Dagger - The Light at the End of the World (10 page)

Read Dagger - The Light at the End of the World Online

Authors: Walt Popester

Tags: #horror, #fantasy, #heavy metal, #dagger, #walt popester

Sannah shrugged. “It began with one of the
older ones that amused the others mangling my name. Sannah, Mama,
sounds pretty much the same,” he paused. “I cut off his tongue,” he
went on. “Yes. I’ve wore it around my neck for a week, so that the
other ones would remember how much I hate when people mess with my
name. But, with time, I found it funny and let everybody call me
that, apart from the one who had done it first, of course. I offer
a roof and half a meal a day to a host of irresistible rogues
abandoned in the world by their whore mothers. In return, they do
something for me. It’s the closest thing to an orphanage you will
find around here. Funny, isn’t it?”
The woman made a skeptical expression. “You
could do better,” she said, looking at the corpse of a rat skewered
by a fork rotting in a corner of the room. “Yes, you could do much
better, whereas in Golconda there are still some books that talk
about you as a legend. And many people too.”
Sannah grinned bitterly. “Life is mutable,
Aniah, and luck too,” he said. “Once I landed on this world I had
to invent something to survive. On this side of the portal, life is
harder than it seems, but I suppose it’s difficult to understand it
in the shelter of the warm walls of the Fortress. These people are
sick, more than we, you should really see the passion they put in
tearing apart each other. Even I am a beginner in comparison. At
least they say, since I wouldn’t get out of these four walls for
any reason!” He chuckled, his hearty and hoarse laughter, before
pulling a puff of smoke from the cigar hold between his dirty
fingers. “As for the legends about me, well, you know what remains
of human deeds once time buries them under his generous, and
inexhaustible, load of shit?”
Aniah did not answer. There was no need to
answer and the old man himself left the question hanging over his
grin.

“
So why you came here?” He
continued. “Not just to remind me how hard life is on this sick
world, I hope. This sick world already does so.”

“
I’ve got a problem. We both
have.”

“
Oh. Seriously?” Sannah
said, coughing out smoke. “Well, after all this time I’ve been
waiting for you, do you know what can you do about your problem?
Any problem? Go tuck it in that mastodontic ass of your beloved
Angra!”

Aniah drew a dagger, bringing it against
his neck so fast that the old man found just time to helplessly
open his arms. “Do not mention Angra in vain!” she growled. “This
is just a demonstrative gesture, but if you nominate him again, oh
Ktisis be fucked! I put an end to your atrocious life now and where
you are, whoever or whatever you have been for me!”
Three boys dressed in rags burst in through
the door, armed with switchblades that only asked to be used.
Judging by the look in their eyes, Sannah thought that they had not
expected to find a scene like that: their master, perhaps their
owner, with a knife to his throat. They had the expression of
someone who believed such a thing was not even possible.

“
Get out of here. This is
none of your business!”

“
But—”

“
Get the fuck
OUT!”

The three could only obey that order.

“
That’s better,” Aniah
continued, lowering her blade. “I don’t really feel like shedding
more blood today. The trip was far too long.”

Sannah put his hand around his neck,
massaging it nervously to make sure there were no cuts. “Damn, you
got good at it! Nothing I wouldn’t expect from my daughter, of
course; not even your brother Marduk could put me up against the
wall so quickly. I’m really proud of you.”

“
You’ve been a lousy father
and not a day goes by that I do not curse you in my prayers,” Aniah
replied in the same tone of voice that she could use to order a
beer in a tavern. She was good at not showing her suffering. She
had always been. “Angra will understand. My god always understands
the grudge.”

Sannah laughed again, rubbing his stubble.
“You’re right. If Marduk has become a Dracon that’s because of my
teachings, so we can say I spent some more time with him. To tell
the truth, I don’t even remember ever taking care of your
training.”

“
You took care of me in many
other ways.”

“
It’s just that I couldn’t
conceive such a thing,” the old man continued, as if he had not
heard. “For me, you were just a woman, and women should not play at
Guardians. Women need to make babies, don’t you think?”

She took the blow. He saw it. It was stupid
that he could hurt her again with a few simple words, after all
that time. Aniah sat down, resting her filthy boots on the desk,
and uncovered the bundle she held against her breast.

“
A child,” Sannah observed.
“Yes. I was expecting to see one when I heard that cry.”

“
When you’ll understand who
it is you’ll find very little to laugh about.”

“
Who’s the boy, your
son?”

