In the gallery, the Poison Guardians slowly raised their faces. Araya hastened to give them a steady gaze before they did something stupid. Then he grinned. “You’re right, my Pendracon. We won’t pretend you have studied.”
“Take it in the ass, black mountain of shit!”
“Did you see how our father answered him, yes?”
“Oh yes, our Daddy is really cool!”
Dagger turned back. The two Messhuggahs looked down to him as if to ask what he wanted.
“If you must spy on me, can’t you do it in silence?” the boy protested.
The two looked astonished for a moment, then nodded with half a smile.
Olem spoke. “We were coming back from our mission. The ship we were traveling on was attacked by Gorgors—dozens of them—riding their damn Cruachans. It was wrecked on The Silent Island and all the Guardians on board have been killed.”
The Pendracon murmured, “Apart from the two little bastards.”
Olem turned in his throne to glare at Varg, then slowly stood up. Seeing this, the black Guardians put their hands on the grips of their hammers, ready for blood.
“Finally a little action! I was a little bored of all that blah blah.”
“Split his face in two, come on! Let’s see if there’s some brain inside that bald head!”
All were silent, waiting for the Sword Dracon to speak, or for any other action.
Before the inevitable, Varg added, “You and Araya are not the only survivors, right?”
“No, we’re not,” Olem replied. “But it’s my foster father you’re talking about, and your old Warrior King. He didn’t bring bastards into the world. He wasn’t like…” He didn’t continue; his fists clenched.
The Hammer Guardians were waiting for the rest of his words, their every movement monitored by those of the Poison and the Delta, looking relaxed as always—blades everywhere.
“You acted wisely, when you decided to bring the boy here,” Varg admitted. “Although in absence of my orders.”
“I thank you, my Pendracon, and apologize at the same time.” Olem sat down again.
“We might as well introduce him to our brothers,” Marduk said. He stretched out a hand, and suddenly the boy found himself pulled on the stage. “Dagger Nightfall. He doesn’t really need any introduction, here.” He motioned toward the boy. “The only legitimate son of Crowley Nightfall, who, thanks to the madness of his mother, we were forced to search for in the world Beyond all this time. Here’s the very reason our expedition lasted twelve years.”
“Ah, that’s who he was!”
“Yeah, the little son of a bitch who says you don’t talk during the viewing!”
Dagger felt everyone’s eyes fixed on him. He heard the voices of those behind him, probably turning back to explain to the others what was happening.
Holy shit, he thought. In less than twenty seconds, he had become the talk of the Fortress. He walked into the room, focusing on each step and missing the dark alleys of Melekesh, the secret corners where only stray cats could locate him.
Pendracon Varg looked at him with contempt as he advanced. “We have more important issues to resolve.”
A clamor arose from the Guardians.
“Important issues?” Marduk scowled. “This is an important issue, my Pendracon. The son of our last Warrior King is back where he belongs. We won’t forget our king died in battle, and the son and brother he’s left to us.”
At that, the Guardians swept the silence away, screaming, “Honor to Crowley!”
None of the black ones joined in the tribute. Nor their Pendracon. “If the bastard has grown up in the world Beyond, that’s where he belongs.”
Many of his men applauded his words, others went back to screaming, “U-NION! U-NION!”
“And that dirty mutt!” Varg continued, apparently heartened by the support. “That half-Tankar you enrolled last year: do you want to kick her out of the Fortress, or do you want to keep her, too? Make her your first Warrior Queen after twelve hundred ye—”
“Stop!” Araya shouted. “All of you!” For a moment the entire room hung from the lips of the Messhuggah who had dared to interrupt the Pendracon. “Must I be the one to remind you of the rules governing this ancient institution? Assuming it still makes sense. Assuming it’s not been downgraded to a mere administrator of appearances…crushed under the weight of a rising need for change!”
“We’ll vote,” Marduk summed up. “The Dracons will decide now and for all if Dagger, son of King Crowley Nightfall, will become a novice Guardian of the Fortress. I declare myself in favor.”
