would be aided and guided by sorcery. Night crossing wasn't a real option anyway. Kira couldn't navigate—it was a talent you had to be born with, or so they all said. You could only learn to control and develop it, not bestow it on someone else. Besides, while Kira was real smart in a lot of ways she'd been a female jock. Something called the Biathlon, she'd said. Crazy kind of thing that had to do with cross-country snow skiing and rifle shooting. That was why she was such a good shot, but the deserts of the Kudaan were a hell of a place for a snow skier to wind up!

  But it was beginning to get darker, though, and not from any impending storm—she could tell that now—but because of the lateness of the day. Her hair and everything she had was still soaked through, and there was a chill wind blowing from whatever world was up right now.

  She was still trying to figure out what to do when she heard the sounds of others approaching from the hub. Crim! Or—was it? Not one wagon there, but two! She moved off a bit so she wouldn't be right in line once again, but she wanted to stick close enough, risk or no risk, to make sure just who was in what.

  The lead one was Crim! She felt some relief at that, but what the hell was the second, trailing wagon? Two tough, weathered men in front, on the seat, and probably two more in the wagon since four horses were trailing behind them. This didn't look good, and it was unlike Crim to take this long to get across. Hell, what if it was sundown before he could clear the entry point? What if it was sundown while he was at the entry point?

  She shadowed them at a distance, taking a wide semicircular route around them. Wherever Crim was going, that's where she was going, and to hell with those other guys. If he was being shadowed by suspicious characters, maybe with too many guns, figuring on just what they were pulling and hoping to catch her when she caught up with the Navigator, then that was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. She was sick and tired of being hunted like an animal and kicked around by the fates and something within her had hardened her. If she was mortal then they were mortal, too. She'd rather take her chances with Crim and Kira, even if it meant taking these men on, than wander around another unknown land until she bumped into another Duke Pasedo or worse.

  After you saw the Stormriders, four guys with guns didn't seem half as frightening as they might have.

  Crim had gotten a bit ahead of her, but now he stopped, very close to the border region, as the trailing wagon crept up to him and then passed him, allowing her to draw roughly even but maybe a few hundred yards down. It was risky being this close, but this was a new circumstance. She was going in with Crim, no matter what Crim did.

  The Navigator looked nervous, maybe even tense. There were two more guys looking out of the back of the wagon and they had guns of some kind, that was for sure. So why had they decided to pass him?

  Suddenly she realized the reason. He was the Navigator— none of them were. He had to be behind to bring up the world and stabilize it for them to cross. It would also hold only a couple of minutes after he let it go at best, so she had to be really ready now. It was maybe a quarter of a mile to the border. She didn't feel much like more exercise, but she was prepared to float over if she had to. She took off the backpack and let it fall. The hell with that waterlogged dead weight. She had other clothes in the wagon. Besides, some cruel god or fate seemed to like her naked for some reason. At least this time she was armed.

  The worlds began to flip, faster and faster, and, after a couple of minutes, they stopped on just what he had described—a great forest, in the first throes of dusk, with another good road leading up to an entry station carved out of the forest that already had some lights on.

  She started to go in, for some reason, held herself, as she watched the men in the wagon proceed in and then up onto the road itself. Something, perhaps in Crim's manner or perhaps a sixth sense she hadn't suspected and which hadn't been very useful until now, warned her.

  Suddenly the forests vanished and several worlds flipped past before slowly coming to a stop again. He'd gotten rid of them! He'd dumped them in that world and then let them go.' "Misa! If you're out there run like hell now!" Crim called at the top of his lungs, and she ran as if the Stormriders were right on her tail.

  Crim slowly edged forward as she took off. He was buying her all the time he could, but it was still an ordeal for her after the rest of the day and no picnic at all. She was going on sheer determination, every muscle aching, not even seeing what kind of world had come up.

  Suddenly there were trees and leaves batting her face and she grabbed some limb and brought herself to a stop, then dropped on the ground, gasping for breath. It was several minutes before she could get hold of herself, and when she did she knew that Crim had crossed the border. There was lightning and the start of a storm out there in the void.

  She took stock of her surroundings. It was getting pretty damned dingy, but they were going west, after all. This sure wasn't the world Crim had planned on, though, and she wondered if he had any more idea about this place than she did or had just picked it as the first decent-looking one that came up before he lost control of the "deck." Probably the latter, but the odds were he'd spotted a road or something, so her best bet was to head back over towards that road—if the land allowed her.

  The humidity was tremendous, and the vegetation was incredibly thick and seemed to reach almost into the mist itself. She worked herself around as best she could, using the spear as a probe and walking stick. It was getting very dark very fast, and she wanted that road. If it was dark and nobody crossed late, then the odds were it was a pretty safe area so long as she avoided any entry station.

