Sin Eater

by Shel, Mike

  Auric managed to rise to his knees, brushing the dirt from his cheek with a shirt sleeve. He reached out and took the sword from the priest. The sin eater was again sitting back on his haunches, a queer mixture of filth and calm.

  “My cowardice…”

  “It’s not the trembling of your hands, the nightmares that plague your sleep, Auric of Pescham. It is the way you recoil from pain. That is the demon that bests your resolve.”

  “I should wallow, then, in my suffering? How is that different from the flagellants we passed, tearing their own flesh, bringing more pain into the world than already exists?”

  “Don’t wallow,” said the priest, revealing brown teeth as his lips pulled back from them. “Respect it, learn from it.”

  “The same old bromide,” spat Auric, disgusted. “Our suffering is sent by the gods to test and temper us.”

  The sin eater clucked his tongue. “Huh. The gods. Auric, my friend and brother, we don’t grow because of pain. We grow in spite of it. We learn from our failures, we atone for our sins, we strive to leave a better world for our children. Our children.”

  Auric sat back, gutted. “Agnes.”

  “Yes. Agnes. Perhaps some lives are cut short, because that is all the time allotted them—the gods cut the skein of our years as we are formed in our mothers’ wombs. Perhaps the length of our lives is determined by chance, the collision of a million choices made by ourselves and others. I don’t know. Nor does any man or woman who would call themselves wise. Show care, my friend, for those choices you make, and how they might sever the life threads of those we hate, or disdain, as well as those whom we love.”

  The two of them sat in a long, malodorous silence, bone and twine icons hanging overhead. Auric thought on the sin eater’s words. They were at once comforting and disturbing.

  “You’re a queer sort of sin eater, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Aye. And you’re not the first to say so.”

  “Agnes,” said Auric again.

  “Agnes,” echoed the sin eater. “The others you have failed are all dead. She lives. How will you atone for the injury you have done her?”

  Auric hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “No, you don’t. But you will, when the time comes. You will find a way to atone for the wrong you have done to her.”

  The sin eater’s words hung in the stinking air. After what seemed an eternity, Auric asked another question, even though he thought he knew its answer. “Are we finished here?”

  “No,” answered the ragged priest, a little sad. “It is early, and we still have much to speak of, you and I.” He reached a broken-nailed hand into a pocket of his foul vestments and pulled out a small leather bag. He shook it, and the contents within rattled. It was the distinctive rattle of bones.

  31

  Incense

  The sun was rising when the sin eater finally released her from his squalid cave, buttoning up the filthy hood he wore so that he wouldn’t witness the morning rays that reached their fingers down the entry tunnel. Agnes blinked in the light of that bright, cloudless day. Having never before submitted to that unpleasant ritual, she doubted she would ever do so again; not if she had a say. There was no relief. She did not feel unburdened. Rather, it was as though she was covered with a sick residue. Her eyes red from crying half the night, she stretched at the precipice and took in a deep breath, trying to shake off the ordeal. So much cryptic talk from the sin eater about Raimund—hinting, sly suggestions, leading…where? Meaning what?

  When she turned back to the cliff face, she witnessed Kennah come crawling out of an opening as though a hungry demon snapped at his heels. He stopped and sat back on his haunches, looking down at the worn slate tiles. Then he yelled up at the sky, an anguished bellow that broke her heart. She went to him, put a hand on his shoulder for comfort. He jerked away, surprised. When he saw it was her, he hung his head and let Agnes hug him to her, only a bit taller than him now, though she was standing and he was on his knees. His words were muffled, spoken as they were into the hardened leather breast of her cuirass.

  “I failed Ruben, more than once. And I’ll never make it up to him.”

  “That’s nonsense, Kennah,” she answered, cradling him against her armored chest. “You couldn’t stop that arrow, couldn’t have taken it yourself. Ruben wouldn’t—”

  Kennah jerked away from her roughly, making the scar from her father’s sword burn like an angry torch. “No! No, you don’t understand! It’s…” He trailed off, embracing her again, weeping into her cuirass.

  “What, Kennah? What?”

