Dagger 4 - The Tankar Dawn: A Dark Fantasy Adventure

by Walt Popester

  “And now?” The Anti-Pendracon realized only then where the conversation was going. Dagger saw it in his eyes.

  “Now? I authorize you to continue the war as best you believe. Your forces have been decimated by the massacre of Sabbath and the thousand wrong choices of your leaders. If you think you can enter here and rule in the heart of my young, strong civilization, you’re even more stupid than you seem.”

  The Hammer Dracon smiled at those words. “As you command. My King.” He bowed his head, spun, and walked toward the exit.

  “The wound is healed,” Baikal added, as if he had not yet finished. “The Tormentors have come to my side.”

  The Anti-Pendracon stopped. “How many?”

  “All. At least, all those who have embraced the power of Hanoi, that is to say almost everyone. Only those who had material interests in the cult of Sep-hul proved hard of hearing. The mercenaries and the poor found it way easier to listen to my promise of peace.”

  “Strange. Sep-hul-turah is the great harvester of the hatred structured in the misfits and the outcasts. All of you dogs should be the people of Sep-hul.”

  “It’s always a war religion when people face the worship of wealth and the fear of hunger.”

  The black Guardian reasoned in silence, before answering, “This increases the strength at your disposal.”

  “Nothing ever escapes you.” Baikal moved slowly. “That’s why I invite you to reconsider our alliance in view of the following.”

  The man had only time to turn around before landing under the bestial mole of the Asmeghin.

  The Nomad Emperor drove his claws into the chest of the Guardian and yelled, “I! AM!”

  Dagger jumped to his feet and took a step back when he understood Baikal’s intent. His strong, Tankar fingers opened a way through the ribs of the man. The beast leveraged with all his strength, energy and power to open the rib cage of the Dracon in a viscid explosion of entrails.

  The cry of pain of the Anti-Pendracon was cut off by the shouting of his companions, butchered by the Nehamas in atrocious screams of euphoria, wrath and agony, an orgy of scalps loosened from the skulls, severed limbs and eyes popped for pure, playful sadism out of enemies lying on the ground with hands held out in the air.

  Beyond the pain of his abstract bowels, the Anti-Pendracon seemed to look down to his body in ruin.

  Baikal ripped his heart away and bit it, pulling with his canines and unraveling the muscle in a thousand hard, bloody filaments. He ate, satisfying his hunger with the meat of his troublesome ally, never ceasing to look into his dead eyes. The heart opened, pouring out the dense and ruby fluid on the chest of the beast.

  When the meal was over, the Emperor turned to Dagger and looked at him and him alone. “You still don’t understand.” He nodded to the stairs through which he had arrived, his red fangs glittering at the soft light of the torches. “My Tankars will lead you to the only place you want to be.”

  * * * * *

  The only place I want to be…another cage? As he walked back and forth in his new cell—cozy, but still a prison—Dagger wondered at the rationale behind Baikal’s actions, if there was one. He had been moved to a room in the colossal tower above the fortress in the dunes. Even though there were soft carpets under his feet now, walking back and forth was still a monotonous activity.

  At least he had to thank the Emperor for the first decent clothes he was wearing after having been spat out of the crab, and for leather armor, almost whole except for the four lacerations on the right flank. The boy who died inside it, pierced through by a Tankar glove, had been more or less his size.

  He watched the landscape out of the small window. The desert stretched as far as the eye could see, crowded with longer and longer shadows. Numerous black lines along the invisible ways of the desert cut the dunes and the decadent stone. The Tormentor-Tankars were following the call of their self-proclaimed Nomad Emperor.

  After sunset, a heavenly music descended into the bowels of the tower, plunging into its silence. Deep and majestic, it reminded him of the wind blowing through the ruins, modulated in different tonalities.

  It was the heart of the night when he was awakened by the voices of two Tankar guards. They were slowly climbing the stairs. The noise of their heavy breathing covered that of their footsteps.

