He slid again toward the light, which was waiting for him. The black beast seemed to laugh at him a step below his perception.
“What do you want from me?” Dag whispered, not knowing who he was talking to—the light, the beast, himself. “Leave me alone. Please. I have nothing more to give.”
The procession stopped abruptly. He heard confused hisses. The chains were pulled once again, for a long time, and then suddenly dropped down. The rings rang against each other and after that not a sound was heard anymore, except for the scream of the desert sweeping the ruins.
The shovels began to dig.
“You see?” Konkra said, facing the light and the shadow that kept him company in the void. “Now we’ll all end down. Me, and you.”
The light rolled back to him and Dagger shouted, “Go away!”
The Gorgors stopped digging. The ensiferum sphere swayed back and forth, waiting, undecided whether to attack him again.
Dag looked at it. “You’re not here for me, are you?”
The Gorgors grabbed the chains and dragged the cage to the side to make it fall into the pit.
No rescue at the last minute. The sand sang on the metal walls, hissing a cheerful tune to the ears of Dagger, who was laughing against the light.
Cold. It was cold now. That metal had to be sensitive to the changes from the outside. The sounds were attenuated by the sands and went far, too far, until there was only the silence of a world that no longer existed. And the absolute darkness, when the sphere gradually died, playing its last dirty trick on him.
The beast screamed. Dagger screamed. He stood up and punched the dark. He hurt himself against the blackness which reigned sovereign. It made its way inside him, pervading every fragment of his being.
Ktisis, Konkra, he. The black silhouette of his nature rose at the end of the ruins. He yelled and looked for Solitude somewhere in the claustrophobic emptiness and implored it to save him once again.
He felt his mind drifting, slipping in the torpor of reason, the widespread nothing, the end of all lies.
No!
“Yes!”
Dork. Long white hair fluttered in the wind in the bowels of the cosmic darkness. The white blood laughter deafened him. He threw something against Dagger: a head. Ash opened his mouth before Dag’s eyes, screaming.
“NO!” Dagger took cover on the bottom of his grave. He cradled his fears and despair and rebelled. “It can’t end like this!” He climbed, slipped and got up on his toes. “I want to live!”
Just then he heard that sound again, at first distant like an illusion: shovels digging. The sound drew closer, but in the dark he feared that it might be just a fantasy born out of despair.
The chains were pulled again and Dagger shouted among the bestial laughter of his redeemers, as the coffin was hoisted out.
A ray of light penetrated inside, blinding his old, tired eyes. Black against the sun, a shadow looked inside and laughed at him—a wild Tankar howl, “What did I tell you? We must take this one straight to the boss!”
Dagger threw himself against the light. He bruised his hands and spat blindly. When he opened his eyes in a crack, he had only time to glimpse the Gorgor corpses scattered everywhere in the sand, their temples pierced by a metal pole.
The Tankar slammed the head of one of them against the grating, hard enough to smash it and make the greenish brains rain into the amorphis prison. “Close this tomb before he pisses me off!”
“Go fuck your sister!” Dagger shouted before being deprived of the light.
He closed his eyes, because his shadows must not see him that way. He was back on the rough road, surrounded by the sounds of a hostile land.
He hated and cursed everyone, in the bottom of the dark. There he was found by the light, that of a fire, when the Tankar opened again his miserable window onto the world. The white, hairy hand threw into the cage some sheep meat chunks, so hard that they bounced on the metal. Dagger wasn’t hungry. He crawled toward the light, slowly getting used to it, and looked outside. At the end of a wooden platform—that of the cart on which he was—five white Tankars sat around a campfire. They were talking and laughing, sipping a dense, red wine from big wine skins.
They don’t fear any attack. That fire must be visible from miles away.
They seemed to pay no attention to him, either.
“I think I lost myself,” Dag said. “I was chasing a giant crab, it shouldn’t go unnoticed. Have you seen it, by chance?”
