Free Dagger - The Light at the End of the World by Walt Popester

this
fucking portrait, Mar, so we can go to drink!’
    ‘ Hammoth’s right, I’m
getting a paresis standing like this! Skyrgal be cursed, I need a
beer…’
    ‘ And
where could we go? Now everyone may recognize you. A Pendracon is
not supposed to drink in public.’
    ‘ Let’s
saddle our Mogwarts!’
    ‘ You’re
crazy as fuck, your grace.’
    ‘ Fuck it!
I’ll be crowned ten days from now. Let’s ride on the desert for the
last time, as in the old days. I know a place that you’ll like,
near the boundary with the Tankars’ land.’
    ‘ Which
one?’
    ‘ The light
at the end of the world ! Marduk and I ran
into it five years ago, during a patrol on the damn wolf-men’s
lands. Damn, that place earned its name, but there they serve a
beer mixed with Mokai that… ah! You’ll tell me if I’m not right.
But first, let me finish this Skyrgaldamn portrait.’
Portraits made people look different from
what they actually looked like, he thought. He would have preferred
to see his old friend and king depicted at the time of his greatest
splendor, with his face covered with the enemy’s blood in a scream
of killing wrath. He ran his hand along his sister’s face, down to
the golden pendant she wore around her neck. Aniah never parted
with it. Inside, there was the same portrait, perhaps the only
thing left of her old life, the person she used to be. He hated
portraits. They reminded him of the time that passed and made all
things look older, grayer, sadder, miserable. He took it to put it
around the child’s neck.
    “ You will leave tonight,” he
said again, looking into her eyes. “You will reach Arleb in the
world Beyond, the only Guardian who has definitively established
himself on the other side of the portal. He is a noble man, blessed
by fortune. You will give him the child. You will give him my
orders. Then, you will come back here. Arleb was a Dracon, he will
know what to do. He will watch secretly over Skyrgal’s son. This
will give us the time necessary to understand what are the enemy’s
intentions, now that Skyrgal’s soul is back in our hands. Just the
two of us know it. No Guardian, subjected to the most atrocious
torture, must ever reveal the place where this beast is kept
hidden. Time. Time is the only thing we need now, and it’s the only
thing we can’t afford to lose.”
The woman was unable to respond immediately
to that series of orders. Perhaps not the words she had expected
from her brother in a similar moment.
    “ That world,” she said. “You
really want to leave him there, where our ancestors used to exile
the most feared criminals in whole Candehel-mas? You, who are a
Guardian, would leave my son in—?”
    “ He’s not your son!” Marduk
cried, clenching his fists. He lowered his face and gritted his
teeth. “Surrender to the idea that for him you were only a… a…” He
could not finish. He turned to the wall and hit it with bare
knuckles, making them bleed. “Take what you need,” he said in a
small voice. “And go away!”
    “ You’re giving me up too,
right?”
    “ Aniah…”
She shook her head, standing up. “After
all, I’d do the same thing with you if you were in my
position.”
Marduk knew it was not true. He stopped her
by the arm and turned her around. “Aniah…” he repeated, but
couldn’t continue.
She smiled. “Yes, I know my name,” she
said. “It is the only thing I have left. However, big brother, I
left you speechless. How many people in here could say the same
thing? Your talent for sarcasm seemed to know no end, a little like
our conviction that we could look over the Equilibrium forever.
Skyrgal was right. This world is already at an end. It’s only a
matter of time. Sooner than not we will kill the weaker puppies to
feed what’s left of the litter. As in the story our father used to
tell us when we were kids, remember? Before you fell asleep, sure
that in that house nothing was going wrong. This time there won’t
be a new dawn at