Soulfall (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 2)

by Shaun O. McCoy

  I feel a sudden sense of vertigo.

  I’m afraid of heights, you know—or I used to be, long ago. The trick is to learn to like it. The trick is to be exhilarated by the fear. I feel it now, the exhilaration. The blood rushing through my veins. Even the air smells sweeter, somehow. It smells like . . . something, a lost memory.

  Like cut grass.

  Jesus fucking Christ, it smells like freshly cut grass. I breathe in and let the air out slowly.

  Then I sneeze.

  Fuck, I forgot about that part.

  Aiden’s step is unsteady, and I start to worry he might fall. El Cid must have seen it, too, because she helps strap him onto Q.

  I can tell the pain has gotten much worse for my son. He’s not able to talk anymore, and murky tears are running out of his eyes. I wipe that half-wight, half-human blood off his lip again.

  “Follow me,” Amirani says.

  “How far down is it?” I ask, watching the bright, silvery mists that roil like thunderclouds below.

  Amirani frowns. “No one knows. But the devils come from there, crawling along the walls or flying up through the abyss. I led an exploratory team down a while back. The light that brightens the mist dies away a couple of hundred feet beneath the canopy. Below that, darkness. I believe the clippings and tree leaves which fall to the floor become fodder for a fungus. I believe the pigmiditz live off that fungus. Just a theory I have.” He points along the fifty foot diameter trunk beside us to a walkway. “This way. Like I said, the dyitzu have been lobbing fireballs at us all morning from over there.” He points across the chamber to one of the farthest trees. Even at this distance, I can see men camped out behind wicker fortifications, guns leveled at the hostage tree. “I’ll keep us clear of them, mostly.”

  I’ve rarely been more careful in choosing my step. The boards creek alarmingly as we walk.

  “This shit stable?” Q asks.

  Amirani shrugs. “We lose a person every month or so to construction failure. So, no.”

  “They don’t let you supervise building?” El Cid asks.

  “I’ve been working on a few things on the Lord’s tree,” Amirani answers. “Mostly they have me building fortifications. It’s a tougher job than you’d think, though. Earth and stone, well they move a little, but these trees, they grow much faster than anything I’ve built on before.”

  The planks look almost as if they’d been manufactured in the old world. They aren’t fastened with nails however. Many are fitted together. Others are tied with little wicker vines. Those are the hardest to walk on, not just because they’re loose, but because the wicker makes the surface uneven.

  At least it’s not snow.

  It doesn’t help that the main light source is below us. The more I look down, the more blinded I become.

  We move onto a branch which leads toward the center of the chamber. It’s maybe four feet wide at this point and getting narrower. It’s been braided together with the outstretched branches of another tree. I see where some of the leaves—a few almost the size of my body, others the size of my head—have been struck by dyitzu fire.

  “They’ve been attacking the joints,” Amirani explains. “Their attacks have been getting more organized lately, and they’ve got some Icanitzu with them. There’s been a flood of Icanitzu lately, coming upstream along the Northern Lethe.”

  El Cid grunts. “We may have run into some of that earlier. We were hit by a pack of dyitzu on the river that was pretty well organized.”

  Amirani picks his way carefully across what he’d called the joint. The path is only a foot wide, but there is a vine stretched alongside us like a rail. Infidel balance or no, Amirani keeps a hand on it. I follow his example.

  “Be careful,” I tell Q, worried for my son.

  “Damn right I’ll be careful.” Q answers.

  Nebuchadnezzar mutters something in German.

  “Is that why Portsmouth went dark?” El Cid asks, “Icanitzu?”

  The braided branches and leaves creak under Amirani’s step. “I believe so. I think they’ve been streaming out of the Carrion for some reason. I put a few down in their initial assaults, but they’ve grown more wary.”

  I walk onto the braided joint, keeping my hand on the vine. A great many small branches, splitting off of the main one, allowed this joining to be possible. Still, a lot of the greenery has been burnt. My foot slides an inch or so on the oily residue of the dyitzu fire. I grip the vine so hard my knuckles pop.

  I pause for a moment, making sure my balance is secure.

