Blood and Sand Trilogy Box Set

by Jon Kiln

  ‘I am warning you, priest!’ Ikrit thrashed his limbs, forcing his mouth open to holler between the creed of the Sin Eaters.

  “Help! Brothers, I am here!” Vekal heard his own voice shout to the demon-controlled boat.

  “Only the dead can grant life; for the living can only give themselves away…” Vekal managed to gasp the final refrain, and, in that instant, he felt the dreadful power holding onto his limbs lessen, and the thud of pain return in his back where the Menaali arrow had lodged.

  He howled in agony as his ‘normal’ body was returned to his control. The devil was still there, inside of him, thrashing and angry – but it was also pushed back from the forefront of his senses and his body by the holy words of the Creed.

  The Creed had the power to heal the sins of others, with the devil’s help, but now that Vekal had seen heaven, had visited heaven, a new-found certainty swept through him. He wouldn’t be the abomination’s puppet. He wouldn’t swim to the devils.

  Vekal turned, ducking under the waves to power himself back, back towards Gaunt even as his legs spasmed and pain shook him.

  ‘You’re making a terrible mistake…’ Ikrit’s voice was nothing but a thin whisper of scorn against his senses now.

  “I probably am,” Vekal cried with the effort. “But it will be my mistake.”

  And it was at that moment that things slapped into the water around him, sending plumes of sprays all over his half-drowning form. As Vekal turned over to thrash in the water, he saw them for what they were – ropes. The sky over his patch of chaotic waters was dark with shadow, and he saw that it was one of the strange, floating triremes – they had thrown him a rope.

  ‘No! They are our enemies!’ Ikrit howled inside of him.

  “Not my enemy, imp.” Vekal seized the nearest coil of heavy hemp rope, wrapping it around his hands and his belt as his fingers started to stiffen with the cold. Much longer in the seas, in his present condition and without the devil’s animating power, and he would die. He didn’t have the strength to pull or climb up himself, so he just hung weakly to the ropes, as he felt a lurch in the world around him.

  10

  “He is alive, just,” a man’s voice was saying stoically as Vekal spluttered and gasped on wooden boards. Everything hurt, and he was shivering cold. He didn’t think that he had ever been so cold before, like his spine was made of ice. He couldn’t hear the devil inside of him at the moment, but his ears still buzzed with the thud and hammer of pain.

  Don’t let me die, don’t let me die… he wondered who he prayed to, the Lady Iliya and Lord Annwn, or Ikrit.

  “Then get him inside, quick,” a woman’s voice was saying, as strong hands seized him and lifted him from the deck of the strange aerial vessel. “Sails! Balloons! Get us over safe water!” he heard the woman shout as he was borne away, every inch of his body protesting, through a door and suddenly into dark corridors.

  The glare of lamplight washed over him at intervals, and his carrier turned first one way, and then another, before bringing him into a dim-lit room, heavy with the scent of incense.

  “Steady now,” he heard the man holding him say as he was laid down on something soft. Soft! How long had it been since he had that luxury?

  More lights hurt his eyes as candles were lit around him, and, through his pain, Vekal caught sight of a large wooden room with beds like biers to each side and across from him. Dark shapes moved from one to another, and Vekal realized that this must be some kind of infirmary for the strange boats. A bowl was pressed to his lips, and warmth spilled down his throat. Sweet and spicy, the substance brought with it a warm numbness that spread throughout his entire body.

  Hands dabbed and washed away grime and wounds, and, when he was turned over (to gasp with pain) and his tunic was cut away, he heard a hiss from the healers that tended to him.

  “That doesn’t look good. Get Saphiel,” said a very human-sounding voice.

  More pain followed, during which Vekal passed in and out of blackness, and occasionally a smaller clay thimble of the warming, numbing mixture was offered to his lips. He coughed and spluttered on it, but still drank it eagerly.

  “Who… who are you…?” he managed to gasp.

  “Shhh. No talk for now,” the unseen healer said, prodding the old wound in the center of his back that was long-since healed, but there was still something terribly wrong with it. The Sin Eater cried out in agony.

