Blood and Sand Trilogy Box Set

by Jon Kiln

  “You are learning, priest, even if you are incredibly slow-witted,” the devil said, in a slight return to its previous, infernal self. “The Shoggoth will always be here, and it always acts as a deterrence and a challenge to any who come this way. It is a lesson for all, set by the gods!” Ikrit spat the last part out, vengefully.

  “A lesson? To never try to live forever?” Vekal was confused. “Why would the gods need to keep alive a monster like that up there, just in order to teach a lesson?”

  “Because the Shoggoth also acts to guard this very passage here,” Ikrit said finally. “The passage that we are walking along right now.”

  Vekal nodded, the supernatural ab-light of the devil’s sight overlaying his own so that he could see perfectly well as he trudged, ever onward. He was wondering how long this passage would go for, and to where it ultimately led.

  “You can hear the odd sounds of water, can you not? The trickles and the hisses, and the pops? That is because, not very far beyond our heads there sits the entire weight of the blooming seas and the Shattering cliffs. There was a reason that the greater evils told us to build Telset here, of all places. There was a reason that they gave us to listen to them—by tricking even me to inflict the Shoggoth on the Vor. It was all a part of their plan to secure this passage, the very one that leads all of the way to the Isle of Gaunt itself.”

  The priest gasped. “All… all of that? The ten years that you spent searching the world? The cursing of Faal? The construction of the entire city…” It was a plan of devastating scope. One that had lasted almost generations, and all to secure that headland of the Shattering Coast, and a passageway to the Tomb of Gaunt.

  The backdoor to Heaven. Vekal realized. “That is what the devils wanted, wasn’t it? They wanted control over how to get to the realms of the gods.”

  “You are learning, at last. It is a shame that you had to spend so many years with your dry books and scrolls before you could understand,” Ikrit said. “The forces of heaven and hell, of the gods and of the devils make plans in generations. In millennia. The devils have always wanted a way to escape hell, and they have always sought to gain control over the Lockless Gates. Those are the types of forces arrayed against us, and that is why I had to raise an entire army of Menaali Tribesmen and Dal Grehb himself in order to get myself, and us, here at last.”

  “And that is why the gods leave the Shoggoth alive up there, in the ruins of Telset. That monster is the last defense against any who seeks access to this tunnel,” Vekal said, just as something started to change in the light ahead of them.

  A sort of greyness. Somewhere, ahead in the tunnel of the dead, there was a source of light.

  28

  Suriyen opened her eyes, amazed that she wasn’t in fact dead.

  I might as well be though, the warrior considered from the way that she felt. Pain hugged her and surrounded her like a blanket, at turns feverishly hot, and at others chillingly cold. Those bastards probably tipped their arrows with poison, she considered, trying to focus her bleary eyes.

  They instantly stung, but not from any injury that she had been afflicted with. Instead, her eyes hurt from the acrid smoke that lay heavy about the room—for she saw that she was in a room, and not still on the bridge or on a battlefield.

  A hiss from somewhere out of sight, and when Suriyen tried to raise her head she found that her neck muscles felt as weak as a newborn’s, and the woman’s body just twitched and shivered uselessly where it lay.

  “That’ll do you no good, you know,” said a voice. It was a woman’s voice, and it sounded heavily accented. A moment later a fuzzy shape edged into view, and it slowly resolved to the braided head of an older woman, with dark skin and deep, lined eyes. “The herbs that I fed you have stolen your body from you, I’m afraid. It won’t obey you until they wear off. If they ever do, of course,” the woman said nonchalantly, her head turning to look out in a direction past where Suriyen’s recalcitrant head couldn’t turn.

  The woman made a clucking noise in the back of her throat, as if she were annoyed at something, and then turned to consider Suriyen again.

  “Stubborn, I grant you, for all of your heathen ways.”

  Suriyen tried to protest, but all that came out from her clumsy lips was a growling moan.

  “Oh dear, really!” This brought a smile to the woman with the braided hair. “You should know never to show weakness in the face of your enemies. Surely, a woman of your rank knows of such things?”

