The Tankar Dawn

by Walt Popester

  He saw Kugar standing in the doorway. He saw the horror in her eyes as she brought a hand to her face and asked, “What have you become, Dag?” She drew near. “Is that really you?”

  He tried to shout something, but only an infernal sound came out of his bestial mouth. Konkra saw his twelve claws and felt disgust for himself. He looked beyond, at Kugar, and saw her hide behind the altar when the black sun pulsed in the middle of his chest. The waves swept away the throne, the seats and the frail walls—they fell one by one around him, exposing the source of the light which flowed outward through the crevices of the structure.

  A mirror! Dagger looked outside the storm of visions and saw it in the real world, too. It stood high, smooth and perfect, slightly curved backwards to dive into the rock from which it seemed it had anciently been unearthed.

  What light is it reflecting? he wondered, before being sure the mirror was calling his name.

  “Dag!” Kugar hugged him, emerging from behind the broken basalt slab that had protected her.

  “Go away!” he shouted. “For your own good! I…I have you…now I remember, I have…”

  Kug held Dagger in her arms. “Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  * * * * *

  The last candle was almost completely consumed when Dagger found the strength to get up on his trembling legs. He had slept for hours, or maybe days. He was outside the crab, among the ruined walls of a house on the banks of the dry river.

  He brought a hand to his face and realized that his nose was bleeding. Something was contaminating him. It’s infecting my mind and destroying my body.

  Kugar was sitting a little further away, her pregnant belly lying on her crossed legs. She leaned her forehead on her hand, and the dirty hair flowed to the ground as her finger distractedly drew the Spiral on the sand.

  Looking at her slow, obsessive motion, Dagger opened and closed his cold hands. The vibrations were still so strong that they distorted his field of view with acid green waves. It’s you, right? It’s always been you. He approached and embraced her in his arms, sighing against her neck.

  “Dag. What do you think is there…on the other side?”

  I don’t know. But why does it have no effect on you? Dagger was about to ask it, when he felt his heart vibrate in an uncoordinated manner. He lay down and took his head in his hands, crouching in a fetal position. “No…”

  Kugar lay down beside him, her belly against his back. She didn’t ask anything. “Now I stay here with you, in case the nightmares come back.”

  Dagger found her hand, but the green waves distorted his thoughts again, overlapping them with the grin of the jackal god.

  “Dag?”

  “In my head.” The hooks to my brain are well in. He struggled against tears as one obsessive thought filled his mind, The fall from grace. The fall from grace. “Don’t you know that feeling? When she hugs you, your heart becomes stone. She comes at night, when you’re alone.”

  “I can understand you,” Kugar caressed him. “Couldn’t you see the ruin of my life?”

  Dagger relaxed. He got his senses back. “Where are we, really? You must know.”

  “This is the key we were looking for.”

  “To the gods, to the dimensions, to—”

  “To you,” Kug barely whispered. “And now we can do only two things. Go back, or go to the end.” She held out a finger and Dag pulled back weakly. Kugar reached his half-naked chest and brushed the path of the Spiral, touching his body and soul to continue her obsessive movement. “The Spiral often recurs in Ktisis’s language. It represents the two forces that dominate the All, which we call Creation and Destruction.”

  The vibrations in his mind ceased completely. Dagger got up on one elbow.

  “But they represent even the plant of this structure—of the temple of Ktisis,” she continued. “It evokes the two different ways followed by Skyrgal and Angra to become the Lords of the All. Moak called them with two distinct names, as if they were separate structures.” She stroked one half of the Spiral. “The Theater of Pain.” She touched the other half. “And the Black Room. Everything is tied in one point, only one in the whole Creation, where everything comes together. That’s why you…” She corrected herself. “That’s why Ktisis has erected his temple here, on this world and this exact place.” She resumed the spiral motion on Dagger’s body and soul. “The Theater of Pain,” she continued. “The Black Room.”