  “This is him?” a new voice asked, a woman’s voice and the same one that he had heard on the deck.

  “An old arrow strike, I believe, ma’am,” the healer’s tone was muted, respectful. “It has healed, but look…”

  “Healed bad,” the woman that Vekal took to be Saphiel murmured. “There is still infection in there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is still a sliver of the arrowhead in there too. Look, the way the infection spreads down his spine.”

  Another gentle prod at the base of his spine felt like the woman was spearing him with a hot poker.

  “It’s a wonder that he is alive, he certainly couldn’t walk,” said the healer.

  “Well, not without aid,” the second voice said dryly. “It is him. The one we were told about. Look at the scars all over his body,”

  An agreeing noise from the other woman.

  “Hold him down,” the woman named Saphiel said, and as hands suddenly shoved him hard on the shoulders, Vekal was struck by a thunderbolt in the center of his back.

  ***

  When Vekal next awoke, it was to the shudder and shake of the trireme’s walls. He heard gasps and anguished shouts coming from either his fellow patients or the healers, and running feet.

  But strangely, despite the chaos – he felt better. A whole hell of a lot better, in fact.

  ‘Or should that be a heaven of a lot better, idiot.’ Ikrit popped up in his mind like a cork, as if nothing had ever happened.

  But something had happened, the Sin Eater knew. He could sense the devil now more as a discrete entity, an actual shadow to the side of his mind, not an all-encompassing buzz, but like its own creature. One that he could listen to if he wanted, but didn’t have to.

  ‘Okay, stop crowing in your good fortune,’ Ikrit said miserably, doing the psychic equivalent of sitting in the corner with his head in his hands. ‘We’re in the midst of the angels. Yay for you. It must be what you always wanted.’

  “The angels?” Vekal thought in bewilderment. The Hosts of Heaven. Hadn’t the Lady Iliya said that they were coming to the Garden to defend the Lockless Gate?

  ‘To destroy it, more like,’ Ikrit said sadly. ‘And that is what you and all your holy mumblings will have caused. No way to get to heaven now. Not for anyone.’

  “You have the way we always have. Redemption,” Vekal muttered, pushing himself up into a seated position. There was a twinge in his back, but no more than an old wound, healing. What had they done to him?

  ‘You have no idea, do you, priest.’ The devil started to do what it did best: argue, but Vekal shoved it violently back from him, deeper into his mind.

  “Enough. You were going to sell us out to the Hordes of Hell, imp. I’ve had enough of accepting your wisdom so blindly.”

  He looked around him, to see that, although this place was like any other healer’s hall he might have seen in the City of the Gods, it was still unlike any other. The ceiling was held up by thick tree-trunk pillars, each one carved with curling vines and fruits. On the walls had been carved the reliefs of giant winged birds.

  Who were these people? he thought, as he saw one of the nearest healers.

  She was a little smaller than he was, with skin that was gold-red, and with long, black, wiry hair. Around her neck she wore a gold ornament made of lots of separate gold sections, covering her collar bone and halfway up her neck. She wore a silver-grey robe thrown back over her shoulders, but her dress underneath was made of a fine cotton, a cross-over wrap tunic and pantaloon pants. Vekal had never seen their like before, which surprised
him. The City of the Gods – Tir’an’Fal, in his old language, was meant to record the histories of the entire world. But no scroll in the Tower of Records had described these people and their floating, balloon-triremes.

  Just like it hadn’t described the ancient city of Telset, either. The birthplace of Ikrit back when he had been but a human sorcerer.

  How much didn’t he know about the world, he thought, just as he realized that it was probably going to be a lot, as a woman swept into the room.

  “Sin Eater,” said the woman, staring hard at Vekal. She was dressed like the others, although she wore a heavy gold necklace at her throat instead of the collar. She was a little taller than the other healer woman, but with the same red skin and black hair. Her eyes were startlingly bright, and her clothes were a soft cream linen, edged in cold concentric circles. “I am Saphiel-Oulia, of Avantis, whom the south calls The Fire People.”

  “I can see why.” Vekal remembered the barrels of burning pitch oil that the triremes had thrown from their decks to the devil-controlled ships below.

