Dagger - The Light at the End of the World

by Walt Popester

  “Eternity. I thought it inappropriate to bring the boy here, without having previously discussed my reward.”

  The shadows shouted their outrage, deafeningly, as the Divine stood up. He advanced, protected by darkness, and Mawson watched his feet getting nearer and nearer. Until, raising his face, he saw a small yellow light shining at a short distance from his face. It was his eye, cursed by Kam Karkenos.

  “Are you negotiating with us, Mawson? Do you dare to negotiate with us?”

  “No, I’d never dare!” the prefect squeaked, like a mouse trapped under the cat’s paw. “I’m just begging you to reward me as you’ve always promised, at least now that my task is fulfilled. My son. It was them, the inhabitants of that filthy cemetery, to reduce him so. Prostrated at your feet, I beseech you, Eternity! You promised that—”

  The shadows interrupted him, but the Divine yelled. Only one deafening scream, which forced everyone to silence. The armor produced a flash of light that allowed him, for a single moment, to perceive the true appearance of the shadows. They were more than he could ever think and they were observing him. He looked away, refusing to watch. Now that darkness had returned, he just wanted to forget what little he had seen.

  “Your task will be done when the boy is brought to our presence,” the Divine replied. “That will be the end of my torment and the beginning of my kingdom come. Do not fear. I always used to keep my promises when I was alive, when I was the warrior king of the Guardians. Now I will not be outdone. Your son will walk again, I promise. I will give you my armor and it will be as if these long years have never passed. Only think about bringing here the boy marked by the Spiral. Destroy this whole damn city if needed. It does not matter. Your whole world, does not matter. If you fail, this time I won’t punish you anymore. I’ll have your son brought here. And then his feet and hands won’t be the only thing you will regret.”

  The Divine sat back and the shadows subsided. A spark jumped between the armor leggings, clear sign of his anger.

  Son of a bitch! Stupid, rotten son of a bitch!

  “Mawson?”

  “Yes?”

  “Remember that Skyrgal gave me a tremendous power before leaving my body. Make it so, that you can still be useful to this stupid son of a bitch. Even when I was just a human, I was much more powerful than you in this latrine you call a city.”

  As if to underline those words, a shadow came forward. He could see its red eyes in the dark and hear its hungry breathing.

  “Servant of your will, Eternity,” the prefect concluded. He took his leave with a bow and retraced his steps. He had a job to accomplish.

  Damn quickly.

  In the darkness behind, the Divine raised a hand. The two red and shiny eyes came obediently forward.

  “The prey is going to be smoked out,” he said. “Thirteen years have passed since its inception. Now you should be able to perceive his blood. Bring him to me. I won’t contemplate any more failure on your part, Gorgor!”

  The dark shadow bowed, then withdrew. It also had a job to accomplish, damn quickly.

  * * * * *

  4. Redemption

  A wave, higher than the previous ones, crashed against the rocks. The splashing hit him right there, on the bed of loose soil on which he was lying. Dagger awoke in the middle of night. He could not remember where he was, nor how he got there. He only knew he was scared, and cold.

  The wind blew with violence, giving voice to the rocks. Instinctively, he sought the eyes of Seeth lying next to him. When he didn’t found her, it all came back to him with merciless clarity. Seeth was gone. She was sleeping six feet under, now. Mawson had executed her and he had buried her in their favorite place, the Horrido of Ktisis. An expanse of stones eroded by wind in the most twisted ways, overlooking the sea.

  In a world that had never needed him.

  A piercing pain was pulsating in his head to the rhythm of his heartbeats, a painful gift bequeathed by the prefect’s kick. He stood up, clinging to the sharp rocks. The clouds were mustering in the sky, ready to wash away the blood from the world. The storms of Melekesh befell rapidly and with violence, leaving the city to its knees and submerged in water. Apart from the district on the Hill. That was why nobles lived there since always.

  He shrugged his arms, shivering, walking on the escarpment along the coast. He had many scores that needed to be settled with his past, before he could realize what he would do with his future. If there was a future for him, after all. He would gladly throw himself into the cold embrace of the great silence, once he had completed the revenge against Mawson. But first came his easiest target, the old bastard.

  Distracted by his dark thoughts, he hardly noticed he could see his own shadow in a moonless night. He looked up and saw that a huge fire was devouring his miserable world. The ship cemetery was burning.

  As he approached, he saw the city guards entering the district in long, black columns, carrying barrels of pitch and torches. Judging by the deployment of forces, Dagger thought they wanted to raze the entire cemetery to the ground. Probably, it was just what they were doing.

  He disappeared into shadows, moving with discretion, eyes downcast, as if none of that concerned him. When he thought he got far enough, he dipped into water, keeping his head under the surface. He swam through a narrow opening, injuring himself several times against the wood splinters sticking out of the mud. When he emerged, he found himself in a dark peripheral channel, where the neighborhood’s abattoir threw the carcasses of the slaughtered animals. Including those of some men who, indebted to the marrow, were only worth what covered their bones.

