He turned around. Dracon Marduk was on the threshold of the room, knelt to the ground and wrapped in his amaranth cloak. In the dim light of the fireplace, glistened the twelve daggers from which he never separated, the two-handed sword on his back, and the knife on the calf.
“How’s that bitch sister of yours?” the Pendracon asked, before spitting a laugh.
“Aniah is shocked. Thank you.”
“Forgive me, Marduk, I’m… completely drunk.”
“My lord—”
“I couldn’t defend her!” Hammoth almost screamed. Then he added in a whisper, “The fault is ours. Mine!”
A current of cold air came into the room and made the flames dance in the fireplace, waving the shadows reflected on the walls. The Dracon joined him on the monumental balcony, avoiding the pieces of destroyed furniture, asking no question, making no statement, as was his style. He looked at the horizon with him, knowing that somewhere in that huge and dark nothing, the enemy was already reorganizing to strike.
“His soul got back in the sword as the blade of a knife slips in hot butter,” the Pendracon asserted. “It’s impossible, Marduk. The sacred scriptures speak of a booming energy, a gap opening in the fabric of the universe that sucks everything, even time! I expected to die after trapping him again, I was ready for it! But no, Kam Karkenos jumped in his prison just like… like…”
He squeezed the crystal in his hand, until a few drops of blood fell into the void. He did not finish the sentence.
“The bind between body and soul was probably weak,” Marduk opined. “A mortal can’t host a force that has lived through all eternity, even if we are talking about the body of the greatest man that ever walked upon this soiled earth. That soul corrodes, my King. Crowley did not deserve such an end.”
Hammoth squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re not allowed to feel sorry for him,” he growled. “Pity is a form of contempt!”
“Excuse me, my lord. Anyway, now we know what was the reason for Skyrgal’s short and miserable reincarnation. Giving birth to a son in whom may flow his curse blood.”
“A son. Can he really have a son?”
“It looks like one of us, just a human being,” Marduk went on. “It seems so fragile, and helpless. I hate to think what rite Aniah suffered to generate it. She does not want to talk about it. She hides those memories behind her tears, but the marks on her body are obvious, even within, burns and cuts. I asked Dracon Araya to examine her thoroughly; I would not accept anyone else to touch her.
The Poison Dracon kept silent all the time, trying not to say anything and look relaxed. But the look in his eyes spoke for itself. He was in a hurry, Hammoth, in a hurry and afraid. I swear I saw him cry when he discovered the Spiral on the baby’s chest.” He drew a long sigh. “That mark should not be on a mortal. It is the symbol of the infinite; the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth, that regulates the flow of the great All. It’s the symbol of the gods. He has already sent one of his most trusted student beyond the walls of Agalloch in hopes of discovering a little more about what happened, as well as what expects us, but when Aniah begged him in tears, saying, ‘Kill him, Poison lord! At least you can kill him, can’t you?’ His answer was a gloomy silence. In that way, he confirmed that one suspect I never wanted to become a certainty, there’s no way to kill him. He is immortal, all like his father.”
“Then we have to hide him!” Hammoth ordered. “There’s nothing to talk about!”
“The boy?”
“That bastard!” he specified. “Gorgors have eyes and hands even in here, you can bet on it! We have to hide him as far as possible, where they will never find him. if they do find him, the consequences could be unpredictable.”
“You speak with wisdom but there’s no place that far. Not on this world, at least.”
“So what should we do? Close him in a crate and let him spend the eternity on the ocean’s floor? So to lose control and leave him at the mercy of the currents of fate?”
“Angra would never allow it,” Marduk said.
“Was he already informed?” Hammoth asked. Marduk nodded. “And what does he think about us?”
“He just bowed his face, without answering. He looked humiliated, and disappointed.”
Hammoth shook his head. “We betrayed his trust. You can betray the trust of a god only once. We are now impious to his eyes. No storm will ever wash away the blood on our hands.”
A gust of wind slammed against them, shaking their clothes and hair, before leaving them to silence. It was the Scream of Skyrgal, the strong wind that used to come and go with suddenness, knocking men on the ground, bursting open the windows, stripping the trees of their leaves.
“While I was coming here I was thinking about a possible solution,” the Dracon said. “It’s not a good idea, but it’s still an idea, and it’s the only one I have.”
The Pendracon raised a hand. He looked at him with firmness and fear at the same time. “Make him disappear,” he said. “I do not want to know where. No one must ever know I just killed twelve Guardians to protect this secret.” He let those last words ring within his conscience, as he looked at his hands. “Yes. I killed them. And you’ve already figured that out if you’re still the Delta Dracon I know. This secret is worth more than our useless lives. There are spies here at the Fortress, after what happened to Crowley I’m sure about it. If we can’t trust all our men, we can trust none of them. The child and his cursed blood must disappear, nobody can know where. The salvation of all for which we have fought depends on it.”
Marduk looked at him. “It’s a great burden you give me.”
“Yes. It is.”
“And I hope to be worthy of your trust.”
“You’ll have to be.”
