by Jon Kiln
“That?” He thought that she must be smirking, from the sound of her voice. “Those are the hosts of heaven, Vekal.” She half-turned, nodding back behind her, where the Sin Eater thought that he could – just – see shapes in the glowing light. Bodies, figures, even solid shapes of buildings, trees…
“Then it is true. I really have passed the Lockless Gate? That this is heaven…?” Vekal could have wept, although he did not. His heart did not break for the vast injustices and cruelties that he had gone through. Instead, he felt oddly removed from his old life, like his time in the material, living world was a fast-vanishing dream.
“It will be a dream, if you let it, Vekal,” the lady said kindly. “You may pass on, if you want to.”
“Pass on… to heaven?” Now the Sin Eater really did shiver with strong emotion. It was the quest that his kind were trained for, were schooled in. To eat the sins of the world until they could purify it all. Until such a time as they would die, and the gods would accept them into their abode for their part in healing the garden of the world.
“You mean… I have… I am...” Vekal tried to search for the words. “Worthy?” he finished lamely.
“Your soul is not heavy, if that is what you are asking.” The lady sounded like a bemused tutor, and Vekal was her backward student.
But that cannot be. I have done so much. I lived with a devil inside of me for so long… Vekal felt humbled by this honor. He started to turn to the land of the glorious, the place that his soul had been directed to ever since he had been taken into the Tower of Records, as if it were an arrow held taut on a bow, and finally…
“Of course, young Vekal – you have served us well. Even if you leave much sadness behind you,” the strange woman said casually, making Vekal pause, as shame and doubt ran through him.
“Sadness?” the Sin Eater murmured. Of course, it was true – he had run at the head of the Menaali horde all the way to the trading city of Fuldoon, and ran through it as the armies had come to its very gates. He had sent a ship to its watery grave, thanks to the devil inside of him, and he had driven Meghan and her daughter – the two witchlings living in the wildlands of the Shattering Coast – from their home as thugs had come to persecute her.
“Meghan is here, look…” the woman stirred the great cauldron once more, and Vekal found himself turning, looking, as the disturbed waters started to boil and undulate, giving way to shadowy, different forms.
A woman, standing behind a bar in a dark and crowded inn. Large and rough figures swayed and swaggered this way and that, scars prominent across their faces, and cutlasses at their belts.
“Mother?” said a voice behind the robed woman, and she turned, revealing the chestnut hair and features of the widow Meghan that he had met, looking tense and worried as she regarded her daughter.
“Kariss,” Vekal gasped. She could walk, and see now, thanks to the healing that he had put upon her, but she did not look happy for all of her new gifts. She wore a canvas apron over her ragged clothes, and she clenched and worried her small, still-pudgy hands in her own.
“Kariss, get back inside,” Meghan hissed quickly, before her tone softened as she examined her daughter. A sigh. “Did it happen again? While you were awake?”
Kariss nodded, looking upset.
Meghan spared a glance back over the bar and the crowded room, but the assembled men and women seemed more concerned with loudly chanting songs and stamping their feet – at least for a moment. “Tell me. What did you see?”
The child frowned, looking upset, before she swallowed nervously. “I saw a door open in the sky. A door that spilled fire and blood.”
Meghan nodded seriously, throwing a wary glance above her as if her child’s vision would come true this very moment. “I will not let them hurt you, child. Not my little child…” she murmured, as there was a sudden loud knock on the table behind her. “Quickly girl, go back inside,” Meghan said, turning to the figure at the table.
Vekal’s breath caught in his throat when he saw who it was.
2
Sitting at the table was the crone, Aldameda. The woman seer who called herself a Guide, as Suriyen the warrior had called herself – one of the last of an ancient order who had hunted people like Vekal. Abominations. The accursed.
“But what is she doing there?” Vekal gasped. The last that he had seen of that old woman was when he had overheard her and Suriyen discussing whether or not to kill him, because he harbored Ikrit the devil inside of him. He had fled their supposed sanctuary in Fuldoon, but now she had somehow managed to find Meghan.
