Read Dagger - The Light at the End of the World Online
Authors: Walt Popester
Tags: #horror, #fantasy, #heavy metal, #dagger, #walt popester
Dagger - The Light at the End of the World (11 page)
“
Yes,
they
were
.”
“
And you? What will it be of
you?”
“
Me? I don’t know. After
what I did, I’m no longer welcome to the Fortress. They already
tried to…” She paused.
“
They tried to punish you
for what you created, isn’t it?” She did not answer and Sannah knew
he had the right of it, as always. “With a little luck, I may even
guess who the mandator is. A bald and robust man, who thinks he’s
the savior of the world, locked in his cursed tower. He’s got the
look of someone who would rape a woman to punish her.”
“
Your intuition. It’s always
been your best quality, perhaps the only one.”
“
I had many,
once.”
placed under your protection,” she replied after a while. “How many
inhabitants has this city?”
“
No one has ever understood.
In Melekesh you fuck more than you kill, and you kill too much. The
regular population must be around a million, then there are the
passing-by ones, the illegal ones, the wanted ones, in addition to
those who reside here at the cemetery, which no one ever really
counted as human beings. All the towns perched along the coast and
those scattered in the archipelago gravitate around this city. They
won’t ever find him if they don’t know where to look, if that’s
what you’re thinking about.”
said. “You owe me.”
Sannah nodded slowly. “I’m
afraid so. The
Overgods
won’t be merciful with me. My soul is chained at
the bottom of the murky sea of an atrocious existence, far from the
clear surface. Only in this hell, I could find a refuge, stifled by
the fear of dying without having served a single one of my faults.
Maybe this boy will be my Redemption”
“
Very touching. Really.
However, if your only task is to try to be a better father than you
were for me it won’t be that difficult.”
“
I was the Delta Dracon, I
can protect him, but how long? The mark on his chest is clear. He
will live forever and we have to keep him hidden forever, or die
trying.”
“
For the moment he just has
to be invisible,” she said. “Exploit him as the lost souls that
live, or are dying, in this place. No one is more invisible than
who is under the eyes of everyone and doesn’t get
noticed.”
She said no more. Sannah
watched her crawl to the door, exhausted. When she opened it, the
kids who were leaning on it, eavesdropping, fell inside and looked
fearfully at her, retreating. She turned not to look, not wanting
to see what her son would become for her faults. Dirty, hungry, and
at the same time powerful as the
forces
that ruled the flowing of the
great All. Only then, that situation appeared to her in its bare
squalor.
“
You still didn’t say what
name I should give him.”
“
Any one,” she replied, and
stopped at the door. “The first one that comes to your mind. But
remember, when you give a name to something you become responsible
of it.”
“
This is why you didn’t give
him a name, right?” Sannah guessed, approaching. “You didn’t want
to be responsible for him. Ktisis. You’re still his
mother!”
“
You do not become a legend
by chance,” she said. “You’re right, Dad. Perhaps you’ve always
been right. That’s why I hate you.”
“
Try to take care of
yourself. You may embrace him again someday. Time will fix
everything, and he has in abundance.”
“
I’ll try.” She raised her
eyes, red with tears. “But tell me one thing before I go, why did
you get only me to know it?”
“
What in bloody Almagard are
you talking about?”
“
Why haven’t you let
everybody else know you’re still alive, not even to Marduk? Why
only me?”
supposed to see, when I left Candehel-mas and the stupid never
ending fight of the Guardians, there was only one person I wanted
to meet one last time before I die.”
Aniah looked at him in
silence, then she nodded. “Now you’ve seen me,” she said. Her lips
trembled in the attempt to control her emotions. “But you don’t
have my forgiveness. The moment you’ll die, you’ll remember this, I
have not forgiven you. I hope you burn in hell, as you’re already
doing. I was just a kid and you had to protect me. Forgiving you
may be a sufficient Redemption to convince the
Overgods
to let me in Almagard. But I
won’t. I prefer to stand outside, as always. After all, I haven’t
done anything else for all my life because of you. I…”
forced herself to silence.
Nothing has changed in you,
sweet child o’ mine
, Sannah thought. Still
that day no one had to know her pain. Not her masters, nor her
brother Marduk. No one.
You can go through
the gates of hell and back, but some things never change for those
who are used to struggling.
old Dracon blood told him that was the last time he would see her.
And that parting, like all the partings that had characterized his
life, had sucked.
“
What name do you give to
the son of a god?” he wondered as he got back into the room. Just
then he saw that the child had crawled on his desk, to fall asleep
next to his dagger.
blade.
* * * * *
4. Never say goodbye
“
Dagger!”
“
Seeth! Where are you,
little sis?”
“
No redemption! NO FUTURE
FOR YOU!”
“
Where are you?”
“
Under the trap
door…”
“…
beyond the light at the
end of the world!”
the white shroud of night. He saw it infiltrate the guild as a
malignant and treacherous presence. He stood up, walking among the
Spiders lying on the ground, all dead, all dead, and looked out on
the deck. The rickety sign of the gypsy rocked back and forth in
the rain, laughing at him with its ugly and toothless face.
His client laughed, with his throat cut.
“We will die all, because of you!” He was holding the handkerchief
he had torn from his face.
“
Give it back to
me!”
“
Under the trap door! Under
the trap door!”
“
You’re dead!” the client
said. “You’re dead because there’s no Redemption in this
world!”
lights of the neighborhood, on the edge of the cliff, next to the
tavern, next to the Spiders, all dead.
All dead.
The wind blew stronger, loaded with
sand.