  Okay. Time to walk.

  “Then again, there’s been a string of cities going down lately. It’s Maylay Beighlay, I think. It was a huge center for trade. Ammo doesn’t flow in from the east like it used to. No joke, we’ve been using bows and arrows from time to time.”

  I finish crossing the joint and take a deep breath.

  Q comes up behind me, my boy safely attached to his back. Aiden’s whining slightly.

  I look around. This tree isn’t nearly as healthy as the last. Many of its branches are drooping, and its leaves are smaller. I’m guessing it’s because they’ve got sinfruit vines growing all over this thing. Now I understand why a person might choose to live in Dendra despite the fear that someday the wood beneath their feet might break away, leaving them to fall into the eternal void below.

  Food is a damn powerful motivator.

  “This tree doesn’t look so good,” Q says.

  Amirani nods. “The vines aren’t helping, and a lot of the planks you’ve been walking on were harvested from this one. They’re also fermenting alcohol in the trunk, which can’t help. Not to mention the corpses they keep.”

  “Corpses?” I ask.

  Then why would they be afraid of a half wight? Hypocrites.

  “The corpsedust is what ferments the alcohol,” Amirani answers.

  Alcohol. Another good reason to live here.

  “You sure there’s not a Minotaur involved with those Icanitzu?” El Cid asks as we wind our way around a walkway staked into the gnarled trunk.

  Amirani shrugs. “Could be. I hear the Well isn’t doing so hot. That city might be something a Minotaur would strike at. Still, it would be an awfully convoluted strategy.”

  “The Archdevil in Maylay Beighlay is dead.” El Cid tells him.

  “No shit?” Amirani seems surprised at the news. “Who got him? Did Ares come out of the Carrion or something?”

  El Cid shakes her head. “That fucker.” She points a thumb at me. “Q’s been grooming him.”

  Amirani’s eyebrows rise. “My regards,” Amirani says.

  I nod at him.

  There is another group of people coming toward us. They’re dressed in the same brown fabric as the guards, but lack the wicker helmets. They stand to one side, allowing us to make our way carefully around them. One is a girl, and she smells nice . . . like tree sap.

  It occurs to me, as I edge by them on this precarious walkway, that this is a place where you really have to trust your neighbor . . . and not piss off your wife.

  Amirani waits for us to get a bit of distance from that crew before he speaks again. “So what really brings you out here?” He asks in a low voice. “I can’t imagine you’re actually escorting Nebuchadnezzar.”

  I see a trio of women a few branches above us with wicker baskets slung around their waists. They’re picking sinfruit off of the vines. God I’m hungry. I wonder if they smell like tree sap, too. Particularly the busty one in the middle. You’d think Myla would have put me off of redheads, but apparently not. I guess I’ve got a type.

  “He’s got a theory on how we can cure the boy,” El Cid explains quietly.

  Amirani looks back for a second, eyebrows raised. “The lad is on edge. I don’t even know if Endymion can cure that.”

  “I don’t know that I can either,” Nebuchadnezzar says in his accentless voice.

  Thanks for the vote of confidence, dickhead.

  “We’re headed to S
oulfall,” El Cid says, “the precipice.”

  Amirani whistles. “You got a plan for the Furies?”

  Nebuchadnezzar grimaces. “I’ve got a powder that will make the Furies attack the corpses on the upper city.”

  “You trying to die?” Amirani asks. “That part of Hell is awful anyway. The barriers between the Carrion and there are almost gone. Devils are thick, Cid. Damn thick. Not to mention that you’re actually heading to the Erebus.”

  “We have to try,” I say.

  Amirani nods. “I understand.”

  The fuck he does. No one understands.

  We move onto an anemic looking branch which leads to the next tree.

  “Heads up, here comes the Order,” Amirani warns, pointing to a darkly dressed cadre of half a dozen or so men. “I guess it was too much to hope we’d avoid them.”

  Q gives a soft whistle.

  El Cid stops in her tracks. “It’s Keith.”

  Jesus Christ. He must be the one with the arrogant swagger. But how did he get here before us? Unless . . .

