He was incapable of laughter, but I felt acid-hot amusement in his tone as he said, “I will send you a punishment that will make those pitiful wretches beg for death and the eternal fire. Even in your Paradise I will send you a punishment that will seek you out in the darkest night and make you scream for mercy. Not this night. Perhaps not for many nights to come. But soon enough.”
I was already screaming with the effort of trying to break free of his mental grasp. But my screams were silent, I did not have the power to voice them. I could not even sweat, despite bending every gram of my strength to battle against his hold over me.
“Do not bother to fight against me, human. Enjoy what little shreds of life you have remaining to you. I will destroy you all, including the woman you love, the self-styled goddess. She will die the most painful death of all.”
And suddenly I was screaming, roaring my lungs out. Sitting up on the mossy ground beneath the trees of Paradise as the sun rose on a new day, bellowing with terror and horror and the self-hate that comes from weakness.
Chapter 5
The others clustered around me, eyes wide, questioning.
“What is it, Orion?”
“Nothing,” I said. “A bad dream, nothing more.” But I was soaked with cold sweat, and had to consciously control my nerves to keep from trembling.
They asked me to relate the dream to them so they might interpret it. I told them I could not remember any of it and eventually they left me in peace.
But they were clearly unsettled. And Anya regarded me with probing eyes. She knew that it would take something much more than an ordinary nightmare to make me scream.
“Come on,” I said to them all. “We must move deeper into these woods, away from the grassland.” As far away from Set as possible, I meant, even though I did not say the words aloud.
Anya walked beside me. “Was it the Golden One?” she asked. “Or one of the other Creators?”
With a shake of my head I answered with one word: “Set.”
The color drained from her face.
For several days more we traveled through the forest, following the brook as it led to a wider stream that seemed to flow southward. The men all had spears now, and I was teaching them to fire-harden their points. I wanted to find a place where there was flint and quartz so we could begin making stone tools and weapons.
Birds flitted through the trees, bright flashes of color in the greenery. Insects buzzed a constant background hum. Squirrels and other furry little mammals scampered up tree trunks at our approach and then stopped, tails twitching, watching until we hiked past them. My sense of danger eased, my fear of Set’s lurking presence slowly diminished, as we moved deeper into this cool peaceful friendly forest.
It was peaceful and friendly by day. Night was a different matter. The world was different in the dark. Even with a sizable campfire to warm and light us the forest took on a menacing, ominous aspect in the darkness. Shadows flickered like living things. Hoots and moans floated through the misty gloom. Even the tree trunks themselves became black twisted forms reaching out to ensnare. Cold tendrils of fog hovered like ghosts just beyond the warmth of our fire, creeping closer as the flames weakened and died.
Our little band endured the dark frightening nights, sleeping fitfully, bothered by restless dreams and fears of things lurking in the shadows beyond our sight. We marched in the light of day when the forest was cheerful with the calls of birds and bright with mottled sunshine filtering through the tall trees. At night we huddled in fear of the unseeable.
At last we came to a line of high rugged cliffs where the stream—a fair-sized river now—had cut through solid stone. Following the narrow trail between the water’s edge and the cliff, we found a hollowed-out area, as if a huge semicircular chunk of stone had been scooped out of the cliff by a giant’s powerful hand.
I left Anya and the others by the river’s edge while I went in to explore this towering bowl of stone. Its curving walls rose high above me, layered in tiers of ocher, yellow, and the gray of granite. Pinnacles of rock rose like citadels on either side of the bowl, standing straight and high against the bright blue sky.
Through the screen of brush and young trees that covered the boulder-strewn floor of the little canyon I saw the dark eyes of caves up along the bowl’s curving wall. Water and woods near at hand, a good defensive location with a clear view of any approaching enemy.
“We will make this our camp,” I called back to the others, who were resting by the river’s edge.
“…this our camp,” came an echo rebounding from the bowl of rock.
They leaped to their feet, startled. Before I could go down to them they came rushing up to where I stood.
“We heard your voice twice,” said Noch, fearfully.
“It is an echo,” I said. “Listen.” Raising my voice, I called out my own name.
“Orion!” came the echo floating back to our ears.
“A god is in the rock!” Reeva said, her knees trembling.
“No, no,” I tried to assure them. “You try it. Shout out your name, Reeva.”
She clamped her lips tight. Staring down at her crusted toes, she shook her head in frightened refusal.
Anya called out. And then young Chron.
“It is a god,” said Noch. “Or maybe an evil demon.”
“It is neither,” I insisted. “Nothing but a natural echo. The sound bounces off the rock and returns to our ears.”
They could not accept a natural explanation, it was clear.
Finally I said, “Well, if it is a god, then it’s a friendly one who will help to protect us. No one will be able to move through this canyon without our hearing it.”
Reluctantly, they accepted my estimate of the situation. As we walked along the narrow trail that wound through the jutting boulders and trees toward the caves it was obvious that they were wary of this strange, spooky bowl of rock. Instead of being exasperated with their superstitious fears I felt almost glad that at last they were showing some spirit, some thinking of their own. They were doing as I told them, true enough, but they did not like it. They were no longer docile sheep following without question. They still followed, but at least they were asking questions.
Noch insisted on building a cairn at the base of the hollow to propitiate “the god who speaks.” I thought it was superstitious nonsense, but helped them pile up the little mound of stones nevertheless.
“You are testing us, Orion, aren’t you?” Noch said, puffing, as he lifted a stone to the top of the chest-high mound.
“Testing you?”
The other men were gathered around, watching, now that we had completed the primitive monument.
“You are a god yourself. Our god.”
I shook my head. “No. I am only a man.”
“No man could have slain the dragon that guarded us,” said Vorn, one of the older men. His dark beard showed streaks of silver, his head was balding.
“The dragon almost killed me. I needed Anya’s help, or it would have.”
“You are a full-grown man, yet you grow no beard,” Noch said, as if proving his point.
I shrugged. “My beard grows very slowly. That doesn’t make me a god, believe me.”
“You have brought us back to Paradise. Only a—”
“I am not a god,” I said firmly. “And you—all of you—brought yourselves back to Paradise. You walked here, just as I did. Nothing godly about that.”
“Still,” Noch insisted, “there are gods.”
I had no answer for that. I knew that there were men and women in the distant future who had godlike powers. And the corrupted egomania that accompanies such powers.