God of Emptiness

by Walt Popester

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “You’ll come with me, tonight, because there’s only one path we can walk and it leads to home. It leads to Asa Bay.” He approached the Hammer of Skyrgal, without touching it. “What a wonderful structure. To think that it all started from here…”

  “What place is Asa?”

  “Oh, you’ll like it. It’s a safe place, like the one you’ve been looking for all your short, eternal life. We elected that city to be our home after the umpteenth change of course of the Kahars. To constantly change direction is what you should expect from a nomadic people, don’t you think?”

  It was Godivah who answered, laughing. “Actually…caravans always follow predetermined routes…close to the drinking…points!”

  Dagger made an amused sound. “Metaphors have never been his strong suit.”

  Marduk didn’t smile, and didn’t stop looking at Dagger while elegantly, almost gracefully, he slipped the tip of his sword into the eye of Godivah, piercing his head from side to side. “So. What were we saying?”

  “The Tankars stuff.”

  “Of course,” his uncle said, focusing back on the Hammer. “Brother will kill brother, spilling his blood across the land. Killing for religion…is something I can’t understand. They speak of a Tankar Nation, but a divided nation will not stand against the impact with history. Every time brothers are killing each other, there’s always someone who takes the opportunity to enslave them. The Beshavis-Tankars remained loyal to us, hosting us in Asa. That damn Agent Orange has instead put Crowley in charge of the Kahars, making a beautiful armed wing of them.”

  “And what about the Nehamas?” Dagger heard some of the Tankars growl softly at hearing that name.

  “Them? They control the Temple of Ktisis, unfortunately. They taught us that the first strike is deadly, if you can recognize the spark of the unique opportunity, the one you can seize only once in a lifetime.” He turned to Dagger, the imposing profile of the Shadowthrone behind him. “Once there was the Fortress—the Guardians against the whole world. Then the power became bigger and incomprehensible, and too many hands crowded in the attempt to grab it. Today one will be cut down.” He turned to Godivah. “Or rather. A couple have already fallen.”

  “Poorly timed joke.” Dagger wrapped his fingers around the hilt of Solitude. “And you’re leaving out an important detail.”

  “Which one?”

  Dagger lifted his eyes and the shining blade. “First you must get me!”

  “Tsk, haven’t we seen this before?” The Disciple faced him and drew a long two-handed sword with blue stones on the hilt—probably a gift from his faithful hounds.

  “You know, it’s a real honor to face the great Marduk. Or what’s left of him,” Dagger said with a bow.

  “I remember those words. You’d end up just like the Prefect of Melekesh except that…” Marduk lashed out.

  Dagger didn’t even raise his blade to parry, knowing that every ounce of his strength couldn’t deflect such a blow. He dodged and dropped a heavy arm straight down to squash his opponent.

  Marduk ducked and laughed, staring at him.

  “Except that?” Dagger asked.

  “Except that your damn black blood keeps your divine soul trapped inside your body. Otherwise we would have already eradicated it in the…” His long curved blade came up slowly until it touched Dagger’s breastbone. “…most classic of ways, you stupid god.”

  The manegarm sang, echoing in the hypogeum.

  CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

  Dagger ducked a new blow meant to chop off his head. Under the watchful eyes of the eleven Ktisis of mayem, he grabbed his sword with both hands and started forward. Marduk stepped aside and hit him with the flat of the blade on his head.

  He’s just having fun. After all, what could ever happen with two duelists who can’t die? That duel would last until the old Dacron Delta found it interesting. Aware of that, Dag parried one last time and put all his strength in a last blow. Marduk moved in time to avoid parrying it with his frontal bone and the gleaming weapon sank in his left shoulder.

  “SHIT! That burns! Did you wake him up?”

  Wet with cursed blood, the manegarm shone. A web of light spread from Marduk’s wound. Dagger heard the scream of Olem, then his uncle’s and finally his own, when the second Disciple—who had kept still until then—pierced Dag’s back from side to side, making him let go.

