Anackire

Cover: Michael Whelan.

The lowland girl seemed to contain fire. Her hair stirred, flickered, gushed upward, blowing flame in a wind that did not blow.

A tower of light shot up the sky, beginning where the girl stood. For half a second there was only light, then it took form.

The form it took was Anackire.

She towered, she soared. Her flesh was a white mountain. Her snake's tail a river of fire in spate. Her golden head touched the apex of the sky, and there the serpents of her hair snapped like lightnings. Her eyes were twin suns. The eight arms, outheld as the two arms of the girl had been, rested weightlessly on the air, the long fingers subtly moving.

The girl standing before the well, unblasted by the entity she had released, seemed only quiescent. At last one could see that her face, as it had always been, was the face of Anackire.