“
He’s not your son!” Marduk
cried, clenching his fists. He lowered his face and gritted his
teeth. “Surrender to the idea that for him you were only a… a…” He
could not finish. He turned to the wall and hit it with bare
knuckles, making them bleed. “Take what you need,” he said in a
small voice. “And go away!”
“
You’re giving me up too,
right?”
“
Aniah…”
She shook her head, standing up. “After
all, I’d do the same thing with you if you were in my
position.”
Marduk knew it was not true. He stopped her
by the arm and turned her around. “Aniah…” he repeated, but
couldn’t continue.
She smiled. “Yes, I know my name,” she
said. “It is the only thing I have left. However, big brother, I
left you speechless. How many people in here could say the same
thing? Your talent for sarcasm seemed to know no end, a little like
our conviction that we could look over the Equilibrium forever.
Skyrgal was right. This world is already at an end. It’s only a
matter of time. Sooner than not we will kill the weaker puppies to
feed what’s left of the litter. As in the story our father used to
tell us when we were kids, remember? Before you fell asleep, sure
that in that house nothing was going wrong. This time there won’t
be a new dawn at the end of the night. Not even for you.”
“
Don’t say it!”
“
We are already dead, and if
you are still the Delta Dracon I remember, you know it better than
me.”
He slapped her, and she did not answer. She
left the room, carrying the fruit of her love.
“
I’m sorry,” Marduk said
when she could no longer hear him.
* * * * *
Oh, Crowley…
Aniah walked the stone avenue that bisected
the Glade, the cave of rare beauty opened in the womb of the sacred
mountain. Its lush trees, the towering waterfalls and the
multicolored vegetation made that place a perpetual hymn to life,
in stark contrast to the disruptive death of the desert that
surrounded it. Even now, though her heart was torn by remorse, the
Glade inspired her absolute peace. Its muffled silence was broken
only by the sound of water gushing from the numerous cracks in the
rocky vault. No one had ever understood where that water came from.
The legend spoke of the tears of Angra, sorry for what he had done
to his brother Skyrgal, but she was too pragmatic to believe this.
The falls were high and unreachable, no one could ever follow the
course back to their source. She thought if one day someone managed
to do it, the beauty of the place would be somehow affected.
She crossed the forest of
ancient oaks and emerald green lawns dotted with flowers of every
shape and color, yellow daffodils, red poppies, snowdrops, wild
violets, cornflowers. She walked on the pretty wooden bridges
suspended above streams full of life. The placid purple light of
Ensiferum balls, scattered everywhere, illuminated the beloved
places where she had spent the few happy moments of her life. The
woods where she played at war with her brother, the tree trunks she
stripped by dint of blows when from the wooden sword she passed to
that of Manegarm. The trees among which
she
was stripped, to give herself
over to the pleasures of the flesh. She was crushed by the memory
of Crowley’s skin and his sweet words whispered in her ear, the
bites on her back, the fire of passion that Angra, the god of the
universal order, always wanted to be kept alight.
Oh, Crowley…
Yes, her god. She looked up,n the right of
the Glade, a large wooden building, like a gigantic stable, towered
above the treetops. From the slots just below the roof an eye of
pure light watched her escape from his world. Nothing, ever escaped
him.
Angra, my only god,
she thought.
Will you, at
least, forgive me?
A roar of pain went through the Glade. The
god took on her suffering. Aniah felt reassured. She began to think
that, after all, there would be a return home, even for her. Her
only crime had been to love a man beyond rationality, to believe
him alive when she knew him for dead, to follow him down trails he
would have never taken her. For a moment, she came to think that
love could never, ever, be a crime.
Angra come to earth, I thank you.
The rich vegetation gradually disappeared,
giving way to a barren expanse of black stone. She passed through
the endless graves of the Guardians, buried in that place since the
dawn of time. The tombs grew older as they flowed past her,
becoming, in the end, simple blocks of stone whose inscriptions
were gone, forever lost to time. Beyond the cemetery, she arrived
at the gates where the Glade ended. Wrought-iron spikes pushed out
of the bare rock, as the tusks of a wild beast that wanted to
swallow her and make her forever disappear. She found herself in
darkness, descending a long staircase. The echo of her footsteps
became the only company of her gloomy thoughts, as a red and dismal
light rose to illuminate the way.
Against the light, the shadows of five
Guardians appeared. They were waiting with arms crossed on their
chest and a sadistic grin on their faces.
“
Where are you going?” one
of them asked. “The world Beyond is not a suitable place for a
woman, especially one that has so many things to tell.”
She took a step back. Coming out of
nowhere, two hands pushed her forward.
“
Twelve of our blood
brothers died to come and rescue you!” the voice behind her said.
“I hope you are a bit sorry, at least. What are you hiding in that
rag?”
“
I must go to the world
Beyond. This order comes from Dracon Marduk,” Aniah said, as she
realized those men were not there to talk. A blow on the temple
blurred her sight and everything disappeared. Hearing the cries of
her terrified child she came back to her senses. She drew her
sword, blindly beheading the Guardian who tried to tear him from
her arms. Immediately, the other ones threw her on the ground and
closed on her to hit her again and again, and again. She felt the
fingers of one of them reach beneath her tunic. And then inside
her.
“
Open your legs, come on!” a
grotesque voice snarled as two hands grabbed her ankles. “Do it for
all those who died because of you, before we cut your throat like a
sow!”
She felt his saliva on her throat and wept
helplessly, still holding the baby against her breast as they
began. They had been sent there, they had not come on their own,
she knew it. She was being punished for her betrayal. She hoped it
would all end soon then, suddenly, she were soiled by a spray of
warm blood. She looked up and saw the throat of the Guardian over
her slashed by a deep cut. The other ones cursed and backed away in
terror, vanishing. Aniah took the lifeless body of the Guardian off
from inside her, before kneeling on the floor and screaming.