  “Ktisis, you’re such a dork!” said one with a gravelly voice. “You know the Emperor doesn’t want to hear the word shit.”

  “Shit, what could I know? It’s a word we used so often, once.”

  “You just got here, kid, but you won’t last long if you keep on making an ass of yourself.”

  “So you say the girl’s here?”

  “Yes, and she hasn’t open her mouth for centuries. Bah, she screwed one of her family, that’s a sacrilege for all Tankars. Not that she should care a lot. After all, she’s some kind of human, but I think she has studied the uses and customs of us tan—”

  “She’s not a Tankar!” Dagger shouted. “Go fuck your own ass, assholes!”

  The two stopped.

  “And who in bloody hell is this?” the new recruit asked.

  “It must be that other abomination, the jerk who got himself locked up in an amorphis cage.”

  “Ah-ah, that one?”

  “Amorphis is toxic to me!” Dagger shouted, before realizing he was justifying himself. I hate to justify myself!

  “Damn it, the Emperor should have left him rot in there. What is he putting on in here, a freak show?”

  “Don’t talk about it. They say the Emperor can show up anytime, anywhere, in this cursed tower.”

  “Yay.”

  Unable to keep his thoughts on the right side of his muzzle, the Tankar with the hoarse voice continued in a tone that was meant to be subdued, “He should hurry to close the game with the Kahars, instead of spending his nights drowning in his cups.”

  “Does he drink?”

  “Does he drink? It’s becoming impossible to detach him from a bottle. Yet you should see him on a battlefield, my King, drunk as he is, in the front row, a two-pound axe in each hand. He fights as if he has nothing to lose. I’m not surprised he has such a following. And so…of course, that fucking temple and all those books that he makes us study, I understand it’s useful. But I like another form of art. The one in which my King drives me when the drunkenness of both wine and blood flows in his veins.”

  “Think about it, though. You’re exterminating an enemy’s family…”

  “Yes.”

  “One member at a time, with all kinds of burning you know. You’re offering their pain to Ktisis, the god of Emptiness…”

  Oh, Ktisis, Dagger thought.

  The two climbed past his door. The new recruit continued, “…if you study the history of art you can arrange their bodies into more complex compositions than the usual.”

  “I understand the point, but—”

  “Think about sculpting an entire family nailed to the walls to resemble the poses of the sacred family of Khalifa.”

  “Oh, that would be really fun.”

  “Something to tell our grandchildren when we grow older…”

  The other Nehama laughed and barked.

  Dag put his ear on the door and listened to their steps getting farther away. Kugar is here, he thought, and was seized by the fear of facing the world beyond the door once again. He stood for hours with his head resting on the black wood, thinking over and over again about what had happened, about every single time he had got lost in the blue eyes of Kugar or in the thought of them; about the long chase that ended in dejection.

  His heart beat faster as if she were there with him.

  But she is here with me. He focused on the door lock. It’s old, rusty stuff. If only I had an iron wire to fiddle with the mechanism…

  He smiled. For the first time Mumakil’s words made sense. You don’t need any key to open a door. You can break down the walls.

  The arabesques of veins filled his arms once again. Th
e void exploded with a dull sound, tearing down the door and part of the wall and revealing the dark spiral staircase.

  He closed his eyes, sighed and leaned out to look. The torches had been turned off, yet a distant light above him showed the solemn profile of a Gorgor.

  A light at the top of the stairs. It’s nice to be fooled always in a different way.

  He climbed without hesitation. The light didn’t go away as in his dreams. It led him to a regal room open on the vast panorama of the moonlit desert. An entire wall had crumbled in an imperfect arch, and the profile of the large bricks framed a sea of copper-colored ruins.

  I’ve already seen this place. I’ve seen it inside Hanoi.

