Chains.
The boy closed his eyes and begged his own hands not to shake. He couldn’t show weakness, not in front of his master.
“You shall never be afraid, Araya,” the master continued. “You’ll always be still and silent in the storm, with a subtle smirk on your face, as it’s worthy of your wonderful people. In hindsight, it was truly a cruelty to drag a Messhuggah in this hell. I beg you to accept my apologies.”
“They’ll kill us all, won’t they?”
Aeternus didn’t answer that question. He bent his head and went back into the room.
Araya put his hands on the fragile railing that separated him from the endless horror. The choral scream of the Guardians captured and tortured everywhere around them was the only sound in the vast silence that hung over Adramelech, the holy city of the Gorgors, and the unusual structure erected at its center—the Throne of Skyrgal, an immense monolith carved and worked for decades by nameless slaves. There was no place in all Adramelech where it couldn’t be seen, together with the two massive towers at its sides.
‘Madness. It was madness to think we could march in the heart of this city and survive!’ he thought. ‘The Gorgors fought sacrilege with horror, and who are we to blame them?’
With a moment’s delay, Araya realized that Aeternus was still nearby and could hear him. He immediately locked down his thoughts as he had been taught several times, so that they couldn’t be read.
‘We used the Throne of their god to set up kitchens, dormitories…toilets! How could we hope for something different than this?’
He looked up to observe ‘this’. A perfect circle of gallows had been erected all around the Throne, and the Guardians captured in the previous days were being tortured on them. Too far to see the details of their torment, close enough to hear their screams and the sounds of heavy machinery—metal against metal, sharp whistles and the endless, funeral creaking of the wood.
Above all shone the Hammer of Skyrgal. It was an unreachable lighthouse at the end of the night. He watched the lines of light running along its surface up to its handle, which rose over the holy city.
When he heard another scream, Araya followed the First Disciple inside. The command of the Guardians had been set up in the rooms just below the seat of Skyrgal. ‘Where he should have placed his holy ass’, the young Messhuggah thought with detached irony. That recently discovered side of his character had helped him endure the bloody contradictions of war.
‘How old am I? At four hundred years I shouldn’t be afraid of anything.’ For a moment he found himself in a dark corridor, surrounded by yelling people. A divine light blinded him, causing him to raise his arm and shield his eyes.
Then, again, the darkness of the room in the Throne of Skyrgal, and his teacher sitting behind his desk.
At candlelight, Aeternus was leafing through his black book, the inseparable Benighted. “What madness brought us so far, you wonder.” He thus revealed having read Araya’s mind. “What madness is knowledge, I ask you. How high can a human soul rise, when it probes the depths of a god’s knowledge?”
The Messhuggah bowed his head. “I didn’t want to—”
“No. You didn’t want.” Aeternus turned a page. “We had to complete the knowledge kept in our book. It’s all so…fascinating! The rules behind the interaction between life and death—two obsessive lovers who can’t stay away from each other. We’re all connected, this is the truth. The big with the small, what happens in the All is reflected in us.” He stared at him. “Creation and Destruction.”
“Angra and Skyrgal?”
“How did I teach you to call them, until you’re a worthy servant of one of the two?”
“Kam Kres…and Kam Karkenos.”
Aeternus smiled. “What lies beyond the portal within us? Are you genius or insane? Looking for the temple of Ktisis was essential, the only purpose of our existence. Unfortunately, we made a few mistakes of evaluation and now we’re under siege, locked up in this weird place. But we were close to it, my boy. So close!”
A Guardian in a green hardglass armor entered. “My Pendracon,” he said. “His force Korkore, the second Disciple, has returned and wants to see you.”
“Let him in. My brother doesn’t need to be announced.” Aeternus closed the book. “Araya, you’ll be kind enough to leave us alone, now.”