“She’ll kill her!” Vekal said in alarm as the watery vision, disturbed by his angry outbursts, rippled and disintegrated.
“She may. She may not. That is the way of the world, Vekal Morson,” the strange priestess said sadly, but with infinite patience. “It is not your concern now. Your soul has become light. You have a place here, in the halls of the ever-living. The ways of the Garden should not concern you…”
“But they do concern me!” Vekal burst out. “Meghan, Kariss, they are my friends.”
If I was to ever be happy, the young man thought, then it would have been with them. If my life had taken a different course. If I did not have a devil inside of me… And worse still, Vekal knew that the Guides had a holy mission to eradicate “evil” from the world. To protect the “Garden” from the devils and demons and accursed beings that sought to infiltrate the world.
Vekal wondered if Meghan and her child, as witchlings – those gifted with a touch of the Sight, or some other strange power, might just fall into that category for the old woman.
“I have to go back,” Vekal murmured, turning away from the indistinct shapes of heaven’s hosts.
“And why would you want to do that, little Vekal?” the priestess said, her constant stirring of the waters slowing, and finally, stopping. “Is it out of love? Or need to not have failed?”
Vekal did not understand the question.
“Is it for their sake that you would want to go back, or for your own?” the woman continued, speaking into the dark waters. It seemed to the Sin Eater as though this was a very important question to her.
“For them,” he said impulsively, and knew it to be true. “I know what danger they face. I can stop it.”
“Can you?” The woman looked up at him, full-faced, and Vekal suddenly realized who it was that he was talking to.
Lady Iliya the Merciful, the bride of Lord Annwn, the Judge. Vekal found himself looking at a woman’s face with dark hair, but, at the same time he was also looking at a silver mask of a hawk, with a diamond tear trapped running from one eye.
“My lady…” Vekal dropped to his knees. “I did not know.”
“Did you not?” the goddesses voice was amused, but not unkind.
“Please, my Lady Iliya – let me go back… somehow. Let me save them. They are good souls, they are good people,” Vekal babbled and bargained for their lives.
“It is not up to me whether they die or not. Come now, Vekal – you know that,” she said regretfully, before a more serious tone crept into her voice. “You had been the last of our servants in the Garden, Vekal Morson. The last Sin Eater trained in the City of Gods, in the ways of cleansing the sins from mortals. As such, I am inclined to be generous. Did we not need you here, in Heaven…”
“You need me? Here?” Vekal was dumbfounded. What could a god need with a poor and crooked soul like him?
“Arise, Sin Eater, and look!” At her words, Vekal did as he was commanded instinctively, to turn and look back into the dark waters that she stirred once more. The reflected light shattered and rippled, reformed into a fantastic landscape.
Vekal saw the suggestion of white towers, so high that they stretched into the clouds themselves. He saw great and impossible halls like this one, made of the purest marble and as quiet as tombs.
And he saw dark figures, moving at the corners and in the distances. Unlike any of their surroundings they app
eared out of shape in the way that they lurched and scampered. They looked – furtive.
But what reason has any of those who live in heaven to be secretive? To hide? Vekal thought. “Who are they?”
“Devils, Vekal,” Iliya’s voice was chilling. “It wasn’t just you who crossed through the Lockless Gate, but a devil named Koulash, and of course…”
“Ikrit,” Vekal sneered. “Or Gehin, as he was once known.”
“Yes. Gehin the Abomination. A sorcerer of Telset, who bargained away his soul for the love of a woman, to become Ikrit,” the goddess said sadly. “He, too, was one that I had high hopes for.”
Vekal quavered as the implication. Did his goddess think that he was similar to the devil that he had harbored for so long?
“It was not Koulash that opened the Gate, it was you, Vekal,” the goddess continued. “The Gate to heaven could not remain closed to you, one of our chosen. But as soon as the devils passed through, the gate was broken. It is open now, and there is free passage between the Garden, the Hells beneath, and Heaven.” Iliya turned away from the scene of the invaders to look over her shoulder, towards the laughing, joyous, indistinct figures.