  “And the Twilight Hall.”

  Her finger stopped at the center. Kugar’s eyes stared at the Spiral. “How can you know its name, Dag?” She raised her gaze to him.

  Only then did Dagger understand that he and the girl in front of his golden eyes couldn’t hide anything from each other. Isn’t that the worst disadvantage of complicity? He hesitated. “I’ve read it somewhere, I—”

  “I have been looking for it for a long time, but every trace has disappeared. Every written word, every mention in the sacred texts.”

  Dag sat up. “I saw it in my dreams,” he said. “If those were really dreams. I saw this whole damn place, there, beyond the mirror.”

  That left her startled, with tears in her eyes.

  Dagger was afraid to recognize that gaze—Kugar was understanding once again what kind of force, or monster, she was facing. “Kug. In the crab, I saw Khalifa. He called it that way when he spoke to me.”

  She moved her eyes on the light that, after the collapse caused by Dagger, now crossed Hanoi’s remains with greater intensity. “Are you really talking about him? The Gorgor sovereign who evoked Hanoi?”

  “He’s in there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me. Beyond the mirror.” And there I will save at least you. Please, Kug. Please, trust me.

  She shook her head. “This is not possible, Dag. Khalifa can’t be in a physical place.”

  “Then it’s not a physical place we’re going to.” Dagger put a finger to his heart, tapping on the Spiral. “It’s a seal of some sort. And it must be broken.”

  “This will kill you,” Kugar revealed quickly, as if those words were a weight she wanted to get rid of. “It’s written on the walls.”

  “That’s become a habit for me now,” he said, but from her eyes Dagger realized he was in serious trouble.

  Kug got up and took a few steps toward Hanoi. “You no longer have the blood of Skyrgal! You won’t be able to resurrect, not like this. Don’t you see what this place is doing to you?”

  “And what will I become?”

  “I don’t know! The nucleus of Konkra’s soul is inside you. You will surely come again, in some way.”

  Dagger thought again of all the times he had risked dying in the last days. He reached her and forced her to look at him. “In some way? And what will I become, a monster? Another demon of sand? What?”

  “Something that would push you to hope the hermit succeeds in his plans.”

  “Plans? What are you talking about?”

  “You’re the author of that.”

  “Kug.”

  “You are the one who fell in the trap of Baomani! The nature of this horror is—”

  “Who’s the god Erin’s son is coming for?!”

  “It’s you, damn it. YOU!” Kugar knelt. She took her face in her hands, her hair a black veil concealing her eyes. “It will be your ruin. It’s your anti-god, like Hanoi for Skyrgal. Either you kill the Beast in his mother’s womb, or it will kill you.” She sobbed. “Now you see what…I…what should I do, lose you again? Go there and kill her?”

  “There must be a way to stop Baomani.”

  Kugar nodded. “You were so clear when you wrote it, an infinite time ago.” She drove her fingers into the sand. “Kill the unborn in the womb,” she recited. “Few symbols were the keystone of the whole wall, and of all your existence. They also applied for so many other things—the language of the gods works like that—but they apply even for this thing.”

  Dagger closed his eyes. />
  “I’m sorry, Dag. For a moment I thought the answers could be here, on these walls. Then I understood. And the more I went on, the more I understood. Truth is a big, scary thing. Who wants to know it for real?”

  “And you say it like that?”

  “How should I say it, hopping on one—”

  “That’s Warren’s joke!”

  She turned to the skeleton claiming their future. “Our stars are going out. When next they appear, they will be shining upon a world forever changed.” She offered an amused sound in which there was all the sadness of the world.

  “It was better when we didn’t talk.” Dagger walked past her, toward the light, then stopped. “Do you trust me?” he asked, his back to her. “Kug. Do you trust me?”

  “No.” He heard her approach and imagined her as she donned a lethal Tankar glove. He would accept death by her hand, he thought, sure that he was not the first to experience such a temptation.

