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reaching, his baying, yowling cry the only sound I could hear over the simmering blaze of electricity.
Then a tremendous stroke of lightning shattered the world, engulfing Ahriman, turning him into a glowing
demon of pure energy, overflowing onto me, screaming along every nerve in my body until there was
nothing in the universe but pain.
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.
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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.
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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 tohim ?"
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."
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"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. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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