The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1)

by J. C. Staudt

  “How are you feeling?” Bastille asked, looming over him.

  Father Kassic squinted, the hollow slate-gray pupils whirring open. “Thirs…ty.” The word struggled to escape his throat, like gravel packed too tight.

  The door opened and shut as Sister Adeleine slipped into the room.

  “I thought this would be a good learning experience for you,” Bastille said. “Father Kassic requires our attention. It would behoove you to give us yours.”

  “Yes, kind Sister.”

  Brother Soleil examined Father Kassic through a pair of surgical magnifiers. The right side of his chest was a purple bruise. In the center of the bruise was a deep pool of congealed blood with thick veins squiggling away from it in every direction. Blood was slicked across his chest and down to his waistband, and when Bastille wiped it away there was a dry crust beneath.

  “This has been here a long time,” said Brother Soleil. “Days.”

  “Why didn’t he come for help when he was shot?” Sister Adeleine asked.

  “He didn’t need it until now. Very efficient, these machines inside him,” said Brother Soleil, taking up tweezers and a scalpel.

  Bastille shook her head as Soleil paused to let her dab his forehead with a clean cloth. “I don’t think so. I think losing so much blood is what made him thirsty. He came into the courtyard to sate himself, not to get help.”

  “Can’t they feel pain?”

  “It is said that over time, their humanity leaves them,” Bastille said. “Many believe they lose the ability to feel pain, or at least their proclivity toward it.”

  “Quite right,” said Brother Soleil. “The Cypriests’ reward for their devotion to the Mouth is an extended life. As they remain undevoured, their suffering subsides, gradually.”

  “They must at least have memories of pain,” said Sister Adeleine.

  Brother Soleil made his first cut. A spurt of blood shot onto Father Kassic’s shoulder and ran down his armpit in a runnel. There was a twitch at the corner of the Cypriest’s mouth, but otherwise he remained still, staring at the ceiling.

  “Memories, yes,” Brother Soleil said. “But even those diminish with time. The longer a man’s life, the more he sees and the less he remembers. Some men recount what they have seen to remind themselves. Others simply grow tired of remembering. Father Kassic, I think, is tired.”

  “What happens when the Cypriests get too tired?” Sister Adeleine asked.

  “We recycle them.”

  “Will he be recycled?”

  “Someday, perhaps. Not today. Today we will cure what ails him and send him back to the parapets. There is hope for him yet.” Brother Soleil gave Sister Adeleine a warm smile. It was hard to believe this was the same man Bastille had seen abusing slaves in a hidden room below the basilica—a room that was probably not far below where they were now. The same man who, according to Sister Adeleine, had impregnated an acolyte. Who had watched his Brother die and gone about his regular duties, appearing no worse for the wear that same morning. Only a cold, despicable man could do such things and keep such secrets.

  Bastille wondered what Soleil would do when he learned Sister Jeanette was pregnant. It would be easy for one of the Most Highly Esteemed, the greatest rank in the Order, to deny his involvement. In the absence of proof, a lie and the truth are one and the same. Bastille wasn’t sure she wanted to let Brother Soleil keep his secrets anymore. She just didn’t know if there was a way to expose him without putting herself at risk.

  After a few moments of digging, Brother Soleil’s tweezers came up with a hunk of metal and dropped it into the tray. Blood flowed anew from the Cypriest’s chest, but Father Kassic’s breathing was slow and steady.

  Brother Soleil was puzzled. “It’s too small to be a pistol round. It’s made of steel, and it appears to have been spherical before it entered Father Kassic’s body. A ball bearing? My guess would be that perhaps this was the mischief of some brigand with a slingshot, except that Father Kassic should’ve detected and eliminated any threat before it came to this. The projectile didn’t get very deep, that’s certain. Perhaps it was an errant shot from an unrelated conflict somewhere nearby. Nothing to be alarmed about. Press this down, hard over the opening.” He handed Sister Adeleine a towel, then took the cloth from Bastille and wiped his brow.