  But then Kugar’s arms embraced his chest. She lay her head on his shoulder and sighed.

  Dagger turned and hugged her. He took her head between his hands and told her, “It will be alright. Now you must trust me. Let it flow, Kug, and I’ll take you home.”

  Kugar looked into his eyes.

  Dagger smiled.

  * * * * *

  They crossed the remains of Hanoi together and reached what remained of the oval hall where every horror had been conceived. They stared at the last border life was laying before them: the mirror was high and slightly convex. It seemed part of some structure the Gorgors had pulled out of the rock in ancient times, and of which size Dagger didn’t dare to question. He knew only that Hanoi had once looked for it to settle down, and Tankars had escaped from it.

  “Why a mirror?” he asked.

  “It’s not the job of a mortal. Maybe you see that too,” Kugar answered. “Maybe it’s just a first barrier.”

  “To what?”

  “I think there’s only one way to find out.”

  They walked forward until they could see themselves mirrored in the light.

  “I was expecting something different,” Dag said, staring at the bright yellow of his own eyes.

  “What? A jackal and a wolf?”

  He gave an amused sound, touching the cold reflection of his human face. Lost in a paradox, we’re not here. “A mirror shows only the appearance of things,” he said, moving an arm. “You raise you right hand, your reflection raises the left one.”

  “All we got left is figuring out how to tear it down.”

  Dagger smiled. He raised his fist to the black sky above them and hammered it down, putting in that single blow all the power of both his natures. The fracture ran fast through the stone to the last barrier in front of them.

  In the end there was silence, and the darkness opened before his eyes.

  The mirror was still standing.

  Dagger shouted in anger. He tried and tried again. The walls behind him crumbled, the roof was blown away and part of the floor collapsed—but every time, his own cold reflection made fun of him.

  He threw out all his frustration in a scream. “Damn it!”

  Kugar emerged from her shelter behind the altar and flanked him. “Don’t try so hard. It’s when you free your mind from everything that you find the solution to the problem.”

  “You’re very helpful.”

  “You’re very asshole.”

  “If this mirror was raised by a god, then it takes a god to throw it down,” Dag said. His own words froze him. You don’t need any key to open a door, the memory of Mumakil whispered. You can break down the walls.

  Only then, looking at himself, he saw it. “May I be darned.” He held out a hand, and his reflection did the same. They both brushed the thin Spiral barely carved on the mirror surface, following its path in different directions. “Of course.” He looked at it for a long time, his nature and his mystery.

  “How do you think to do that?” Kugar asked.

  “I told you, once. It’s the way your heart beats that makes all the difference.” He uncovered his chest, exposing the Spiral on his sternum.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Something I will regret once again.” Dagger moved aside, until the reflection of his Spiral overlapped that on the mirror. Then he perceived. Saw. Felt. Far and wonderful creatures tamed deserts and seas, but he went beyond, in the places where life was waiting to sprout. He heard the music of death and that of love fused together in the only show going on forever—beyond the silence, the holy dive in the breast of light.

  Life is everywhere but here. It’s unbearable.

  Kugar’s voice came from faraway. “What’s happening to your skin?”

  Where are you? Dagger asked the listening dark. Here. Come here to me.

  The eyes of the night opened beyond the bars of reason. He heard a step, then another. The clawed paw emerged from the dark as the eyes of the jackal rose and stared at him.

  They looked sad this time. “Did you see it?” Konkra asked.

  Everything was absorbed by the Spiral in front of him. Now it emanated a light strong enough to obscure everything else, assuming everything else had ever existed.

  A dark, multicolored wave spilled from his heart. It wrapped his arm and the six clawed fingers of his hand, from which it jumped to the Spiral. For an instant he was in contact with the mirror and perceived the subtle, shiny capillaries which formed it. Then he felt it explode.

  The scream of Kugar.

