by Jon Kiln
And this was it.
“The Lockless Gates,” Ikrit whispered inside of the priest, as the light started to resolve into a shaft of watery sunlight, falling from above. The Sin Eater’s steps had taken him past the last of the alcoves of the dead a long time ago, and now he was walking through what appeared to be natural rock passageways.
“What is that?” Vekal noticed something on the walls. Tiny scratches and scrapes, as though something had clawed it.
“Many devils have sought this place, and over the centuries some have even managed to get to the very door before they fell…” Ikrit whispered, and Vekal shivered. The thought of others, trapped just like him, with a creature riding their souls made him feel less like this was his choice at all.
“Of course you have a choice! We all have a choice,” Ikrit said, suddenly. “I could not do this without you, remember. You and I, Vekal and Ikrit. We are unstoppable.”
Vekal found his feet moving forward automatically, of their own volition, only it wasn’t their volition at all. It was the devil’s. The Sin Eater tried to still them, to call his disobedient legs to listen to him but they would not. He stepped out of the rocky passage and into the shaft of sunlight, to find himself in a cave.
The cave was small, but dry. The shaft of light from above came from the ceiling, where someone had installed a thick piece of wavy glass, held in place by ancient seasoned wedges.
Someone had cared for this place, once. Vekal looked around. The cave had a flat floor, barely enough room to lie down in, with a small alcove facing the wall at one end, and another exit-tunnel to the left, through which came the roaring sound of the sea against the island’s coasts. The Sin Eater imagined that this must be the tomb of the saint, and yet there was no body nor grave nor sarcophagus.
He didn’t know where on the Isle he was, but he found that he also didn’t care. A sense of peace was descending onto him, seemingly from the shaft of watery light above. It was a quiet place, a tranquil place, and Vekal imagined that the earlier him—the one who had spent so very long studying in the Tower of Records of Tir—would have appreciated this place very much.
“You can feel it, can’t you? Where do you think the gate to the Lockless Gates is? The alcove?”
The priest knew that the devil was trying to goad him into taking the next step, trying to seduce him with his words. It was true, he had wanted to come here. After the fall of his home, the city of Tir, Vekal knew that a part of him had felt lost and direction-less.
So, I had decided to come here, with my devil on my back. To pass through the trapdoor and into heaven and finally be done with this world. Something felt wrong with that assertion, however, even inside his own mind. Something had changed in him, and he couldn’t say what it was.
“Are you denying me? Us? We have come so far!” The voice of the devil was urgent and panicked.
“No. I am not denying you your victory, devil,” the priest said hesitantly. “It is just…”
“You must go onward! Think of your lord Annwn, and your lady Iliya. Think of meeting your gods face-to-face. What is that litany that you are always spouting?” The devil was getting desperate indeed, terrified that the priest might not go through with it.
The priest’s voice spoke of its own volition, and Vekal could not tell if it was himself saying the words, or the devil forcing him. Everything just seemed so unsure now, where before his purpose had been crystal clear. “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. 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 it’s halls. Only the dead can grant life, for the living can only give themselves away.”
Vekal paused, and murmured, “But… what if I do not wish to give myself away?”
The priest thought of Meghan, the herbalist, and her witch-child Kariss. What of them? Had a part of himself not considered staying here, on this material plane for them, with them? Living with them as a man does with his family? Or even Suriyen, the snarling, fierce guide? Had he not entertained affections for her?
“But in heaven you can have any bride you wish!” Ikrit said, desperately. “One woman, and one child. Do you know how many perfected souls await you in the heavens? Thousands! Hundreds of thousands.”
“It just…” Vekal hesitated. “It just seems a lot to give up, suddenly. Life, I mean.”
The priest heard a dry, chuckling sound, but it was not coming from within. It was coming from the shadowed figure who stepped into the passageway from outside, throwing aside a rain-damp cloak and revealing a body half-melted, burned, and scarred. If it had once been human, it now no longer was.
“Poor Ikrit. Found a body to carry it all the way here, and now it’s getting cold feet,” said a voice that sounded like soot and breaking teeth.
Vekal staggered back, momentarily given control over his own body again thanks to Ikrit’s shock. The thing that faced him wasn’t human, he knew it. It had the flesh of a dead man, but it had the voice of a very living, very powerful devil. The Sin Eater reached for his sword, only for a fist like a lump of stone to back hand him across the side of the head in a strike that was as fast as a scorpion’s tail.
“Koulash?” Vekal’s voice spoke with Ikrit’s tongue. “Koulash—is that you?”
“You know full well it is I, or have your months in a human body made you forget your servants voice?” The creature stepped forward into the small room, and instantly dwarfed it. Whomever the poor soul had been before he was a puppet of this devil, he had certainly been a giant amongst men, and from the trappings of war that he wore—his sword, daggers, and armor, the body had been a soldier as well.
You know this monster? Vekal thought, aghast, his hands trembling as they reached for his sword once more.
“Of course. He was my chief executioner,” Ikrit said, in a tone that was less infernal, and positively terrified. This exchange took less than a second, however, and already Ikrit’s voice was rising again through the priest’s mouth.
