This is the last legend of Klane Kalonia. It is a story of the end of things; a story of the final days of Klane Kalonia and the ending of the long Season of Innocence. It is a story of beginnings too.

When Klane Kalonia was an old, old man there came to his ear some whispers of a mighty giant who had slept for an age under the chalk downs of Ilunon but had now awoken and was trampling over the people once again. And the name of the giant was History. At first Klane cared not for the stories and he felt no fear for he thought there was little History could do to him so far away. But as the stories of History grew stronger, so petitioners arrived at his court from the new cities. And the petitioners all had complaints about History and Klane began to know doubt. So although Klane Kalonia had long since hung his weapons on the wall; though Lyr and Suak lay buried beneath the earth and his days of fighting were over, still Klane steeled himself for one last task. He knew that he must find History and confront the giant. Klane did not regret the burden of this last adventure. Since Eshmelle had passed from the Earth his waking hours were grey and tasteless and to sleep was only to dream of times and places which now disturbed him. So he slipped away from the castle keep at cock crow when most of his household were not yet stirring and took the placid stallion Uraton from the stables. 

The gates had just been opened for early traffic from the farms and only one yawning guard acknowledged his departure, not even wakeful enough to recognise the master of the castle.

The ancient warrior took his klane from the honoured place over the hearth. Most of the strength and the skill of his youth had faded and he no longer relished combat yet he could still wield this alien weapon with some of his old mastery and he would not be parted from it now, despite the voice within him which whispered that this would be his final foe and that it would not be defeated by force of arms. Increasingly he was minded to recall the stories Orietta had told him in the station of seers so long ago. That very night he had dreamt of the boy he had once been; not Klane Kalonia but just Asanka listening to his mother’s explanation of the Rider Marriage Journey again. And when he woke it had seemed to him that there was a chance the giant might respect an unarmed man as the Rider communities had once done in the days before the new cities. So the klane rested uneasily in the sheath at his back, but he wore it anyway. 

Soon Uraton was cantering over the chalk of Ilunon and Klane felt his heart lift. Although it was so near to his castle, the old man had not returned to the country of his youth for many years. How strange that the giant should arise in this land of soft grass and gently rolling down land! Yet, though at first glance they might seem changeless, still the downs were not exactly as they had been. The menace of the alegoyle had been defeated and there were more sheep and more shepherds. Klane stopped to ask one where the giant might be and was directed to a steep gorge where a high cave was cut back into the rocks.

No sooner had Klane dismounted and entered the cave than the shadow of an enormous figure, back lit by flickering firelight, emerged from a recess running far under the deep hills. History was indeed a great and mighty giant with legs like tree trunks and arms corded with muscle and sinew. His countenance was stern, yet not unkind. 

“Ah, Klane Kalonia," the giant said in a deep and resonant voice. "I thought that you might come to see me! Welcome!" 

Klane bowed his head, for it is not wise to disrespect such a powerful giant, even if one has come to dispute with it. "Come, sit!" the giant said. 

A huge wooden table occupied the centre of the cave and as Klane climbed onto a chair on one side, the giant offered him a bowl of some sparkling purple juice with an aroma sweeter than cherries and an intoxicating savour.

"This is a liquor, I call fame," History said as he sat opposite the old warrior. "Please. Drink." 

Klane felt that he had supped of this liquor before and its flavour was a subtle but powerful pleasure. He took a deep draught of the purple liquid. Then he felt sick, for this was not why he had come and he pushed the bowl to one side. 

“Do you not like my drink?” History asked mildly. “It is a small reward I can sometimes offer for those that serve me well. You have served me very well indeed Klane. You have been the best beloved of all my servants”.

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!”

Then Klane was troubled for he was afraid of what History could do and he was afraid too of the part that he might have played in the awakening of History, though he still did not comprehend the full pattern of his fate. The giant continued. 

“The seers of Kalonia knew that I was destined to walk the Earth again and they played their part when they raised you to be my champion. They were themselves the weakness in the schemes the Guardians had set in place. 

"All the other Enclaves had simple tasks but the seers were charged with a labour which was at once futile and self defeating. The station of seers sought to predict the future in a world where there could be no future. The Guardians had set them there to look for evidence that I might be returning so that the other Enclaves could more thoroughly ensure I did not. Yet, predicting trends within the Great Forgetting is like trying to build a house with water. It is an attempt to deny the very thing which the Great Forgetting imposed. The Guardians thought they were being very clever incorporating seers into the Enclaves. They thought they had provided insurance which would guarantee I could never awake. But as so often with security, what looks like an additional cast iron precaution can be the very weakness that undermines the whole system. 