  “End of the show,” the Disciple said. “Stop wasting our time, novice. Let’s go home.”

  He called Marduk novice! Dag realized, pleasantly amused, as the sword ran through his eye, breaking his socket.

  *

  9. The dissidents

  Stone. Smooth and cold under his hands.

  Konkra looked up, already knowing what he would find: the giant Throne of Karkenos, this time the real one, beyond the boundaries of the All.

  But the seat was empty. The god had disappeared.

  “Daddy?” He turned and saw the fearful shadows taking shelter at the edges of his vision. ‘Once they were more brazen. Why are they afraid now?’

  A wind laden with celestial dust carried a voice to him, “We’re all blind to the world within us, just waiting to be born.”

  “Where are you?” Konkra saw him rise as a black sun far beyond the curvature of the rock. He ran to reach Karkenos, flying above the hard surface so fast he hit the shadows before they could draw back in the darkness. He held out his hands to slap them, and he noticed they had no features on their faces—no prominence of chin, eyes, mouth or nose.

  Konkra landed at the foot of Kam Karkenos. The god of Destruction towered toward the silvery Spiral, screaming his silent rage as he tried to shield his face.

  “You’re still frozen in that moment,” Konkra said. “Petrified when Kam Kres made you—”

  The Lord of Destruction stretched and let out a divine yawn. Then he looked down. “Hey, Konkra! You were saying?”

  “You’re not funny!”

  “I disagree.” Karkenos landed one knee and brought his wide head face-to-face with Konkra. “And so you impregnated her properly. How clever of you, straight into their trap. That infernal prostitute has made a big, old, stinky mess accepting your seed.”

  Konkra definitely knew who he was talking about. “Could you be a little gentler? You’re talking about my lady.”

  “You should have asked the Agent Orange who is your lady.” His father sat cross-legged.

  Konkra circumvented the shadow of his gigantic knees to look him in the eyes again. Two high suns in the black head crowned by the Spiral. “How do you know that Erin is pregnant?”

  Karkenos raised his finger toward the All, out of which they were both exiled. “There was some restlessness in the Spiral. Oh, you couldn’t feel it, but there were signs of decompensation in the Equilibrium, even stronger than those I felt when you were born. Only the union between Creation and Destruction could generate them. I can’t deny that the trouble Erin got in the oven will complicate my plans, but it won’t stop them. At least, if my Disciples hurry for once, following the instincts I vehicle in their minds.”

  “So that’s the way you address the behavior of your servants…”

  “Everybody wants to manage inferior creatures. As the Disciples can control the suffering of mere mortals, now I can do the same with them.” He brought down his eyes.

  Konkra grabbed the meaning of those last words. “Kres brought down some bars of your prison, when he used you to close the portal.”

  Karkenos nodded. “And some of yours fell too, when you reconstructed part of Konkra’s soul in the last battle of the Fortress. Now I can read what happened more clearly. We’re nearer to each other. I can understand you.”

  Konkra lowered his eyes to follow the evolution of the writings on his black skin.

  “Everything that happens to us influences what we are,” Karkenos explained. “Everyone of us changes constantly, at least out of this place. Here everythi
ng is always the same. From you, I get the story—you bring it here through the writings on your divine body.”

  ‘Now I understand why Mumakil wanted to keep me away from here,’ Konkra thought. “I’m not divine. I’m human.”

  Karkenos offered a sarcastic sound. “The words you read on your mother’s grave, right? ‘Be Human’…” He shook his head. “It’s all an illusion, my boy, perfectly arranged by the Guardians. Don’t you find it a bit unfair that they want to control every aspect of your life, treating the god of Emptiness like a dog on a leash?”

  “It’s sweet of you to be concerned. Your love is always so sincere.”

