He tried to convince himself that his
senses were cheating him. That he was alone, yet the shadows were
there and were jealous of him. Mawson was the only referent of the
Divine in that city, his legs and hands, since he had been brought
under there for the first time, in chains and semiconscious.
Everything had changed that day. His life, his expectations, even
his fears. That place still smelled of death even now that twelve
years had passed.
He went down the stairs and
crossed the narrow tunnel that would lead him to
his
presence. He did not
perceive any noise down there. Everything was still. His heart was
not beating; he did not need to breathe; he felt airborne dust
spread against him as he advanced, as if time itself refused to
come
down there
.
It had no sense, it could not be, yet it was.
Slowly, from the shadows, emerged the
ghostly purple light that illuminated only the black rock floor,
leaving the rest of the room in complete darkness. Sat on his
throne, the Divine was waiting for him, as always. Light prostrated
at his feet, making visible only the boots of the armor he wore. In
the still air, Mawson felt the stench of his decomposing body.
Several times the Divine had told him he didn’t have his legs and
right arm anymore. It was just that armor that allowed him to move.
It was made of pure Mayem, the sacred metal that responded to the
will of the wearer and, he thought, even to his emotions.
As former chief of the Three Galleons, the
prefect always wondered what the value of an armor like that could
be. Maybe there was no possible buyer, not on that world. There was
no price a father would not pay to see his son walk again. There
was nothing he would not do in return.
Behind the throne, the
shadows were watching him quietly, safe in the protective embrace
of the
big dark
.
They were hostile.
“
What do you want from us?”
the voice in the armor hissed. “Your confused thoughts upset me.”
Light was shaken by the sound waves of the voice.
“
I’ve found him, your
Eternity.”
The shadows twitched and erupted in their
incomprehensible cries, similar to those of a flock of birds in
flight. Mawson had never seen them but he knew they were there, in
front of his eyes, where they accompanied the Divine’s reaction
with their gruesome cries.
“
Explain yourself,
mortal.”
“
The boy you’re looking for
is hiding here in Melekesh, as you’ve always sustained,” the
prefect said. “To be precise, at the ships cemetery.”
The Divine’s right foot moved. Mawson
imagined him leaning forward to pay full attention. He had been
waiting for that moment for years, after all, away from
existence.
Twelve years, rotting in darkness.
“
Are you sure?”
“
Guardians surely knew you
were on his trail and put us off the track. The bastards are smart.
If only I had known the color of his eyes, I could—”
The Divine slammed his fist. The sad
figures echoed his anger with the gnashing of their teeth.
“
DO YOU THINK THIS MATTERS?”
he shouted. “Where is he now?! Why you didn’t bring him me
here?!”
Mawson bowed his face. “My Divine. I…” he
paused. “I was afraid.”
Then there was silence.
“
Fear, you say,” the one who
sat in darkness replied. “Yes. You are telling the truth. I can
feel it. I always feel everything. It’s this armor, which you think
it’s only a prison, to confer me this power. You are really afraid.
Afraid of us; afraid of all matters that affect our world; afraid
of the ancient god we worship. But I feel even desire. Desire to
learn; desire to share, and this is a good thing. Curiosity drives
us beyond the boundaries from which fear keeps us away. However, I
also feel you’re not telling the whole truth. Tell me what you
really want.”
“
Eternity.
I thought it inappropriate to bring the boy here,
without having previously discussed my reward.”
The shadows shouted their outrage,
deafeningly, as the Divine stood up. He advanced, protected by
darkness, and Mawson watched his feet getting nearer and nearer.
Until, raising his face, he saw a small yellow light shining at a
short distance from his face. It was his eye, cursed by Kam
Karkenos.
“
Are you negotiating with
us, Mawson? Do you
dare
to negotiate with us?”