“The Hosts of Heaven do not know it yet, but my husband will go amongst them, and rouse them shortly. Heaven will be at war, and it will be fierce and bloody. For too long have we tried to restrain and subdue the devils. Now, I fear, that we must destroy them utterly.”
“And the Garden Meghan and Kariss?” Vekal said.
“The war is coming, Vekal. And that is why I need you here, in heaven. To join our hosts…”
“But my friends!” Vekal shook his head uselessly. He knew that he could no more resist the goddesses wishes than he could decide to turn into a rock, but still his heart broke.
There was silence from the woman at his side, as they could both still hear the faint sounds of the happy heaven-dwellers beyond. Happy for now, at least. Until the invading devils got to them.
“You are lucky that it is I who tends the Pool of Remembrance, little Vekal,” Iliya said softly. “I am the Merciful. I am the one who feels the sorrows of the Garden. My lord Annwn has no such weakness…”
“It is no weakness, my lady.” Vekal felt ashamed to hear his deity speak so frankly.
“I can offer you a compromise, because I like you, Vekal. You are the last of our servants who remember the old ways, and you are motivated by mercy for your friends, as I am.” Iliya looked up at him, and, past the shifting bird-woman face, the Sin Eater thought he could even see a shadow of a smile.
“My mercy can extend to this – although you will not think it a mercy. I can give you a limited amount of time back in your Garden, but it comes with conditions, and problems.”
“Anything. I agree, my lady,” Vekal said quickly. He would do anything to save the only people who had been nice to him just because he was human, not a Sin Eater, or devil-ridden.
“You must take this one back with you. He is unworthy to be here.” Iliya’s tone was, if anything, harsh as there was a scuffling sound from behind them, and Vekal turned to see that there were other, tall, white-robed figures like priests, dragging something between them. A figure.
It was Ikrit.
“Get off me! I am trying to save you!” the figure writhed and spasmed.
Vekal had never seen Ikrit in his true form – not his human form of Gehin, the man that he had once been – but his demonic form. The one that he had worn in hell.
To say that his scaled, reddish skin and his swept-back horns looked out of place here in the pristine, glowing white halls would be an understatement.
The Sin Eater recoiled, as the shape of the devil seemed to shed darkness and shadows all about him. His eyes were yellow, and split down the middle like a cats’, and he had black hair sprouting from behind his horns and around his ears. He wore dark, stained leathers, the sort with many buckles and straps that Vekal hated to think what they could be used for.
“It is you…” Vekal said in a horrified awe as the creature was brought before them, and thrown to the ground, where the monstrosity that he had been so in terror of collapsed over his own knees and shuddered in the presence of the goddess.
“Vekal! Tell them, please, tell them!” the devil gibbered and hissed. “I was trying to save my love, Eiver – to get to heaven where she resides – I never meant to break the Gate!”
“Ikrit, shut up,” Vekal snapped at him. He could feel no remorse for the devil’s stupidity, as the Sin Eater could remember watching his own bodies’ actions in the few times that this demon had taken over, had ripped apart people’s throats and their beating hearts from their chests in an orgy of violence.
“I saved you, priest!” Ikrit half sneered, half wailed, but his voice fell silent at a nod from the Lady of Mercy.
“Ikrit the devil says that he was not a part of the plan to destroy the Gate, but my husband cannot believe so. All we know is that the Lockless Gate is open, and there are devils approaching our domain.” The Lady Iliya was stern. “Ikrit, you are sentenced to return to the Garden. If you truly have no hand in this sin, then you can work to undo it.”
The devil writhed for a moment, shuddering. “But my Eiver? Is she here, at least? Can I just see her, just once…?”
The goddess ignored his pleas as she turned to the Sin Eater, this time. “As for you, Vekal. You, I will grant to return to the Garden, but only for a limited time, when your body will fall and your final judgement – by Lord Annwn, not I – will await you. As this devil is tied to your soul, Vekal, than I am afraid that you must take it back with you.”
Vekal opened and closed his mouth, realizing what it was that the goddess was demanding. To return to the world to save Meghan and Kariss, but to have this devil once again inside of him. Just like before.
