The Sin Eaters

by Aaron Summers

  Camdzic bound herself to Fen, no matter what corrupt knowledge found its way to the eastern edge of the known world. She knew it because of the fire she felt in her face while she watched him sprawl on the furs just now. The languid pile of bronze muscle and razor edges, the countless bone, wire, and beaded trinkets woven into his braided hair telling unspoken stories of his victories, his generosity with anyone who chose free life, the way he roared at the hunt.

  She had watched him fight the lion, hadn’t she? There was nothing else to say. Bright white scars studded his left shoulder, the gift of lion’s jaws. She knew a matching pattern scarred his back. His scars told more about him than shallow words ever could.

  All other people were empty like the Hollow Folk. They ought return to the emptiness that is the Yuush as soon as possible. But Fen was life itself. She would find her purpose with him. The other Leyevi felt the same. For that, at least, she could find a connection to each person, even Lundoo.

  She ran a clawed hand through her clattering hair. She was even changing like Fen, in some ways, though her plated hair felt more like musk ox horn than true bone.

  The arguing grew louder. She turned to listen. Of course Lundoo led the pointless debate.

  “I know it is difficult to understand if you have not seen the bones, but it is true. I swear by God.”

  The small group paused. An oath to the gods meant less than nothing because there were no gods. It was a little lie they tolerated because all knew language took time to change. Anyone raised on the wild Steppe knew this in their blood. It was not forbidden, exactly, to reference the gods or even believe in them, but it was another tally against the healer’s suspect reputation.

  Lundoo ignored the hesitation to press his argument.

  “All I say is that there have been different kinds of peoples before, and there will be again. There were things called Neanderthal in the time before time. They were thickly built with powerful arms and broad noses. They were apart from people.”

  “But people like that live today!” Omduro said. “How can you say they are different kinds when they live among us now? Old Jonah looks enough like one, though you do make him sound like an ape. Now that you say it, Healer Man…”

  The scarred old grappler opened his eye long enough to glare at the boy.

  “Fen, make gift for beloved mentor. Feed Omduro’s feet to hungry mouth. Finish what hyena start.”

  Omduro frowned at the stumps of missing fingers. The chieftain grinned but nodded for Lundoo to continue.

  “There were many others. The cromagnon, who was like the Neanderthal in some ways. Pygmy people who stood no higher than Omduro’s knobbly knees. Listen, all I say is that these changes in the species are an old trick, not a new one.”

  “Is that what the Dragons are? A kind of species that lives in caverns beneath the earth?” Omduro asked.

  “The Dragons… the Dragons are a myth, boy.” Lundoo waved him away. “You ask too many foolish questions.”

  “But a Leyevolki from the south told me a story about…”

  “Species?” Fen leaned forward.

  Lundoo blinked rapidly, running an arthritic hand through his sweaty white hair.

  “A word from my home. It means peoples, or like a kind of peoples. Omduro, what I am saying is that...”

  “What tongue is this?”

  Lundoo closed his mouth. Fen arched an eyebrow. The pair stared at each other for several long seconds. Camdzic felt a grin spread across her long face. Fen would have what he wanted. His iron-grey eyes dug deep into people.

  “Angliyskiy,” the priest surrendered.

  “Old Jonah, wake yourself. What is this word from Lundoo’s home west of here but east of the Uralskiye?”

  “Is island far west across Yevropa where sun set on world. Old enemies of Rossiya. Novgorodi know this tongue. Lundoo is Novgorodi, no? Jonah tells Fen this before.”

  The group stayed silent as Fen processed the admission of Lundoo’s long standing lie.

  “Is this what happens with the children?”

  Fen’s voice was a low growl. Do not deny my questions, it told them all. Camdzic chewed her lip. She would have him tonight. Maybe she could arouse that same simmering fury.

  “What… what of the children, Leyevi Fen Enkidu?”

  The priest dipped his head and closed his rheumy eyes.