  He mumbled something, weeping like a child.

  “Kennah,” Agnes said in soothing tones, stroking his tangled black hair. “I can’t understand what you’re—”

  “…since we were boys!” were the words Agnes heard as he pulled away again from her, eliciting more burning from the fresh scar made by Szaa’da’shaela. His eyes were bloodshot and heavy from tears and lack of sleep. He looked exhausted, perhaps frightened. She decided she needed to give him some sort of comfort.

  “Later, Kennah. When all this is over. You and I will talk about whatever this is. Sin eaters know things they shouldn’t, fuck with your head. I’m sure Ruben—”

  “No, Peregrine!” he wept. “I was too much a coward to say it while he was alive!”

  To say what? she wondered. Again he buried his face in the leather of her armor and she embraced him, letting the big man sob against her. A few moments later, Sira came out from another cliffside tunnel, a little dazed. Kennah caught Agnes’s gaze and stood quickly, wiping tears from his face and clearing his throat with a manly rumble. He put a hand on Agnes’s shoulder, again the big, burly swordsman.

  “When this is all done with, Peregrine,” he whispered to her. “We’ll work it out then.” He then walked over to Sira, affecting a casual air, asking how she fared.

  How silly men are, thought Agnes. How much like confused, frightened little boys.

  Within the hour, all five Syraeics had emerged from sin eater hovels in the mountainside. Agnes’s father was the last to rejoin them, looking shaken. He embraced her for a long while, until at last it grew awkward and Agnes broke his grip, patting him on the chest like an over enthusiastic dog. He looked at her strangely. “What is it, Father?”

  He smiled at her, stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “I’m proud of what you’ve made of yourself, Agnes. You’ve grown into a fine woman and a skilled Syraeic. Your mother and your Aunt Lenda would both be pleased.”

  The compliment should have warmed her heart. Instead, at the mention of her godmother, she felt a cold chill. She thanked him, muttered something about always wanting to make him proud, and looked to the ground, lost in an uneasy mix of emotion.

  When they ascended the final approach to the caves of Gnexes, Bocca led them, the only member of the procession who looked rested that morning. Agnes was surprised by what she saw when they reached the summit: an enormous cave mouth, forty feet high and twice as broad, most of it bricked over with rough mountain stones in a hundred shades of black, white, and brown. A great portcullis barred the opening, an archway twenty feet high. Three solemn priests hovered nearby, sunken-eyed, heads shorn of all hair, expressionless, eyes bulging. They reminded Agnes of a trio of frogs. They were clad in shapeless gray robes that gave no hint of gender.

  At least thirty other pilgrims had made the ascent that morning. Agnes and her companions stood at the periphery of the crowd. Bocca addressed the Syraeics, though it was clear he was mostly talking to her father. “Many have said of me that I have a silver tongue. I confess it’s true. However, our best chance of reaching the Videna is by an application of gold.”

  Auric grimaced and reached for his purse. “How much will this require?”

  “All of it,” grinned Bocca.

  “All of it?”

 
; “Aye. I have to talk them into conducting a ritual done but once a month, and it has already happened, not twelve days ago. My silver tongue and a fat bag of coins will persuade them to overlook the impropriety of conducting the ceremony so soon.” Her father made to speak again, but Bocca held up a hand. “Don’t worry about money for your return journey, Sir Auric of Pescham. It is needed now.”

  “We have the queen’s script when we head back for Boudun,” offered Sira, laying a hand on Auric’s arm. His expression sour, he turned the purse over to Bocca. The blond-haired man weighed the leather bag in his hand, bobbed his head from side to side, and then nodded.

  “I suppose I’ll need to lay the silver on thickly.” And with that, Bocca pushed his way through the crowd to the sunken-eyed priests, whose expressions changed not at all as he reached them. A casual hand on his hip, he began talking to the tallest of the three clerics. Some amiable banter to weasel our way to the front of the line? wondered Agnes. What sort of ritual would this be? At last, one of the shorter priests took the proffered bag of coins and walked to the closed portcullis, shouting something Agnes couldn’t make out. Bocca nodded with enthusiasm and put a friendly hand on the tall priest’s gray-robed arm. The priest—him or her; Agnes couldn’t decide on the cleric’s sex—shook his or her head and waved Bocca away. Their Candle turned back around with a shrug and rejoined them.

