Guilt.
The sin was not his. He had been shaped to do what he had done. A terrible enemy had made him its instrument, its weapon. You do not accuse, condemn, imprison the murder weapon.
The runesmith, smiling (how long since?) fumbled for the skin-bag of knucklebones. He closed his eyes, his strong, clear rested eyes, and turned his rested mind to the talent (inborn) and skills (instilled) in him alone of all men ever. No jaded blind buckshot in the faces of his kind, done in anguish to stay alive, but the careful, knowing, precise drawing of a bead. The location, direction, range known to Smith the weapon in ways impossible to Smith the man.
The knucklebones spilled chatteringly on the floor.
The pattern was random; his talent and his skills understood it.
He murmured a new murmur.
Hunkered down on his haunches, he called up the power.
There was the faintest hiss of a breeze in the tumbled warren of this focus-room, a breeze that was peculiarly bittersweet, the way Holland chocolates used to be. A chill breeze that broke sweat out on Smith’s spine, in the hollows between his shoulder blades.
Then the screams began.
They were screams beyond sound, and surely only an immeasurable fraction of them reached Smith, so different were they in quality and kind from anything remotely human. Yet their echoes and their backlash seemed to blur the world for a moment of horror beyond imagining. A soundless, motionless quake, the terror of countless billions of frightful beings facing death and (unlike the millions who had perished here) knowing it, knowing why.
Smith’s skills knew as Smith himself could not, that the universe itself was relieved of a plague.
Was it a long time later? Probably it was—Smith was never able to remember that—when he stood up and filled his lungs with the dusty, sweet air and looked out on tomorrow and forever with clear and guiltless eyes.
He tested his power. It was intact.
He walked to the inner and outer barriers, kicking them down. He looked out at the sunlit ruins of the city.
If I live, he thought (and barring accident I can live forever), I can build it up again. I have magic; they gave it to me and no one can take it away. Magic and science, humanity and the Powers. It’s supposed to have worked that way long ago. It will again. Build it up again…
And if I don’t, if I fail, then at least I’ve fixed it so they have no enemies but themselves. Terrible as that might be, there are worse things.
He saw a flicker of movement in the distance, something feeble, hungry, misshapen, ragged.
The runesmith stepped out of the shadows, and walked toward the movement in the distance. There was sun now. For the first time. Because he wanted sun. And he wanted cool breezes. And the scent of good things in the air.
He could have it all now. They might never forgive him, but they could not harm him, and he would help them, as they had never been able to help themselves.
They were still alone, but perhaps it would be better now.