Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

just by meeting you. I’m afraid you can’t go back to court—ever. You can bet Ethur will be looking for someone to take out his anger on, now that he doesn’t have me.”
    “He would have had us killed,” Dominic said numbly.
    “We spent our lives in duty and service to his name, and at the end it meant nothing to him.”
    “Yes, well,” said Owen. “Emperors are like that, mostly.”
    “He betrayed us,” said Glory. Something had changed in her face, in her eyes. “Something must be done, to block the power of Emperors.”
    “Even Heartworld won’t be safe for us now,” said Dominic. “We’ll have to try and lose ourselves on one of the border worlds. Have to say good-bye to our families, to our friends . . . All I ever wanted was to be a Defender of Humanity, and I’ll have to give that up too. Damn you, Owen. Why did you have to choose us?”
    “I’m sorry,” said Owen. “Believe me, I know how you feel.” He looked around the starport, and at the city in the distance. “This Empire is a legend in my time; the greatest flowering of human civilization. I hadn’t expected . . . this. So much more, and so much less. But if anyone should have known you can’t trust in legends, it’s me.”
    Glory frowned. “If you’re from the future, this should be history to you. Didn’t you study the period before you left?”
    “There are no records,” said Owen. “Just . . . stories.”
    Dominic looked at Owen searchingly. “Something’s going to happen—something . . . bad? What aren’t you telling us, Owen?”
    “Is the Mad Mind coming back?” said Glory.
    “No.” Owen looked at them both compassionately. He would have liked to lie, but he owed them the truth. “Your Empire will decline and fall. We don’t know exactly when, or why. Perhaps you would be safer on a border world, after all.”
    Dominic and Glory moved closer together, as though for comfort and protection. A directionless fear moved in their eyes, of bad times coming they now knew they wouldn’t be able to stop.
    “Who are you, Owen?” said Glory. “Who are you, really?”
    “Just a man, trying to do the right thing,” said Owen. “In the end, that’s all there ever is.”
    “Where . . . when will you go next?” said Dominic.
    “My friend—your Mad Mind—leaves a trail when she travels back through time. I’ll pick up the trail again and follow where it leads. Hope to catch up to her before she can do any more damage. I only missed her by twelve years here, and that’s not bad after a trip of nearly a thousand years. Good-bye, my friends. Make new lives for yourselves. And remember: look forward, never back.”
    He let go his hold on time, and the planet dropped away from under him, leaving him suspended in open space again. He reached out for Hazel’s trail, and was surprised to find she hadn’t immediately dived back into the past again. She’d made what looked to be a side trip, to one of the border worlds, on what would one day be called the Rim. Curious, Owen followed her trail, treading the stars under his feet as he headed for the edge of civilization.

    It was a green world, young and full of life, and the human presence there was still a new thing. Owen hung in orbit above the planet, studying it with his extended senses. He didn’t need to see or hear things directly anymore; he just knew. There were barely a hundred cities on this world, most of them little more than stone and timber. A single starport served only visiting ships. It was a low-tech civilization, sliding slowly but inevitably back into barbarism. Armies warred constantly on each other, though it wasn’t clear what they had to fight over, except perhaps territory. It was a purely human world, with no extreme body shapes or adaptations. Some guns, but steel was the weapon of choice. Owen was amused to find he felt more comfortable here than he had on Heartworld.
    He materialized in the midst of a great forest. Massive trees with blue-black bark, and heavy fleshy leaves of a green so brilliant they were almost luminous. They towered all around him, packed so closely together they blocked out most of the light from the brilliant silver-blue sun. The air was cool and crisp, full of the scents of living things, and a curling ground mist moved this way and that, though no breeze blew. Owen looked slowly around him. There were dark shadows in between the trees, and dust motes curled slowly in the silver shafts of light, but there