My sleep was becoming more uneasy each night, more restless. I did not really dream; at least, I remembered nothing in the morning except vague stirrings, blurred images, as if seen through a rain-streaked window. I did not visit the Creators’ domain, nor was I visited by Hera or any of the others. Yet my sleep was disturbed, as if I sensed a threat lurking in the darkness nearby.
We posted guards, even when we camped with caravans that had their own troops with them. I took my share of guard duty. I needed little sleep, and I especially liked to be up to watch the dawn rising. Whether in the cold and windswept mountains or out on the bare baking desert, it pleased me deep in my soul to watch the stars slowly fade away and see the sky turn milky gray, then delicate gossamer pink, and finally to see the sun rise, huge and powerful and too bright to look at directly.
“They worship me,” I remembered the Golden One saying, “in the form of the sun. I am Aten, the sun-god, the giver of life, the Creator of humankind.”
I had given up all hope of reaching Anya, the goddess whom I loved. Those troubling half dreams tormented my sleep, dim indistinct visions blurring my unconscious mind, stirring forgotten memories within me. I wondered if I could ever achieve the state of desirelessness that Ketu promised would bring me the blessed oblivion of Nirvana. The thought of getting off this endless wheel of suffering, of putting a final end to life, appealed to me more and more.
And then one night she came to me.
It was no dream. I was translated to a different place, a different time. It was not even Earth, but a strange world of molten, bubbling lava and stars crowding the sky so thickly that there was no night. It was like being inside an infinitely-faceted jewel—with boiling lava at your feet.
Somehow I hung suspended above the molten rock. I felt no heat. And when I put out my arms, they were blocked by an invisible web of energy.
Then Anya appeared before me, in a glittering uniform of silver mesh, its high collar buttoned at her throat, polished silver boots halfway up her calves. Like me, she hovered unharmed above the roiling sea of seething lava.
“Orion,” she said, urgency in her voice, “everything is changing very rapidly. I only have a few moments.”
I gazed on her incredibly beautiful face the way a man dying of thirst in the desert must look at a spring of clear, fresh water.
“Where are we?” I asked. “Why can’t I be with you?”
“The continuum is in danger of being totally disrupted. The forces arrayed against us are gaining strength with every microsecond.”
“How can I help? What can I do?”
“You must help Hera! Do you understand? It’s imperative that you help Hera!”
“But she wants to kill Philip,” I protested.
“There’s no time for argument, Orion. No time for discussion. Hera has a crucial role to play and she needs you to help her!”
I had never seen Anya look so pained, so wide-eyed with fright.
“You must!” she repeated.
“When can we be together?” I asked.
“Orion, I can’t bargain with you! You must do as you are commanded!”
I looked deep into Anya’s gray eyes. They had always been so calm before, so wise and soothing. Now they were close to panic.
And they were not gray, but yellow as a snake’s.
“Stop this masquerade,” I said.
Anya stared at me, open-mouthed. Then her face shifted, flowed like the boiling lava below me, and turned into Hera’s laughing features.
“Very good, Orion! Very perceptive of you!”
“You are a witch,” I said. “A demon sorceress.”
Her laughter was cold, brittle. “If you could have seen the expression on your face when you thought your precious Anya had deigned to appear to you!”
“Then all of this is an illusion, isn’t it?”
The seething ocean of magma disappeared. The jewel cluster of stars winked out. We were standing on a barren plain in Anatolia in the dark of a moonless night. I could see my camp, where Ketu and the soldiers slept. Two guards shuffled near the dying fire, their cloaks pulled tight around them. But they did not see us.