The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1)

by J. C. Staudt

  Ellicia scrunched up her mouth, deliberative. “We sort of have to amputate, at this point, don’t we?”

  Daxin frowned. “If we want to keep a bunch of hungry sanddragons away from Dryhollow Split, I’d say taking Duffy’s leg is our only chance.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Rowers

  Curznack’s crew opened the hatch and dumped a box of bread crusts into the hold. When Lizneth had wrestled one out of the hands of another slave, she ate so fast she barely chewed. When she swallowed, the dry tack stuck in her throat like a lump of coal. The meager portion didn’t stop her stomach from churning, but at least it made her feel like she was still alive. Even if she got seasick and it came back up later, it was worth it; eating was one of the few things she still had the freedom to do on her own.

  When the slaves had eaten the last of the scraps, the hatch grated open above them. Taskmasters descended the stairs with flagrums in hand, shouting and cursing as they dispersed among the ranks of bound ikzhehn. They came onward with ferocity, as though the rowing slaves had done something worthy of punishment, lashing them across the shoulders and snapping at their legs with leather cords tied to bits of bone and metal. Lizneth caught a glancing blow on her thigh—a blow that had been aimed at another slave. The pure white fur on her leg began to drip red, but she had no time to stem the wound before the taskmasters heaved her to her feet and shoved her up the stairs with the others.

  The taskmasters lined them up along one edge of the railing while more crewmembers brought the prize slaves up from the rowing hold. The prizes were wet, many of them dripping as if they’d been doused in seawater. Without rowers at the oars, the ship rolled listless on the current, pulling at the pit of Lizneth’s stomach each time the craft settled into a trough of wave. She held herself against the railing and tried not to stumble as the deck shifted beneath her feet. The wood was slippery, and whenever one slave moved, he pulled his neighbors along with him by the string of chain that bound them together.

  Curznack stood on the quarterdeck with his brood-brothers, looking down over the main deck to oversee the changing of the shifts. Lizneth noticed him watching her. His coat was damp, and wisps of his fur undulated on the breeze.

  “Curznack, they put me in with the wrong group,” Lizneth shouted, desperate to point out the mistake. She didn’t want to row, and she certainly didn’t want to be left aboard the ship and forgotten when they made landfall.

  One of the taskmasters drew back with his flagrum and made to strike her as punishment for speaking out. Lizneth lifted her arms to shield herself.

  “Bilik,” Curznack shouted.

  The taskmaster turned at the sound of his name. He lowered his arm and watched as the Captain descended the quarterdeck stairs, favoring his side and taking care to use the handrail.

  “You are not to strike this slave,” Curznack told him. “You hear me?” He raised his voice to make sure everyone did. “This scearib is not to be whipped.”

  “Thank you,” Lizneth said, breathing a sigh.

  Curznack punched her, hard across the snout. He hit her so hard, it made her eyes water and put an aching in her head. “What are you thanking me for? I’m the only one with the sense to hit you proper. These dimwits of mine don’t know how to treat good stock.” Curznack lowered his eyes and scowled at the gash in her thigh.

  Lizneth wiped the tears away, chains clinking at her wrists. She wanted to cry for her Papa, for the days when she was just a lecuzhe and Papa was young and strong, when he could pick her up in his arms and hold her in his warm fur and protect her from anything.

  “I should be with the prizes,” Lizneth said.

  The ship pitched and threw her back against the railing. Curznack caught her by the throat and held her there, halfway out over the water. Sea foam crowded white at the hull below, a fine spray misting over them as the ship ploughed through a cresting wave. Lizneth wrapped her tail around a spindle in the railing to keep herself from falling overboard in case Curznack pushed her. Her spine was arched at an uncomfortable degree, the muscles in her abdomen tight, her knees weakening with every passing second.

  The front of Curznack’s haunches were pressing Lizneth against the banister. He spoke softly, showing her the whites of his eyes. “Scearibahn row like everyone else. The next time you ask for special treatment, I’ll make you cry red.”

  He pulled her forward by the neck and released her, but the ship tilted hard to port in that instant, and she stumbled into him. He shoved her away with a cry of surprise, making her fall to the deck and yank the slaves next to her by the chains.

  Curznack brushed himself off and straightened his coat. “Can’t keep herself off me,” he said, fixing his collar and making sure the others heard him above the waves.

  The sailors chittered.

  “Carry on, ledozhehn.”

  The crew grumbled at his insult, but they went about their business.

  Curznack stared after Lizneth, his mouth hanging open, his tongue rubbing the back of his longteeth. There was a cold glimmer in his eyes, but he said nothing more to her.

  The taskmasters led Lizneth and the others into the rowing hold, a long room with a low ceiling located just beneath the main deck. Benches ran along either side from front to back, and water pooled on the floor, sloshing with the ship’s movement. The taskmasters slid them off the chain one at a time and sat each of them down on their own bench, fastening their manacles to rings bolted into the floor—the same kind of ring Lizneth had hung from in Curznack’s quarters.

  The bench was damp, its middle worn smooth. Lizneth slid into place and took up her oar. She could see the dim glow of the mirrored lanterns shining from the main deck above. All else was black, the dark water fading into the unseen distance.

  “You have spirit,” Bilik said, as he worked to fasten the chain to the floor between her legs. He was a fawn—a big one, with deep red eyes and a bright coat of golden orange. “Rowing will take that spirit right out of you.”

  At the front of the hold were two tall drums, goatskins stretched with thin leather cords over smooth ironwood shells. Behind them stood a lean hooded buck with a thick stripe of dark gray down his belly. He wore a leather cap and knee-length breeches, and he was holding a cloth beater in each hand. As the taskmasters locked the last of the rowing slaves into place, the drummer made ready to play.