“
Look at him.”

Sannah watched the little one as if he were
a strange artifact, taking him in his hands, more than in his arms.
The only weird thing he noticed was the color of his eyes: blue,
but with thin red veins around the pupil. The little one stretched
out a hand to grab his nose, curious, and seemed to smile. Sannah
smiled too. He loved children, this was why he dedicated to them
what remained of his life, even though in a questionable way.

“
Oh, you’re just a little
son of a bitch. Yes, yes you are?”

The child wore around his neck a golden
pendant, with a portrait of his parents inside. An Arsis. All the
Guardians’ children had one and if his mother had already put it
around his neck that meant she was going to leave him there. Awful
story, but if he would have sold it he would have gained something,
at least enough to feed him for a few years. Or to drink for one
week. Or to buy a pair of those kind of mushrooms that eased his
long sleepless nights.
He noticed something underneath the
pendant, like a symbol tattooed on the white sternum. At first, he
could not believe his eyes and thought he had been drinking too
much again. Then his face turned into a mask of silent horror and
his lips barely uttered, “Oh, shit! It cannot be!”
The boy smiled. Sannah laid him on the
desk, trying not to drop him, and found himself rubbing his hands
as if to clean them. He raised his face to look at his daughter.
Aniah smiled back impassively.

“
Ktisis damn! He
is—”

“
He’s my son,” she said.
“And not just mine, as you can see. You know that mark: it should
not be on the chest of a mortal. Yet.”

“
This is a living
blasphemy!” the old man snapped. “It must not live,
must not
be! How can you
be its mother?”

The woman stood up. She walked past the
desk and got to the large window in the back of the room, all
covered with the dust of decades. She couldn’t enjoy a beautiful
view from there, just a lousy corner of sea filled with abandoned
boats and decrepit wrecks, the last refuge of a multitude of
wretches who had made crime their reason to live.

“
Inside me, they created
him,” she said. She put her open hands on the glass, bending her
fingers as if to break her nails and, in that way, appease her real
pain with a purely physical suffering. “A mother should always be
fond of her son, shouldn’t her? And I love him. He’s also mine, and
my life and death are forever linked to him. Yet I must
not.”

She closed her eyes.

“
How could this happen?” the
old man asked. “Who? Who has been so fool to make it?”

“
Skyrgal himself,” Aniah
said. “Skyrgal brought back to life,” she rested her head against
the glass. “In the temple of Adramelech, where the father of all
gods sacrificed his children. Those sandstone walls are still
soaked with the immortal blood spilled in the old days. The sacred
writings, Sannah. They interpreted
those
!”

“
They… they found
them
?”

“
They found a lot of
things.”

“
And did you see
them?”

“
Oh, I’ve seen
too
many things,” she
answered. “Therefore I will not be allowed to live. It doesn’t
matter. Even my stupid feelings do not matter anymore; now, I just
have to make sure that Gorgors can no longer get their hands on
this sweet child o’ mine. If we can’t kill him, we can at least
hide him where they’ll never find him.”

Sannah shook his head. It was all too much
for him, he was late one night to settle the score and suddenly he
was facing a bunch of crap too big for his bare hands. He looked at
his daughter for a long time and, for a moment, thought he could
understand how she felt.

“
And what are the Guardians
asking me to do?”

“
What
I’m
asking you to do,” Aniah pointed
out. “My orders were different. Marduk wanted him entrusted to a
Dracon come to this world years ago; a noble man, blessed by luck,
who would take care of him, he said, bringing him up in a
respectable way.”

“
Arleb?”

“
Yep.”

“
But Arleb was executed
three days ago!”

The woman grinned bitterly. “Executed? No,
I don’t think that’s the exact word for it. The house where he
lived was razed to the ground and his entire family nailed on the
pillars, children included. A truly memorable show. No one had the
mercy to take them down from there and crows were still feeding on
the charred insides, spilled from the gutted bellies, pecking at
the stumps of the wrists and neck. Not exactly what I wanted to see
after the long journey that brought me to his door.”
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.”

Other books

Undone, Volume 2 by Callie Harper
[SS01] Assault and Pepper by Leslie Budewitz
Entrepreneur Myths by Perge, Damir
Bryant & May and the Secret Santa by Christopher Fowler
After Forever by Krystal McLaughlin
A Scandalous Proposal by Kasey Michaels
Celestial Bodies by Laura Leone
Elsinore Canyon by M., J.
Gluttony by Robin Wasserman