“Forgive me,” Kugar said, turning away and refusing to look at Ian. “At least you, forgive me.”
Ianka knelt down sliding along her friend’s arms, while the blades hid again in his bowels. He curled up in a fetal position, holding his red belly like a scared child. A slimy dribble trickled from the edge of his lips, when half crying, half laughing, he replied, “No. Don’t…worry. After all, you warned me that…you’re a Tankar too.”
Kugar closed her eyes.
Schizo tore off his black patch in a last surge to freedom. His empty socket already returned the silent gaze of death, while his eye looked one last time at the world of the living. “Funny.” He offered a single, amused sound, shaking his head. “Really funny,” he repeated, before surrendering to the comfortable embrace of the dark.
Kugar remained still and Dagger watched her for a long moment, unable to say or do anything. Is it really you, the same girl who comforted me, taking up my own suffering? “Why?” he just asked.
She ran a hand through Schizo’s hair. “Because Ianka wouldn’t have allowed it. It would have opposed himself. Ianka has never understood that it’s impossible to save who will not be saved. Somehow, it was my Test. If it hadn’t happened so fast, I could never do it.”
“They’ve been manipulating your pain, right?”
She shook her head without turning around. “No. Not me. I never lost control. You’re face to face with the girl who sold the world.”
“What?”
“Open your eyes, Dag. There won’t be a sunrise at the end of this night. I’m a Tankar and you’re a god. Did you really think there could be a future for you and me? It’s always the same old no tomorrow kicked in your face.”
He clenched his fists. “I’d like to know what other future they offered you.”
“Not a future. A past.” A single tear fell against Ianka’s face. “Why am I in the world?”
“Kug…”
“You’ve asked that yourself too every single night of your life, haven’t you, Dag?”
“You and I have nothing in common.”
“Stop it.”
“Look at your feet. There’s a boy who had decided that he didn’t give a shit because living was damn more important. You killed him. You have been his no tomorrow.”
She was silent. “You’re right,” she finally confessed. She laid Schizo on the ground and stood up. “But one day you wake up and you realize that you’d sacrifice everything—every single thing in the world—just to fill that void you carry inside yourself since forever. At least, since you ceased to be part of something and became the grain of sand the wind likes to move from dune to dune. You know how it feels, right? You know what it means to be the dog they all try to beat.”
Oh Kugar. “I…” he said. I know it. “Then why did we…that night we two—”
“It was not supposed to happen.” That hurt, and she noticed it. “Even if just for once, I wanted to know what it means to be loved, to be happy. Now I know that, thanks to you.”
“It was a pleasure.” Dagger searched for the right words to hurt her, but couldn’t find them. If he did find them, they would have been lost on the way to his mouth. At least that memory was to remain intact. That’s all I have left.
“Dag. I’ll never be a puppet on their stage again, maneuvered by those who have a home to get back to,” Kugar tried to explain. “When someone told me there was a home for me too, I accepted any condition to know where. You don’t know how much you’ve silently wished for one thing, until someone offers that to you on a silver plate. Home, Dag. The one you’ll never have, not even in my arms.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No!” Dagger clenched his fists, before relaxing his fingers. “Home was Schizo laughing after having knocked Kerry out with a punch, or when he looked at the bottom of an empty jug and said, You made a hole in it, haven’t you? Home was Ash and Warren arguing and laughing together, and then quarreling again, but we knew it was all right because that’s what brothers do. Home was Erin’s green eyes reflected in ours. Home was us. Home means that no one is ever left alone, or behind. Home was us. You and me.”
She bowed her head, hiding her emotions.
“I forgive you,” he said. “You will explain it to me, and with time I’ll understand. But now you must come away with me before it’s too late.”
Kugar shook her head. “It’s already too late, you idiot. It’s always been too late for us. I’m just a dream in which you’re dying.”
“The dream in which I’m dying is the best I’ve ever had. Lie to me…LIE TO ME, for Ktisis, because you’re the one thing I believe!”