“Koulash. Then you can join me. We will enter the kingdom of heaven together.”
In answer, the fiend spat on the alcove to one side, grinning through a ruined mouth. “Why should I care what you offer me now? Nothing can stop me entering heaven myself, and nothing can stop me from opening the gates for every devil to pour into the world when I am there.”
What? The priest saw, immediately, what the devil’s plan was. Not just to get to heaven, to beg or fight for his pardon, but to somehow overthrow heaven itself. To allow every Undying spirit to rise up from its ghostly existence and infest the world.
“Trust me, Vekal. You need to give me total control over your body. Total,” Ikrit was hissing inside the priest’s mind, as the priest lunged.
“No!” Vekal shouted, driving his sword in a fast plunge, straight through the haunted man’s side. Koulash grunted and staggered backward, one hand at his side, but did not fall. Instead, the warrior shook his head, and once again raised his fists, with Vekal’s sword stuck in his side.
Has this been your plan all along, devil? The Sin Eater ducked the first swing, and dodged to the side. To take control over my body, and then call your friends to flood the world with your foul kind?
The next swing from Koulash caught Vekal on a blocking arm, but it still threw him against the wall, with a thud that made his eyes see stars, and the taste of blood fill his mouth.
“Of course not,” Ikrit said. “You cannot hope to defeat Koulash without my total power. You must give me control!”
“Never.”
The priest rolled as a foot crashed down on the place where his head had been. Vekal’s body remembered his training from distant Tir; how to disable and kill and punish silently, those who had been found wanting. He rolled to his knees, striking out against the side of the larger man’s kneecap and h
earing a crack like a branch snapping.
Koulash didn’t cry out in pain, or curse, or even snarl as he fell with one knee shattered. Instead, in a movement that showed just how little respect the occupying spirit had for its host, Koulash turned his ruined knee so that he fell on top of the priest like a sack of bricks.
Vekal gasped, more from shock rather than any pain, as Ikrit was still filtering out his own body’s responses. The man tried to squirm and struggle, but he could not budge the weight of the larger Menaali soldier as it crawled up his body, each finger like talons that dug into his flesh.
“You are not the first I have killed this way. What was the name of the other one? Councilor something?” Koulash laughed as he thumped a fist down on one of Vekal’s forearms, causing a dull cracking sound within.
“Maaritz, that was it. Councilor Maaritz. His soul was so very tasty,” Koulash sneered, using a free hand to casually cuff Vekal’s face, splitting a lip as he did so.
Vekal didn’t know to whom the fiend was referring, but he felt a quiver of something from Ikrit within. Was it fear? Regret? Or excitement? He tried to struggle, but knew that he had been overpowered. This devil was too strong, just as the body that it was within was too strong as well. He was beaten.
“Give me control. Give me your soul, and I swear that I will give it back. Do it now, Vekal, now!” Ikrit was begging him, as Koulash seized the human by the throat with one hand, and squeezed. Vekal felt the pain this time, even past Ikrit’s powers of enchantment, there was a red-hot pain building inside his temples as his body starved of oxygen and blood.
“For shame, master.” The devil-executioner called Koulash was laughing. “To think that I used to be scared of you. To think that the Princes of Hell named you a Greater Abomination. All those centuries you thought me just good enough to swing the Axe against the limbs and the necks of the singers—and now look at you. This body of yours is weak.” Even at the same time as the devil was strangling the Sin Eater, Koulash turned around with the other hand and casually seized the man’s kneecap, and crushing it in one hand as if it were a leaf.
Vekal screamed. Even Ikrit couldn’t stop the pain this time.
“It hurts. Doesn’t it?” Koulash snarled, before raising the same hand and quickly, with pinpoint accuracy, jabbing it into the center of Vekal’s sternum. With the force of the devil’s strength behind the poke, the finger punched through robes and pierced flesh, and for a moment the Sin Eater felt the man’s digit scraping his own organs and bones as he screamed. The devil-executioner laughed, letting go of Vekal’s body and letting it slump, almost dead and gasping like a fish, onto the floor of the cave.
Amazingly, the possessed Menaali warrior slowly straightened up—standing on one leg while the other hung at an odd angle at his side. “I’ll let you watch, Ikrit.”
Koulash staggered to the alcove where the saint of Gaunt used to sit, and chant for days at a time. Koulash lowered himself, perversely, to his knees in mimicry of the dead holy figure that had once occupied this little cave at the edge of the world. Vekal, through his pain, heard the disgusting pops and grating sound of the man’s shattered kneecap as he knelt on it, grinding the broken bits of gristle and bone into the rock beneath his leg. The devil-executioner didn’t appear to mind however, as he said over his shoulder.
“Because you gave me such a good job, once, with oh-so many souls to chop up, Ikrit, I am going to allow you to lie there and watch as I ascend to heaven in your place. As I hunt down your woman and claim her for my own. What was her name again? Eiver? I have to know what to call when I get to the kingdom of heaven, after all.”