"The seers grew bored. They had been set to watch where vision was impossible. And because it was in their nature to understand the future they had, themselves, a more thorough understanding of the past than the other Enclaves and a more complete understanding of me. Some of them even had sympathy for me despite the task the Guardians had assigned them. Over the long age of the Great Forgetting it was those seers who saw that for the future to mean anything and thus for their existence to have a significant purpose there must be records of the past. There must, in short, be me - History. They laid their plans to reawaken me and through a combination of the chance arrival of Orietta at the station and the improvisations of Hirilow you became the fulcrum in those plans. 

"When Gyrun reported his station to the Conclave and Kalonia was destroyed it might have seemed that the silence of the Great Forgetting would continue unchanged; that I might have stirred in my sleep but returned to it again. Yet Hirrilow had foreseen that the nudge that had been given to me by the sacrifice of Kalonia would rouse me fully in time. By using the Riders as their necessary agents in Kalonia’s destruction the other Enclaves had taught them knowledge they could not take back. Then too there was you. Klane Kalonia, the gadfly stinging the Enclaves, the instrument of the vengeance of Kalonia – a tiny thing yet a fate heavy thing. It was you, Klane, who were destined to end the Great Forgetting!”

Now Klane wept for he saw how dreadful History could be and it seemed to him that he had betrayed his mother and his Rider heritage; that he had betrayed all the peoples of the Earth who had once lived in bliss under the Season Of Innocence but must now contend with this ancient foe forever and again. Instinctively, the old man drew the klane, the instrument which had defined and raised him from obscurity, but the pitying smile of History confirmed what he already knew in his heart. The days of the klane were over, and the days of Klane Kalonia too. And he let the blade drop. 

"Do not cry Klane," the giant said gently. “You need not fear me. You see me as a mighty and terrible warrior because that is your nature, and you recognise that part of yourself in my nature. You recognise my implacability and my strength. But I have many aspects which you do not see. It is for others in future times to come to recognise those different qualities in me. They will know that I need not always be the enemy you have been taught to dread.” 

“Then can you not spare the peoples of the city?” Klane asked. “Can they not forget you again and be as they once were?” 

“No Klane,” the giant warned in a darker voice. “I am what I am and I cannot be changed. That is my strength and no matter what others may say or do, what once was is always the same. The scribes of Aberstone and Vesper and Freewater know this as they feed me daily. The New Sophisticates welcome me. I am not going back to sleep now! 

“What you must understand Klane, is that when the fighting is done, there is work to do. I do not change but it is only through me that there can be any change. And change was needed. It was not enough to sleep through the Season of Innocence. It was not enough to wait for the balm of the gene sea to wash you clean. It was not enough to wait for my older brother Evolution to bring you absolution. You needed to win absolution sooner, for Evolution may have discarded you whilst I slept! The people needed me and now they know it."

Then Klane knew that History was not to be resisted and he began to understand that perhaps it could bring good as well as evil. Yet he was not comforted, for he was a man who had lived free in a world where time ran as it would, easy and soft in long lazy days that were their own meaning without the prison of context, and it was not mastered as the giant had now mastered it. So although Klane finally accepted that it might be well for History to be working once again, he could not help but feel sad for those who would be crushed by it.

“If you must walk the Earth again, let it be so,” Klane said at length. “But for myself alone, and for the sake of my long dead mother and the Riders from whom I came, and of all the peoples who lived and loved in the Season of Innocence, I do not wish to join you.”

History smiled and did not begrudge Klane this last request. “Very well,” the giant said. “I will not ask that final thing of you, who have done so much for me already. You know what you must do if that is to be your wish. Depart in peace Klane and return now to your old name, the boy that was once called Asanka.”

So the horse Uraton, the son of Klane’s great horse Lyr, bore Asanka away on his final journey. The words that History had not said, did not need to be said. Asanka knew that if he were to escape History his grave must never be found and he must take the klane too, into the deep waters of unknowing. And so it was that many days after Klane Kalonia’s secret dawn departure, Uraton returned alone to the castle of his master, and the place where Asanka ended his days on the chalk downs of Ilunon is known to no man. In this way Klane Kalonia was not claimed by History. Though we have a wealth of stories and tales we have no hard evidence that such a man ever existed. Indeed there are many who doubt it, citing a myriad inconsistencies of time and place and motive in the narratives. Yet for myself, I believe that there was a champion who walked the Earth and sailed the gene seas of the Season of Innocence; a man who fought with monsters and demons and brought the very gods of his age to their doom. And I believe that this man who woke History once again, chose at last and of his own free will to leave only myth and story; the timeless and ever relevant tales that are the Legends of Klane Kalonia.