Dagger 4 - The Tankar Dawn: A Dark Fantasy Adventure

by Walt Popester

  “Dag?”

  “Hmm?”

  “We should really get back to work,” she said, pulling the heavy wool blanket over their bodies and nestling against him. “I guess I understand how much you’ve been looking for me. You don’t need to explain it again.”

  Dag hugged her and closed his eyes. “Down here is my home. Here in hell.”

  She looked up to the sky and laughed. “Oh, that’s all we need!”

  “Hey.”

  Kugar interlaced her fingers with his. “Why?” she asked, her expression serious. “I mean…after what I did. After Ianka. After all. Why?”

  “I,” Dag answered. “Ianka, you, Erin. And Warren, Ash, and maybe even Mumakil and his sons. Maybe even the gods. It’s off the chain.”

  “You need a verb with those.”

  “They always use our dreams against us. They push us toward that light when we would just like to stay here, embraced in the dark.” More stars fell from the sky above them. “When you love someone, you must go beyond everything, to the bottom of the abyss. Because if she is your place in the world, then hell is your place in the world. I can’t accept it, not even if a god writes it, that somewhere, on some world, you can’t be mine.”

  “I killed Ianka.”

  “Instinctively.”

  “I penetrated his guts with the claws of my hands. I felt the smell of his shit as he died.”

  “Ianka wanted to die since I met him. You’re probably the only Tankar by whom he would accept to be killed, to settle his score with the past. Maybe he always knew it would have been you. Maybe he always wanted it.”

  Kugar shook her head, but it seemed like she was thinking about those words. She replied, “You should have put a stake through my heart and dragged me into sunlight.”

  “I don’t exclude doing that, but I need you to interpret these writings and understand what I have to do with our sons, remember? Then you’ll have all the stakes of this world, don’t worry.”

  Their hands met again with a passion that was nearly anger. “Wasn’t our goal to stop the Disciples?”

  “Hmm. I don’t know. Was it yours?”

  Their fingers interlaced and Kugar nearly drove her nails into his skin.

  “I’ll never give up on you, Kug. Even if I must sacrifice on that altar everything that still makes me a human. You’re the one reason I…”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “…I chose to be human.”

  She closed her eyes. A rebel tear fell down her cheek, and maybe that was the first time Dagger saw her cry without hiding.

  She hugged him. “I don’t want just your body,” Kugar said. “I want to penetrate the darkness of your memories.”

  “Is that a confession?”

  “It is, Dag.” She rested her head on his chest. “Those writings…what they scream to the world. Enjoy the truce because it won’t last forever. We must stop what’s growing in her womb. Do you understand how I feel or should I get you a drawing?”

  And what are you fancying to do with your son? He hugged her. “I’m sorry. Let’s not talk about that anymore.”

  “It’s all too big. And sometimes you have the same understanding of the sword you wield.”

  “Olem is not in there anymore, did you know that?”

  “I fear it’s impossible to kill such a baby,” Kugar confessed, not even listening to him.

  “There must be a way to save him.” Dag clenched his fists. “Mumakil trained me for that. I don’t know if Erin—”

  “I was talking about mine.” Kugar took her hand away from her womb and said nothing else.

  Dagger continued to caress her hair. I’d like to hurt you, I’d love to kiss you. I’d like to chase you to the end of the world and see you flee again. I want to hurt you just to hear you screaming my name. He closed his eyes. Know yourself, infinite voices reminded him. Be human. He wanted to scream. He was choking.

  She threw the blanket to one side. “I have to get back to work.”

  “You’re weird.”

  “I’m pregnant!” She got up and messed about with a splinter of hvis.

  “Let me do that!” Dagger snatched the splinter from her hands.

  When the fire was burning in the ring of stones which portrayed the demons of the past, Kugar sat cross-legged before her notes to read, learn, and understand. The light struck her from below, accentuating the roundness of her shape, flushing her tense face and her hands, which found again their way to her belly.

