I answered, "You drove her away, Menalaos, with your brutal ways. She is willing to be your wife now, but only if you treat her with love and respect."

"You make demands of me?" he snapped, hefting his spear.

I sheathed my sword. Softly, I said, "Menalaos, we have faced each other in combat before..."

"The G.o.ds will not always favor you, Orion."

I took a quick glance at the intricate carvings on the temple walls. Sure enough, there was Osiris, and Aset-my Anya, I realized-and all the other G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of the Egyptian pantheon.

"Look at my likeness, Menalaos." I pointed to the portrait of Osiris. "And you, too, false priest of Ptah. See who truly faces you."

The three of them looked up to the carving of Osiris. I watched Menalaos's eyes widen, his mouth drop open.

"I am Osiris," I said, and I felt it to be the absolute truth. "The G.o.ds will always favor me, because I am one of them."

Helen was gaping, but Menalaos was goggle-eyed. Only Nekoptah saw through my words.

"It's not true!" he screamed. "It's a trick! There are no G.o.ds and there never have been. It's all a lie!"

I smiled at his twisted, enraged face. So in his heart of hearts Nekoptah had no belief at all. He was the worst kind of cynic.

"Helen," I said. "Menalaos is your husband, and no matter what has transpired between us, it is to him that you must now cling."

Nodding, she answered, "I understand, Orion... or should I call you Lord Osiris?"

She asked with a slight smile that made me wonder how much she believed me. No matter; she saw what I was trying to accomplish and she accepted it. We both knew we would never see each other again.

Ignoring her question, I turned to her husband. "And you, Menalaos. You have torn down the walls of Troy and searched half the world for this woman; she is yours now, won by the valor of your arms. Cherish her and protect her. Forget about the past."

Menalaos straightened to his full height and glanced at Helen almost boyishly.

"Fools!" spat Nekoptah. "I'll have you all slaughtered."

"Your troops will not raise their swords against a G.o.d, fat priest," I told him. "Whether you believe me or not, they do."

He knew that I intended to kill him. His tiny pig's eyes darted wildly back and forth as I stepped toward him.

Suddenly Nekoptah threw a fat arm around Helen's neck. A slim dagger appeared in his other hand, and he raised it to her face.

"She dies unless you do as I say!" he screeched.

He was too far away for me to reach him before he could slice her throat open the way he had killed his twin. Menalaos stood frozen beside them, his spear gripped in his right hand.

"Kill him!" Nekoptah commanded Menalaos. "Drive your spear through the dog's heart."

"I cannot kill a G.o.d."

"He's no more a G.o.d than you or I. Kill him, or she dies."

Menalaos turned toward me and lifted his spear. I stood unmoving. In Menalaos's eyes I saw confusion, fear, not hate or even anger. Nekoptah's face was a seething map of hatred, his eyes burning. Helen stared at her husband, then looked at me.

"Do what you must, Menalaos," I said. "Save your wife. I have died many times. A final death does not frighten me."

The Achaian king raised his long spear high above his head, then whirled and sank it into the fat neck of the priest. Nekoptah gave a strangled grunt; his body spasmed, the knife fell from his numbed fingers, and he released Helen as he clawed at the spear haft with his other hand.

His face contorted in a fierce frown, Menalaos yanked the spear from Nekoptah's neck and the fat priest collapsed in a heap on the stone floor of the temple, blood gushing over his huge body.

Throwing the spear to the floor, Menalaos reached for Helen. She fled to his arms gladly and rested her head against his chest.

"You saved me," she said. "You saved me from that horrible monster."

Menalaos smiled. In the flickering light from the wall lamps, it seemed to me that his swarthy face reddened slightly.

"You have done well," I said to him. "That took courage."

He ran a finger across his dark beard, a gesture that made him seem almost shy. "I am no stranger to battle, my lord. Many times I have seen what happens when a spear strikes a man's flesh. The body freezes with shock."

"You have rid this kingdom of its greatest danger. Take your wife and return to the capital. Serve Prince Aramset well. The burdens of the kingdom will be on his shoulders now. And one day he will be king in fact, as well as in duty."

His arm around Helen's shoulders, Menalaos started for the door. She turned to say a last good-bye to me.

"Orion, behind you!"

I wheeled and saw the bleeding Nekoptah on his feet, staggering, clutching Menalaos's long spear in both his hands. He lurched and drove its b.l.o.o.d.y point into my chest with all his weight behind it.

"Not... a G.o.d..." he gasped. Then he fell face down on the stone flooring, finally dead.

The shock of sudden pain flooded my brain with unwanted memories of other deaths, other agonies. I stood transfixed, the spear hanging from my chest. Every nerve in my body screamed excruciatingly. I felt my heart trying to pump blood, but it was torn apart by sharp bronze.

I sank to my knees and saw my own blood spilling to the floor. Helen and Menalaos stood frozen, staring in horror.

"Go," I told them. I meant it as a command. It came out as a whisper.

Helen took a step toward me.

"Go!" I made it stronger, but the effort sent waves of giddiness through me. "Leave me! Do as I say!"

Menalaos pulled her to him once more and they fled through the open doorway, into the night, toward the capital and a life together that I hoped would be bearable, perhaps even happy.

I sat heavily, all the strength gone from my body, leaning forward until the spear propped me from falling any farther, its b.u.t.t wedged against Nekoptah's obese corpse.

The final death, I thought.

"If I can't be with you in life, Anya, then I will join you in death," I said aloud.

I toppled over onto my back as the black shadows of death swirled and gathered about me.