  Suriyen growled. Just kill me, witch, if that is what you are going to do, she thought savagely.

  The woman with the braids did not kill her however, and nor could she hear what Suriyen’s thoughts were. Instead she glanced back over her shoulder at whatever had attracted her attention and sighed. “Well. I suppose, at least you should see the destruction of your city for yourself.” The woman crossed over, out of sight behind where Suriyen growled and thrashed, before an instant later she felt pain shoot down her sides as she was hauled up to a sitting position. The room around her swung into view, and with it a low moan of dismay escaped Suriyen’s lips.

  She was in a Menaali tent, heavy with incense. The tent appeared to belong to the woman, as everywhere were drying herbs, phials of foul liquids, and countless sharp blades hung from the roof ridges. But it wasn’t the tent that had caused Suriyen such heartache. It was what she saw ahead.

  The tent flap to the outside was open, and Suriyen could see that they were looking down over the river and the ruined bridge to the walls of Fuldoon. The woman’s tent must have been placed on a slight rise outside the cattle markets as Suriyen could see that she was looking down, and could see the blanket of devastation laid out before them.

  The great boat-bridge of Fuldoon was almost destroyed, with only a few struts and planks connecting one side of the middle to the other. From this side of the walls, Suriyen could see the damage the trebuchets and the fires had done to the city, with large swathes blackened with soot, and with areas where the tops of the walls had collapsed almost completely. Beyond the walls, the heavy dark smoke of the fire hung over the city, but she couldn’t tell if this was smoke from the smoldering remains of the city, or whether it was smoke from an inferno that still raged.

  But even that sight wasn’t what caused such great anguish in the wall-captain.

  There was a sound like rolling thunder, and another mighty block of masonry was thrown by the siege towers, crashing into the pile of broken rubble and rock where the central gates had been. Suriyen jumped at the sound, cracking like a lightning bolt as rock dust billowed out from the wreckage to hang like a mist over the boat bridge.

  The gate has fallen. The wall has been breached. Suriyen’s voice rolled around her head. It wasn’t panic that she was feeling. If anything, it was beyond panic—just a cold dread that made her want to close her eyes, to give up. She had lost. She had failed Fuldoon.

  But Dal Grehb isn’t dead. Her lowering eyes snapped open, as she forced herself to watch as the rock dust started to clear, revealing a pile of rubble like broken teeth where the central gate house had been. I have to see this. Even if I can’t stop it, I have to witness it, she told herself, aware of all of the deaths that she had not seen, all of the invisible moments of terror and tragedy which she had ignored. But no more.

  It was my job to protect them. I could at least bear witness to their final end.

  Though as she watched, she saw a shape rising from the mist, on the other side of the rubble. It was a tattered and ragged flag on the end of a spear. Someone had rammed it into the pile of bricks just a moment ago, and it bore the purple and red flag of Fuldoon. The defenders were still defiant, even if there was no way that they would be able to stop the Menaali horde.

  A horde which still can’t cross the boat bridge, Suriyen saw before her. The bridge was too unstable for the tens of thousands to pour across into the city, and so the war leader had clearly organized his soldiers to start repairing the bridge. Suriyen watched a
s wooden boats were being rowed out, and others waded into the shallows with bags of rocks to shore up the foundation posts, as the horde tried to reconstruct any sort of platform that would hold their weight.

  Now, though it caused her pain, Suriyen’s mouth twitched, and stretched into a sickly, savage grin. It might be days before they build something that can allow them to cross—and in that time, even if they keep on pulverizing the walls from their siege towers, the people of Fuldoon might be able to escape.

  The wall-captain knew that it was a pipe dream, that an operation to evacuate a few hundred thousand people would take longer than a day and a night to arrange, but it was something. A crumb of hope, and that was all that she needed to endure what she was going through.

  The woman with the braids hissed, striking the grinning face of the wall-captain. It hurt as Suriyen flopped over to her side uncontrollably, but not as much as all the other pains that were warring through her shivering and sweating body.

