“I have merely accelerated time for the two of us,” Ahriman said as I studied her. “This way we can talk without being overheard or interrupted.”

I stepped across the stone floor toward him. The stones felt solid and real. Ahriman looked as I had remembered him — a dark, brooding, powerful hulking body and red burning eyes. Agla remained as lovely and as still as a statue made of living flesh.

“When you return to her, she will not know that an instant has passed. And for her, no time will have elapsed.”

“You play many tricks with time,” I said.

He was standing straddle-legged, his huge fists planted on his hips. He wore fur-trimmed robes and high leather boots. I could see no weapons on him, but how paltry a sword or dagger would be to a man of his powers.

“You travel through time quite easily yourself,” Ahriman hissed. “And through space. It was a long journey from Hulagu’s camp.”

“You never rode in the camel caravan, did you?”

His broad, brooding face almost smiled. “No. I took a different mode of transport. I have been here in Karakorum for three months now. I am highly regarded as a priest of a new religion, a religion for warriors.”

“You sent those two assassins.”

“Yes,” he admitted easily. “I doubted that they would accomplish much, but I had to see if you still possessed the powers that you had the last time we met.”

“At the fusion reactor.”

His heavy brows knit in puzzlement for a moment. “Fusion rea…” Then he took in a deep breath. “Ah yes, of course. You are moving back toward The War. I haven’t reached that time yet.”

We were traveling across time in different directions, I remembered. We had met before, and we would meet again.

“Did you… kill me, then?” Ahriman’s labored voice almost sounded worried.

“No,” I answered. “You killed me.”

He seemed pleased. “Then I still may accomplish my task.”

“To destroy the human race.” He glowered at me. “Human. Look at the wonders that these Mongols have achieved. Observe how they slaughter their own kind by the hundreds of thousands, and how others who believe themselves to be civilized applaud such slaughter and benefit from it. Human, indeed.”

“Do you count yourself better because you plan to slaughter us by the billions?”

“I plan to correct a mistake that was made fifty thousand years ago,” Ahriman rasped. “For every life that is snuffed out, a life will be gained. My people will live; yours will die. And so, too, will your creator die — the one who calls himself Ormazd.”

“The War was fifty thousand years ago?”

“You will learn,” he said. “You will meet me then. You will see. Why else would Ormazd have you moving back from The End toward The War? To keep the truth from you.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to keep his lies from penetrating my consciousness. I formed a mental image of Ormazd, shining, glowing against the darkness of eternity. The Golden One, the giver of life and truth. Ahriman called him my creator and said that he would kill us both.

Opening my eyes, I said, “My mission is to kill you.”

“I know. And I would happily kill you, as easily as you would crush an insect beneath your heel.”

“As easily as you murdered her?”

“The girl?”

“Her name was Aretha… in the twentieth century.”

“I have not been there yet.”

“You will be. And you will kill her. If there were no other reason for me to hate you, that would be enough.”

He shrugged those massive shoulders. “You can hate; you can love. Ormazd has programmed you quite flexibly.”

I was close enough to reach out and take him by the throat. But I had felt the strength of those mighty arms before, and I knew that even with all the powers I possessed, he could toss me about like a matchstick.

“The Mongols make it difficult for us to do battle,” Ahriman said, breaking into my thoughts. “They have their laws, and they will do their best to see that we obey them.”

“I will gain an audience with Ogotai and warn him against you. You will not succeed here.”

His almost lipless slash of a mouth curled back in a hideous smile. “Succeed? I have already succeeded. And you have helped me!”

“What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “What do you expect of me? Do you think that I am here to assassinate Ogotai?”

“You are the leader of the cult of the assassins, aren’t you?”

The smile degenerated into a sneer. “No, my ancient adversary. I am not the Old Man of the Mountains. Only a true human would think of murdering his fellow humans for profit. The leader of the assassins is a Persian, as human as you are. He was a boyhood friend of someone you may have heard of — Omar Khayyam, the astronomer.”

“I know the name as a poet.”

“Yes, he scribbled some verses now and then. But as for the assassins, Hulagu will crush them — after he takes Baghdad and destroys the flower of Islamic culture.”

“You said you have already succeeded here… and I helped you.”

“Yes,” Ahriman said, his face becoming serious again. “Come. I will show you.”

He turned and walked toward the solid stone wall that had been behind him. Remembering what he had done in the twentieth century, I hesitated only a moment, then followed him.

I stepped through the wall, again feeling the chill of deepest space for an instant. And then we were in a forest, surrounded by tall, dark trees that sighed in the night wind. Wordlessly, Ahriman led me along a path that meandered through the underbrush. High above, through the leafy canopy, I could see a thin sliver of a moon racing through scudding clouds. An owl hooted in the darkness; crickets chirped ceaselessly.

We stopped at the edge of the woods, where the ground slanted downward toward a wide grassy plain. Tents were pitched there; horses were tethered in long sleeping lines. But these tents were high-pitched and square in shape, not like Mongol tents. The carts were huge and heavy compared to those I had seen in Karakorum. And the horses also looked different from the ponies of the Gobi — bigger, heavier, slower.

“The cream of Eastern Europe’s knighthood,” Ahriman whispered to me, “led by Bela, the King of Hungary. A hundred thousand men are camped there, knights fromCroatia,Germany, the Hungarian cavalry, of course, and even Knights Templar from France.”

“Where are we?”

“Down there is the plain of Mohi. Across the river is Tokay, the wine country. That is where Subotai and his Mongols are spending the night — or so Bela thinks.”

By the wan light of the moon I could see guards standing around the edges of the huge camp, and more tents pitched on the other side of the river at the foot of a stone bridge that spanned it. Neither the guards nor I noticed anything amiss as the night slowly faded and the first gray fingers of dawn began to streak the sky.

Ahriman pulled me down to a crouching position in the underbrush. I started to protest, but he silenced me with a massive hand on my shoulder.

In the predawn dimness I heard the slight snuffle of a horse. Turning, I saw through the tangled undergrowth a pair of Mongol warriors nosing their ponies slowly, silently, through the woods. Behind them were more horsemen, each as quiet as a wraith. They stopped, bows in their hands, already notched with arrows. They waited for a signal.

A shower of fire arched across the gray sky. Flaming arrows fell into the Europeans’ camp, setting tents afire and terrifying the tethered horses. A horrendous roaring scream arose from thousands of warriors as the Mongol horsemen spurred their mounts and dashed into the sleeping camp from three sides. Horsemen thudded past us as we crouched in the brush, spattering us with clods of earth, shrieking their hideous war cries, bending their little double-curved bows and firing arrows into the stumbling, barely awake Europeans.

The slaughter was complete. All morning long the two armies battled, thousands upon thousands of maddened men furiously trying to kill one another. The Europeans fought with the strength of desperation; they were surrounded and had no hope of escape or mercy. The Mongols, though heavily outnumbered, remorselessly cut down their opponents with arrows, lances, and curved swords that drank the blood of nobleman and peasant equally. The Europeans never had a chance to mount their battle steeds or even don their armor. They were slaughtered in their nightclothes. The men on the far side of the stone bridge fought bravely, but soon enough the Mongols cut down the last of them and stormed across the bridge to complete the encirclement.