by Jon Kiln
The air was starting to smell foul, acrid and bitter with the wafting vapors of the chemical fire that Suriyen had unleashed. The screams had died down, thankfully, but the war had not restarted as both sides watched the Menaali rescue effort.
“Fool of a child,” Maaritz cursed the wall-captain. As one of the friends, and himself a student of Mother Aldameda, he knew just what spiritual dangers faced the world. He knew that such a terrible and violent death as being burned alive, carelessly and callously, would create spirits that would hunger for generations of violence. Maaritz, for all of his practical devotion to the politics of Fuldoon, believed in the life-cycles of eternities.
If we stopped the Menaali here and saved Fuldoon, then Suriyen might be right in part, damn her. Maaritz slowed to a panting walk, as he considered the silence on both sides of the wall. Perhaps this act of violent terror had caused the Menaali to rethink their attack. Perhaps Dal Grehb will regard Fuldoon as too costly to take. Thousands of lives will be saved. It was a simple arithmetic for Maaritz. Less war equals less vengeful spirits in the afterlife.
But the way that she did it? The man clenched his fists. No. This had to be wrong. How could Suriyen or himself, or any of them ever expect to be judged fit for heaven by the gods after what they had allowed to happen here?
It was during these deep meanderings that Maaritz spotted the first soldier to emerge from the store houses beneath the city streets, choking and gasping for air.
“You there! What is happening?” He jogged up to the man, who had collapsed outside of the small wooden lean-to that stood over the entrance to the tunnels below. When the siege had started, the captains like Suriyen had known that the first few streets nearest the walls would become a dangerous no-man’s land of arrows and boulder-shot from the attackers. Instead of storing their weapons and food there, they had seen to it that the water tunnels nearest the wall were converted into clinics and warehouses, safe from danger above. All along the wall there were similar wooden and tented structures over hastily opened up tunnels.
And they were all curiously quiet.
“Soldier? What is happening, man? Report.” Maaritz went to the side of the man collapsed against the wooden beam of the lean-to, putting a hand on his shoulder as he suddenly lurched forward and fell to the cobbles below. His chest was a mess of blood, and his face was smeared with soot.
“By Annwn’s watchful gaze!” Maaritz said.
“He came… so quickly… fire and smoke,” the soldier coughed. “Everywhere was locked. Trapped like rats in a barrel…”
“Who came?” Maaritz said quickly, looking up to shout to the empty streets. “Healer! We need a healer, quickly.”
But all of the healers were at the front gate, still a good jog down the streets and silhouetted ahead against the glow of fire.
“The man with the black eyes, and cold skin…” the man gurgled one last time and slumped, dead.
“May Iliya have mercy on your soul,” Maaritz whispered, closing the soldier’s eyes so that he might open them once more in a different life. Then, with a grimace, he stood up and walked into the tented opening, towards the heavy trapdoor that should have sat at the head of a ladder down to the water tunnels and makeshift store rooms below. Instead, the trapdoor was broken and smashed open as if from below, and from it was pouring black smoke.
“By the spirits and the gods,” Maaritz said. He had thought that the stench of smoke and burning flesh had come from the river and the burning oil on the other side of the wall. It wasn’t at all. “And that soldier had to smash his way out of the water tunnels.” Someone had locked them, or wedged them shut, and started a fire down there.
“Hello?” Maaritz shouted. “Is there anyone there?” The smoke was so thick that Maaritz knew that he wouldn’t be able to make his way through, so instead of going down into the dark, he elected to race towards the next tented lean-to, to find it once again suspiciously quiet, but filling with escaping smoke from below.
The trapdoor that sat in the center of the room should have been easy to move. It was designed for that purpose after all—as a means to store arms and food for the long siege, but the metal ring attached to the wood wouldn’t lift it. Instead, wisps of smoke were rising from it, and Maaritz hoped that it was his imagination that sensed heat rising from the cobbles themselves.