  “You think this is funny, captain?” The woman sneered at her, and Suriyen felt her body pulled up once more into a sitting position, only to be slapped again to slump to the other side of the blankets that she was laying on. This time a line of fire opened across her cheek, and she tasted her own blood from the woman’s sharpened claw-like nails.

  “Why are you smiling at the loss of your city’s walls? You think that you have been clever, and brave?” Another stinging blow, on Suriyen’s unflinching cheek. This time the wall-captain saw the blood from her cheek dribble onto the blanket in front of her.

  “Your destruction of your bridge has only prolonged the torment of your people inside. I hear their screams and cries every night as I sleep in that bed, and even one such as I tremble. What horror are they going through, I think. What foolish, stubborn captain could lie to them with word of hope and of resistance, when we all know what the truth is. There has never been a war chief like Dal Grehb and his Menaali in all of history, and when they overrun the south, the whole world will bend their knees.”

  “Why?” Suriyen spat out blood and, disconcertingly, a tooth in her effort to make her body talk.

  Fingers as cold as ice seized Suriyen’s raging flesh, gripping her chin as it dragged her up by the head. “Because I said so. Because I am Aisa Desai, and because I have been promised a throne in heaven if I deliver the thrones of the world.”

  Deliver to who? Suriyen tried to say, but this time her lips would not obey her, and the braided woman known as Aisa Desai was enraptured by her own myth anyway, as she plucked, with her free hand, a long thin blade with a curved point like a fish-gutting knife, and brought it closer to Suriyen’s face as she whispered.

  “You see, captain, this is the gift that I will give to you. The knowledge that all of this, all this destruction, bloodshed and pillaging is not even because I want your pathetic pile of money-lenders and thieves. Fuldoon will fall, and the whole south will fall because others greater than you have demanded it so. The ones I am talking about do not care for your treaties or your prayers or your money. They just want blood, torment, and service.”

  Demons. Suriyen shuddered, knowing it to be true. Mother Aldameda was right. The only true enemy are the devils and fiends, not soldiers and generals. Suriyen felt a wave of despair threaten to drag her down. Why had she waited here, pretending to be Suriyen the great warrior, the noble leader, the wall-captain, when there was a greater enemy at large? The devils of hell. The hordes of the Undying, seeking to find a way into our world…

  “Aisa! What are you doing?” a gruff voice barked from the tent, and the braided woman hissed, turned and let go of Suriyen’s head in an instant. Suriyen grunted in pain as she fell back onto the floor, blood dribbling down the cut on her face where the witch had struck her.

  Someone stood in the doorway, and filled it. It was a man who would almost be called a giant in other cultures, though not for his height, but his stature. The armor plates that sat on his shoulders, knees, and calves had to be especially made and hammered to fit his form. His shoulders were almost the width of two men, and his face was craggy and pocked with scars. On his chest, he wore the traditional strips of intertwined leather of the Menaali, and between his gauntleted hands he held a great helmet, with two sweeping-back horns.

  Dal Grehb. Suriyen’s heartbeat thundered. The last time she had been this close to him she had been a child, and he had dismissed her with a grim stare. Dismissed her to the slave pens of his horde. She wondered if he would recognize her, after all these years, and she wondered just what it was she was feeling. Hatred? Terror? Fury? Shock.

  “Dal,” Aisa Desai nodded gracefully, setting the stiletto blade back on its hook. “Just interrogating the prisoner. A captain of the heathen Fuldoonians.”

  So, the war chief doesn’t know of Aisa Desai’s true masters, the demons, Suriyen thought wildly. The woman was nervous, but she hid it well.

  “Enough, witch,” the war chief growled. “What can this one tell us that we need to know, anyway? The gates are fallen, the city is fighting inferno. We’ll be inside by tomorrow nightfall. Leave your cruel pleasures to after the siege.”

  The braided woman opened and closed her mouth, before stuttering. “As you wish, my lord, but she is one of the wall-captains. The very one who dared to challenge you, yourself.”

  The immense war chief of the Menaali horde, the scourge of the world, defiler of the city of the gods, and the victor of the Iron Pass, turned his head to regard Suriyen. “Is that so?” he said, in a voice like grating rocks.