  Ikrit emerged for long enough to hiss a warning in Vekal’s mind. The Sin Eater ignored him.

  “I know what you are, Sin Eater,” Saphiel said. “I can see the abomination riding you like a black cloud,”

  Vekal tensed. Was he going to be healed of the injury that had been Ikrit’s hold over him just to be punished by his rescuers?

  “And normally, I would not hesitate to dispatch you to the underworld just as quickly as we do so to the enemies below,” she said carefully, her voice steady and exact. “But I have had word not just what you are, but also who you are. Vekal Morson, beloved of Iliya.”

  The Heavenly Hosts… This is what Ikrit meant by delivered to angels, Vekal realized. “You–you are from heaven?”

  “I am what you might call an angel,” the woman smiled faintly. “The Hosts of Heaven have long had a relationship with the people of Avantis, and so when…” a look of annoyance crossed her features, “…the trouble happened, they welcomed our arrival into their bodies.” Saphiel-Oulia raised her hands in gratitude. “I am the angel Saphiel, and the human that I reside in is the Priestess Oulia, the leader of Avantis. And we have come to defend the Lockless Gate from the enemies of heaven, and to ensure that your stupidity will never be repeated again.”

  ‘That glowy tart will destroy the Gate!’ Vekal whispered.

  “You will destroy it?” Vekal echoed.

  “Of course,” Saphiel-Oulia nodded. “Will that be a problem?”

  “No.”

  ‘Yes! What right does she have to do that? What right do the gods have to close all the doors to their abode?’ Ikrit’s anger was so intense that it made Vekal cough, and his hands atop their blanket twitched.

  “Your devil doesn’t like it, I see,” Saphiel-Oulia smiled slowly. “Good. Disappointing devils is what I am here to do.”

  Vekal thought of Meghan and Kariss, and the Lady Iliya’s words to him. “I came back to look for someone,” he blurted out. “I mean, that is my mission here, ordained by the Lady of Mercy herself.”

  A moment of silence from the angel-woman, before Saphiel-Oulia nodded slowly. “I know. Meghan and Kariss of the Shattering Coasts?”

  “How do you know?” Vekal gasped.

  ‘Don’t trust the feathery cow!’ Ikrit snarled.

  “Because I am an angel, silly human. The humans are on their way here as we speak. They are being brought to us by a brother of mine.”

  “Oh,” Vekal said, stunned that it could be so easy. “Thank you.”

  “I do not need your thanks, Sin Eater,” Saphiel-Oulia said gravely, as the floor rocked once more. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have some devils to burn.”

  11

  Meghan sat in the mess hall of the Red Hand, crowded with other pirates, watching Oberra. Or Ruthiel-Oberra, she thought with a scowl.

  “Potato?” Kariss said at her side, spearing another chunk of the greyish-looking vegetable in the stew in front of her.

  “That’s right, honey. Potato,” she said absently, watching as Oberra picked up a mug of his wine and downed it as normally as if he were any other regular human being.

  But he’s not, the herbalist scowled. The thing was, he even laughed and talked just as the old Pirate Lord Oberra had done. No, better. She saw his Quartermaster beside him – a large man with a shaved head, dabbing at his eyes in mirth.

  The pirate angel sat at the ‘head’ table, holding court as he regaled them with some story of past misdemeanors, earning chuckles and outright guffaws from those surrounding him. There was the Quartermaster Heg, the First Mate (a woman with a shaved head named Fatim) as well as a few others that Meghan didn’t know the name of. At the end of the table, sitting on a stool where the others shared a bench perched the boy Talon – the one that had been accompanying Mother Aldameda, but who appeared to have taken to this new life of sea adventures with great relish.

  Don’t trust him! Meghan thought in alarm as she watched the boy. He, lanky and youthful, she had thought was like Kariss in some way. Touched by something fey, or perhaps she had just recognized a fellow outsider amongst this surly crew.

  “Ugh. Bad.” Kariss wrinkled her nose, looking around their own corner of the table. Meghan had made sure since coming on board the Red Hand that they remained the furthest, quietest, and most out of the way of people on the boat, and their current table was half the size of the others, and wedged into the corner under a round porthole. She didn’t want to give any of these dangerous men and women ideas that they might be anything other than scared, nothing special, nothing that would warrant attention. It was a role that she could play quite well, as she realized that she felt scared right now.

