But time passed and nothing happened.
Eventually, Ian found something to laugh about in it.
“What?” Dag asked with anger.
“Why don’t dead stay dead? I said that just a while ago. Funny.”
“Only the pains in the ass rise again, apparently.” Erin took a step toward the smoldering stones. “Let’s look for him, he’s still under there. We must—”
Ash held her by her arm and shook his head. She was about to protest when she saw the debris move. A stone rolled in the sand, exposing a faint ray of blue light.
“We must leave,” the white blood said. “And we must do it quickly.”
*
Warren sped through the desert riding his skar, and thinking—as always—that to be Warren was the coolest thing in the world.
Did you see, Araya? he thought. I completed your impossible plan. Now I just need to go back to that damn Agent Oran—
A flash of light dazzled him making him fall from the saddle. He rolled in the dust and crashed into a pillar beside the road, sure that he had broken his neck.
He raised his arm to protect his face, as the light advanced. Who are you? he asked within his mind.
The answer he didn’t expect came anyway, If you don’t pay attention to the light coming in, you’ll always stay in the dark. Warren, son of Hammoth, you must listen to me. My name is Mumakil. And I have come back.
*
3. Fortresses
“Do we really have to do it?”
“It’s our tradition for the winter solstice, my Araya.”
The Messhuggah, wearing the sacred white robes of the Pendracon, nodded. And stuck his katar in the throat of the little one.
The mogwart puppy was shaken by uncontrollable tremors. It gave a single, agonizing sound and spewed blood from the hole in its trachea. It surrendered with dignity to death as the blade ran down its chest and belly, exposing its bare innards.
Araya handed his knife to his assistant, then put his clawed fingers into the ripped open belly. He took out the liver, which was fat, its surface uneven. It was hard to clean it up from the layers of fat.
Bad omen, the lizard thought, resting the soggy tissues on the ceremonial plate and giving them to the flames. I’d never eat something like that.
He turned to the men and Messhuggahs who had joined him at the Sun Gate, the ancient terrace opened on the western cliff of Golconda. Old obelisks were erected along its curved edge. Each marked a specific time of the year on the floor covered with engravings.
At the dawn of that day, the shadow of the highest obelisk penetrated the belly of the mountain.
“Good Omens,” Araya lied. “The holy diver got in touch with us to tell us that the worst is over. The Fortress will rise to its old power again, so assist me, Blood Brothers, because victory is near!”
The Guardians cheered and waved their swords, daggers, and katars against the blue, golden sky.
No hammers. It can be easily noticed, the lizard thought. I hope the sun won’t lay my lies bare. At least, not so soon.
As his men feasted on roasted mogwart meat and rivers of draug, Araya walked down the passage that only he and the shadow of the sacred monolith could use that day. The shadow accompanied him until he met three of his Faithful, and the new Pendracon crossed the Glade with them.
The belly of the holy mountain still bore marks of the recent battle, yet the most indelible scar was the smell—a pungent stench of putrefaction, where once the scent of flowers used to be. That reek would remain forever engraved in the minds of all who were present that day, and perhaps in the same pores and irregularities of the rocks, structures, and tombs.
They circumvented the island where the mortal manifestation of Angra—or Kam Kres—once lived and walked by the tree of life, burned like a great part of the forest. Araya ran his finger over its blackened bark, on the ancient sword cuts where the wood had been stripped, and on the charred names that his hand could still find.
Aniah and Crowley. Hammoth and Valmara. Olem and Missy. Time, he thought. Time washes everything away. He remembered the first time when as a kid—he wasn’t even sixty— he had brought his girlfriend under the young fronds of another willow. That day, the mysteries of life and death had unfolded in front of him in a rosy, dazzling burst of senses. He had spent the rest of his life trying to figure out, to dig into the meaning of life, yet sometimes he believed that all the truth appeared clearly only in that moment: in the essential spark behind the continuation of every horror and wonder of Creation.
