CHAPTER 43

Outlived my usefulness. I realized that if Ormazd had created me, had placed me in all those different eras to hunt down Ahriman, had brought me through death many times over—he could also end my existence, totally and forever.

I stared at him. "Is that the reward you will give me? Final death?"

"Orion, try to understand," he said, almost placatingly. "What you desire is truly impossible. Anya is not a human being, no more than I am. We take on human form to make ourselves familiar to you."

"But Adena... Agla..."

"They are human," Anya said. "Adena was created in a time that is far in the future of any era you have known..."

"Fifty thousand years in the future from the twentieth century," I said, recalling what Ormazd had told me when I had first met him.

"Exactly," Anya said. "She was created at the same time you yourself were."

"Then..."

"And the others, Aretha, Ava, Agla—they were born of human mothers, just as all humans have been, since Adena's band of soldiers struggled to survive in the Age of Ice."

"But they were you."

"Yes. I inhabited their bodies for their entire lifetimes. I became human."

"For me?"

"Not at first. In the beginning it was merely... curiosity, a novelty, a chance to see what Ormazd's handiwork was like. But then I began to feel what they feel—the pain, the fear—and then I found you, and I began to understand what love is."

I turned to Ormazd. "You would prevent us from being together?"

His taunting grin had long disappeared. He seemed deeply concerned now, somber. "I can give you a full, rich lifetime, Orion. Many lifetimes, if you wish. But I cannot make you into one of us. That is impossible."

"Because you refuse to make it possible," I replied, bitterly.

He shook his head. "No. It is impossible because not even I can accomplish it. I cannot transform a bacterium into a bird. I cannot turn a man into a god."

Turning back to Anya, I pleaded, "Is he telling me the truth? There's nothing that can be done?"

"Try to understand, Orion," she said gently.

"How can I understand?" I felt rage boiling within me. I glanced at the imprisoned form of Ahriman and knew a little of the hatred burning in his eyes. "You haven't allowed me to understand. You created me to do a job for you, and now that it's finished, you're finished with me."

"No," Anya said. "That's not..."

But Ormazd overrode her. "Accept what cannot be changed, Orion. You have done well. The human race will worship you, through all of time, in one form or another. They will forget about me, but they will always remember Prometheus."

"Why?" I asked. "Why did you create me? Why create humankind? Why fight The War against Ahriman's people? Why did you cause all this agony and bloodshed?"

Ormazd fell silent. His golden radiance gathered around him almost like a protective cloak as he lowered his head and refused to answer me.

But Anya's gray eyes flashed with silver flame. She stared at Ormazd until he lifted his eyes to meet hers.

"He deserves to be answered, God of Light," she said, in a voice I could barely hear.

Ormazd did not reply. He merely shook his head slowly in refusal.

"Then I will tell him," Anya insisted.

"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, 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, but why? 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.