“But… if I stay here, and join the hosts?” Vekal said uncertainly, as Ikrit seethed and whimpered at his feet.
“You may do that if you wish. You will fight in my Lord Annwn’s armies against the devils. You may win. Or you may be destroyed.” Iliya was implacable.
“And what would happen to Meghan? To Kariss?” Vekal dared to urge her. He did not want to rush into having this devil strapped to his mind once more. Wasn’t that precisely what had caused this cosmic mess? But still, he also knew that Ikrit had torn apart the politics of the Southern Lands all to get here, and to see the woman that he loved: Eiver.
“And what would happen to Ikrit?” Vekal heard himself say.
“Meghan and Kariss may die, or they may not,” Iliya said, once again noncommittal and impenetrable. “The war of heaven will spill out into the Garden. There will be massive slaughters, possessions, diseases, apocalypses. They may be lucky enough to survive. As for Ikrit? If you do not take him back, then I will have to have him destroyed. Now. Here,” she said, with cold certainty.
“Vekal? Don’t let them do it! Please!” Ikrit suddenly wheedled, making the Sin Eater angry, just for a moment. Why did he have to listen to anything that the devil wanted, after the hell that it had put him through? After the war that it had started that tore apart his home city?
“Shut up.” The Sin Eater looked back at the dark waters of the giant pool, and wondered what he should do.
But there really isn’t a choice, is there? The priest said to himself, feeling something like peace settle on his crooked heart. He would go back to the world, and he would try to save Meghan and Kariss.
And he would take the devil back with him. After all, he was a Sin Eater, wasn’t he? This was what he was supposed to do, to eat the sins of those around him, and now, the man reasoned, he would be eating his own sin. The crime of bringing the devils here to heaven in the first place.
To be denied heaven is a fitting punishment, isn’t it? Vekal thought, raising his head to look at Iliya as he nodded. “I’ll do it. I’ll take Ikrit. I’ll go back.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Ikrit started to gasp in gratitude, but once again the deities’ wor
ds cut him off.
“You know duty, Vekal Morson, and for that I commend you,” the Lady Iliya of Tears said, as she casually snapped her fingers and Ikrit the devil disappeared. The Sin Eater didn’t immediately feel the devil inside of him, but then again, he also didn’t know if he had a body here in this celestial place at all, either.
“What a story, little Vekal,” the goddess’s words were soft as she stepped forward, and, to the young man’s amazement, she raised a hand to gently cup the side of his face with her palm. It was soft, and it made the Sin Eater forget for a moment all the woes that he carried with him.
“You are a worthy soul, Vekal Morson,” the lady said, and Vekal felt that it was the highest praise that she could give, until she leaned forward, and brushed his cheek with her soft lips, and Vekal gasped–
And woke up somewhere else entirely.
3
“Do you want to repeat that again?” Meghan said as she reached for the tankard at the end of the bar and casually picked up her cloth. The woman wondered if she could be quick enough to bring the tankard down on the old woman’s head before she said anything.
Meghan and her daughter had fled after the attack from the locals who had burned down her cottage. If it hadn’t been for Vekal saving us, Meghan recalled sadly, then they too would be burnt corpses beside the road somewhere. She had intended on crossing the Inner Sea to the Kingdom of Thrane perhaps, to start a new life there.
Not that it would have been any easier than down here, she considered, eyeing the old woman sceptically.
Mother Aldameda just eyed her back, her small and dark eyes glittering like an inquisitive crow.
But Meghan’s path had slowed, and finally halted in the days since Vekal had left her. She had wound up here, at the Gull of Roscorn tavern on the edge of the Shattering Coast, a place that was just as likely to entertain pirates and slavers as it was the Fuldoonian navies. It was easy for an attractive, full-figured woman such as herself to get a job here behind the bar, and although it was not a job that she relished or enjoyed, she worked hard. The owner, a little bald man by the name of Kaplan, was uncouth, but he was fair. He protected his staff, and that was all that Meghan wanted. And enough money to buy my daughter some safety.