  The Cypriest grunted when the acolyte applied pressure. He coughed, and a line of saliva draped itself over his reddened lips.

  Bastille wetted another cloth and wiped Father Kassic’s face and hands, scrubbing away as much of the blood as she could. “How are you doing, Father Kassic?”

  “Thirsty.”

  “Yes, I know. As soon as you can sit up I’ll have that tended to. Are you in pain?”

  No answer.

  “Are you in pain, Father Kassic?”

  He turned his head to the side, then back again.

  Shaking his head to say ‘no.’ He doesn’t feel the pain, or he just won’t admit it. “Kind Sister Adeleine, fetch a fresh bucket of water and a cup for Father Kassic. Here, let me take that.” Bastille resumed pressure on the wound as Sister Adeleine scurried out the door, bucket in hand.

  Being alone with Brother Soleil put a pounding in Bastille’s head so fierce it made her vision go blurry for a moment. She had been alone with him on many occasions while she was learning the sacrificial rites, but it felt different now. Now she knew him for the man he really was. Although Father Kassic was with them in a technical sense, the Cypriest’s presence did little to assuage her anxiety. Leaning over the table to hold the towel in place, she felt the iron key pressing against her thigh again. Brother Soleil turned his back to her as he cleaned his implements and prepared to stitch the wound. Until today, she had admired him. He had been her mentor. He represented everything about the Order she loved, and when she had looked at him she saw what she wanted to become. All of that had changed. Now she knew his corruption; she knew that what he claimed to stand for was nothing more than a convenient ploy. His devotion to the Mouth was hollow and meaningless, and she concluded in that moment that she wanted to see him devoured for it.

  Soleil turned toward their patient, a line of catgut threaded through the needle in his hand, and glanced at Bastille. A look of concern came over his face. “Is something the matter, kind Sister?”

  “My arms are getting tired,” she said, trying to soften the hard expression she could feel on her face. “I’m not very strong. Do you think the bleeding has stopped?”

  “Ease up on him, kind Sister. You’ve pushed him halfway through the table, I fear.”

  Father Kassic had not complained. His blood had spotted through the towel; Bastille could see it spreading when she pulled back.

  Brother Soleil held out the needle. “Would you like to…?”

  “If it makes no difference to you,” Bastille said, taking it. She leaned down and set to work.

  The corner of Father Kassic’s mouth drew up each time she punctured his skin with the point of the needle, but he didn’t once make a sound. She sealed the wound with a patch of NewSkin; it would heal faster that way. Brother Soleil stood watching; the room was so quiet she could hear his breath rasping in his throat, like footsteps in a pile of dead leaves. She didn’t look up at him, even when she got the sense that he was staring at her instead of supervising her work.

  Sister Adeleine returned when Bastille was close to finishing, water sloshing in the bucket as she hurried inside. They helped Father Kassic sit up and let him drink his fill. He emptied five cups before he began to slow, gasping for air between desperate gulps.

  “There, that’s good,” Bastille said. “Do you feel better now?”

  “Yes,” the Cypriest said, his eyes whirring as he focused on her. “Apologies, Sister. It is hard to speak when I’m depleted.”

  “I understand,” she said. “You should have come for help sooner.”

  “No,” he said. “I was weak. I gave in to my thirst and left my station. It is no matter; I should have
let myself die. If actions like mine are repeated, the Order will fall to ruin.”

  “Nonsense, Father Kassic. Did you see who it was that did this to you?”

  “Yes. He was gray. He was too far to see, but I saw him.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Do you know him? Did you know who he was?”

  “No. I only know that he was one of many. And the many will come again. The Order will fall to ruin. The Mouth proclaims it. The Order will fall to ruin.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Lightsick

  A week had passed since Raith and the convoy set out from Decylum. The days felt longer on the surface than they ever had back home; a week under the light-star had felt like months when contrasted with the cool artificial glow of the facility’s lightbeams. Perhaps the length of each day didn’t matter as much when there was no natural light to measure them by.

