Dagger - The Light at the End of the World

by Walt Popester

  Sannah looked down. “It must have been a miserable time for you.”

  “Oh. You have no idea.”

  “I don’t know why it happened. It was the typical lightning process that’s become so popular around here. Guards barged in his house with an accusation of betrayal and the sentence was carried out immediately, by the prefect Mawson in person. Judging from my Spiders’ resume he did horrible things, Aniah.” He bowed his head, rubbing his temples. “Horrible even for this world. Women and children first, under his eyes. Him at last. Arleb was on the list and when your name is written there for you, it’s already over. Every week the guards expose it in the square of Infamity and people come, a little scared, a little curious, to see who got at the top. Often, just reading there, people find their own name. Some commit suicide there on the spot, preferring a quick and painless death rather than be tortured in a cold and cramped cell by the prefect’s guards. Others are grabbed and torn to pieces by those who since the day before they called intimate friends, even before they have a chance to make their way through the crowd and read their name on the list. In any case, the looting soon begins on their bodies and lives. Everyone can take everything, money, property, even his wives and children. Tsk. Many people end up on that list only because of their wealth. Many people have been killed by their beautiful house in the city center, by some piece of jewelry, or by the most beautiful daughters on which someone wanted to put their hands. However, that leads to a coarse regulation of the entire process. Who’s got the sharpest knife cuts the biggest slice, but it’s always better not to overdo, or at least not to get noticed, if you do not want to end up on the next list and follow the dead in their endless march.”

  When he stopped talking he looked at his daughter, but Aniah had eyes only for the child. “What do you think to do, now?”

  “Why, do you think I came here just to have a chat with my beloved father? Now that Arleb is dead, you are the only Guardian on the world Beyond. There’s no alternative.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “My son must disappear. If you don’t want to do it for me, do it because Marduk ordered it. He must become invisible, one of those about whom the world does not care.”

  Sannah grinned. “And you thought of me? Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome!”

  “Marduk is just a son of a bitch if he compels you to make a choice like that!” Sannah broke out. “You must have the right to bring him up. How can you leave him here?”

  “I’m following my orders, as a Guardian should always—!”

  “Oh, the hell with this CRAP!” the old man boomed. “All your Ktisisdamn commandments! Spare me the perfect recital of the Guardian. So obedient and blind as not to see that his world is going to pieces! You were always a fool, a puppet in the hands of others. First in mine, then your husband’s. Now of Marduk’s!”

  Aniah looked down under the strict father’s eyes, biting her lower lip.

  As when she was a child, he thought.

  “You’re probably right,” she said. “But I don’t care about it anymore. I’m just a ghost, the pieces of the woman I used to be, at least since the last illusion has shattered in my hands like a layer of dry sand. I’m not here to discuss it. You will bring up my son, and hide him. When there’s no alternative, making the right choice is far too easy, right?”

  “Those were my words.”

  “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.”

  Aniah kept silent. “The son of Skyrgal is 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.”

  She nodded. “You can’t deny it to me,” she 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!”

  Aniah grinned bitterly.

  “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?”

  He grinned. “When I saw what I was not 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…”

  She relaxed the fist in her right hand, and 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.

  When Sannah watched his daughter go, his 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.

  With his little pink hand around the blade.

  * * * * *

  Thirteen years later

  4. Never say goodbye

  “Dagger!”

  “Seeth! Where are you, little sis?”

  A cruel laughter arose all around.

  “No redemption! NO FUTURE FOR YOU!”

  “Where are you?”

  “Under the trap door…”

  “… beyond the light at the end of the world!”

  The fog had descended upon the world like 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!”

  He saw a white silhouette against the dim 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.

  The gypsy laughed.

  Everybody laughed.

  “It’s my fault,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Seeth.”

  She bowed her head and a gust of wind shook 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

  under the trap door

  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.

  Seeth, on the brink of the precipice.

  “Sister…”

  Sister don’t you leave me alone. Sail away with me, sail away sweet sister…

  … in the lap of the gods.

  When he managed to lay a hand on her 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!”

  He fell to his knees and hugged her legs.

  “NO REDEMPTION!”

  “What did he do to you?” he said. “What did he do?”

  Seeth put a hand on his head, stroking his 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?”

  The sign stopped swinging. It made a full 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.

  He could only see the lit outline of the 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?”

  Laughing.

  “He’s coming.”

  “Who?”

  “Run away. He’s coming! They brought him to life, with the words

  in the temple

  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!”

  a kick

  “NO FUTURE!”

  “Seeth?”

  “No REDEMPTION!”

  A powerful kick on his side welcomed him back to the world of the living, and Dagger understood that only for the dead it was really over.

  “Get up!”

  He found himself pulled up by the collar of 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!”

  Dagger grinned and looked him straight in 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!”

  The old man shuffled him along the guild 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!”

  He turned and Dagger dropped the knife from 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, ev
en 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.”