“Someone, friend or foe, Watches your every move and listens to your words at any time, maybe even now,” Erin intervened. “You never know what’s behind a friendly smile, so you’d better not trust anyone. If you have any doubt, don’t trust even us.”
“Just like in Melekesh. I felt at home since I woke up.”
“Oh, poor thing,” the girl said.
“Yeah. Don’t you want to adopt him and give him a home?”
“Yes, and bathe him and dress him up.”
“You always think about naked boys, don’t you?”
“Fuck you, big brother.”
“You know who we should let him meet?”
“Who?”
“Kugar. He would have taken him for a ride until—”
“You know Kugar?” Dagger shuddered.
“Kug?” Ianka said. “She must still give me a rematch!”
“In a duel?”
“Yes, a duel to who drinks more! Holy shit, that girl has a bottomless stomach, believe me! She’s the only one who could knock me down, apart from Warren, of course, but with him it ended in a draw.”
“And do you even know what she…” Dag stopped.
“…really is?” Ianka finished for him. “Listen, if it were not for us, they would have already subjected that half-Tankar to the torture of the moon. We’ve always covered her up.”
“Torture of the moon?”
“Yes, a half moon opened in the belly. You know, they put you on a—”
“Ian.” The girl closed her eyes. “Please, no details.”
“And why did you protect her?”
“Tell me—you never had a friend, right?”
Dag raised an eyebrow, finding impeccable the logic of the other one.
“We are his mates!” Ianka stated, as if it was the most logical concept in the world. “You go nowhere without your mates! Erin, Ash, Warren and me—we are the Hotankar, the wolf pack in Tankars’ language, and nothing can separate us. Every now and then we bite each other just to feel our presence and unify the group.” He scratched his head, puzzled. “At least I think. Well, the pack is always united against external attack, it’s nature’s laws! The pack defends the weakest element because what happens to one, happens to all. We wanted to protect Kugar.”
“But in the end it was useless.” Erin shrugged her shoulders. “What did we expect? That she would grow up with us, fighting by our side without anyone noticing?”
From his eyes, Dagger realized that she cared about Kugar in a very special way.
“It’s been a long day for everyone,” the girl concluded with the clear intention not to continue. “You’d better go to sleep, Dag. If tomorrow Olem decides to let you still be part of this world, you can come and sit with us again. After all, you just have to survive until dinner.”
“Yeah, just until dinner,” Ianka repeated. “Even if it’s something that someone occasionally forgets to do around here, right brother?”
Dagger was still thinking about the possible double meaning of those words, when Ianka landed a pat on his back that nearly made him fall to the ground. Then the green-eyed boy left, raising his fist in victory to an audience that was all in his head.
“Is he always like this?”
“Sometimes he’s even worse,” Erin replied. “But he’s somewhat improved since he’s started to drink a little less.”
“Drink a little less?! Ktisis, he’s had seven—!”
“Oh, you don’t know what Schizo was like before.” Erin smiled bitterly. “Friends are the family you choose, and those you’ve seen at this table are the only possible family for me. The only safe place, the only refuge.”
“Why are you so bonded?”
“It’s the way friendship works, red-eyes, that’s all. There are people we can’t bear even if they have done nothing to us; others to whom we feel connected at first glance. Maybe it’s happened to you too…looking in the eyes of someone for the first time and feeling like you’ve always known him.”
“It happened to me today.”
“Curious. Today it happened to me too.” She smiled. “Dag?”
“What?”
“Any news from home?”
Dagger shuddered. That word brought him back to Melekesh, home, and for a fleeting moment he could smell again the dirt in the hair of Seeth. He clung to that memory with all his strength, closing his eyes and trying not to let it disappear. But it was already gone—in its place, only that hungry void he wasn’t ready to face again.
