Chapter Eighteen: The Grey Knights
Kannis waited nervously. He felt like he'd been nervous for a long time now, on edge and jittery. Despite previously having been the kind of jackal to take direct action who would have found such feelings an anathema he was getting used to them. He was getting used to the cold sweats, he was getting used to the way his hands shook all the time. He was getting used to jumping with fright every time someone closed a door and he was getting used to the pain of no longer having a tongue with which to speak.
His tail had been taken as well, this he could live with despite the loss of balance causing him to become clumsy and ungainly. But without a voice he was but a dog, which was exactly what his new master wanted from him. When the Ivy House had collapsed in on him Kannis had thought that was the end. The darkness had swamped him and a part of his mind saw it as the conclusion of his efforts, a failure he would not have to confront again. But alas, his swim through the dark waters of death was a brief one.
The light came back, the pain came back and the memories came back. When he'd woken the first time he still had a tongue and a tail. That was when he met Hekyll. Hekyll was not one of the grey knights. He was a nightmare, a true nightmare. Not like the demons which are the dreams of evil men, he was the fear of good men made by their own minds to terrify them, to keep them afraid and to keep them good. For the fears of the just are far more terrifying than the fantasies of the sinner, Kannis could not even begin to imagine the mind that dreamt Hekyll.
His back was hunched and he had several humps, from each which grew a head. These were the small heads, the ones which laughed as he did his work. The main head was bald and round, his features were a blur but every now and then Kannis spotted a serrated smile, a thin nose or eyes like pieces of coal. His legs were short and stumpy and his arms long and thin giving him the look of a primate. His hands were grey fleshy things, indelicate and cruel.
Hekyll did not say whether or not he had been ordered to take Kannis's tongue and tail, for all the jackal knew he'd done it for enjoyment. Indeed, it seemed to have given him great delight for he could have performed the amputations while Kannis was still injured and unconscious from the collapse of the Ivy House. But instead he'd nursed him back to health and waited for him to wake so that he could tell him what he was going to do. He told Kannis that he was going to put him back to sleep and that when he woke he would not longer have a tail.
Hekyll had been true to his word, when Kannis woke up his tail was gone and he writhed in pain, then the torturer told him that he was going back to sleep again and that when he woke he would no longer have a tongue. Hekyll had asked him how that made him feel, all Kannis could do was whimper. Again he was drugged to sleep, again he woke to the pain of a new injury, but now all he could do was gag and gargle unintelligible guttural noises.
Only then had he been taken before his new master, in chains until these were taken off so his master could attached a leash around his neck, a thick leather one with a metal collar. Kannis had been beaten and told never to come before his new master standing on two legs. When he'd dropped to all fours then he'd been beaten again for doing something without permission, without an order.
Day in, day out the beatings and torture had continued. Now Kannis was a broken thing, no longer a jackal but a true dog who scurried about on all fours, doing his master’s bidding. He'd tried to dream weave at the start, back when he had a will of his own, but the gift was denied him now. His new master had cursed him thrice: a tail, a tongue and the power to dream weave, all lost and rotted away.
Only then had he been questioned, only once his mind was broken; his master did not speak to him, he just laid his cold metal hands upon Kannis's skull. He searched within the waking mind of the jackal for answers. Kannis saw what he took but he made no effort to stop him, his new master often made jokes about taking his arms and legs and using him as a footstool. The heads on Hekyll’s back laughed with glee and anticipation, the main head just made licking slurping noises, the sound of anticipation. But the act had not yet come and Kannis did not stand in his master’s way as he fished through his mind for all the secrets with which he'd been gifted.
The master wanted to know about Eredyss and the Lair and he wanted to know who ruled the jackals. Most of all he wanted to know about what the talented jackals had planned on doing with the dreamer; all this he gleaned from his dog.
Knowing what the jackals planned, his master had sent Kannis on a mission. This was when Kannis had met another of his master’s servants who was called Block. Block had two legs and half a body out of which grew the tentacles, how many Kannis could not tell as old ones retracted and new ones grew all the time. There were eyes and mouths along the tentacles every now and then, between the clusters of spikes. He spoke from several mouths at a time, giving the impression that Block was many people.
Block was another nightmare. The new master had a reputation for consorting with nightmares, a reputation well deserved as Kannis found out. Block took Kannis back out into the open air for the first time since his capture. He did not know where they were, the wilderness went on for all the horizons around him. There they met up with grey knights, a thousand or so.
