by Jon Kiln
Heading East. Meghan stroked her child’s head distractedly as she tried to order everything that happened to her in the last few days. The Mother Aldameda had convinced her that it wasn’t safe in the inn, and that her best chance at safety would be with her.
Her and the pirates of the Red Hand, and the Pirate Lord Oberra.
This last assertion, although it would have filled her with dread a scant few days ago, now made her smirk in the darkness. Oberra was handsome in a way, but he was also a fool. She had met many such young, desperate men in her time along the Shattering Coast. Sailors and captains who thought they could find treasure in the wilds, or build new towns, or serve in the great wars of the north.
They had all been fools, and she was sure that they had all died, and the herbalist was sure that the dread pirate lord Oberra was no exception. Even she could see that it was just his charm and wit that kept him in charge of this bunch of criminals and military deserters, as he sought to impart his dream of a pirate republic, founded and serving him, of course.
A dark feeling swept over Meghan, stilling her hands as her heart beat a little heavier. How many people would her daughter see die, before her very eyes?
At least they hadn’t been there to see what had happened to Vekal. She thought of the strange traveler who had turned their life upside down, but also saved them, and healed her little girl’s eyes. He had been odd, reserved, and his skin was criss-crossed with the scars of his kind. The Sin Eaters. The Accursed of the distant City of Gods. Meghan had thought them a fairy tale, until her little girl had brought him home one day.
Yes, he had been kind, but bearing such a terrible weight. Why were all the good men already bound up with their heavy chains of honor and duty and shame? She could have imagined a quiet life with Vekal, in the wilds, with a little cottage and a small herd of goats, a flock of chickens. Giving what healing they could to the travelers that passed their way, and to each other.
But it was not to be, and now Meghan was here, on board a pirate vessel heading east through the Inner Seas.
And something in the night had woken her up. Something that should not be there, and yet was.
The herbalist felt the wrongness of it clearly even though she couldn’t see what it was that approached. Like the arrival of a sudden cold breeze in midsummer, or the growl of a bear heard in the woods.
What is that? Meghan’s eyes twitched to her sleeping daughter, but she only burbled in her sleep, unaffected.
There was a sound outside her door. The creak of a board. Had the old woman tricked her? Was her wish to protect her just a ruse to get her here, surrounded by dangerous criminals and open water? Meghan knew the many dangers that faced women on the Inner Ocean. They might sell her to slavery. They might decide that Kariss is ‘bad luck’ and heave them overboard.
Well, we’ll go down fighting. Meghan reached for her knife under her bunk; a short belt knife, but one that she kept wickedly sharp. Without waking her daughter, she slipped out of her bunk, her bare feet feeling the cold of the wooden floor, her night shift feeling flimsy and vulnerable over her body. She crouched as the door handle turned, its metal making a sharp whining noise.
Meghan braced herself as the handle moved. The door started to open onto the dim glow of lantern light of the narrow corridor beyond.
There was a shape in the darkness, a tall shape, silhouetted against the light.
Meghan raised her blade.
And light burst from the figure’s face.
***
Meghan gasped, falling back as brilliant white light illuminated her, blinded her. She waved with her knife in front of her, but somehow her body felt clumsy, awkward and heavy. With a clatter, the knife dropped to the floor from fumbling fingers.
“Get away from us!” Meghan hissed, as the light grew in intensity. She pushed herself back against the bunk. Where was Kariss? Why wasn’t she awake?
“Meghan,” a voice said. It was a rich, liquid voice, one that seemed made of silver and crystal. With the word, there was a gentle thud as the door behind the glowing figure shut, and the light started to fade.
The herbalist rubbed her eyes with one hand as she waved the other in front of her. “Stay away!”
“Have no fear,” the voice said, and now the blinding spots of light in the herbalist’s eyes were fading, returning to the gloom of the night time room, and the form of the Pirate Lord Oberra, standing before her.