  If not for the slow, trundling flatbeds, the convoy might have been in Belmond by now. As it stood, another week’s travel would take them within reach of the decaying city, barring any mishaps. The road they traveled was not so much a road as it was a pathway through an endless expanse of nothing—just one flat, fathomless landscape that fled away before them, making every possible direction bleaker than the next. The guides Raith had commissioned were tracking the convoy’s course according to Infernal’s celestial passing, but the rest of the men soon lost even the direction of home as the winds erased their tracks behind them. With no road to follow, they were far from being able to gauge the distance they’d traveled. There were no forks to choose between; no waysides to fall along; no bumps to get over, and no hills to climb. There were only two choices: go, or stop going.

  The men swayed in their saddles, pink and lethargic. Blisters had raised and burst and raised again wherever their skin was uncovered, leaving their flesh soured and spoiled like raw meat. The light-star is poisoning us, Raith knew. Even the apothecaries’ ointments could only do so much. The foolhardy among them had neglected to apply the ointment at all. They were the worst of the lot.

  A row of tents had sprouted on one of the flatbeds, and the line of sick and incapacitated had grown to fill them. By the second day, the water in their tanks had lost its underground chill; drinking it was like pouring fire down their throats, more chore than refreshment. Raith made them stop to drink every few hours, regardless. The hottest parts of the day were best reserved for taking shade and rest, but they had learned to fill their canteens in the morning, before the big plastic tanks became too hot to touch.

  Each night when they made camp, they took comfort in the cooler air. Their chatter had grown more rousing and animated with each day closer they came to their destination. Often on these nights, they stayed awake well into the small hours. The hunters traded stories about their adventures in the wastes, while the older men passed down tales and legends about Decylum. They spoke about the history of the facility, about their mothers and fathers and grandparents before them, the botanists and physicists and engineers and molecular biologists performing classified research for the Ministry. Most had kept the secrets of those studies to their deaths, even after the Ministry’s dissolution.

  The men never seemed to grow tired of these nights, filled as they were with all the dreaming and tale-telling that could be had. Their eyes never lost the spark of interest that shone whenever they heard the stories of their past, or whenever there was talk of those who had lived before their time. In the light of the cookfires, their comradery grew, and the men were bound ever closer together by their common heritage and the histories they all shared. They were from a place that was unlike any other on the Aionach; a place secluded and safe from all else; a place that made them closer, somehow, than the inhabitants of any other town or colony. The people of Decylum were kin, woven together by generations of family lineage and the prevailing mutual dependence that had preserved them over the years. No other community they knew of could boast such a legacy, and the protection of that legacy had never been more important than it was now.

  On this particular evening, Ezequimus Albrecht was telling the story of how his father had come to work for the Ministry and been assigned to Decylum. Ezequimus was a man whose mischievous demeanor had passed in equal proportion to his son, Daylan Albrecht, who was council’s youngest member. Listening to Ezequimus speak, it was clear where Daylan had inherited his ineloquent manner. But as with his son, that lack of eloquence was easy to overlook in favor of the candor and sincerity he showed without exception. Raith lay in his sleeping sack a dozen yards from the fire—more out than in; he’d never encountered a sleeping sack large enough for a man of his size. Nestled beneath one of the flatbeds and waiting on the verge of sleep, he listened as Ezequimus Albrecht finished his story.