The young Messhuggah nodded. He bowed in a sign of respect, before leaving. He walked slowly and barefoot on the hard stone of the corridor, his mind tormented by fast and confused thoughts, ‘How does it feel to die? We discussed it long, master, talking about its necessity, but…what do we feel when our existence comes to an end despite the hate and love we feel toward it? I don’t want to be a grain of sand in the desert of Creation. I don’t want to die! You speak of the book, of the sacred text, but I…’
He turned left into a secondary corridor and then climbed a narrow flight of stairs. ‘I must know! Then as now, I must know!’ He slipped into a tunnel and crawled in the droppings of the mice that infested the place. He squeezed one of them in his hand, stubbornly proceeding toward the light. ‘I must know! I must live!’
He reached the grate overlooking the command room. ‘Silence, my conscience.’ He watched Aeternus in front of the bird cage next to the arch opened to the outside. He had seeds in hand.
“You’re my most loyal servants, those who’ll never betray me, right?” The messengers of the gods silently accepted the food from his hands.
“Right.” The First Disciple caressed them, then closed the aviary and sat at his desk, in front of the book. He stared at it, elegantly rolling a coin over his fingers.
Two steps resounded in the air soaked with dust.
“My King. Brother,” a man out of Araya’s visual greeted. “I’m here to report about the south and west gates.”
“They’re attacking where expected, then.” Aeternus raised his face. “Did they cut off all of our escape routes?”
“They’re using the bodies of our captured comrades as flags. But first they have chopped—”
Aeternus drove away the details with a wave of his hand as he flipped another page. “Gorgors…those little demons are always looking for attention, aren’t they?”
“Brother—”
“We were so close, Korkore, you have no idea—maybe a few days, a month, no more. The entrance to the temple must be near, I can feel it! If only we could resist, if only…!” He clenched his fist. “How much time do we still have?”
“If we concentrate our strengths, perhaps one day. The Gorgors don’t seem in a hurry. They never hurry up when they mean to enjoy the massacre.”
“A whole day. It’s time enough.”
“To find the temple?”
Aeternus shook his head. He stood up and approached his trunk—the only piece of furniture dragged there from the Fortress, apart from his desk and his uncomfortable chair. He opened it and picked up a long bundle wrapped in a sheet of raw wool. He laid it on the city map, studded with marks and circled areas.
Korkore approached, entering Araya’s vision. He was taller than his brother and he wore a black cloak and an armor of hardglass, including the helmet forged in the shape of straight, thin hair.
When the Pendracon uncovered the bundle, Korkore took a step back. “You’re completely crazy!”
“Your prudence is folly,” Aeternus said in a sterile tone of voice. “Is there any other way out, now?”
Araya saw only a sword in its purple, shiny amorphis sheath, with silver writings bonded to each other like the links of a chain.
Korkore tried to compose himself, but his voice sounded broken when he spoke. “Did you forget what you swore when you wore the Pendracon sacred garments? Angra himself made you promise never to use the power of Skyrgal!”
The Warrior King walked to the arched window, protected only by the sinuous movement of a curtain. “Can’t you hear the screams of our children? With a little luck, I could tell you their names.” He raised his fin
ger. “Listen! The one yelling now is your young Hektor. And listen to this, his brother Ruhar. Yes, Gorgors are working them together. Surely, they immobilized your sons facing each other. It would be quite in the style of those little dem—”
“Brother…”
“I am YOUR KING!”
The man in the armor bowed. “My King. Angra entrusted us with the soul of Skyrgal as a proof of his confidence in us. There’s an oath. You swore it. You can’t choose not to respect it.”
“In the end, I interpreted those pages at the end of the first volume, you know?” Aeternus revealed. “I stopped just before the section about the Cry of Mankind, because I was too afraid. The key you suggested was fundamental.”
“Did you take that damn white root?”
“Now we both know there was no other way. Solstice has opened the doors of my mind like nothing before. This means that I’m dying, but it was worth it, brother. Now I know how to tame the soul in the Sword and use it. And when—”
“My King…”
“—WHEN, if not today, could we do it? Can’t you hear their screaming, out there? I should have led them, I should have…can’t you hear them?” Aeternus gestured toward the outside. Then he studied the palms of his blistered hands, and said, “You see it too, the blood of our sons. It’s here, on my useless hands.”