  “Oh, my son.” Karkenos reached a titanic claw to ruffle Konkra’s hair. “The abomination you’ve copulated with out of boredom is one thousand and two hundred years old. Do you really think she has a crush on you? Your greatest achievement is Megatherion, never forget that. You’re the fruit of my seed and only I know why you’re in the world. What’s in the blood goes from father to son…from father to son! Everybody else is lying, for one’s own vile purpose.”

  “A purpose like saving the world? Just a guess.”

  “Tsk. Saving the world, and why?”

  “Oh. Don’t start babbling about the miseries of a mortal life and all that blah blah. I’ve just been killed for the…sixth? Seventh time? Have you any idea of how many assholes you sent after me?”

  Karkenos pointed his massive index at him. “Your language, young man.”

  Konkra looked straight into his huge eyes. “Just one year of love is better than the rest of my life alone. Hear this, old man: I’ll run the risk of being happy. It’s the only sensible choice. We just need to choose the illusion that makes us feel fine.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Who put this nonsense in your head?”

  “Read here: Olem!”

  “Well, he surely didn’t know what it meant, at the time.”

  “What?”

  The huge goat face descended on him and occupied his entire vision. “To have been happy and alive, and then to live forever locked up in a piece of metal, or worse. Just hope you never know what it means, after death, to live again. Because that’s exactly what will happen to you, if you let them fill your head with these human bestialities. Wait until you see the rest of eternity. Wait until you see every pleasant memory become an anguished nostalgia. Damn it…try to ask Olem if he’s happy now!”

  Konkra blinked, hiding the writings on his heart. “Those who bet on the failure of their children have already lost!”

  Karkenos laughed.

  The light took him.

  *

  Dagger opened his eyes in a slit and the light, albeit weak, pierced his pupils accustomed to the dark. He jumped back when a hand stroked him, and realized that he was chained to a wooden wall.

  A face emerged from the absolute darkness, half illuminated by a rickety lamp which made the shadow of the bars dangle on his skin. “Welcome back among the living.”

  Dagger managed to sit down, while he was tossed back and forth with his wrists tied behind his back. He had woken up on a large covered wagon on the move. The bars were only to his left and from there came the light showing the huge shoulders of a Tankar driving two mogwarts.

  Dagger was still in the good company of Solitude. It had watched over him as always. Holly…Daddy asked if you’re happy in there. He laughed at the thought. He bowed his head, fighting tears.

  “Quiet,” the voice said. The man was young, judging by the only side of his face that Dag could see, and had a deep gaze in his black eye. Shaven and bald, he wore an old habit of the Sanctuary.

  A depression in the street cocked the lamp bringing out of the dark the cold, shaken faces of ten priests—mainly old people. They huddled at the opposite side of the cage, as if they were afraid of him. The green, metallic teeth of one of them glittered in the half-light.

  “And so you’ve come, in the end. What a good boy.” The young man uncorked a leather flask and handed it to him. “Drink, if you don’t want to die again.”

  Dag instinctively reached out, before the chains reminded him of their presence.

  The young man, probably a priest, poured the water directly into Dagger’s mouth. “We’ve been traveling for three days. You’ve been dead all along.”

  “I was asleep.”

  “With your face split in two? No, I don’t think so. And the old farts, here, don’t believe it either. Especially those who burnt their hands to disarm you while the wound on your face cicatrized—innocent like the scrape on a child’s knee.”

  “I don’t want to know their opinion about me.”

  “They just stay away from you.”

  “And you? Don’t you wonder why they left me armed?”

  The young priest shook his head, showing the burns on his hands, which still seemed to smoke. “I’ve stopped wondering when Olem reacted. You called him that in your dream.” He fixed Dag’s rags to cover the mark on the boy’s chest, and spoke in a hushed tone. “That symbol is not very popular around here. Keep it covered for it’s the same that was on the chests of the two affable, decaying guys who showed up at the head of the Beshavis-Tankars, and put an end to the Sanctuary’s candid version of Almagard.”

