“If you treat me like the queen of your slaves, you should have an idea.”
Orgor slapped her again, this time with kindness—Erin just fell to her knees. “Your face, girl. I saw it take back its shape before my eyes. You were dead—damn it!—your brain was oozing out of your skull. I asked, You pay me to escort a corpse? But those who pay real money doesn’t generally like real questions. You were dead. And now you’re here in front of me.”
“People have many hidden qualities.”
He offered an amused snort. “You will speak. It will be better for you.” He clapped his hands twice.
The slaves came and grabbed Erin’s feet and arms, forcing her to the ground.
“What…?”
Their frightened eyes warned her not to speak again for her own good and that of all of them, as Orgor undressed.
*
At sunset, Erin went out of the tent clutching her torn clothes, now that she could. She looked straight ahead to the table where Orgor was eating his meal in the middle of his reign in blood. Agonizing cries arose all around mixed with the singing of chains, the screams of the guards, the death knell of an axe that fell and fell.
The Lord of the desert didn’t even look up to her. “No matter how unacceptable you found what I forced you to do.” He grabbed a piece of raw entrails and brought it to his mouth. “I like every part of the women and the other animals.” He licked the luscious blood on his index finger. “Every single part. After all, that’s what represents the noblest component of life. What is inside a body and allows its existence, working in the dark and in secret, pumping blood and unhealthy fluids, sweat and the precious sex nectar. There’s something very noble in what we’ve done today. Try to understand, something noble in everything that lies inside, slaving far from the surface. Many call that soul. I call that entrails.”
He raised his blacks and terrible eyes. “Tomorrow you’ll fight again and I’ll break you again. Then you’ll fight again, and I’ll break you once more, perhaps for good. Go ahead as you please in this rape game. I’ll enjoy every moment. Maybe when you stop fighting, and the light in your eyes is turned off, I won’t find you funny anymore and devote myself to something else. Your pain is part of the game, the one that I prefer. Don’t take it away from me.”
“Are you done?”
“Only for now. You know? You should at least try to please me. Do you have any idea what kind of meat I’m eating right now?”
Erin forced herself to say, “Human flesh?” It was supposed to be a joke.
Orgor smiled. “You have freedom of movement in my camp. Needless to say that you’ll be guarded at sight. This place belongs to me. These people belong to me. It’s my world and it moves with me. Nothing happens that I don’t want. People are not even allowed to die.”
Erin tried to make a sarcastic bow and walked away. I must not betray my feelings. No one must know my pain. She lowered her gaze before the suffering everywhere around her, children torn from their parents and their mothers effectively brought back to order.
“Mom!” Sharp cries arose at one with the pain, the chains, and the whips. An axe came down to punish a disobedient child.
STAK!
Erin fell to her knees and vomited, as tears escaped her control. I’m a Delta Guardian. I’m a Delta Guardian! she thought. And then, My baby…my baby?
She saw many Hammer Guardians in the camp. She heard a moist noise that she couldn’t identify and turned toward an opening in the middle of the tents. There was a rock on the ground, covered in blood and…
“No,” she let out. “No!” She heard the sound again when the slaver slammed the head of an infant on the boulder, holding him by his legs like a rag. He dropped the little body to the ground, when his assistant handed him another infant. The two didn’t stop laughing for a moment, as the guards around them played the jewelry of the sacrificial lambs on a roll of the dice—magic dust everywhere.
Erin plugged her ears and hoped they tore those away from her instead of her tongue.
“Sister!” she heard to his left. “Sister!”
Oh, Ian. Now I think I can hear your voice…
“Angra shat! have you become deaf?”
The girl turned around. Her emerald eyes met those of Ianka framed by the bars of a cage. She ran to him, slipped in the sand and kissed his narrow fingers around the bars. “Ian! Oh, Ian…”
“Locked up with the wolves again, you see?” Schizo’s dry lips were cracked. He was lying on a side, since his cage didn’t allow any movement. Those all around him contained dogs.
“I thought I…”
“You can’t lose a brother like me.” He ran a hand through her hair. “Not even death can keep us away. You and I are one.”
“Yes.”
“Did they hurt you?” Ianka read it in her eyes. “Hey?”
She didn’t answer.
“Look at me.” He lifted her face and dipped in the green of her eyes. “Who did it?”
“Ian—”
A caress told her to go ahead. “Say the name.”
“Orgor.”
Schizo nodded. “You always aim high, don’t you? This time it will be difficult for me, too.”
“Ian, you shouldn’t—”
“I only said difficult. You know I like to challenge myself, and this time the target almost meets my match.”
“What happened? I mean…to us, to the others?”
“And to Dagger? Let him go on his way now.”
“Ian…”
“I woke up. I tried to get up and I banged my head against the ceiling of this cell. The dog above me is always pissing. I think they make him drink only for that purpose. These days have been particularly boring and the view is always the same.”
“We’re still alive.”
“And I still wonder why. They should have killed me—that was the logical choice. If they didn’t, there must be a reason.”
“You will fight,” said a stern voice. “You’re precious, my boy. You’ve always been.”
Ian turned around, but slammed his nose against the closed side of the cage. “Holy shit. Is it really you?”