  It wasn't easy. Several times she almost slipped off the slick floor into the mist, and while she had no fear of the transition zone as such she had no desire to lose Crim now that she'd kept up with him. Or maybe Kira by now. She hoped that after all there hadn't been some kind of awkward embarrassment ahead.

  Finally she made it to a cleared area that was most certainly the main road. It was more than a little muddy, although none of the rain that she could see had escaped from the transition zone, but she wasn't going to be on it, anyway, but rather walking along it.

  About ten feet inside there was a strong and very high fence with a kind of barbed wire on top, and she realized that when she'd dropped the pack she'd also dropped the wire cutters. Smart. If she had tried to press in, she wouldn't have been able to get through. The road was open, though, and the gate there was a simple wooden slab on a hinge.

  Just beyond was the entry station, a pretty small affair by its look, with just room for a couple of people. There was a small cottage made of bamboo or the like nearby with a thatched straw roof, kind of looking like a fairytale house, and a couple of horses grazing in a nearby clearing.

  Crim's wagon wasn't there—he had to have cleared the place and gone farther up
, maybe to wait for her. By now it was sure to be Kira, and Sam didn't want Kira out in a strange place alone right now. Kira was skilled, but this wasn't her kind of element, and against a gang or perhaps animals of who knew what variety she was just one woman alone.

  The lights for the entry station and outside the hut weren't electric but plain old torches, but they gave off a good amount of light and definitely lit up the entire gate area. Suddenly a dog started barking over the hut and Sam didn't like that at all. It was definitely a dog, and maybe a big one. She tightened the grip on her spear.

  Funny, she thought. Like a half hour ago I was ready to kill four human beings, but I'm not sure I can kill a dog.

  A woman came out of the hut and said something sharply to the unseen dog, who quieted down but only a little. She went on over to the guard shack and called in. A man came out, then reached back in and turned off his inside light. Sam couldn't tell too much about them from this distance, but they both looked kind of average. Thin, though. They looked like the kind who could eat a chocolate cake apiece and still lose weight. They were also kind of romantic, as if they hadn't been married long—if they were married now. He said something, she laughed, said something back, they kissed, and then walked hand in hand back to the hut. Sam thought it was kind of sweet.

  But that damned dog better be on a chain or something. She suddenly sensed an odd building of energy, and almost immediately after there was a crack of thunder and it started to rain. It wasn't the kind of very hard, driving rain like out in the mist, but it was a steady rain with pretty good volume, the kind that soaked everything through and turned the mud to worse. She risked at least a bit of a bond with the storm, trying to sense if it were normal and natural or if some ghostly airborne riders were within it, trying to use it. There was nothing but the storm, though, and she relaxed. If it was a normal thing, then it could be used. She doubted the dog liked it any more than anybody else, and it was noisy enough to mask most sounds. She went to the fence, then to the gate, and squeezed through. The horses made irritated sounds, not at her particularly but at being left out in this crap, and she walked back into the shadows sinking in mud to her ankles now.

  Within a few hundred yards of the entry station it turned pitch dark; so dark it was impossible to see a thing, only feel the rain and mud. She slipped a couple of times, but it meant little, since the rain was giving her a rinse. She was, however, beginning to long for very short hair again, and mulling over the virtues of shaving her head. Hell, considering how she looked now what difference would it make? Boday would still love her, and Charley would still be her friend, and Boolean would still need her. Still, she had the uneasy feeling that maybe looking like some freaked-out Hunchback of Notre Dame might not be something she could live with.

  Odd to be thinking of Boday and Charley at a time like this, but she really missed them. They were the only two people she really cared about in this godforsaken place, the only two who cared anything about her. Oddly, and particularly these past few days, she missed Boday more than Charley.

  Charley had changed so much Sam wasn't sure she knew or understood her old friend anymore. Jeez—she didn't have any more to do with working as a hooker than Sam had with getting fat, but Charley liked it.

  Boday—Boday was security. Hell, it was more than that. She'd lived with the crazy artist for a real long time now, and she knew her better than she knew anybody. Oh, not that you could understand Boday—that was probably impossible—but you got to know her real well. She admired Boday's egocentric confidence, her real genius at almost any art form she wanted to tackle, her inner strength and toughness in a world that was far more of a man's world than anything Sam had known before.

  That was something. It was starting to come back after all. She was starting to remember "home," or at least the Earth she'd come from. There were lots of gaps, mostly personal ones, but she remembered the music and TV and cars and all that. She could remember Boston, and Albuquerque a little, but she couldn't remember any faces. Not even her Mom and Dad. No faces.

  It bothered her, but only that. She hadn't ever been happy there, and God knew where she'd have wound up if she hadn't gotten pulled here. If only they would just leave her alone here. If only she had some time and some peace to find out about herself once and for all ...