Maybe it was an accident, he thought desperately, looking around for any tool to help lever open the door. Some of the burning oil might have somehow been carried underwater and up the flood tunnels somehow, reaching into the city itself…
But it was clear to see that this was no accident when he saw the wedges driven into the sides of the trapdoor, hammered so tight as to be flush with the wood of the frame.
He grunted as he lifted the edge of a barrel from the side of the tent, and started to drop it on the trapdoor, driving it with dull thuds against the wood. “Come on, come on!” he said in consternation as the wood started to crack, and then splinter, and then, with a sudden belch of smoke, burst downwards, filling the tent with the smell of acrid burning.
“Hello? Is there anyone alive down there?” Maaritz tried shouting once more, but still no answer apart from the dull roar of flames, and now screams—but they weren’t coming from below, or from the walls. They were coming from inside the city. Maaritz was only a few streets away from the front gate. Had it fallen? He coughed and spluttered, emerging from the tent to look out at the night and try to ascertain what was going on.
Fire. That was what was going on. There were small ruddy glows dotted along the houses near the city walls. The fire that someone had set in the tunnels under the city walls was spreading, feeding up to the deepest of basements or cellars. Screams and shouts and now bells were starting to ring, as the citizens reacted to the fires that seemingly came out of nowhere and took apart the foundations of their houses and exploded into kitchens.
Traitors? Maaritz thought. How had the Menaali managed to set alight to their stores? Had they tunneled under the river? No. They hadn’t had the time, clearly. It must have been traitors or sympathizers inside the city who were working with the invaders. Maaritz knew that the trouble would come in the morning, when the defenders realized that now they would starve as well as face an angry horde of warriors at their gates. That is, if they still had enough of the arrows and spears and bandages left to defend themselves against them.
“Friend…”
A voice like the cold grate of bones met the Councilor from behind.
There had been someone in the flame-filled tunnels below, someone who had walked up out of the water tunnels and who had worked carefully without need for rest or even breath to trap as many as it could below the city, and set them alight. It looked like a Menaali warrior—an immense Menaali warrior without hair, and with ring and metal armor that was now partly scorched and melted into its own skin. No normal human could have done that, could have allowed the heat of the fires to sear off its leathers and hides and become a horrifically burned and scarred thing. But this creature, Maaritz knew, was no real man. Or at least, the human part inside of it had long since given up its will completely to the creature that occupied.
“Devil,” Maaritz sneered at it, drawing his sword and stepping backwards. “So Dal Grehb is recruiting demons now, is he?”
“No. As much as I love everything that he is doing over there,” the devil inclined a gracious nod to the front gate, “I am not commanded by the warlord. I have come for a different purpose, and one which I think you can help me with.” It grinned, teeth as yellow and crooked as a dog’s. Its eyes were almost pitch black, and glittered strangely.
“I’ll cast you back into the deepest Pit of the Unliving, fiend. Tell me your master, quickly now. Who summoned you?” Maaritz demanded, trying to instill what authority he had into his voice. Am I strong enough to take a devil alone? What kind of devil is it? He licked his lips nervously.
“Why should I tell you?” The devil laughed, taking a step closer toward
s the entrance way of the tent. “Do you really think that you will live long enough to trade summoning tips with them?”
“I would know my enemy, at least give me that much, fiend,” Maaritz snarled. “Or can you not? Are you enslaved to the Menaali like some pup on a leash?”
The devil hissed and writhed, making the Councilor smile. All devils hated having their will usurped, and it was one of their greatest weaknesses that when they possessed a body, they had to sacrifice at least some of their control in order to subdue the soul of the human inside.
“I do not fight for Dal Grehb, sheep-herder. This,” the warrior gestured with hands that were blackened with soot and scalds, “is just a favor owed to the one who freed me. You see, us so-called devils can be very generous to those that aid us.”
“Really?” Maaritz took another step backward. He was clear of the tent’s door now. “Make me an offer then,” he said quickly, flicking a glance around him.