  “How many there are!” Fen clapped his hands as leaned back onto his furs. “So many! We were few peoples for many lifetimes. My father told me so. The cancer stole many lives back to the Yuush. Now more and more children survive their illness. Children did not scurry like ants through the gatherings when I was a boy. Those who do survive…”

  He gestured to himself and then Camdzic. Lundoo’s eyes followed his jagged hands. Camdzic bared her pointed teeth at the old healer.

  “Evolyutsiya,” Jonah grumbled from behind closed eyes. “Priest man Lundoo knows word, yes?”

  “Yes, yes, I do. I do! It is true. I am Novgorodi. The lie was, I mean, is, a sin that perhaps, perhaps you can understand?”

  He spread his empty hands to the waiting group.

  “I cannot help where I was born. No one can. I come from Novgorodi and all the peoples east of the Uralskiye hiss and spit when I tell them this. It is a small lie…”

  “No lies are small. All lies hide truth. My father was Novgorodi. He did not hide this. How can I make the right choice if you tell lies? It is wrong, Lundoo. You will tell only truth from now on or you will leave the Leyevi. Yes?”

  Fen still leaned back on the furs, naked and unarmed save his short breeches and lethal body. Camdzic watched the healer consider his patron. A pitiful creature like this had only one choice in the face of a king beast such as Fen. He must leave.

  “I swear this, Leyevi Fen Enkidu. Truth only.”

  Camdzic growled as she turned away. The fun was over. Lundoo would remain with them a while longer. It was well. Fen injured himself often enough to need a healer. The pestilent liar even made draughts to ease the burning in Fen’s chest when the coughs came. She worried his cancer might return. Children certainly survived, and some even thrived afterwards, but none like him. His physical gifts came with a price. All things did.

  She stared at the wavering horizon as the arguing resumed. Young Omduro could hardly restrain his annoying questions about the buried dragons that lived somewhere far south beyond the desert called gobi. As though they could not handle some dirt chewers.

  Something moved at the place where sky met earth. She watched the growing black shape for several minutes. It might be a simple mirage. She knew it was not. She stared east until her eyes burned, wiped away stinging years, and continued staring. Travelers.

  Only the Kobold lived to the east. There were worse things than telling lies, she knew. At least Lundoo did not make feasts of people like the Kobold did when they climbed out of their crypts to hunt lost travelers.

  She called the alarm without turning away. The person who spied the danger was bound to eliminate the danger. Such was the way of things.

  “Travelers. From the east.”

  “How many?” Fen asked.

  “It is hard to know. Two, perhaps three. They do not walk like people do.”

  Fen was beside her.

  “Nothing is east of here. It is why we chose this place to camp.”

  “The Kobold live east of here.”

  He laughed. She did not find it funny. He could let himself be eaten if he wanted. She would be gone from here.

  “We must greet them,” he said.

  The Leyevi Among the Grasses scattered from the tent without a command. Each knew their role in defense of the tribe. Smaller packs of five or seven people would run out a hundred lengths each direction to surround the travelers. The children remained behind to stop the mares from bolting. They would use the grasses as camouflage while they crept in to watch their chieftain. If all was well, Fen would signal and they would retreat home before dusk. If all was not well a
nd he required their help, they would swarm. Camdzic had taught them the hyena’s tactics.

  Fen’s quick strides carried him away from the tent into the bright sun. A single spiraling hawk marred the blank sky. The travelers chose a poor approach if they wanted to surprise the Leyevi. Camdzic ran behind him. The wind drove waves through the grassy sea. She tasted her excitement on her lips.

  He sprang into a loping run as his hands scraped earth. The hundred lengths between the travelers and the tent vanished. He slowed, brushed his hands clean of fresh dirt, and held them to his face to draw in the scent of earth. Camdzic stopped herself a length behind him. The travelers would see them and make a decision.

  They decided to approach. The shapes refined into two women and a man wrapped in sun-bleached tunics. One woman was a shaggy starving Armasar. Their powerful bodies required constant nourishment. She had not eaten, judging by the angles of her face, in more than a week. Strange. The running folk could find food almost anywhere.

