The one who called himself Ormazd began to contradict her, but stopped before he uttered a word. He saw what she would say. She had allowed herself to be a human being, briefly, and she had felt what the rest of his creations felt.

With a sigh he took a different tack. "They believe that their gods are all-powerful, all-knowing. They blame me for their ills, for their own shortcomings."

"They also give you credit for being merciful," said Anya. "They want to believe that you love them."

He sighed again, more deeply, wearily. "They realize that they have been created for a purpose," she went on, "but they grope in darkness to discover what that purpose might be. They want want to serve you, but they don't know what you expect of them." to serve you, but they don't know what you expect of them."

Ormazd rose to his golden-booted feet. The radiance of his energy made the clouds glow.

"They served their purpose, ages ago. Now if the Hunter will accomplish his task..."

"Then you will have won it all," she said. "Then we will be safe."

"And then I can get rid of all of them, at last."

"You cannot eliminate them!"

He arched an eyebrow. "Cannot? I I cannot?" cannot?"

"Dare not," Anya corrected. "You know that our fate is inextricably linked to theirs. Creatures and creator, we all share the same continuum. If they they are eliminated, we will cease to exist also." are eliminated, we will cease to exist also."

"Surely you don't believe that."

"I know that it is true. Why would you have allowed them to remain, otherwise? You created them to defeat the Dark One. They did that ages ago...."

"Not completely. He still exists."

"Yes." She shuddered. "And as long as he does, you need the humans, don't you? As long as the Lord of Darkness still eludes you, the humans arc necessary. Your army of warriors. Your bodyguard. Your suicide squad."

"I created them to be warriors. I made them for that purpose."

"Yes, and did the job so well that when they have no one else to fight, they fight each other. They slaughter each other endlessly."

Ormazd shrugged carelessly. "Of what matter is that? There are billions of them now. They breed constantly. I built that that into them, too. I gave them pleasure to balance out their pain." into them, too. I gave them pleasure to balance out their pain."

"Again you speak of balance." Anya smiled bitterly. "I think you actually believe that you have been fair to them. Kind, even."

"They are only creatures. Toys, as you call them. I have no need to be kind or fair to them."

For long moments Anya said nothing, but her eyes showed that she was thinking furiously.

Ormazd reached out a golden-skinned hand toward her. Gently, he said, "There was no need for you to become one of them. I never meant for you to be as vulnerable as they are."

"But I did," she replied, as softly as he. "And now I can't forget it."

"My dearest one..."

"They're so... fragile," she said. "So full of hurt."

"They are very limited. You know that. I created them that way. I had to."

"Don't you feel any responsibility toward them?"

"Of course I do," he said.

"Do you know what they believe, some of them?" Before he could answer, she went on, "Some of their best philosophers believe that they created us. In their own dim, limited way, they are beginning to understand that we need them, that we cannot survive without them."

He gave a disgusted grunt. "Bah! Their philosophers have uttered every kind of wisdom and nonsense, in random order. They simply say everything that comes into their heads, and then call it intelligence."

"They are learning. And they try so hard, Ormazd! They create music, and paintings, and machines that will reach out to the stars."

"So much the better," he snapped. "That will make them more useful."

"But the knowledge they are gaining is bringing them great powers. They have weapons now that can wipe out the entire race."

"That will never happen," he said quickly.

"You are afraid it will."

"No. I will see to it that they do not kill themselves off completely."

"You built that aggressiveness into them. You made them a race of fighters, of killers."

Nodding, Ormazd admitted, "Of course. That is what I needed. Their aggressive nature is all-important."

"Even though it leads them to slaughter one another?"

"Even if they destroy their so-called civilization in nuclear war. So what? Some of them will survive. I will see to that. Their petty little civilizations have tumbled down before. The race survives. That's what is important."

"And the Dark One? I suppose, if you call yourself Ormazd, the God of Light, then he should be called Ahriman, the God of Darkness."

Ormazd bowed his head slightly, acknowledging her reasoning.

"Does he truly have the power to make an end of us?" she asked.

"He believes he does. He believes that if he can annihilate the humans, we will die along with them."