‘Still and silent in the storm. This is what you taught me, master. Still and silent in the storm. This is the true face of a Pendracon!’
Aeternus closed his fingers into two angry fists. Firmness was back on his face. “We’ll do whatever is necessary.”
“It’s a sacrilege.”
“Our god understands revenge.”
Korkore shook his head. “I speak about surviving our children. You’ll do that without me. I’ll never pay the price of Hanoi.”
“Then being the First Disciple is really synonymous with endless solitude.” Aeternus fell back on his chair and stroked the scabbard of the Sword. “Like that of a god, after all. We asked to pass—only to pass—but we were denied. Now I’ll bend Skyrgal to my will to teach those infidel Gorgors their place in the world.”
“You can’t bend a god, this is your illusion!”
“Oh, I will—yes, I will. Because a Disciple always finishes what he begins.” He put his other hand on the black cover of Benighted. “Thanks to Solstice, this book will have no secrets for me. It’s cold and inanimate, but if it must be this waiting for my return, so be it. This will be my new brother.”
The second Disciple bowed his head. “As you command. My king.” He turned on his heels and walked away. He stopped before exiting Araya’s visual, and without looking back he added, “If tomorrow I’ll be blessed by the light of dawn, wherever and however I’ll be given to fight against that power, I will do it.” He looked straight at Araya, for a brief moment. “And you will, too.” He left without waiting for a reply.
Sitting at his desk, in front of the book and the Sword, Aeternus picked up the coin to make it dance on his fingers. Four candles placed at the corners of the map prevented it from rolling up. A clumsy gesture made one of the candles fall down, and a red finger of wax reached for the Fortress.
The Pendracon softly laughed. “Of course.”
Araya watched him with a mixture of respect and fear.
“There’s a passage, in the kitchens, that could allow a slender boy like you to reach the outskirts of the city,” the First Disciple said.
It took a moment to the young Messhuggah to realize that those words were aimed at him.
Aeternus looked up to meet his gaze. “We may have the same age, but at seventy I’m an old, tired man while you’re a young, inexperienced boy. You’ll have time to improve the way you lock your thoughts, if you accept my suggestion.” The rest came out in the fragmented and tormented words of a man on the edge of madness, “You’ve heard my brother…my only brother. You don’t have much time. Today you will choose life, Araya, and you’ll do it forever. Promise me that you’ll survive as you flee into that duct. I’ll hear your thoughts and I’ll know that it was not all for nothing. Don’t wonder why. Don’t forget. I just want to be remembered.”
Araya didn’t answer. He watched his master unsheathe a short section of the Sword. The room was flooded with a hellish light and an atrocious laughter arose everywhere around them. It didn’t last long. Aeternus sheathed the blade and raised his terrible eyes.
Araya fled—far from there, toward life.
The light was waiting for him.
“Why is he crying?”
“I’d bet everything I have that he’s dreaming of the Red Dawn again. Hold him! He’s convulsing again!”
“Will he survive?”
‘Idiots!’ Araya thought as he slid into guts of stone, toward the light at the end of the world. ‘You heard my teacher. I will survive. I will always survive!’
*
4. Sahid’s Garden of Delights
Once Dagger and the Hotankars entered Vardo, along with the rest of the human scum, it wasn’t difficult to find the market square. They just needed to follow the pungent smell of a chaotic assortment of spices, animals and people—a disharmonious, acid and nasty stink mixed with the stench of mogwart dung. Chickens and children were constantly in the way while foreign screams rained down on them with quips and jokes. Hands of every color—dirty or neat—tried to approach, seduce and bewitch them. Thugs got in their way with crossed arms. Young handymen slipped through them, dirty kids bumped into them, stealing or trying to before disappearing in the crowd with a smile. Everywhere, precarious structures of baked mud stood between the colossal ruins—majestic despite the mad race against time.
