Crimson Spear (Blood and Sand Book 1) (9 page)

Aches and pains that he did not know that he had were awakened, but eased with the water. After a while he started to scrub and bathe, and eventually plunged into the colder water, causing a delightful fresh zinging feeling all over. When the Sin Eater had finally put on his new robes of cream, with a soft leather jerkin of faded green, he felt brand new.

Were it not for the wraps and the bandages that he re-wrapped over his arms, neck, calves and feet, he would look like a new person. The robes also had a wide-brimmed hood, which he could draw deep over his face. Although his fingers twitched to do so, he refused the urge though, forcing himself to run fingers over the scars and welts that covered his face and all of his body.

To him, they were just another fact of his skin, as forgotten and as necessary as his nose or his eyebrows. Vekal couldn’t remember how they had got there, or what had put them there, only that he was told that he had walked out of the Bone Sands with them.

But now, for the briefest moment, Vekal did not feel like a monster. As a matter of fact, he did not quite feel like a Sin Eater at all. He took a deep breath, feeling relaxed, and walked out of the room and into the corridor beyond.

He heard murmured voices from the area he considered the lounge. He took a well-practiced, silent step to the edge of the doorway.

“…know it. It has to be done. There is no other way,” Suriyen was saying. She was engaged in a whispered argument with the other, older woman over something which was obviously important, and obviously terribly secret.

Like any good Sin Eater, Vekal held his breath, and bore witness.

“It is wrong. How could you bring that thing here, into a friend’s house,” Aldameda bit back as the hidden Sin Eater heard the thump and thud of them both moving around the room.

“We have to take it before the Council. That is what I intend to do,” Suriyen said.

A moment of silence then, from the older woman. “Have you forgotten your vows? With all of this nonsense, you have forgotten who you are and where you came from.
I
dragged you out of that pirate ship.
I
put you back together again.
I
helped you find your true name.”

Another silence, and this time when Suriyen answered it was with a heavy voice, full of woe. “I know.”

Vekal wondered what they were arguing about.
It must be me, surely.
Suriyen thinks that I am cruel and evil just like all of the others out there.
She will deliver me to this Council as one would deliver a criminal, or a dog.
He felt trapped suddenly, and scared, a feeling which he was not used to.

But I am one of the Unliving. It does not matter what happens to my body, just my spirit.
He considered attacking them both then and there. He would be able to take the old woman, with his training and years of practice. But Suriyen was good. He had seen her fight in the tunnels and later, at the oasis shrine. She had been silent and unblinking. She didn’t hesitate when she killed, and she made no loud noises or grunts to let her opponent judge her move.

“But I have to do it. We cannot keep it here. The Council needs what information it can provide,” Suriyen said.

“I won’t
allow
you to keep it here. If it stays one more night, I will destroy it myself.” Aldameda sighed, clearly giving in to Suriyen’s argument. “Fine. Take it before the Council. See what good it will do you, but I can only hope that
they
destroy it just as swiftly as I would.”

“Agreed,” Suriyen said finally.

They mean to kill me.
Vekal felt a strange feeling to him, like vindication or relief. He knew what he had to do now. He was, after all, a Sin Eater. Nothing more and nothing less. He would die eventually, and the prospect of his death was a welcome thing as it would return him to the gates of Annwn. He turned and crept back down the hallway, not pausing at the baths where he could hear Talon still splashing, but crept beyond the room to the turn in the corridor.

Here he found himself before an arched door. Setting his hand to it, and knowing that he did not have the time to waste, the man pushed at the door, finding it unlocked.

Warm southern sunlight almost blinded him. It was a balm to his senses as he stepped out into a courtyard filled with weapon stands and wooden target boards. Some were cut into the rough shape of a human, with well notched areas showing the heart, the liver, the abdomen, neck, and other dangerous areas to be struck.

This is some sort of weapons academy,
Vekal thought with horror.
No,
he corrected himself.
It is too small. This is a private home, where the house has been so extensively remodeled that no one on the outside would know what happens on the inside.

