Then, with a sudden startling chill, I realized that every picture showed a sun in the sky that was deep red, not yellow, and so big that it often covered a quarter of the sky. There were even a few scenes in which a second sun appeared, small and yellow and distant.
These were pictures of a world that was not Earth. The red star they showed was the darkly crimson star that I had seen night after night, the evil-looking blood red star that was so bright I could see it in broad daylight, the star that was hovering above the castle even at this very moment.
I was about to tell Anya, but our guards stopped us at an ornately carved door, so huge that a dozen men could have marched through it at once. I reached out to touch it. It looked like dark wood, ebony perhaps, but it felt like cold lifeless plastic. Strange, I thought, that it can feel cold in such an overheated atmosphere.
The door split in two and swung open silently, smoothly. Without being told or prodded, Anya and I automatically stepped into an immense high-vaulted chamber. Juno trotted between us.
Using my own vision once more, I could barely see the top of the ribbed, steeply arched ceiling. The lighting was dim, the air oppressively hot, like standing in front of an open oven on a midsummer’s afternoon.
Set reclined on a backless couch atop a platform raised three high steps above the floor. There were no statues of him here, no human slaves to worship him and try to placate him. Instead, rows of dully burning torches flanked Set’s throne on either side, their flames licking slowly against the gloom, seeming to shed darkness rather than light.
We walked slowly toward that jet black throne and the devilish figure sitting upon it. Anya’s face was grim, her lips pressed into a tight bloodless line, her fists clenched at her sides. The welts of the ropes that had bound her showed angry purple against her alabaster skin.
Once again I felt the fury and implacable hatred that cascaded from Set like molten lava pouring down the cone of an erupting volcano. And once again I felt the answering fury and hatred in my own soul, burning inside me, rising to a crescendo as we approached his throne. Here was evil incarnate, the eternal enemy, and my unalterable task was to strike him down and kill him.
And once again I felt Set take control of my body, force me to stop a half-dozen paces before his dais, paralyze my limbs so that I could not leap upon him and tear the heart from his chest.
Anya stood beside me as tensely as I. She felt Set’s smothering mental embrace, too, and was struggling to break through it. Perhaps the two of us, working in unison, could overcome his fiendish power. Perhaps I could distract him in some way. Even if only momentarily, a moment might be enough.
“You are more resourceful than I had thought,” his voice seethed in my mind.
“And more knowledgeable,” I snapped.
His slitted red eyes glittered at me. “More knowledgeable? How so?”
“I know that you are not of this Earth. You come from the world that circles the red star, the planet that Kraal called the Punisher.”
His pointed chin dropped a centimeter toward his massive scaled chest. It might have been a nod of acknowledgment, or merely an unconscious gesture as he thought over my words.
“The star is called Sheol,” he replied mentally. “And my world is its only planet, Shaydan.”
“In my original time,” I said, “there is only one sun in the sky, and your star does not exist.”
Now Set did nod. “I know, my apish enemy. But your original time, your entire continuum, will be destroyed soon enough. You and your kind will disappear. Sheol and Shaydan will be saved.”
Anya spoke. “They have already been destroyed. What you hope to achieve is beyond hope. You have been defeated, you simply don’t understand it yet.”
Set’s lipless mouth pulled back to reveal his pointed teeth. “Don’t try to play your games with me, Creatress. I know full well that the continuums are not linear. There is a nexus here at this point in spacetime. I am here to see that you and your kind are swept away.”