The Tankars fell silent, staring at the flames.
For a moment the boy was sure he had plunged into yet another dream. “Or maybe you know Kugar? I think so. From what Warren told me, she should be the only sister of your leader, Baikal, lord of the white assholes. Because that’s what you are, right? Nehamas. The albino stray dogs banned and hated by everyone.”
One of the Tankars turned and white fire burned in his cold eyes.
Another one, perhaps his superior, growled and brought him back to order before turning to Dag. “You talk too much for being such a little slip of a thing. Tell us. Do you have a name, or you go around slaughtering Gorgors to kill time?”
“You’ve been attracted by all that mess?” It must be a dream, otherwise why do they speak my language? “We should be friends. You’re at war with Gorgors, too.”
“We were,” the Tankar said. “You took our favorite enemy away from us.”
“Oh. Don’t tell me.”
“The surviving shadows have fled to the part of the world which doesn’t interest anyone, further north, but that group had been left behind to take you away. They were slow, too slow, as you can imagine by what happened afterward. Surely too slow for the lords of the desert.”
“Why do you speak my language?”
The Tankar tilted his giant head sideways. “We? In truth, you’re the one who’s speaking ours, and I still wonder how you can do it with hardly a trace of accent. Sometimes we can’t understand Krogor, here, who is from the south and fucks mogwarts.”
“Hey!” Krogor protested.
Dagger shuddered and focused on his own lips. “What are you sa…” They were right, he suddenly realized. The meaning of his own words was clear to him, as if he had always talked that way, but the movements of his lips were different. It was the damn crab. It put me in touch with everything and now I’ve even learned the tongue of these beasts!
“There will be time,” the head of the small group continued. “There will be time to explain who you are and what you were doing there, when we take you in chains to Baikal, Ice Lord and Nomad Emperor of all Tankars. Yes. The father of the Dawn soon will greet you.”
“The above mentioned lord of assholes.”
The young Tankar growled again.
The head warned him, “His skin is mine. You’ll leave it to me.” He stood up and came toward Dagger, his huge silhouette against the fire. “But it’s better he stays in there until we get to the fortress.”
Dagger drew Solitude. “Please, come. My big brother needs a little company.”
“Big brother?”
Ktisis, I must remember that Olem is no longer in there. “It’s a long story, and I don’t think you’ll have time to listen to it if I can get out of—”
“Of course, of course,” the Nehama interrupted him, closing the grate again.
The journey was long. The Tankars didn’t speak any more when they opened the grate to throw inside their indigestible food, and maybe it was better that way. Judging by the clipping of the sky he could see, they were going south.
He learned to mark the days according to their meals—two every day, the first one being the most abundant. One evening the march slowed, becoming a long and strenuous climb that ended in a hopeless silence.
“This is the end,” Dagger whispered to Araya. He couldn’t remember how long the messhuggah was there before him.
The end will set you free, the Dracon lizard said. The end is the only truth of things, their ultimate fate. Once I d
idn’t understand, but now…He was about to continue, when the light crossed his wrinkled body, making him vanish. The ray of light pierced his eyes, too, and Dagger was sure that light itself—and not darkness—was the end of it all.
He approached the opening in the cage. It was night outside, and a thousand torches reflected their orange light on the sandstone.
A huge Tankar was staring at him through the gap in the amorphis. The inexpressive wooden mask on his face left only his muzzle uncovered. His eyes were of a blue so bright and deep they seemed to radiate their own light through the dark holes.
Behind him lay two long lines of Tankars with thick black hair. They were impaled, their bellies gutted in a half-moon of leaking bowels. Judging by their movements in the dim torchlight dance, many were still alive in spite of the wooden poles sticking out of their clavicles or mouths.
“Dagger Nightfall,” said the wild voice of the creature behind the death mask, without any Tankar accent. “Or should I say Kam Konkra? The one everyone wants.”
Dagger returned the gaze of those cold eyes. “How do you know my name?”