On the other side stood the rear wall, and beyond that the gurgle and splash of one of the many irrigation canals that went into the city. Tall, leafy trees stood outside, with some of their waxy hot-weather fronds splaying over the wall. This, at last, was the sort of activity that Vekal had been trained for. Not intrigue and crossing deserts. He would rather work in the night, but he had no choice as he picked up a selection of throwing knives from the rack, a heavy wooden short bar, and two long daggers. After having secured them, he started to scale the rear sandstone wall, using the thick fronds to aid his escape, before dropping to the narrow overgrown embankment beside the canal, and ran.

“Vekal?” Suriyen repeated once more at the door of the bathing room. She didn’t want to enter as it would be improper, but the sound of splashing water had stopped a long time ago, and still the Sin Eater had not emerged.

“Is he okay?” the boy Talon said at her side. His eyes were much brighter and healthier than they had been before, but were now pinched with worry. He almost looked normal again, and not the young, trapped worker that she had rescued from the gypsies.

But still, this is no place for a child…
she thought as she looked down at him. Over his head she saw the shape of her mentor and friend, Aldameda, scowling. She could see what the woman was thinking, clearly. The older haired woman was standing, carefully composed, but Suriyen was almost certain that behind her back she would be holding a long knife or a dagger, something quick and deadly.

“He is no older than you were,” Suriyen said, causing Talon to look around, startled to see her there.

The boy said nothing, but questioned wordlessly.

Suriyen sighed, her hands squeezing on the hilt of the long blade that she kept under a fold in her robe. She nodded, bowing to the older woman’s decision as she turned back to Vekal’s door.
Perhaps I was that age when I first started learning how to do this. And perhaps he has already seen bloodshed… But I had no choice.
She gritted her teeth, before pushing the bathroom door open quickly and stepping inside. She didn’t pull the dagger yet, just in case, but kept her stance low.

If the fiend has taken over, it will look to attack…
Her eyes scanned the room, waiting for it to appear.

“Where’s Vekal?” Talon was the first to ask, walking calmly into the room beside her, even as both Suriyen and Aldameda moved to stop him. He wasn’t attacked. None of them were.

“He’s gone,” Aldameda said, stunned.

It was an obvious statement, as far as Suriyen saw. The bathing room was entirely empty, the water cooling or tepid, and a pile of rags in the corner which had been his clothes. There were also no windows, no cabinets, no cupboards nor chests for him to hide within.

“Why did he leave us?” Talon said, as Suriyen glanced in horror at Aldameda.

“I thought you said that it wouldn’t emerge. That it
couldn’t
emerge here?” Suriyen hissed at the older woman.

“What are you talking about?” Talon was alarmed.

“Shhh. Not now.” Aldameda was already striding to the door. “The Training Yard. It is all that there is, other than the back of the house.” She made no attempt to hide the long, slightly curved blade that she clutched in one hand as she hurried ahead of them.

“What?” Talon shrieked. “What are you going to do to Vekal? He saved me!”

Suriyen paused at the door, taking out the long handled dagger that she too had been hiding from the boy’s eyes. “Hopefully, nothing. This is for
our
protection, child. You must stay in here,” she said sharply. “Vekal isn’t Vekal. He is… he has something inside of him, which is trying to control him. It will make him say things, and it will give him the power to do terrible things.”

“No. That’s not true!” Talon’s voice quavered. Even he did not fully believe his own voice. Talon had seen the thing coiled at the back of the Sin Eater’s eyes. There had been something, coming and going, a slack-jawed but calculating look that did not seem to be coming from the man who had worked so hard to save him at all, but something else.

“You know it is, boy, even you have seen it,” the guard said sadly. “Here.” She withdrew a shorter knife from the depths of her robes somewhere, and pressed it into his hands. “It is going to be okay, I am going to do the best that I can to protect you.” At that the woman stood up, frowning as she saw how thin and gangly the boy still looked, before she shut the door to the bathing house, and hurried down the hallway after Aldameda.

