His jaw dropped open. Reeva, suspicious, asked, “Why would you do that for us?”
I made a small smile for her. “I don’t want that little boy to grow up in slavery. I don’t want any human being to be the slave of that inhuman monster.”
I camped with them that night. It was clear that they were afraid of me, thoroughly mystified about my motives in allowing them to live and trying to battle against the seemingly all-powerful Set. The baby’s name, they told me eventually, was Kaan.
As I had feared, Set was methodically, determinedly wiping out every tribe of humans he could find. Shamefaced, stammering, Kraal told me that at first Set’s minions treated them well as he and Reeva helped the demons to round up entire villages of people and march them off into slavery. Chiron, Vora, and all the others I had known had been taken away in that manner.
“But when the red star began to flash and shake in the sky, Set became very angry. His demons started to slaughter whole villages and burn them to the ground. At last they surrounded our village with dragons and killed almost everyone. Then they burned the village and took us away with them into slavery.”
I nodded in the evening shadows. “And you tried to escape.”
“Reeva ran away from them and I followed her,” Kraal told me. “We ran as fast as we could but still one of the devils found us with his dragon. And then you appeared, like a god, to save us.”
Through all this Reeva said nothing, though I could feel her eyes on me.
“Set is evil,” I said to Kraal. “He intends to kill every one of us. Some he will use as slaves, but death is the final reward he has waiting for us all.”
“You intend to fight him?” Kraal asked.
“Yes.”
“Alone?” asked Reeva. The tone of her question made me realize that she feared I would force them to help me.
“Alone,” I replied.
“And the priestess? Anya? Where is she? Will she not help you?”
“No, she can’t help me,” I said. “I must face Set by myself.”
“Then he will kill you,” Reeva said, matter-of-factly. “He will kill us all.”
“Perhaps,” I admitted. “But not without a battle.”
In the morning I wished them well, told them to live as best as they could.
“Someday,” I said, “when young Kaan is big enough to walk and speak, when the new baby you are carrying is weaned, you will meet other people like yourselves and know that Set has been destroyed. Then you will at last be free.”
“What if Set kills you, instead?” Reeva asked.
“Then one day much sooner his demons and dragons will find you and kill you.”
I left them with that fearful thought and started off again toward the northeast.
Day after day I walked alone through the forest of Paradise toward my rendezvous with Set. I passed the hollowed rock cliff where I had invented the god who speaks. I passed two other villages, as burned and dead as Kraal’s. I saw no other human being anywhere in Paradise.
Set’s demons had visited all the villages, burning and killing, carrying off a few people to serve as slaves, slaughtering all the rest. He was wiping this world clean of humanity, except for a few slaves. He was making the Earth the home of his own reptilian kind.
I reached the edge of the forest at last and looked out from between the trees to the broad undulating plain of grass that stood between me and Set’s fortress.
Pterosaurs glided through the sunny sky high above. On the horizon I saw the lumpy dark shape of a sauropod. Set had his scouts out looking for me. He knew I was coming after him and he was waiting for me, alert and ready.
I sat myself on the ground, my back against the rough bark of a massive maple, thinking hard about my next move.
It was lunacy to try to reach Set’s fortress by myself, armed with nothing more than a wooden spear and a few stone implements. I had to have help. That meant that I had to return to the Creators.