Something changed in her. She reached out for him. “Dag…”
He was about to touch her, when a familiar voice caught their attention, “Hey, hey. Not so fast!”
Kugar seemed to wake up and took a step back.
Dagger froze. “You sent her over to do the grunt work?”
“No,” the voice answered. “She asked for some time to spend alone with you. To talk to you while my men cleaned up the slavers out here and had fun with the survivors. But, Ktisis! She’s taking too much time. Blah blah blah. And you: home this, home that, lie to me and blah blah blah!”
“Your sarcasm is becoming legendary, Evoken. Go easy with it or the rock itself here will start to laugh.”
The son of Varg Belhaven advanced, followed by his long, straight black hair. He turned Ianka’s body over with his boot and looked at his face. “Sarcasm is a matter of timing, pauses, rhythm.” He assumed a fictitious expression of sorrow, shaking his head. “Who wants to make people laugh at all costs never waits for the appropriate time and always ends up burning all his lines, causing embarrassing moments of silence.” He looked up. “You should have noticed an absence as important as mine. I was still the son of the late and never too much regretted Pendracon Varg, the black Warren of the situation.”
“Don’t hurt my feelings,” Dagger answered. “I can’t get your beautiful black hair out of my head. What’s the secret of its luster?”
“Staying in the shadows, constantly. Perhaps light would bleach it.”
The next words came out in a growl, “What shit did you promise Kugar?”
“Well, son, she tried to explain that to you, home, the only safe place. Wasn’t it you yourself to shove that into her head?”
Dagger watched Kugar, but she kept her face down. “He’s not lying.”
Evoken put his arm around her shoulders. “Why should I? Now that I’m about to put my hands on the first part of Ktisis, the one inside you. The good lies in the purpose, Araya is right about that. But damn it…the fun is all in the means!”
“If you’ve taken all this trouble just for me, tell Mumakil—that walking corpse—that you still lack two parts of Konkra.”
“Um. Yes. I think you’re talking about the Armor in Crowley’s hands—our allies will soon wage war against him and his curs for the last time. And maybe about your old dagger—wait until Mumakil finds the Agent Orange. He’ll soon bring his skin to me. They say that this year Messhuggah-skin boots are very trendy in Asa.” He watched his own boots, as if he were really considering a change of style. “Well, there will be time enough to decide. I must admit that trying to keep the three parts of Ktisis far from each other was a good idea in its total madness. Yet, when the wind blows on the dune, nobody can foresee where the grains of sand will touch ground again. So the desert moves, slow and inexorable in its monstrous unconsciousness, and calmly it devours everything—every plan, every mortal hope.”
Evoken walked around Ianka’s corpse. “Including love, that innocent hope that someone could be our redemption. I believe it all comes from mother love, and its projection in adult life. That welcoming darkness at the beginning of the world from which we would never come out. Too bad that all illusions always end with the cold awakening.”
“Ktisis, Evoken, did you ever have a girlfriend?”
T
he man smiled. “You see? Perfect timing.” Gently he ran his little finger over the girl’s bottom lip. “That’s why I kind of like you.”
Dag shook his head. “No…”
“Don’t look at me like that,” Kugar cried. “Please, Dag. Don’t look at me like that!”
Evoken continued, “Naked in my arms, Kug found it too easy to listen to my simple proposal. You in exchange for the truth she’s always looked for about herself, her family, but above all about her Tankar origins. The truth…the light at the end of the tunnel, I think she defined that so, once. Aren’t these your words, too? After the incident of the Tower, I was on your trail, only to find out that Warren had been crazy enough to take you to the Sanctuary—the same Sanctuary about to be taken by the Disciples.” He applauded once. Twice. “How good of you. You must have had a good reason to take such a risk.”
“We had a wounded with us, remember?” Dag murmured absently.
“Anyway, if only you saw the smile on my face. I knew you’d come here in chains—there was no other way to get around the Kahar territories. I just needed to get to Kugar before you.”
“But she…?” Dagger didn’t continue.
