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  “I’m the scout and guard of this caravan, and it is my job to see that you all get to Fuldoon alive. And I can’t do that if you die from heat stroke, can I?” Suriyen growled, shoving him, not so gently, under the awning.

  The nearest gypsy woman hissed and spat onto the sand as she moved away from him. Vekal needed no translation for what that gesture meant. He found a space at the edge of the shade, beside a cart wheel, and ignored the glances that the rest were giving him. Vekal had spent a long time ignoring what others thought of him, and by now, he rather thought that he was an expert at it. The conversation grew mumbled, but soon enough tiredness and hunger overtook their need to ostracize him, and Vekal was listening to the sound of the gypsies talking and sharing food with each other.

  “Here.” Someone knelt down in the crunchy sand and dirt beside him. It was Talon, the boy he had saved. Vekal looked at him with narrowed eyes, and then at the bread, cheese, and water bottle he was being offered.

  “I thought Suriyen told you not to talk to me,” Vekal said, gratefully taking the nourishment. The cheese was very tangy and salty, but the bread was spiced with some kind of fruit and nuts, and was delicious.

  “She’s busy talking the route through.” Talon shrugged. He still looked a little tired and weary from his ordeal, but he was much better than before. Talon sat and watched the strange man eat the food.

  “She likes you. Suriyen. I think she sees herself in you. Young. Out of place,” Vekal told the boy.

  Talon made an agreeing sound and shrugged. “Yeah, I know. The gypsies are good to me. I may stay with the gypsies when we get to the city, or travel with Suriyen. We’ll see when we get there.”

  If war doesn’t overtake us all, Vekal thought, a wave of reality crushing him down. The Menaali controlled Tir, and they were only a few short days from the port of Fuldoon. What would come of all of them now? Was Dal Grehb happy with his daughter’s apparent health, and would he return to the Iron Pass?

  “Everyone!” said Suriyen’s clear and strong voice from one end of the awning. She was standing a little hunched so that others could see her. “After our delay in the sands,” she began, and Vekal felt a few eyes turning to regard him warily, “we have made good time. Another day and we will be at the river, and our destination is across from us. We should be within safer territories now, and tonight we will stop at an oasis that I know well. One more day of hardship and your journey will be over. I will, as I have promised, see you to safe passage to the gates of Fuldoon, and there I will leave your services.”

  There were a few ragged cheers, although Vekal couldn’t tell if it was because the crowd was happy at the job that she had done so far, or happy that she would be out of their company.

  “Thank you,” Suriyen took the cheers as a compliment, although the Sin Eater detected a wry smile at the edges of her lips. “I think. But there are other matters that I feel that I must advise you. These seem to be unsettled times for the Sand Seas. The Menaali have come further east than they ever have before, and I fear that the weeks, months, and years ahead will be very difficult for us all. With that in mind, I would advise you all to travel through Fuldoon to the Inner Sea, and there to carry on your journeys in the far north.”

  This time the crowd erupted into angry murmurs and hisses. Not a plan they like, then.

  “No, friends!” Suriyen tried to placate them with upraised hands. “I am not trying to secure more work for myself. This whole region will be unsettled, and may even be at war by winter’s mark. I believe that over this short time that I have served you all, I have come to know you, and even, that some of you may have come to regard me as an ally. Out of respect for that trust, I am telling you this: that you may find rich markets to the south of the Inner Sea, but it is to the north that you and your children will be safe.”

  The same spitting woman who had hissed at Vekal cursed in annoyance. She seemed older than the rest, with heavily lined skin and dark hair streaked with silver. Suriyen opened her mouth as though to argue her case, then shrugged, before moving around the congregation to where Vekal and Talon sat. The Sin Eater saw the guard share a warning glance with the boy, who knew that he was not to talk to his savior, but all three of them sat and shared their food all the same.

  “That went well,” Vekal said with a wry smile.

  “Could have gone better, I guess.” Suriyen shrugged. “And as for you, Sin Eater, will you come with me to the Council when we reach the city?”