  “Good news and bad,” he said with a grin. “Kendas of the Puckered Asshole is chief gatekeeper this morning. Ye gods! If that man’s sphincter was any tighter he could manufacture diamonds out of coal. Well, we’ll have to wait through the full, tiresome display before the ritual that matters. I must stay here, where we stand. I hope you enjoy the smell of incense. You’re in for a lot of it.”

  “And I thought that silver tongue of yours opened all doors,” commented Chalca.

  “Some holes,” answered Bocca, holding up his clenched hand, “would resist the very fist of God.”

  Agnes laughed at the man’s reckless irreverence. She imagined Raimund blanching at such talk. Raimund. Before meeting with the loathsome sin eater she hadn’t thought of her lover in days. Indeed, she hadn’t even said goodbye to him before leaving Boudun. What did it mean? Was she bored with him? Was his kindness, the gentle lovemaking, his attentive ear, were they not enough for her? Was there something she needed the soft-spoken priest couldn’t provide? She tried to imagine Raimund with them now, instead of Sira. Impossible. She only saw him lying next to her in bed, asleep, or clad in his ceremonial vestments in the apse of the Blue Cathedral. Not here, not in the field.

  The rituals of which Bocca spoke began soon after his exchange with the priests. White smoke started to emerge from the darkness, escaping between beams of the portcullis. First it was only a few feathery wisps, but soon vast clouds blew out, like the exhalations of some great beast. The Syraeics were far enough back to avoid the smoke, but the smell of it tickled at Agnes’s nostrils, flowery and cloying.

  “Blessed Belu,” said Chalca, covering his nose with the fold of his elbow. “I think I might prefer the stink of the sin eater to that obnoxious fragrance.”

  “Better get used to it, lad,” said Bocca. “This is only the beginning of that scent.”

  Agnes smiled at their Candle’s use of the term “lad.” If she had to guess, Chalca was a few years older than Bocca. The man didn’t lack for confidence, and Agnes’s faith in their guide was undeterred: she was still certain they needed his aid. At the same time, she wondered how he drummed up any business here. She guessed that most pilgrims would be put off by his humor, impious demeanor, and his occasional unnerving demonstration of the Second Sight. Agnes herself found his wry manner a relief. She’d had her fill of ominous portents already. Bocca’s style dismissed some of the tension she had been feeling ever since Pallas Rae had sent her to fetch her father in Daurhim.

  The last murky cloud of smoke escaped the cave. On its heels came a long, low drone, a basso voice, singing a single profound, endless note. It was joined by another, then a third, deepening the effect. The hairs stood up on the back of Agnes’s neck, the sound rumbling in her chest. Tenors merged with the chorus, their note in harmony with the original voices. Then came a piercing, dissonant choir of high ululations that set Agnes’s teeth on edge. The cacophony went on for what seemed an eternity, strangely threatening, insinuating mystery and wonder just beyond the heavy gate of wood and iron. And when Agnes thought she could take the sonorous assault no longer, it ceased, as though she had gone deaf.

  After several minutes of silence came the sounds of gears turning, wood creaking, rope straining, metal scraping metal, all of it echoing off a cathedral-like ceiling of stone. The great portcullis began retreating behind the bricks that formed the archway. When it was done, the sharp iron-shod points at the ends of its vertical beams dipped below the archway’s upper rim, like a row of ready teeth.

  From that dark mouth came more hairless, sexless priests, the hems of their gray robes hanging so low it created the illusion of each cleric floating off the ground. The crowd of pilgrims surged forward, and Agnes made to move with them, but Bocca held up an arm. A second later, the crowd stopped at the abrupt sounding of a gong, rumbling like a peal of thunder. From between two priests came the taller one, whom Bocca had called Kendas: face gaunt, eyes deep in the sockets of his or her skull. Arms outstretched, the cleric spoke in a voice that mesmerized: high, penetrating, yet fragile. Agnes found herself spellbound, along with the other pilgrims gathered before the mouth of the cave.