Among the charred remains, a sprout raised its green head, obstinate in death.
Araya bent down to caress it. You never give up, do you? The innermost mystery of the universe, that we can brush every day without ever really touching. From the collapse to the new blast, from the future to the past, you break free and expand, infiltrating every boundary set before you. You’re the chain that keeps us all bonded, the very soul of Creation and only empress of the Emptiness. From what cosmic horror were you born and what path brought you here? How far do your roots reach and what lies even deeper, there where no one would dare to dig?
He watched that green spark of life in the dark for a long time, until one of his Faithful awakened him.
They reached the Fortress, and entered the Council Hall. The other Faithful were ready in front of the worm-eaten door leading to the old tower of the Disciples. Araya nodded, and they grabbed the maces with both hands. The door came down without resistance.
The thick darkness of their past lay beyond. Araya was the first to get inside it with an Ensiferum sphere in hand. The purple light showed only the lower half of the bas-reliefs on the walls—the paws of Angra, the legs of the Disciples, the endless roads. There were no scenes of violence, like the ones displayed in the corridors leading to the other towers.
He stopped, and looked to his left.
“What is it, my Pendracon?”
“It was here. I think it’s the first memory of my childhood.”
“What?”
The Messhuggah didn’t answer. He watched the sphere in his hand one last time, before turning around and throwing it. The Ensiferum sphere bounced several times on the wall’s irregularities, revealing the carved figures and making them dance after centuries in the dark. It disappeared into a funnel-shaped recess, before reappearing in the right, bright eye of a merciless Angra.
Araya turned back. From the eye of god, a ray of light hit a man carved on the ground after having fallen from the saddle of his mogwart. He was trying to shield his face, but nothing could stop the truth from above.
There was an inscription under the relief: If you do not pay attention to the light coming in, you will always live in the dark.
The Pendracon smiled bitterly, resting a hand on his own shoulder. An old memory seized his mind and he thought, Oh, Dad.
“My Pendracon?”
“Let’s go.” Araya grabbed the sphere from the hand of Messhuggah at his side and walked along the wall, slowly, sliding his fingertips on its hard surface. He stopped. “Here.”
His Faithful ones nodded. The wall came down under their blows, revealing a flight of stairs leading down into a huge nothingness.
“Cow shit!”
The Pendracon snapped his fingers to bring back silence. He didn’t specify that he hated coarse language, as he moved the first step down into the unconsciousness of the Fortress.
At the bottom of the stairs, a gray, dusty corridor stretched before his eyes. It was asymmetrical, as if it had once been part of a wider hall with a different shape—oval, perhaps. The pillars of the surface structures burst into the fusty blackness. They were sunbeams hurting the intimacy of a world that had preferred to be forgotten.
Araya closed his membranes. Before him he saw faceless Disciples quickly walking down the corridor, entering or leaving a room, bringing messages, news, prisoners—gazes, sounds and voices, images of life and death over which time had laid its eternal veil.
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He opened his eyes on the present. Earth mixed with gravel was now spewed from the side doors. Only their architraves were still visible. They were decorated with lines and concentric circles—a poor art, of a time where survival was dictated by pragmatism.
Araya saw the black profile of a door free from debris. He snapped his fingers again and pointed to that. Its senses alerted him to the presence of life just beyond. He put his hand to his katar: a real weapon—not a ceremonial one—that had already tasted death. He threw the sphere on the floor to light the way. It was a leap in the dark until the last corner.
As he walked on, he noticed white roots shaping on the geometries of the walls. At first they were as thin as hair, then became thicker and thicker. They had a scaly, shiny surface like the skin of fish. He realized that the thinnest ones were moving very slowly, sliding toward the surface world.
The Messhuggah drew near to watch them better. One of the vegetal appendices broke away from the wall and stood in midair, as if it were studying him.
It sprang too fast.
“HA!” Araya shouted.
“What happened?”
