The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1)

by J. C. Staudt

  “That’s too bad. Send him and the others our best wishes from home, will you?”

  “I certainly will.”

  “How are my kinfolk faring? Bon? Aliman?”

  “Both are well. Bon misses his hydroponic beds, but he’s making do. Aliman is still doing an excellent job of steering us in the right direction. How are things there?”

  Kraw rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re doing okay. Last night’s council meeting was… slightly alarming.”

  “Cord and his old ladies spreading gossip around the knitting circle again?”

  “I wish it were only that. At first it was just a suggestion here or there, but he gets more fervent and sounds more serious at each meeting. You’ve only been gone a week, but he’s already proposing a dramatic shift to the council’s structure. He claims the council is too large; he suggests that each wing is entitled to equal representation. One councilor for each of the eight wings in the facility, 1A through 4B.”

  “The council’s purpose isn’t to squabble over which wings get what,” Raith said. “It’s to make decisions for the good of Decylum as a whole.”

  “I know that, and I agree. There’s no good reason for it, unless Cord is planning some sort of shakeup. I didn’t want to speak too soon—it could just be another one of his schemes for stirring up trouble. If he does pursue this seriously, there’s no guarantee I can keep him from going through with it. Having you, Hastle, and Jiren gone, that leaves eight councilors in Decylum. Cord can nullify my authority as Head with a seven-man vote in his favor. That means it’s possible you three could come home and find yourselves without places on the council.”

  Raith frowned. “That wouldn’t even be the worst of it. Eliminating three seats would make it easier for Cord to make a bid for the Headship. Then it would only be a matter of time before he institutes the cycle of chosen births and begins slaughtering every newborn who isn’t a blackhand.”

  “Hold on, now. You’re getting ahead of yourself, Raith. I don’t even know if he’s serious about this yet. With this salvaging expedition, you’ll bring home enough raw materials to house generations of Decylumites to come. That would eliminate the perceived need for population control here. Even Cord wouldn’t enact the cycle of chosen births unless it were absolutely necessary.”

  “You’re sure of that, are you?”

  Kraw scratched his wiry gray beard. “I’m not sure of anything, anymore. But I’d like to believe this council consists more of reasonable men than monsters.”

  “Cord sees only the potential for greatness. He doesn’t care at what cost it comes. I don’t think a man ever perceives himself a monster when he aims to achieve greater things. He’s gone past seeing the actions themselves—despicable though they might be—and he’s onto seeing the kind of society they’ll bring about. One where blackhands are the only people who deserve to live.”

  “You may be right… but for the sake of all we hold dear, I hope you aren’t.”

  “So do I. The convoy is almost set to move, so I should be going. I’ll comm you again in a few days. In the meantime, hold fast, my friend. Fight back if you have to. We’ll be back in about three weeks, if the fates are with us. Give everyone at home our love.”

  “Take care of yourself. Send my regards to the men there as well.”

  Raith waved, then flicked the switch and watched the screen go dark. He removed the power cell and pressed his fingers to the leads, letting the charge course into him. After he’d packed the commscreen away, he summoned Sarl Sandonne to prepare his mount. The herdsman brought Beguli and kneeled the corsil so Raith could heave himself into the saddle. He’d grown accustomed to the animal itself, but the height of the ride still took some getting used to each day.

  The travelers set off on the day’s progress, most of them greasy with the ointment they’d spread over their inflamed skin. Raith was feeling less than enthusiastic about facing another day, however. His muscles were stiff, the heat was stifling, and the dire winds stirred the air to a hot-lunged thickness. He’d grown more anxious the closer they came to Belmond, and this morning’s conversation with Kraw Joseph had done nothing to ease the disquiet in his bones. He felt the gnawing abyss of despair, doubt, and hopelessness; it was as though a deepening crevasse was reaching out for him with grasping arms, tugging him into its depths.

  However much he drank, he was still thirsty, his stomach desolate as the grave. However often he laughed and kept to the company of friends, he still worried, fretting about both home and the way ahead in equal measure. Though morale remained high, his burden increased every time one of the men fell sick. A week away from teaching the younglings had made his skin suppler than it had been in a long time, but when the anxiety overtook him, he still gripped his reins so tight it made the skin crack.