Erin stood up.
So did the man on the other side of the cages. He looked at her. “In the flesh.”
“Who are you?” Erin asked.
“Has he got an eye of hardglass?”
“Yes,” the girl answered Schizo’s question.
“And a scar on his nose, broken in two?”
This time it was the man to answer, running a finger on his old wound. “The one you drew on my face? Of course. I couldn’t erase it even by rubbing strongly.”
“The old Orah in person,” the boy replied. “The head of the guild I worked for before Olem took me to the Fortress.” He slammed his head against the bars. “And this explains why I’m still alive. Did you make a career, old fart?”
Orah continued to stare at the breasts emerging from the girl’s torn clothes, as he replied to Ian, “How ungrateful of you. After all the times I saved your life. I welcomed you in my guild, raised and trained you as my son. Then what? You left me in the middle of a night to become a Guardian—one of those parasites we had vowed to fight. Remember the rite of initiation?”
“Hard to forget it. All that blood…my blood.”
“You left me like Olem—dammit—just like Olem.” Orah turned to her. “Your friend must be still pretty good with the sword. No one could keep up with him, that’s why I left him in peace, too. I never harmed a hair on him, you know, sugar?”
“That’s why you punished my friends,” Ian said in a soft voice. That was the first time that Erin heard him talk like that. “One at a time.”
“I hoped their screams could soften you a bit, but nothing…” Orah said. “No wonder no one wanted to be your friend.”
“You will pay. You will pay for all of them. I promise.”
Erin was terrified by those words. Ianka had always kept such a promise, even at the cost of getting
himself killed.
Orah showed no fear. “The Lords of the desert like the exhibition of pain, to see the warriors killing each other for their own pleasure and bet large sums on them. You have no idea…I’ve seen commercial empires go down in the flash of a sword, condemned by the folly of their Lords. My Lord—Orgor the pastor of souls—has trusted the intuition of this poor bastard and has great plans for you. You’ll be his luck. And mine too.”
“And what if I refuse?”
Orah shook his head. “Innocence. My favorite weakness.” He drove a hand through Erin’s hair. “Now we know how to blackmail you.”
Ianka shrugged. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The man nodded. “You will. Well, it was nice to talk about the past with you, but responsibilities are calling me—so much traffic these days. Don’t you find there are so many people who don’t understand their place in the world?”
“I find,” Schizo answered. “And I’ll find you. One day, it will be just you and me. After a while, it will be only me. It’s a promise.”
“I know your promises, especially those of eternal fidelity. You’ll pay for abandoning me. You’ll pay for that until I myself will feel sorry enough to say, Stop it! Please, that’s enough!” He smiled one last time and took his leave.
Ianka turned to his sister. “If I live. You live. You hear me?”
A scream ripped through the silence. A little head rolled in the sand. “Ian…”
He caressed her again. Erin felt in Almagard even though she was in the middle of hell.
Then she felt the new spasms in her womb. Please. Please, my tiny son. Don’t make me suffer.
*
At the last light of sunset, Dagger was awakened by Warren and knew it was time to go. In the reddish darkness, he hardly noticed the magnificence of the ruins escorting their wandering—a majestic nothing that spread in every direction.
The gods’ faces darkened the sky, parading along their path. Aroused by their whispers in forgotten languages, Ash replied with incoherent words about the Cry of Mankind.
This stone wants our death, Dagger. It wants that we become part of it. He imagined two inanimate statues shaped like them, forever marching on a sandy road.
“It’s dehydration that speaks for you,” War said. “Don’t die. We can’t wait three days to see you rise again.”
“Hmm?”
“You were speaking.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know, but you scared me. You were talking about two statues carved on our appearance, marching or something. Damn it. I think I even understood what you were saying. This rock, here…it seems so…bah, fuck it!”
Dagger stopped thinking, focusing on his lips to see if they were moving by themselves.
Warren turned to him. “Don’t be afraid. We’re nearly there.”
“That’s what makes me afraid.”
A dune crashed over an immense building like a tidal wave on the rocks. It took them most of the night to climb it and set foot on the remains at its top—a ruined roof garden entrusted to the sterile memory of the raw matter with its half-destroyed statues, empty basins, and clay pipes exposed in the sections of the walls.
They reached the edge to look out. Nothing obstructed their view. Dagger noticed for the first time the great, candid dome in the copper darkness. It was impossible to understand how wide it was from that distance. At its center stood a dark green metal monolith.
“After the Red Dawn, the ancient Adramelech neighborhoods have become separate towns fighting each other or isolated in the middle of the desert,” War said. “From now on, the loneliness that accompanied us could become a pleasant memory. That’s the Sanctuary, the heart of darkness.”
“But it’s…white.”
Warren turned to him, raising an eyebrow. “Candid is the heart of hell and the secrets it holds, the Genesis says. It’s one of the few buildings in the ancient city to have remained virtually unchanged throughout history. The whole history.” He pointed to a distant oddly-shaped structure that reminded him of a throne. “That’s the Throne of Skyrgal, the nucleus around which the Tankar civilization used to gravitate. Once every year their clans gathered there to celebrate the Rite of Rebirth, at least until the civil war.”
