by Jon Kiln
“I already am hurt!” yelled the larger guard, before Aldameda pressed the knife a little closer to his neck. “Oh, it hurts, my face hurts so much,” he wailed to his fellow guardsman.
With a look of resigned fear, the slimmer one let his spear fall and stepped away.
“Good choice, friend.” Aldameda said, holding the larger one tight as Talon picked up the spear and then relieved both guards of their scimitar-like swords. They were lighter than the improbably long sword that Suriyen wore, but they still felt awkward in Talons hands as he shoved one through his belt, and the other he held in front of him.
“Now the keys. Unlock the gate for us, friend, and lock it back after we’re gone.” Aldameda started to shuffle with their hostage guard towards the small metal gate, and the other frowned, then grimaced, and then took the large set of iron keys from his belt and did as the old woman had directed.
“What are you going to do with me?” said the burly guard, his eyes streaming with tears, and his mouth turning a very puffy shade of red and purple. “Are you working with Dal Grehb? You going to enslave me?” he whispered, as Talon ushered their ponies through the narrow gate, and then stepped beyond himself as Aldameda moved as careful and as slow as a spider, always keeping the body of the guard she was holding between her and the younger.
“Do you really think Dal Grehb wants whatever information you have?” Aldameda laughed. “I think he has enough greedy brutes in his army, don’t you?”
“Y-yes ma’am, whatever you say ma’am. Will I ever see again?” the guard breathed.
“Of course. Douse your face in cow’s milk when this is all over.” Aldameda sighed theatrically. “And the reason I did this to you is because you have a weak heart, guard. You have a weak and greedy heart, and Fuldoon deserves better.”
“Yes ma’am, of course it does. Anything you say, ma’am.” The blinded guard was gibbering, as Aldameda was the last to step through the iron gate, releasing her hostage and giving him a kick up the backside as she did so, and sending him sprawling back inside the city.
For a moment they all stood there, Aldameda and Talon outside one of the small access gates in the eastern walls of Fuldoon, and the two guards on the inside of the city, wondering if the danger had passed.
“It’s not worth it,” said the slimmer one, shutting the black iron gate and locking it firmly in Aldameda’s face. “Just get out of here. Get lost and don’t come back,” he snarled suddenly, brave now that there was a wall and a gate between them.
“With half a hundred thousand Menaali tribesman banging at your gates? I wasn’t particularly planning on hurrying back,” Aldameda said, before turning and walking past Talon at a pace the younger found hard to match. All signs of her hobbling limp and enfeebled voice was gone, as they marched out along the eastward road to the Shattering Coasts.
8
“I’m telling you, this woman is a witch,” Ikrit said, once again in the back of the Sin Eater’s mind. Vekal sat wrapped in simple home-spun blankets in a chair by the fire of the woman’s stilted hut. Although dark, and a little smoky, Vekal had to admit that the place was actually quite cozy for a place that appeared to have been completely built by hand, by the woman across from him.
Meghan, as she called herself, was a northerner by appearance, lightened skin and hair that was a frizzy red, with skin that was littered with freckles from a life spent working outside. She was a quiet woman, stopping from her tasks only to talk to Kariss, her daughter with the exact same hair who sat on the other side of a round table, watching Vekal with wide eyes.
“She doesn’t speak,” Meghan said by way of explanation to Vekal, who hadn’t asked. The Sin Eater thought that the fact that the woman had offered the information said more about her than it did about the daughter. Did she feel guilty for having a mute child? As if she had done something wrong in childbirth? It was hard to turn off his Sin Eater’s mind sometimes, as the man found himself analyzing what was around him, sorting out the surface appearance from the probable causes beneath. It was an old habit, and one that he knew he should probably give up.
“Why? You’re the last of your order, aren’t you?” Ikrit said against his consciousness. The devil’s mind was hurting less as it found the natural cracks and grooves in Vekal’s soul and started to nestle in. Their long association had made the two fit together—if not comfortably, then at least adequately.
