Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) (23 page)

“The Namtarii?” Tony yelled, pointing his sword at the Dealmaker. “You think we are that stupid?”

“They will help you,” the Dealmaker said, taking a step back from Tony's blade. “They do need to get in the Guardians' good graces.”

“Who else can help us?” Elise asked.

The Dealmaker placed a hand on his chin. “No one else can,” he said, smiling crookedly. “Only them.”

Tony stepped toward the Dealmaker, sword at the ready. The Dealmaker flinched.

“Stop,” Mrs. Pianova said. “Why do you think they can help us?” she asked.

The Dealmaker locked his eyes with Tony after running his gaze through the blade of the sword. “Your problem is because of the blood-bond between your Cyphers. The Namtarii know the strength of blood-bonds, and they know how to break them.”

“He's lying.” Tony threatened the Dealmaker with his sword.

“He can't lie,” Mrs. Pianova said. “Not while conducting a business. If he could, he would be a really dangerous creature instead of the annoyance that he is.” The Dealmaker sneered at Mrs. Pianova. “Get out,” she said. “Go tell the Doctor.”

“But Mrs. Pianova…” Tony said, releasing him.

“Don't worry, Mr. Della Francesca,” she said. “I'll be quite safe, and I don't want any of you watching this book by accident.”

As they walked away, Thomas saw the Dealmaker approach the box. “You know a lot about me,” he told her, “but I don’t know anything about you.”

“Yes, you do,” Mrs. Pianova said. “You know who I am.”

The Dealmaker seemed confused, and then his face turned to a fearful sneer as he nodded.

“Begin to read,” she said, lifting up the crystal box, and then Thomas couldn't see anything more as a bookcase covered his view. Thomas realized that there was more to Mrs. Pianova than what he already knew about her or the Dealmaker wouldn’t have had that reaction towards her.

They walked up the stairs and into the streets of Pripyat, a full contingent of guards and armored vehicles were parked around the entrance to the Dealmaker's lair.

“Take the vehicle, sir.” A guard threw Bolswaithe the keys to an ATV.

“Are you all right?” Elise asked Thomas, grabbing his hand. His hand was back to normal, the black botch already gone.

“Yeah. It's gone now,” he said, flexing his hand as he entered the vehicle. “So who are the Namtarii?” he asked Bolswaithe, who was sitting on the driver’s seat.

Bolswaithe didn't answer; he just gave him a worried look.

Thomas leaned his head against the seat. His skin felt dirty, and he wanted to take a shower. He couldn’t get the Dealmaker out of his mind—his dirty hand, his long fingernails, his crooked, yellow smile. And now he had to visit the Namtarii, whoever or whatever they were. A feeling a dread sat in his stomach as they made their way back to the Mansion.

He looked out the window, hoping that this was the last time he would see anything like Pripyat ever again. The city was ominous, its character oppressive, and no place should ever suffer a fate like this again.

Then a stray through crossed his mind.

The Dealmaker had told him that he could help him with other problems.

Maybe even help him find his parents.

Thomas looked at his hand again, reliving the pain from the black spot caused by his deal and deciding that, should anything else fail, it was a pain he would endure to find them.

The Namtarii

“So this is the last resort,” Doctor Franco said as they entered his office. “The Namtarii.”

“That's what he said,” Bolswaithe said. “He told us they would help because they needed to be in our good graces.”

The Doctor rubbed his chin. “That part is true.”

“They are a mistake, if you ask me,” Tony said. “Like the smallpox virus sample they keep in Russia and the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. They should have been eradicated long ago.”

“They surrendered to us,” Bolswaithe said. “We can’t just kill them.”

“I could,” Tony said. “One by one.”

“I would help you,” Henri chimed in.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. He surely read in their minds that they would kill them all if given the chance.

“You are not thinking about asking them for help, are you Doctor?” Elise said.

“I’m thinking that it's a decision I can't make without the approval of the Council of Twilight,” the Doctor said. “Set up an emergency meeting, Bolswaithe . . . immediately.”

Thomas had remained silent. He had read a story about the Namtarii in the
Book of Beasts
, but it was only a small passage, and no one had told them who they were.

“What do you think, Thomas?” Tony asked.

