Dagger 4 - The Tankar Dawn: A Dark Fantasy Adventure Read online

  Happy? Alive?

  … not alone.

  Tusday laughed with them.

  “Look at him, right where he belongs,” Vektor said. “I can’t bear when naughty dogs don’t understand their place in the world. You bend them and they fight. So you must bend them again. And again!”

  The shit boy stared into his eyes and decided, for the first time, to let the world hear his voice. “Vektor,” he said. “Why?” He didn’t find the courage to add anything else.

  Vektor didn’t answer straight away. He returned his gaze, then rage escaped his lips. “My father got mad, you get that? It’s all your fault, yours! It didn’t have to go this way!”

  Mutt, son of the Tormentor Asmeghin, tried to say, “Hey, don’t shout or they will—” Vektor interrupted him with a nudge that smeared his nose all over his face.

  “It was all your fault! I just want… just…” Vektor bent his head.

  You just want things to go back the way they were, the shit boy shook his head. “Things can’t be like before,” he said. “They never can. I’d like that, too. Do you remember when we played together? Do you remember it, Vek?”

  Probably his friend didn’t even hear him. He sneered. “Did you want to throw me in a pool of shit? Were you trying to impress her with me? Then impress her with me!” Vektor moved an apparently heavy bucket to the edge of the pit. “Impress her with me!”

  The shit boy raised his arm to shield his face as the shit bucket was tipped into the pit. The raining feces suffocated his desperate cry. But not their laughter. And even if Bai hadn’t heard it, that laughter would have forever resounded in his head, chasing him into every hope.

  “We’ve been wrong about you all these years.” Vektor was talking to her. “You’re tough and you deserve to be one of us, little sis’, even if our father didn’t want you.”

  One by one, their faces disappeared from the infamous circle.

  Only Tusday came back, after a while. She looked at him one last time. Dirty and destroyed, the shit boy hoped to find a hint of regret in her voice, or eyes. He would understand. She needed to be happy together with the others. In time he would have forgiven her. In the end, didn’t he know, too, the need to be accepted?

  Tusday seemed sorry. For a moment. “Come on,” she said then. “Did you really think there could be a future for me and you?”

  Slowly her sweet face, the deep Tankar eyes where he had so often found relief and shelter, disappeared like two stars obscured by a cloud.

  “No,” a yelp broke once again the rules and escaped from his mouth, soon becoming a scream, “No. No! NO!”

  The hole was covered. Bai was again alone in his lousy, lonely world and soon there was only the company of his long, inconsolable no.

  Time lost meaning, down in that deep abandonment. Hours, or maybe days, or years passed by. Perhaps all his life went away and he didn’t care. The unbidden salvation showed up with the face of his master, laughing above him. The echo in the pit distorted his voice. The shit boy could hear nothing but his laughter. In the end, the Kahar threw him a rope which Bai was tempted to refuse.

  What’s the use of ascending to the surface? What’s the use of fighting and crawling toward the light?

  One voice answered him in the intimacy of his mind, You will resist. You will live, and when the timing is right, you’ll get what is yours. And although Bai thought that day would never come, he grabbed the rope with one hand, then the other.

  One step at a time, one disgusting memory at a time, the young Tankar returned to the light to which he belonged. Yet the shit boy born out of that hole was not the same who had fallen in it, and he knew it.

  Bai was forever dead at the bottom of that putrid pit.

  * * * * *

  The next day the caravan of Kahars set out toward the fortress in the dunes, abode of the Last Shaman. The shit boy couldn’t refuse to be part of it. Nehorur would never be separated from his score to settle with the past. He held Bai on a leash on the road leading south from the Hakanui village, through the forest of Gorgor ruins and the deciduous remains of a world where mortals seemed to wander like shadows.

  On all fours, as the rope dug a furrow in the fur of his neck, Bai tried to avoid the gaze of the statues and the titanic faces of the Gorgors. His mind relived the legends about their cruelty, their human sacrifices and tragic end. The colors themselves looked burnt.