“You?” she said, although she knew instinctively that it wasn’t him. Just like Vekal, her confused thoughts addled, although she couldn’t say why. There was something different about Oberra, the way that he stood had none of that chin-out cockiness, none of that slight wariness as if he was a child about to be caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. No, this Oberra was as still as a post, and looked at her with clear eyes and confidence.
Vekal would change, sometimes, her mind whirled. It was the darkness inside of him. It was as if, sometimes, she could see someone else peering through his eyes in a calculating scowl.
“Demon!” Meghan spat at him, wishing that she had some weapon, anything. She wanted to shriek, to scream, but her fear was too great.
“Hardly,” the sides of Oberra’s mouth flickered into a smile. “Do not be frightened, Meghan. I have not come to harm you or your babe.”
Meghan bared her teeth at the thing that rode Oberra’s skin.
“I am no demon, Meghan. My name is Ruthiel, and some have called me an angel.”
8
“An… angel?” Meghan shook her head. “Impossible.”
“Is it?” Ruthiel, or Oberra, she thought, took a slow, elegant step into her room, holding his hands open in a peaceable gesture. Every movement was exact and poised, as if he was about to explode into action at any moment. She had met men like that before, although never a man who could glow. They had always been dangerous, and capable of terrible things. She suspected that an angel was no different.
“You know the truth of the world, Meghan, although you didn’t want to see it. That Sin Eater harbored a devil. An ugly little abomination called Ikrit. And, if you can accept that, then surely you must accept that there are also good spirits on the other side as well. Angels.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Meghan countered, although her voice was wavering and small, and she knew that the creature spoke the truth. “What have you done with Oberra?”
“He is still in here, and he is quite safe,” the thing that wore Oberra’s skin said casually. “When my job is done, his body will be returned to him, and he will have… a greater understanding of how the world works, shall we say?”
“But why him, of all people?” Meghan found herself asking. The Pirate Lord was vain, prideful, a thief and a pirate.
A shadow of unpleasantness crossed the man’s features, like a cloud obscuring the sun for just a briefest moment, but it was gone just as quickly. “Yes. I have to admit that this choice of body is a little less than what we might usually go for, but, surprising to everyone, Oberra is a believer. He may have many frailties, and have committed many sins of this world, but he has never reveled in violence or the suffering of others.”
The angel sounded like it was trying to convince itself of that, Meghan thought. “Needs must, in difficult times, you mean?”
“Yes, ah – I suppose that you could say that.” The angel had at least the good graces to look a little shamed. Still, the herbalist didn’t like it. She hadn’t liked what she had seen in Vekal, and she had liked him, and she didn’t like what she saw in Oberra now. It’s not natural, stealing a person’s body. It wasn’t the way that the world was supposed to work.
“So, what do you want? Why are you here?” Meghan looked over to Kariss for just the briefest of moments, to see that, amazingly, her baby girl was still sound asleep. She had never seen her so rested, in fact. A suspicion grew in her mind. “My girl. What have you done to her?”
“Nothing bad. Just a glamor of sleep,” Ruthiel said,
again quirking a smile as if he were being asked elementary lessons by a child. “Kariss will come to no harm of it. In fact, it will benefit her.”
“Don’t speak her name!” Meghan hissed suddenly. The thought that this creature had any power over her daughter made her feel sick.
In response, Ruthiel-Oberra pursed his lips for a moment, a fraction of displeasure that felt like it contained oceans of anger. Meghan felt her pulse quicken in panic.
“I am here, Meghan, because I have been called here. By the Heavenly Hosts,” Ruthiel said gravely, his voice taking on a deep timbre that Meghan could feel shaking in her gut. “I am here, Meghan, because of Vekal and Ikrit. The Lockless Gate, the door to heaven, has been broken open, and right now there are many of my kind seeking to defend it from armies of devils.”
“But what has that to do with us?” Meghan snapped. “Why don’t you leave us humans out of your war?”
