The Sin Eaters Page 13

  “It would take many months to walk west into the setting sun to reach Jonah’s home. Only the Berians live farther north and east than Jonah and Fen do now. In the summer Jonah and Fen will travel to Baikal and live by the water so that Jonah can watch the women bathe each morning.”

  Fen nodded, showing no signs of confusion. Perhaps he understood Russkiy better than he spoke it. Such things were possible.

  “The Darumbull guard the Uralskiye. They are the mountains that border the living world. Little Fen has seen mountains but not like these. They grow to the very sky.”

  “This is your home?” Each word stopped and started as he struggled with the borrowed language.

  “No, horseling. It is where the Darumbull lived for many generations. The grandparents of Jonah’s grandparents were born there but it is not our home. The Uralskiye marks the boundary where the last wisps of yadernoy ruin the land. Jonah does not know this word in your language. Yadernoy is an infection of the air itself. It is dust that burns the earth. It is poison that makes your children deaf and dumb. It makes you unable to become a father. It comes from pustoye mesto.”

  “The Hollow Lands.”

  “The Hollow Lands, yes. Jonah will show Fen.”

  Jonah flicked several drops of blood from his finger as he drew a misshapen rectangle in the dirt. He drew a squiggled line as the shape’s left wall.

  “This is the Uralskiye far to the west of here.”

  He drew a dot near the shape’s top right corner.

  “Jonah believes we sit here. It is hard to know without maps.”

  “What is a map?”

  Jonah grunted. He could never be sure when the boy joked and when he asked real questions. The gulf between them, in some ways, grew as they knew each other more. Jonah no longer belonged among these hordes that felt like distant cousins to all the people he had known.

  He looked at Fen’s beardless face. The boy stared back through the flames. Hemanta herself was of the Leyevolki, themselves one of three such messenger tribes called Thundercloud who considered themselves adjacent to humanity. Why would her hybrid son be less strange? He knew little of Fen’s father beyond that the man exiled himself from the Novgorodi. The man had been wise enough to escape those cursed people, at least.

  “No matter. The Darumbull guarded the Uralskiye. Three dangers did we watch for. First, the lightning. Fen has lived his whole life in a paradise. The lightning here starts a grass fire or kills some careless hunter. It is a terror at the Uralskiye. It crackles night and day, striking as it wishes. Fen does not know true fear of the sky until he watches a single pitiful bolt strike a running rabbit. He thinks all is well until another bolt and another and another descend to burn the rabbit from existence. There is a thing, koloss, a giant among giants, it comes down from the sky and destroys whole villages. They say it burns mountains.”

  Jonah realized he was gasping and slowed his breathing. It had been decades since he last saw the koloss come. A thousand ribbons of light preceded the singular column of heavenly force. He longed to die without seeing another.

  “The second danger is yadernoy. We will speak of this more. The third is people. From the grandparents of Jonah’s grandparents to the day the Darumbull died, never did a person come across the Hollow Lands. But Hollow Folk are the oldest danger and so Jonah watched for them all the days of my life.”

  “What is to the west? I know nothing of the Hollow Lands. My father said they are dead places.”

  Fen’s mask became an eager face and shining eyes. Jonah felt a pang of regret. He should not have agreed to this story. The boy would want to know everything now.

  “The Uralskiye is not the home of the Darumbull. They retreated east from their home in Moskva when the storms brought their wrath to Yevropa, where the Tutanakii lived. Do these names mean anything to Little Fen?”

  The boy shook his head. Jonah drew a vague circle that started at the top of the squiggled line representing the Uralskiye and looped west and around to the bottom of the mountains.

  “There was a thing, a place, Jonah does not know the word, it spat the yadernoy from its burning halls. The Darumbull retreated as the storms and the poison burned the lands hollow. The dust stopped at the Uralskiye and so the Darumbull halted their retreat at a fortress and committed to guard the whole world Fen knows from the Hollow Lands.”

  “What is a fortress?”

  Jonah poked a dot to the east of the mountain line.

