And then darkness.

PART FIVE: THE CYCLE OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER 42

I never lost consciousness. I felt nothing, as if my body had gone numb, encased in a cocoon of transparent gossamer that held me immobile and perfectly protected from everything outside. Neither heat nor cold, pain nor pleasure, joy nor fear penetrated the cladding that covered me.

But I could see. The night storm and the Ice Age landscape wavered and slowly dissolved, like a castle of sand being washed away by the incoming tide. Beside me stood Ahriman, still encased in the bluish-white shimmer of energy from the lightning bolt, frozen immobile just as I was. His red eyes glared at me, and in them I could see not only hate and anger, but fear as well.

Slowly, by degrees, it grew darker and darker until vision was useless. I could see nothing. I was alone in a well of darkness, suspended in time and space, not knowing where I was or where I was heading.

Strangely, I felt no fear — not even apprehension. Even though I could no longer see him, I knew that Ahriman was beside me. I knew that Adena and her tiny band of remaining soldiers would survive the cold of the Ice Age and raise their children to tell them of the demigod who taught them how to make fire. I realized now that Dal’s hunting clan and all the other humans of every age were the descendants of those few soldiers lost and abandoned after the last battle of The War.

And I knew that Ormazd was near. And with him would be the goddess whom I loved when she deigned to take human form.

The darkness began to pale. Faint flickers of light, almost like stars in the night sky, began to show themselves. Then, like a slow, reluctant dawn, the blackness around me softened, became a pearly gray, a softer pinkish hue.

Light and warmth slowly washed over me, thawing the cocoon that held me. I could flex my fingers, move my arms. Gradually I felt all constraints melt away from me. I could move and feel once again.

But Ahriman remained trapped in an invisible web of energy — glowering at me, but unable to move. I should have felt glad at that; instead, I felt something close to pity.

“There’s nothing I can do,” I said aloud, knowing that he could not hear me. I shrugged elaborately to show him that I was helpless. His baleful stare never left me.

I turned away from him to examine the place where we stood. It was a featureless expanse of clouds. Not a hill, not a tree, not a blade of grass in sight. Nothing but a cloudscape extending in every direction as far as the eye could see. Not even a horizon, in the usual sense of the word; merely soft, puffy white clouds drifting slowly, one after the other, endlessly.

My feet seemed to be standing on something solid; yet, when I looked down, I saw nothing more substantial than wisps of cloud tops. Overhead the sky was clear, and far up at zenith the blue was dark enough to show a few twinkling stars.

I remembered flying in jet airliners through cloudscapes such as this, where no trace of the ground could be seen and there was nothing below except the tufted tops of a thick, soft carpeting of dazzling white clouds.

I grinned to myself. “So this is heaven, is it?” Raising my hands to cup my mouth, I shouted as loudly as I could, “I don’t believe it, Ormazd! You’ll have to do better than this!”

I looked back at Ahriman. He stood like a statue of implacable enmity, the only substantial landmark in this fairyland of cloud and sky.

Something drew my eyes up toward the zenith, where those few stars looked down at us. One of them seemed to burn brighter than the rest. It glowed and shimmered and seemed to grow as I watched it. Like a bubble of light it expanded and blazed brighter until it was too brilliant to look at. I threw my arm over my eyes as the glare from that golden sphere flooded everywhere.

The glare subsided, and I looked up again to see the human form of Ormazd, splendidly adorned in a uniform of gold, his thick golden mane framing his handsome, smiling face.

“Well done, Orion,” he said to me, beaming. “You have succeeded at last.”

I felt an overpowering satisfaction at his words, the kind of emotion a puppy must feel when its master pats it on the head. Yet, deep within me, there was a nagging resentment.

“My duty was to kill Ahriman,” I heard myself say.

Ormazd waved a self-confident hand. “No matter. He is as good as dead. He can’t harm us now.”

“Then… my task has been accomplished?”

“Yes. Quite fulfilled.”

“What happens to me now? What happens to him?”

Ormazd’s satisfied smile faded. “He remains here, in this stasis, safely out of the stream of the continuum. He can do us no harm now. The continuum is safe, at last.”

“And me?” I asked.

He looked slightly puzzled. “Your task is finished, Orion. What would you have me do with you?”

My throat froze. I could not speak.

“What is it that you want?” Ormazd asked me. “What reward can I give you for your faithful service?”

He was playing with me, I could see. And I could not find the courage to tell him that I wanted Aretha, Agla, Ava, Adena — the gray-eyed goddess whom I loved and who loved me. Suddenly I wondered if she hadn’t been a part of Ormazd’s plan, a stimulus to move me through the pain of death in my hunt for Ahriman, an unattainable prize to lure me through space-time in the pursuit of Ormazd’s goal.

“Well, Orion?” Ormazd asked again, grinning at me. “What is it that you desire?”

“Is she… does she really exist?”

“Who?” Ormazd’s grin became feline. “Does who really exist?”

“The woman — the one who called herself Adena when she led a squad of your troops in The War.”

“Adena exists, certainly,” he replied. “She is as real as you are. And as human.”

“Ava… Agla…”

“They all exist, Orion. In their own time. They are all human beings, living their lifespans in their own particular times.”

“Then she’s not…”

The air beside Ormazd began to shimmer, as if a powerful beam of heat had suddenly been turned on. It wavered and sparkled. Ormazd edged back a step as the air seemed to congeal, to take on a silvery radiance and then solidify into the form of a tall, slender, beautiful woman, clad in glittering metallic silver.

“Stop toying with him, Ormazd,” she said sternly. Then she looked at me, and our eyes met. “I exist, Orion. I am real.”

The breath froze in my lungs. I could not utter a word.

But Ormazd could. “Is she the one you meant? Have you fallen in love with a goddess, Orion?” He laughed.

“You find it ridiculous that your creature should love me?” she asked, cutting through his laughter. “Then how amusing it must be to think that I love him.”

Ormazd shook his head. “That is impossible.”

“Is it?”

I found my voice at last. “Your name… what is your true name?”

Her tone softened as she told me, “I am all those women you have met, Orion, in each of the times you have found yourself. Here, I call myself Anya.”

“Anya.”

“Yes,” she said. “And despite the scoffing of your creator, I do love you, Orion.”

“And I love you, Anya.”

“Impossible!” snorted Ormazd. “Can a human being love a worm? You are a goddess, Anya, not one of these creatures of flesh.”

“I became one of them. I have learned to be human,” she said.

“But you are not human,” he insisted. “Any more than I am.” Ormazd’s form shimmered, blurred slightly. “Show him your true self.”

Anya shook her head slightly.

“You refuse? Then look upon me, Orion, and see your creator as he truly exists!”

Ormazd’s body flowed and blurred and began to burn with an inner golden light so powerful that I could not look directly at it. It cast no heat at all; if anything, the air around me seemed to grow colder. But the brilliance was painful. I had to lower my eyes, bow my head, put my arms up to shield my vision from that overpowering glare.