“No,” Ruthiel-Oberra said simply. “You have lived too long in your ignorance of your true nature. The human souls are our war. Every human mind that is weak is being attacked and exploited by the devils.”
And the angels…? Meghan thought sullenly.
“Who will stop at nothing to control heaven and earth – the place we call the Garden – entirely. If we did nothing, then the devils of hell would win, and then your life would be considerably more miserable even than it is now.”
“So, you think you’re saving us?” Meghan said, unable to keep the contempt from her voice.
“You will understand, one day,” the Ruthiel-Oberra creature replied, his eyes dismissing her as they settled instead on the sleeping form of her daughter. “Now…”
“No!” Meghan staggered between the angel’s gaze and her child. “I don’t care what side of heaven you’re from, I won’t let near my daughter.”
“I wasn’t.” The angel frowned slightly. “You really must start trusting me, Meghan. I mean you and your girl no harm.” His words were emphatic.
“Why should I trust that?”
“Because the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The fate of all of the worlds. The balance has been destroyed, and unless we can find a way to close and seal the Lockless Gate, then all of creation is doomed.”
“And just what has my girl got to do with that?”
Ruthiel was quiet for a moment, as if deciding something. Eventually, a sigh shook his body, and he spoke. “Your girl is the one who can close the Gate. Or open it. She is a rare soul, a pure soul, one just like the Saint of Gaunt, the mystic who was so beloved by the gods that their shrine became the Gate to heaven itself.”
“But, but… that is ridiculous!” Meghan cried out in horror, even as her heart knew that it was the truth. Her child had true dreams. Her child could predict what was to happen to the people she met, and she had been blessed with the most incredible luck in her life. Meghan’s mind skipped back to the time on the Shattering Coast just before they had been run out of Fisheye. A boy had gone missing, and Kariss, barely two at the time, had calmly walked to the edge of the town where there was a stone well which the boy had fallen into.
Or the time a year later, when they had been living in their cottage in the wilds, and Meghan had lost the three-year-old, to find her playing in a clearing mere feet away from a mother bear – neither of them seeming to mind the other’s presence at all.
Their water in that hut had always been fresh, the milk had never curdled, she thought, knowing everything that the angel said was true.
But that didn’t mean that she wanted to admit that to him.
“You know it is true, Meghan. How can a mother not? You thought it was her gift. Magic, perhaps – but it was no magic, it was a blessing from the gods.”
The realization struck Meghan like a stone. She felt her whole world suddenly become strange, and yet making a perfect kind of sense. “But… but why would the gods do that to her?”
Ruthiel-Oberra shrugged as if the question was of no consequence. “It is not for me to explain the will of the gods. Perhaps it is just because it is time for this to happen in the ages of the world. Perhaps this is all a part of their plan. But what I do know, is that your child there is very special, and must be protected at all costs. That is why I am here.” He gestured self-deprecatingly to his body.
“You–you’re saying that you are what, her guardian?” Meghan said, unbelievingly.
“I am a Captain of Heaven,” Ruthiel-Oberra said proudly. “And yes, I suppose you could also say that I am your child’s guardian angel.”
Great, Meghan thought. Although she was glad that her child clearly had such a powerful protector, she didn’t know what it meant. “What do you intend to do with her?”
“To close the Lockless Gate.” Ruthiel didn’t even blink.
“But… how? What does that even mean?” Meghan said despairingly. “She knows no spells, no magic words, she can barely read!”
“She will know, when the time comes,” Ruthiel-Oberra said finally, and, as Meghan watched in horror, he smiled at her child as if she were his prized possession. “This boat is already heading for the Lockless Gate, where my brothers and sisters are waging their war. We will meet with them, we will close the Lockless Gate together, and then the world will be restored.” He beamed at her daughter. “Your daughter will be a saint.”
Meghan looked in alarm at her magically-sleeping child. I don’t want her to be a saint. I just want her to be my little girl.