Hammoth looked down to him. He put a hand on his shoulder and sent him away with that gesture. Marduk bowed as a sign of obedience and strode to the door. Then, he stopped. He turned to look at his Pendracon, overwhelmed by responsibility, drunk, exhausted. He looked at him with compassion and felt remorse. A Guardian, especially a Dracon, could not look that way at their infallible, irreplaceable guide, the man from whose decisions life and death of all depended. He could not doubt his unquestioned integrity but, in the end, not many years had gone by since they were both just Guardians, blood brothers, friends of a Pendracon called Crowley Nightfall. He heard his wild laugh, remembered the light in his amused eyes as he watched them vomit their soul out after a night of drinking. They were just men who played at being gods, which was the crux of the matter. Charged with responsibility, no one could ask a man to never do the wrong thing, to always be fit for the situation, even when he held, in his trembling hands, the fate of the entire world.
“Hammoth,” he said. “My friend. What is done is dead. Now his son is in this world and we can only hide him. If nothing else, at least now Skyrgal and the child are in our hands and not in Gorgors.’ If they want to come and get them, we’ll be here waiting, armed to the teeth as has always been in our glorious history. We’ll face any attack, the example of Crowley’s end will not be lost. Leave it to me. Leave at least this burden on me. You’re not the only one who has killed Guardians for the common good. I’m still the Delta Dracon you remember.”
Hammoth remained silent for a while. Then he answered in a way that Marduk would have never expected. He laughed. A dark, drunken laugh. He stood up and threw a bottle against the wall.
“Crowley is still alive!” he shouted. He put his head in his hands and shouted again, “Our old Pendracon is still out there! He survived the soul of Kam Karkenos and… and…!”
He laughed again. Marduk felt a deep pain, the pain of a child who saw his father become weak and unreliable just when he most needed him. He left the room and the tower behind him, marching fast on the bridge. He went into his tower and climbed the stairs to the top floor.
Aniah was there, where he had left her, sitting on a stool in front of the fireplace with the sleeping baby in her arms. “I manag
ed to put him to sleep,” she said as soon as he heard him enter. “He was tired. Be quiet.”
“You’re leaving!” Marduk said, slamming the door. “Tonight!”
She continued to rock the child, staring into void, chanting softly. The Dracon leaned back against the wall, watching her in the gloom. Now that she had changed her clothes, she had a dignified look. Her amaranth tunic of wool, typical of the Delta, hid the best qualities of her body. The darkness in her eyes, however, still blinded who was forced to watch it. Especially those who, like him, had once seen those eyes full of light, childish and happy to be alive.
Time passes and everything changes, he thought. And it is a huge shit.
“Aniah—”
“What fate has been given me?” the woman asked. “Why must I feel… this pain?”
The Dracon stepped forward and forced her to look at him. He saw her eyes red with tears and he felt compassion. “We cannot rewrite the past. We can only make up for what you did,” he said. “If we can’t kill his son, we will hide him!”
“And where are we supposed to hide him? He’s not safe here at the Fortress?”
Marduk shook his head. “Why do you ask, when you know the answer better than I? You’ve been with Gorgors. You know that their hand moves in here too. If what you say is true, they are getting ready for a war they think they have already won. So we must take him away from here!”
“Where?”
Marduk darkened. “We’ll hide his son where Gorgors could set foot only once they razed the Fortress to the ground and killed the last one of us!”
She looked aghast. “No. You can’t think of that hell! How can you—?”
The Dracon stroked the scar on her face, the scar with which Skyrgal had branded her as a head of cattle. Then he looked up. Above the fireplace was framed a portrait of Crowley, his eyes still and solemn. The pain of a memory crossed his mind:
‘What a fuckin’ expression you’re making? You look like a fool!’
‘Marduk, I’m your new Pendracon now. We should check again our way of speaking in public.’
‘Ah, come on! As children we used to poo in the same place to make a joke to the same man, I think I have the right to—’
‘Oh! Don’t start again with this story!’
‘You look like a jerk. Besides, this painter is deaf to the bones.’
‘Let him finish this fucking portrait, Mar, so we can go to drink!’
‘Hammoth’s right, I’m getting a paresis standing like this! Skyrgal be cursed, I need a beer…’
‘And where could we go? Now everyone may recognize you. A Pendracon is not supposed to drink in public.’
‘Let’s saddle our Mogwarts!’
‘You’re crazy as fuck, your grace.’
‘Fuck it! I’ll be crowned ten days from now. Let’s ride on the desert for the last time, as in the old days. I know a place that you’ll like, near the boundary with the Tankars’ land.’
‘Which one?’
‘The light at the end of the world! Marduk and I ran into it five years ago, during a patrol on the damn wolf-men’s lands. Damn, that place earned its name, but there they serve a beer mixed with Mokai that… ah! You’ll tell me if I’m not right. But first, let me finish this Skyrgaldamn portrait.’
Portraits made people look different from what they actually looked like, he thought. He would have preferred to see his old friend and king depicted at the time of his greatest splendor, with his face covered with the enemy’s blood in a scream of killing wrath. He ran his hand along his sister’s face, down to the golden pendant she wore around her neck. Aniah never parted with it. Inside, there was the same portrait, perhaps the only thing left of her old life, the person she used to be. He hated portraits. They reminded him of the time that passed and made all things look older, grayer, sadder, miserable. He took it to put it around the child’s neck.