Vekal saw that the hut was, for the most part handmade, but it wasn’t the work of a skilled wood crafter, weaver, joiner or shaper. Rather, it was the work of someone who had become better with the more practice that they had as the building grew. This indicated she had always been alone out here, apart from her daughter Kariss, and that told the Sin Eater many things indeed.
Alone in the wilderness of the Shattering Coasts. Possibly one of the most lawless parts of the south. The Sin Eater took in the stout staffs by the door, the long bow, and the collection of cooking knives and pots that hung from the rafters. Resourceful. Determined.
“You have a nice home here,” Vekal said eventually, despite the devil inside of him insisting that it was a peasant’s hovel. In fact, the simple cot beds, the chairs, the stack of hides and fleeces, and the cupboards and storage boxes all seemed to the Sin Eater to be the signs of a simple and well-lived life—something that he could appreciate compared to the chaos and noise of Fuldoon.
“You think so?” The woman smirked, flicking her eyebrows as she continued to pound the sweet-smelling herbs into a paste on a flat river rock.
“Look at the way she handles those herbs! She’s a witch, I tell you,” Ikrit inside of him hissed, a little excitedly, for Vekal’s liking. “Lives alone. Has a weird kid. I wouldn’t be surprised if a black cat appeared any moment now.”
Shhh, fiend. Vekal frowned.
“What’s wrong? Your injuries?” Meghan was looking at the twitching Vekal oddly, and the Sin Eater had the strange sensation that maybe she could sense the devil inside of him.
“Oh uh, yes—just the injuries,” Vekal said.
“You still haven’t told me just what you were doing abandoned on the Shattering Coasts,” Meghan said heavily, scooping up the paste with a large knife and mixing it with some other gloopy substances, before adding them to a cup of heated water. “Here, drink this. It’ll help you heal.”
Vekal sniffed the offered drink suspiciously for a moment. Too many people had tried to kill him recently, but he took a nervous sip all the same, and found that it was actually quite nice.
“Nothing to fear, priest,” Meghan said. “Just a lot of fortifying herbs and some honey. Enough to lift any cold from your chest and give your body a fighting chance against whatever it’s been through.” The woman said the last words heavily, and added a look that said ‘and whatever it is you’ve been through is bound to be no good at all.’ But Vekal was thinking about the other words that she had uttered.
Priest. She called me priest.
“Uh… thank you,” said Vekal, sipping the drink again, and calculating how far it was to the door and whether he was fit enough to make it through before she could reach for her bow. With the devil’s help he probably could, but it was a close thing.
“I can see you’ve been through enough of something, at least.” Meghan sighed after a moment, turning to the platter of roasted boar meat and setting it beside Vekal’s chair. “And I don’t begrudge you your secrets, but it’s curious to have a Sin Eater this far out from the deserts.”
“Tell her you’re here to recruit,” Ikrit joked, causing another ripple of annoyance across Vekal’s face.
“Each to their own, I guess. I was only trying to help,” Meghan said, and sighed again.
“No, it’s a nervous tick, that is all.” Vekal wondered how much more trouble the devil inside of him would get him into. “I didn’t know that you had recognized me, I was shocked. One of our kind…”
“The Accursed?” Meghan smiled wryly. “I know of your kind. Or at least, I’ve hea
rd of you.”
“We prefer Morshanti,” Vekal said, a trace of pride still there somewhere. “I should say preferred. I don’t think that I am a Sin Eater anymore.”
Meghan looked surprised, enough to stop her cooking to regard Vekal slowly. “Now that is a tale worth telling. A Morshanti run away from Tir? How incredible.”
“It happens,” Vekal said, and well he knew. There had been a time, early on in his training in the Tower of Records when he would have given one of his arms to be able to run away. The training for the Sin Eaters was harsh and demanding, and the rewards very few indeed. The people of Tir’an’fal roundly hated them—thinking them tainted by the sins that they had heard, and the rest of the world thought them little better than necromancers or worse. “We don’t cavort with the dead, by the way,” he clarified.
“Only with devils?” Ikrit suggested.