  Dagger left her to her studies and jumped on Apatridus. Wandering through the immensity of the temple lifted his mind from all pain, and soon there was nothing but that pitiless roaming in a forgotten past. His ancient fears hunted him in the innermost heart of emptiness, too. Skulls and bones emerged—smiles left in the dark for a whole eternity.

  What was I running away from? What was I looking for through your pain?

  A demon laughed at his confusion beyond the bars of reason. He wiped his eyes with his forearm. Who were you? Why did you make me crazy? He flew faster and faster between colonnades of ribs and skulls smashed by ancient hammer blows. He screamed in the wind and the jackal lord yelled for him, with him, raising his bestial head to the dark sky for their common pain. It had been a long time since Dagger saw him so clearly within himself—a black lightning tearing at reality.

  Is this you, or me, crucified on this wall?

  He lost his direction, sure Apatridus would still bring him back to her at the end of the day.

  The faces of the gods were slowly emerging from the deepest darkness. Now the long-blind orbits seemed to give frosty rays of rancor, and not just because of the insects inside them. A feeble light, ever stronger, was pushing the darkness away.

  The ceiling lowered.

  The walls shrank.

  The floor raised.

  The tunnel was closing itself into a funnel toward the far skull of a Burzum, so similar to Skyrgal that for an instant Dagger thought he was before his father. The light came from his eyes and his wide open mouth. A long ramp climbed toward the latter, sown with abandoned tools, wheelbarrows and ropes. The remains of an abandoned camp were everywhere, with spheres of ensiferum and turned-off torches on the ground.

  Judging from the copious dirt around, he realized the skull had been recently pulled out of the sand. It was not only that. Colossal skeleton fragments emerged from the naked stone as if they were part of a wall of bones. The Tankars have dug too deep once again, Dagger though. They were running, but from what?

  The cruachan flew toward the skull.

  “No!”

  Apatridus darted through one of the broken orbits—a fierce gaze, full of revenge—and took him to the other side in a wide, borderless space.

  The first thing Dagger saw was a strong glow that pushed him to shield his eyes, but it was just the darkness to which he was so accustomed that made it so strong.

  Is this the heart of the shadow?

  Long cones of light appeared from the boundaries of the dark. More than the light itself, he was surprised by its source: the maw of a giant crab. For a moment, Dagger smiled.

  Then he understood. That’s not Hanoi. That’s only his abandoned carapace.

  It had been there for a long time. The multiple archways and windows opened on its surface made it look like a lavish palace in ruin structured in arcades and partially collapsed galleries. The perfection and grace of that uniform luminosity contrasted with the crushed limestone, the broken cornices, and the scars left by time.

  He landed. From below, the crab seemed much more impressive, perhaps thanks to the great natural staircase that ascended to its dead mouth.

  As his astonished eyes adjusted, other details emerged from the white haze. The skeleton of Hanoi watched over the dry bed of a river and stood nestled against a rocky wall, so high that it got lost in the darkness.

  The light was born from there, beyond the threshold of that place that—now he saw—had once been inhabited.

 
; His wonder was blown away when a dark, vaguely human figure interposed between him and the brightness. Standing still at the top of the stairs, it seemed to look at him.

  Dagger shielded his eyes once again, but couldn’t see his face. The shadow stood there, looking at him, before disappearing into the glare.

  This is the end of the road, Dag thought. The Gate at the end of the world.

  Apatridus called his attention. He grabbed Dagger’s sleeve with his beak and pulled him back.

  I’ll be darned, Dagger repeated it uninterruptedly as he returned to the base camp. You’ve already been there, right? he wanted to ask the winged beast, but Apatridus was locked in his animal silence.

  “There’s…something you must see,” he said to Kugar. He read suspicion in her eyes when the shining face of the Burzum appeared, terror when they went headlong into its mouth. And finally wonder when they emerged on the other side.

  Kugar got off as soon as Apatridus touched ground. “How can it be still standing?” She admired the wide carapace, one arm in front of her eyes.