“
No, I’d never dare!” the
prefect squeaked, like a mouse trapped under the cat’s paw. “I’m
just begging you to reward me as you’ve always promised, at least
now that my task is fulfilled. My son. It was them, the inhabitants
of that filthy cemetery, to reduce him so. Prostrated at your feet,
I beseech you, Eternity! You promised that—”
The shadows interrupted him, but the Divine
yelled. Only one deafening scream, which forced everyone to
silence. The armor produced a flash of light that allowed him, for
a single moment, to perceive the true appearance of the shadows.
They were more than he could ever think and they were observing
him. He looked away, refusing to watch. Now that darkness had
returned, he just wanted to forget what little he had seen.
“
Your task will be done when
the boy is brought to our presence,” the Divine replied. “That will
be the end of my torment and the beginning of my kingdom come. Do
not fear. I always used to keep my promises when I was alive, when
I was the warrior king of the Guardians. Now I will not be outdone.
Your son will walk again, I promise. I will give you my armor and
it will be as if these long years have never passed. Only think
about bringing here the boy marked by the Spiral. Destroy this
whole damn city if needed. It does not matter. Your
whole
world, does not
matter. If you fail, this time I won’t punish you anymore. I’ll
have your son brought here. And then his feet and hands won’t be
the only thing you will regret.”
The Divine sat back and the shadows
subsided. A spark jumped between the armor leggings, clear sign of
his anger.
Son of a bitch! Stupid, rotten son of a
bitch!
“
Mawson?”
“
Yes?”
“
Remember that Skyrgal gave
me a tremendous power before leaving my body. Make it so, that you
can still be useful to this stupid son of a bitch. Even when I was
just a human, I was much more powerful than you in this latrine you
call a city.”
As if to underline those words, a shadow
came forward. He could see its red eyes in the dark and hear its
hungry breathing.
“
Servant of your
will,
Eternity
,”
the prefect concluded. He took his leave with a bow and retraced
his steps. He had a job to accomplish.
Damn quickly.
In the darkness behind, the Divine raised a
hand. The two red and shiny eyes came obediently forward.
“
The prey is going to be
smoked out,” he said. “Thirteen years have passed since its
inception. Now you should be able to perceive his blood. Bring him
to me. I won’t contemplate any more failure on your part,
Gorgor!”
The dark shadow bowed, then withdrew. It
also had a job to accomplish, damn quickly.
* * * * *
4.
Redemption
A wave, higher than the previous ones,
crashed against the rocks. The splashing hit him right there, on
the bed of loose soil on which he was lying. Dagger awoke in the
middle of night. He could not remember where he was, nor how he got
there. He only knew he was scared, and cold.
The wind blew with violence,
giving voice to the rocks. Instinctively, he sought the eyes of
Seeth lying next to him. When he didn’t found her, it all came back
to him with merciless clarity. Seeth was gone. She was sleeping six
feet under, now. Mawson had executed her and he had buried her in
their favorite place, the
Horrido
of Ktisis. An expanse of stones eroded by wind in
the most twisted ways, overlooking the sea.
In a world that had never needed him.
A piercing pain was pulsating in his head
to the rhythm of his heartbeats, a painful gift bequeathed by the
prefect’s kick. He stood up, clinging to the sharp rocks. The
clouds were mustering in the sky, ready to wash away the blood from
the world. The storms of Melekesh befell rapidly and with violence,
leaving the city to its knees and submerged in water. Apart from
the district on the Hill. That was why nobles lived there since
always.
He shrugged his arms,
shivering, walking on the escarpment along the coast. He had many
scores that needed to be settled with his past, before he could
realize what he would do with his future. If there was a future for
him, after all. He would gladly throw himself into the cold embrace
of the great silence, once he had completed the revenge against
Mawson. But first came his easiest target,
the old bastard
.
Distracted by his dark thoughts, he hardly
noticed he could see his own shadow in a moonless night. He looked
up and saw that a huge fire was devouring his miserable world. The
ship cemetery was burning.
