He heard the thunder of hooves and saw the three remaining hunters fleeing. One horse was down, and there were four bodies lying on the logging road. The other three horses had run off a little way and were standing some fifty yards distant. “It’s all right, Frey, they’ve gone,” he said.
The man in the brocade waistcoat knelt by them, lifting Zerah from him. “Are you hurt, lady?” he asked.
“Only my pride,” she said, allowing Laton to help her rise. “Don’t know how I let them get so close.”
Laton grinned. A groan came from the left, where Bell was pushing himself to his knees, his right hand gripping his belly, blood pouring through his fingers. Oz watched as their rescuer approached the wounded man.
“By damn, Bell, you are a hard man to kill,” he said. His pistol came up and fired, and Bell pitched backward and lay still.
“He was one that needed killing,” said Zerah, struggling to rise. Oz helped her, then recovered his pistol from the road.
“I should have done it a long time ago,” said Laton. Turning away, he called out to his friend, “Hey, Nestor, catch those horses yonder and we’ll offer these folks company on the road.”
Esther peeped out from the bushes. Zerah called to her, and she scampered across to the old lady, hugging her leg. Zerah leaned down and kissed the top of the child’s head.
As the younger man rode off for the riderless horses, the older one turned to Oz. “You did right well there, Son. I like a lad with spirit.”
“Are you Laton Duke, sir?” asked Oz.
The man grinned and extended his hand. “The name is Clem. Clem Steiner.”
“But he called you …”
“Just a case of mistaken identity. I never saw him before,” he said with a wink.
Oz shook the man’s hand as Zerah gathered up her rifle. “I don’t much care who you are,” she said. “I’d have welcomed the Devil himself with open arms just to see that piece of scum go to hell.”
“Your grandma is one tough lady,” observed Clem.
“Yes, sir!” agreed Oz. “You don’t know the half of it.”
The attack was short-lived, with only four of the creatures charging the house. Wallace took out the first with a double-barreled blast while it was still in the yard. Shannow shot down two others as they tore the shutters away from the window. The last leapt to the porch awning and tried to enter an upstairs window. Beth ran into the room and fired three shots into the beast’s chest, catapulting it back to the yard, where Wallace killed it as it tried to rise.
The downstairs rooms stank of cordite, and a haze of blue smoke hung in the air. Dr. Meredith approached the Deacon. “You have a stone, don’t you?” he said as the Deacon reloaded his pistols.
“Yes. One small stone.”
“Surely, with its power, you could block all the windows and the doors.”
“I could,” the Deacon agreed, “but I don’t know how long the power would last, and I need that stone, Doctor, for when the real evil shows up.”
Meredith’s eyes widened. “The real evil? These beasts are not the real evil?” Quietly Shannow told him about the Bloodstone and how it had destroyed its own world. He told him of the coliseum and the forty thousand dead, of the absence of birds, animals, and insects.
“Oh, God … you really saw this?” asked Meredith.
“I saw it, Doctor. Trust me. I wish I hadn’t.”
“Then what can stop him?”
The Deacon gave a weary smile. “That is a problem that has haunted me for twenty years. I still have no answer.”
Isis joined them. Leaning forward, she kissed the Deacon’s cheek, and the old man smiled up at her. “A kiss from a beautiful girl is a wonderful tonic.”
“It must be working,” said Isis, “for I’m sure your beard is darker, Jake, than when first I saw you.”
“That’s true,” agreed Meredith. “How is your wound?”
“I healed it,” said Shannow.
“I think you did more than that,” said Meredith. “Isis is right: your skin is looking less wrinkled and ancient. You’re getting younger.” He sighed. “Good Lord, what wonders could be achieved if we had more of those stones!”
The Deacon shook his head. “The Guardians had them, but the stones were corrupted—just like everything man touches. Sipstrassi has its dark side, Doctor. When it is fed with blood, the result is terrifying. Look at the creatures yonder, the Bloodstones in their brows. Once they were Wolvers, gentle and shy. Look at them now. Consider the Bloodstone himself. Once he was a man with a mission: to bring back the earth to a Garden of Eden. Now he is a destroyer. No, I think we would all be better off without any stones of power.”
Beth called out to Meredith, to come and help her prepare food. The doctor moved away, and Isis sat beside Shannow.
“You are sad,” she said.
“You see too much,” he told her with a smile.
“I see more than you think,” she said, her voice low. “I know who you are.”
“Best to say nothing, child.”
“I felt as if I were floating on a dark sea. Then you came to me. We merged when you drew me back. We were one, as we are one now.” She took his hand and squeezed it, and he felt a sudden warmth in his mind, a loss of loneliness and sorrow. He heard her voice inside his head: “I know all your thoughts and concerns. Your memories are now mine. That’s why I can tell that you are not an evil man, Jake.”
“I am responsible for the deaths of thousands, Isis. By their fruits shall ye judge them. Women, children—an entire race. All dead by my order.” Harsh memories erupted into his mind, but Isis flowed over them, forcing them back.
“That cannot be changed … Deacon. But an evil man would not concern himself with guilt. He would have no conception of it. Putting that aside for a moment, I also share, now, your fears about the Bloodstone. You don’t know what to do, but in your memories there is one who could help. A man with great imagination and the powers of a seer.”
