The Awakening of History : 04

Now Klane was confused for he had come to resist History.
“I do not understand your words,” Klane answered the giant, “yet I must tell you at once that I am here to contend with you for I have heard many stories of your tyranny over the people of the new cities. I have heard how you have become a terrible task master. I have heard of how you bind and blind your servants, of how you seek to judge your foes and friends alike and condemn them. And I have heard of your great ignorance too, for you know not what truly lies in the hearts of men and women.”
The giant sighed and bowed his head. “I am very old, Klane,” he said. “I am much older than you; not as old as your people or this world, it is true, but much older than any days you now remember - for there were times before the Great Forgetting, of which you should now be told; many, many times in fact. These were great periods, slowly eroding eras and vast epochs and in most of them I was honoured and respected by most of the peoples.
“But there have always been those who do not like me or who seek to use me for their own ends. And too, if I am honest, I am not myself incapable of sin. There came at length an age when the Guardians of Earth ruled over Earth and Moon, a small and humble part of the greater glory that was the Galactic Compact. At first the Guardians were no different from other rulers and for the most part their reign was benign. But over the long centuries of stewardship the Guardians changed. Then they began to bend me and twist me and use me as their slave," History said.
"And for a while it seemed as though I served them though they treated me with contempt. Then something terrible happened to the Earth and I was blamed for it. Even I cannot remember that terrible thing now and remembering is the thing I do best. Yet here I can only be silent. It is of no use to ask me.
“After the terrible thing, the Guardians were afraid of me and they sought to kill me with the Vow Of Earth. I do not know why but I do know that I cannot be killed so easily. Though I have slept for long and an age beneath these hills, and though much is forgotten I have lasted longer than the Guardians and I am returned.
“It is because of you, Klane, that I have been roused to life again!”