9
Once again, Vekal was surrounded by water. The priest flailed and slapped at the waves, kicking with his feet as he surfaced from the water one more time.
‘You seem to spend a lot of our time drowning, priest!’ Ikrit snapped, lending its unholy strength and vitality to the priest’s limbs. Vekal didn’t feel cold, in fact, he didn’t even feel wet – and instead the power of the spirit inside of him made him feel strong, invincible.
Vekal still shouted as he broke the surface one more time. He had come to hate the feel of the devil lodged inside of his skull now. Even when it was saving his life.
‘And I damn well intend to!’ In his furious state, the devil swiftly took control of his limbs, forcing him to paddle away from the rocks of Gaunt, out into open water.
“What the hell are you doing?” Vekal managed to shout when he got his head above water again. The waves were strong here around the island and the Shattering Coast, large, dark swells of water that pushed and pulled his bobbing body wherever they willed.
And the sea was also burning, he saw in alarm, as great planks of wood either from one of the destroyed trireme platforms above, or from the devil-controlled galleons they were at war with. Vekal heard the roar and whoosh of cannon and ballista, the whine of arrows, the screams of sailors (spirits, he thought) dying.
‘It is precisely Hell that I am doing,’ Ikrit snapped, paddling his body further out, away from the now-burning Isle of Gaunt, out towards the battle. ‘You want to die? Again? And be dragged down to hell?’
“I thought it was clear I would be going to heaven,” Vekal managed to splutter.
‘Not with me attached to you. You only got up there because the Gate is open, you idiot. I am going to save your skin, and my soul!’
Vekal saw, in horror, that he was swimming towards a demon-controlled Galleon of Thrane.
Thrane was a northern kingdom, one on the far side of the Inner Seas, and one that rarely had anything to do with the warm southlands, save trade with Fuldoon, Vekal knew. It was a harsh, martial place, and it patrolled its waters with a passion, so the galleon that they were heading towards would be stuffed full of devil-possessed sailors with their swords, crossbows, and every sort of defense.
Once I am on that boat, I will never escape, Vekal thought. He would be in the hands of hell.
‘Once we are on that boat, we will be safe,’ Ikrit corrected.
The priest couldn’t believe it. After all this – Ikrit had decided to side with Hell? The very place that he had fought for
centuries to climb out of? That he had created a world war to be rid of?
‘Please don’t moan about not trusting devils now, milk-sap,’ Ikrit said. ‘We can all see where this cosmic war will go. It’s time to pick a side – and I, at least, know how to speak to devils.’
“No!” Vekal gasped water, kicking with his feet as hard as he could. It was like he was stuck in treacle, and every suggestion of movement that he wanted to make was like pushing through stone.
‘Stop that!’ Ikrit buzzed inside of his mind, filling his head with anger. ‘You’ll only get us both drowned.’
“No!” Vekal thought of the words of the Lady Iliya, he thought of that tranquil peace, that brilliant light on his face – all in danger now – all out of reach for someone like him. He struggled once again against the devil’s hold over his mind, but it was strong. His limbs twitched, and he went underwater for a moment, before Ikrit took charge of his legs to kick them back up over the surface, and forced his mouth to breath.
‘Enough of your nonsense.’ Ikrit was furious, pressing its devilish self around the hardened kernel of Vekal’s mind.
But I am a Sin Eater. I do the god’s work, he pleaded with himself, with his own disobedient limbs.
“I am the dead. The Unliving. I do not belong to the world but to those that live beyond it. I am made of this world but are not owned by it…” he gasped.
‘I said STOP THAT!’ Ikrit hissed all around him, driving out the sounds of the sea and the burning battle in the Sin Eater’s ears, until it was only the devil and the priest.
But Vekal was thinking about Meghan and Kariss. He was thinking about his friends, about why he was here. How could he let them go? How could he let them die, as the devils took over the world?
“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…”