“Who?” As swiftly as she had merged with him, she was gone, and Shannow felt the pain of withdrawal, a return to the solitary cell of his own being.
“Lucas,” she said aloud.
He looked into her beautiful face and sighed. “He went down with the Fall of the world hundreds of years ago.”
“You are not thinking,” she said. “What are the gateways if not doorways through time? Amaziga took you back to Arizona. Could you not travel the same route? You must get Lucas.”
“I have no horse, and even if I did, it’s a three-day ride to Domango. I haven’t the time.”
“Why go to Domango? Did not Amaziga tell you that the stone circles were placed where the earth energy was strongest? There must be other places where they did not place stones yet the energy is still there.”
“How would I find one?”
“Ah, Deacon, you lack the very quality the stones need. You do not have imagination.”
“Meredith has already pointed that out,” he said testily.
“Give me the stone,” she ordered him. Fishing it from his pocket, he placed it in her hand. “Come with me,” she said, and he followed her upstairs into Mary’s old room. She opened the shutter. “Look out and tell me what you see.”
“Hills, the slope of the valley, woods. The night sky. What would you have me see?”
Placing the stone against his brow, she said, “I want you to see the land and its power. Where would a circle of stone be placed? Think of it, Deacon. The men who erected the stone circles must have been able to identify the power points. Draw from the Sipstrassi. See!”
His vision swam, and the dark gray of the night landscape began to swirl with color: deep reds and purples, yellows and greens, constantly shifting, flowing, blending. Rivers of color, streams and lakes, never still, always surging and vibrant. “What is the color of power?” he heard her ask, as if from a great distance.
“Power is everywhere,” he told her. “Healing, mending, growing.”
?
??Close your eyes and picture the stone circle at Domango.” He did so, seeing again the hillside and Amaziga’s Arizona house and the distant San Francisco peaks.
“I can see it,” he told her.
“Now gaze upon it with the eyes of Sipstrassi. See the colors.”
The desert was blue-green, the mountains pink and gray. The rivers of power were lessened there, sluggish and tired. Shannow gazed upon the old stone circle. The hillside was bathed in a gentle gold, flickering and pulsing. Opening his eyes, he turned to Isis. “It is a golden yellow,” he said.
“Can you see such a point from here, Jake?” she asked, pointing out the window.
13
When will we have peace? That is the cry upon the lips of the multitude. I hear it. I understand it. The answer is not easy to voice, and it is harder to hear. Peace does not come when the brigands are slain. It is not born with the end of a current war. It does not arrive with the beauty of the spring. Peace is a gift of the grave, and is found only in the silence of the tomb.
From the Deacon’s last letter to the Church of Unity
ISIS MOVED OUT into the yard, enjoying the freshness of the predawn air. Several of the wolf creatures were stretched out asleep, but she sensed the presence of others in the ruined barn. She could feel them now, their pain and anguish, and as she crossed the lines of power that stretched back from them to the Bloodstone, her limbs tingled and stung.
Concentrating hard, she narrowed her eyes. Now she could see the lines, tiny and red, like stretched wire, pulsing between the servants and the master, passing through the house, burrowing through the hillsides. Her body aglow with Sipstrassi power, she stared intently at the lines, severing them, watching them wither and fail. An instant later they were gone, snuffed out like candle flames.
Walking steadily forward, she approached the first sleeping beast. Reaching down, she touched its brow, her index finger and thumb taking hold of the Bloodstone shard embedded there. The evil contained in the shard swept back over her, and for the merest moment she felt a surge of hatred. It was an emotion she had never experienced before, and she faltered. The Bloodstone turned black and fell away from the wolf.
“I do not hate,” she said aloud. “I will not hate.” The feeling passed, and Isis knew she was stronger now. “Come to me!” she called. “Come!”
The beasts rose up, growling. Others poured from the barn. Now she felt the hatred coming at her like a tidal wave. Isis absorbed it all, draining it of energy and purpose.
A creature lunged forward, rearing up before her, but Isis reached out swiftly to touch its huge chest. Instantly she merged. Its Wolver memories were buried deep, but she found them, drawing them into the beast’s upper mind. With a cry it fell back from her.
Isis let her power swell, enveloping the mutated animals like a healing mist and sending the power out over the mountains and hills. One by one the beasts dropped to the ground, and she watched as their great size dwindled, the dead stones falling from their brows.
Then the power left her, drifting away as the dawn light crept over the eastern mountains. Tired now, Isis sat down. A little Wolver padded across to her, taking her hand.
The Deacon strode across the yard, holstering his pistols. The Wolvers scattered and ran, heading away into the distant hills.
“I felt him, Deacon,” she whispered. “I felt the Bloodstone.”
The Deacon helped her rise. “Where is he?”
“He has rebuilt a ruined city a day’s ride from Pilgrim’s Valley. He has warriors with him, black-garbed men with horned helmets. And the Jerusalem Rider Jacob Moon.”
“Evil will always gather evil,” said the Deacon.
“The wolf creatures were linked to him, feeding him. Now the supply has stopped,” she said.