  Beguli lurched beneath him, stumbling over a faulty patch of ground and falling onto one knee. Raith tipped forward over the saddle, and when the animal righted itself, its long muscled neck snapped back and clobbered him on the forehead. Raith managed to stay in his seat, but a ribbon of red pain wrapped itself around the back of his skull and pulled tight across his temples.

  Hastle Beige laughed, seeing Raith avoid what could’ve been a more serious accident. Raith laughed a little too, at first, until he realized something wasn’t right. The horizon began to twist upward, reset itself, repeat. His heart quickened. He tried to grip the reins and squeeze his thighs together, but his arms and legs had turned to mush. The horizon twisted one last time before falling away into a sea of blue. He was weightless, and blue was all he saw apart from the dust clouding the edges of his sight.

  Hastle Beige broke the plane of the pure blue sky and crouched down on towering legs. Jiren Oliver came after him, then Theodar Urial, the old apothecary. A crowd had gathered before long, their eyes reflecting the daylight on the sand like frozen yellow sparks. Above the faces, their mouths vacillating, saliva glinting between chomping teeth, was the blue. Eternal blue; great ridges and paths and formless globs, a gradient that faded to the palest hue before exploding into full white where it met the face of the rising light-star.

  Raith wound down, his heartbeat throbbing slower. It was a sensation he’d felt before. It should’ve alarmed him, but he was lost in the sky. Beautiful, endless, clear and bright and full of possibility. He forgot his despair, his foreboding, his longing to admit defeat and turn back toward home. None of that mattered now that he understood the meaning of the sky. It was the absence of struggle; a surrender to fate. Under the bottomless, unfathomable sky, everything withdrew, until his worries were far beyond the realm of his control. None who wrestled with the fates could hope to change their whims. It was a fool’s hope that drove men to seek victory over those immovable forces.

  Several of the men lifted Raith onto one of the flatbeds, turning his warm bed of sand into an unrelenting wooden slab. Then they took the sky away from him, pitching a green nyleen tent over his head, folded and creased from longtime storage. He wanted to see the sky again, but his limbs were too dead and cold and useless to struggle free of his prison.

  Hastle Beige came under the tent and covered Raith’s eyes with his palm. Thumb and middle finger latched onto each of Raith’s temples, rubbing as they warmed. The black skin smelled of leather and char and horse sweat. Raith felt them working, sending him charge. The surge dispersed across his eyes and crackled over his scalp, proliferated along his neck and piped through to the rest of his body. The ticking of his heartbeat came back smooth and steady, no longer a wild, panicked throbbing. Exhaustion came over him and his eyelids closed against his will, losing their strength just as his limbs had lost theirs. He was feverish, the sweat cold on his brow and gathering around Hastle’s fingers like condensation. Then Hastle was gone.

  When the flatbed began to move again, Raith let his head roll to the side so he could look out the tent’s mesh window. The tent next to him blocked out all but a thin strip of sky. Thunder ached in the distance, and he dream
t it was the sound of the wind gargants’ footsteps as they roamed the Farstrands, grumbling through waves of foam, pushing gales out to sea like goatherds ushering their flocks. Raith was a boy again, his head brimming with wonder and imagination. Every unexplored corner of the Aionach was his to discover, the songs and fables his only guide against the perils that lay in wait.

  Raith couldn’t remember when it was that he’d lost his sense of adventure and suffered the fear that came as its replacement. Perhaps Cord Faleir was right; it was cowardice that kept Raith’s hopes holed within the safe sphere of Decylum, instead of allowing its people a chance for better. Maybe Raith had led these men into the desert to die. Or if not to die, then to achieve some goal that seemed noble but fell short of their greater purpose. The outcome of this journey was beyond Raith’s ability to foresee. For now, he had neither the strength nor the will to rise. He could only lay helpless as he felt the waking world dissolve. The sleep of the gifted took him.