“I suppose you know the Hammer Guardians, my little bosom friends. I wonder what they would say if they knew you are in my hands, after having seen you fall off that cliff in the hug of the river.”
The boy leaned his forehead against the hard metal. “It was not a cliff. It was a well.” And I held Erin in my arms. His eyes narrowed. “How long have I been in here?”
“If you had an appointment, have no fear. It’s not been five days since my faithful found you by following the smell of death you left behind.”
“I thought you ate twice a day.”
“I believe you have miscalculated time in there.” The Nehama sounded amused. “A Tankar is fasting when he eats less than six meals from sunrise to sunset, the bare minimum during a pleasure trip in the desert.”
“You must excuse me. Sitting in the dark on a metal plate tends to dilate days.”
“Luckily we arrived in time.”
“To save me at the last? Lucky, that.”
The Tankar shook his head. “No one is saving you, my boy. After all, someone like you should never be taken out of six metal walls once he falls into them. I just wanted to hear your voice, perceive the shape of your thoughts, before knowing you are delivered to the nothingness to which you belong. Maybe just…in a closer place than the icy desert where you ended up. It must have been a long and interesting journey.”
“Something tells me you won’t say anything about me to the assholes of the Hammer.”
“I hear a resentful note. Did you have any negative experience with them?”
“And you? Have you already forgotten when they skinned you before killing you?”
“Diplomacy is surely a weird thing.” The Nehama looked at him. “I will tell you a secret. The Hammer Guardians were necessary to overcome the Tormentor, just like the Kahars needed Crowley and his Gorgors to keep us at bay. But I didn’t let them fill my head with their orders and prohibitions.” His eyes were lost again in the depths of memories.
No, Dagger thought. These eyes are not cruel or cynical.
“They will often play at a game that draws you closer, until you find yourself in a trap,” Baikal continued. “Some time ago, someone warned me and I’ve taken the right precautions, waiting to get rid of them until it was possible.”
“And is it possible now?”
The Tankar smiled. “Tell me. A giant crab comes from the east and mercilessly exterminates the Gorgors, freeing me from the lumbering presence of Crowley. The Kahars have lost the support of the shadows in the most direct way and, who knows, maybe it’s time to release Nehamas, too, from the uneasy alliance with the Hammer Guardians.”
“All very interesting,” Dagger spat. “The difference between a Tankar and a dog it’s all in the leash.”
“This one was nice, where did you hear it?”
“Die.”
The Nehama scowled. “Humans’ days are over, just like the long shadows they once projected on this desert. The Kahars are free from the Gorgors’ yoke, and we’ll soon be released from that of the Guardians. The world belongs to the Tankars once again.”
“So now you’re free to slay yourselves in the final act of your war. It makes sense. There’s only one minor detail left to settle.”
“Don’t tell me. Are you worrying about your fate?”
“Somehow, yes.”
“Fear not,” said the beast. “For entirely personal reasons, I have no sympathy for the god of Emptiness. Your soul will rot once again in the sand, Ktisis. This is the decision of the Nomad Emperor of the Tankars, words that you could write—”
“In the shit!” Dagger shouted.
The white giant punched the grating, strongly enough to make it ring. “Don’t ever pronounce that word! I should put a stake through your heart and drag you to sunlight like any demon of the dunes, for saying that.” The brute moved back. “This way you would pay for interfering with my fratricidal war.”
Crowley was right, Dagger thought. “Brother will kill brother, right? You vagabond surrounded by assholes, in this Ktisisdamn desert there are still such powers that will crush you in no time!”
The Emperor shrugged. “It’s likely. However, you won’t be there to see it.”
The boy drew Solitude and hit the grating. “I’ll find a way!” he barked. “You hear me? I will put my soul together and give to the flames the ones you love!”
The Nehama Asmeghin didn’t seem totally insensitive to those words, even though he laughed harder. “Of course, of course.” He turned away.