“Tell me what you know of the passage of one of my kind, an imp named Ikrit.” The devil took another step, and Maaritz made his move.
He lunged with his longsword, making the possessed being twist sideways in a dodge, faster than any human could do, but Maaritz converted the lunge into a swing in a smooth whirling movement. He didn’t aim for the twisting devil at all, but at the wooden beam that held the tent open. The shock of the blow jarred his arm and almost made him drop his blade, but the beam splintered and cracked, bringing the smoke-filled tent down onto the possessed soldier and wrapping him in its heavy folds.
The devil growled in frustration as it thrashed and hit the floor, and Maaritz knew that he had no time to spare. He lunged forward, blade darting in and out of the material as quick as a striking desert snake, punching holes into the creature wherever he could see it. He knew that he wouldn’t be quick enough, nor strong enough, nor vicious enough to defeat it in a fair duel, but he might have a chance if he surprised it.
“Die! Die, fiend! Back to the Halls of the Unliving.” He grunted and stabbed, feeling the blade bite something, and then the form stilled.
Have I done it? Have I really killed it? Maaritz swayed as he stepped back, panting and gasping with the effort. He had never single-handedly defeated a demon before.
“I have to tell Suriyen. She has to know that the Menaali have a sorcerer powerful enough to summon a spirit.” He staggered backwards, turning to race towards the front gate as all around him the warning bells started to ring out the fire alarm.
Something caught his ankle, and with a heavy thud, the Councilor tripped and thudded heavily onto the cobble below. He gasped, as pain scored through his knees and elbows and his sword skittered out of his gasp.
There was an annoyed hissing noise behind him. He looked down in horror to see the thing that had caught his ankle was a terribly burned hand, more scorched tendon and bone than it was healthy skin. Maaritz tried to raise his other boot to break the thing’s hold, but another terribly burned hand caught it, as out of the wreckage of the tent crawled the possessed Menaali soldier, grinning with a face that had lost most of its skin.
“You think you can kill me that easily?” The spirit started to rattle and gasp, a sound that was closer to the dead branches in a winter breeze than it was to laughter. “You have no idea what my old job was in hell,” it said as it started to crawl, hand by terrible hand up the man’s body. Each grip was vice-like in how strong it was, with nails puncturing flesh, almost stapling the Councilor to the floor.
“You’ll never have my soul, fiend.” Maaritz thrashed and buckled underneath the immensely strong creature.
“Why would you think that I want your soul? I already have several of my own,” it said as it reached its terrible talons of burnt fingers to Maaritz’s neck.
14
The dawn that touched the Sin Eater’s face felt like the first dawn of a new life. A strange, bright energy filled his senses as he awoke. Not that it felt like he had been asleep at all. In fact, as the Sin Eater’s mind swam into sharper clarity than it seemingly had ever been before, he could remember fragments of the previous night.
Fire. Flames. Screams. The look on the choking face of a terrified man as the life was squeezed out of him.
What did I do? Vekal thought.
“What you had to,” came the immediate reply, no longer buzzing or painful in his own mind, but instead sounding exactly like his own, if a little more satisfied, and stronger.
Am I… Am I me? The Sin Eater raised his hands to mush the palms into his own eyes. The world was brighter and clearer than it had ever been. He was sitting on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a tree, but he could feel every texture and grain of the bark as it bit into his thin clothes, and he could feel even the life of the tree behind him, a fresh green glow that spread out to give him confidence and strength.
But his newly sharpened senses did not stop there. The light of the day was fierce, almost incandescent, and he could see the light radiating from the grass and the path ahead of him. The sound of the winds, clearly discernible in several layers. The wind in the branches, the scratching of the twigs and leaves against each other, the rustles and shivers of the leaves, and then the high soft whistles of the higher winds, and finally the low moaning of the deep vapors.
Vekal shut his eyes, but the light of the day still penetrated his eyelids as a ruddy glow, and he could not stop his ears from all of the sounds inside his own body as well as without. He could smell the insects and the earth all around him, as well as his two companions, Meghan and Kariss, who were even now returning out of sight from a nearby stream.