  “O you who present yourselves to our Lord and Lady Pember, God in the Weave, Omnipresent, Omniscient, the Far Seer who guides our steps, who pulls back the Curtain of Mystery, who makes the blind to see! Abase yourselves, pilgrims to Gnexes, before the god who stands above and beyond the Winding Threads of Time!”

  Slowly, one at a time, then as a mass, the pilgrims went to their knees. Bocca motioned for Agnes and her companions to do the same, and they did so together. The chief priest was flanked now by acolytes in pale green robes, wearing head coverings that mimicked a frog’s gaping mouth. One carried a round wicker basket filled with balls of thread, the other a brass censor hung on a chain, from which tendrils of incense smoke drifted. The chief cleric made strange gestures over the basket and muttered a prayer.

  “Get ready,” whispered Bocca.

  Several priests positioned themselves around the gathering, milling in amongst the pilgrims. The green-robed acolyte who bore the broad, bowl-like basket stepped forward, expressionless. Agnes couldn’t be sure if he or she was a prematurely wrinkled child or an ancient, body hidden in shapeless robes and shorn of all hair. Then the acolyte opened his or her mouth and out came an ear-piercing scream from which Agnes’s heart recoiled. The priestling heaved the basket in the air, launching the balls of thread into the crowd: reds, greens, grays, yellows, blues, and more, trailing elongated tails as they began unraveling.

  Agnes watched it all as though she was a spectator, distant. She witnessed every unraveling ball, hovering in the air as though all the world had slowed to a crawl. Pilgrims reached for the spinning spheres, snatching them out of the air, crying out with glee. Some balls were caught, some bounced out of eager hands, struck the ground and rolled to the mingling priests, who gathered the strays and rejoined their peers at the cave mouth. Agnes’s eyes fixed on the last, a fat ball of coal-black thread, flying over the heads of the pilgrims gathered close by the entrance. She shoved Bocca and Kennah both aside and leapt for it, feeling a kind of desperate elation, an urgent desire to catch that ball before it struck the profaning ground. Both feet off the ground, her fingers closed on the thread—it was warm, as though imbued with life. She came down and stumbled into a few unhappy pilgrims but managed to keep a tight hold of the thread. She held it to her bosom like a precious treasure.

  “What’s this about, then?” asked Kennah. “Some sort of game?”

  “Of a kind,”
said Bocca.

  Agnes met her father’s eyes. She knew she was beaming with childlike pride and couldn’t say why. She felt like a little girl in that moment, her smile wide, witnessing the delight on her father’s face. She looked at the ball of thread now with surprise, as though it was a butterfly that had chosen to land there unbidden.

  “Does anyone bear the crimson?” shouted the chief priest.

  “Indeed, I do!” came a shout. It was Kassam, the Azkayan they had met the day before. He was dressed in lily-white robes today, his head bare, and he held aloft a ball of bright red thread in his hand. He strode forward, accompanied by his son, again in matching robes, and three women, their faces veiled by woven nets of coins. Kassam presented himself to the chief priest, who questioned him, the last whispered in the Azkayan’s ear. The cleric then did the same for the boy and the three veiled women, and then all five passed through the archway into the cavern beyond, hidden in shadow.

  “Does anyone bear the golden?” the tall priest cried.

  And so it continued, green, azure, ochre, lavender, until at last, the somber-faced cleric called out for the black.

  “Aye!” shouted Bocca in response, holding up Agnes’s hand that clutched the thread.

  The chief cleric, still expressionless, nodded and held up an open hand. “Come then, blessed of Pember.”

  Bocca turned to the Syraeics and smiled broadly. He jerked a thumb at the mouth of the cave and turned to push his way through the crowd, apparently assuming the Syraeics would follow. After a moment, Kennah, Chalca, and Sira set off in his wake, but Agnes stood rooted to the spot, holding her ball of black thread. Auric put his hand on the small of her back and gave her a push. “Agnes?” he said, spurring her on. She looked up at him.