Free The Last Guardian by David Gemmell Page B

of them lived in lands that were at best no more than a hundred feet above sea level. Some were below it andrelied on seawalls or dikes. When the earth toppled, they were destroyed utterly.”
    “And yet man survived, as did the people of the Dianae.”
    “We are tough, Oshere—and incredibly resourceful. And God did not want us all to die.”
    “But is human man still evil and harsh? Does he still slaughter his fellows beyond the wall?”
    “He does. But not all men are evil. There are still those who resist the spell of the land.”
    “When they breach the wall, will they come peacefully?”
    “I don’t know, Oshere. Now I must return to my work.”
    Oshere watched the woman walk to her laboratory. Her skin was ebony dark and glistened as if oiled, and the undulating sway of her hips was a joy to behold. He realized he was now appreciating her beauty on a more aesthetic plane—yet another sign of the impending Change. He raised himself from the bench and ambled down the terraces until he came to the main street. Everywhere there were people moving about their business. They saw him and bowed low, as befitted a man soon to be a god. A god?
    The humor of it touched him fleetingly. Soon his mind would lose its intelligence, his voice would become a roar, and he would spend the rest of his days driven not by a lust for knowledge but by the desire to fill a swaying belly.
    He remembered the first day when the woman known as Chreena had arrived at the city. Crowds had gathered to gaze on the blackness of her skin. Priests had bowed down before her, and Oshere’s older brother, Prince Shir-ran, had been smitten by her unearthly beauty. She had had a child with her then, a sickly boy with wide sorrowful eyes, but he had died within the first two months of her stay. The physicians had been powerless; hisblood, they had said, was weak and diseased. Chreena had mourned him for a long time. Shir-ran, tall and handsome and the finest athlete among the Dianae, had spent his days walking with her, telling her of the legends of the Dianae, showing her statues and holy buildings. At last—when they had become lovers—he had taken her on the long walk to the mountains of the sword. She had returned dazed from the experience.
    Then the Change had begun in Shir-ran. The priests had given thanks and blessed him, and a great celebration had been ordered for the dwellers of the city. But Oshere had noticed that Chreena did not join in the festivities.
    One night he found her in the ancient medi-chamber of the palace, poring over scrolls of the Lost Ones. And he remembered her words:
    “Damn you, you bastards! Was there no end to your arrogance?”
    Oshere had walked forward. In those days he, too, had been tall and well formed, his eyes wide-set and tawny, his hair dark and gleaming, held in place by a band of gold. “What troubles you, Chreena?”
    “Your whole stupid civilization!” she stormed. “You know, once upon a time a people called the Incas believed that they could make people gods by cutting out their hearts.”
    “Stupidity,” Oshere agreed.
    “You are no different. Shir-ran is being mutated into some kind of beast, and you all drink to it. I have never mocked your legends or sought to fill you with the arcane knowledge I possess. But this?”
    “What are you saying, Chreena?”
    “How can I explain this to you? You have seen that dust and water combine to make clay. Yes? Well, all living organisms are the same. We are all a combination of parts.”
    “I know all this, Chreena. Heart, lungs, liver. Every child knows it.”
    “Wait,” she commanded. “I don’t mean just the organs or the bones or the blood. Oh, this is impossible …”
    Oshere sat down facing her desk. “I am not slow-witted. Explain it to me.”
    Slowly she began to talk of the genetic material that was vital to all living organisms. She did not use its Between Times name—deoxyribonucleic acid—or the initials by which it had become