  Unless he’d guessed our plan.

  “Can we go around?” Nebuchadnezzar asks.

  Amirani shakes his head. “They came here to meet us. If we avoid them, they’ll just move to blockade us another way. Do your best to keep them from noticing the kid. They’ll take great pleasure in exposing us.”

  El Cid glances back over her shoulder, grimacing. “I’ll distract ‘em as much as I can.”

  “They have to know Aiden’s plight already,” I say. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have known to come here.”

  El Cid’s head shakes. “Maybe, but I doubt it. They might have just lucked out.”

  “Twice?”

  She turns around and stares at me with her green eyes. The light from below and the matching color of the trees make them all the more brilliant. “I’m sorry, Cris. We may have come all this way just to lose your son now.”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “If they set the guards against us . . .”

  She points to the soldiers moving along some of the branches. “They have guns, and we don’t.” She turns to Amirani. “What’s the punishment for leprosy?”

  Amirani points down.

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  “And that’s visited on outsiders?” she asks.

  Amirani nods.

  I feel rage boiling in my heart. Why did we choose to come through here?

  Time. The answer was time. We have none of it.

  I see the Order’s people ahead of us. Five of them, standing on a platform that, unless we are to double back, we’ll surely have to cross.

  Our branch widens, and I move up to walk beside Cid. “Aiden lives.”

  “They’ll give us up to the guards, Cris.”

  I pass her and Amirani by, heading toward Keith. “Then they all die.”

  The men of the Order dress in a dark grey that is surprisingly close to infidel black—only they could never be mistaken for infidels. I wonder if they know how cruel their faces look. Hell, maybe they’re proud of it.

  The one that must be Keith steps forward as we make our way onto the platform, leaving his compatriots lounging against the trunk. He’s pale, pale enough to make me think he’s taking wight dust. Like Nebuchadnezzar, he looks like an American hero, but in a different way. Keith looks like a slender superman, curly black hair, blue eyes, and a dimpled chin on a strong jaw.

  A few brown-clad natives are watching. They’re safe enough, I suppose, since all of us have been stripped of our weapons.

  “Nebuchadnezzar,” Keith says with a smile on his lips, “you’ve gone turncoat. Did the Infidel himself pay you a visit in your snowy little tower, or was it this little cunt that turned you to the dark side?”

  “Keith,” Nebuchadnezzar addresses the man, “the Infidel did indeed come to my home.”

  There is a moment of pause. The men leaning against the tree shift awkwardly.

  That’s one thing I’ve learned about Hell. Everyone fears the Infidel. Humans, devils, doesn’t matter. I’ve never even seen him, and I’m starting to fear him.

  They recover quickly though, and Keith takes a couple of long looks at Q and Aiden.

  “Your kind doesn’t come this far west,” Keith says, his eyes still on my son. “What’s the occasion?”

  Nebuchadnezzar grins right back at him with that damn smile which touches his eyes. “We’re going to drop into the Carrion. Meet up with Ares. See how many of you poor bastards he’s killed already.”

  Keith chuckles. “I don’t fear that Neanderthal. And I don’t buy your bullshit. I think you’re here because it’s a half-day walk to the Northern Lethe if you go around Dendra. I think you’re headed to Portsmouth.”

  I get the feeling he’s lying. I think he knows exactly what our plan is.

  Q gives them a golf clap. “You’d be right. Congratulations, you figured it out.”

  “Shut up, nigger,” Keith says. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  His men chuckle a bit, even the black one.

  Just like with Nebuchadnezzar, Q doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even look angry.

  One of Keith’s men, one of the cancer, leans forward off of the tree trunk. He takes a couple of steps forward. “That nigger got a monkey on his back. A dead monkey.”

  Oh, they ain’t getting my son. Fuck them. I’m an infidel, so maybe I’m supposed to hate them already—hell, they even called my best friend a nigger—but if they want to fuck with my son . . .

  I give out a short laugh.

  They look at me.

  “The Infidel is coming here,” I say.

  Keith’s eyebrows rise in disbelief. El Cid watches me closely.

