Free The Last Guardian by David Gemmell Page A

the same promise to Shir-ran?”
    “Yes, damn you, I did. And I’ll say it to the next unfortunate. I’ll keep saying it until I make it true.”
    Oshere looked away. “Forgive me, Chreena. Do not be angry.”
    “Dear God, I’m not angry with you, my dear. It is me. I have the books inside my head, and the knowledge. But the answer eludes me.”
    “Take your mind from it for a while. Walk with me.”
    “I can’t. I have no time.”
    Oshere pushed himself painfully to his feet, his greathead lolling to one side. “We both know that a tired mind will find no answers. Come. Walk with me on the hillside.”
    He put out his hand, sheathing the talons that leapt unbidden from the new sockets at the ends of his swollen fingers. She put her fingers into the black mane on his cheek and kissed him gently. “Just for a little while, then.”
    Together they walked along the statue-lined hall and out into the bright sunlight blazing down on the terraced gardens. He stopped at a long marble bench and stretched himself along it. She sat beside him with his head resting on her lap.
    “Tell me again of the Fall,” he said.
    “Which one?”
    “The disaster that destroyed Atlantis—the one with the ark.”
    “Which ark?” she asked him. “During the Between Times there were more than five hundred legends involving great floods. The Hopi indians, the Arabs, the Assyrians, the Turks, the Norse, the Irish—all had their own racial memories of the day the world toppled. And each had its ark. For some it was gopherwood, for others reeds. Some were giant vessels, others huge rafts.”
    “But the Between Times people did not believe the legends, did they?”
    “No,” she admitted. “It was part arrogance. They knew that the earth had changed, that the axis was no longer what it had been, but they believed it was a gradual happening. However, the evidence was there: high water marks on the sides of mountains, seashells found in deserts, huge bone graveyards of animals found in mountain caves, where they must have gathered to escape the floods.”
    “And why did the earth topple, Chreena, that first time?”
    She smiled down at him. “Your desire for knowledgeis insatiable. And you know I will not tell you the secrets of the Second Fall. You are too guileless to attempt cunning, Oshere.”
    “Tell of the First Fall. Tell me.”
    “I do not have all the answers. There was tremendous seismic activity. Tidal waves rolled across the lands—thousands of feet of rushing water. There are indications in legends I have read of the sun and the moon reversing their motions, the sun rising in the west. That phenomenon could only have been caused by the earth suddenly rolling. One of my teachers believed it was the result of a meteor striking the earth; another claimed it was the increasing weight of ice at the poles. Perhaps it was both. Many legends talk of the Atlanteans finding a source of great power and disturbing the balance of the world. They did indeed find such a power source. Who knows the truth? Whatever the answer, the roaring seas destroyed much of the world. And most of the continent that had been Atlantis sank beneath the new oceans.”
    “Did no Atlanteans escape?”
    “Some who lived in the far north survived. Another group lived on a large island that had once been a mountain range; it used to be called the Canaries. They lived there undisturbed until the middle 1300s A . D .; then they were discovered by a seafaring nation called the Spanish. The Spanish butchered them all, and the language and the culture were destroyed for all time.”
    “The Between Times people were unusually harsh,” said Oshere. “Most of your stories concerning them deal with death and destruction.”
    “They were harsher than you could possibly imagine,” Chreena responded.
    “And the Second Fall was worse than the first?”
    “A thousand times worse. By then the world’s population had multiplied many times, and almost eighty percent