  “A kind of man-made place, a mountain. Jonah spent his entire life there surrounded by the technologies of the people who came before. The Darumbull studied them to know what evils to avoid. The Darumbull knew many things about how people change.” He saw Fen’s gaping mouth. “The technology was all rusted before Jonah was a boy.”

  Fen spat at the taboo word and Jonah spat with him. Technology ruined the world, did it not? He studied these sins as he lived among them. But Fen would never understand that not all technology was evil. Books were not evil things. The old man remembered the thumb-worn novels of his childhood. He had not held a book in decades.

  “The emptiness drove the Darumbull mad. We watched for so long that we forgot what we watched for. The storms grumbled even when the sky was clear. What need do living devils have for things like clouds or storms? The yadernoy washed over the mountains when the spring winds came. Our children were born stupid, lame, and sick. Jonah’s father tied stones about his waist and walked into a river. Jonah’s mother ripped the thinning hair from her head as she rotted. Does Fen understand? The air poisoned us.”

  “Yadernoy,” Fen muttered.

  “Jonah was already named Balerion when the witch folk who called themselves Yaga came. They promised cures for our dying families who wasted long lives watching an empty land. Cures they did provide. We grew healthy again, or healthy enough, and we celebrated the Yaga. We slaughtered bison in their honor and gave them the fresh livers. We hosted feasts despite our hunger. We named our children for these, these, these ved’my!”

  He flung a stick into the fire. Sparks roared free. He leaned into the new heat as a chill crawled into him.

  “Life returned to our fortress. The Darumbull grew strong again.”

  He swallowed a lump in his throat. The stars seemed brighter through the lens of his tears. How well had Fen’s sharp eyes adjusted to the night, to the fire? The boy might see him weep.

  “They stand before Jonah now, one and all, so much the same as to be sisters. Withered, dying things the Darumbull guessed were women. Worthless skin hung slack from their misshapen limbs. They sounded like the Darumbull though Jonah could never recreate their language. They wove the bones of voles into their hair. They stank of ginseng and thyme.”

  It did not matter if the boy saw him weep. Now was a time for weeping.

  “They smelled like life and death rolled together. Whatever fire is shared by those who live here among the grasses is a twisted, rotten thing inside them. It changed them into devils. Fen does not know this word, devils. Each called itself Yaga as if they were all the same creature. Maybe they were. One day they left. The Darumbull withered like wheat on the stalk in high summer. The winter came. Many died. Jonah snuck out in the night to find these ved’my. It took many weeks to find them. Jonah Balerion is stubborn, if nothing else. Jonah brought them back. They promised to heal us if the Darumbull went with them. To where, the Darumbull asked? It would not have mattered if they said to the bottom of the seas. Our home was the whole good green world, despite our ills. They could live with us as holy folk. But they said no. They needed us, Fen. They were too frail to travel to the zemli nichego. They wanted to find the old technologies.”

  Fen added another limb to the waning fire. Steam and smoke mingled together with the rising embers as juniper filled their noses. He stared unblinking at his shivering mentor.

  “They wanted lightning. Can Fen imagine this? These witches held our lives in their hands. They made the Darumbull travel to the wastelands to steal
the same weapons that ruined all Yevropa. Old Jonah would die happy if Fen never saw the lightning. No Kobold crawling from its hole could be worse. Nothing the dirt chewers do could be worse. Old Jonah would give his life to the Yaga before wishing the lightning on this green place we call home. He would watch his parents die again before he would face the sky dragons. Yet these witches held a knife to our necks. It is… it was… Jonah could not decide for the Darumbull.”

  He let out a long sigh.

  “The Darumbull crossed the Uralskiye. Jonah helped guide them. After six generations, the Darumbull abandoned our fortress and became nomads. The ved’my herbs enthralled us. The Darumbull followed them into the Hollow Lands.”

  Jonah buried his face in his hands. His back thrust silently in the dark until his sobs became too strong.

  “You abandoned them. You would not go,” Fen said.