  “Do not believe you’re better than these old fools, if you wear their same clothes.”

  “How ungrateful of you. If you’re here, it’s because of me. My name is Hagga. I wrote the message that made Araya become even more paranoid than usual, convincing him that the Hermit—my old teacher—was still alive.”

  “In some way he is.”

  Hagga ran a hand over his bald head. “In some way that won’t make any difference.” He came forward and his whole face appeared. The connotations of the half hidden until that moment were fused together by a deep burn, which was cicatrized in a patch of liquefied skin. His eye, cheekbone, and cheek were melted like wax around the hole where once his nose had been. “I was sentenced to get in touch with Baomani, who was locked up in the Hammer of Skyrgal. You can well see that touching the truth has its cost, but it was worth it.”

  Dagger watched the man’s hand. His fingers were devoid of the distal phalanges and covered by a disfiguring scar. “Why?”

  “Because I had to understand. Why did my teacher decide to betray me and all the Sanctuary? Godivah spoke of love, but not for me. In my cold dungeon I could think about all the things Baomani had said, and I couldn’t understand. He taught me never to believe blindly the revealed truths. That’s why they always considered me a bad priest.”

  “I remember you now.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I entered the Hammer of Skyrgal, too, and that’s where I saw you. You were just a kid with a knife to your neck, in the hands of a man with mayem teeth.”

  “Oh, you’re talking about Arax, the Torturer Priest of the Sanctuary. He must be here somewhere, but he doesn’t speak much.” Hagga retired in the prudish semi-darkness. “None of them do. They’re afraid. I believe that Marduk threatened to mutilate them in order to get the information on the black book.”

  “And did he find it?”

  “May very well be. Old men are selfish and fearful. It was enough to see the youngest one of them swallow his own eyes to be convinced that yes, maybe it was better to speak. They believe in the value of martyrdom only as long as it’s that of their brothers.”

  “Like yours?”

  Hagga smiled. “I don’t remember having even met my old mentor. As soon as I set foot on the first step leading to the Shadowthrone, I found myself sliding on the floor leaving a trail of blood and tissues. Many said they heard a scream resonate throughout Molok. I only remember trying to get up and falling to the ground again. On my chest, there was a message.” He lifted his habit to show the tiny letters engraved on his sternum.

  Hey, lizard! I am still here on Candehel-mas. Alive, or something like that. Does your father still wake up crying when he dreams the Red Dawn?

&nbs
p; I would pay to see it. The sun never rises in this nameless place.

  Have him reproduce with you know who. I say it’s high time we took a walk on the wild side.

  Remember? If you believe it, I believe it.

  Damn Aeternus, Skyrgal sucks his anus!

  “Are you the one who should have come to show us the light, or should we wait for someone else?” Hagga continued. “My teacher often spoke about it during our long walks among the ruins of Adramelech. The lost light in the vast prairies of emptiness. The light wandering on the wild side. Beyond everything.”

  “I’m nobody. And I don’t shine.”

  “Do not believe that.” Hagga covered his chest and the little red scars. “We’re traveling on the one road that leads to Asa and avoids the territories under the rule of Kahars and Nehamas, through a shapeless heap of ruins as high as mountains. At least a hundred Beshavis were kind enough to accompany us. Too big an escort for a bunch of unfortunate priests.”

  “You’re no good at alluding.”

  “I know what you have in mind,” Hagga said. “The time will come, be sure, at least if you know how to use the tool you carry with you.” He opened his mouth to continue, when all of a sudden the wagon stopped. Then Hagga smiled and nodded one last time.

  Savage cries rained down on them—the wrath of heaven made substance. The clatter of arms exploded all around and the wagon drove off at full speed. It rolled over on its side and burst in an explosion of splinters. Dagger found himself in the sand, his wrists still chained behind his back. He saw the silvery shining of the five blades of a glove. He ducked and ran headlong, sliding in the dust until he was a heartbeat away from an endless abyss. What the fuck!