  CHAPTER 21

  To Get Lost

  Daxin sat on the lumpy pillow with his back against the wall of the cave. It was hard and rough—not the least bit comfortable—but he had begun to notice it less and less. “My wife is a very bright woman, and wise beyond her years. She’s brought me a lot of happiness. We met the day she came to Pleck’s Mill. She’d hitched a ride in with one of the indie trade caravans. Looked like she’d been through a lot, bruised up and thin as a rail, but she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. We were married three months later. My grandparents were thrilled, even though I was eighteen at the time and Vicky was… much older. The year after that, she gave me my daughter Savannah.”

  “How old is your daughter?” Ellicia sat facing Daxin at the far end of the ragged blanket, legs crossed, hands resting in her lap. Her eyes shone like pale jade in the morning light, framed by the long wisps of dark hair that had escaped her messy bun and fallen alongside her face. Her brown woolen robe was worn, smudged with dirt, and fraying along the hemline. She’d drawn a thin shawl about her shoulders, and Daxin could see the sheen where the exposed skin became softer below her collarbone. He made himself look away before his eyes wandered lower.

  The waking sounds of the villagers had begun to liven the cave. The traps had started working, and as their yields of fresh game began to escalate day by day, so too had the refugees’ spirits.

  Daxin rubbed the sleep from his eyes and yawned. “Savvy will be seventeen when the long year changes. She wanted to come with me, but I left her back home in Pleck’s Mill. It’s way too dangerous out here.”

  Claiming Pleck’s Mill was his hometown was the third lie Daxin had told. The first had been his name; the second had been the reason for his travels. Luther Sicarus was a rancher from Pleck’s Mill, Daxin had told them. He was on his way north to take delivery of a herd of cattle in Elcombe when a gang of common bandits had attacked him. Like Daxin Glaive, Luther Sicarus had a wife and a daughter, but Luther’s wife hadn’t left him. The masquerade was just close enough to the truth to suffice.

  “Seventeen, wow,” Ellicia said. “You did get started young.”

  “Sure did. It’s hard to believe she’s grown up so much. Gotten so much more independent, you know? But yeah, I miss them both. You have kids?”

  Ellicia’s mouth turned up at the corners, a smile of things remembered—or wished for, perhaps. “I never had kids, but I had a husband. We tried for years, but children weren’t in the cards for us.”

  “What happened to your husband?” Daxin asked.

  “He still lives in Unterberg. I guess you’d say we’re divorced. Whatever it is you call marriage these days, without a piece of paper from the Ministry to make it official.”

  “You don’t need a piece of paper to promise someone you’ll always love them. And by the way, the Ministry’s downfall is one of the only good things to come out of the Heat.”

  “Okay, well I don’t like politics, so let’s not get into that. Let’s just say I was married, as officially as you can be, these days.”

  “Sure, I understand. So what happened?” Daxin was more interested in keeping the attention off himself than hearing some long, drawn-out tale. The less often he had to lie, the better.

  “We were coming up on ten years, and then one day he decided he didn’t want to be married anymore.”

  Daxin waited for her to continue, expecting to hear her spout off some contemptuous tirade about her former husband. He figured she’d outlined every problem in the relationship and embedded it within a network of complex over-analyses wrought amidst years of bitter hindsight. After all, that was what he’d done. How else did one cope with the inexplicable? If I hold out a little longer, Daxin told himself, she’ll find herself wanting to spill every detail, and the floodgates will open.

  They didn’t.

  “That’s the whole story,” Ellicia said.

  Daxin was surprised, but he left well enough alone. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  “Don’t be. So do you think you’ll still make it north in time to pick up your cattle?”

  “Not a chance. The entire herd’s liable to die of old age before you people let me out of here.”

  “Okay, mister sarcastic. You can stop being so…”

  “Sarcastic?”

  Ellicia smiled, but she was glaring at him. “I can only imagine what you must put your wife through.”