“You will leave tonight,” he said again, looking into her eyes. “You will reach Arleb in the world Beyond, the only Guardian who has definitively established himself on the other side of the portal. He is a noble man, blessed by fortune. You will give him the child. You will give him my orders. Then, you will come back here. Arleb was a Dracon, he will know what to do. He will watch secretly over Skyrgal’s son. This will give us the time necessary to understand what are the enemy’s intentions, now that Skyrgal’s soul is back in our hands. Just the two of us know it. No Guardian, subjected to the most atrocious torture, must ever reveal the place where this beast is kept hidden. Time. Time is the only thing we need now, and it’s the only thing we can’t afford to lose.”
The woman was unable to respond immediately to that series of orders. Perhaps not the words she had expected from her brother in a similar moment.
“That world,” she said. “You really want to leave him there, where our ancestors used to exile the most feared criminals in whole Candehel-mas? You, who are a Guardian, would leave my son in—?”
“He’s not your son!” Marduk cried, clenching his fists. He lowered his face and gritted his teeth. “Surrender to the idea that for him you were only a… a…” He could not finish. He turned to the wall and hit it with bare knuckles, making them bleed. “Take what you need,” he said in a small voice. “And go away!”
“You’re giving me up too, right?”
“Aniah…”
She shook her head, standing up. “After all, I’d do the same thing with you if you were in my position.”
Marduk knew it was not true. He stopped her by the arm and turned her around. “Aniah…” he repeated, but couldn’t continue.
She smiled. “Yes, I know my name,” she said. “It is the only thing I have left. However, big brother, I left you speechless. How many people in here could say the same thing? Your talent for sarcasm seemed to know no end, a little like our conviction that we could look over the Equilibrium forever. Skyrgal was right. This world is already at an end. It’s only a matter of time. Sooner than not we will kill the weaker puppies to feed what’s left of the litter. As in the story our father used to tell us when we were kids, remember? Before you fell asleep, sure that in that house nothing was going wrong. This time there won’t be a new dawn at the end of the night. Not even for you.”
“Don’t say it!”
“We are already dead, and if you are still the Delta Dracon I remember, you know it better than me.”
He slapped her, and she did not answer. She left the room, carrying the fruit of her love.
“I’m sorry,” Marduk said when she could no longer hear him.
* * * * *
Oh, Crowley…
Aniah walked the stone avenue that bisected the Glade, the cave of rare beauty opened in the womb of the sacred mountain. Its lush trees, the towering waterfalls and the multicolored vegetation made that place a perpetual hymn to life, in stark contrast to the disruptive death of the desert that surrounded it. Even now, though her heart was torn by remorse, the Glade inspired her absolute peace. Its muffled silence was broken only by the sound of water gushing from the numerous cracks in the rocky vault. No one had ever understood where that water came from. The legend spoke of the tears of Angra, sorry for what he had done to his brother Skyrgal, but she was too pragmatic to believe this. The falls were high and unreachable, no one could ever follow the course back to their source. She thought if one day someone managed to do it, the beauty of the place would be somehow affected.
She crossed the forest of ancient oaks and emerald green lawns dotted with flowers of every shape and color, yellow daffodils, red poppies, snowdrops, wild violets, cornflowers. She walked on the pretty wooden bridges suspended above streams full of life. The placid purple light of Ensiferum balls, scattered everywhere, illuminated the beloved places where she had spent the few happy moments of her life. The woods where she played at war with her brother, the tree trunks she stripped by dint of blows when from the wooden sword she passed to that of Manegarm. The trees among which she was stripped, to give herse
lf over to the pleasures of the flesh. She was crushed by the memory of Crowley’s skin and his sweet words whispered in her ear, the bites on her back, the fire of passion that Angra, the god of the universal order, always wanted to be kept alight.
Oh, Crowley…
Yes, her god. She looked up,n the right of the Glade, a large wooden building, like a gigantic stable, towered above the treetops. From the slots just below the roof an eye of pure light watched her escape from his world. Nothing, ever escaped him.
Angra, my only god, she thought. Will you, at least, forgive me?
A roar of pain went through the Glade. The god took on her suffering. Aniah felt reassured. She began to think that, after all, there would be a return home, even for her. Her only crime had been to love a man beyond rationality, to believe him alive when she knew him for dead, to follow him down trails he would have never taken her. For a moment, she came to think that love could never, ever, be a crime.
Angra come to earth, I thank you.
The rich vegetation gradually disappeared, giving way to a barren expanse of black stone. She passed through the endless graves of the Guardians, buried in that place since the dawn of time. The tombs grew older as they flowed past her, becoming, in the end, simple blocks of stone whose inscriptions were gone, forever lost to time. Beyond the cemetery, she arrived at the gates where the Glade ended. Wrought-iron spikes pushed out of the bare rock, as the tusks of a wild beast that wanted to swallow her and make her forever disappear. She found herself in darkness, descending a long staircase. The echo of her footsteps became the only company of her gloomy thoughts, as a red and dismal light rose to illuminate the way.
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