  Where the hell was Kira with the wagon? She couldn't have kept going far in this weather. She knew Sam would be along, and it wasn't out of friendship that the strange two-in-one couple was helping her, but for profit. She was sure that Crim or whichever had made it to this particular world, and equally sure that customs or whatever had been cleared because there was no sign of the wagon or any problems back there.

  Clearly something had gone wrong after clearing the gate, and that something was almost certainly not related to the entry gate itself—that couple hadn't looked like they'd had anything unusual happen back there.

  So now there was just the rain and mud and darkness of a strange world, and she began to feel miserable and alone.

  I'm sick of this! she thought sourly. Sick of running and hiding and being chased and abused, sick of having everybody crap on me in this world and having everything go wrong to boot! Damn it, I've been nothing but somebody's Ping-Pong ball since we got here! This has just gotta end! There's just gotta be an end to all this!

  The storm rumbled, and there was now thunder and lightning. She had been conditioned to fear such storms, first by the dreams, then by the reality of being hunted by ones who used them, but suddenly she began to think things out. She was a clone or something of the Storm Princess, or the Storm Princess was a clone of her. Who cared? And the Storm Princess was being conned or was going along with this Klittichorn clown who wanted to kill her; right? But why did this big-shot sorcerer who had enough power to find her back home and chase her here need the damned Storm Princess at all? It wasn't just a big plot, it was something that Boolean guy had said long ago.

  Klittichorn didn't have any power over the storms! That's why he needed this Storm Princess! Sure, he used those ugly creatures of storms, but they were dangerous when they were around, maybe, not him. And she'd actually called a storm once, here, to save them. It hadn't turned out so right, but it saved their personal asses anyway. But it hadn't worked out so right not because of Klittichorn or those monsters. Why was he trying to kill her, anyway?

  Because for some reason he was scared of her. She was a wildcard he had to kill because he couldn't control her and her power was dangerous to him! That wasn't putting down the real threat from killers and sky creatures and changeling witches and all that, but she was running into them anyway. And—why were they all chasing her?

  'Cause he's just as scared of me as I am of him!

  She stopped dead in the middle of the muddy road, closed her eyes, and took a number of deep breaths. There, in the dark, in the rain, she let her mind go, let it rise up to the clouds and turbulence above.

  And she felt power.

  She was one with the storm, and the storm was hers. She was where she stood but she was also everywhere touched by this great tropical storm. The winds were hers to command, to bend branches or whip through the treetops; the lightning was a plaything, a toy, a weapon if she wanted it to be.

  She was aware, suddenly, of a presence in the storm, a thing not of it that hid within it and took from the storm's center a bit of its power to give it form. It used clouds to form a skull face, a demon face, and electrical energy to feed it and give it strength and solidity. She did not know what it was, but she knew immediately, somehow, that it was looking for her. Looking, but not seeing, because the rest of the storm was hers and she would not permit it to see.

  The Sudog felt resistance, felt its will being blocked, but the force against it was too strong. It looked anxiously in all directions for the source, but the source didn't seem to have a center, a locus. The storm itself was somehow alive in the same way as the Sudog was alive, and the storm was much larger and greater than it could
ever be.

  Winds whipped around it, creating an upper-air twirling, a tornado within the clouds, and with it came the force and power of a vacuum, tugging and pulling at the Sudog as it strove fruitlessly to break free. Sucking it up, tearing it apart ... It gave a mournful, anguished moaning scream as it came apart, on a level few could hear, and then it was gone, leaving the storm to her alone once more.

  My God! she thought, feeling both exultation and disgust at herself. Boolean should have told me! All this time I been runnin' from storms, cowering in lonely rooms, scrunched up in dark corners. All this time I've been afraid of the thunder, and it was my greatest ally, my one true friend!

  She felt the soaking rain on her body and found its touch no longer terrible but instead a friend, a lover's caress.

  She shifted her mental focus again to the storm, using it now, directing it. Lightning within the storm could be used as well, could illuminate the very road ahead, if only briefly . . . There! Off to the side and not too far ahead, partly hidden by the tall trees! Horses!

  Just whose horses she couldn't be sure, but so long as she had the storm, and she knew now that she could have it if she needed it, it wasn't as important. She started walking again, this time using the illuminations as a guide in the rain and mud and darkness.

  Yes! There! It was Crim's wagon and the familiar team, still all hitched up as if waiting for the rain to pass. The wagon wheels were sunk deep in mud, and even she was now struggling in the mud of the road, sinking down well past her ankles and going on only because of her hard-won great strength. Clearly, though, that wagon was going to have lots of trouble unless things dried out.

  She approached the rear of the wagon cautiously, unable to figure out why she had been forced to walk so long a distance. Satisfied as well as she could be that there was no one lurking under it or in the nearby trees, she stood there and shouted, "Kira! It's me! Is there anything wrong?"