  Did you say still? Dagger caressed his winged steed, looking up. Emptiness weighed on them. Even in flight, he had been unable to see the ceiling of that place, so high it could generate its own weak rainfall. Every detail led him to a truth for which he didn’t feel ready.

  “Hanoi went upriver,” Kugar said. “Of course. And brought his people with him. Look at the village on his back, look at the crumbled houses…how else could they hide here, in the temple of Ktisis?” She turned to him. “Then he walled the only entrance, using the same bones of the gods.”

  “And now where is he?” As the water droplets fell softly around them, Dagger felt Kugar taking his hand.

  In silence they climbed the monumental staircase toward the entrance of the carapace. Dagger kept his eyes fixed on a sort of lintel above it, with writing engraved on the surface, TRAVEL LOSE YOURSELF PAY THE PRICE OF HANOI — YEAR OF KHALIFA LDTTWA. That stone was the mute witness of a time and people gone forever. A cry of life frozen and wrapped by the silence of the ages.

  The lintel above them seemed to get higher and raise that message toward the mysteries of the dark. They reached the top of the stairs. Now they could see that the entrance to the skeleton gave onto two distinct corridors, divided by a thin layer of calcification.

  Kugar went on without fear, but Dagger had a sinister presentiment and held her.

  “Do you want to stop now?” He opened his mouth, but she said, “There’s only one way to find out where it leads…remember?”

  “That was a long time ago,” Dag answered.

  “We were at the gates of this temple. Or maybe you were so strong only because Moak and Olem were watching over you?” She slipped into the right corridor.

  Annoyed, Dag chose the left one in protest.

  Like the rest of the exoskeleton, the wall between them showed several solutions of continuity, big and small holes between the long lines of symbols, this time clearly written by the imperfect hand of man. Through them, the light hidden in the heart of that once-lived structure found its way to the outside.

  Dagger passed his fingers over the frail writings. He watched Kugar’s face appear and disappear from the splits in the wall, sometimes shrouded in darkness, other times surrounded by a blinding halo. As they read the incisions on both sides of the wall, they came to a square opening. Dagger saw her go away but stood there, waiting. Just as he expected, she came back.

  “Hey,” Kugar said. “Did you find something interesting?”

  He nodded. He put a hand into the hole, toward her, immersed in the light. Kugar smiled and did the same to try to reach him in the dark. For a moment it seemed they could never touch, but they both believed in it to the end, and their fingers brushed.

  Kugar laughed.

  Dagger pulled his hand back, his visual crossed by an electric storm.

  The jackal grinned beyond the bars.

  “No.” This time he hadn’t even felt it coming. He moved a step back, his heart bursting, but it was all useless. The shadow was already everywhere.

  The far voice of Kugar, “Dag?”

  “Go away! Save yourself!” he shouted, or maybe he just thought.

  The jackal laughed at him in the dark and the blue light. His memories exploded, the screams of the gods rose around him to crush him and suffocate him. He dodged a hammer, and a sharp blade. He felt like falling into the void, but his feet sank into the sand and he realized he was still running and running, forever fleeing.

  “No!”

  The boom, the void. A spurt of blood lorded an immaculate wall and a huge clawed finger traced signs of fangs and eyeless faces laughing about him. Three arches. The fall from grace.

  A friendly, or at least benevolent voice broke into the horror. “Does it hurt?” Mumakil asked.

  “Yes,” he answered trying to see in the heart of that huge void.

  “Shake away the pain and start all over again. Start again, Dag. As I taught you on the back of the damned crab.”

  Dagger didn’t try to open his eyes. He shut them. He concentrated. He swept away the pain, the nostalgia, the human and divine suffering of which he couldn’t even understand the nature. His mother, Olem, Seeth, the terror of the Spiders guild and the Fortress, the eyes of Angra.

  He expelled everything in a single yell and found himself sliding to the ground, cutting his skin.

  The obscure tentacles of pure emptiness got back into his intimate perdition.

  “Dag!” Kugar was calling to him from somewhere, faraway.

