by Jon Kiln
“The last?” Vekal opened and closed his mouth. “But there were others. Others more experienced than I.”
“There were,” Dal Grehb said with lowered brows, as if recalling a terrible fact.
My brothers and sisters! Vekal thought with alarm.
But the girl—Marria—sniffed once again, her face looking awfully painful. The Sin Eater looked beyond her to where Aisa was standing, shrouded in her own doubt. She had a calculating look on her face. Did she believe that I could heal this child? Or had she only been wanting to get the Menaali army here, to destroy the city? Vekal looked at her as if she were mad, but she would not meet his gaze.
“Will you take the evil curse away from her, Sin Eater? Will you eat whatever it is that is infecting her from the inside out?” Dal Grehb asked, his voice quavering in the only moment of weakness that the Sin Eater had seen so far.
“I-I’m not sure it works like that…” Vekal said, but heard the hitch of the girl’s cry as tears started to roll down her face.
There was a roll of impressively large shoulders and a growl from her father. “What are you telling me, Sin Eater? Have I dragged my army hundreds of miles across the desert, and sacked this backward rock of a city for nothing?”
What truth do the dead owe the living? Vekal thought, but found himself nervously looking at the big man’s fists as they clenched and unclenched with rage. Looking back at the girl again, he saw how scared she was, surrounded by the shadow of her over-large father, and the machinations of the braided woman beside her. He saw how utterly, utterly alone she must feel amongst it all. He didn’t know why he did it, but he nodded, coughed, and reached out a bruised hand.
“Come here, child. Come.” He tried to smile, but the bruises and scars on his face prevented it from being anything other than a pained grimace. Oddly, the girl found this reassuring—for she too could no more smile than a broken pot could hold water. She took a hesitant step forward, and then another, until she was standing over the Sin Eater, huddled and crouched on the floor.
Down. Vekal made a waving movement, asking her to crouch down next to him. Dal Grehb flinched as she did so, some residue of loving fatherly instinct telling him that she shouldn’t be so close to one so strange as Vekal.
You are the dead. The Unliving. You do not belong to the world, but to those that live beyond it. You are made of this world but are not owned by it… Vekal thought, mumbling the words to himself as he lifted bandaged-wrapped, painful hands and laid them, tenderly, on the sides of the girl’s face. His fingertips felt the callouses and hardened crusts of skin under his fingers, and he felt her recoil from his touch, even though he tried to be as gentle as possible.
“I will cast no shadow, for the dead have nothing to hide. My feet will leave no tracks in the sand, for there is no way back. Death shall come for me and I will welcome it, because I know its halls…”
As Vekal repeated the words, even his own mind started to feel clear and bright, and he felt that same sense of calm tranquility settle through him. He reached towards the girl with his thoughts, trying to be open to whatever terrible crimes that she may have committed against the gods. It was at this point that usually he might experience feelings of nausea, or even occasionally visions. He rarely felt anything as powerful as what he felt now, though.
“Argh!” The pain was excruciating—and it wasn’t coming from his back, but from his face. Vekal tried to pull back, but he couldn’t—it was like he was stuck in time, or that there was something else holding him.
“What? What is it?” he said, trying to thrash around, but all was darkness.
A moving darkness. Vekal felt it like a collection of flies flowing from the girl, from her face and through his fingers, collecting inside of him, filling him with their maddening whine.
What is happening? Who are you? Vekal coughed, but in the cavity of his mouth he just felt more of the flies, filling him with their buzzing bodies. The whine reached a crescendo, almost splitting his brain with their din, and they resolved into a voice.
“What is this? Human? Another human? Who are you?” The voice was snide and foul, and Vekal knew that if it had a smell, then it would doubtless smell like brimstone and burnt soot.
You are one of the Undying, Vekal thought in horror. One of the spirits that has never found its way to the light, but resides in the Underworld.