They'd trudged for a goodly while across the land until they reached the Dreamstone Wall. Kannis was a student of history, he knew that his new master had been known for his association with nightmares from the Dream Sea, what he did not know was how his master had managed to bring nightmares across the wall into Avalen. Now he did. When they got to the foot of the wall they found hidden beneath tall thick trees a portal going into the base of the wall.
The portal was tall and wide, oval in shape with a flat bottom, and to look at it was an ever shifting layer of grey, like a small neatly shaped storm cloud which churned in and over and around itself constantly. When Block had pushed Kannis towards the wall he refused to go.
“If you refuse we are to take teeth until you comply”, Block told him, speaking from the many mouths on the many tentacles. As if to add reality to the point he'd reached down into the writhing body from which the tentacles came and pulled out a pair of sharpened pliers. “Hekyll gave me these, he said you would like them”, Block told him. That had got Kannis moving pretty quickly, towards the portal. He'd hesitated again directly before it but a spiky prod in the back send him stumbling through.
Kannis, like every dream in Avalen, had been taught that once a dream had left the Dream Sea there was no going back. To do so would be to relinquish one’s hold on their individuality and personality, to become another flash in the chaos. However, as Kannis soon discovered this was not entirely true. The portal led to a tunnel, the sides of which were made of similar grey matter. However, here and there beyond it the jackal saw glimpses of the Dream Sea, the sea of storms, coursing within lighting and fire. Within it were a thousand images a second, all the dreams of history colliding with one another in this great maelstrom.
The tunnel went on for a long way, it was wide and tall and it felt a lot like they were walking through a tunnel at an aquarium. After a time, Block pulled a device which looked like a compass from his body. It was made of bronze, when he activated it many points of light floated from its sphere and started to rotate around one another like a miniature three-dimensional map of a solar system. Kannis had heard of dream finders before, but he had not the slightest idea of how they worked.
As they walked on more tunnels appeared diverging off from their main branch in many directions. Block followed the route the compass told him to. For many leagues they walked beneath the Dream Sea until he stopped at one point when the globes of multi-coloured light had begun to spin incredibly fast before coalescing into one bright ball in the centre of the compass.
Block nodded and several of the grey knights who'd escorted them grabbed Kannis and attached a harness to him, from which extended a very long chain.
“You will find the first one through there”, said Block pointing to the wall of t
he tunnel. Kannis had not budged until the wicked-looking pliers were brandished again. Even then several of the grey knights had to physically push him into the tunnel wall.
It felt like he was being pulled in a thousand different directions, like he was spinning so quickly that movement no longer had any meaning. He was falling and rising at the same time, every ounce of his being moved in a different direction, far and away but at the same time colliding with one another. Then he was through and he collapsed upon the grass.
It was a small field and the grass was short, neat and mottled here and there with patches of daisies and dandelions. The colours and lights were thick and blurry, lacking in definition not unlike a dream. The harness was still attached, the long thick chain clinking as he stood. The field was only a hundred yards or so in any direction, beyond the Dream Sea still raged. Kannis did not know where the light was coming from, it was just there, emitted from the grass, permeating the small sky above. Busy bees buzzed here and there, but the main feature of the field was the child's swing in the middle of it.
The swing squeaked as it went back and forth, the child on it laughing gleefully. He continued laughing and swinging until he saw the jackal approaching. The blonde haired boy had stopped and looked solemnly at Kannis.
“Hello”, he'd said. But Kannis could not speak, he just stared and with staring he'd inspired fear. The boy did not run, he curled up into a ball and sobbed. He covered his eyes for in his mind if he did not see the jackal then there was not a jackal. But he'd felt Kannis's long clawed fingers curl round him just as Kannis felt the force of the chain pulling him back through the air and the wall of the Dream Sea. He collapsed back into the tunnel with the boy in his arms; the boy wailed and hid his eyes, but the nightmares would not go away.
The boy was bundled into a thick sack and thrown over the shoulder of one of the grey knights. They moved on. The next child was a girl. She played on a castle made of fabric filled with air. Kannis's claws had burst the castle as he'd climbed upon it, the hissing of the air rushing from it masking her screams. The brown-haired brown-eyed child had been taken like her brother and she ended up in a sack just like his over the shoulder of another grey knight. She kicked and moved for a way before staying still and quiet but for the occasional lost and sorry sob.