  He barely got up, a knee on the doorstep of an oval room obtained in the hollow skeleton and dominated by a smooth, perfect dome. What kind of place is this? Something in that place was not entirely new to him, as if he had already been there but couldn’t remember when.

  He went in, followed by the echo of his footsteps. A black basalt table stood in the middle, with the remains of four chains at the corners and grooves which intersected at the center. There was blood on the stone, as well as on the sharp tools lying on the nearby tables or fallen to the ground.

  “Dag?!” Kugar called again in the darkness behind him. She seemed to be moving away, but he had eyes only for the throne, raised at the far end of two half-circles of seats.

  Dagger reached it, climbed the few steps and turned around, dominating the strange room as he sat down.

  This time he consciously released the control on his inner void, allowing the shadow to talk to him again. He could dominate it. He knew he could. In a flash, the faces of the ancient figures on the seats appeared and disappeared. He closed his eyes, because he didn’t need those to see. He concentrated. He went further.

  He saw two human figures standing at the base of the basalt table, turned toward him. One smiled, the other was in tears. Dagger tightened his hands on the armrests hoping to be strong enough. He would never regain control of the void if he allowed it to prevail.

  He breathed and everything appeared again. Sitting on the seats, the Disciples and the Gorgors were watching with interest what was happening on the cold stone altar in the middle of the hall.

  Dagger recognized the non-face of the First Disciple. Aeternus smiled at him, three bloody metal probes in his hands, a grin suspended on the lips which had denied Angra.

  “Baomani…”

  The fearful young man at Aeternus’ side had an ampule in one hand and Redemption in the other. He was scared.

  The two figures moved away, showing the naked woman chained on the altar.

  Dagger couldn’t avert his eyes from her as he climbed down the steps of the throne. Extraneous thoughts crossed his mind, the thoughts of a man who had lived before him.

  Noises in his head.

  Noises in his head.

  He was at the foot of the tree of life and was engraving two names on the bark: Aniah and Crowley, one alongside the other since they had no letter in common.

  Noises in his head.

  …light of my l
ife. It doesn’t matter if we can’t have children. I’ll love you wherever you may…

  Noises in his head.

  …Ah, come on! As children, we used to shit in the same place to play a prank on the same man. I think I have the right to—

  Noises in his head.

  Dagger cried, “No! Please.”

  But the noises in his head went on.

  …you’re not my son, Olem, and you’ll never be. You’re a petty thief coming from the sewers and you filled a void that didn’t belong to you. I hate you. I hate you!

  Noises.

  …my king, it worked! The Tankars are fleeing!

  The voices of the memories spoke altogether and Dagger gave one single shout to overwhelm them, “Crowley!”

  That silenced everything, leaving way to a far more deafening thought, Skyrgal was inside the body of Crowley when my mother…

  The revelation crushed him, together with the new noises of images and words that were still there with him.

  “No!” Dagger, Skyrgal, and Crowley shouted as the violated womb disappeared, and Dagger fell again into the frail reality of the silent hall. The only sound snaking between the stone remains was the echo of the past. And an ever closer voice, “Dag! Dagger!”

  The faces appeared and disappeared in the turbine of unconsciousness. As he risked losing his control over the immense obscurity, Marduk’s voice surmounted everything, Skyrgal imprisoned her in the temple of Ktisis and arranged her womb so that she could receive you…

  Dagger moved some steps back, bumping the seats and the basalt altar.

  …instilling in her the corrupt seed that has made you hybrid between mortal and eternal…

  He staggered forward, overturning the table with the rusty tools.

  …He did so under the complacent eyes of the Disciples and Gorgors, observing the fruit of their infinite labors.

  “Mom.” He cried in their laughter and the screams of pain, those of a woman—the woman who had loved him to the end, at her every breath, until the end of her wicked labor.

  You are the product of countless ages spent fighting, dying and digging in that sand soaked with death. But she…she then decided to condemn you to the eternal escape from yourself.