Can there be life, with no bonds? He released Erin’s hand. “A city on fire; the severed head of a woman going to the bottom of a channel and the city guards, free to slaughter children and women as they pleased: this is the only picture I associate with home. But now they all say this is my home and yet here I feel like a stranger. Can you believe it?”
Erin took his hand again and asked no more. “Stay with us.”
Hotankars, Dagger thought. Sounds good. He closed his eyes. Shit!
The girl accompanied him back to his room. For a moment he came to think that she too needed some company, and that was the whole of it: the simple need to have someone close—the same for men, gods and everyone in the middle.
“Things don’t have to go wrong just because they’ve always gone wrong,” she said when they were at the door, as if she’d thought about those simple words all along. “If you locked yourself beyond this door, tonight, we wouldn’t have met. If you don’t open the door and face the world that lies beyond…” She looked for the right words to finish, but couldn’t find them. She kissed him on the forehead and held his face in her cold, white hands. “Always give a chance to the world outside the door. You’ve got nothing to lose. Locking yourself inside your cage is never the right choice. Who’s alone, is helpless.”
She left him and Dagger stood there, watching her disappear up the dark staircase, already so distant, even if he still felt the imprint of her hands on his cheeks. He got back into the room and threw himself on his pallet.
He thought about her words. Erin was right and wrong at the same time, but she couldn’t understand. He should have invited her to stay, but he was afraid to experience the pain of loss again. In the end, he just wanted to have someone next to him and not be alone that night too.
This could be my last chance, he thought. Then he remembered the words, Be human, written at the bottom of the bas-relief above his mother’s corpse.
Only when he closed his eyes he realized how tired he was. Soon he fell asleep. A familiar wind-borne sand escorted him toward the middle-earth between consciousness and unconsciousness, where loneliness and death reigned lesbian and supreme.
* * * * *
6. In the lap of the gods
The shadow bit him and shook him like a ferocious dog with a rag doll.
“Why, Crowley?!”
Dagger tried to defend himself with a wide movement of his arm. He woke as he slammed his head on the ground. He’d fallen from the wooden bench in the darkness of his room.
“Ouch!” he said, and felt the sore spot on his head. Tired as he was, he curled on his side to sleep again. Then he noticed a shadow that had probably observed him until then—a vaguely human shape against the blue arch of the window.
When it realized it had been discovered, the black shape vanished quickly. Dagger struggled up from the floor and reached the ledge in time to see the shadow disappear between the columns beneath him. He expected to be observed at all times. It didn’t matter if it was someone hired to bump him off or to prevent someone else from doing it. It didn’t matter because he was sleepy, very sleepy, and the only thing he could think about was going back to sleep. He threw himself face down on the sweat-soaked straw. On the verge of surrendering to the cold desert wind, his thief's instinct kept him from sleeping under the watchful eyes of a shadow that would soon reappear to spy on him again.
He opened his eyes and listened to every noise: an owl, the rustling of leaves, a drop of water fallin
g somewhere, a girl laughing and moaning…
A creak.
Dagger jumped, looking at the door. It was still closed. He forced his body up and leaned outside. He saw five novices, or at least their dark shapes, looking into a room three doors away.
“It is time to obey, Blood Brother,” a voice whispered.
The boy, whom these words had been spoken to, answered nothing. He followed the others down the stairs and disappeared with them.
Shadows always go somewhere, Dag considered, slamming his forehead against the doorjamb. Where are they going? Oh-oh, there’s only one way to find out, right? “Fuck you,” he added, addressed to the voice inside his head. Sleep. Sleep! I don’t ask much, just to sleep! he was still thinking it, when he closed the door and advanced barefoot and silent in the corridor. He went downstairs and walked in the night full of promises.
They were moving slowly, wearing long black tunics that made them virtually invisible in the gloom. On top of the two towers, the tiny silhouettes of few Hammer Guardians looked to the east, and the desert.
They don’t, or don’t want, to see. Or maybe there’s nothing they haven’t already seen in the rotten heart of this mountain.