  Daxin let out an uncomfortable laugh. It was a sound he tried to make mirthful, but it tumbled over itself like a foal learning to stand, and Daxin found himself having to repress the wave of grief that came over him. Speaking of Victaria had been easy at first, but it had dredged up the memory of a thousand isolated, perplexing days. “She puts up with so much of my crap,” he said when he’d regained his composure. “She’s a fine woman to have by my side.” Saying it made his throat tighten again.

  He remembered the day he’d woken to find Victaria’s side of the bed empty, the sheets still stained with traces of fluid. She never used to get up before him in those days. Often he would rise early to care for her, stumbling out of bed half-asleep to fetch fresh water and get a fire going before daylight came. That day, he’d guessed Vicky was feeling well and was up to surprise him with breakfast. But no fire had been burning in the hearth, and there were no slippered feet shuffling across the kitchen floor.

  The washroom and lavatory had been as empty as the den and kitchen, so he’d jogged barefoot to the town square and descended the stone staircase to Bradsleigh’s underground well, the only known source of good water for a week’s ride in every direction. The tainted waters of Lake Veraeri and every other surface body for horizons around were so contaminated that death came quickly to those who drank from them. The well and the Glaive family’s livestock gave the people of Bradsleigh everything they needed to survive, even through the harshest of times.

  Townspeople had been out in the pre-dawn stillness, bringing buckets to draw water for the day ahead, gathering crops from the lowered beds in the greenhouse, patching the roofs over their ramshackle homes with new materials they’d bought from the trade caravan the week before. The top few stairs had still been warm from the previous day’s heat, but each step grew cooler as Daxin descended to where Infernal’s light never reached. He could hear the familiar tinkling of the small, clear stream that ran across the grotto and down another hundred or so feet beneath a great ledge of slanted rock. At the far end, it waterfalled into a chasm whose bottom was deeper than any man had discovered without giving his life in exchange for the knowledge.

  There was barely enough space between the ledge and the stream for someone to squeeze through without drowning. Daxin doubted his wife had any desire or reason to do so, anyway. He had dashed back to the surface, taking the narrow stairs two at a time. High Infernal, he remembered thinking. Where can she have gone? Townspeople had waved to him as he stumbled up the hill toward the family pastures, but he’d ignored them.

  It wasn’t until he had reached the f
ield that he began to find the first evidences of her; the empty stall where she stabled her favorite cob, the fresh boot prints in the muck. Jerichai, one of the Glaive family’s hired hands, was just arriving.

  “Weren’t you supposed to be up here overnight?” Daxin had asked him.

  Jerichai was confused. “Missus Glaive gave me the night off. Said you all had it covered.”

  “Vicky’s gone, Jer. You’re telling me nobody was here to guard the livestock all night?”

  The ruddy-skinned man had shrugged, lost for words.

  “Coff it, Jer. Her cob is missing. Water my mare and check the gates for tracks. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and I want you to tell me which way she went.”

  Daxin had returned to the house to find his daughter lounging in the den.

  “Mornin’ daddy,” Savannah had greeted him, rubbing her eyes. “Where’s mom?”

  Daxin had barely stopped to acknowledge his daughter as he rushed downstairs to their bedroom. Vicky’s slippers had still been next to the bed. Her outdoor shoes were gone, along with her boots, her cane, a few pairs of denim, and some leathers. Daxin had pulled on a pair of trousers and a tunic, plunged his feet into his boots, and sped up the stairs, stumbling to finish dressing as he went. “Baby girl, I’m going for a ride. I’ll be back in a few hours. Mind the house and I’ll see you midday.”

  Whatever reply his daughter had given him had fallen into the background as he shut the door behind him.

  Jerichai had met Daxin at the stables after inspecting each of the three gates that opened from the Glaive family pastures into the wide scrublands beyond. Within a matter of hours, the winds had all but blown out the tracks Vicky’s cob had left at the west gate, leaving nothing but tiny ridges in the dust. The untrained eye might have missed them altogether, but the hired hand had spotted them in no time at all.

  “She’s gone east,” Jerichai had said.

  “I’m following her. Until I get back, the pastures are to be guarded at all times. Make sure Hamish and Garlin get the word. You understand?”