“I understand your words, wizard,” Ogotai said, slowly. “But I do not believe them.”

“My prophecies have never failed you, High Khan.”

“Leave me, wizard. Let me sleep in peace.”

“I am…”

“Leave,” Ogotai commanded.

I heard Ahriman’s heavy, lumbering tread cross the tent and disappear into the night. For several minutes I remained behind the tapestry while, one by one, the lamps in the tent were snuffed out. Finally there was only one dim light flickering. It stayed lit, and I decided that Ogotai was not going to have it put out.

I stepped out from behind the hanging. The High Khan was lying atop the quilts of his bed, wearing a rough robe of homespun. His face looked haggard. He was sweating. But he was still awake, and he saw me.

So did his guards. Six swords leaped from their scabbards.

Ogotai made a motion with his hands. The guards stood where they were, swords gripped tightly in their hands.

“They see the dagger in your hand, Orion,” said Ogotai, “and fear you are here to slay me.”

Only then did I realize that I still held the weapon. I opened my fingers and let it drop to the carpet. Ogotai gestured to the guards and they sheathed their swords and left the tent.

The two of us were alone.

The High Khan seemed drained of all strength. His eyes focused on me, and I could see agony in them.

“Have you come to fulfill Ahriman’s prophecy?” he asked. “Have you come to kill me?”

“If I must.”

He almost smiled. “It is not fitting for a Mongol warrior to take his own life. But I have a devil inside my body, Orion. It burns inside me like a red-hot coal. It is killing me slowly, inch by inch.”

Cancer. That was why Ahriman was providing him with pain-killers. But not even Ahriman’s skills could cure cancer once it was so far advanced.

“My lord High Khan…”

“Orion, my friend. I cannot be struck down in battle. I am too old for that. I barely made it through the hunt. But you can strike me down. You can give me a clean death, instead of this lingering foulness.”

The breath caught in my throat. “How can I kill a man who calls me friend?”

“Death always wins, in the end. It took my father, did it not? It will take me. The only question is when… and how much pain there will be. I am not a coward, Orion—” he swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment — “but I have had my share of pain.”

I stood there by his bed, unable to move.

“You are a loyal friend,” Ogotai said. “You hesitate because you know that if you kill me, the prophecy of Ahriman will not come to pass: the Mongols will not rule the entire world.”

How could I tell him that this was why I had to murder him?

“I like your own prophecy better, Orion. Let the Mongols live in peace. Let other nations struggle and war against one another. As long as we find peace… and rest…”

His eyes squeezed shut again and his whole body arched on the bed like a man being tortured on the rack.

When he opened his eyes again, there were tears in them. “Not even Ahriman’s potion is — helping tonight. I weep like a woman.”

My hand slid to the empty sheath at my belt.

Ogotai’s breathing had become shallow, gasping. “It would not be good for the others to see me so weak. The High Khan should not appear with tears in his eyes.”

I remembered that among the Mongols it was forbidden to shed blood. I turned and took a pillow from the chair beside his bed.

Ogotai actually smiled at me. “Good-bye, my friend from the western lands.”

I covered his face with the pillow. By the time I lifted it from him, there were tears in my eyes.

I walked slowly out of the tent, past the guards who still stood at the entrance. The storm had blown away. Dawn was turning the sky pink. I strode back to the house, to the pony tethered beside it, mounted up and rode out of the city. Agla was still there in the wilderness, somewhere. Perhaps I could reach her before the Mongols realized what I had done.

For two days and nights I searched the grassy open plain, wondering if Agla had survived the storm, wondering if the Mongols would come hunting for me, wondering what Ahriman was doing to revenge himself for my thwarting his plan.

On the morning of the third day I saw a pony, head drooping, reins dragging on the grass, its saddle askew and empty. I had been walking my horse, but I quickly mounted up and dug my heels into its flanks. I galloped along, following the trail that Agla’s mount had left in the grass, my heart racing faster than the pony’s drumming hooves.

And then I saw a figure sprawled on the ground as if it had fallen from its horse or dropped with exhaustion. I bent over my pony’s neck and raced toward her.

But suddenly the world seemed to drop away from me. I was falling — falling in a crazy, wild, spinning tunnel — my arms and legs flailing against emptiness as a flashing kaleidoscope of vivid colors battered at my senses. Just as suddenly I was floating in utter darkness, disembodied in a black pit of weightless, timeless suspension.

“Agla!” I screamed. But there was no sound.

How long I hung suspended, bodiless in that dark void, I have no way of knowing. Slowly I began to realize that this was Ahriman’s doing, his revenge upon me for thwarting him: I was sentenced to an eternity of nothingness.

But then I saw a tiny spark of light, a distant star glimmering against the vast, indifferent emptiness, and my heart leaped. The star grew, shimmering, into a golden sphere and slowly took the shape of a glowing golden man.

Ormazd.

You have done well, Orion. I could not hear his words, for no sound existed in this blankness. But I understood what he was saying. This was his doing, not Ahriman’s. Ormazd had taken me away from Agla, whisked me out of time once I had completed his bidding. This was my reward for stopping Ahriman once again.

But your work is far from finished, he was telling me Ahriman still threatens the continuum. You have only deflected his evil; you have not ended it.

I felt myself falling again and heard wind whistling past me. I opened my mouth in a long primal scream of anger — anger directed not against Ahriman, my enemy, but against Ormazd, my creator.

Orion’s body floated lifelessly on nothingness in an infinite void. The Golden One appeared, shimmering into radiant human form, and began to examine his handiwork.

With senses that could discern the energy levels of individual atoms, the Golden One inspected the inert form floating before him. He nodded to himself, satisfied.

“He did not need to die this time.”

The Golden One did not bother to look up. “No. Yet he still resisted my summons.”

“He is learning to hate you.”

“He is learning that his own petty desires are sometimes in conflict with mine. And the one he hates is the godlike personage he knows as Ormazd. That is only a small part of me, as you well know.”

A silver gleaming lit the featureless expanse, and the one who called herself Anya appeared, clad in metallic silver from throat to foot, her dark hair tied severely back away from her face. Her silver-gray eyes looked first at the Golden One, as they must, and then focused on the body of Orion.

“He wanted to stay where he was,” she said.

“Yes. With you.”

“We were happy together.”

The Golden One made a gesture that might have been resignation, might have been pique. “He was not sent on this mission to be happy. He has a task to accomplish.”

“You send him to kill the Dark One; yet he does not have the strength to do so.”

“He will, eventually. He must.”

“You have not made him strong enough,” Anya insisted.

“No.” The Golden One shook his head. “It is you who are weakening him.”