Evoken looked down on the girl. “Oh, Ktisis. You didn’t tell him the story of the little orphans, did you? I really don’t see you in the form of a mommy.”
“Knock it off,” Kugar growled.
The son of Varg ruffled her hair, before focusing on the boy. “We were saying, I just had to get here before you. By the way, next time choose a faster mount, my boy.”
Dagger opened his mouth, then closed it. He could only think, Oh, Kugar…
“Don’t wear a long face. You break my heart,” Evoken said. “The Kugar you knew no longer exists, a simple awareness took her away. She’s not alone. There’s someone who’s been looking for her far and wide across the known world. She has a safe place, unlike you, who are alone.”
“You hurt me.”
Evoken seemed amused by his irony. “I’ll tell you that I found bizarre that her only Tankar relative still alive is Baikal himself. Son of Exodus, he always likes to specify.”
“The Ice Lord,” Dag remembered in a whisper. “The Nehamas’ Asmeghin?”
Evoken nodded. “The two of them, brother and sister, are the only survivors of the massacre of Assado—a rather bloody page in Candehel-mas history that I hope someone told you about. It’s the accident that blew Aeternus’ plans to smithereens.” He smiled. “The last time we met, I told you about an unusual alliance, remember?”
“And what alliance is more unusual than that between the Hammer Guardians and their sworn enemies?”
“Family. Clan. Tankar,” the son of Varg recited. “You know, my father’s biggest mistake was to think that you can defeat any enemy by simply beating him on the battlefield. This way you may win every battle and still lose the war.” He shook his head. “Know your enemy, his culture and history. Only those will give you a way to figure out where to break him, or how to even bring him on your side. Family. Clan. Tankar!”
“How good of you,” Dagger said. “The Disciples use people’s pain against them, but you’re on another level. You used the pain of an entire people.” And you’re a bloody genius, he thought.
Evoken pulled Dawn out of a pocket. “All of you are beating yourself up for this damn little book, when the whole temple of Ktisis has come to light. I know, the downside is that the temple is in the hands of the Tankars.” He smiled amiably. “But since those desert curs are divided into a multitude of groups and subgroups, maybe it was enough to find the right way to put one against the other. Throwing salt on the wound of Assado would rekindle a fire which was never extinguished, and bring the Nehama Tankars on the right path. Sure, it was necessary to seek the alliance of Baikal, to find the one handle to grab hold of a wolf’s mind. Tankar. Clan…”
Dagger gaze shifted to Kugar. “…family,” he said.
“Well, you’ve worked it out!” Evoken laughed slowly. “And who will stop the combined forces of the Nehamas and the Hammer, now?” He became serious. “You? Or maybe the lizard, or those half-dead on the run since the red dawn of times, exiled and landless. Oh boy. I appreciate your efforts—you have some talent, you know?—but it all happened too fast and you haven’t had any leeway. Only the Agent Orange must have sensed something, because he tried to complicate our lives by putting Crowley at the head of the Kahars. At least, I have to give him that.”
He shifted his gaze on the girl, then back on Dagger. “I will give a choice to you. Will you let us chain you up like a good boy, or will you give us some more fun? Just try to oppose me, I can’t wait to see you humbled before the love of your life. I warn you that, once they start, my men always find it difficult to stop. They have a penchant for some tortures that…well, what’s the use of describing them? If you want, they’ll be more than glad to show them to you. One by one.”
Dag raised Solitude.
A slimy smile dripped on Evoken’s lips. “Please, say something funny.”
“This should be the time that Warren jumps out.”
The son of Varg smiled. He kept on smiling even when the blade stuck out of his neck from the bottom up. Pulling off, the blade opened new red lips that the man tried to hide with his prudish hands. The blood spurted between his fingers on Dag’s face, who looked at him impassively.
Evoken moved his mouth in silence, perhaps to curse him or any other god before falling to his knees, obstinately struggling against the end. One simple “No…” mixed with blood gurgled out of his cut throat.