  Dagger watched the darkness take refuge inside the cracks in his skin, when the world of the tangible things came back. Every trace of the mirror had disappeared, apart from a few silver capillaries on the ground, snaking back toward the last thing he would have expected.

  He cocked his head sideways. “Two mirrors?”

  One was red, one green; they were angled as if the shattered mirror was the third side of an imperfect triangular prism. The green one, on the right, reflected in acid and venomous shades the darkness behind them. It was half occupied by a solidified mayem flow in the shape of an elephant foot, so abundant that it also covered the base of the other mirror.

  The mirror to his left had a red and vivid color as if hell itself was burning beyond it, but it was its reflection that terrorized him: the jackal god stared at him from the other side, immersed in those cold and scarlet flames. His titanic black body was covered with silver writings linked to each other like the rings of a chain.

  Is that me…is that Konkra? “I didn’t expect to be so tall.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. That’s your other form.”

  “You always know how to sweet talk me.”

  “You’re a paradox on two legs, and you scare me.” Kugar walked to his side, looking for his hand with trembling fingers. “Did you break reality in two?”

  The hell I know. Dagger shook his head and Konkra did the same on the other side. He remembered Khalifa’s words, Reach it, if you can. There you will face the choice between what you are and what you have been. Make the right choice, Dag. Make it again and forever. His two natures were before him. “The Gate,” he whispered. Kugar turned, then stared again at her own reflection in that green, parallel world.

  The thin silvery tentacles continued to climb the mayem flow and seemed to invite him with their sinuous movement to refuse the call of the red darkness. Dagger followed them on the block of melted metal until he reached the surface of the green mirror.

  Be human. He stared at his acid reflection, which turned his courtesy. Just then the last candid tentacle disappeared from view. “Why is it melted?”

  Kugar climbed a few steps. “It’s a wound, and it’s still open. Where do you think your father has drawn the energy to create you?”

  Dag refused to ask her how much of that story she already knew. Sometimes she was unbearable. “When there’s only one alternative, making the right choice is just too easy.”

  “Don’t you think I’ll follow you in there?”

&
nbsp; Dagger turned around and opened his mouth, then closed it and turned his gaze to the sky. He smiled. “Look, a star has fallen.”

  “That’s the last of our problems.”

  “You don’t understand. When a star falls, you must express a desire.”

  “And it works?”

  Dag looked down to her. “Sometimes. Some magic is real, if you only believe in it to the end.” He held out his hand.

  Kugar looked skeptical. She stopped halfway—a hand to her womb, that one secret she couldn’t understand.

  “All the steps taken in your life led you here,” Dag said. “I’ve spent what seems an eternity to follow you. Now all I ask you is to take just one step by my side. To come with me.” He closed his eyes, fearing that she would never move that last step at his side. Then, in silence, Kugar’s fingers laced with his. He searched for the right words to say as he looked into her eyes. “I still believe it.”

  “What?”

  “The eternal return, the full circle. That thing. We’ve crossed the abyss of time to meet again, I know.” He grabbed her arm as if he was afraid to see her vanish into thin air. Kug took Dagger’s arm, and for a moment they seemed to be bonded like two links of a chain. Or like the Spiral.

  “Beyond this mirror lies the answer, that one man who can save you. And my son.”

  At that revelation, she leaned her head on his shoulder. “Scars are the wounds we show. And that time only heals when you let it go.”

  “What?”

  “Forgive us.”

  Dag didn’t understand exactly what happened next.

  He only felt shoved back, beyond the mirror.

  * * * * *

  9. The Twilight Hall

  He fell on his back in a cold, humid place.

  He opened his eyes and saw the tall trees of a forest, their leaves covered with dew. He sank his fingers in the earth as red as blood and felt almost at peace, in spite of everything.

  Large blocks of vermilion sandstone stood all around, and collapsed columns, broken marble faces, lonely walls erected in the green nothingness. Is this the end of the road? Still ruins?