  “Really?” Keith smiles knowingly.

  I nod. “Because he knows what’s at the bottom of that pit, and he knows how to clear it out. Who else do you think could get the Tree Lord to let a leper in his city?”

  That shuts them up.

  Hell, it was the best lie I could come up with. No time to stop now, they might think about my lie and figure it out. “And you think you’re scared shitless now, staring at three infidels who don’t have their weapons. Wait until you’re looking at the Infidel. Ain’t nobody taking his guns away. I bet you’ll feel naked as fuck.”

  I see a line of guards moving along the tree to the right. At first I think they’re coming this way, but then I notice they’re carrying our gondola. Oh, hell, those poor bastards. Carrying that thing over the joints has got to be scary as shit.

  “Sorry, Keith,” El Cid says, pointing to the boat, “we’ve got a ride to catch. I hope you follow us, I really hope you do.”

  Keith sneers. “I’ll see if I can’t oblige you, miss.”

  We walk by them. I keep my body between Keith and my son, just in case.

  They watch us go with cold eyes.

  “Well I’m fucked,” Amirani says when we make it to the next bridge. “They’ll check with the Lord about the wight, and then I’ll have to defend myself.”

  “Won’t be a problem,” I say.

  “Oh?”

  “The guard who checked us in, he’d be in some serious shit if he was caught letting a leper through, yeah?”

  “He would,” Amirani says.

  “Lie. Say the boy was just injured and lost some blood. He’ll back you up, and make them look like idiots.”

  Amirani smiles. “I hope that works. I’ll see if we can’t lock them up for it, at least for a couple days. I might be able to keep them off your trail.” He stops and cocks his head, regarding me. “Where’d you find this guy?” he asks Cid.

  “Find him?” Cid snorts. “This damn stray found me.”

  It doesn’t look like the guards at Dendra have stolen any of my stuff.

  We’d climbed the trunk of one tree and walked up through a hollowed out root to get to the Northern Lethe. We’d left as quickly as possible, not wanting to be followed by the Order or be caught by a guard with Aiden.

 
The caves surrounding this river are completely natural in formation, and the lighting is very dim. Even so, the waters are wide, slow and shallow, allowing us to continue poling our way toward the Erebus.

  “Keith’s like a damn bad habit,” Q says from the back of the gondola.

  “He knows,” I say.

  “Knows what?”

  “Everything.” I pause while Q brings us around a rock, noticing that everyone, even Aiden, is listening to me. “What we’re doing. Where we’re going. The state that Aiden’s in.”

  Q frowns. “That’s impossible.”

  “Can you think of anything else that would explain how he’s been able to follow us so closely? He even beat us to Dendra. Unless he knows a faster route than we do, he must have taken his men straight from the Pole to Dendra even before we saw Nebuchadnezzar.”

  El Cid says nothing, but her eyes are on me and me alone. Her lips are slightly parted. Suddenly, for some reason I can’t quite explain, I feel nervous.

  Q shakes his head. “He’s not psychic, Cris. It has to be luck. Maybe they know a faster way or heard from the Pole natives that we were going down the river.”

  El Cid is still looking at me, and I think her cheeks are slightly flushed.

  “Durgan,” I say.

  Q’s eyes narrow, and he looks at me for a moment before returning his attention to the river. “Who?”

  “You said there was a wight with Keith. I know who it is. It’s Durgan. He’s one of, well, was one of the Archdevil’s wights. I never killed him. He’d know exactly what state Aiden is in.”

  “But to anticipate our travel to Dendra,” Q says, “he’d have to know more than that. He’d have to know our solution. And unless that Creature or Jeeves is talking—”

  “Hansel,” Nebuchadnezzar corrects.

  “Whatever,” Q says, annoyed. “So unless that Creature or Jeeves is talking, there’s no way they’d know we’re headed to the Erebus.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Cid’s voice is soft, but we all shut up and look to her. “The Order is deeply connected to the City of Blood and Stone. Lucreas Crassus has been a key player in both. It’s possible that Keith knows enough about wights, with the help of Durgan, to have guessed our next move.”