The Last Guardian

'I have what you seek,' he said and Nu came to him and took the golden egg from his palm.

'Yes,' Nu agreed, his voice low. 'You have indeed.'

'The Stone from Heaven,' said Oshere. 'Wondrous. What will you do now?'

'It is not mine to take,' replied Nu. 'But if it were, I would return to my land and try to save my wife and children from the coming cataclysm.'

Then take it,' Oshere told him.

'No!' cried Amaziga. 'I need it. You need it. I cannot watch you change again.'

Oshere turned away from her. 'I… wish you to have the Stone, Nu-Khasisatra. I am a prince of the Dianae. The High Priest is dead and I have the right to bestow the Stone. Take it. Use it well.'

'Let me have it just for a moment,' pleaded Amaziga. 'Let me make Oshere well again.'

'No!' Oshere shouted. The Sipstrassi will not work against itself, you have seen that. It made me what I am. The power is too great to waste on a man like me. Can you not understand that, Chreena? I am a lion who walks like a man. Even magic cannot change what I am… what I will become. It does not matter, Chreena. You and I, we will see the ocean and that is all I want.'

'What about what I want?' she asked him. 'I love you, Oshere.'

'And I love you, Dark Lady… more than life. I always will. But nothing is for ever, not even love.'

He turned to Nu. 'How will you find your way home?'

'There is a circle of stones beyond what was once the Royal Gardens. I shall go there.'

'I will walk with you,' said Oshere and the three men left the chamber. Amaziga stayed beside the dead priest, staring at the golden scrolls.

The circle of stones had been largely untouched by the centuries, though one had cracked and fallen. Nu walked to the centre of the circle and offered his hand to Shannow.

'I learned much, my friend,' he said. 'Yet I did not discover the Sword of God as I was commanded.'

‘I’ll find it, Nu… and do what needs to be done. You find your family.'

'Farewell, Shannow. God's love be with you.'

Shannow and Oshere walked out of the circle and Nu lifted the Stone and cried out in a language Shannow could not understand. There was no flash of light, no drama. One moment he was there

… the next he had gone.

Shannow felt a sense of loss as he turned to Oshere. 'You are a man of courage,' he said.

'No, Shannow, I wish that I were. But Sipstrassi has made me what I am. Chreena used the magic of the Stones to reshape me, but almost immediately I began to revert. She is a stubborn woman and she would use all the Stones in the world to hold me. Such a gift from God should not be wasted in that way.'

The two men walked slowly back to the Temple. Crowds had now gathered and the bodies of the slain priests were being carried from the building. 'Why did they not fight?' asked Shannow.

'There were so few of the enemy.'

'We are not warriors, Shannow. We do not believe in murder.'

Inside the Temple Amaziga joined them, her face set and hard.

'We must talk, Shannow. Excuse us, Oshere.' She led the Jerusalem Man back into the Inner Sanctum; the priest's body was gone, but blood still stained the floor. Amaziga swung on him.

'You must follow the killer, and stop him. It is vital.'

'Why? What harm can he do?'

'The Sword must be left as it is.'

'I still do not see why. If it serves God's purposes…'

'God, Shannow? God has nothing to do with the Sword. Sword? What am I saying? It is not a sword, Shannow; it is a missile — a nuclear missile. A flying bomb.'

'Then the Parson will blow himself to Hell. Why concern yourself?'

'He will blow us all to Hell. You have no conception of the power of that missile, Shannow. It will destroy everything that you could see from the tower. For two hundred miles the earth will be scorched and laid bare. Can you comprehend that?'

'Explain it to me.' Amaziga took a deep breath, trying to marshal her words. As a Guardian and a teacher, her memory had been enhanced by Sipstrassi and she could summon all the facts concerning the missile, yet none of them would serve to help her explain it to Shannow. It was an MX (Missile experimental). Length: 34. 3 metres. Diameter: 225 centimetres at first stage. Speed: 18, 000 miles per hour at burn-out. Range: 14, 000 kilometres. Yield: 10 X 350 kilotons. Ten warheads, each with the capacity to destroy a city. How could she explain that to an Armageddon savage?

'In the Between Times, Shannow, there was great fear and hatred. Men built awesome weapons and one was used on a city during a terrible war. It destroyed the city utterly; hundreds of thousands of people were killed by that single blast. But soon the bombs were made even more powerful, and great rockets were constructed that could carry the bombs from one continent to another.'

'How did the nations survive?'

'They didn't, Shannow,' she said simply.

'And these bombs caused the earth to topple?'

'Not exactly. But that is not important. The… Parson?… must not be allowed to interfere with the missile.'

'Why does it stand in the sky? Why is it surrounded by crosses, if not from God?' he asked.

'Come back to my rooms and I will tell you as best I can. I do not have all the answers. But promise me, Shannow, that when I have explained it to you, you will ride to stop him.'

'I will decide that when you have explained it all.'

He followed her to her chambers and sat down opposite her desk. 'You know,' she said, 'that this land was once below the oceans? Where we are now was once an area of sea known as the Devil's Triangle. It acquired that name because of the unexplained disappearances of ships and planes. You understand about planes?'

'No.'

'Men used to… It was discovered that it was possible for machines to take to the skies. They were called planes; they had wide wings, and engines that propelled them at great speeds through the air. What you will see clustered in the sky around the… Sword, are not crucifixes or crosses, but planes. They are trapped in some sort of stasis field…. Dear God, Shannow, this is impossible!'

She poured a goblet of wine from the pitcher on her desk and drank deeply, then she leaned forward. 'The Adanteans used the power of a great Sipstrassi Stone and aimed it at the sky. Why, I do not know, but they did it. When Atlantis sank beneath the oceans, the power of the Stone continued. It trapped more than a hundred planes and ships. It would have been more, but the field is very narrow; the power has been decreasing over the years, and the ships fell to earth.

You can still find their ruined hulks out on the desert beyond the Chaos Peak. How it trapped the missile, I can only guess. When the earth toppled for the second time, there were massive earthquakes. By then the weapons centres were run by computers and they probably registered the enormous earthquakes as nuclear strikes, and responded. That's why the levels of radiation are still so high over most of the world. The earth toppled, missiles were released and any opportunity of salvaging some remnants of civilisation was gone. This missile was probably fired from somewhere in a country called America. It crossed the stasis field and has remained there for three hundred years.'

'But surely the Between Timers would have seen — as we do — the planes hanging in the air? If they had such great weapons, why did they not destroy the Stone?'