Her hand held in his, Baalat followed Horus along a golden corridor past doors of wood, stone, gold, silver--no two the same.

"The Hall of Eternities," Horus said. "Each door leads to a different universe, it is how he moves between them."

"How do you know?" Baalat asked, intrigued.

"He gave me the tour while we waited for you," Horus smiled, pointing at a plain wooden door. "He allowed me a look inside this one. A failed desert world. In the distance, ruined pyramids and obelisks, half buried in sand, the sky black, dead, no stars. Marduk was there, alone, imprisoned within a sarcophagus."

"So he exists in the other worlds, too," Baalat said, soft.

"In every world," Horus said reaching the end of the corridor and leading her up a flight of golden stairs. They stopped before a pair of closed doors, carved in starlight. "Wait until you see this." He opened the doors with a flourish.

She stepped through, and caught her breath, transfixed. They stood upon the edge of a vast platform, a disk, with only the shimmering doors behind them. Around and above them, a multitude of planets and stars wheeled past, stately, breathtaking, the spaces between clad in drifting streamers of yellow, red, blue, and green. The surface of the disk sparkled, glittering with the light of a million stars.

Her consort led her across the expanse toward a hulking mass in the disk's center. Baalat stared at it, stunned by its complexity--the size of it at least as great as their residence in the Immortal Realm--a vast game board filled with alternating colors of squares spread out over miniature hills, islands, mountains, deserts, forests and seas. It towered over them as they approached, more than twenty levels high, buttressed by observation platforms weaving throughout the spaces between the sections. On each of the spaces, tiny versions of people, gods, even animals: horses, lions, cats, dogs, and in the seas, great fish, the size of boats. All of them alive, breathing.

"What is it?" she breathed, rapt.

"A game," a voice, resonant, reeking of eternity, said. "Of a kind."

She turned and blinked, astonished. "You were there," she said, wondrous, "at the portal, in the ship with us."

"I was," he smiled, the skin around his eyes wrinkling. "Although," he said gesturing at himself, "this is nothing more than a costume." He eyed the game board, watching as several pieces moved. A look of disappointment flickered in his eyes. He waved his hand and the board disappeared, replaced by another one, its dimensions the same but arranged differently. "Sometimes I leave for a little while, just to be among you, to watch. A little adventure now and again is good for the constitution." He pointed at the board resolving before them, almost entirely empty apart from a cluster of immortals and gods standing within the center square of the lowest level. At its furthest edge, across a vast sea, three others gathered, two immortals, glowing white, the other, a god, the glow of gold outlining his body. Dotted along the other edges, groups of mortals, outlined in blue, far distant from each other, separated by seas, mountains and deserts.

"I departed the ship while it transited to this world," he said, eyeing the ones clustered in the middle of the board. "I find it is best to leave when no one is looking. They will forget me soon enough."

Baalat leaned forward. One of the gods in the center had starlight cascading down her hair. She caught her breath. "Is that--"

"You?" the Creator finished. He pursed his lips, the wrinkles around them deepening. "Hmm. Yes, and no." He turned and gestured for them to follow. "Come. Walk with me."

She fell into step beside him and followed him back to the shining doors, the light of the stars underfoot brightening as he passed over them.

"Each of you share a thread of my light," he said. "All gods do. It is what enhances you, makes you what you are. But," he lifted a finger when Horus opened his mouth to speak, "neither of you are the first of your kind: not you, Baalat, of healing, or you, Horus, of war. You are their seven-hundred-sixty-eight thousandth, four-hundred and forty-fourth incarnations."

"We were mortal?" Horus asked, astonished.

"Once, very much so," the Creator answered, smiling, glancing up at the heavens as a blue, ringed planet sailed over them.

"But how can we not remember?" Horus wondered.

"Your mortal memories fade. It is why you cannot remember coming to life as a god."

"So another gave her light to me, just as I have done to Istara?" Baalat asked, filled with awe.

"Each time the circumstances are different, but yes." They reached the doors, closed again. The Creator paused. A shimmering of starlight washed over his fading, once-mortal features. "However, your journey has been the most interesting to watch by far. I must say I have become rather invested in the four of you, and perhaps I might have helped you a little along the way."

"The ravine," Horus breathed. "We would have died without you."

The Creator smiled, serene. "But you didn't." He opened the doors and went down the stairs, stars trailing in his wake. "Now you face a choice. Because you have pleased me so much, you may return to a world of your liking and live again as mortals, or--" he paused, glancing over his shoulder, eyeing them, one at a time, "--you can return to me, and become one with my light."

Baalat read the question in Horus's eyes. She looked back up the stairs, toward the board they had just left.

"Any world?" Horus asked.

"Any one."

"And we will arrive as ourselves, not as babes?" Horus clarified, cautious.

"However you wish it to be, it shall be done."

"My love?" Horus turned to face her. "Are you willing to face the pain of mortality again?"

"Yes, oh yes," Baalat breathed. "To be with you, anything."

"We will go back," Horus said, his eyes dark, holding Baalat's, "to the world where Sethi and Istara went."

The Creator nodded, his eyes warm with approval. "Just as I had hoped." He led them to a door, one made of the clearest crystal. "They are going to need all the help they can get." He touched the surface and the door slid into the wall.

Sunlight poured through the opening, warm, gentle, beckoning. At the door's threshold, the white sand of a beach. Baalat bent down and picked up a pink and white conch shell resting against the jamb's edge, no bigger than the size of her palm, its interior smooth, perfect. Further down, broken by the cries of the sea birds, soft waves lapped against the wet sand, thick with the scent of seaweed and brine. In the distance, perched upon an outcropping of rock, a city gleamed, gold and white, its thin towers soaring up to the blue sky, elegant, perfect, just like the cities of men Baalat remembered from the Golden Age.