  “Would… not, not… no.”

  “Do you know they died? Maybe they found a safe place, or took the herbs from the witches who would steal their lives.”

  “They are gone,” Jonah said between gasps.

  He forced slow breaths and set his face like Fen’s. His smoothed voice sounded dead.

  “Three days Jonah watched from the mountains. Never once did they turn back. They followed their salvation deep into the wastes. The storms came. A man can see the lightning come across the plains. It dances around like jackals stalking antelope until a man loses all fear of it. Jonah watched the fires burn. The dragons coiled and swarmed until the whole plain burned. It feasted on them. Jonah watched the Darumbull die in the Hollow Lands between the Uralskiye and Yevropa.”

  He erased his map in the dirt.

  “You are the last Darumbull. You cannot…” Fen gestured at Jonah’s groin. “There will be no more.”

  “The sickness took that from Jonah. As good as not. Every child born before and after the Yaga was crooked or dead. Jonah is the end. Does little Fen understand this story? Tell Jonah your mind.”

  “It makes my chest tight. My guts writhe. I want to vomit. It is all danger.”

  “Good. The Hollow Lands are an evil place. Fen must remember this. Evil places make evil things. But that is not what this story should teach Fen. The Darumbull died because they followed. The Yaga died because they led. The Tutanakii who laid waste to Yevropa with their technologies died because they tried to force the world one way. Little Fen must not follow and must not lead.”

  “Am I to be nothing?”

  “No. Does Fen not see? Be alive and then die. It is not nothing to drink the morning dew without thinking of ways to conquer the Steppe. To lead others to death for the hopes and grudges that burn inside is evil. People came from the wilderness of animals to be here a while. The Yaga acted as if they knew the way to this place or that fate. They stood at the center and claimed to see the whole world. These are lies!”

  He slammed a fist into his palm. Fen startled. Good, he thought. The boy would understand.

  “No one can see the whole world. No one can tell another how they should live. The Darumbull chose badly and died. The Yaga killed the Darumbull, too. The Yaga took life when they had it to give. Fen must not do such things. The Darumbull let themselves be led to death. Fen must not do such things.”

  “This is a hard thing,” Fen mumbled. “I would be alive.”

  “Fen must be alive. This is true. There is balance between runt and dragon. Little Fen will find a path. Jonah’s horseling will become a stallion.”

  He paused, letting his promise linger in the crackling air. Beads of sweat ran down his chilled face. It was time to clean the wound on his thigh. An early infection already threatened lasting illness. The skin around the wound burned. But Fen had to understand, now, before he became so strong that no one could teach him any lesson that did not end in death. He had to understand, or there had been no point in all this training, all this pain, all the uncounted scars on both their bodies.

  “Such is the way of things,” Fen said.

  “Good. Fen understands. Such is the way of things.”

  CHAPTER 12 - RESEARCHER BIAS

  “Can we get some black coffee or an epinephrine shot or something?”

  Eliza thumped her fist over her heart, winced, and feigned stimulation.

  “I’ll need it if we’re going to make any sense of this.”

  Michael ghosted from the computer lab. He seemed to do that. She wondered if he was capable of simply leaving like regular people did. Maybe it was only how her addled mind processed him. It had to be. He was a real person and, despite all instincts since that distant memory when she had met him two mornings ago, seemed to be their only ally. Rachana was certainly not.

  The Grupo’s miniscule research director was a monolith. She glared again. Maybe she had never stopped. A thousand thousand freckles dotted her sallow face and bald head like so many foreign constellations. Her pale skin, loosened by more than a decade of chemotherapy, seemed willing to sacrifice every molecule of pigment to those freckles. She might have been pretty once, even beautiful, but she was not the kind of woman to care about such things. What she cared about was Charlie, or at least how his body worked. Eliza disliked her immediately and completely.

  A holographic projection of their savage host floated in the room’s center. She noticed all the terminals oriented to the projector to create a shared experience for the researchers. The hologram cast the only light except for dimmed pot lights embedded in the distant stone ceiling.