Eiver. A small part of Vekal’s soul recognized the syllables. It was the very same name that had been inscribed on the shrine of Telset. He had thought it their god-empress, or queen, or perhaps a goddess. But Ikrit itself told me that the Vor who built Telset had no gods. They only had the Shoggoth, and their chiefs.
There had been three faces on the shrine. One was the Shoggoth, one was a beautiful woman’s face with the name of Eiver inscribed, and the other, the other had been a man’s face. Vekal came to a realization. I thought it might be a king, but it wasn’t, was it? That was your real name?
“Yes,” the devil said. Its voice was sad and remorseful.
Vekal thought about the picture of the man that had marked almost every flagstone in the ghostly city. You lied to me.
There was a change in the air of the cave, as the devil Koulash set both club-like hands on either side of the alcove, and lowered its ruined forehead to the rock wall. Absurdly, and horrifically, the devil started to mutter words. “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…”
“I was ashamed,” Ikrit the devil, or Gehin the man cried out. All trace of its previous rancor, hatred, and spite was gone, as if just saying the real name of the soul behind the devil had the power to cleanse it of its evil. “I did lie. I was the chief architect of the city of Telset. But that was all that I lied about. I still loved Eiver, and Faal still turned into the Shoggoth, thanks to how the demons tricked me. But I made the people create that city. I made them worship me. That throne was mine.”
Vekal could have shut his eyes and wept had it not been for the devil keeping them open. The priest wondered why he had been so foolish as to ever believe a devil. At least this one beside them, Koulash, was honest about its intentions. Now that Vekal knew that Ikrit had been lying to him, the Sin Eater could not say for sure how anything he had said might ever be true. What if none of it was? What if Ikrit was not trying to get to heaven because of a change of heart? What if Ikrit had the same dark desire as Koulash did?
Beside them, the dry, soot-laden voice of Koulash droned on. “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 it’s halls…”
“No!” Vekal, even though his vision swam and his body was in agony, thrust out a hand to try to seize Koulash away from the alcove. I can’t let him do this. I can’t…
“Only the dead can grant life, for the living can only give themselves away,” Koulash murmured the final words, and there was a sound like the island being ripped apart, and Vekal’s eyes filled with the most painful light that he had ever seen.
Gate of Heaven
1
Light. That was the first thought in Vekal’s mind when he opened his eyes. Not that he could tell if his eyes were open or not, the Sin Eater realized. He was surrounded by a white glow, but it did not glare or dazzle. And it was quiet, no sound of wind or sea or…
“Ikrit?” Vekal said, his voice sounding strange in his ears. Younger, fuller. Not the croaking wheeze or the snarl that he had grown used to from his years in the hot desert winds, without even noticing.
The devil that had been living inside of him did not answer, and Vekal felt – strangely – at peace.
Quiet, the man repeated internally. There was no distant hum or buzz of the creature that had been with him since Dal Grehb’s armies overran the City of the Gods, his home. It reminded him of his many long hours that he had spent training or studying in the Tower of Records, practicing his martial strikes against the wooden dollies, or reading the scrolls that had been kept carefully preserved for hundreds and thousands of years.
“I had forgotten what this feels like,” Vekal murmured to himself, trying once again to tell the difference between wakefulness and dreams. He rubbed his tired face, and then realized that he had hands. “At least I am not some disembodied spirit, I guess…” he even smiled to himself – before he realized that his hands were smooth.
Unscarred.
“Wait a minute…” he turned his palms over, saw that he had lost all of the white lines that had been the mark of his profession. And he wore a robe. A white robe with a golden edged trim.
This was like the robes that
the High Priests of my Order wore, Vekal remembered. The ones who had run the City of Gods itself.
“Vekal Morsan,” a voice thrummed in the light, and with it came clarity, and definition. The light started to fade a little, and it was replaced by the gleam of clean marble, smooth as the sky underfoot.
Vekal was in a room – no, a hall – as there were round pillars, each larger than some towers in the mortal realms. When he looked up he could see nothing but clouds of faintly glowing silvery light.
“This really is heaven…” he said in awe to himself.
“Vekal Morson, of the Morshanti…” the voice repeated, and the Sin Eater found his steps moving down the hall, and a shape appearing out of the gentle glow. A vast cauldron set into the ground: bronze, and as wide as a pool, with its lip rising to his waist. There was a figure on the other side, who appeared to be bearing a similar white and gold robe, and was stirring the cauldron with a pole.
The Sin Easter walked around the curving lip towards the figure who had spoken to him. It was a voice that he recognized, although he could not say who, or why.
“Do you know who I am?” The woman did not look up from her task, but stared intently into the dark waters as she stirred. Her hood fell to obscure most of her face, but Vekal could see an edge of a brightly shining cheek, a fine nose, the suggestion of long lashes. Dark hair spilled out from the hood as she moved, and it looked as soft as the water that she was tending.
“No,” Vekal admitted.
“No matter. I am not like my consort. I do not require my subjects to know my name,” she said, her voice sounding merry and bright.
It wasn’t the only sound that Vekal could hear, however. He was also starting to hear the strains of other voices, raised in laughter or riot, he could not tell.
“What is that?” Vekal asked, feeling oddly unafraid in front of this strange woman.