Ianka stopped at a fruit stand under a huge stone pincer. He gestured to the clerk and her dates, but when she smiled back, a black giant interposed to break their eye contact.
Ash turned their friend away from the temptation. “Maybe it’s better not to ask him if he knows Sahid. Let’s go.”
They walked on, toward the gigantic open jaws of Skyrgal down the way. The god stuck out his forked tongue, arranged to host stalls and rickety structures made of wood and dried palm leaves. They entered the god’s mouth, escaping from a thousand hands, and found themselves in a marble hall with a collapsed roof. Soon they realized they had reached the cattle and slave market. Exposed on wooden platforms—all naked to be better scrutinized by their potential buyers—men, women and children were waiting to know the price of their fate.
A man with a turban put his hand between the buttocks of a blonde. An old man stroked the peaches of a girl. A woman with a veil opened the mouth of a boy to check his teeth. She pushed him away with an inelegant gesture and turned her attention to another one, parting his lips. She chose that one.
Dagger drew near and his friends followed. He pretended to examine some slaves—frightened children looking at him with wide eyes, and a woman holding an inert infant to her breast. On the corner, an old man stared into space with an elbow on his right knee and his head resting on a hand. He kept the other one on the chest of a young, unconscious man—perhaps his son—lying on the man’s legs, his head abandoned to gravity, his left arm resting on the platform.
The merchant—a slender figure, his face almost completely covered by silk bandages—made fast and furious gestures as he spoke with a client. The conversation was one of the roughest Dagger had ever listened to.
“Forget it! For that money I can sell you just my mother, an old cow, but with a lot of experience!”
“Don’t you waste my time, Sahid! I’m here to negotiate seriously, what do you—”
“Seriously? For that money, I could sell you—”
“Yes, yes, I get it. I’ll pay you a three and two zeros, not one more.”
“Three? You hear him? The one in front of you is a respectable slave trader, who do you think you’re dealing with? Do you want shitty goods? Go across the street, go to those who sell shitty goods and never come back to Sahid—neither you, nor your sons
for seven generations!”
“Do you think I have the whole day, dog of Ktisis, to hear this old Gorgor crap?!”
“Ah!”
“Oh!”
“Then forget the red haired girl, look at this one. She’s grown up but look at this ass.” The merchant approached a girl—who probably was no more than fourteen—and gave her two loud slaps on her butt. “Look at her hips—you can do whatever you want with her! You can use her to breed. Imagine how many little slaves she can give birth to from here until she dies. It’s a long-term investment, you know? You’ll make a fortune with her and live off private income, drinking every day something to the health of poor Sahid. I’m giving her away for free, damn you, because you’re my friend. You’re a brother!”
The customer estimated the goods. “No. She’s no good. I know my job.”
“Ah, you want to hurt me!”
“Managing a brothel is more difficult than selling slaves to the good people, you know?”
“Don’t tell me that she—”
“She would drive her teeth into the neck of her first customer. Do you know the effort it takes to tame them at this age? They struggle and struggle, then you bend them. Then they start to fight again and you must bend them again, hoping that this time is for good. I don’t want that again. It breaks my heart. I need the little ones to do things properly. They resign themselves quickly and give you no trouble until you sell them to a tavern to serve at the tables.”
“Of course. But I told you—dog!—that they cost more.”
“Those two, and the boy. How much?”
“A sixteen and two zeros.”
“You’re crazy, Sahid! Somebody should come here and take you to the place where they imprison the fools like you! Get down to five and two zeros!”
“You want to see me ruined, don’t you? You want me and my children to end up here, tell the truth!”
“You have no children!”
“Then you want—”
“You should really end up here, you dog!”
“Ten and two zeros! Do you want to see me ruined? You’ll see me ruined. You’ll find me under a bridge and you’ll bring me dry bread laughing at the misfortune of Sahid.”
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