The Last Guardian by David Gemmell Page A

like the Dianae, were slowly dying.
    The priests here believed that the Changes were gifts from heaven. But they were happening more frequently, with whole families showing signs of reversion.
    Chreena’s anger rose. She had seen the books and the records back at the home base. Many diseases of the Between Times had been treated by producing bacterial DNA and using it in commercial production. Insulin for diabetics was one such. Food production had been boosted by inserting genes for growth into pigs and cattle—promoter genes, they had been called. But the Betweeners had gone much farther.
    May you rot in hell! she thought. Suddenly she smiled. Because, of course, they
were
rotting in hell. Their disgusting world had been swept away by the power of nature, like blood washing the pus from a boil.
    And yet it had not affected the core of the infection—man himself: the ultimate carnivore, the complete killer. Even now they warred among themselves, butchering and plundering.
    The spell of the land was at work. Colossal radiation levels, toxic wastes in the air they breathed—all coming together to create abnormally high levels of aggression and violence.
    The circle of history spun on. Already man had rediscovered guns and had risen to the level the world had known in the middle 1800s. It would not be long beforethey took to the skies, before nations were formed and wars spread.
    Slowly she climbed the stairs to the observatory platform. From there she could see the streets of the city and watch the people moving about their business. Farther out she could see the farmlands and the herds of cattle. And away into the distance, like a shimmering thread, the wall between worlds. She could almost hear man beating upon it, venting his rage on the ancient stones.
    Chreena transferred her gaze to the south, where heavy clouds drifted over the new mountains and the Sword of God was hidden. She shivered.
    A sudden storm broke in the east, and she swung to watch the lightning fork up from the ground, the dark thunderclouds swirling furiously. A cold wind screamed across the plain, and she shivered again and stepped inside.
    The city would withstand the storm, as it had withstood the First Fall and the terrible fury of the risen ocean.
    As she turned away, she failed to see a glimmer of blue within the storm, as if a curtain had flickered in the wind, showing clear skies amid the lowering black clouds. At the center of the blue shone the golden disk of a second sun so that, for no more than a heartbeat, two shadows were cast on the streets of the city.

12
    T HE RIDERS DISMOUNTED and gathered around the fallen man. His nose was crushed, and both eyes were swelling fast; his upper lip was split and bleeding profusely. Two men lifted him, carrying him from the street to the sidewalk outside the Jolly Pilgrim.
    The owner, Josiah Broome, took a bowl of fresh water and a towel and moved to join them, kneeling beside the injured man. He immersed the towel in the cool water and then folded it, placing it gently over the man’s blackened eyes.
    “It was a disgrace,” he said. “I saw it. Unwarranted violence. Despicable!”
    “Damn right about that,” someone agreed.
    “People like him will ruin this valley even before we get a chance to build something lasting here,” said Broome.
    “He stole a horse, goddammit!” exclaimed Beth McAdam, before she could stop the words. Broome looked up.
    “These men were hunting a beast that could have devoured your children, and they took the first mounts they could find. All he had to do was ask the man for his horse. But no. Men like him are always the same. Violence. Death. Destruction. It follows them like a plague.”
    Beth held her tongue and walked back into the eating house. She needed this job to swell the funds she had hidden in her wagon and to pay for the children to remain at the cabin school. But men like Broome annoyed her.Sanctimonious and blinkered, they saw only what they wished