But how many years?
Close to two hundred. Hatred and longing keep him going. Longing… you know about that.
Without turning from the distant vision of an old and red-booted man, he knows she has smiled. Don't forget the hatred… some of that, too… She touches his fingertips with hers. In turn, his eyes refocus on the quince tree before he looks at her. He has his vision, she adds. Don't we all? Some men look, and others create…
… and still others think they are gods. He turns to her, their eyes nearly level. Even for me, the temptation is great.
The time is coming when you will have to surrender to it. Our time must come round again. He shakes his head, for he knows it is true. She is right. While the past few centuries have been quiet, the times are again changing, and new gods and new empires are building. Gods without understanding, who will have to be cast down, and empires without humanity, which will have forgotten their origin and their purpose.
He sighs, quietly, and looks back at the quince, which is beginning to lose its leaves as the fruit ripens. She picks the thread of the old song from his thoughts.
Tell me now, and if you can, What is human, what is man. Tell me now, and if you must, Where's the god that men can trust?
He laughs, and his laugh echoes alone above the emerald grass. The pieces fracture and float like mist above the turf, finally dissolving into the sod.
He laughs, and the haunting notes still even the crickets. He laughs, and the twilight becomes night. She laughs, gently, in return. Silver bells in the evening wrap themselves around the haunted notes of his rejoicing.
The two laughs mingle, build, rustle the forest leaves and needles as they carry the wind across the black-and-white stone wall, where the monks hear the sacred bells and bend their heads in worship.
On the portico of a white-and-black marble villa, a man and a woman hold hands, just like any other man and woman. A red-booted old man boards a shuttlecraft. Three monks in white lift their heads and finish sweeping the nave before replacing the tapers.
The evening star glitters in the eastern sky, and the man and the woman hold that brightness in their hands, and the blackness from his hands and the light from hers twine around it, the one following the other, black and white, black and white.
Hammer of Darkness Page 29