  Her right foot bounced independently of her swollen ankle. Her hair, normally corded in the ornamental style that told how many messages she could remember at once and how far she could run, was a burnt bush. Vacant sapphires eyes stared past the pair to the tent’s shade.

  The man towered. Camdzic knew he was several hands taller than she was. His stomach bulged from his gaunt frame in the surest sign that he had not eaten in a fortnight or more. His skin was a sickly, sallow yellow the color of rich fat wherever it could be seen beneath his wrapped tunic. Camdzic recognized the clothing. They were from very far away and entirely a different direction.

  The women seemed to carry the man despite the Armasar’s shattered leg. Camdzic tried to focus on the other woman but felt her eyes slip back to the giant man. She could see his eyes now. They must be within a dozen lengths or less. His eyes cut into squinting ovals like those of the Tibetan monks who lived south of the gobi.

  Yes, that was right. Those tunics usually included a peculiar head wrapping that shielded everything except the eyes. They were from the Masari Where All Was Sand. Why did they flee from the east, then? They must have travelled to the Kobold. She liked them even less, now. Today was a day for lies.

  “Leyevi Fen Enkidu welcomes you!”

  The oppressive heat muffled his powerful voice. The trio startled anyway. Camdzic turned back to the tent and saw only a shimmering heat haze. The travellers hadn’t seen them. Fen walked closer.

  “Welcome, travelers! Dobro pozhalovat! Hosgeldiniz!”

  The Armasar spotted him in the mirage. Her pained face shifted to panic as she noticed the stark bone ridges growing from his body. The trio collapsed at his feet. Fen crouched beside them.

  “From where do you come? We think you are people-eating Kobold. This is a bad thing to be.”

  The pale woman startled. Camdzic’s eyes locked on the white face cooked a ruinous red by the scorching sun. Why could she focus on her only now? The traveler looked back east, then north, and finally south before staring at the tent.

  Fen took the Armasar’s broad chin in his hand, careful not to scrape her with his coarse knuckles. He found her solitary signal braid with his other hand. A single long silver wire wove through it. Whoever purchased her services had also purchased her focus. She carried only one message.

  “Armasar, what is your message?”

  The runner’s dazed eyes snapped to focus. No Thundercloud, no matter the tribe, the distance, or the pain, could refuse the essence of their purpose any more than a wolf could make itself not hunt.

  “Am to tell… no, carry… to help… to deliver… Where is this?” she croaked.

  “You are lost? The Running Folk do not lose themselves even in the deep winter amid forests of snow.”

  The woman retched her response. A thick yellow fluid ran over her cracked lips. It stank of death even to people who spent most of their lives drinking fermented milk and eating bloody meat.

  Fen took her head in his hands and forced her eyes open with his thumbs.

  “How are you lost?”

  She started to retch again. He dropped her chin. The woman wept. Camdzic understood. It was her ankle. Her people could run from the farthest sea to the highest mountain without losing the trail inside their mind. She was comically muscular around her thighs and calves, with haunches built like a horse’s and a severe arch in her feet that forced her to run on her clawed toes. She was more than a simple Armasar. She was truly gifted. Now her ankle was broken. She might lose the leg. She was killing herself to complete this final message but was blockaded by her own determination.

  Fen moved around to the man. His head rolled to the side as his hands shot to his stomach. Fen leaned away to avoid the man’s looming vomit. It never came. His hands stayed locked around his aching gut as he moaned.

  “Do you speak?”

  The man flinched at Fen’s words. He understood it was a language, at least. Fen switched to Jonah’s tongue and asked again. The man frowned as he mouthed the sounds.

  “Omduro, bring Jonah and Lundoo. Fetch water. We need help to carry them home.”

  Camdzic growled.

  “Woman, they are not threats. The Armasar will die without help. She could not do an evil thing. Her life is forfeit otherwise. This man is dying.”

  The moaning man’s palm sliced open as he lurched for Fen’s wrist.

  “Who are you?” His sickly voice sounded hollow, somehow alien.