The Creator stepped back and folded his hands in front of him. He tilted his head at the world waiting for them. "Whenever you are ready."

Horus looked at Baalat. "Shall we?" He held out his hand, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips.

Her heart trembling, she took his hand and ran with him across the sand, euphoric, into the sea, the warm, salty waters making her gown cling to her skin. Horus caught her to him, holding her steady as the waves buffeted them, kissing her, the glint of his tears catching in the sun's light.

"It's not over," Baalat wept, her heart aching with joy. They still had time to live. To love.

Horus turned and they looked back. The Creator watched them through the impossible door, no longer an old man but another, made of starlight. He smiled, soft, and the door slid closed, the space replaced by white sand and a brilliant blue sky--as though it had never been.

❃

Alone in her apartment, Tanu-Hepa unrolled the letter from Hattusilis, her eyes moving over his words, long memorized. Hatti lay in ruins. With his own blade the usurper king had killed his queen, believing Rhoha to be the cause of Hatti's destruction. It hadn't helped. Tarhuntassa had vanished, along with the mountains, a great chasm left in its wake. He begged Tanu-Hepa to return to Hattusa and take up the mantle of Hatti's high priestess, to reign beside him, a sister-queen, the true Tawananna; to help him rebuild.

Tanu-Hepa walked out onto the terrace, clad in a white linen gown and jeweled collar, no longer dressing in the style of Hatti. The late afternoon sun warmed her shoulders, and Waset's river breeze caught at the tendrils of her hair, swept up into a golden circlet. Over the last month, news of the horrors befalling the world had slowed, though survivors still arrived by the thousands to Egypt's northern cities, seeking food and shelter. Within the ashes of the ruined empires old hatreds faded, and new alliances arose. Even Tanu-Hepa's visits to Nefertari had blossomed into friendship, the younger woman's company pleasant, her growing brood of children, a delight.

Whatever had come upon the world had left again, though its toll had been great. Babylon was no more, swallowed by the earth. The once-mighty empire of Ashur lay in ruins, devastated by famine, tribal wars and disease; the great coastal cities of Amurru flattened by waves as high as the ancient pyramids, and the islands of Ahhiyawa vanished, subsumed by the Great Sea's waters. In Egypt, on the night of the shortest day of the year, a great wailing had risen, as thousands of women lost their unborn babes. Even Egypt's queen had not been spared.

Tanu-Hepa glanced down at the letter, at the familiar symbols of the Nesite language, speaking to her of a life long gone--of a world she had been exiled from years ago. She owed Hatti nothing, Hattusilis even less. She would never go back. Setting the letter down, she walked to the edge of the terrace, its position granting her a splendid view of the city and the verdant lands beyond--the fields laid out in neat, irrigated rows, edged by the luxurious villas of the wealthy, their compound walls pink in the light of the lowering sun. With the sun at her back, she gazed at the land, admiring its beauty, order and symmetry.

To the north, the vast compound of Egypt's once-commander Sethi--the man who had stolen Istara's heart, and whose death the empire had spent a month mourning--stood against the horizon, its sprawl almost as large as the palace. Now, the woman who had borne his son lived there. A beautiful woman, often seen at court, though always unaccompanied, a hint of melancholy lingering in her eyes. They had spoken together, once, at a feast not so long ago. Edarru had told Tanu-Hepa how Istara had saved her and her babe's life; smiling when she described how much her son, Nesu, grown to almost a year, had become attached to Istara's dog, Sehetep.

Tanu-Hepa looked down at her hands, spotted with age, thinking of Edarru's youth and beauty, envying her. Despite the elegance of her rings, Tanu-Hepa knew nothing could hide the evidence of her age, closing in on her fifth decade. She had lived long, at times well, at others, not so well. She missed Istara with all her heart, the daughter she had never had, and her stepson, the stubborn, strong, handsome Urhi-Teshub, the true king of Hatti, both of them long gone to Babylon. Her heart ached at the thought of them dead, lost in the ruins of the destroyed city, unremarked and unmourned. Urhi-Teshub would have protected Istara to the end, his arms around her, sheltering her even as he fell. Though her heart told her they were gone and she would never see them again, Tanu-Hepa closed her eyes and offered a silent prayer to Arinna.

Wherever they are, let them be safe, let them be well. Let them love again.

Movement came to the terrace. She turned, the stiff folds of her gown rustling. Her ladies knelt by the tables before the divan, setting out platters of food. One came forward and bowed.

"The evening meal is ready to be served, Your Highness."

Tanu-Hepa went and ate, alone, as always. From within the palace gardens, the soft sounds of a harp rose, and a woman's voice, gentle, melodic, sang of a warrior finding a foreign princess washed up on the shore of a river, their love unbreakable, even in death.

Brushing aside a tear, Tanu-Hepa set down her wine, catching a glimpse of Nefertari and Ramesses embracing on his terrace. The pharaoh took his queen's face in his hands and kissed her, tender, reverent. Her heart tight with envy, Tanu-Hepa looked away, toward the dark waters of the Nile, where nascent starlight glimmered against the river's placid surface. She followed its path, winding to the north, thinking of Hatti, and of her youth; of Muwatallis, and of love, and how a heart, no matter how wounded, never ceased in the longing for it.

❃END OF BOOK II❃ 

Author's Note

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The Prologue for the third and final book, The Rise of the Goddess, awaits...