Dagger walked around the arena, standing behind the black novices along the avenue that cut the sacred forest in half. He walked on the edge, careful not to step on the gravel and to maintain a safe distance, until the shadows entered the trees near the statue of a weeping woman, with arms outstretched and half amputated by the merciless passage of time.
Under the trees, the darkness grew so dense it became difficult to follow the shadows. Several times he feared having lost sight of them in the surrounding trees, rocks and branches.
Did they find me out?
Tormented by his fears, but driven forward by curiosity, he finally reached the imposing rocky wall that enclosed the Glade. A barely visible path went up, carved into the stone; twisting and turning, the path got lost in the dark. The shadows had already begun their ascent and Dag could not deny himself the chance to see where that umpteenth passage to nowhere led.
The tree tops below were gradually shrouded in darkness until, in that black sea, the only visible lights left where those of the ensiferum balls, scattered in the sacred forest.
It’s like being suspended over a starry sky.
The curvature of the wall forced Dag to advance in a crouch. He was relieved when he saw a slit of light in the large black dome, beyond which the shadow of the last novice disappeared. The slit was somewhere above him, but in the circular motion of his path it was hard to tell how far. He walked and walked, turning and turning, bowed to the ground. The path became so narrow that soon he had to move on his heels with his back to the wall. His toes were now suspended in the air. A misstep would be enough to meet Skyrgal again.
It took him some time to reach the light. What, at first glance, had seemed just a little slit turned out to be a high rift in the vault, with two-winged Mastodons guarding the threshold. Dug there on the spot, full-size and turned against one another, the statues seemed to emerge from the rock as sentinels at the beginning of a long, steep staircase.
Dag moved on the first step, so high and narrow that he could only put the front of his foot on it. He went up again in what had become a struggle against endurance. Time seemed to lapse, and Dag could not remember how long had it been since he had left the safety of his room. Then, at the end of this big and black nothingness, Dag saw the light of the starry sky and a titanic hand that obscured it with five shady fingers.
He was not surprised when he found himself at the foot of Skyrgal, on top of Golconda. His father’s arm overshadowed the two moons, one balanced on his thumb and the other on the little finger, casting a long, orange shadow in the world, and on him. He saw no trace of the novices, but he saw a new wooden staircase twisting as a snail on the titan’s right leg, making its way through the arches and twisting tongues of the petrified flames. In some places, the stone was so thin to be translucent in the moonlight, and yet it had to be so hard and tough to have been barely touched by time.
When he approached, he felt again the morbid heat coming from Skyrgal’s body. That turbid feeling came from within and flowed with Dag’s blood, causing him to sweat and slow his march. With a heavy sigh, he resigned himself to climb the steps, rising on the cold and silent fire. When he realized that it would be difficult to dig such a hard stone, to create within the colossus rooms where novices might meet and play at small conspiracies, Dagger had a first, rough idea of the place where he was directed—the staircase ended, a little higher, inside what was probably the sphincter of the god. He continued to climb the winding structure, until he stopped in front of the circle of blades that, like an unusual arc, rose at the end of a wooden platform.
“No way. After being eaten and shat from the skeleton of that Burzum in the world Beyond, now I have to take the reverse path, too…?”
He wondered why that particular anatomic part of Skyrgal’s body was open. Then he imagined a furious Angra grabbing him by his tongue and thrusting a sword straight into his heart, and ventured the reaction that anyone could have in a similar situation. He turned to look at the bottom of the stairs, as if expecting to find something that time had obviously swept away. He saw only ruins, ancient and mysterious ruins, and the statues of deformed monsters guarding their entrance.
He resolved to take a step inside that new tunnel. It was rather small and its walls all but smooth. He had to crawl in there, though the novices, or somebody on their behalf, had placed wooden planks all along the way to protect their knees, and a trail of ensiferum balls.