  He almost choked because of the bittersweet stench as he swam fast to reach and climb on one of the wrecks’ mast. He looked around, trying to understand what was happening. Soon the situation turned out all too clear: with methodical expertise, the guards had set fire to the cemetery area farthest from the city, so that flames were slowly advancing. They would have left no part of it unscathed. This, of course, gave the guards the necessary time to draw, from their duty, the shameful pleasure of exercising the darkest power, the one to dispose at will someone else’s suffering. Burning in front of his dry and tired eyes, was the final showdown between the city and its nightmares; between the strong and the weak; the rich and the poor; the ones to which life had never denied anything, and the desperate.

  He saw that the smugglers, occult caste of that world, had been awakened in their sleep. Bound to each other with barbed wire in a circle, they were forced to look toward the center, where their families were torn apart. The pile of ears, feet and tongues, suggested that for the cemetery there would be no dawn after that night.

  Why? he wondered, resting his forehead against the rough wood. Smugglers were useful to the whole city. They fed the vices of the guards and of the entire town with magic dust, some kind of mushrooms and all sorts of substance that came from the other side of the sea. Yet that night they were slaughtered too, erased from the face of that dirty world. For a moment, he thought to be the cause of all that. Yet robbing the son of a nobleman was not enough to explain a similar reaction. No, there had to be more.

  He went back down and decided to go all the way, driven by his inextinguishable thirst for truth. Something heavy fell on his shoulder and he instinctively pulled away, afraid of having been discovered. He turned around in time to see the severed head of a woman thrown down into the water, with eyes wide open. Then he heard a shrill scream, the clatter of a blade, and saw another head falling down a little farther on. This one of a child. Dagger retreated against the wall of the old sailing ship that housed the greatest pleasure house in the neighborhood. The guards who once, in plain clothes, had come to give rise to their most vile instincts, now came in uniform to give death. He went under water and felt the mud mixed with blood fill his nose, as if to choke him. When he emerged again, he found himself in a blind alley. He climbed along the hull of a fishing boat and looked around. The Three Galleons were burning. The sun around
which the whole neighborhood used to orbit was burning for the last time. Their absolute leader was gutted like a fish, bound the helm. His five lieutenants dangled from the yardarm, hanged, their half-charred corpses swinging back and forth in the infernal air, heated by the flames of the surrounding barracks. All the other members of the guild were nailed to the ship. Some of them were still alive and screamed with less and less force, less and less, as fire claimed their body. Until there was a last atrocious cry, and silence swallowed their lives.

  Dagger turned to the den of Spiders; that part of the district had not yet been lapped by fire. He jumped down and swam as fast as he could to reach it in time. He climbed the bumpy side of the old wooden vessel and passed through a crack opened by moisture. In the safe and sinister gloom he stood silent. Noises reached him on the sly, now. The screams of pain and the wild cries of the guards; bodies falling into the water; above everything, the voice of the merciless fire. He got deeper into the bowels of the dark, using his hands to orient himself. When he came under the grate opened on the deck, he crouched against the wall, away from the mortals and red rays of light coming from above. In the metal grid, he saw the shadow of two feet. The feet of a man who was silently watching the macabre show around him.

  “He must be escaped. That little son of a bitch must be somewhere out there!” It was Mawson’s voice.

  A guard stepped forward and bent to his knees. “Must we suspend the search?”

  In response, the prefect stuck the sword inside his face. Then he pushed him to the ground with a kick, watching his body shaken by the spasms. Blood flowed beneath the grate, dripping hot and dense on Dagger’s face.

  “No,” Mawson replied. “None of this old game is of any importance, anymore. There are no more rules, no more terms to be respected. Let violence reign supreme on this night. Give free rein to your every meanest instinct, but watch over this place and make sure that flames do not embrace it. Maybe he will come back, if he’s more stupid than I think.”

  Then he left. Dagger listened to the clattering footsteps of the guards placing themselves around. Then there was only the raging of fire, the barking of dogs and the screams of agony. Now he could be certain that they were looking for him. That carnage was all for him. He didn’t wonder about the other Spiders’ fate. He doubted that Mawson had knocked before entering.

  I am more stupid than he thinks. Perfect, prefect!

  He had to get out of there in a hurry, out of that hell, then he would have time to think about what to do next.

  He got back to the crack through which he had entered, but found out that fate had rolled the dices, having fortune take two steps backward, he barely had time to hide, before encountering the watchful eyes of one of the guards. From the deck, they were now watching over the channels between the ships. He felt the instinctive desire to punch the wall and swear Ktisis. However, that would surely not come in handy this time. He walked away from light, being swallowed by darkness. He explored the walls with his hands, for long time, hoping not to run into a hole on the floor that would make him fall hopelessly in the never explored lower decks of the ship. Soon he lost orientation. He was no longer able to understand where he was, nor how to get back. He was on the verge of surrender, and wait for death to come or find him there—to kill him at its will, with fire or hunger.