“Well. Maybe too much for you just yet.” Ikrit-with-his-own-voice said inside, and Vekal felt as if a thin veil was drawn over his senses between him and the rest of the world. It was a pleasing blanket of ignorance, as his hearing, sight, smell and thought returned to somewhere near human levels.
“Is that,” Vekal whispered, hearing his voice boom against the back of his own throat, “what living is like for you?”
“For a devil? A little. We have become one, you and I, Vekal. All of the things that I am and that you could be are now joined. You see that humans spend most of their time in a fog of sleep, unaware of what their own bodies can do,” Ikrit said proudly, and a little greedily.
“And that is why you all wish to live so much?”
A moment’s silence, and this time the Sin Eater could sense a small window into the devil’s mind, whereas before he hadn’t been able to detect anything at all. The devil was hesitant, saddened even, by the idea that it was about to give up all of this.
“Then why give it up?” Vekal kept his eyes closed as he talked. “Why seek the Lockless Gates and the Isle of Gaunt so fiercely, if what you wish is to live free in a body?”
“Ha! Are you offering me a permanent residency? A partnership? Vekal and Ikrit? Sin Eater and Greater Abomination?” the devil chided. “No. You should know, priest, that this place—this garden of flesh and bodies and trees and rocks and winds is just a passing place. A very pleasing one, but still a prison cell all the same.”
Vekal could have laughed. He had never quite thought of the physical well as a prison, despite thinking of himself as one of the Unliving, a spirit promised to the gods.
“Yes. We have one quest, you and I. One direction that we are all traveling. Heaven.”
“Heaven,” Vekal agreed, before a shadow fell across his face.
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But yes, it is a nice spot,” said Meghan, the ‘witch’ whom he had stayed with, and whom he had saved from the vengeful fishermen last night. His newly dulled senses and his conversation with the devil inside of him had completely masked the approach of the mother and child, as they set down a stick of skewered river fish. “Breakfast.” Meghan nodded, as Kariss sat down beside Vekal, still silent.
Vekal looked across at the child warily, and then gave the woman a cautious smile. How could they be so easy with me, after they saw what I did last night? He
was amazed.
“What we did, priest. Do not credit yourself with such great skill yet,” Ikrit corrected, a slight return to its more usual devilish self.
“Rest,” Meghan said. “Although it looks to me as though you’ve no reason for it. I’ve never seen a person so recuperated after…” The woman’s eyes slid away for a moment, going far, before coming back to him.
“I, uh, maybe I should apologize.” Vekal nodded towards the girl. “For what the girl saw.”
“Don’t you dare apologize,” the mother hissed, suddenly fierce. “Don’t you dare! Never apologize for saving us, and for doing what you had to do in order to save our lives. I for one am grateful that you were there last night, no matter how or what you had to do in order to defeat them.”
Despite the fact that it was probably my fault that they were even there in the first place, the priest confessed to himself. The old fisherman that he had killed, after all, had been the same one who had hauled him from the sea, and whom he had terrified so much that he had come back with his posse of brutish friends to finish the job that the storm had started.
“No matter what you had to do,” Meghan repeated, giving him a serious look. Does she know about my possession? the Sin Eater thought hesitantly.
“It’d be hard to see how she doesn’t, after what she must have seen you do last night,” Ikrit pointed out, but, thankfully said no more, and neither did Meghan, as Vekal just nodded his own thanks to her.
The small group worked to light a fire in silence, and for once Vekal realized how much he had missed the company of other people.
“Hey!” Ikrit said, annoyed.
Other living, breathing people, Vekal hastily corrected. The sailors on the boat hadn’t really been friends, but they had been people that could at least talk and cook and share stories. But no, Vekal realized that he didn’t mean them. He didn’t even mean Sadgast the other devil in Fuldoon—a man like himself, possessed and bonded to the creature that sat atop his mind.