“I think...” Thomas said, “That I don't know enough about them to decide.”

Elise sighed. “You know…it’s getting old that I have to tell you things five minutes before we have to do them. Don't you study in your free time?”

Thomas hunched his shoulders. “How am I supposed to know what to study?”

“Study everything,” Elise said, tightening her lips.

“The meeting is ready, Doctor,” Bolswaithe announced. “In five minutes.”

The Doctor picked up his cane. “Let's go, Bolswaithe.” He turned to Elise. “Bring Thomas up to speed...again,” he said before leaving his office.

Elise walked toward the Doctor's desk and the wall of monitors lit up. “Namtar,” she said, bringing up an image of a Hindu demon, “was considered a God of Pestilence and Death in Mesopotamia. In reality, he was a powerful Wraith, one of the ones we call
'The Elders,'
and his domain was indeed pestilence and sickness.”

She pulled up ancient texts in Sumerian that appeared in English for Thomas thanks to his Cypher abilities. “The Namtarii were humans once,” she continued. “Sixty powerful mages and witches, and they had sworn to destroy Namtar by whatever means necessary to stop his reign of disease.” Thomas saw old stone carvings of the mages waging war against the demon. “Around 3123 BC they succeeded, but at a terrible cost,” Elise said.

Thomas read in the stone how the mages had to divide the power of Namtar and absorb it in their bodies in order to eliminate the demon. “So far they don't seem evil,” he said.

“They weren't, at first,” Elise continued. “Namtar's power gave them immortality, but it took away most of their Magical powers, which came from Life's Magic and filled them with the power of Chaos Magic that the Wraith control. They went on a self-imposed exile on the island we call now Dzaoudzi, between Mozambique and Madagascar. Many of them had been Guardians of renown, so we left them alone. That was the first mistake.”

The Guardians records that came next on the monitors told about the community the Mages had formed on the island. They had become something like monks, and they worked the land, studied philosophy, and the arts. Every ten years the Guardians would send a group to see how they were doing. They came back with works of art and designs of machines and treaties about the stars and how to make the most of crops. Then the world moved on, and the trips of enlightenment became more infrequent—twenty years, thirty-five, and fifty, until around 1500 BC they stopped completely.

“We left them alone,” Thomas said. “We abandoned them.”

“They wanted it that way, Thomas,” Elise said. “They were already more than human, and they changed. They began to see themselves separate from humanity. As Namtar’s power grew within them, the Wraith influence grew too, festering and corrupting them. Humans couldn’t stay with them for long; their mere presence would make the explorers mad in the long run. So yes, we left them alone. And then, after we had forgotten them and while we were thinking of ways to advance the world, they came back.”

“And this time,” Tony said, “they weren’t just monks or wizards. They came out for blood.”

“One of the Namtarii, Pandora, left her island recluse and visited her ancient homeland in Greece in 648 BC. She was a poet and philosopher, so the Athenians were happy to have her and the Guardians protected her. She was content for a while, but then in 433 BC she changed. She became erratic and ultimately created a pandemic that killed a quarter of the population in less than three years. The Guardians tracked her down and ultimately killed her. But the box, so to speak, was already open. From that incident is where we get the myth, Thomas. The Guardians sent a group to Dzaoudzi, but the Namtarii were already gone. They had left only this stone.” An image appeared onscreen.

“Too long have we waited,”
Thomas read the inscription on the stonehead the Guardians had recovered from Dzaoudzi.

“We think they traveled the world, and maybe they wanted to reconnect with humanity, but it always ended badly. In 165 two of them traveled through Rome. A quarter of the population died. In 541 they visited Constantinople where the Guardians had settled and caused another plague. By then the Guardians had begun to hunt them down and kill them if they didn’t submit into Guardian supervision. We held twenty-two of them in a monastery deep in Mongolia’s Altai Mountains.”

The screens showed various illustrations and paintings of the captive Namtarii on an isolated mountain stronghold protected by Fauns and humans. It depicted them as emaciated humans, covered in rags and treated as prisoners.

“And then there was war,” Elise said. “Their leader, Isaurus, led the remaining free Namtarii and broke out the captives in the early 14
^th
century. With their full powers restored, they waged war on humanity on an unimaginable scale.”