“
Seeth!” he called to her,
but she did not turn around. Dagger did not want to get close, sure
that she would vanish under the touch of his bloodied hand. Only
the dead were smiling. He rested his shoulder against the doorjamb
and waited.
Everybody laughed.
“
It’s my fault,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Seeth.”
her hair, stained with blood. The sign rocked back and forth. The
wind took her sobs to him. He tried to get closer, slowly, fearing
she would move that last step toward the great beyond, and
disappear forever.
“
Don’t do stupid things.
Don’t you ever leave me alone, Seeth!”
“
You left me
all dead.”
The client crooned, sad as death,“I’ve
see-en yoo-ur faa-ce! I’ve see-en yoo-ur faa-ce!”
“
Rule number one! Who sees
your face, dies!” Mom yelled behind him, somewhere, beyond the
dead.
“
Sister…”
with me, sail away sweet sister…
…
in the lap of the
gods.
shoulder, Seeth did not disappear.
The rickety sign laughed at him. Only the
dead were smiling.
He turned her and saw what was left of her
face.
“
Don’t look at me like
that,” Seeth cried. “Please Dag. Don’t turn away from
me!”
legs.
“
NO REDEMPTION!”
“
What did he do to you?” he
said. “What did he do?”
hair the color of sand.
“As he cut me, he said he was doing it for your own good,” she
said. “Why? Why for your good, Dag?”
“
I’ve worked her good, you
see?”
turn, again and again, never stopping
in the rain
laughing at him.
Dagger shook his head, his face contorted
in silent spasms of weeping. He said nothing, thought nothing. Pain
became a deep, huge emptiness that filled his whole mind, absorbing
every feeling.
“
No redemption! No future
for you!” a voice behind him cried.
door in the dark. It beat like a heart, repeating those horrible
words at each beat, no redemption. No redemption! NO
REDEMPTION!
Soon he realized he was embracing
nothing.
“
Seeth?”
“
He’s coming.”
“
Who?”
“
Run away. He’s coming!
They brought him to life, with the words
where the father of the gods
the father of the gods laughed!”
From under the door came a trickle of
blood, black as night, which slid slowly to his feet.
“
Who?”
‘
The light at the end of
the world!’
“
Get up!”
“
NO FUTURE!”
“
Seeth?”
“
No REDEMPTION!”
back to the world of the living, and Dagger understood that only
for the dead it was really over.
“
Get up!”
his tunic. It was Mama; the old man looked at him with bloodshot
eyes, more pissed off than when Dagger’s actions forced
confrontation the Three Galleons.
“
You and your bloody red
eyes!” he barked. “You got seen in your face and you don’t tell me
anything!”
the eye, to let him know he was no longer afraid of him. Not now
that he had taken away everything he could take from him. Not now
that there was no future for him. It was over, all over. The
struggle for survival, the struggle against that damn city, against
the guards, the hunger and the disease. Against everything. He was
dead and he was beginning to like the idea.
“
Redemption!” yelled in his
face, grinning.
“
Redemption? Yes, I’ll give
you redemption!”
under the gaze of the other Spiders, now amused, now terrified. He
slammed him outside on the deck, to the red light of dawn slowly
undressing itself of the fog.
It was a wonderful day to die.
He looked up and saw, all
around him, twelve city guards armed to the teeth. He didn’t wonder
what they were doing there. The guards pushed into the district
only in
exceptional
cases
. Most of the times, to claim
someone’s eyes to show those who had paid more than the usual to
get a quick and effective justice. He deserved to be an exceptional
case. If he really had to part with that world, he wanted to do it
in style. He brought a hand to his knife, when he noticed that, in
addition to the guards, there was also a tall, broad-shouldered
man, dressed in a long black cloak, black coat, black pants and
black boots, each bearing the silver symbol of the city Watch: the
amputated hand above the log. The man was staring at the horizon
without paying any attention to what was going on behind his back.
He was whistling a happy tune as if he was, or wanted to be, far
from there. When he found himself surrounded by silence, he
realized everyone was waiting for his word. The tune came on minor,
dark, grave keys. Until he snorted, cursing softly,
“Ktisisdamn!”
terror. The man understood it and smiled. He advanced slowly and
looked down in him with his black and cruel eyes, framed by a
square face and prominent cheekbones, and thin lips split by a
hideous scar.
“
Yes,” Prefect Mawson said.
“This boy has the red eyes I’m looking for. And he stinks, like
this whole damn sewer.”
He took a few steps around
him, like a vulture in the sky carefully watching over the agony of
his next meal. “Son,” he said in a fatherly voice. “There is a code
of conduct for everyone in this city, even for you and for me.
Yours, requires you be careful about what happens around you in
every single moment, even when you sleep. Mine,
especially
when I sleep. Yours,
requires to stay away from the big fishes, mine from the little
ones. But when someone sees my face while I’m on duty, my code of
conduct requires that this person feel fear. Yours, requires that
he die.” He stopped again in front of him and dug inside his eyes.
“Because a dead man tells no lies,” he resumed. “And you should
know it, considered the place where you’ve grown up. Yet you made
that mistake, typical of some of you, usually the last one that you
can commit in your lowly existence. You felt pity for someone
you
had
to kill.
Pity for someone who did not hesitate a moment to denounce you.
Sure it did not help—the color of your eyes, my men had just to ask
a few questions to figure out where you were. If you had killed
your
client
, now
we would both have a problem less and return to our usual
occupations. But now you have become my problem. And my problems
have a very short life, I’m afraid.”