  Vekal nodded. He hadn’t really considered it, to be honest; he just flowed forward, carried on by the tide of events. But what is it that I want to do, now that Tir is gone? He was surprised that he had no answer to that question at all.

  Ikrit? he asked of himself, but still the demon inside of him was silent. Perhaps the beast really has gone. Perhaps there never was a beast to begin with, and it was all a pain-addled dream.

  “I dare say that there will be many who wish to meet you.” Suriyen took a slug of water. “The last Sin Eater of Tir’an’fal.”

  Vekal’s hand shook. Could it really be that I am the last of my kind? Far above him, one of the albino crows of the desert, beloved to Annwn, called harshly, and without pity.

  13

  They walked through the dusk, Suriyen keeping her charges supplied with water and grateful for the cooler temperatures. Vekal was once again relegated to the back with the pack-beasts, who didn’t appear to need much of his guidance at all, or to care that he was there. Inside his own head, the Sin Eater wondered what was happening.

  Would it matter so much if I walked off on my own? If I started a new life? For all of his years he had been a student of the dark arts at the Tower of Records, and now, without it he felt lost. He had heard a thousand dirty little secrets, and a thousand terrible, terrible lies. He had absolved them all. He had eaten all of their sins and had offered his service to the gods as payment. He had done whatever they asked, whether it was Annwn’s accounting, or Iliya’s mourning, or their reckoning.

  It was not an easy life by any stretch of the imagination. The normal folk of the holy city had reviled him and hated him, along with his brothers and sisters of the order. He had pushed his body to train hard and train well until he would collapse from both the heat and the exhaustion. He had studied long through the night, until dawn’s early light had met his tired eyes.

  And all for what? Vekal thought, feeling oddly dislocated from his past. For some warlord to come and steal all of it away. Vekal felt like he had not only lost his home and his friends, but also his past.

  He did not stop being a Sin Eater, of course. I am one of the Undying, a dead man walking. I may move on this world but I do not belong to it, the words of the litany flowing inside his head.

  But if it really were true, if I really am the very last of my kind, the very last Sin Eater, then I have a whole world to administer to. The thought scared him, but he could not find any way around it. He did not remember his life before he walked out of the cutting sands that day. He did not know what he was, or what even his name had been.

  I am a product of the Tower. Nothing more, nothing less.

  The caravan approached first a blur on the horizon, and then a dark shadow in the purpling gloom of evening. The ground below had long since stopped being the soft golden sand of the true desert, and was instead the harder, packed grit and dirt of the scrublands. The occasional bush and shrub, spiky with tines or with long sharp leaves, sprouted between the rocks. Up ahead, the shadows resolved themselves into the shape of trees.

  “The oasis!” Vekal heard Talon shout, and the caravan picked up their weary pace a little faster. It was like approaching a dream, as Vekal found that he heard not the voices of the gypsies or the sighing winds of the sands, but instead the splash of water, and the calls of birds. Many hundreds, thousands of birds.

  Annwn! The Sin Eater gasped as the caravan pulled under the leafy shade of the trees. The oasis was a natural water hole that had been widened, dug out, and br
icked to form a wide set of stone channels, connecting different galleys of pools. Trees of every kind and height sprouted from the water’s edge, and every branch was covered with bird life, as the beasts sought the only roosts that they could in the hot southern lands.

  It is a sign! Vekal thought in awe, looking at the dark forms twittering and cackling above them. He knew that all birds were beloved of the God of the dead, as they flew so close to the heavens, and free from the heavy earth.

  Just when I was questioning who I am, I see this sign. Annwn has brought me back home.

  The gypsies set up camp once again, and the strange camel-like pack beasts needed even less encouraging to stay close, as they hungrily started to graze the rich grass and the leaves and all the greenery that they could, before drinking noisily from the large pool that was clearly designated for livestock and cattle use.