Marduk appeared in front of her, emerging
from nowhere. He had a bloody dagger in his hand.
“
Marduk,” Aniah groaned,
throwing herself into his arms. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry big
bro!”
“
Shhh, little sis…” he said,
stroking her hair. “It will be okay, you will see. Now, you see
what the situation is here at the Fortress.”
“
I’m sorry.”
He spoke softly and clearly. “Everything
you have been through has only made you stronger. Even this. You
have a mission to accomplish. When you do, come back. I will find a
solution for you too. You will leave the Fortress and change your
life. I will think about it. I will think about everything, as
always. Do not worry about anything this time.”
She slowly left his protective embrace,
putting a hand to her waist to unsheathe the dagger of Mayem, the
only that survived the destructive fury of Skyrgal in the tavern of
Adramelech, days earlier.
“
Here,” she said. “It’s a
gift.”
Marduk looked at her suspiciously as he
took it from her hands. “A dagger of Mayem?” He was aghast. “Where
did you get it? These weapons are cursed!”
“
When the time comes it will
be useful to you, I am sure. In this, lies what I, now, love above
everything else. Even though it is my death and ruin.”
Marduk did not understand those words. When
he looked up to ask for an explanation, Aniah had already
gone.
There were still many things he wanted to
tell her and, he was sure, many things she had not said.
* * * * *
3. The old man
That night, like every
night, old Sannah was sitting at the desk in his studio, surrounded
by endless piles of papers and dust, somewhere in that maze of
channels and wrecks that was the neighborhood of abandoned ships;
best known as the
ship
cemetery
. That room had been the cab of a
commander once. In there decisions had been made that had decreed
the death of many men. Approach maneuvers, boardings, tortures and
turns of the keel to punish the unruly. He smiled at the thought.
Now it was just the asshole from which he ran the Spiders guild,
not one of the most important associations in the putrid city of
Melekesh, perhaps not even a real guild. Perhaps the only refuge
for a bunch of mutts, abandoned in the world, that did not have
anything better to do with their lives than get killed while trying
to sneak something for him.
The gentle rocking of the floor went along
with the weak cemetery sea waves, while old Sannah drew another
entry on a register stained with moisture. He rubbed his chin,
covered with sticky stubble, twirling between his fingers the round
earrings that dangled from his left ear, the only one he still
had.
“
That’s totally wrong.
Totally wrong again!” he said, tearing up the paper and throwing it
into the brazier. “Bah! Incomes from the sale of the boys, little,
only twenty Dragoons. Who buys them thin as they are? Incomes from
theft, still less, no more than twelve Dragoons. They are good only
at getting caught, the little bastards. Begging,
Uhm
. one hundred and
forty Dragoons. The specialty of these damn wankers. Total… a
hundred and ninety Dragoons.”
He scratched his head. He
hated it when on the paper he found more Dragoons than he could
find in his chest. He hated above all not to understand how much of
that money had been spent on alcohol and in some kind of mushrooms,
or what might have been stolen by his Spiders. The first one was
more likely. Spiders knew all too well what they were getting if
they were caught stealing in there. Death would only be the final
consolation. No, the mistake had to be his, since every time he
repeated the addition the result changed.
‘You never miss a thing, huh?’
said a
voice inside that he decided to ignore. The old man knew he did not
get a particularly long education. He had been educated at the game
of sword and war in a place and a time far from those. For a
moment, he let his mind wander to the high towers of the Fortress,
the desolate landscape on the ruins of Adramelech, the bloodstained
faces of his companions after a long day of war. The Glade. Yes,
the Glade: a pure diamond embedded in that damn desert where people
fought and died.
Uhm, let me write this
down. I can write a poem on it,
he
thought.
Then every questionable inspiration was swept away by the confused
clamor from the other side of the door.
“
You can’t get in!” the
voice of a young boy shrieked. “He doesn’t want to be interrupted
when he tries to settle the score!”
He did not understand the answer, but he
did recognize the voice that answered. The voice of a woman he had
not heard in a long, long time.
The studio door was thrown open with a
kick, but Sannah did not jump up and grab the dagger he kept stuck
on the desk, ready for use. He always tried not to sound surprised,
especially when, like that time, he really was. He kept his hands
crossed in front of his lips and looked at the woman as she came
in, wearing a pair of boots soaked with fetid water as well as the
worn amaranth tunic she wore. Over her shoulders rose the handle of
a two handed sword, in addition, of course, to the daggers on her
belly and, he was sure, the knife on her calf. All this would leave
very little doubt about her identity, at least to who could
recognize a Guardian of Golconda even from miles away, a Delta, to
be precise, their damned chosen squad, of which he had once been
the Dracon. The only thing that Sannah just couldn’t make out was
what the fuck that woman was doing right there. Only afterward he
noticed the bundle clutched to her breast as if it was the most
important thing in the world to her, and he knew that in one way or
another, big trouble was coming.
A skinny boy, whose ribs were about to pop
out from the skin thin as he was, burst into the room. “I’m sorry
great Mama!” he screamed. “We could not stop her! I tried to—”
Sannah raised a hand and the boy fell
silent. “Get out,” he just said.
The Spider bowed and obeyed, fearfully
closing the door behind him. The old man and the woman remained in
silence, deep silence, in which suddenly emerged the moan of a
newborn. Sannah raised an eyebrow.
“
The trip was long, I
suppose,” he said. “And, just to know, what brought you to the
world Beyond, Aniah? You haven’t come to bring back your old
father, I hope.”
Aniah walked slowly forward, looking
around. “Nice little place you’ve pulled up, Dad. Exactly, what do
you do now for a living? And why do they call you ‘great
Mama’?”