  Killer. Murderer. Tyrant. Suriyen glared at him, her nemesis.

  “Then she has proved herself brave, at least. Stupid, but brave,” the war chief announced. “She is not to be harmed, not until the siege is broken, and I am in command of the city. Now come, witch, and counsel me.”

  At that, the war chief Dal Grehb glared heavily at Aisa Desai, and turned, trusting that the braided woman would follow at his heels. Suriyen saw the woman scowl at the war chief’s back, but turn a vicious little smile at Suriyen as she followed her master. “Enjoy the view, captain,” the braided woman hissed, leaving Suriyen alone to contemplate the downfall of Fuldoon, and the charity of the tyrant who had just saved her life.

  29

  None of the crew of the little boat knew the man’s name, but they knew that he paid in gold. He wore heavy robes, swathed over his face and over studded metal leathers, and the sailors had thought that he must be a deserter from the distant war against Fuldoon. Everyone had heard of the war against Fuldoon, of course. It was all that anyone talked about along the Shattering Coasts—whether fishermen, smugglers, or pirates.

  The sailors hadn’t offered any explanation as to which group they belonged, and the strange man with the heavy purses of money hadn’t explained what he was either. That was fine by the crew. In these dark times of war and tragedy, it was better to ask little, and pay a lot.

  If the stranger had hideous burns up and down the bits of flesh that he forgot to cover with his robes, then it wasn’t for the crew to mention. If he even smelled slightly if they got too close, of cooked meat and soot, then no one said anything. They had smelled far worse things at sea when a barrel of fish guts had gone off.

  No, no one asked the stranger who he was or why he had paid so much to charter their boat to a nowhere rock on the edge of the Shattering Coasts. It was a little strange that he didn’t speak, and didn’t eat or drink water for the few days that it took.

  “It must be some religious thing,” one of the crew members whispered to another, and they reckoned that he was probably fasting or purifying himself for some sort of ceremony or hermitage. In fact, hadn’t one of the crew members heard that the rock that they were sailing for might have some sort of chapel or grave or tomb on it?

  When they sighted the Isle of Gaunt the very next morning, emerging through the sea fog like an accusing finger, no one was surprised when the already very strange, silent man in robes stood up in the tiny row boat, and looke
d at the island.

  The Isle of Gaunt was little more than an atoll, really; a thickly forested crag of rock that stood proud from the cliffs of the dangerous Shattering Coasts. It was lucky, they had all agreed, that their boat was so small as to be rowed through and around the shelves and reefs of rocks that lay dangerously everywhere around the waters here.

  What did surprise all the crew members aboard the small row boat, however, was when the stranger turned around and, still without saying a word, proceeded to kill every sailor who had brought him here, and throw their body—heavy with the gold that the stranger had paid them—into the waiting sea.

  The stranger was large, and covered in burns, and whose features—when uncovered by the robes, and when deciphered from their mass of burns—looked vaguely Menaali.

  30

  There was light at the end of the passage, and it grew steadily brighter until Vekal’s night-sight was lost completely. He didn’t know for how long he had been walking, as the devil inside of him had banished all thoughts and feelings of fatigue from his body.

  So, this is it. This is what all of this suffering has been about, the priest thought as he trudged ever onward. The tunnel had been sloping upwards for a long time, that much he knew, but he could not say how high his steps had taken him—perhaps all the way to the surface of the island, perhaps just to the sea bed. His mind went back to similar dark marches that he had made under the far off desert, down the old water tunnels of the city of the gods, when he had first discovered the devil lodged inside his soul. I have fled the sacking of Tir for this. He remembered the burning fires of the Menaali invaders, the screams of his countrymen. I dragged my weary body across the Sand Seas for this. Days of burning heat and dry thirst, where he had encountered Suriyen the guide, and her charge, young Talon. He had survived attacks by murderous gypsies, storms at sea, a sinking ship, witch-hunters and even a monstrous Shoggoth in the ruins of a forgotten city.