The monitors showed medieval paintings of people dying on the streets, their bodies covered with scabs and pustules, priests praying to God, carts of the dead followed by men wearing masks in the form of a raven’s beak.

“We called it the Black Plague,” Elise continued. “Millions of people died.”

“You shouldn’t say millions of people died,” Tony said. “Millions of people die every year, and millions died during World War II. The Namtarii didn't kill millions of people: they wiped out almost fifty percent of the world’s population. The Namtarii don’t kill millions, they kill percentages….  Half of the Fauns and humans died because of them, Thomas. Half, and they died horrible deaths. So horrible that every human and faun recognizes and fears the image of the Namtarii.”

“I don't know what they look like,” Thomas said. He had never seen one.

“Yes, you do.” Elise pressed a button. “Medieval stories told of creatures clad in long robes and carrying a scythe arriving at cities and towns before the plague. Death followed them wherever they went.”

The screens on the wall showed hundreds of images that Thomas recognized immediately. From old Albrecht Durer’s woodcarvings, to tapestries and oil paintings, to modern music albums and drawings. The dark figure with the eternal smile glared at Thomas. It was unmistakable, universally recognizable. Everyone in the world knew who the Namtarii represented.

“They are the origin of the Grim Reaper,” Elise said. “The Namtarii have become the symbol of Death.”

Thomas gulped. It was one thing to have seen the Grim Reaper in paintings and movies, but to know that he or she or whatever it was really existed? “And we are going to ask for their help?” he asked.

“We will see,” Bolswaithe said from the door. “Thomas, the Doctor needs you in the meeting. Immediately.”

“Let's go.” Tony stood up from the couch, but Bolswaithe stopped him.

“Just Thomas,” he said. “For now.”

The Council of Twilight

“They just want to meet you,” Bolswaithe told Thomas as they entered Doctor Franco’s office. “I, for one, think that you should’ve done this long ago. Have you read about the Council?”

“Up to red tag clearance.” This was at least one of the subjects Thomas had caught up in his studies, because the Doctor had told him that sooner or later he would have to be introduced to the Council.

Sooner seemed to be correct.

The Council of Twilight was the original group created by the first Cypher almost seven thousand years ago. It was an evolving organization changing with the needs and times. The Council had grown as much as technology and it had divided and specialized in order to influence all areas of human endeavor. At some point it had included almost three hundred people, a mini senate of human affairs, with all the problems and divisions a senate carried. All that had changed in the year 301 BC when the Chairman of the Council, Emperor Chandragupta Maurya, decided that in order to eliminate the divisions that were already arising in the organization they needed to restructure it, taking into consideration the crafts the members performed for the Council instead of geographical location, race, or the empires they served.

Organizational guilds were formed—potters and metalworkers, farmers and astrologers banded together across the known world, and as they began to exchange information, the organization became stronger, simpler to manage and more unified, and it also began to be more advanced than the rest of the world. 

In an effort to give it the sense of purpose the original Cypher had created it for. Emperor Chandragupta decided to change its name from the Council of Twilight to the simple moniker of Guardians. Each and every one of them was a Guardian of Humanity, and together they worked to improve technology and advance civilization.

When Bindusara, son of Emperor Chandragupta, became Emperor, he paved the legal way to create an actual unity of people with a set of rules, and after adopting the word “Corpus” from Latin, he established the Guardians as a Corporation. A separate entity from any government or allegiance to any ruler or empire, their loyalty reserved for Guardians Inc. their duty to humanity.

Through the years, as lines of communication within the Guardians strengthened and technology became widespread, The Council continued to shrink until in the year 1580 on the Netherlands a new structure was accepted and Guardians Inc. went from three hundred Senators to just over thirty CEOs, as smaller divisions were absorbed into larger ones and a proper corporate structure was adopted.

The guilds united and became companies, but retained their ties, names, and ancient symbols used by their founders. And so the Farmers Guild became Gefjun Conservation, the Builders Guild became Xamanek Engineering, and so on. The Asclepian order and its universities became the most prominent among them as healers, philosophers, and teachers remained the guiding hand of Guardians Inc.