  On the second day’s march without a drop of water, he thought he could hear them cry and ask for help. He felt their eyes fixed on him, like those of the Kahar guards who shadowed him, just waiting to see Bai stand up to bring him down with a kick in the back. The gravel and sand incessantly scraped his skin, making him bleed.

  Water. At sunset, even the Gorgor ghosts fell silent because he couldn’t think of anything else—Water. His black lips split. His drool became thick and foamy. Even keeping his eyes open became strenuous. Soon the ruins disappeared to make way for an indefinite ocher mist, where everything was nothing, and nothing was everything.

  Water. He knew he couldn’t speak. He knew they were only waiting to hear him say that single world to mutilate his face again or cut his tongue as they had promised countless times.

  Water. They probably heard that desire in his empty eyes. During a break, under the shade of what remained of a monumental door, Nehorur pulled him by the leash among his people.

  “I think he’s thirsty,” he barked. “What do you say? Do you want to quench his thirst?”

  All his Tankars laughed. The shit boy closed his eyes when the first golden jet hit him, followed by another and yet another. The stench of urine drowned out every other thought.

  He could not. He must not, not surrounded by their laughter. I’m sorry, Dad, he thought as he pulled out his tongue, mortifying himself to survive.

  A scorching day followed, and then a cold, merciless night. Chained outside Nehorur’s tent, Bai couldn’t sleep, he could only look about persecuted by that obsessive thought. Water.

  Water.

  He awoke from a sleep full of nightmares with dunes, sand and mirrors when he heard someone approaching. It was Vektor, alone in the night like him. Vektor was holding a bowl in his hands.

  Bai began to breathe fast, thirsty, watching him come along, but didn’t move. Vektor knelt before him and handed him the bowl. The shit boy challenged the chains to throw himself over it. He expected another humiliation, but what went down his burned throat was real water, and so cold it hurt. He had to spit the third mouthful and begin to drink slowly, deafened by the whispers of the sandstone faces adorning the wretched square where they had camped. Inexpressive and dark, they were angry with him because he was drinking.

  He raised his eyes. Vektor was crying. The son of Nehorur didn’t say anything. He stood up and went away.

  “I forgive you,” the shit boy whispered to the stones. The wind rose, and the stones murmured their agreement. My friend, I forgive you.

  The following day was one endless march under a pitiless sun. Bai was craving for death when, from the dunes from which it took its name, a complex mass of sandstone emerged, sculpted by the wind in the most complex shapes—arches, colonnades, and unlikely faces of mythological creatures fused in the formless stone.

  “The fortress in the dunes,” Nehorur said. “The place where the damned shamans dance with their shadows. Follow me, brothers. The future is at hand.”

  Water, the shit boy thought, and this time it was a mere consideration. A swollen river divided the fortress from the desert, tamed by colossal bridges that were once part of a wider road network, now leading straight into the hungry maw of the ruins. High, fallen towers and wide, broken domes—unlike any he had seen before—rose on the opposite bank. They were all immersed in a pink mist, thanks to those which the shit boy identified as the real wonder of the place: endless trees, everywhere in bloom.

  Bai slowed. Nehorur invited him to stay close with a tug strong enough to reopen the wound on his neck. They crossed t
he only bridge still viable and found themselves in the vast cemetery at the base of the cliff. The graves seemed to fight in the attempt to get close to the fortress, crowding along its slopes. The shit boy could easily understand why. Along the river, the graves stretched as far as the eye could see, before the desert claimed them and delivered them back to nothingness.

  Even in death they are escaping.

  The ocher, wide mass of the fortress in the dunes stood out before him. It was irregularly covered with houses, partly built on it and partly excavated out of it. At its foot, houses in terraces clustered round the mountain side. They all had a myriad of windows lit by oil lamps. Behind each something was happening, a fragment of everyday life that maybe he would never know—children quarreling, lovers moaning, orders to a slave, a lullaby, a mother cooking for her kids, a father patiently being tortured by his daughter. It’s life in the heart of death, he thought. A high tower rose above everything at the center of the complex. Its higher floors penetrated the belly of the sky.