For the first time, Anya looked afraid. "Is that true? Can that happen?"

And for the first time, Ormazd appeared troubled. "I am not certain. The humans want to believe that they are the center of creation, the crux upon which the entire universe depends."

"Are you saying that they may be right?" she whispered.

"I don't know!" Ormazd shouted, his fists clenched in helpless anger. "How can anyone know? So much is hidden from us, so much is beyond our understanding!"

Strangely, Anya smiled. She stood before the gleaming, golden, angry God of Light, her smile widening until she threw her head back and laughed aloud.

"Then the humans are right! They don't need us. What have we given them except pain and grief?"

"I created them!"

"No, no, my would-be god. They created us. You may have molded them out of clay and breathed life into them, but you were doing it because they demanded it of you. They insisted on being created and you, and I, and all the would-be gods and goddesses are merely their servants."

"That's insane!" Ormazd insisted. "I created created them! To serve them! To serve me me!"

Anya's laughter filled the air like the tinkling of a silver bell. "And you blame them for insisting on strict causality! Yes, you created them. But they created you, too. Cause and effect, effect and cause. Which came first?"

Ormazd stood there, stunned into silence.

"Does it matter?" Anya asked. Without waiting for an answer, she said, "Their struggle is our struggle. If they die, we die. We must must help them. We have no choice." help them. We have no choice."

Ormazd finally regained his voice. "I have been helping them," he insisted.

"Yes, by creating warriors to do your fighting for you, while you remain here, safe from all the pain and turmoil, pulling strings like a puppeteer."

"What would you have me do, go to them and make myself human?"

"Yes!"

"Never."

"I have done it."

"And died for it. Felt their agony and fear. Experienced death, just as they do."

"Yes, and I will do it again. And again. As often as necessary."

"Why?"

"To help them. To help us us."

"You're mad."

"I love them, Ormazd."

He stared at her. "But they're only creatures!"

"Yes, but they're alive. Along with the pain and the grief and the frightening uncertainty of their lives, they also experience love and joy and kinship and adventure. They're alive alive, Ormazd! You made them better than you know. And I want to be one of them."

"Even though you'll have to experience death?"

"Even though I go through a hundred deaths. Or a thousand. Life is worth the price. Try it!"

"No." He took a step back away from her.

"You'll remain here while the rest of us struggle for the final victory?"

"I'll stay here," he said.

"The puppeteer." Her tone was mocking.

He drew himself to his full height. "The creator."

Anya laughed and, shimmering into a silver radiance, slowly faded from his view. He remained alone, suspended beyond space and time, wondering if the creatures he had made on that tiny world called Earth really bore the crux of the continuum on their shoulders.

Even the gods can weep, and as Ormazd stood there thinking about Earth and the strange convolutions that cause and effect can take, he began to feel very old and very much alone.

PART TWO: ASSASSIN.

CHAPTER 9.

I opened my eyes and found myself standing in the Middle of a flat, empty wasteland. The soil was sandy, with scrubby patches of grass scattered here and there. The sky was cloudless, although a pall of smoke rose far off on the horizon to my right, climbing into the clear blue sky and spreading its dirty fingers outward. Something was burning. Something the size of a city, judging from the huge bulk of the smoky cloud.

The sun burned hotly on my bare shoulders. I was wearing a short skirt and a pair of sandals, nothing more. Not for an instant did I marvel that I was still alive. I remembered dying in the fusion reactor. I knew that I had not survived that inferno. This was another life. I felt strong, totally in command of myself, although my knees trembled when I thought of what I had gone through during those last few seconds back in the twentieth century.

Back in the twentieth century? Somehow I was certain that I was in a different era, an earlier time. Ahriman had said that I was proceeding through time in reverse, back from The End to The War. Although I knew he was the Prince of Lies, somehow I believed him about that. in the twentieth century? Somehow I was certain that I was in a different era, an earlier time. Ahriman had said that I was proceeding through time in reverse, back from The End to The War. Although I knew he was the Prince of Lies, somehow I believed him about that.