“A devil, a demon, a djinn! Yes—I have heard all of these names before. What of it? Are not you, as well?” The snide voice hissed. “I can read you now… Vekal, son of Mor—which is just another way of saying an illegitimate orphan on the streets of the crumbling city, yes?” Vekal could hear the demon’s scorn and laughter as it spat its bile at him.
“Why, Vekal, we are nearly brothers then! Don’t you Sin Eaters believe that all people are spirits of the Undying, here to be reborn and reborn until they can float their way to heaven or something equally as strange?” The demon coughed.
“We do,” Vekal said, out loud, his eyes open but fixed on an internal battle. “But you are no spirit of man or woman, plant or beast. You are unformed still. Primal. Rude. You have more in common with an illness, or a fire, than you do the people of the world.”
“Ha! And aren’t I glad of it! Who would want to become a person, with your morals, and your qualms, and your worries, and your pathetic little woes?” The demon laughed. “Now, do me a favor and kill the girl, Vekal. I hate looking at the past.”
“What? No! Of course not!” Vekal thought and said, before slumping forward as his heart thumped loudly. The demon inside was trying to make him kill the girl, but the demon had not bet on just who, and what he was possessing.
I am a Sin Eater. Not any normal person. I may be made of this world, but I do not belong here, Vekal thought, straightening himself up with an immense effort of will. When he opened his eyes, he gasped, almost losing all control.
The girl’s face was blemish free and her nose was whole. She was cured.
“Praise be!” Dal Grehb, her father and the War Chief of the Menaali Plains, said in awe.
5
The next few hours blurred for Vekal—a horrible nightmare of burning skies, oily smoke, and screams. The Menaali tribesmen, it seemed, had no intention of leaving the city of Tir any time soon, and the citizens of Tir had become their playthings. The night following their victory was one of wild celebrations for the soldiers, as they erected bonfires in the narrow plazas and atop the ancient walls, and danced and drummed and howled long into the night.
The tribesmen had come a long way across the dangerous desert for this, and it seemed that Dal Grehb was giving them full reign to enjoy the city as they wished. The ancient grain houses were ransacked. The precious few gardens, shielded from the glare of the desert sun by delicate cloths and veils and irrigated with the fresh spring water that flowed under the city, were all ruined and plundered.
The first night was a tapestry of despair for the people of Tir. Those who had been allowed to return to their homes might have found in there a couple of Menaali soldiers, taking their belongings, food, or whatever else they desired. Ancient statues of the gods of the desert, the supposed builders of this very city, were torn down and smashed, until the air was thick with the cloying itch of rock dust.
Vekal wandered, limping through the ruins, as a man seemingly drunk with pain and exhaustion. Ever since that moment in the most sacred room of the Tower of Records he had felt ill, like he wasn’t himself at all. The buzzing never went far away, and a headache pounded against his eyes.
What had happened? How did it happen? The Sin Eater gabbled to himself, but the girl was healed, and Vekal had no explanation for it.
“The creature… could it really? Was it really a demon?” he found himself asking, as he stumbled through the city. The War Chief was content to let him go, it seemed, and just as eager to not be touched by him, in case the demonic illness infected him this time. The only one who watched him go was the braided woman, Aisa Desai, whose eye
s plucked at him like a hawk.
Down the marble and monochrome steps, past rooms that he had never seen any living person walk into, but were now occupied by sneering and leering soldiers. The scrolls and the books of the world were being pulled from their shelves, and used for the crude amusement of the soldiers or in turn to light the victory fires outside.
Vekal moaned with despair. What had his world come to? What had happened? How could the city of ages fall so quickly, and so completely? He stumbled further down the steps, his wounded feet seeking to carry him away from this madness.
His foot slipped on something on the stairs. It was wet, and slick with blood. When he looked down, he could see that the nearest open doorway held the overturned shape of one of his fellows. A Sin Eater by the name of Jaron.
Vekal gasped, stepping backwards and slipping again, so that one of his hands slid down the wall. His dilemma was met by the harsh laughter of the Menaali soldiers above him.