The third child was riding a horse through the surf of a long beach on which the sun was forever setting. He was older than the previous two, being about ten years old. This was the hardest to catch so far. His horse was many hands high, young, powerful and fast. Had the jackal taken the time to speak to the lad he would have found that the horse’s name was Bucephalus, named for the horse ridden by one Alexander the Great, of whose exploits the boy was fond.
But Kannis was not there to talk, he was there to do his master’s bidding. In the end he was forced to slash the horse’s throat as it made to run past him. The creature tumbled with a scream, the boy too. Kannis gathered him up and the chain was pulled, bringing them both back through the side of the tunnel. Despite being older this one cried the longest, probably for the horse. Kannis had never been one for stealing dreams but each one got easier, his hesitation lessened. He was his master’s dog, he would do as he was told.
The fourth child played with his blocks as the jackal snuck up behind him and took him from his game. The fifth, another girl, sat at a table with a mirror and comb and pretended that she was a princess. She saw the jackal in her mirror just before he took her, she had time to scream but little else, and soon she was in a sack being bumped along against the hard armour of a silent knight in grey.
The final girl was older, a little more so than the boy on the horse. She sat in the carriage of a train which went round and around in circles. She listened to music as she travelled, staring solemnly out of the window. She had soft brown eyes, much like those of her father. It took Kannis quite a while to get on board the train. He was worried that the chain which held him would not be long enough and that he would be pulled away.
But he managed to reach a surprised girl. After the surprise, however, came defiance, not fear. She kicked and punched at the jackal but to no avail, he dragged her from the carriage and then they were both pulled through the tunnel wall. This one shouted and screamed all sorts of profanity at the grey knights as they put her in the sack. Several hard blows from a steel gauntlet silenced her shouts, soon she just cried quietly like the rest of them.
With all of the children gathered they'd walked back through the tunnels. It took hours which turned to days, so far had they wandered from the portal in the Dreamstone Wall. The old Kannis would have been fascinated with the things which he glimpsed through the swirling grey walls which led to the Dream Sea, but the new Kannis had had his mind dulled along with his will and the strength of his body. Every so often he glanced at the wall to see a reflection of himself in it, the matted fur which had gone white from pain and fear did not suit him, nor did the look of a dead thing which inhabited his eyes.
They'd emerged from the portal back into Avalen and walked the long walk back to the hole in the ground which led to his new master’s fortress. Block led the way down the slope into the underground. Light came from the small fires which burned without fuel along every tunnel they walked through. Eventually they'd reached the outside of a large set of doors and here they'd waited.
Kannis was anxious, he did not want to see his master for he knew that Hekyll would be there with his laughing heads and his lip-smacking slurps at thoughts of torture. Through the doors Kannis could hear the sounds of metal striking metal, a hammer beating something into shape. Block stood with him as did six of the silent knights, each carrying a sack over his shoulder.
Eventually the doors opened. At Block’s prompt Kannis walked through remembering to get down on all fours as he did so, his master did not want to see him on two legs. It was a sign of equality with the rest of them that he did not deserve, the master told him. Kannis prowled through keeping his eyes to the floor. The chamber they entered was large containing thousands of tables, long thin metal tables bearing a resemblance to operating tables.
They were all occupied by what Kannis assumed would be grey knights when they were finished. Some lacked arms, some were missing legs, some tables contained only a torso or a head. At one nearby his master stood. In his hand was a huge hammer and with it he beat into shape a piece of metal which was starting to resemble the torso of a grey knight. The master looked similar to them, bar the antlers, but Kannis knew that he was living metal formed into shape by his own will, not that of a forger as he was to the grey knights.
As they approached he stopped his work and turned to them. His silver eyes burned like molten metal. “All of them?” he said to Block.
“Every one, My King”, responded the many-tentacled minion. Hekyll was nowhere to be seen. “How did my dog do?” asked the master.
“He did well, I think he started to enjoy himself”, laughed Block.
“Good, good”, said the master slowly. “Open them”, he said to the grey knights, his voice rumbling like a volcano. The grey knights opened their sacks and dumped the children at his feet. They were dazed and confused, their eyes were red from crying and each one looked pale and sick. But still they paled further as they looked up through their tears at he who was known as Arma Geddon.