The older woman was banging though the other rooms of the house on the sides of the courtyard. Suriyen heard the thumps and clatters of cots being overturned, cabinets being opened, but she already knew what was going to be said. When Aldameda returned to the courtyard looking crestfallen, the guard sighed.

“He’s long gone, isn’t he?” she asked, looking at the high wall and the overhanging tree outside.

“Yes. And that means only one thing. The devil managed to find a way to overcome the spirit wards we have on this place.” Aldameda groaned. “They will have to be re-consecrated. Do you know how much that costs?”

“Not as much as a war, sister,” Suriyen answered. “There is more though. It also tells us that Vekal is quiet, and quick. With the devil’s help perhaps, but he is going to be hard to track down in a city the size of Fuldoon.”

“His face and wrappings will give him away. I still have my friends and networks. A gang of street kids over by the docks, a few guards I keep on my payroll in the residential area, a crooked priest, a gate guard. They will tell me as soon as he surfaces.” Aldameda started walking to one of the disturbed rooms and brought forth a cage with a grey and blue desert pigeon inside. “I will send the word out immediately. Hopefully, we may have him by nightfall again.”

Suriyen nodded, distracted. “But what then? What do we do with the most dangerous thing in all the kingdoms this side of the Frozen Wastes? We cannot kill the man. He does not deserve that fate.”

“He is one of the Undying, isn’t he? He will relish the idea of dying for a greater cause,” Aldameda said unsympathetically.

“No. He may be, but we are not,” Suriyen said, her forehead in her hands.

“What do you mean?” Aldameda looked at her as if she had sprouted wings. “Are you placing limits on what we friends can do?”

“No, of course not. But we preserve life. That is what we do. How can we condemn an innocent man to die for something that is holding him hostage?”

“All men die,” Aldameda said heavily. “And how do we know that he is innocent? What do we know of what really happened back there in Tir? Who took the devil, who gave it, and why? This Vekal of yours might be a willing participant. He might relish the power that the devil bestows upon him. The gods alone know just how he is still walking, given the state of his body’s injuries. It would be reasonable to suggest that he knows that the devil is keeping his body alive, and is grateful for that.”

“Give him the herb,”
s
aid a tearful voice by the door of the courtyard. It was Talon, who had disobeyed Suriyen’s orders and walked out to find them, brandishing the long dagger in front of him. Suriyen had no idea just how long he had been standing there, and what he might have heard, but it was too late now.

“Talon,” she acknowledged.

“The herb. The one that the old woman said was keeping it under control. You remember, Suriyen? That night that he tried to rescue me from the gypsies?”

“Herb? What herb, child?” Aldameda said sharply.

“Devil’s Bane. The gypsy matriarch had seen the devil in Vekal and was using it to suppress the demon.” Suriyen drew the pouch from where it had hung around her chest and showed the older woman. “I hadn’t had a chance to talk to you about it, whether it would drive it out of him, or whether the demon would resist it.”

Aldameda shrugged, putting her weapons away and snatching at the strange wort and sniffing it. “I will have to ask my contacts, but it may do. Actually….” She looked thoughtfully into the middle distance. “Perhaps that is not such a bad idea after all. We might be able to drive it out, and then entrap the spirit and send it back to its lowest hells.” She was sucking and clicking her teeth. “Hm. Yes. I know just the occultist who could help. Thank you, boy.” She gave Talon a bright smile, and started to move towards the door.

“So, you don’t think that you will kill Vekal for what is inside of him? He will live?” Talon was saying slowly, his own arms lowering and the blade steadying towards the floor.

“I think so,” Aldameda replied, “but first I have to conduct some tests on this herb and see how it works.” Her voice echoed as she wandered through the corridor beyond.

Suriyen was left feeling oddly deflated and hopeful at the same time. “I guess that it is time that I told you about this place, if you want to stick around with me,” she said wearily to Talon.

The boy nodded, looking at the racks of weapons and targets that filled the small courtyard around them.