“Don’t come near the walls, walk in the middle of the corridor!”
“Did it hurt you, my Pendracon?”
Araya didn’t answer. He went ahead, following the curve of the corridor. He grabbed the Ensiferum sphere and when he stood up he realized he was on the verge of a huge cone-shaped hall, with a small opening on its top. From that came a ray of light too feeble to touch the ground. On his right, the light shone on the prominences of a massive forge molded in the shape of a crab. Coal remains were scattered at the foot of the great, pincer-shaped bellows.
Somewhere, in the heart of darkness, an impetuous river flowed.
The Pendracon walked slowly, his eyes focusing on the pile of bones in the middle of the room. He picked up a femur, too small to be that of an adult. Some skeletons wore rags torn into pieces—but, seemingly, not by the cuts of time alone.
“What are we looking at?” one of his Faithful asked.
“Unsolved mysteries,” the Pendracon replied, picking up an Arsis from the ground. It had a Delta engraved on it. In it, two faded portraits. “This one should be the little Goran, disappeared while playing in the Glade. We were afraid he’d been abducted by his uncle, in bad relations with the child’s mother. We tortured that man for a long time, before burying him forever in a ventilated case with food and water for a month.”
“But…it’s not allowed to bury a Guardian alive.”
“Yep, for at least two hundred years, young Orya. I knew he was innocent, but no one wanted to listen. Humans deal with human affairs! they answered that time, like countless others.”
He stood up. Where are you? he asked the darkness. “Don’t follow me.” He dropped the sphere on the ground, as a sign of humility toward the dark, and advanced, casting his long Messhuggah shadow. Just within his shadow Araya’s eyes perceived the figure lying against the wall. The white roots surrounded it and their scales reflected the light—an unusual starry sky enclosed in the dark.
The black silhouette tightened a lace above the elbow, keeping one end in his own mouth. He grabbed one of the roots—that didn’t seem to fear him—and brought it on his cubital vein, piercing the skin. After a few moments the shadow relaxed, loosened the noose, and slipped into an orgasmic torpor.
The Pendracon approached, lowering his blade, because that creature was no longer able to hurt him. He leaned over. “Who were you?”
The shadow breathed, and awakened. He turned his shadowy head and looked at his interlocutor. “Death seize me again if this isn’t little Araya’s voice.”
The Messhuggah looked at him. His messy face was framed by a helmet of hardglass—its perfect lines descended along the nape like hair, protecting the neck. Centuries later, it seems just forged. “Korkore, is it really you?”
“Yes,” the Disciple hissed, reaching out a skeletal hand. “Living flesh. Maybe a bit old, but alive.”
“How many of you are still here at the Fortress? Where’s Aeternus?”
Korkore produced a slow, suffering laughter. “You haven’t changed at all since you used to sit on my lap and storm me with your questions. Your Why this? Why that? Oh, my little one…how many times have you left me without answers. It was clear that you’d become Pendracon, one day. And you’d be a great Pendracon…except the game is almost over and all your pawns are far from the finish line.”
“Korkore. Where?”
“Who can say? My brother Aeternus has put together a good team, don’t you think? Key figures of your little, dying world. He’s always been pretty good at managing the pain of others. Maybe one day he’ll be able to do it with you, too.” He laughed again. “I think it’s always been his dream—fucking a Messhuggah’s mind, and fucking it good. If he could only put his hands on that damn black book. But that day the Hermit chose me, not him.”
The Messhuggah closed his eyes. “Angra was right all the time. It was really you who taught Baomani…”
The shadow made a wide, slow movement of his arm. “Look at my beautiful forge. Who knows how many things a young mind has learned here. Who knows how many you would have learned, if you wanted. But you…no. You decided to stagger into the darkest ignorance, Araya, and that will lead you to madness.”
“The Hermit brought you back Benighted, didn’t he? The forgotten black book.”
“And I trained him.”