Kugar turned around and took a step back, but a hatchet stuck deep into her right shoulder almost down to her breast. Her eyes widened as her strengthless arm fell along her body.
Dag moved slowly to the left, running his gaze along the handle of the ax tamed by two white arms, until the sneer of…“Erin?”
She kicked Kugar forward, releasing the blade stuck in her bones.
The Tankar girl fell to the ground next to Ianka in a pool of blood. “My…lung!” she spat out breathless, her words mixed with red slime. “You hit my…”
“Bye bye, beautiful.” Erin drove her sword into Kugar’s back and left it swinging in the still air. Then she looked up, ax in her hand.
“I…” Dagger shook his head, stepping back. “What’s happening?”
Erin shrugged and stepped forward. “I’m saving your life. And please, don’t joke about the fact that you can’t die. I must have made that joke at least…um, I think a few hundred times.”
“You mean you’re not mad?”
“A mad goddess? Boy. In twelve hundred years these eyes have seen too much shit to get crazy for real.” Erin blew a lock of hair away from her eyes. She got nose to nose with him. “After all, what’s madness but a defense mechanism? I played the part to save you, a bit like your mother at the time. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”
“You had a purpose!”
“Of course. To see unseen and unmask this slut, make her lower her guard to…hey, what’s that face?”
Dagger raised a finger. The girl looked at him doubtfully, before turning around. She came face to face with the huge muzzle of a beast surrounded by a cloud of white hair and a candid aura. Kugar had turned into a wild, giant Tankar.
Erin opened her arms. “Okay, bitch. Let’s settle this matter once and for all.”
Dagger had to shield his eyes, when the blinding purple light illuminated the cave. He was hit by a shock wave and slid to the edge of the precipice. It took him some time to get back on his feet. He opened his eyes, but saw nothing. He was dazzled, and trying to focus he perceived only shreds of the clash in front of him. But he could hear wild screams and barks.
When his sight came back, he saw a wing of Erin—or whatever was the creature before his eyes—broken and bent in an unnatural way, while Kugar’s chest was flayed by several cuts of claw. The goddess, similar to Angra, struck again. A blood splatter sullied the rocky vault and painted
the thick fur of the Tankar, who in turn slashed down and down again. The severed arms of the goddess fell to the ground with a splatter of purple blood. Erin had only time to throw her opponent against the rock in a shower of fragments, then her mighty roar faded in a crystal, clear cry and the titanic body became again thin and fragile. Dagger ran to catch her.
Erin looked at him, dismembered also in her human form. “I…” She smiled. “I love you too. Fool. You were not a mission. You’ve never…been.” She lowered her gaze to look at the broken bones sticking out from her flesh. “He’s…still inside me. I feel it. It hurts, Dag, it hurts so bad. Motherhood…is always a little…madness.” She gave herself over to slumber, to silence. To death.
“No!” Dagger lifted her off the ground as the white Tankar advanced again, its nose an inch from the ground, its two cold, murderous eyes staring at him.
Dagger backed away until he teetered on the precipice, his heels suspended above the emptiness. Only now did he notice the Hammer Guardians, who had so far kept away from the clash.
He looked into the eyes of the Tankar until he saw his reflection in its blue irises. There was nothing but the hatred of an untamed beast.
Don’t oppose, a voice inside him said. Stop fighting. Let it flow, Dag. Let it flow.
He dropped back down into the mouth of the void. He watched the imperfect circle of the sky enclosed in the well, then gravity guided him through the gnarled branches and leaves, wounding him and cutting him until the icy embrace of a water current dragged him away.
The river…the river flowing under Adramelech! Dagger struggled against death to hold Erin’s body, as they were dragged deeper and deeper into the blind darkness. He thought he could see two blue eyes, lapis lazuli in a face covered with small scars. He remembered Kugar’s smile in the brief moments when it had broken the hardness of a face voted to anger—that of those who didn’t have a past, those who came from nowhere.
Like him.
Oh, Kug…
The water made its way into his lungs, forcing him to abandon the slender body in his arms.
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