“The civil war?”
Warren answered by pointing at a distant rock which seemed to be—in perspective—between the Throne and the Sanctuary. “The fortress of Assado. The clan Nehama barricaded itself there before being assaulted by the Gorgors sent from Aeternus. From what Araya says, the war broke out because the Nehamas wanted to keep the temple of Ktisis all for themselves and denied the other clans the right of transit. That contravenes at least a couple of the laws that those beasts orally hand down from father to son.”
“So we know that the temple of Ktisis is there, somewhere.”
“Sure. But now that temple is again under the Ice Lord’s domain.”
Ash stirred in his sleep and whispered, “Baikal! Baikal the Ice Lord!”
“You can clearly see them from here.” Warren turned south, to the distant profile of the mountains that lay beyond the sea of ruins. “The Silver Mountains. I never thought I’d see them again. The Nehama Tankars took refuge there after Assado, brooding on their revenge and waiting for the opportunity to honor the memories of their dead with a worthy bloodbath. When the Kahar Tankars moved against the Fortress—blinded by the desire to save their umpteenth messiah—the white Tankars attacked, slaughtered the ones guarding the temple of Ktisis, and took back its possession.”
“Why? What would they want with it?”
“Nothing. For some reason, the white Tankars are destroying the temple piece by piece, along with the god’s writings. With each passing hour we risk losing forever the knowledge necessary to stop you, Skyrgal and…” He didn’t finish.
“You?”
“The Disciples,” Warren concluded. “Those albino dogs must be stopped at all costs. When Orange asked me to bring Crowley back to his Kahars, he had only one thing in mind: getting his hands on the temple before it was too late, even at the cost of taking a position in the Tankars civil war and giving them the Armor. After all, that won’t be of any use without you and Redemption.”
“Do you think Araya would agree?”
“I just know that Araya doesn’t interact with the rest of the world anymore. And his silence scares me more than anything he’s ever said or done.”
Dag put a hand to his neck. “Could be worse.”
“How?”
“There could be Gorgors.”
The white blood snorted in amusement. He pointed in the opposite direction. “They’re somewhere far north, beyond all this, and they also have been silent for far too long. Unlike the Tankars, the shadows suffered only marginal losses in the battle of the Fortress. So why don’t they march against the Tankars, or against us?”
Dagger had nothing to offer. He was simply glad that those creatures able to sniff his blood were distant.
“The pawns are placing themselves on the chessboard,” Warren summed up. “And a lot of balances are changing. The desert air is filled with corruption, and the spring increasingly under tension. When it will release its force, these ruins will blow up once and for all.”
At dawn they found shelter in an old building with a partly collapsed ceiling. War lay Ash on the ground, then sat at his side, leaning his back against a column. Dagger watched him fall asleep, before dozing off in turn.
Awakening, Dagger saw the red light of the setting sun pouring down on Warren, who was sitting on a stone. Ash lay on Warren’s legs, as the big brother encircled his shoulders with an arm and stared into the void. Ash was unconscious, his head and left arm abandoned to the will of gravity.
Warren raised his left hand and closed his eyes, sighing, “What did they do to you, brother?”
Dagger felt a deep shame at having spied on the intimate piety of War. “We’d better go.”
The white blood looked up. H
e nodded and wrapped his brother in a cloth. He carried Ash on his back like a child in swaddling clothes.
Some dark shapes flew across the sky, winged messengers of one faction or the other. They often fought, and black or purple feathers rain down on the three boys.
Warren led Dagger southeast, toward the white dome and the high metal monolith—a dark lighthouse in a sea of stone. Their path led them through a maze of narrow alleys, dry stream beds, and old sewers where the few creatures that had not abandoned those ruins still survived. Small green crabs, with bizarre orange circles on their carapaces. There was life in the dark, hiding from the increasingly weak ocher light with which the waning moon flooded the world.
A monumental road emerged from the sand beneath their feet. Before they even realized it, they were walking in the suburbs of a city, as if the stone itself had come to life around them, reviving the ghosts of the past. Naked beggars held out their hands to no one. Skeletal stray dogs ran away from swarms of children with blackened teeth and worn-out garments, ready to bicker over what little remained of the poor animals’ meat. One of the beasts barked helplessly when it was grabbed and dismembered while it was still alive. Outside the taverns, whores and drunks sang in the night and shouted wildly. A bottle was thrown outside a window and shattered on the ground inches from them.
“Welcome to Molok.” Warren said.
“It reminds me of home,” Dag answered.
The white blood tsked. “Don’t say that. And don’t be so hard on them—it’s a day of celebration. They’re just having a little fun.”
“I don’t want to know what they’re celebrating.”
“They don’t know themselves. They’re praising Ktisis, but actually they’re celebrating the unknown god—an old Gorgor cult adapted to the god of the moment. Look at the beautiful crabs all around us.” The white blood pointed at a drainage ditch. “Now they’re moving in the dark, but after thousands of years the crab is still a sacred animal. Here no one would dare to kill him to eat it.”
“And what does that have to do with our present state? And with our present state I mean the sea of shit in which we’re drowning.
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