“Contrary,” Pendracon Varg Belhaven growled.
“I abstain.” Araya lowered his face, as if tormented by an inner conflict.
His decision aroused the indignation of the Delta and Sword Guardians, but not of Dagger, who still thought that everything had been decided since the beginning, and that what transpired here was all a show put on for the Guardians. The real decisions were taken when the curtain was lowered, by three or four people sat around a table, talking quietly, understanding each other with simple expressions and complacently shaking hands. Power was elusive, difficult to identify. It loved meandering in the dark and silence. From there it was a short step to hearing the laughter of Skyrgal echoing in his mind.
It’s all a set-up, can’t they see it? Held in a theater with fragile walls, as the desert belly is about to give birth to the thickest darkness. That darkness will not sit at a table to talk.
The Pendracon looked at Olem, who bowed his head. He seemed to mutter something to himself, then raised his eyes again to look at Varg, with no tremor disturbing the absolute firmness of his face. Soon everyone, including Dagger, realized that silence was his answer.
“Will you abstain too?” Marduk asked, incredulous.
The Hammer Guardians burst into shouts of surprise.
“So the Sword Dracon abstains too…” Varg turned to Dagger, giving him a measured look. “The Council remits the decision in my hands. Well, it’s not going to be us to choose your destiny, this time. It will be you, my boy, who will direct the course of your life. This is the decision of the Pendracon. After all, no man or woman has ever become a Guardian unintentionally.”
Dagger stared at him. You’re not a brutal asshole as you’d like everyone to believe, he thought. No, you’re just playing a part, like everyone else in here. But which one? Maybe you hope to hear me say, ‘No, I think I’ll go back beyond the portal'?
Dagger would gladly do it, if only to see the reactions of all four; to read in their eyes and realize what was really happening—who was on whose side. Then he realized that, like all the wrong decisions, that one too would have its consequences. So he just kept the Dracons a bit on edge before saying, “I will follow the footsteps of my father. To the end.”
From the corner of his eye he saw Marduk and Varg breathe sighs of relief. Olem was impassive. On the lips of Araya, the subtle, ever-present grin.
“Dagger Nightfall is admitted to the order of the Guardians,” the Pendracon recited. “Provided he be trained separately from the other novices for a time his teacher deems appropriate. What order will he be part of? I don’t want him in the Hammers, for obvious reasons due to…his physical size.”
Asshole!
Marduk seemed about to speak, but Olem beat him to it, “He’ll be a Sword.” He caressed the scar on his face. “Or he won’t be a Guardian at all. I’ll take care of his training. It belongs to me!”
Dagger found himself wrong-footed. No, no! Not with Olem. Then he remembered Angra’s words from the night before: Aniah would have liked you to take care of him.
“So be it,” Varg said. “Now, can we move on to the rest?”
“It remains to decide what to do with that damn half-Tankar,” Olem said.
“Kugar is NOT a Tankar!” Dagger broke in, looking the Pendracon straight in the eyes, with the same anger he felt toward the Sword Dracon. “Fuck you and your goddamn tower!
”
At that blatant disrespect toward their Pendracon, the Hammer Guardians railed with such ferocity that they seemed about to take a hardline approach. The son of Skyrgal realized he had completely destabilized the situation when he noticed that even those of the Poison had laid a gentle finger on the handles of their weapons.
Then the room was shadowed by a purple half-darkness, and everybody looked up, becoming silent. Angra stood in the dome’s oculus. He looked down on them with the white glow of the sky at his back.
He slipped through the opening and descended, landing gracefully in the middle of the room. “Sorry for being late,” he said. “Ktisisdamn it! I’m getting too old to spend the whole night drinking. What have you talked about until now?”
“We have admitted the boy in the Guardians,” Pendracon Varg Belhaven said.
The look of the force rested on Dag. “Was there really something to decide?” He stared into his eyes and examined his every thought, the boy was sure of it. He felt naked before him, an open book with no secrets.