  He slowly turned left, and saw her. In the light of a single oil lamp Kugar was waiting for him, her body lying on soft silk pillows, her naked legs stretched on the furs and the rich carpets on the floor. Her belly was pleasantly round, maternal. When she saw him there, standing in the doorway, the girl didn’t betray any emotion. She knelt and put her hands on her breast to tear the clothes and uncover her chest. Even as she allowed her eyes the luxury of tears, there was an unstoppable force in her gaze.

  Dagger approached and pointed Solitude at her, as he slowly lowered his other hand. He didn’t caress her. He was horrified at the sole thought of feeling something else than hate or rancor.

  His gaze dropped on the soft roundness of her belly, and his open, understanding hand turned into an angry fist.

  From behind him came Baikal’s voice, “Not so fast. Be good and put away that thing before somebody gets hurt.”

  Dagger turned around.

  The white shape of the Emperor came out of the darkness at the bottom of the room. “You must get up very early if you want to fool a Nehama.”

  “What do you want from me?” Dag asked. “Do you want to watch me in silence, too, as I make a spectacle of myself?”

  “Of course. I wanted to see your reaction. But—Ktisis damn it—next time try to open a door. If Vektor won’t kill me, the expense to rebuild this tower will.”

  “I’m sorry. I hope you’ve enjoyed the show at least.”

  “Give it a break and come with me.”

  Dagger didn’t follow him up the stairs. He stared at Kugar as the sword slowly drifted to the ground. Me and you, he thought. Desire, resentment and a desperate need to belong to someone. There was everything in their silence, but Kugar was already staring at the ground, crushed by the weight of a life of abandonment and a desperate running toward an unreachable happiness.

  Where are you now? How can I reach you there, far from everyone?

  “Hey,” said the beast behind him. “Don’t force me to hit your head and drag you away unconscious. It wouldn’t be respectable, would it?”

  “It would be nothing new to me.” Dag sheathed his sword. Getting out he looked back for the last time.

  He didn’t know where his light at the end of the world was. Surely it was not there with him.

  * * * * *

  7. And the Tankar Plays

  Dagger realized his intuition was correct: the gloomy room of skulls where he had first met Baikal was nothing but a stage to impress his guests. The real nest where the Nomad Emperor hid himself from his duties and the horrors of the world—which often were the same thing—was in a straight line above Kugar’s chamber.

  They climbed the endless spiral staircase until they reached the room that occupied the whole top floor of the old tower. The golden surface of the treasures in the dark reflected the weak light of the candles, making the room intimate.

  Apart from the few places where the terracotta bricks emerged, the floor was covered with large and soft carpets. They were woven in purple and orange threads depicting giant crabs, impregnable fortifications, and titanic faces partly hidden by the dunes. Dagger followed their intricate nodes to a bizarre piece of furniture at the wall on his left, made of long and short metal pipes and with a stool before it.

  A thin silver veil separated the room from the outside and the silent spectacle of the infinite desert. It was not a terrace, Dagger realized, but a continuation of the room where part of the ceiling had collapsed in ancient times.

  Baikal approached a mahogany cupboard—wood seemed the most precious treasure in the middle of all that sterile gold and stone—and poured his beloved ruby fluid in two glass cups. He gave one to the boy, walked to the silver veil, moved it away, and went out.

  Dagger followed him to the decadent scenario of Adramelech, which he had never seen from so high. The light at the top of that tower led a strange dialogue with the hopes lit in the village and the camps in the ruins.

  Baikal rested a strong hand on the apparently precarious balustrade. “I am the King,” he said. “The king of this waste.” He watched the vastness of the world in a religious silence, bringing his cup to his black lips without drinking. His blue eyes reflected the restless light of the stars, as the moons on the horizon painted the profile of the naked, distant vestiges.

  His head bent, Baikal went back into his den leaving the boy alone to contemplate the marvelous nothingness.

  Not long after, Dagger heard some long, suffering notes articulated in a crescendo. Walking through the silver veil, he saw the Tankar sitting at the curious piece of furniture made of pipes. His fingers now slipped, now dropped on a row of ivory keys. In this way, the wild beast modulated the air that came out of the instrument producing an imposing and majestic symphony, the same Dagger had heard before falling asleep.