  It’s his eyes, she thought as she watched Oberra. They were too sharp, too darting. When they swept over the room – as if he were any other captain checking that his crew were happy and content, Meghan thought he saw them calculating too quickly. As if he were judging us. Meghan realized then that she didn’t feel freed by her “rescue” from the Shattering Coast by Mother Aldameda. She felt trapped.

  “Bad…” Kariss said again, her voice more insistent.

  “I know it is sweetheart, but it’s good food. You have to eat it,” Meghan sighed distractedly, turning to her daughter to see her eyes suddenly staring out of the porthole, into the greying storm skies beyond.

  Oh no. Meghan felt it at the same time as the nearest of the other pirates did, on their own benches and tables. A pooling of cool air in this warm and sweaty room.

  And it came from her own daughter.

  “Kariss? Kariss – wake up!” Meghan gripped her little girl’s shoulder urgently. She had felt something like this from her before, but never in her waking hours, and never this strong. Her daughter was now rising from her seat, casually pushing herself to stand on the bench as she continued to stare out of the porthole.

  “Bad. Bad.” Her voice was rising in alarm.

  “Kariss, sit down, please!” Meghan wrapped her arms around her, only to feel her little girl’s body rigid as if made of stone.

  “What’s got into her bonnet?” Meghan heard one of the pirate’s grumble. They had noticed.

  “It’s nothing, just a fancy…” Meghan said awkwardly, but Kariss clearly had something to say.

  “Bad!” she suddenly wailed, her voice high-pitched and plaintive, cutting through the growl and grumble of older voices like a gull through a storm. “It’s coming!” she screeched, raising a small, pudgy arm to point out of the porthole, before collapsing backwards into Meghan’s arm.

  “Holy spit,” the nearest pirate to her suddenly pushed himself away on his bench, as if he might catch some of the girl’s craziness.

  Please no, please no… Meghan clutched at her girl’s form, to see that her eyes were still unstaring, and her body twitched.

  “What’s wrong with her?” a man’s voice was shouting.

  “Look!” Another voice – and the alarm in it even mad
e Meghan holding her girl glance up through the round window to what her daughter had been trying to warn them of.

  A wall of black cloud, that hadn’t been there scant seconds before, frothing and boiling as the winds whipped and tore at it – and it was coming straight for them.

  12

  “All hands! Watersprite!” the Quartermaster was shouting, jumping from his seat and scattering plates and bowls as he did so. Elsewhere, pirates were doing the same, scrambling from their meals for the decks.

  “Get the sails reefed!” Meghan heard Oberra ordering, and, “secure all lines – we’ll ride her out!”

  But Meghan only had eyes on her daughter, putting a hand to her cheek to see her twitching and shaking slowing, and then her eyes flutter close.

  “She’ll sleep. We must get her to safety,” a voice said over her shoulder amid the chaos, making her start. It was the sudden form of Mother Aldameda, appearing as if summoned, and peering at the child.

  “I’m very capable of looking after my own daughter,” Meghan said, picking her child up (growing larger and heavier now, she thought) as she hurried back towards their bunk, with Mother Aldameda following behind.

  That was when the strange storm hit, rocking the boat and throwing the women against the wall. Meghan heard shouts and screams from above them on the decks as the pirates wrestled with their boat, and, keening above it – a sound like high-pitched laughter.

  “What is that?” Meghan flushed with fear. Was that ‘just’ the storm? It had sounded so alive!

  “The watersprite. This is no normal storm.” Aldameda reached to steady the herbalist, helping her down the swaying and rocking corridor.

  Another blow slammed into the side of the boat, and Meghan was sure that she heard the splinter of wood, as her stomach spun. The entire boat was spinning it seemed, as the whirling winds played with it like a child’s toy.

  “Then what is it?” Meghan breathed, managing to take another few steps before the boat swung again.

  “It’s the devils of hell. They’ve come for the girl,” Aldameda said.