“Whose will be the red smile you’ll force yourself to look at again, in the hope of suffering and, thus, deceiving yourself to be like all of them?” the god asked, in a question requiring no answer. Then he moved his shining eye on Olem. “Why does man feed on death, when death feeds on men? Sword Dracon, you’ll find the answers to your questions, but will it be too late for you?” Then, toward the Pendracon he said, “Power is like a circle in the water, which never ceases to enlarge itself until, by broad spreading, it disperses to nothing. The evil that men do lives on, and you know it well. That’s your trouble.”
Finally, Angra raised his head—his purple eye, a blazing sun above them all. “No one knows where the road we take today leads, not even the one that seems straight and free of hazards. I’m glad you’ve taken the boy back in the warm bosom of the Fortress, but some minor details are yet to be fixed…like what to do with the enemy that’s about to pounce on you right from the second portal.”
“What can we do about it?” Angra’s words had broken Varg’s voice. “Guardians always play ahead of time. Let’s march now and crush them. This is the way!”
“You can’t destroy a portal,” Marduk replied.
“Then we can occupy it, or build another tower!”
Ktisis! They’re obsessed with towers, Dag thought.
The Sword Dracon shook his head. “The whole Tankars’ army is camped on the threshold of the second portal, in the Pacific desert.”
“How many?”
“Tens of thousands, well-armed,” Olem answered. “Attacking here on Candehel-mas is impossible. We’re just a bunch of warriors packed up on an impregnable mountain, but the discovery of the second portal has changed everything!” He put his forehead against his fists. “Everything.”
Angra nodded. “The Sword Dracon has spoken with wisdom.”
“In the Pacific?” Varg asked. “Why is the second portal located there?”
Noting that Olem was on his last legs, Marduk spoke up. “Dracons, we’re facing a so ancient story that its bloody roots—”
“Ah! Words and words and more fucking words!” Angra interrupted him. “The temple of Ktisis has come back to light!”
It wasn’t necessary to say more. That name alone instilled a dreadful, atavistic fear in the heart of all—the memory of something they’d never seen yet they’d always feared, something unknown and which no one wanted to know. The god watched them from above, and each Guardian was sure he was looking at him and him alone.
“Let’s march,” Varg said again, stubbornly. “Let’s march on the desert and solve this problem in the only possible way. What can’t be solved by the sword, it’s crushed with a war hammer. Your prudence is madness!”
“Stop saying this conservative shit!” Olem growled. “The fact that someone like you sits on that chair is madness!”
To that definitive accusation, the black Guardians brandished their hammers. Those of the Sword reacted, unsheathing their blades.
The Messhuggahs and Deltas just grabbed something firm when they saw Angra charge air.
“DAMN!!!” the force erupted.
The air was compressed in a scream that deafened minds as much as ears. Part of the mosaic tiles collapsed with their following of gold and blood.
“The problem is more serious than you think! The second portal is not the only blasphemy brought back to light in that temple—what do you think?” Angra got up on all fours. With a wing, he hit one of the columns, making it crumble to the floor. “The Council continues behind closed doors! Clear the Hall!”
Marduk laid a hand on Dagger’s shoulder, inviting him to stay while all the Guardians reluctantly got out. Before long, the hall was cleared and the doors closed.
Now Angra’s voice echoed even stronger among the high mosaics depicting him in combat with Skyrgal. “The public has a bad effect on you. The public has always a bad effect! This is not a theater, and we are not actors.”
The bystanders’ attention was distributed between Olem and Pendracon Varg, who said, “I apologize for my vehemence, but I can’t tolerate that an enemy army holds by the balls the world I defend. Why talk, when we could be already on march?”
“Because it would serve little.” Angra paced slowly around them all in the giant hall, for him as small as a cage. “You of the Hammer: you throw yourself against the barking dogs and not against the masters who keep them on a leash.”
“The masters?” Varg asked.
The eyes of the Messhuggah became two narrow black slits in the golden irises.
Angra went on, “They are not coming back. Your words, Sword Dracon, made me think last night. If they’re not coming back, it’s just because they are already here, so close to the creature they created to reach, Megatherion—their only possible revenge against me.”