Where was I? The desert scrubland all about me gave me no clue. The only sign of human activity was that immense pyre smoldering on the horizon. I started walking toward the tower of smoke, the hot sun at my back throwing a lengthening shadow before me as the weary hours wore on.

It was difficult to control my thirst. If I prevented myself from sweating, my internal body temperature climbed to the point where I grew dizzy and faint. But if I let my sweat glands do their job and cool me, my body began to dehydrate. To some extent I could draw moisture from the plasma in my blood and from water stored in the cells of my visceral organs, but that was a dangerous game that could lead to further, fatal dehydration. Like any ordinary human being caught in the merciless heat of the desert, I needed water. And more desperately with each passing hour.

Off to my left I saw birds circling high in the brazen sky. Vultures. Something, somebody, was either dead or dying off in that direction. Animal or human, whatever it was might have water-or its corpse might be a source of it. I am no less squeamish than the next man, but the desert squeezes the fastidiousness out of you. A man dying of thirst gives up pity before his own life.

The vultures circled lower as I stumbled over rocks as hot as newly baked bread. Both of us were scavengers in the merciless oven of the desert. Finally I saw what the birds had seen before me: a family of refugees, stretched out dead on the dusty soil; an overturned ox-cart a few yards away, with a vulture perched on the rim of its useless wheel and eying its prospective meal. The other birds were swooping in low, spreading their angel-shaped wings as they landed, making obscene sounds as they waddled slowly toward the corpses.

I picked up a fist-sized rock, despite its searing heat, and pegged it at the vulture on the wheel. It hit him on the head like a rifle bullet, killing him instantly. The other birds hardly seemed to notice, until I threw three more rocks at them, hitting two more of their number and finally alarming the rest enough to make them flap angrily into the air, stirring up the dust as they departed.

The birds of death hovered above me, waiting with the patience of certainty, as I staggered toward the bodies. They had not died of thirst. The man was riddled with wounds, most of them in his back. The blood had barely congealed. It looked as if he had been shot with arrows, which his killers had then pulled out so that they could be used again. His wife and two children all had their throats sliced open. The woman, who could not have been much more than twenty years old, was stripped almost naked.

Whatever they had been carrying in the cart had been taken away; it was completely empty. The oxen were gone too. I could see the tracks of the animals in the dusty soil. Whoever had overtaken this pitiful little family placed more value on the beasts of burden than the human beings. There was no water, no possession of any kind among the four corpses. And I found that, despite my earlier certainty, I could not assault their wretched bodies any further to drink their blood, even though my life depended on it.

I squinted up at the glaring sky and saw the vultures still circling, watching silently. I wished I had the tools and the strength to bury these strangers. But I had neither. The vultures won. I turned back toward the pillar of smoke, stumbling across the stony desert, and left the filthy birds to their feast. The day seemed to go on interminably, each moment hotter than the one before it. I walked for many hours, and still the smoke seemed no closer than it had been when I had first noticed it. Something deep inside my mind found the situation ludicrous enough to be almost funny. Certainly Ormazd had sent me here. Certainly something was going to happen at this time and place that could alter the entire history of the universe; Ahriman was going to make another attempt at tearing space-time apart and destroying the continuum. And just as certainly, it seemed, I was doomed to die ignominiously of thirst before I ever got close to the task that Ormazd had sent me here to perform.

And then I saw them.

Five-no, six-horsemen moving slowly across the scrubland ahead of me. Their ponies were lean and haggard, the riders themselves seemed equally wiry. They wore pointed metal helmets and carried long slim lances. Each of them also had a small, double-curved bow and a curved sword clinking at his side.

They saw me at almost the instant I spotted them, stopped their ponies for a moment, then nosed them in my direction. They approached slowly, not out of wariness, but because they knew that a half-naked, unarmed man on foot was not going to escape them.

As they approached, I saw that they were oriental, with the high cheekbones and flattened face of the true Asian. Their skin, what little of it showed outside their leather and metal armor, was a light brownish tone, almost like the color of cured tobacco. Their eyes were narrow, but not particularly slanted. Mongol warriors, I thought, or perhaps some of the earliest Turks to invade the Middle East from their original homeland in high Asia, near Lake Baykal.