  “Being born underground, I never knew the difference,” Ezequimus was saying. “My father used to tell me how dangerous it was outside, and besides that it was way overrated, he said. He probably told me that so I’d be less curious about what it was like. For a long time I was satisfied with that, but I’ll never forget the time we got it in our heads that we were gonna sneak up top, me and my friends, I mean. We were so curious back in those days, you know the way children are. We actually made it without getting caught, too. Back then they were still anal about it, but not as much as they are now, you know. So anyway, we were out there playing for about five minutes before we all got thirsty and tired and decided we didn’t like the outside after all. Unfortunately someone let the door shut behind us since nobody thought it would lock itself, and we got trapped up there. It was awful, kids were crying and saying they’d forget about us and we’d all starve and die and the grown-ups would never know what happened to us. We were outside for hours before anyone thought to look for us there. By the time they found us we felt like we were almost dead, I mean we got really bad heat-burns and everything, it was terrible for a little kid to go through something like that, not to mention my dad was this close to flogging me silly if I hadn’t been in such bad shape already. He went on and on about how stupid I was, and how could I do a thing like that, talking about how the nomads could’ve snapped us up and made slaves out of us, or how the wild animals would’ve eaten us whole. I don’t think any of us ever wanted to see daylight again for the rest of our lives after that. Plus, that got all the parents upset and that was when the council decided to make the first level off limits.”

  “So you’re the reason the first level is restricted,” said Jiren Oliver. “Daylan and I always got so mad when we were kids because they never let us play in the hangar.”

  “That’s right—that was us,” Ezequimus said proudly. “Thank goodness you and Daylan never got into the same trouble I did. Things have only gotten more dangerous.”

  “I often wonder what it must have been like in the old days, when things were better, and safer,” Jiren said.

  “Safer maybe, but not better. There was talk when the Ministry folded… the crazy things people said about what was happening up here. Not only that, but my parents worked for the Ministry, and they weren’t getting paid anymore. There was no contingency plan for when the Ministry went under. No one thought it was even possible. It was the furthest thing from our minds at the time. I remember, there was hope in those days that some form of the Ministry would re-emerge. But having taken oaths and signed documents under penalty of termination—or death—not to reveal the nature of their work, most of the older generation, my parents included, were loath to do so. Theories still abound regarding what it was they were researching back in those days; how the gift came to Decylum, and whose ancestors are truly responsible for it. Years later, the rooms they had been using as labs and supply closets were re-appointed as dwellings. Some of our families live in those spaces now.”

  “It was Myriad, wasn’t it? The first person to be born with the gift?”

  “Oh no, not the first,” said Eziquimus. “The first and only healer, yes. But far from the first blackhand. Myriad’s exodus from Decylum wa
s a tragedy, plain and simple. Who knows if anyone with those powers will ever be born again?”

  “Speaking of power, perhaps the hunters here can shed some light on the Scarred,” said Bon Menerey, a grandson of Kraw Joseph, his fleece of curly slate-colored hair wild and upright. “I hear talk that their power in Belmond has grown ten-fold.”

  “Might be true. Fact is, we know very little about them,” said Derrow Leonard, the cousin of councilor Rodge Leonard. “I could tell you a lot more about the nomads than I can about the Scarred.”

  “I’m not worried about either of them, and the Scarred least of all,” said Hastle Beige. “If we time things right, we can be in and out before they know we’ve been there.”

  “Derrow gave me dating advice once that sounded a lot like that,” said Jiren, stifling a laugh.

  Derrow jumped up and charged Jiren. There was a brief chase that resulted in a wrestling match between the two, and much cheering and shouting to accompany the bout. Raith lost hold of the night’s proceedings as he drifted off to sleep. Morning was the next thing he knew, woken by the sound of distant thunder ripping the sky. A rainstorm moved far to the southwest as the daylight rose behind them, a pillow of dark gray clouds blending into edgings of violet and orange.

  Raith flicked his commscreen’s power button, and the display winked on. After a brief CONNECTING screen, Kraw Joseph appeared on the other end, sitting alone in his hab unit in Decylum. The picture was lined and fuzzy, distorted by the intermittent zap of static.

  Kraw smiled when Raith’s connection came through. His voice came shallow and tinny through the commscreen’s speaker. “Good morning, councilor. How are things on the surface?”

  “Good morning to you, Head Councilor. Well, the going gets harder every day, but we’re pushing onward. Sombit Quentin fell lightsick yesterday, but we’ve got the apothecaries working overtime to restore him and the others.”