“What did you do, Vekal? What did you do?” said a buzzing voice inside his own head—and Vekal knew that it wasn’t his own.
***
It was twenty years ago, and the young Vekal was sitting in the dust and the sand. The boy was only seven, but he was already used to this existence, being covered by the sand, grit, and dust of the desert around him. His world had become unchangingly uncomfortable, and what was worse was that he did not question it.
“Here! It’s a boy! A boy!” Voices were shouting, but all Vekal could hear was the trudge of his own heavy feet against the sand. His feet ached, but they had gone beyond the sharp and stabbing pain of the blisters and the burns, and into the dulled ache of flesh that was dying.
He wore dirty and filthy rags, scavenged from the bodies of those that he could no longer remember, and he trudged towards the only smudge on the horizon that appeared different. It was the city of Tir’an’fal, and to be his new home.
“Boy! Boy!” The people spoke a tongue that he knew, but was not easy in his mouth. The boy wondered for a while how he could speak, or why, but everything that came before the terrible desert was gone. Whatever tragedy had taken him or led him out there, it had happened, and it had happened completely. There was now no more life behind him, no past, no history, no childhood.
The boy—Vekal’s—life began in Tir, and the city.
The voices were worried and astonished. It wasn’t often that a boy walked out of the desert sun, his lips pocked and white with dehydration, his skin grazed and scarred by the sandstorms, and his feet nothing more than blistered and burnt stumps. It was clear to the people of the city that he must be the last survivor of one of the rare caravans, or else abandoned to the desert for some misdemeanor no one would ever know now.
But, even though they were worried about the boy, no one touched him. No one held him, and no one comforted him. They asked him questions and fed him sips of the clear, precious spring water. Slowly, at first, for they knew that too much would make him ill. And still they didn’t touch him.
The people of Tir were surprised that any child could survive the burning sands of the greatest desert of the known world, but they also had a tradition. The desert was not a place that belonged to mortal men and women. It was one of the few places that belonged solely to the gods. Everything that happened in the Sand Seas was the will of the gods, and everything that came from it or died in it was theirs.
This boy belonged to the gods, and that meant that he would be taken to the Tower of Records; there to serve. By nightfall of that very first day, the boy was bundled up in rags and entering the tall iron gates, being pushed—somewhat gently—by the people who had first seen him.
There was a clang as the gates shut closed behind him, and he was left with just himself and the tower.
The Tower looked to be the tallest building that a boy like him would ever have seen in his short life. But he could not know if this was true, as his mind was a blank. The Tower was made of a dark, marbled rock, and with pillars stretching like tendons, snaking up and up through its masonry, curling and coiling around balconies and small peaked windows. The surrounds were a mess of nests and holes, from which emerged the croaks, whistles, and whirrs of the desert crows seeking to roost. The night air was still warm, as the city radiated its trapped heat, and the boy felt vaguely afraid.
A creak, as the double doors opened up ahead, and a figure stepped out. It was dressed in dark, thin robes that were held and bound to its body by grey-tan strips of bandages. Even its head was covered by a hood, and the boy regarded the figure solemnly, not saying a word.
“Come here, boy,” said the voice. A woman’s.
The boy that was to be Vekal did so, his feet moving slowly and purposefully across the cobbles to stand before the robed woman and the doorway. He caught a scent like vanilla, and dust.
“You are not scared of me, are you, boy?” the robed woman said in a voice that was more used to being quiet than it was to talking.
The boy shrugged but didn’t say anything. He didn’t see the point in being scared of a person in robes.
“I wonder what you saw, out there to make you so unafraid,” the woman mused, but not to him as she held the door a little wider. “Come. The gods chose to spare you, and that means that the gods want to train you for something special. This is your home now.”
The boy nodded, accepting it all silently. In all of the time that he had first walked out of the Sand Seas, he had still not spoken at all. The woman tutted, and closed the door to the Tower of Records behind them both.