Dagger rested his head against the metal. “A white wolf in the ruins is howling my name,” he said to himself. “I never thought it could mean this.” He looked up one last time at the world of the living.
The white Tankar had stopped after a few steps, his huge shoulders against the stars in the sky. He was looking up to them. He raised an arm and the grate was closed.
Dagger lay down, seized by an unexpected resignation. He laced his fingers behind his head and stared at the ceiling of what would be his world for the rest of the eternity.
He closed his eyes and laughed.
As if pushed away by that spark of madness, the amorphis walls came down one by one and revealed the starry sky.
Ktisis, the sky is really beautiful tonight, he thought, still lying on the cold metal floor. Gusts of reddish dust were blown by a dry wind.
He sat on the ground. The two lines of impaled Tankars were longer than he had thought at first glance, and ran down the long stairway to meet the red moon. White Tankars were standing guard at their feet, wearing leather armor so discolored it seemed white, too. He was on the top of a pyramidal mountain standing out on a beautiful river painted blood red in the light of the night.
He got up and watched the circle of crumbling structures surrounding the square at its top. In the middle stood a gigantic, expressionless stone face portraying a Gorgor as he would appear before the curse of Skyrgal. The almond-shaped eyes of the placid face were thin just like its mouth, while its chin was the keystone of a high and narrow portal. It occupied the front of a massive building, perhaps a temple, supporting a tower so high as to be crowned with a crimson cloud. The outer walls of the tower had partially collapsed, as well as its top, so that Dagger wondered how it could be still standing. Then he noticed the two buttresses at the sides, as if they were the thick hair of the Gorgor, and once again marveled at the skill of those who had once been the sons of Skyrgal, undisputed lords of the desert. He went all the way round and looked again at the misery of his present—that Nomad Emperor who had saved or damned him once again.
Baikal of the Nehamas wore a simple linen tunic, in addition to the old funeral mask. He came forward, immense in the red disk of the moon.
“Well, thank you for setting me free,” Dag said.
“Who said you’re free?” the Tankar replied when one, two, three ropes forced Da
gger again to his knees.
* * * * *
The sun at dawn penetrated through the bars. Dagger sat up and rubbed his eyes, then lay down on his side and slept for another half an hour.
Ktisis, how long has it been since I last really slept? he wondered in the half-sleep. Oh. Right. The damn crab. The shadows inside him didn’t trouble him and he slept until the sunlight became more insistent. Then he put down his feet and checked himself.
He was clean and well fed. Except for the bars at the slits—and the Tankar-proof door—it seemed he had ended up in a more welcoming prison than his hovel at the Guardians’ Nest. And they had left him Solitude. Now it was empty of the soul of Olem, which so far had been so determined not to be separated from him. The sword was once again a simple, deadly piece of fine manegarm. Any Tankar would desire it, even if only to sell it, yet they had decided to leave it to him. Another clue that made of him a guest rather than a prisoner.
That sector of the fortress in the dunes—the Nehama guards who brought him there had called it so—had not originally been conceived as a prison. He could tell by the imprints of the benches on the walls and his unusual bed: a slightly convex white marble slab, with four grooves which sloped down toward the corners. The straw made it, however, a relatively comfortable bed.
Since a cage was always a cage, he walked back and forth uninterruptedly. Every now and then he stopped to think, but immediately went back on his way to escape his remorse or memories too pleasing for his current situation.
He felt his stomach protest in time—shortly after, he heard the steps of the guards coming down to bring him something to eat. He pricked up his ears and listened to their voices. Who knows what atrocities they are talking about today, what horrors, he wondered. Cruel tortures, the bodies of the enemies arranged in horrible sculptures and—
“What a great emotion,” said the first Nehama when he was close enough. “Every time I see those frescoes my heart becomes so light I feel like flying.”
Dagger raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, the artist of the sixth chapel,” his companion replied. “Such colors!”
The Tankar Dawn Page 18