The Devil's Heart - Carmen Carter [106]
Age frosted the entire planet, but the pulsing glow of the Heart warmed his hands. Whenever his foot strayed off the path, the stone shifted in his palms, gently pushing him to one side or the other until he recovered his way. Picard let the Heart guide him over the pitted terrain until they reached a line of broken columns. There he stopped to gaze in wonder at the sculpted form just ahead.
The thick slab of rock was set on edge.
Its original shape may have been oval, but now its outer rim was broken and irregular; the opening in its center appeared to be part of the ancient design, but it was eroded as well.
Picard was buffeted by waves of an invisible but palpable force emanating from the structure. Or was it a being?
“The Guardian of Forever,” he whispered in awe.
At the sound of his voice, the crystalline stone of its ring-shaped body flickered and glowed from within, suffused with the same quality of light that fired the Heart.
The reaction was a reply of sorts, and Picard wondered if he could communicate with the being. There were so many questions he wanted answered, but one above all others.
Picard held up the Heart. “Guardian, what is this stone I carry?”
“It is a seed,” said a deep thrumming voice. The light flickered in rhythm with its words. “One meant to grow in a better soil than this dead planet.”
“How did it become enmeshed in our history?”
“Those who created me, created the seed; but the Architects were mortal, and after their passing there was no one to guide it on its true path. The seed went astray.”
Mist pooled in the center of the slab, then cleared away to reveal a stream of images framed inside the stone border.
Picard moved closer, mesmerized by the clarity of the visions. He saw the Heart fall like a blazing meteor through a purple sky, then plunge deep into a grassy plain. Alien hands scrabbled through the dirt of the crater until they uncovered the stone. To Picard’s horror, he saw the simple hunting culture of a race known as the T’Kon erupt outward into a far-flung stellar empire, then wither away and die.
New hands seized the stone, starting yet another undulating wave of murder and war. Fiefdoms burst into imperial splendor, then toppled as greed-driven betrayals weakened their foundations.
He caught a brief flash of Garamond and Kessec in the timeslip, but the rest who had held the Heart went by in a blur.
As Time flowed on, the ripples of disruption spread wider and wider, all part of an unceasing pattern of struggle for possession of the Heart.
“Guardian, can this damage be undone?”
“Yes,” said the voice, “but if you take back the seed early in the affairs of these beings, you also unravel all the greatness built with its powers. The universe you know will be torn from its roots, and the river will flow through different channels.”
Picard shook his head; this was no solution. The consequences of the Heart’s presence had gathered too much weight to be dislodged from the past. “I must remove the Heart from my own time before it causes any more upheaval. Show me how to return it to the path you spoke of.”
The mist gathered again, then cleared to reveal a new scene the blackness of deep space, a scattering of stars and a comet with its tail stretched out behind it like a banner.
“I know this place,” said Picard. “It was in the vision given to me by T’Sara.”
“Planting time draws near again,” said the Guardian. “The seed must be sown here.”
As if called by those words, the Heart stirred in Picard’s hands. He edged to the very lip of the portal and gazed raptly at the image of the comet. The seed’s yearning to continue its journey almost drove him to step through the opening. His fingers closed tightly on the rough texture of the stone’s surface. He knew what it wanted, but letting go was difficult.
Taking