As he approached, he saw the city guards
entering the district in long, black columns, carrying barrels of
pitch and torches. Judging by the deployment of forces, Dagger
thought they wanted to raze the entire cemetery to the ground.
Probably, it was just what they were doing.
He disappeared into shadows, moving with
discretion, eyes downcast, as if none of that concerned him. When
he thought he got far enough, he dipped into water, keeping his
head under the surface. He swam through a narrow opening, injuring
himself several times against the wood splinters sticking out of
the mud. When he emerged, he found himself in a dark peripheral
channel, where the neighborhood’s abattoir threw the carcasses of
the slaughtered animals. Including those of some men who, indebted
to the marrow, were only worth what covered their bones.
He almost choked because of the bittersweet
stench as he swam fast to reach and climb on one of the wrecks’
mast. He looked around, trying to understand what was happening.
Soon the situation turned out all too clear: with methodical
expertise, the guards had set fire to the cemetery area farthest
from the city, so that flames were slowly advancing. They would
have left no part of it unscathed. This, of course, gave the guards
the necessary time to draw, from their duty, the shameful pleasure
of exercising the darkest power, the one to dispose at will someone
else’s suffering. Burning in front of his dry and tired eyes, was
the final showdown between the city and its nightmares; between the
strong and the weak; the rich and the poor; the ones to which life
had never denied anything, and the desperate.
He saw that the smugglers, occult caste of
that world, had been awakened in their sleep. Bound to each other
with barbed wire in a circle, they were forced to look toward the
center, where their families were torn apart. The pile of ears,
feet and tongues, suggested that for the cemetery there would be no
dawn after that night.
Why?
he wondered, resting his forehead against the rough wood.
Smugglers were useful to the whole city. They fed the vices of the
guards and of the entire town with magic dust, some kind of
mushrooms and all sorts of substance that came from the other side
of the sea. Yet that night they were slaughtered too, erased from
the face of that dirty world. For a moment, he thought to be the
cause of all that. Yet robbing the son of a nobleman was not enough
to explain a similar reaction. No, there had to be more.
He went back down and decided to go all the
way, driven by his inextinguishable thirst for truth. Something
heavy fell on his shoulder and he instinctively pulled away, afraid
of having been discovered. He turned around in time to see the
severed head of a woman thrown down into the water, with eyes wide
open. Then he heard a shrill scream, the clatter of a blade, and
saw another head falling down a little farther on. This one of a
child. Dagger retreated against the wall of the old sailing ship
that housed the greatest pleasure house in the neighborhood. The
guards who once, in plain clothes, had come to give rise to their
most vile instincts, now came in uniform to give death. He went
under water and felt the mud mixed with blood fill his nose, as if
to choke him. When he emerged again, he found himself in a blind
alley. He climbed along the hull of a fishing boat and looked
around. The Three Galleons were burning. The sun around which the
whole neighborhood used to orbit was burning for the last time.
Their absolute leader was gutted like a fish, bound the helm. His
five lieutenants dangled from the yardarm, hanged, their
half-charred corpses swinging back and forth in the infernal air,
heated by the flames of the surrounding barracks. All the other
members of the guild were nailed to the ship. Some of them were
still alive and screamed with less and less force, less and less,
as fire claimed their body. Until there was a last atrocious cry,
and silence swallowed their lives.
Dagger turned to the den of Spiders; that
part of the district had not yet been lapped by fire. He jumped
down and swam as fast as he could to reach it in time. He climbed
the bumpy side of the old wooden vessel and passed through a crack
opened by moisture. In the safe and sinister gloom he stood silent.
Noises reached him on the sly, now. The screams of pain and the
wild cries of the guards; bodies falling into the water; above
everything, the voice of the merciless fire. He got deeper into the
bowels of the dark, using his hands to orient himself. When he came
under the grate opened on the deck, he crouched against the wall,
away from the mortals and red rays of light coming from above. In
the metal grid, he saw the shadow of two feet. The feet of a man
who was silently watching the macabre show around him.