“Well, my name is Jaron. So you’d better get used to using it. Do you have a name, boy?” The woman led him down a short passageway to a circular room, from which branched many different corridors and steps.
Vekal shook his head, and Jaron hesitated for a second, as if shocked.
“Hm. Well. Probably just as good, anyway,” she said matter-of-factly, then chose one of the curving corridors, past expertly-dressed black stone and scones of snarling wrought-iron beasts, holding lanterns. They came to closed wooden doors on both sides, before she slowed to one larger opening, out of which flowed the smell of hot food, fried fish, and spicy, fragrant herbs.
Inside the room was a small kitchen, its walls given over to skillets and pans and pots hanging from hooks driven into the wall, over ovens little more than fires enclosed with stone and with metal grates atop. The smells came from the glass jars and the chopping boards of a thousand types of spices, cuts of desert meat, and even some fish from the rare stream.
“This is the service kitchen. You will come to know the canteen in time. But the rest of the brothers and sisters are studying, or asleep. So you will eat here, with me,” Jaron said in an easy-going manner, taking a clay bowl and ladling it full of some sort of spicy broth from one of the bubbling pots, tearing a hunk of bread and cheese, and depositing it and the boy at one end of the table.
“Eat slowly, but you should be okay by now. The healer will tend to your wounds before bed, when you will sleep with the rest of the brothers and sisters of the Tower.”
Jaron spoke as though all of this were normal and simply another day in the life of a door warden for the Sin Eaters, when, in fact, it was rare for any new person to join their number. The Sin Eaters were given orphans or the unclaimed, and, in extreme cases those who had a life before, but now wanted no part of the world. Why anyone would choose the life of the most accursed of the world is something that no one had been able to find out.
For Jaron, however, she did not bore herself or her young charges with these questions. Instead, she asked him after he had eaten, “Do you know of the gods? Iliya the Mournful? Annwn the Note-Taker? Vars the Sun-Stealer? Oluin the Warden?”
At each of the sacred names the boy nodded, even when the list had grown long, and Jaron had been forced to include the lesser-known half gods.
“Are you just nodding for the sake of it? Are you lying to me, child?” Jaron said sternly. “Because liars are not permitted in the Tower. It
is unnecessary, and unwise.”
The boy shook his head once more, and his unlikely warden sighed.
“Well. I guess I will just have to believe you, considering. Good. Your family, whomever they were, taught you well. This place, this Tower, is dedicated to Annwn, the keeper of the halls of the undying, the record-keeper of history, and his consort the Queen Iliya, the mournful, the remembrancer of those passing away, the keeper of the river of time.”
The boy nodded. Not that he knew what this place was, but that the stories were familiar to him, somehow.
“Then, my boy, you will understand as well just how lucky you truly are. All those who enter the service of Annwn become a Morshanti, or a child of the dark. Out there they call us Sin Eaters, because we are the only ones who have the ability to go between the realms of the human and the gods on their behalf. We can take on the sins of our fellows in order to lighten their journey towards heaven. We remember, and we record the misdeeds of all of those who ask for our aid. Sometimes, we may even act as judges, if those crimes cannot be lifted, and the only way to heal them is to forward their life onto the next reincarnation. Do you understand, child?”
The boy nodded, once, and continued to look at Jaron with cool, clear eyes.
Jaron had expected tears, fits. Sometimes she even saw the new recruits try to run away, but not this one. This one accepted his new role with all of the expected ease as if she had just asked him to be a water-taster for a living. This one was older than most who came to their halls. She was used to working with babies and toddlers, not those nearly into their majority. Jaron found herself feeling vaguely unsettled at the calm attitude of the child as it accepted all that was going to happen to it, the entire course of its life changed forever.
“But you must understand, child, that even though you will perform this noble and holy task, there are those out there who will not thank you for it. They will only see the accumulated weight of your sins and the dirty little secrets that you have collected—not the freedom that you have given people. They will see the money that some pay you to take their sins away, and think of greed. They will hate you.”