  From there, the boy saw a mirror on the wall opposite the strange musical instrument. It was flanked by two empty green glass sarcophagi, but there was one more which was not empty. It contained the beheaded corpse of a black Tankar. I bet the Tormentor Asmeghin.

  He almost didn’t recognize his reflection in the mirror, and not just for the golden color of his eyes. He had the face of an adult, now. His scar was deeper, his hair darker. The time spent in the crab had probably seen to that.

  Is that you? Is it me? He reached out to the stranger on the other side, who did the same. “Why the mirror?” he asked, but the white beast continued to play.

  “Asmeghin Baikal,” Dagger asked with more insistence. “Why, the mirror?”

  A note out of place followed, and the music ended.

  “I like mirrors,” the Nehama said, starting to play again. “They make me see the only individual who never let me down.”

  There’s something more, Dag thought. He sipped the wine in his cup and turned around. The mighty body of the Tankar shadowed the keyboard. His shoulders were almost as wide as the instrument.

  Yet the music…There was something in the way the Tankar played that didn’t belong to the monstrosity of that world.

  The boy sat on a cushion, his legs crossed. He sipped the red nectar again and listened.

  “When the gods came down in this world, they left behind them a ladder made of seven steps.” The fearsome beast played on the keys, seven sounds in crescendo, and then decrescendo, before continuing with his melody. “This could be the language of the gods, who knows. It would be the most logical answer, and the most acceptable one. There must be a reason for the existence of beauty, it can’t be here by chance. Someone must have wanted it, and maybe ours is just the tempo of the damned.”

  Dag wiggled his wine.

  “You shouldn’t be surprised if the individual you’re dealing with looks better than the demons dancing around him,” the Tankar continued. “My hatred is just as profound and hopeless. I’ve only come in contact with…” The music ended with an unpleasing, high note. “Him.”

  “The crab?”

  “Don’t call him crab.” The beast kept on playing. “One of my masters often told, Wander, wander, because if you won’t find the answers you’ll never get the magic cruachan and the personal abilities.”

  Dagger remembered the letters partly erased that he himself had read once spat out of the crab. So that’s what was written there.

  “I
n this old Gorgor dogma lies the whole meaning of life, Dag. A frontier always ends up being the place where people make war, when it should be the place where they make love with existence, experiencing the exotic.”

  “The exotic?”

  Baikal’s fingers were moving faster and faster on the keyboard. “It’s what we don’t know because it lies beyond the border, that’s what we’re looking for since always. Since the moment we’re born and explore the little world around us, to the moment we close our eyes before a greater journey. It happens to the gods too, and maybe that’s the core of all this filthy story. The search. The search for the unknown, which is nearer than we may think. You must confront yourself with what you don’t know. Who doesn’t do it faces only himself. But what’s the knowledge, I say, of those who face only themselves?” He briefly turned to him. “Theirs is a dream of mirrors.”

  Those words made Dagger shiver. “I knew there was a meaning to it.”

  “There’s always a meaning. There’s a meaning to pain, and solitude. There’s a meaning to the happy past that never comes back, to the guides and the friends lost in the belly of nothingness. There’s a meaning to the void, the one inside, which took everything away as the orchestra continued to play.”

  “Orchestra?”

  “I learned a lot thanks to the power of Hanoi. Surely more than I can handle, or understand. Before that, I didn’t even know what music was—after all, there’s no music in the desert except the most delicate, silence, which is the origin of wisdom—but that crab has his own way to connect you with all the…rest. The unknown.”

  Dagger remembered Mumakil’s words, Hanoi has his own way to help and influence those who have had the privilege to get in touch with him. “Solstice,” he said. The amazing hallucinogen obtained by Hanoi’s tentacles infiltrating the river.

  Baikal took a long sip from the metal canteen at his neck. “The power of Hanoi allowed me to see the meaning of things, where once there was only darkness.”