Chapter 46.

I lay on my back, waiting for the final death, knowing that neither the Golden One nor any of the other Creators would revive me again. Nor would they revive Anya. They were glad to be rid of us both, I knew.

A wave of anger crested over the pain that throbbed through my body. I was accepting their victory over me, over her her, their victory over us. They were tenderly nursing the Golden One back to sanity so that they could continue their mastery over the human race and its ultimate destiny.

Memories of other lives, other deaths, flooded through me. I began to understand what they had done to me and, more important, how they had done it.

With the last ebbing bit of strength in me, I slowly reached up and clasped the spear imbedded in my chest. Bathed in cold sweat, I closed off the receptor cells that shrieked with pain, willed my body to ignore the agony flaming through me. Then, weakly, slowly, I pulled the spear out of me. The b.l.o.o.d.y barbs of its point tore great gouges of flesh, but that no longer mattered. I pulled it free and let it fall clattering to the stone floor.

The world was swimming giddily about me now, the very walls of the temple shimmering, their carvings shifting and undulating almost like living creatures in an intricate, eerie dance.

I propped myself up on my elbows and watched the walls, saw my own image and that of Anya facing each other, wavering, moving, fading from my sight.

The secret of time is that it flows like an ocean, in vast enormous currents and tides. Humans see time as a river, like the Nile, always moving linearly from here here to to there there. But time is a wide and beautiful sea that touches all sh.o.r.es. And in the many lives I had led, I had learned a little about navigating on that sea.

It takes energy to move across time. But the universe is filled with energy, drenched with the radiant bounty of uncounted stars. The Creators knew how to tap that energy, and my memories of their actions taught me how to tap it also.

The walls of Osiris's temple faded before my eyes, but did not disappear. The carvings melted away. The dancing, shimmering pictures slowly dissolved until the walls were blank and smooth, as if newly erected.

I rose to my feet. The wound in my chest was gone. That existed in another time, thousands of years away.

Through the open doorway I saw not the columned court of the main temple, but a lush garden where fruit trees bent their heavily laden branches to the gra.s.sy ground and flowers were opening their colorful petals to the first welcome rays of the morning sun.

The temple I was in was small, plain, virtually undecorated. A rough stone altar stood against one wall, with a single small statue atop it. It was the figure of a man with the head of a beast I could not recognize: a sharply curved beak, almost like a hawk's, but the rest of the face had no birdlike qualities to it.

No matter. I saw that there was another doorway in the opposite wall, and that it led into a smaller, inner shrine. It was dark in there, but I stepped through the doorway without hesitation.

Through the dim shadows I saw her lying on the altar, dressed in a long gown of silver. Her eyes were closed, her hands lay by her sides. She was not breathing, but I knew she was not dead. Merely waiting.

I looked up at the low ceiling, barely above my head. It was made of wooden beams covered with planks and sealed with pitch. I reached up and, sure enough, the section of roof just over the altar was hinged. I pushed it open and let the morning sun shine down on Anya's rec.u.mbent figure.

The silver of her robe gleamed like a thousand tiny stars. Color returned to her cheeks.

I stepped to the altar, leaned over her, and kissed her on the lips.

She felt warm and alive. Her arms twined around my neck and she sighed deeply and kissed me back. My eyes filled with tears and for many long minutes we said nothing at all, merely held each other so closely that neither time nor s.p.a.ce could separate us.

"I knew you would find me," Anya said at last, her voice low and warm and filled with love.

"They said you couldn't be revived. They told me you were gone forever."

"I was here. Waiting for you."

Anya sat up slowly, and then I helped her to stand. Her eyes held the depths of the universes in them. She smiled at me, the same radiant smile I remembered from so many other existences.

But as I held her in my arms, rejoicing, the memory of our death together sent a chill shudder through me.

"What is it, my love?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"The Golden One murdered you..."

Her face grew grave. "He is mad with jealousy of you, Orion."

"The other Creators have taken him. They're trying to cure his madness."

She looked at me with new respect. "And you helped to capture him, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"I thought so. They couldn't have done it without you, just as they couldn't have revived me without you."

"I don't understand," I said.

She touched my cheek with her soft, wonderful fingertips. "It will take time to teach you, my brave Orion, but you already know much more than you realize."

A new question rose in my mind. "Are you human now, or a... G.o.ddess?"

Anya laughed. "There are no G.o.ds or G.o.ddesses, Orion. You know that. We have much more knowledge than earlier human species. We have much more powerful capabilities."

Much more powerful than I, I thought.

As if she could read my mind, Anya said, "Your own powers are growing, Orion. You have learned much since the Golden One first sent you to the Ice Age to hunt down Ahriman. You are becoming one of us."

"Can you be killed?" I blurted.

She understood my fear. "Anyone can be killed, Orion. The entire continuum can be destroyed, and everything in it."

"Then there's no place for us to be at peace? No time when we can rest and live and love as ordinary human beings do?"

"No, my darling. Not even ordinary mortals have that luxury. The best we can hope for is to be together, to face the joys and dangers of each moment side by side, through all time, across all the universes."

I took her in my arms once more and felt not merely content, but supernally happy. "That will be good enough. To be with you, no matter what, is all I desire."

Epilogue.

WITH Anya beside me, I walked out of the ancient temple into the warming sunshine of the new day. All around us, a lush green garden grew: flowering shrubs and bountiful fruit trees as far as the eye could see.

Slowly we walked toward the river, the mighty Nile, flowing steadily through all the eons.