The Poison Dracon broke the heavy silence that followed. “There’s a door, in this hall, which has been closed for far too long.” Araya looked directly into the god’s eye. “Time has come to open it, Holy Father, and reveal the true nature of the enemy we’re fighting.”
“Why did we banish them?” Marduk asked, as if it were a question he had kept inside for too long.
The god of Creation turned toward the sealed door leading to the abandoned tower. For a moment, he seemed about to leap in the air and escape from their questions and suspicious eyes.
You erased them from history, Dagger thought. You’re the one who ordered the destruction of every statue, ornament, and symbol that witnessed their presence. Who are They and what did They do to you?
The god slowly opened his mouth, changed his mind, and then said, “This story is bound to the soul of Skyrgal and the Sword that contains it—my crime beyond repair. Many want it. We have it. Even a god can’t use it without suffering the consequences.” He observed the hole in the mosaic, perhaps recalling the scenes it once depicted. “I prohibited its use for a reason. Why didn’t They understand? I wanted to protect all of you.”
“Angra?”
“My Disciples are the original nucleus of the Guardians,” the god forced himself to reveal. “They built the Fortress and erected Agalloch’s walls in a time so distant that no written testimony is left anymore. They had no Dracon because they were my Faithful Twelve, and lived with me at the top of Golconda. I never abandoned Skyrgal. I couldn’t leave him after what I did to him, and some mortals doubted my own existence. Once in a while, someone thought he saw a winged shadow against the sky, or swore he heard my cry of pain. The waterfalls of the Glade soon became the tears of Angra. Temples were built in honor of Angra, and poems were written about the deeds of Angra, and yet no one could say to have ever truly seen me, nor be sure of my existence, if not my Faithful Twelve. Even after the pact of alliance, when the order of the Guardians widened, and I descended among the mortals, the Disciples continued their elitist behavior. Pure, incorruptible, and dedicated to a hermit’s life, They lived inside Kam Karkenos, moving through the t
unnels that only They could dig inside his body. The room of the First Disciple was located in the head of Skyrgal, and from there, he could see the horizon directly from his right eye. Not the hammer, nor the sword—They managed the most powerful weapon that a man can be given, the one that brings him close to a god and elevates him to creator and destroyer, manipulator of the great All: knowledge. In his room, inside Skyrgal’s mind, the First Disciple kept a book which contained many transcriptions from the temple of Ktisis, which I had originally dictated. They copied and copied them and passed them generation after generation, up to the present day. Since those scriptures are as ancient as I am, you can easily come to the right conclusion.”
Dagger closed his eyes, and his mind raced back to the temple of Ktisis, to the immense walls drenched in divine blood. He remembered with affection Moak and Kugar, as they browsed them with their eyes, trying to interpret them, but the writings were…“incomplete,” he recalled.
“Yes,” Angra confirmed. “And only the old transcriptions contained in the black book can complete some missing parts. And that’s probably just what they did since you, my boy, are now here in front of us.”
Dagger felt a shiver down his spine. “So it’s the Disciples who created me. Not the Gorgors?”
“The Gorgors?” Araya said, skeptical, as if the god was not saying anything new. “Can you imagine them creating anything, in the state they are now? Who told you such nonsense?”
“Then it’s them, the masters keeping the dogs on the leash,” Marduk said. “How long ago did They abandon the Fortress?”
“It all happened after the first holy war,” the god replied. “In the year 4012. The Disciples wanted to take Adramelech away from Gorgors’ control and bring the temple of Ktisis back to light. They were looking for the rest of the ancient scriptures, the full knowledge that would allow them to equal the father of the gods. It was then that the Main Road was created, to bring death to the heart of the enemy. Many believed it was the hunger for power and wealth that moved them. Maybe I was the only one to really grasp how great was their need to know, study, and understand.”
Dagger 2 - Blood Brothers - A Dark Fantasy Adventure (Born to Be Free series) Page 8