  The fortress was accessed through a steep rise flanked by monumental winged lions made of sandstone. They roared at the top of columns different in shape and material, but not in height.

  The Tankars walked in single line. The Asmeghin led them but the shit boy on his leash was marching before him, and for a moment it looked like Bai was at the head of the clan.

  “What’s that? Is he trying to take your place?” Rogoh asked, laughing so hard his patch moved from his empty orbit, revealing the deep cavity underneath.

  Nehorur didn’t answer and soon nobody was laughing anymore. The shit boy knew he would pay for that.

  At the top of the path rose a giant, inexpressive face, that of a Gorgor as it would have appeared before the Red Dawn—his elegant features, his wide and intense eyes, his dark skin. Soon after, the half-open mouth appeared, on the verge of revealing its secret. The solemn visage occupied the whole facade of the fortress, which didn’t seem to have any defensive purpose. It didn’t keep any richness but the knowledge of the shamans. The prominent chin was the keystone to a narrow, high portal, a split leading into the heart of the structure.

  The other clans had already arrived. In the square before the portal, the Tormentors were already raising the mother tent in a bedlam of voices, shouts and laughter. The Beshavis occupied the ring of buildings surrounding the square, as indicated by their precious, blue fabrics lying in the sun.

  Apart from the shamans and the power they held, the fortress was a coveted resting place in the desert, because of the subterranean river which flowed underneath Adramelech. Here it came to the surface, to disappear underground farther east.

  “Well, look at that. You got yourself a new dog?”

  Bai followed Nehorur’s gaze toward the energumen who had just spoken.

  A colossus of muscles and black hair came forward. The little horns above his ears identified him as a Tormentor. The shit boy recognized him. He’s their Asmeghin, Mutt’s dad. The hilt of two sabers rose above his shoulders, a belt of daggers crossed his chest, and two faithful sickles were at his sides. He wore a skirt made of rust-colored rings, a black leather jacket opened on his belly, and black bracers with copper engravings.

  “I would have expected everything today,” Nehorur said.

  “Really?” The giant stopped before him, arms crossed.

  “Yes. Everything but seeing your stupid shitty face, Karka.”

  Karka stared at him. Then he burst out laughing.

  The two hugged each other.

  “You old fuck, how is it going?”

  “I’ve seen better days,” the Kahar answered.

  “I know what you need to forget all your troubles. We should go hunting for humans one of these days, like the old times.”

  That took away all the joking from Nehorur.

  Soon, the lump of muscle understood his misstep. “Oh, Ktisis. I didn’t mean that.”

  “Don’t worry, my friend. We fought the Guardians tooth and nail. That city of theirs is razed to the ground and I think all their women tasted an obelisk of the desert.”

  Karka strove to laugh at those words.

  Nehorur nodded. “Of course, I would have liked to see that blasted Fortress burning.”

  “We’ll do it sooner or later, you’ll see. We’re going to see the end of the road, the Tankar Dawn which is the dream of all of us. And we’ll get there marching on the holy corpses of our enemies. Don’t think about that, now.”

  “And what should I do now?”

  “Drink!” Karka hammered a hand on his shoulder and dragged him along. “The light at the end of a tunnel is usually that of a tavern.”

  “Vektor.” Nehorur let the leash fall.

  His son grabbed it and kept the pace. “Here, doggy!” Vektor said to please the adults, but the Kahar and Tormentor Asmeghins were already talking to each other.

  The shit boy followed them on all fours.

  Only once did Karka turn his head to watch him, with eyes sharp and dark. He turned back to Nehorur and said, “His father should have never…” Bai couldn’t hear the rest, until the Tormentor Asmeghin said, “Come and see. I led them here to be healed. The shamans are our only hope, but it’s a mess, I tell you. A big mess.”

  Vektor and his dog followed the two Asmeghin to one of the temples surrounding the main square. The marble had been smoothed by the paces of the centuries, its veining exposed like the capillaries on the skin of an old man. The ladders were guarded by Beshavis and Tormentor Tankars, soon joined by the Faithful ones of the Kahar Asmeghin. There was a long and intense exchange of hugs, pats on the back, punches, laughter and poor jokes about each other’s mothers. But behind every smile there was a tear, someone hopelessly dying; a brother, a son.