“Where did he find it? Where is he now?”
“Unnecessary details. Instead, wonder why brother will kill brother, since always? How many times did it happen in our history, and how many times will it happen again?”
Araya shuddered. “Did you notice anything when you looked at the top of this mountain? It’s a law of nature, that moves Creation! And it’s horrible.”
“You scored a point.” Korkore coughed out the words in a wet gasp.
“Where’s your brother?”
“If I knew it, I wouldn’t be here, for one reason or the other.” He smiled in the dark. “Go and sift all the crevices of this structure. Tear it down and build it again. There will always be a forgotten hole where we can hide and start our stupid fight from scratch. We’re red ants in our anthill and we don’t fear any attack, as long as the river flows.”
“The river…”
“It appears only here and there, no one knows exactly where. The tentacles of the unknown god run up its course—a thousand snakes to ride up to the origin. The sacrifice. The sacrifice of our sons.”
“You’re trying to tell me something…”
“I’ve always tried to tell you something, lizard.” Korkore seemed to drown more and more under the surface of consciousness. “Even that night, remember? I wanted a student, and I found three in the children of a Pendracon. Your fucking Hermit is just one of them.”
“It’s impossible. Besides Baomani, Pendracon Mumakil had only two children. The third was killed as a child!”
The shadow laughed again. “Oh, you’re missing the funniest part of the story. How I’d like to watch the face you’ll make when the skein will be untied. But your time is running out, Araya. You’ll end up just like Pendracon Mumakil, straight into the guts of the damned crab. It’s just that you don’t know it yet. Oh, my little one. You don’t know.”
Araya shuddered. “The crab…”
“Stories, a thousand stories, infinite stories intertwined like the strands of a spider web to keep us all connected. Do you want to take a walk on the wild side, Araya?”
The Messhuggah felt the blood freeze in his veins.
“You’ve dared too much, my child.” The Disciple laughed. “Maybe now you understand the meaning of my words. The petals will fall from the flower one by one and you’ll remain there, blind and alone in the ashes…like you’ve always been.”
Araya jumped up. He sank his katar into the gelatinous chest of the shadow and the manegarm absorbed and exiled his soul.
; With his last breath, Korkore shouted, “You’ll pay the price of Hanoi!” His cry ran up the entrails of the underground reaching the Messhuggahs left behind.
They didn’t make it on time to help Araya. He fell to the ground, watching the spot where the sting had pierced him earlier. It glowed in the dark and released a blue light throbbing to the rhythm of pain. It took me. Damn, it really took me!
“Drag him away!”
“It stung me too!”
“Get out of here, everybody!”
Araya laughed when he saw the multicolored lines run beside him. They had a happy face, but when they penetrated him they yelled all their pain.
“No! Korkore, no!”
“They look like a motionless sea, don’t they?”
“Is that you, Aeternus?”
“What’s happening? Who is he talking to?”
“Master.”
The First Disciple turned to him, staring silently.
“Why did you leave me alone?”
“He has convulsions! I can’t hold him!”
“He’s got a hallucination! And this time he didn’t ask for it!”
“Shit!”
“Master… why did you leave me?”
“They look like a motionless sea, don’t they? Oh, Araya─don’t they?”
*
Aeternus, the First Disciple, smiled at him. Then he turned back to the immense structures of Adramelech below them. “There’s a perfect harmony in the rising and the falling of the dunes, my boy. They look like a motionless sea, don’t they?”
The young Messhuggah nodded, as a terrible scream of pain rode the waves of the wind to reach them. “Yes, master.” He looked at his small hand. ‘How old am I?’ he wondered. ‘What are you talking about? There’s no desert here, yet.’
Aeternus stroked his head. “The sea must truly be a sight. It’s immense, liquid, and therefore able to fill any void. I've never seen it, yet—” A new cry of pain erupted from the malignant ruins, cutting short his words. It was followed by the sound of an axe shearing muscles and bones.
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