  Tim leaned in with his head propped on his hands. He looked like a child. Eliza decided she liked the naked wonder in his eyes. Rachana gestured to a network of neon purple spots spread throughout the hologram’s body.

  “It is not complicated. Do you want a whiteboard? I could sketch cartoons for you.”

  Even her clinical accent sounded sick. It crept from her lips. Were it not for the woman’s vicious condescension, the voice might not be heard at all. She leaned against a terminal while she lectured.

  “Just… just start over. I’m just tired,” Eliza said. “This model is supposed to be Charlie? But everything is wrong. It’s all wonky. And what about the tattoos?”

  Eliza realized she made a mistake when she rubbed her eyes. She closed them. They stayed closed for a long time. Her head tilted back and she startled awake.

  “Perhaps…” Rachana’s hard lips relaxed. “Perhaps you need rest. I am aware of the past 48 hours. Even with time being so short and the unlikelihood that you’re of any use at all, you would do better if rested.”

  Tim started to leave his chair but Eliza stopped him. This was important. She didn’t know why, but it was. She had to push through so that she could understand why she chose to stay. It was more than curiosity about the mystery man himself. Michael was here for more reasons than just his friend. None of these people made any sense at all. They were in a gigantic collective hurry to find… something.

  “No. I’m okay. Michael’s bringing coffee, I think. I’m listening. Please.”

  Rachana’s lip quivered at the corner. She grunted but began again.

  “As I’ve explained already, this hologram is a model of Charlie’s entire system. It contains detailed representations of his skeletomuscular, circulatory, nervous, endocrine…”

  “Digestive, excretory, reproductive, et cetera. Right. It’s him. And you update it pretty often, whenever you can pin him down for a scan or two dozen. And you can use it to take different looks at him. Like right now. You’re showing me what his body’s doing while he’s in his sleep cell.”

  “Recovery chamber. Yes.” Her thin knuckles whitened as she squeezed the hologram’s remote control. “We are looking directly into his body right now to track all activity in his system during the recovery phase of a mild hallucinatory event. As you may notice from the overall lack of activity, he is sleeping deeply. He is exhausted. A good thing.”

  “That’s where I’m stuck! I get all the rest. He’s really weird. I’m supposed to believe this
model is a person despite the bones being wrong, and the muscles, and the absolutely wild internal temperature. One hundred twenty degrees would leave him brain dead. You think he’s some kind of advanced atavistic subspecies of human, yeah. Got it. We’ve seen this stuff before but not like him. Like people with the gene for hypertrichosis.”

  Tim raised his hand.

  “The werewolf gene, dude. It makes people grow long hair all over their face and hands and stuff.”

  “That is approximately correct.” Rachana advanced the hologram so that the purple node network grew brighter while the model’s body dimmed. “What is it about the mild hallucinatory event that you don’t understand?”

  “All of it. It doesn’t make any sense. You’re saying his body naturally produces hallucinogens? That’s not a thing people’s bodies do.”

  “Correct. He is atypical. Though the human mind does produce chemicals related to the receipt and utilization of hallucinogens. This is based on three decades of rigorous study, more than a thousand trials, and a sample library of tissue biopsies and neutralized fluids from the gland network. I won’t waste further effort justifying the data. It is a reality.”

  The seductive aromas of coffee and cocoa filled the sterile computer lab. Michael appeared behind Eliza’s left shoulder. She spun to slap him away as Tim rolled his chair backwards. When had the door opened?

  “Apologies, Doctor Reyes. Your particular response to me is… severe.”

  He sat the tray on a stool and retreated to a wall where she couldn’t see him.

  “No, no, don’t hide! Stand where we can see you. And thank… thank you for the coffee.”

  She poured a mug, handed it to Tim, poured another and drained it despite the heat. Caffeine washed over her tongue. She smiled. Tim had drained his mug as well and moved to the tray. He was torn between the coffee and the cocoa. She realized the cocoa was a better idea and handed her mug to him.