“I?”

“You make him realize how alone he is. You make him desire companionship, even love.”

Anya’s chin rose a stubborn inch. “Have you ever considered, while you are playing your game of infinities, that he makes me desire companionship… even love?”

“Nonsense! You cannot…”

“I did love him,” Anya confessed. “When I was in human form, living down there in those wretched tents, he was magnificent. I thought him a god, almost. I think he reminded me somewhat of you.”

The Golden One smiled. “Truly?”

“A god,” she went on, “a being of great strength, and great goodness. And…” she hesitated.

“And what?”

“Great need.” Anya’s voice suddenly became almost pleading. “Can’t you see how confused, how painful, it is for him? Cast into a strange time and place, commanded to do things that are impossible…”

“He succeeded in his task,” the Golden One said. “He has kept the continuum intact.”

“At what cost?”

“The cost does not matter, my dear. Only the goal is significant.”

“You would sacrifice him — you would sacrifice all of them — to save yourself.”

“And you,” the Golden One pointed out. “If I am saved, so are you and the others.”

“And so is he, the Dark One. He will be saved also.”

“No. He must be destroyed.”

“But you cannot destroy him without destroying us.”

“That is not true. I will destroy him. This creature that you dote on will do that for us.”

Anya looked down on Orion’s silent body. “You know he can’t achieve that. He is only a creation of yours. The Dark One has powers that he cannot match.”

“He will defeat the Dark One.”

“He can’t.”

“And I say he will! We have already stopped him twice. I will keep sending out this creature to defeat the Dark One, no matter how long it takes.”

“Haven’t you looked around you?” Anya demanded. “Haven’t you seen what’s happening? Are you so egotistical that you believe you actually are winning this contest?”

“I am winning,” the Golden One replied. “The continuum remains intact, despite the Dark One’s pitiful little schemes.”

Anya raised one hand, and the emptiness in which they stood was suddenly filled with vast swirls of stars, boiling cauldrons of gas that glowed pink and ultraviolet, whirlpools of galaxies sweeping out to infinity.

“Look!” she shouted over the rumble of the expanding, exploding universe. “See what is happening to the continuum.”

The Golden One followed her outstretched finger and saw stars collapsing in on themselves, titanic explosions that flung out seething gases and then sucked them back in to an insatiable vortex of energy until what was once a brilliant star became nothing more than a black hole in the fabric of space-time. He saw whole galaxies succumbing to the same forces, winking out of existence, dying even as he watched.

“Do you think you are winning?” Anya demanded. “While the continuum is dying, piece by piece?”

The Golden One snapped his fingers and the starry universe disappeared. Once again they were in the calm nothingness of the void.

“Do not be alarmed by side-effects, my dear,” he said. “The battle is taking place on Earth. Of all the planets of the continuum, of all the living intelligences in that universe, it is these creatures of Earth that hold the key to our struggle.”

“So you believe,” Anya said.

“What I believe is true,” answered the Golden One. “What I believe is the continuum.”

“For how long?” she taunted. “How long will you be able to maintain your control? He is defeating you, O mighty Ormazd. The forces of darkness are gobbling up the continuum, bit by bit.”

“That will all be reversed once the Dark One is destroyed.”

With a sad, unbelieving shake of her head, Anya said more softly, “So you will send him back again?”

Glancing at Orion’s waiting body, the Golden One replied, “Yes. It is necessary.”

“Then I will go also.”

“You are very foolish,” said the Golden One.

“And stubborn. I know.”

“You can’t actually want to be with this… this, creature. You can’t actually desire him.”

She smiled. “He reminds me of you, a little. But where you have arrogance and power, he has doubt — and courage.”

The Golden One turned his back on her, and abruptly disappeared. Orion’s body began to stir; his eyelids fluttered as his fingers clutched at emptiness.

Anya watched him. coming to life, and slowly she faded into nothingness. But as she dissolve the human form that she had taken, her luminous gray eyes never left the face of the creature she had known, the man she had loved.

My eyes opened and showed me a blue sky bright with sunshine and puffy white clouds. The memory of Karakorum, of Ogotai and the Mongols, faded from my mind like a distant, echoing song. All I could think of was Agla, the sound of her voice, the touch of her vibrantly warm skin, her beautiful face. “Ormazd,” I thought, “do you understand what suffering is? Do you know how cruel you are?”

Yet, even as I said those words to myself, I had the feeling that I would meet her again. Aretha, Agla, whatever her true name was — she was bound to me, and I to her, through all of time. No matter how many centuries separated us, we would find each other. I knew it with all my soul.

I realized that I was lying on my back. Sitting up, I surveyed my new location. It was a broad open meadow of cool grass that sloped gently down toward a distant river. Trees grew at the water’s edge, the first trees I had seen in a long while. The grass itself was long and wild and matted; no blade had ever cut it, from the looks of it. Wild flowers dotted the land with color. Rocks and boulders jutted here and there; no one had ever cleared them away. The trees by the river swayed in a warm wind; they rose up from a tangle of low foliage that hugged the river’s bank. There was no sign of civilization, no sign of human beings ever having been here.

A rabbit’s brown, lop-eared head popped up from the grass. It eyed me, nose twitching, as I sat there, then hopped up closer, well within arm’s reach. It had no fear of me at all. After a few moments of inspection, it bounded away and disappeared into the long grass once again.

I looked down at myself. My garments were a simple kilt made of hide and a leather vest. A braided belt around my waist held a small knife. I drew it from the belt and saw that it was made of a smooth stone handle and a blade of chipped flint, tied to the handle rather clumsily with what looked like dried pieces of vine.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I tried to puzzle out where and when I might be. Obviously I had been sent backward through time again. Ahriman had told me I was moving back toward The War, from the twentieth century to the thirteenth to the…

I looked down at the crude knife in my hand once more. I was in the Stone Age, apparently. This time Ormazd had flung me backward not mere centuries; I had traveled back ten thousand years or more.

From the tortured hell of a blazing nuclear fury to the barbaric splendor of the capital of the Mongol empire, and now to this. A calm, grassy meadow on a sweet, sunlit morning. An Eden where humans were so rare that animals did not fear them. Civilization had not yet begun. Not even the first villages had been started. The pyramids of Egypt were a hundred centuries or more in the future. Glacial ice sheets still covered much ofEurope, retreating grudgingly as the Ice Age gave way to a warmer climate.

Here it was springtime. Flowers bloomed everywhere. Insects buzzed and scurried through the grass. Birds swooped and sang overhead. I must be far south of the ice, I reasoned, or in a region where the glaciers had never penetrated.