“I never thought you did,” Meghan said. “But why choose the Shattering Coasts? Why here? Surely a man can get lost in Fuldoon much easier than out here.”
Vekal winced. “Fuldoon is…”
“Full of mad women who want to execute us?” Ikrit gave another helpful suggestion.
“Endangered,” he ended up saying. “Dal Grehb, have you heard of him?”
“Of course I have heard of him. The warlord of the north.” Meghan snorted, as she watched the priest eat some of the food she had prepared. Her child, Kariss, waited until the priest had taken a bite before she too, copied him almost exactly.
“He rides on Fuldoon. He took the city of the gods,” Vekal said. “Hence,” he spread his scarred hands to indicate his current position. He didn’t add that it was because of the very thing inside of him that made Dal Grehb travel that far.
“By root and branch. That is bad.” Meghan stopped and looked at her own child fearfully, considering how far the warlord would go. She had come to some decision as she shook her head and sighed, urging Vekal to eat more. “Well, you’re sure to be safe out here. He won’t come to the Shattering Coast.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“What, aside from the days and days of nothing out here? No society, no civilization, no riches for him to plunder. And further east there are only the World’s Edge mountains, and who knows what lies beyond there.”
“I do,” Ikrit said smugly, but before he could elaborate, Vekal did his best to push the devil to the back of his mind.
“And besides that, everyone knows that the Shattering Coast has a foul reputation. Home to monsters and specters and all of the nightmares that your mother kept you awake with at night.” Meghan made a face at Kariss, who bared her teeth fiercely back.
“And witches?” the devil buzzed.
“But what about… uh, I mean…” Vekal fought for control of his own mind as he spoke with Meghan, who was now looking at him strangely.
“How about us? Why is a lone mother and child out here in this terrible landscape?” Meghan set her hands on her hips. “Maybe you’re not the only one who has to hide, priest. And maybe you’re not the only one with secrets. Now, you get some rest for tomorrow starts early, and I can show you to the road that’ll take you to the only spit of a trader’s post around here.”
“I thought you said that there weren’t any villages or towns out here?”
“Oh, I said that there wasn’t any civilization around here, and that’s a big difference,” the woman said mysteriously, before smoothing her skirts and continuing. “The trading post is just that: a stone quay where sometimes a boat comes in and takes on fresh water for a day or so before going further down the coast to Fisheye or Fuldoon. I get some of the bits that I can’t make myself from there, but there’s no telling when a boat might come.” Meghan looked out of the darkened open window at the night sky outside. “Might be one near full moon, a week or so away now.”
“I’m not going to Fisheye or back to Fuldoon,” Vekal said.
Meghan took Kariss’s empty plates and patted her shoulder. “Come on now, Kariss, off to bed with you.”
Kariss shot her mother an annoyed look, but did as she was bade, disappearing up a ladder to a sleeping loft where she hustled and rustled for a moment, before her pale face appeared once more over the edge to stare at the newcomer downstairs.
“I mean it, Kariss. Bed!” Meghan pointed, and there was an annoyed huff and the face vanished. “Children.” The woman rolled her eyes, turning back to tidy the plates away. Vekal listened to the crackle of the fire in the hearth, and was almost falling asleep with the humming warmth of the food and whatever concoction that she had given him when Meghan was once again at his side, whispering.
“If you’re not heading to Fisheye, and you’ve come from Fuldoon, then you’re either mad or you’re heading for Telset. I know it’s none of my business, but I would advise you to reconsider, as you seem an almost intelligent sort.”
“And if I am mad?”
“Then there’s no helping you. Get some rest, we rise early.” The strange woman in the wilds blew out the candles and disappeared into the gloom, leaving her guest in his chair by the fire to chew over her words as he stared at the dying coals. Before he realized it, the Sin Eater was already asleep.
9
Vekal was walking through a street paved with white stones, but it was not any place that he recognized. It was not the city of the gods, and it was not the city of traders, Fuldoon. This one had wider streets than either, and whose buildings were mostly built of solid whitish stone, with pillars holding their eaves. Wide plazas held empty plinths where statues should have stood, and from rounded roofs sprouted flagpoles that bore no flags.
