CHAPTER 27
Dal was not happy with us when Ava and I returned from our long walk. And he grew increasingly unhappy over the next few days as the two of us spent more and more time together.
At night I took Ava away from the lights of the clan’s fires—each family had its own small cooking fire in front of its hut now, instead of one single campfire. Off in the darkness I showed her the stars and began to teach her how the constellations formed a vast celestial clock and calendar.
She grasped the concept quickly, and even noted, after a few nights, that at least one of the stars seemed to have moved slightly out of place.
“That’s Mars,” I told her. “It is not a star like all the others you see. It is a world, something like our own world here, but incredibly far away.”
“It is red, like blood,” Ava murmured in the darkness.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Its soil is red sand. Even its sky is pink with reddish dust, almost the color of your hair.”
“The people there must be angry and warlike,” she said, “to have made their whole world the color of blood.”
My heart sank at the thought that I was helping to invent astrology. But I consoled myself with the notion that such ideas did not occur only once, in a single time and place. Concepts as obvious as astrology would be invented time and again, no matter how ludicrously wrong they may be.
That night we stayed up until dawn, watching the stars wheel across heaven in their majestic cosmic clockwork. And when Venus arose, the Morning Star shining as brilliantly beautiful as anything human eyes could ever see, I heard Ava’s sigh of pleasure in the predawn darkness.
I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her. But she must have sensed what was in my mind, and she moved slightly away from me.
“I am Dal’s woman,” she whispered. “I wish it was not true, but it is.”
I wanted to tell her that I loved her, but with a shock I realized there was no word for such a concept in their language. Romance was yet to be invented. She was Dal’s woman, and women did not change mates in this early era.
We walked back to the huts and the embers of the cook fires. Dal sat on the ground in front of his hut, looking miserable, angry, worried and sleepy, all at the same time. He scrambled to his feet when he saw us, and Ava smiled at him and took his arm. They ducked through the low entrance to their hut without either of them saying a word to me.
I stood there alone for a few moments more, then turned and went off to my own dugout, which Dal had insisted the clan build for me—a good hundred yards away from the nearest hut of a clan family.
When I stepped down to the entrance and ducked through it into the shadowy interior of the single room, I immediately sensed that someone else was already inside. Dawn was just beginning to tint the eastern sky, and there were no windows in the hut—nothing but the open doorway to let in light or air. But I knew that I was not alone in the inky shadows of the dugout. I could feel a presence, dark and menacing. I could hear a slow, deep, labored breathing.
“Ahriman,” I whispered.
Something moved slightly in the darkest corner of the room. My hand went to the stone knife at my waist. A silly, useless gesture, I knew, but my hand moved of its own accord.
“You expected me to be here, didn’t you?” His harsh, tortured voice sent a chill along my spine.
Stepping to one side of the doorway, so that I would not be silhouetted against the growing light outside, I replied, “You’ve been trailing us for many weeks.”
“Yes.”
I could barely make out his form, bulking darkly in the shadows. “You plan to bring harm to these people?” I probed.
He moved slightly. “What harm can I do? I am only one man, against your entire race…”