“Then he’ll have to go hungry.”
She shook her head. “The horned riders will come, Deacon. The war is only just beginning.”
Jon Shannow stood on the brow of the hill, the Sipstrassi Stone in his hand. There was no circle of stones there and no indication that there ever had been one. Yet he knew this was a point of power mystically linked to others throughout time. What he did not know was how to harness that power, how to travel to a given destination.
Was it just imagination, or were there sets of coordinates needed by the users?
Back in Babylon he had learned that there were certain windows in time that would enable travelers to move across the gateways with minimum energy from Sipstrassi. How did one know when such a window was open?
Closing his fist around the stone, he pictured the house in Arizona, the paddock and the red jeep, the sun over the desert. The stone grew warm in his hand. “Take me to the world before the Fall,” he said.
Violet light flared around him, then faded.
There was the house. There was no red jeep there now. The paddock was gone, replaced by a tarmac square and two tennis courts. Beyond the house he could see a swimming pool. Shannow stepped out of the circle and strolled down to the building.
The front door was locked. Leaning back, he kicked hard at the wood, which splintered but did not give. Twice more he thundered his boot against the lock, then the door swung inward.
Swiftly he moved across the living room. It was sweltering hot and airless inside. Out of habit he wandered through to the lounge, flicking on the air-conditioning unit. He grinned. So long away, yet as soon as he returned, he thought of the wonderful comforts of this old doomed world.
Moving back to the main room, he plugged in the computer leads, engaged the electricity, and watched the screen flicker to life. Lucas’s face appeared.
“Good day, Mr. Shannow,” said Lucas.
“I need you, my friend,” said the Deacon.
“Is Amaziga with you?”
“No. I have not seen her in twenty years or more.” Shannow pulled up a swivel seat and sat before the screen.
“She left here some time ago for Brazil. My dates are confused. I think there must have been an electrical storm. What is today’s date?”
“I don’t know. Listen to me, Lucas. The Bloodstone is in my world. I need your help to destroy it.”
“There is nothing in your world to destroy it, Mr. Shannow. As long as it lives, it will feed. If you deny it blood, it will go dormant and wait, go into hibernation, if you will. But there is no weapon capable of causing it harm.”
“The Sword of God could have destroyed it,” said Shannow.
“Ah, yes, but the Sword of God was a nuclear missile, Mr. Shannow. Do you really want to see such a weapon descend on your land? It will wipe out countless thousands and further poison the land for centuries.”
“Of course not. But what I am saying is that there are weapons which could destroy him.”
“How can I help you? You can have access to all my files, but few of them have any direct bearing on your world save those which Amaziga supplied.”
“I want to know everything about Sarento. Everything.”
“The question, surely, is which Sarento. I know little about the man who became the Bloodstone.”
“Then tell me about the Sarento you know, his dreams, his vanities, his ambitions.”
“Very well, Mr. Shannow. I will assemble the files. The refrigerator is still working, and you will find some cool drinks there. When you return, we will go over the information.”
Shannow strolled through to the kitchen, fetching a carton of Florida orange juice and a glass. Sitting before the machine, he listened as Lucas outlined Sarento’s life. He was not a primary survivor of the Fall, though he sometimes pretended to be, but had been born 112 years later. A mathematical genius, he had been in the first team to discover Sipstrassi fragments and use them for the benefit of the people who became known as the Guardians. While he listened, Shannow remembered the struggle on board the restored Titanic and the disaster in the cave of the original Bloodstone. Sarento had died there, with Shannow barely escaping with his life. There was little new to be learned
. Sarento had been obsessed with the thought of returning the world to the status and lifestyle enjoyed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It was his life’s work.
“Has that helped, Mr. Shannow?”
Shannow sighed. “Perhaps. Tell me now of the gateways and the points of power on which they were built.”
“You have me at a disadvantage there, Mr. Shannow. The gateways were used by the Atlanteans until the time of Pendarric and the First Fall of the World. Whether they were built by them is another matter entirely. Most of the ancient races are lost to us. It could even be that the world has fallen many times, wiping out great civilizations. As to the power sites, they are many. There are three near here, and one is certainly as powerful as that on which the ancients erected the stones. The earth is peppered with them. In Europe most of the sites have churches built upon them. Here in the United States some have been covered with mounds, with others bearing ancient ruins. The people known as the Anasazi erected cities around the energy centers.”
“Do you have maps in your files?” asked Shannow.
“Of course. What would you like to see?”
“Show me the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada.”
“Do you have more specific instructions?”
“I want to see all the energy centers, as you call them.”
For more than an hour Shannow pored over the maps as Lucas highlighted sites of power. “More detail on this one,” said Shannow. “Bring it up closer.” Lucas did so.
“I see what you are getting at, Mr. Shannow. I will access other data that may be relevant to this line of inquiry. While I am doing so, would you mind if I activate the television? It annoys me that my date and time sections are down.”
“Of course,” said Shannow.
The wall-mounted unit flickered to life, the picture switching to a news text. The date and time were outlined in yellow at the top right-hand side of the screen.
“Mr. Shannow!”
“What is it?”