The Stone filled all the pit with a deadly blaze of glory.
Bas stopped, looking up at the dais. He grinned. A naked boy, beautiful
with youth, his grey eyes veiled and sleepy under dark lashes.
He threw the Stone of Destiny up on the dais. An idle boy tossing
stones at a treetop.
Light. An explosion of it, without sound, without physical force.
Ciaran dropped flat on his face behind the pillar. After a long time he
raised his head again. The overhead lights were on, and Bas stood on
the dais beside two twisted, shining lumps of man-made soulless men.
The android flesh had taken the radiation as leather takes heat,
warping, twisting, turning black.
"Poor freaks," said Bas softly. "They were like me, with no place in
the universe that belonged to them. So they dreamed, too--only their
dreams were evil."
He stooped and picked up something--a dull, dark stone, a thing with no
more life nor light than a waterworn pebble.
He sighed and rolled it once between his palms, and let it drop.
"If they had had time to learn their new machine a little better, I
would never have lived to reach them in time." He glanced down at
Ciaran, standing uncertainly below. "Thanks to you, little man, they
didn't have quite time enough."