“What is this place?” Vekal asked, wondering if, once again he had been transported by the Lord Annwn’s wisdom and the Lady Iliya’s Mercy to some sort of heavenly citadel. It didn’t feel like a heaven though. Despite the way that his limbs moved sluggishly, and his vision blurred occasionally, still it did not have the bright and tranquil presence that he had felt in the rarest of his dreams.
No, this place felt to Vekal similar to the Tower of Records. It was dry of life, empty; a place full of history, regret, and solitude.
“Telset,” said a voice, both inside of him and around him. It sounded much less like a buzzing cloud of sin, and more like the cultured voice of a young man now, as Ikrit the devil talked. “I am surprised that you have not heard of it, with all of those hours spent with your nose in grimoires and scrolls.”
“Is it real?” Vekal reached out to the nearest pillar to feel a vague sort of resistance under his hands.
“Real? Ha! Now there is a question for the philosophers!” the devil croaked. “Telset is a city as real as you or I, but this is a dream. You are asleep and I am feeding your hungry little mind some of my own memories.”
Vekal tried to shudder. The very thought of being subject to the fiend’s past, to what sort of horrors that it must have inflicted made him want to be sick—if he had a stomach at the moment.
“Oh ye of little intelligence. This is a memory of my life, not of my death.” The devil sneered at him. “Although, if you prefer some of my more pleasing recollections of the Torture Gardens or the Quilt of Pins then it would be my pleasure…”
“No! No, that is quite alright,” the priest said hurriedly. “So… this is your life? You really walked these streets in flesh and blood?”
“Yes. Although ‘walked’ is perhaps an understatement. This city was designed to be a great place, even greater than Tir’an’fal if you would believe.”
“A greater city that Tir? Then why didn’t the Tower records mention it?” Vekal mused as he made his way past row after row of empty buildings, all in the same elaborate style.
“Because there is a history before history, and a time before time,” the devil was saying, with what the priest thought might almost be sadness. “Telset was never completed, and the people who were to live here never did. So your city of the gods grew and flourished, and your bird-brained deities lavished their gifts upon
it, whilst this one was forgotten.”
“But, why? Why build so much and not use it?” Vekal was amazed at the construction—far more elaborate than Tir’an’fal. Every stone was locked into place, with gutters down the streets and wells and water systems.
“Telset was designed to be the home of the greatest monarch who ever ruled the south, or so he thought. A home for the god’s to walk amongst the men and women, a place of learning and beauty… But the place fell under a curse before the monarch ever got to live here. Instead, the city became a mausoleum for their hopes and dreams. No stone was laid that did not cause a worker to break a finger or bruise a toe. No house was raised that did not have a body fall from its construction ladders. The ill-luck grew so vast that the entire site was abandoned, and every record of it scrubbed from the history scrolls,” the devil said, wistfully. The priest wondered if it was wistful as such a great piece of dark sorcery, or wistful for the human part of it that had once lived and walked this earth.
“And that is why even the Tower of Records will not record it,” Vekal said, as they passed another empty plaza, with empty buildings all around.
“Exactly, genius. Why-oh-why didn’t I get one of the cleverer Sin Eaters to possess instead of you?” Ikrit sighed theatrically.
“Probably because they were all butchered in your crazy quest to anger the gods,” Vekal replied heavily.
“Provoke the gods, not anger. Provoke. There is a difference,” Ikrit protested.
“Well, and look at what that got us. Half a continent at war, and drowned. Why are you showing me this? I thought we wanted the Isle of Gaunt? The Lockless Gate and all that.”
“Well, the Isle of Gaunt lies on the other side of Telset,” the devil said, its tone heavy and stilted. The priest wondered why the fiend hadn’t raised it before, if it had already known that they would have to go through this ghost city in order to get to their destination. Was this some kind of trip down memory lane for the fiend? Some kind of revisiting old haunts of its waking life?