  “You speak. I am Leyevi Fen Enkidu of the Leyevi Among the Grasses.”

  “Leyevi… you are buluo.”

  His eyes vibrated like drum skins as he considered this. The organic malfunction shifted into a mechanical clicking that neither Fen nor Camdzic had ever heard. His head snapped back.

  “You are horde.”

  The words sounded mimed, like a child mocking their sibling. They were words echoed but not understood. He had borrowed their language for a little while.

  “We are,” Fen said as he removed the man’s ruined hand from his wrist and found far less blood on his arm than should be there.

  The man whispered something. Fen leaned close to hear him.

  “Does horde fear lightning?”

  The stench of searing flesh filled the air. Fen sprang away, landing beside Camdzic. The crippled Armasar’s face froze as oily smoke rose from the man’s orifices. His body’s scant fat began to burn.

  Omduro darted in to help as the wounded Thundercloud woman crawled away. The smoking stopped. The awful stench faded. Bright fire erupted in the cloth where his hands still clenched his gut. The fire crackled as it consumed his coiled body.

  Omduro danced around the human bonfire to help the sun-scorched woman. Camdzic’s harsh voice cracked the air.

  “She is dead.”

  The boy backed away as the pale woman joined her tall companion in flame. Their color shifted from the familiar pleasant yellow of a pine torch into a roaring blue that seemed to eat them more than it burned them. The sweet stench of burnt flesh returned. Camdzic scowled when Omduro retched. Fen’s face was an ironwood mask.

  Another moment and a pile of ash barely the size of two malnourished bodies replaced the travelers. Faint embers glowed around the ring scorched by the bonfire. Omduro stomped them out. Grass fires could kill more than anything except the lightning itself. The Armasar’s soft sobs filled a long silence.

  “What in all the hollow places was that?” Omduro’s teeth chattered despite the sun.

  Camdzic looked to Fen, who offered nothing.

  “The Kobold are vicious creatures.” She stepped between Fen and the ashes. “If this is the first then may it be the last. Help me carry her, boy.”

  The pair lifted the crying woman and headed for the tent. Fen soon caught them.

  “I do not know what that was.”

  His voice dropped below hearing. When it returned, it was full of the same flat certainty that his companions took as command.

  “Such is the way of things. We will offer her shel
ter and then learn what she knows. This thing was not her doing.”

  Smoke from the pyre they left behind climbed to join the lone hawk and hot sun in the electric sky.

  CHAPTER 16 - SECONDARY SOURCES

  The world was made of darkness. Why had she darted into the tunnel at all? The man was a lunatic. Maybe his black eyes could see in here but Eliza’s couldn’t. Her hands found the tunnel walls. The stone door was beside and then behind her. How did that mechanism even work? He must be somewhere around. She started to call for him but stopped as she thought about the all-consuming darkness washing into her open mouth.

  She couldn’t hear him. It was time to turn back. She would walk another twenty feet, no, just ten, and then go back. He was insane, after all. This was probably just another hallucination and he was taking her to a cave full of human bones where the Grupo offered interns as sacrifice to their Neanderthal monkey god. It was all a big joke. Some dumb football player named Tim must have slipped LSD into her drink at a party in undergrad and she had hallucinated the last, say, ten years. Yeah, that worked better than the way her life had gone to lead her to a black tunnel atop a freezing mountain in pursuit of a self-dosing organic stoner.

  The sound of shredding metal echoed through the tunnel. She froze. It stopped. She took another step. There it was again. She rocked her foot back. The sound was smaller, more like crumpled aluminum. The shreds filled the tunnel with an insectoid skitter as they crawled over each other. White light thrummed at the corners of her vision. She realized she could actually see her heart pounding right there in her eyes.

  She took a step forward. Crunching leaves. They were beneath her feet. She took another step onto a springy surface. It felt like soil. The ground yielded as she pushed her boot down. She took several more steps. The pitch black yielded to faint starlight and the cloying perfume of rotting leaves.