  Then he found himself walking in a spacious and dimly lit room. The little light came from a bright square on the ceiling, high above him. He walked on until, with his outstretched hands, he met an old wooden ladder. In that moment, he knew exactly where he was. The punishment room, where Mama locked up the Spiders to torment them at the end of the night. That place where he had sent only once, coming just through that bright square. The trap door in the old Mama’s studio.

  He climbed the rungs until his fingers brushed against the ceiling. There he stood for a while, listening, imploring his heart to beat more slowly. Then, with the caution that prudence advised, he opened the trap door to a crack. He saw two boots and immediately closed it.

  Shit!

  He rested his forehead against the top rung. When he heard the sound of an unsheathed blade, that sound which he would be able to distinguish even in the uproar of hell, he hoped his hour had come. He was exhausted. His world existed no longer. He wanted to reach Seeth in Almagard, the large tavern of the afterlife, and get drunk to unconsciousness in the company of the dead. But he realized that the blade had not been unsheathed for him, when he listened to the last lament of the guard who had just been slaughtered. He heard him fall to the ground and die, as blood penetrated through the cracks of the hatch. The murderer landed heavily on the floor, jumping from the ceiling where, probably, he had remained hidden for so long.

  He could not hear his footsteps as quiet as he was, yet he was able to track his way, following the sound of the blade. He imagined it sticking in the flesh of the guards, surprised, their throats cut, one by one. Only when he heard him getting out on the deck, Dagger jumped out of the hatch and rushed through the cabin of Mama. In the gloom, he saw the shadow stick his knife into the neck of the last guard, and then he slammed the door and stepped back.

  Time passed. Nothing happened.

  All of a sudden, the shadow tore down the door with just one kick. Dagger saw his black silhouette against the crimson glare of the flames, advancing through the cabin with fingers clenched on a shining dagger. He observed him getting closer and closer, as he stepped back and back, until he found himself with his back to the wall. He dropped to the ground, resigned, taking shelter behind his arms in a last, desperate gesture of defense.

  The shadow grabbed his tunic and pulled him to his feet, with the same ease with which he would have lifted an injured dog from the ground.

  Then he uncovered his chest. And smiled. “Umh. Look what the cat dragged in.” He examined him from head to foot. “Damn. You’ve grown up since the last time!”

  Dagger wriggled out with a jerk, putting a hand to his knife, but keeping it sheathed. “Who are you?” he asked.

  The shadow stood motionless for a moment, then he pulled down the hood to uncover the face of a man in his fifties, hardened by deep scars. He had blue eyes and gray hair that had once been auburn, like his.

  “I am Marduk,” the man replied. “Delta Dracon of Golconda. Usually, I do not save people’s lives. Usually I kill them.” After that consideration, he slowly looked around, taking his time to examine every dark corner of that place.

  Overwhelmed by his Spider’s instinct, Dagger drew his knife but Marduk threw him to the ground without even looking at him.

  “This place is impregnated with a familiar smell,” he said calmly. “All too familiar. The man to whom this stench belongs must have died a long time ago. I’m confused.”

  The boy was on his feet again, knife clutched in his hand. He gasped, refraining from attacking.

  Marduk lowered his gaze back on him. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he said. “I saved your life. It’s very rude of you to try to kill me. And then, if you really want to do it, try with a decent weapon. Not that… thing!”

  He put a hand to the belt of daggers on his chest. He picked one and handed it to him. “Happy Birthday!” he said. “Some time ago you turned thirteen, you know?”

  “What the Ktisis is a birthday?”

  At that, Marduk laughed. Then he realized that Dagger was serious. “This is a gift,” he continued, handing him the handle. “Do you know at least what a gift is?” The smile on Marduk’s lips turned into a bitter grin when the boy shook his head. “It means you must not be afraid of me,” he added. “I’m here to get you out of this mess. As long as you want it.”

  Dagger examined the knife. He had never seen a blade like that. It was rough and porous, of a greenish color, mottled with yellow as if it had spent a long time on the bottom of the sea. The handle was engraved in a tangle of abstract shapes, reminiscent of thorny brambles and tentacles. It belongs to a museum, he thought. Then he realized that weap
on had killed. There were marks on the blade, one for each life taken from a man. When he took it out of Marduk’s hands, sparks of purple light went through its entire surface, changing it under his eyes. It looked like his fingers brought the dagger back in time, to the day when it was a shining and sharpened blade, ready to kill.

  He looked up in amazement. “What the fuck—?”

  “Aniah was right,” Marduk said. “This is a confirmation that it’s really you.”

  “I never had any doubt of really being me,” Dagger answered.

  The man grinned again. One last time. His face suddenly froze. Pulling back the cloak, he put his hand to a hidden sword that hung by his side and Dagger did not dare to move. He looked at him open-mouthed, dumb.

  Marduk unsheathed his silver blade and stood still. “When I sensed your smell, I didn’t even want to believe,” he said. “You should be dead!”

  Only then, Dagger saw the old Mama come forward at the man’s shoulders, limping. He clutched two knives in his hands and his face was a mask of blood. He didn’t wonder how he managed to make his way through the guards. He must have been more clever than he had ever believed and, judging by the pace, even drunker than he had ever been.