“You make demands of me?” he snapped, hefting his spear.
I sheathed my sword. Softly, I said, “Menalaos, we have faced each other in combat before…”
“The gods will not always favor you, Orion.”
I took a quick glance at the intricate carvings on the temple walls. Sure enough, there was Osiris, and Aset — my Anya, I realized — and all the other gods and goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon.
“Look at my likeness, Menalaos.” I pointed to the portrait of Osiris. “And you, too, false priest of Ptah. See who truly faces you.”
The three of them looked up to the carving of Osiris. I watched Menalaos’s eyes widen, his mouth drop open.
“I am Osiris,” I said, and I felt it to be the absolute truth. “The gods will always favor me, because I am one of them.”
Helen was gaping, but Menalaos was goggle-eyed. Only Nekoptah saw through my words.
“It’s not true!” he screamed. “It’s a trick! There are no gods and there never have been. It’s all a lie!”
I smiled at his twisted, enraged face. So in his heart of hearts Nekoptah had no belief at all. He was the worst kind of cynic.
“Helen,” I said. “Menalaos is your husband, and no matter what has transpired between us, it is to him that you must now cling.”
Nodding, she answered, “I understand, Orion… or should I call you Lord Osiris?”
She asked with a slight smile that made me wonder how much she believed me. No matter; she saw what I was trying to accomplish and she accepted it. We both knew we would never see each other again.
Ignoring her question, I turned to her husband. “And you, Menalaos. You have torn down the walls of Troy and searched half the world for this woman; she is yours now, won by the valor of your arms. Cherish her and protect her. Forget about the past.”
Menalaos straightened to his full height and glanced at Helen almost boyishly.
“Fools!” spat Nekoptah. “I’ll have you all slaughtered.”
“Your troops will not raise their swords against a god, fat priest,” I told him. “Whether you believe me or not, they do.”
He knew that I intended to kill him. His tiny pig’s eyes darted wildly back and forth as I stepped toward him.
Suddenly Nekoptah threw a fat arm around Helen’s neck. A slim dagger appeared in his other hand, and he raised it to her face.
“She dies unless you do as I say!” he screeched.
He was too far away for me to reach him before he could slice her throat open the way he had killed his twin. Menalaos stood frozen beside them, his spear gripped in his right hand.
“Kill him!” Nekoptah commanded Menalaos. “Drive your spear through the dog’s heart.”
“I cannot kill a god.”
“He’s no more a god than you or I. Kill him, or she dies.”
Menalaos turned toward me and lifted his spear. I stood unmoving. In Menalaos’s eyes I saw confusion, fear, not hate or even anger. Nekoptah’s face was a seething map of hatred, his eyes burning. Helen stared at her husband, then looked at me.
“Do what you must, Menalaos,” I said. “Save your wife. I have died many times. A final death does not frighten me.”
The Achaian king raised his long spear high above his head, then whirled and sank it into the fat neck of the priest. Nekoptah gave a strangled grunt; his body spasmed, the knife fell from his numbed fingers, and he released Helen as he clawed at the spear haft with his other hand.
His face contorted in a fierce frown, Menalaos yanked the spear from Nekoptah’s neck and the fat priest collapsed in a heap on the stone floor of the temple, blood gushing over his huge body.
Throwing the spear to the floor, Menalaos reached for Helen. She fled to his arms gladly and rested her head against his chest.
“You saved me,” she said. “You saved me from that horrible monster.”
Menalaos smiled. In the flickering light from the wall lamps, it seemed to me that his swarthy face reddened slightly.
“You have done well,” I said to him. “That took courage.”
He ran a finger across his dark beard, a gesture that made him seem almost shy. “I am no stranger to battle, my lord. Many times I have seen what happens when a spear strikes a man’s flesh. The body freezes with shock.”
“You have rid this kingdom of its greatest danger. Take your wife and return to the capital. Serve Prince Aramset well. The burdens of the kingdom will be on his shoulders now. And one day he will be king in fact, as well as in duty.”
His arm around Helen’s shoulders, Menalaos started for the door. She turned to say a last good-bye to me.
“Orion, behind you!”
I wheeled and saw the bleeding Nekoptah on his feet, staggering, clutching Menalaos’s long spear in both his hands. He lurched and drove its bloody point into my chest with all his weight behind it.
“Not… a god…” he gasped. Then he fell face down on the stone flooring, finally dead.
The shock of sudden pain flooded my brain with unwanted memories of other deaths, other agonies. I stood transfixed, the spear hanging from my chest. Every nerve in my body screamed excruciatingly. I felt my heart trying to pump blood, but it was torn apart by sharp bronze.
I sank to my knees and saw my own blood spilling to the floor. Helen and Menalaos stood frozen, staring in horror.
“Go,” I told them. I meant it as a command. It came out as a whisper.
Helen took a step toward me.
“Go!” I made it stronger, but the effort sent waves of giddiness through me. “Leave me! Do as I say!”
Menalaos pulled her to him once more and they fled through the open doorway, into the night, toward the capital and a life together that I hoped would be bearable, perhaps even happy.
I sat heavily, all the strength gone from my body, leaning forward until the spear propped me from falling any farther, its butt wedged against Nekoptah’s obese corpse.
The final death, I thought.
“If I can’t be with you in life, Anya, then I will join you in death,” I said aloud.
I toppled over onto my back as the black shadows of death swirled and gathered about me.
Chapter 46
I lay on my back, waiting for the final death, knowing that neither the Golden One nor any of the other Creators would revive me again. Nor would they revive Anya. They were glad to be rid of us both, I knew.
A wave of anger crested over the pain that throbbed through my body. I was accepting their victory over me, over her, their victory over us. They were tenderly nursing the Golden One back to sanity so that they could continue their mastery over the human race and its ultimate destiny.
Memories of other lives, other deaths, flooded through me. I began to understand what they had done to me and, more important, how they had done it.
With the last ebbing bit of strength in me, I slowly reached up and clasped the spear imbedded in my chest. Bathed in cold sweat, I closed off the receptor cells that shrieked with pain, willed my body to ignore the agony flaming through me. Then, weakly, slowly, I pulled the spear out of me. The bloody barbs of its point tore great gouges of flesh, but that no longer mattered. I pulled it free and let it fall clattering to the stone floor.
The world was swimming giddily about me now, the very walls of the temple shimmering, their carvings shifting and undulating almost like living creatures in an intricate, eerie dance.
I propped myself up on my elbows and watched the walls, saw my own image and that of Anya facing each other, wavering, moving, fading from my sight.
The secret of time is that it flows like an ocean, in vast enormous currents and tides. Humans see time as a river, like the Nile, always moving linearly from here to there. But time is a wide and beautiful sea that touches all shores. And in the many lives I had led, I had learned a little about navigating on that sea.