  When they were inside, the figures lying on the floor slowly emerged from the dull and smoky semidarkness—new ghosts of a world adrift. The shamans were taking care of them beyond tents thin as spiderwebs. Every time a bandage was removed there was a horrid revelation of wounds, ulcers and sores a foot long, of a color that had nothing to do with living matter. Sometimes the white of vertebrae, ribs and skull bones were exposed, besieged by the black of necrosis and the yellow of the slough.

  It’s the curse of Ktisis, Bai thought. They can’t keep on denying it.

  The plaster had crumbled almost everywhere, but some old graffiti still survived in the light of the torches at the far end of the room. They depicted the unknown god Hanoi, the crab to whom Gorgors paid the highest price. The shit boy had seen similar ones only once in his life, but his father had explained in detail what that cult consisted of.

  They passed through several cellars, and rows of small, damp, foul-smelling cells. Karka led his peer to a secondary room, kept under surveillance by his full personal guard. Part of his Tankars were standing around a pallet, blended in with the dust and the debris covering the floor. A little Tankar was lying on it. He hardly breathed, with no more tears for his pain. Every limb of his immature body seemed focused on that fundamental act, but every breath followed the other with such effort that it seemed the last.

  Bai knew him: it was Kimi, Mutt’s little brother, second born of the Tormentor Asmeghin. Kimi had always been a lonely child, and so sensitive that he would divert his path, as he walked, so as not to disturb an ants’ nest. He never offended anyone, he listened more than he spoke, and always divided everything with everyone.

  Even the most fictitious light disappeared from his father’s eyes. The brutal, massive black body of Karka stooped to lay a gentle hand on his son’s head, and kissed him tenderly. Kimi didn’t react beyond putting another breath after the others, maybe a little deeper one.

  The Tormentor stood up and walked on. “Let’s drink, my friend. Or perhaps you know some other way to drown the demons inside?”

  “I could settle for drowning the ones outside, these days.”

  They sat at a white marble table with diagonal grooves intersecting in the middle.

  Neh
orur turned to his son. “Visit the place. Take the dog out for a walk. The adults must talk.”

  Vektor nodded once. “Come, doggy.”

  “Vek.” His father’s firm hand stopped him. “Be careful.” The Asmeghin looked on the verge of adding something, then let his son go.

  The shit boy followed Vektor in silence. They walked across the square crowded by the busy Tankars, keeping away from the portal under the wide Gorgor face. Bai stopped to look at it, then a painful tug forced him to walk on. They climbed down a ladder between two half-collapsed buildings, and then went around an old well filled with rubble—alone, more and more alone in the world of adults.

  Where is he bringing me?

  They came to a barren expanse of sharp stones. There was no one around.

  Vektor rolled the leash around his hand twice. The shit boy felt a last squeeze on his throat and thought he would suffocate. Then the leash let go. He turned around and watched it on the ground, before he raised his eyes to Vektor.

  “Run,” Vektor said. “Run!”

  The shit boy kept still and didn’t dare bat an eyelash.

  “Run! Go, what are you waiting for?” Vektor was shouting now. He picked up a stone and menaced him with a gesture. “Run away!”

  Bai was frozen. He moved only when the stone hit him—two steps backwards, and no more.

  Vektor fell on his knees and took his head in his hands, bursting into tears. “Run away, damn you.”

  The shit boy moved forward. “Vek.”

  “Don’t speak,” Vektor said. “Don’t speak. Don’t speak!” He threw himself on him.

  The two rolled over on the sharp stones, cutting themselves, rolling and rolling until they stopped at the feet of the headless statue of a woman with a child in her arms.

  At the end, they were hugging each other.

  “Forgive me,” Vektor cried. “Forgive me, my friend.”

  Bai hugged his friend. “I…” He looked for something to say, something that wasn’t too absurd for that moment. “I’ll never regret all the time we spent together.”