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

the end of the night. Not even for you.”
    “ Don’t say it!”
    “ We are already dead, and if
you are still the Delta Dracon I remember, you know it better than
me.”
He slapped her, and she did not answer. She
left the room, carrying the fruit of her love.
    “ I’m sorry,” Marduk said
when she could no longer hear him.
    * * * * *
     
Oh, Crowley…
Aniah walked the stone avenue that bisected
the Glade, the cave of rare beauty opened in the womb of the sacred
mountain. Its lush trees, the towering waterfalls and the
multicolored vegetation made that place a perpetual hymn to life,
in stark contrast to the disruptive death of the desert that
surrounded it. Even now, though her heart was torn by remorse, the
Glade inspired her absolute peace. Its muffled silence was broken
only by the sound of water gushing from the numerous cracks in the
rocky vault. No one had ever understood where that water came from.
The legend spoke of the tears of Angra, sorry for what he had done
to his brother Skyrgal, but she was too pragmatic to believe this.
The falls were high and unreachable, no one could ever follow the
course back to their source. She thought if one day someone managed
to do it, the beauty of the place would be somehow affected.
    She crossed the forest of
ancient oaks and emerald green lawns dotted with flowers of every
shape and color, yellow daffodils, red poppies, snowdrops, wild
violets, cornflowers. She walked on the pretty wooden bridges
suspended above streams full of life. The placid purple light of
Ensiferum balls, scattered everywhere, illuminated the beloved
places where she had spent the few happy moments of her life. The
woods where she played at war with her brother, the tree trunks she
stripped by dint of blows when from the wooden sword she passed to
that of Manegarm. The trees among which she was stripped, to give herself
over to the pleasures of the flesh. She was crushed by the memory
of Crowley’s skin and his sweet words whispered in her ear, the
bites on her back, the fire of passion that Angra, the god of the
universal order, always wanted to be kept alight.
Oh, Crowley…
Yes, her god. She looked up,n the right of
the Glade, a large wooden building, like a gigantic stable, towered
above the treetops. From the slots just below the roof an eye of
pure light watched her escape from his world. Nothing, ever escaped
him.
    Angra, my only god, she thought. Will you, at
least, forgive me?
A roar of pain went through the Glade. The
god took on her suffering. Aniah felt reassured. She began to think
that, after all, there would be a return home, even for her. Her
only crime had been to love a man beyond rationality, to believe
him alive when she knew him for dead, to follow him down trails he
would have never taken her. For a moment, she came to think that
love could never, ever, be a crime.
Angra come to earth, I thank you.
The rich vegetation gradually disappeared,
giving way to a barren expanse of black stone. She passed through
the endless graves of the Guardians, buried in that place since the
dawn of time. The tombs grew older as they flowed past her,
becoming, in the end, simple blocks of stone whose inscriptions
were gone, forever lost to time. Beyond the cemetery, she arrived
at the gates where the Glade ended. Wrought-iron spikes pushed out
of the bare rock, as the tusks of a wild beast that wanted to
swallow her and make her forever disappear. She found herself in
darkness, descending a long staircase. The echo of her footsteps
became the only company of her gloomy thoughts, as a red and dismal
light rose to illuminate the way.
Against the light, the shadows of five
Guardians appeared. They were waiting with arms crossed on their
chest and a sadistic grin on their faces.
    “ Where are you going?” one
of them asked. “The world Beyond is not a suitable place for a
woman, especially one that has so many things to tell.”
She took a step back. Coming out of
nowhere, two hands pushed her