Orion in the Dying Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

died slowly into embers I gazed down on her face, smudged and stained with grease from our pork dinner. Her hair was tangled and stubborn ringlets fell over her forehead. Despite her best efforts she was no longer the smoothly groomed goddess from a far superior culture. I remembered vaguely another existence, with that other hunting tribe, where she had become one of them, a fierce priestess who reveled in the blood and excitement of the hunt.
    It would not be so bad to stay in this time, I thought. Being cut off from the other Creators had its compensations. We were free of their schemes and machinations. Free of the responsibilities they had loaded upon me. Anya and I could live here in this Paradise quite happily like two normal human beings; no longer goddess and creature, but simply a man and a woman living out normal lives in a simple, primitive time.
    To live a normal life, free of the Creators. I smiled to myself in the darkness, and for the first time since we had arrived in this time and place, I let myself fall completely and unguardedly into a deep delicious sleep.
    But with sleep came a dream. No, not a dream: a message. A warning.
    I saw the statue of Set from that little stone temple back along the bank of the Nile. As I watched, the statue shimmered and came to life. The blank granite eyes turned carnelian, blinked slowly, then focused upon me. The scaly head turned and lowered slightly. A wave of utterly dry heat seemed to bake the strength from my body; it was as if the door to a giant furnace had suddenly swung open. The acrid smell of sulfur burned my lungs. Set's mouth opened in a hissing intake of breath, revealing several rows of sharply pointed teeth.
    He was an overpowering presence. He loomed over me, standing on two legs that ended in clawed feet. His long tail flicked back and forth slowly as he regarded me the way a powerful predator might regard a particularly helpless and stupid victim.
    "You are Orion."
    He did not speak the words; I heard them in my mind. The voice seethed with malevolence, with an evil so deep and complete that my knees went weak.
    "I am Set, master of this world. You have been sent to destroy me. Abandon all hope, foolish man. That is manifestly impossible."
    I could not speak, could not even move. It had been the same when I had first been created by the Golden One. His presence had also paralyzed me. He had built such a reaction into my brain. Yet even so, I had learned to overcome it, somewhat. Now this monstrous apparition of evil held me in thrall even more completely than the Golden One ever had. I knew, with utter certainty, that Set could still my breath with a glance, could make my heart stop with a blink of his burning red eyes.
    "Your Creators fear me, and justly so. I will destroy them and all their works utterly, beginning with you."
    I struggled to move, to say something back to him, but I could not control any part of my body.
    "You think you have struck a blow against me by killing one of my creatures and stealing a miserable band of slaves from my garden."
    The terror that Set struck in me went beyond reason, beyond sanity. I realized that I was gazing upon the human race's primal fear, the image that would one day be called Satan.
    "You think that you are safe from my punishment now that you have reached your so-called Paradise," Set went on, his words burning themselves into my mind.
    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