  A sound like a celebration started amongst the gypsies, and Vekal saw, to his delight, that they were taking out lyres, lutes, and fluted instruments as well as small hand-drums, and started to sing and to dance while others lit the fires. He smiled at them. Every oasis in the southern hot lands was a happy place, and the arrival at one always a cause for celebration. So many people didn’t make it—with the dangers of rattlesnake, scorpion, spider, ghoul, sandstorm or heat.

  And there is always a gift to be made. Vekal knew the old lore of the desert. He had read the original scrolls that had been written on in the vaults of the tower itself. Every oasis was a gift from the gods, and as such the mortals that visit it must give their own gift in return to appease them.

  What do I have, but my prayers? Vekal looked around until he saw it. There, a little way off from the pools, set back behind the dense stand of trees. The Shrine of the Gods.

  Every desert oasis had a shrine, and Vekal knew that it was the place where one might leave money, wood, food, or whatever valuables that they had in order to aid the next travelers. All that Vekal had were his prayers, and his feet took him unerringly away from the pools where the others danced and laughed, until their voices became a low murmur in the night.

  The Shrine was a flat stone slab, set in a small clearing of the woods. The branches above were heavy with the sounds of the roosting birds, and by the slab there were stacks of dried wood, and a few barrels of more dried food. The sacred place was not just occupied by the birds and the donations of those that had passed before, however, but also two others.

  Standing before the Shrine was the aging woman, the matriarch of the gypsies. She was mumbling as she scattered her fingers, and a foul smelling dried herb or incense hit the stone and the floor at her feet.

  Vekal didn’t say anything as he approached, but kept his distance until she straightened from her task, and turning, saw him with a start.

  “I’m sorry, I did not mean to disturb your offering…” Vekal started.

  “Sin Eater!” the woman hissed, her eyes going wide with either horror or terror, he was unsure which.

  “I’ll go, come back when…” Vekal started to say, before he heard something behind him. The crunch of feet on the path, and he turned to see one of the larger gypsies there, holding a naked blade behind him in one hand. “Oh,” Vekal said wearily. “You mean to kill me?” He felt oddly disappointed by the endeavor, like it was so predictable.

  “No, but it might be better this way.” The woman leered at him. “I had not planned for this so early, but maybe you will do as a much better sacrifice than the boy. You and the devil you carry inside of you will be freed!”

  She knows, was Vekal’s first thought, and then The boy? “What boy? What do you mean, sacrifice?”

  It was then that Vekal saw that the dark, huddled shape by the other side of the stone was no collection of dried wood and old blankets, there to be donated to the life of the shrine. It was Talon, trussed up and gagged.

  Vekal felt a hot wire of rage flare deep inside of him as his hands went to his side. He had a belt knife, but not his battle axe. That was still strapped to the bags back with the others. As his fingers touched the hilt of his knife, the old gypsy woman moved at the same time, drawing forth a long, thin point of a steel blade and pointing it at Talon’s terrified and staring face.

  “I wouldn’t, devil. I would have thought that worm inside of you would be pleased, after all…” The gypsy laughed. “Drop your blade, Sin Eater.”

  Vekal gritted his teeth, hearing the trudge of the gypsy man behind him. He might be able to kill the bigger man with the knife, but he would never be able to make it in time to save Talon.

  Ikrit? he asked of himself. For the sake of Hell, if you are there I need your aid now!

  But still no answer from the devil came. I have to buy time, the Sin Eater knew. Time until I can save the boy. He held up his hands, stepping away from both gypsies. “Wait! Wait. You have this all wrong. There is no devil inside of me.”

  The woman spat, pressing the point of the blade lightly on Talon’s shaking cheek. “What do you take me for, a fool? I knew from the moment that she dragged you out of the ground what you had in you. Do you think that I have never seen a devil before? When your body was asleep from your wounds, I came to your bedside and it spoke. The creature babbled the tongue of hell at me, offering me riches and power were I to find a way to free it.”

  Ikrit? Vekal felt oddly cheated by the silent thing inside of him.

