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"What good will it do?" Ormazd said. "He already hates me. Do you want him to hate you, too?"
"I want him to understand," she said.
"You are a fool."
"Perhaps I am. But he deserves to know the entire truth."
The golden glow of Ormazd's aura began to pulsate and redden at its fringes. The light grew brighter,
brighter, until it was impossible to look directly at him. His human body faded into the brilliance and the
radiant golden sphere, a miniature fiery sun, then rose above our heads and dwindled in the featureless
distance until it was no more than a star-like point of light against the far sky.
I turned back toward Anya.
"Are you prepared to see the truth, Orion?" she asked. Her eyes held all the sadness of time in them.
"Will it mean that I must lose you?" I asked.
"You must lose me in any case, Orion. Ormazd spoke truthfully: you cannot become one of us."
I was tempted to ask her to end it all right there and then, to put me out of existence, out of pain. But,
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instead, I heard my voice replying, "If I must exist without you, then at least let me know why I was
created."
"You were created to hunt Ahriman," she answered.
"Yes, butwhy ? I don't believe the story Ormazd told me. Ahriman couldn't possibly destroy the
universe. It's all nonsense."
"No, my love," Anya said gently. "It is all quite true."
"Then show me! Let me understand."
Her beautiful face was utterly serious as she nodded to me. "You will have to enter the time stream
again. I must send you to a place in space-time that is before the Age of Ice, before human beings existed
on Earth."
"Very well, send me. I'm willing."
She drew a slow, hesitant breath. "I will not be there with you. Not in any form. You will be
alone except for..."
"Except for whom?"
You will see," Anya said. "Suffice it for now to know that there will be no other human beings on Earth,
no creatures like yourself."
I realized. "Ormazd won't have created them yet."
"That's right."
"But there will be others there," I guessed. And then a flash of recognition lit my mind. "Ahriman's
people!They will be on Earth!"
Anya did not reply, but I could see in her eyes that it was true. I turned my gaze from her to Ahriman,
imprisoned in his web of energy, and saw his eyes burning with a fury that could destroy worlds, if ever it
got free.
CHAPTER 44
Anya instructed me to close my eyes, and not open them again until I felt the wind against my skin. For a
moment I stood there, unmoving, my gaze fixed on her lovely, somber face.
This would be the last time I'd see her, I knew. There would be no return from this journey.
I wanted to take her in my arms, to kiss her and tell her for one last time that I loved her more than life
itself. But she was a goddess, not a human woman. I could love her as Agla the witch, or Ava the
huntress. I could love Aretha, whom I barely knew, or Adena, as she led her troops in battle. But this
silver-clad goddess was beyond me, and I knew it. Ormazd had been right: a bacterium cannot become
a bird; a goddess cannot fall in love with a monkey.
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I closed my eyes.
"Keep them closed until you feel the wind against you," her sweet voice told me.
I nodded to show her I understood. Then I felt the softest touch against my cheek. Her fingertips,
perhaps. Or perhaps the faintest brush of her lips. I burned for her, but found myself paralyzed. I could
not unclench my fists, could not move a step. My eyes would not open even if I willed them to.
"Good-bye, my love," she whispered. But I was unable to answer.
For the briefest instant I remained locked in frozen darkness, deprived of all sensory inputs. I could see
nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing.
My hearing returned first. A soft, sighing sound came to me, the whisper of something I had not heard
for so long that I thought I had forgotten it: a gentle breeze rustling the leafy limbs of trees.
I felt that breeze on my face, warm, kind, loving. Opening my eyes, I saw that I stood in the midst of a
forest of gigantic trees sequoias, from the looks of them. Their immense boles were wider than a house,
and they stretched up toward the blue, cloud-flecked sky like the pillars of a giant's cathedral.
Except for the sighing of the breeze, the forest seemed silent to me. But as I stood there lost in wonder
beneath the shade of those gigantic leafy boughs, I began to recognize the sounds of life in the
background: bird calls echoing through the forest, the gurgling of a fast-rushing stream off in the distance,
the scampering of a small furry creature through the sparse underbrush between the enormous tree
trunks.
What a world this was! How Dal and Ava and their clan would have loved it here. Even Subotai and the
High Khan, crusty old warriors though they were, would have happily settled themselves here. Everything
a man could desire was here except other people.
I wandered through the forest for hours, picking berries from a bush, drinking from that noisy brook,
reveling in the peace and joy of a world untainted by war and killing.
Slowly I began to wonder if Anya had not sent me here to get rid of me as gently as she could. It was a
good world, an easy place to live in except for the absence of companions. Was this her way of exiling
me, removing me from her presence? A pleasant Coventry? A warm and lovely Siberia? I would live out
my solitary existence here in comfort, and when I finally died, I would no longer trouble her. Like putting
a pet to sleep when you no longer need or want it.
I shook my head. No, she would not lie to me. She sent me here so that I might understand the whole
scheme of things. She placed me here for a reason, not merely to get me out of her way, I told myself. I
insisted to myself. I had to believe that. There was nothing else for me to cling to.
The sun was setting behind hills that I could barely make out, far off in the distance, through the stout
columns of the trees. The shadows lengthened into dusk, but the air was still warm and fragrant with
flowers. I wore a sleeveless shirt and knee-length pants made of hides. My feet were shod with thonged
sandals of leather. Yet, even as twilight deepened into night, I did not feel cold. The ground was mossy
and soft; I stretched out on it and fell asleep almost at once.
In my dreams I saw this early Earth as a god might see it, as Anya and Ormazd undoubtedly saw it, a
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beautiful blue sphere set against the cold darkness of unfathomable space, decked with bands and swirls
of clouds that gleamed purest white. I recognized the rough outlines of Europe and Africa, the Americas
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