Dag’s shoulder touched one of the blades that the guts of the titan pointed against him. Tasting his blood, the stone came alive and malleable like lava. It lit up Skyrgal’s intestines for a short moment, then faded and turned to cold, lifeless matter once more.
Dag advanced, climbing and turning, until he noticed an red light reflected on the stone. Soon he found himself on the threshold of a great cavern, three times as high as it was wide and with a curious rounded shape. The walls were divided into sharp filaments that dripped and hung in the air, everywhere—petrified acid waterfalls so numerous as to absorb any noise.
A stomach, he supposed.
The floor was made of red and black paving stones, arranged to reproduce a large Spiral. Worn-looking, they seemed to have been there for long.
Someone has inhabited this place in the past.
The novices stood still now. The ones Dag had been following had joined the ones who had already come. Now, one hundred young eyes were looking up to an altar consisting of three blocks of black basalt, with nine red burning candles above it that were the only source of light in the whole place. Both boys and girls were stripped to the waist and apparently not clear headed: from time to time, they brought purple tablets to their mouths and swallowed them whole. Then they kept on swaying like ghosts or living dead, to the sound of no music.
A young man, wearing an old and worn purple cloak, sat on the throne that soared behind the altar. A red symbol was stamped on the breastplate of the refined black-plate armor he wore:
∞
Long, straight and raven-black hair flowed on his chest, down to his hips. His eyes, dark as onyx, glittered above a hooked nose. His square chin and thin lips gave his face a symmetry that had its own beauty.
Behind the altar was a younger boy, whose head glowed in the crimson light. He was white and skinny, and completely shaved except for a long braid of purple-dyed hair that encircled his neck and descended on his bare chest. He clutched a curved knife in his hands. When he lifted it up, the novices raised their faces and arms as they recited a litany.
“Spirits rising from darkness! Burning shadows in the dead of night! Icy fingers all over my hand! Lead me to the place where she lies! Finally They are back! Finally we’re free!”
The novices knelt, twisting their extended hands in a constant motion. Some slipped a tiny tablet in
their or their companions’ mouth, then continued to draw endless spirals in the air.
“Well, it’s time now to obey!” the shaved master of ceremonies said, lowering his knife. “Bring the virgin of rebirth in front of the First Disciple!”
At that order, a girl came into view, conducted at the foot of the throne where the First Disciple sat and watched, silent and composed. She didn’t seem able to walk a straight line and was supported by two novices. When they uncovered her head, Dagger saw that, like the others, she had been drugged. She looked straight ahead with empty eyes and seemed to mutter something, through lips stretched into a stupid smile. She didn’t try to defend herself when a hundred quivering hands deprived her of tunic and underclothes, baring her pink skin. They left her dressed with only her red hair resting on her breasts.
She’s no more than sixteen, Dag thought, embarrassed to see that she was red under there too, just a little brighter. How does the master of ceremonies know she’s a virgin? he wondered, before giving himself an answer.
The girl did not object even when they made her lay on the altar. She could not do anything but whisper her incoherent words at the sharp ceiling of the bizarre temple.
“Blood Brothers,” said the boy with the knife. “We are gathered here to baptize a new initiate who has decided to join us: the Disciples Reborn! That he be brought before the sacred altar, in the presence of our lord the First Disciple!”
A novice, wearing only a cap and with tied hands, was made to kneel at the foot of the throne. When his head was uncovered, long white hair fell on his bare shoulders. Dagger recognized him as Warren, the first-born of Pendracon Hammoth, met that same evening.
“Brother!” the master of ceremonies said. “Are you ready to be part of the Disciples Reborn?”
Warren raised his face and said: “Yes, Grand Meister. I’m ready. I did not know how lost I was until I found you, but now my fears are fading fast. I will make it through the wilderness, because you made me see the path before me.”
Dagger 2 - Blood Brothers - A Dark Fantasy Adventure (Born to Be Free series) Page 15