  “I was going to take you to the seers of Fuldoon, find a way in the city to extract the evil sprite and use it for my own ends. Do you know how much some might pay for a captive demon?” The woman shook her head, looking down at Talon. “But always so many things, so little time. The Shrine requires a sacrifice, and it is this boy that brought the Ghouls onto us and lost half our cargo, after all.”

  “You can sacrifice food, or wood, or clothes, or one of your beasts of burden,” Vekal tried, but the other swordsman lunged towards him suddenly, seeking to take advantage.

  Vekal jumped backwards behind the shrine, placing the stone slab between him and the murderous gypsy. He had been expecting such a move. There is only one thing I can do now. He raised his arms, and flared his eyes.

  “I am warning you, hag! You have found me out. I do have a devil inside of me, and it is angry. I can tell it to stop your heart in the blink of an eye, or damn your soul forever if you do not give up the boy to me now!” Vekal filled his voice with the heavy, sepulchral timbre that he had often used during the rituals and ceremonies of the Tower.

  The bluff appeared to work on the sword-carrier, who blanched, whilst the older woman just started to cackle.

  She’s laughing at me. Why is she laughing at me? Vekal panicked.

  “You think I would let the devil play both sides against us?” She hooted with mirth. “I know the imps of the Underworld too well to trust them. You are not in control of the spirit, Vekal Morson, just as you do not even feel its presence in your mind or hear its voice. The spirit is silent within you, because of this!” She pulled a small pouch from her side, and splattered more of the dried plant over the Shrine.

  “Devil’s Bane. Wort of the Mother. Whatever you want to call it. It suppresses all demonic activity, and I have been feeding it to the entire caravan ever since you arrived. In the soups, in the teas, in the breads. So long as you have this in your system, the devil sleeps and rages silently inside of you. It cannot help you. No one can,” she cawed.

  “Wrong, old woman,” said a new voice, as a blade went through her.

  She croaked and looked down at the sword that was pierced through her chest, croaked once more, and then collapsed onto the shrine, her blood to become the first sacrifice for this visit. It was Suriyen, her face terrible and angry.

  Vekal launched himself at the startled larger man, driving his belt knife under the man’s throat, before holding him as if tenderly, to lay him next to his evil mistress. It was all over in seconds, and Vekal found himself staring at Suriyen, both of them looking worried and uncertain.

  “I came looking
for the boy. I heard what the old woman said about you,” Suriyen breathed, and Vekal tensed over the body of the man that he had just killed. Was she about to kill him now, as the holder of an evil spirit?

  Instead, she stepped forward, and with a quick swipe of her sword severed Talon’s restraints before ungagging him. “We will talk later. But for now, we run.” She hauled the blinking and petrified Talon to his feet before pointing northward out of the clearing.

  Vekal didn’t need much encouragement, stopping only to seize up the dead man’s sword and his belt. Beside him, he noticed that Suriyen did the same to the body of the old woman, and the pouch of the foul-smelling herb disappeared into the guard’s robes.

  I would do the same, the Sin Eater thought, as he, the guard, and the boy escaped the scene of the slaughter and into the still, warm desert. Behind them, the birds of the oasis chirped happily on their feet. The sacrifice had been made, and the price paid in full.

  14

  The trio ran through the dunes, not stopping until they saw dawn’s early light lifting the veil of night behind them. Of all of them, Vekal was most concerned for the boy, Talon. He was slight, and didn’t have the same resilience that either he did, as a resident of the desert, or of Suriyen, who appeared to be perfectly capable of looking after herself through any terrain or adversity. The Sin Eater caught her looking at him several times over their flight through the dunes and scrubland, but in the gloom he could not tell if they were looks of horror, fear, or hatred.

  “Can you blame her? You’re carrying one of the ancient evils of the modern world!” buzzed a voice like treacle behind his ear.

  “Ach!” Vekal stumbled, not expecting the devil to be so loud nor so close.

  Suriyen shot him a look. They were trudging now, not running. He flapped his hands like it was all okay.

  You came back, Vekal thought towards the creature, disheartened that he was still saddled with the foul thing.