  “Sit in and set ready,” he yelled, his voice barking shrill through the hold.

  The rowers raised their arms and leaned forward, letting the blades of their oars come to rest in the water. Lizneth followed suit, trying to mimic what she saw the others do.

  “Ready all,” the drummer shouted.

  They sat motionless, waiting on his command.

  “Row.” He struck the right drum, and it resounded with a low bung.

  The rowers pulled, leaning so far back that the slave in front of Lizneth bumped her with the back of his head. The left drum made an even lower gung when the drummer struck it. They pushed their oars down and forward, lifting them from the water and returning to the catch.

  Lizneth was lost. No one had shown her what to do, how to hold her oar, or even how to row. Bilik strode over, brandishing his flagrum. He began to lift the weapon, but he must’ve remembered Curznack’s decree, because he moved the flagrum to his other hand and batted Lizneth with the back of his fist instead. The blow caught her over the ear and set it to ringing.

  “Fall in and row,” Bilik said, “or I’ll bring the Captain down to make sure you do.”

  Lizneth waited for the next stroke, the next bung of the drum, and worked her way into sync with the others. Her strokes were awkward at first; the oar either went in too shallow and skipped across the top of the water, or she plunged it in too deep and pulled too slowly to keep up. Each time she thought she was getting the hang of it, something threw her off, or she caught a glare from Bilik and lost her place in the cycle.

  However unpredictable and discomfiting the ship’s movement had be
en anywhere else, it was even more so in the rowing hold. Whenever the ship hit a wave just right, water would burst in through the oar holes and soak everyone nearby, slicking the deck and making it hard to keep traction with their feet. Lizneth anchored one foot on the corner of the bench in front of her, but after a while the wood became slippery, and the joints in her leg grew stiff.

  They rowed for what must have been hours on end, never stopping, never speeding or slowing. The drummer gave no further vocal commands, and there was only the occasional taskmaster cursing or cracking his flagrum to remind them not to slow down. Minutes passed, stretching toward hours innumerable, and there was always the steady bung, gung, bung, gung of the two dissonant drums to keep them company.

  “What lies on the far side of the Omnekh?” Lizneth asked later, as they lay in the cargo hold, every muscle sore and every joint aching.

  They’d been shuffled between the two holds more times than she could count, given only short periods of rest while the prize slaves took over the rowing. It seemed that for every hour of rowing the prize slaves did, Lizneth and the rowing slaves did four or five. The taskmasters kept them at the oars for what felt like days at a time. The work was so monotonous, it was maddening.

  “The city of the calaihn,” said Dozhie. “Sai Calgoar, it is called.”

  “It’s in the blind-world, where the eh-calaihn live,” said Fane, a rex merle. Covered with splotches of brown fur over cream, his coat was long and shaggy, though like many of the other rowing slaves, the fur was thinning in places.

  “The blind-world?” Lizneth said, worried. She’d heard the tales of the land of light with no end. They said there was nothing but open air where the ceiling should have been, and the sky was like a great torch of blue fire that could burn the skin beneath your fur.

  “They don’t make you go up there, unless they’re cruel,” Fane said. “Bresh knows. She’s been to the blind-world.”

  “Aye, and I would sooner be there than on this floating tomb,” said Bresh. “It would be a quicker death.”

  “What’s it like?” Lizneth asked.

  “Bright.” Bresh lay on her side, slow breaths pulled in through rattling lungs. A dark agouti with a coat of solid brown, layered under with gray shorthairs. Her coloring reminded Lizneth of her Mama’s, though Bresh was much thinner.

  “What are… calaihn like?” Lizneth asked.

  “Tall,” said Bresh, “and they have less fur. The fur they do have, they often cut it off.”

  There was a murmur in the hold, scoffing and laughter.

  “Their skins are the color of mud and fire, and they cut themselves with knives to prove their strength. Their ledozhehn do not bear full litters; they birth their cuzhehn one at a time. Also… they do not scent one another.”

  Lizneth was astonished, and a little disturbed. “They don’t scent? Not at all?”

  “They can’t. Their snouts are too small. What’s worse, their eyes can’t see in the dark.”

  Lizneth wrinkled her snout. “They sound awful.”

  “They are. But not all of them are mean. There are good calaihn and bad—some who hate what they do not know, and others who welcome it. Those calaihn are rare. Most are content to make us do their work for them. Ikzhehn make good slaves, you know. We are sturdy. Enduring. It is our curse, in some ways.”

  Bresh’s words began to come slow and shallow, along with her breathing.

  “Leave her be, nestling,” Fane said, brushing Lizneth’s arm with his tail. “She’s tired, as are we all. We must save up our strength before the next changing.”

  Lizneth lay on her belly and rested her head on her hands, but the hard manacles around her wrists dug into her neck. She rolled onto her side, but cold water ran in thin torrents around her face as the ship swayed. When she tried turning onto her back, the chains caught in her fur and pinched. Finally she settled on her side again, drifting in and out of an uneasy sleep as the slow beating of the drums throbbed in the floorboards. Bung, gung, bung, gung, bung, gung.

  It seemed as though she had only just closed her eyes when she heard chains scraping the deck above. The taskmasters swarmed in again with flagrums in hand, rousing them from their slumber with coarse shouts, the stink of ale on their breath. Before she knew it, she was topside again, yawning and shivering as sea spray frosted the deck. Some of the prize slaves gave her weary looks as the two lines of captives passed one another, strings of chain jangling at their feet. Others stared at the ground, or looked out over the bow of the ship with longing, as if they thought the waves held better for them than they were likely to find aboard. Lizneth was starting to think that might be true.

  Blisters that had formed during the previous session’s rowing bubbled and popped as the crew set them to work again. The drums resumed, and from the first pull of her oar every inch of Lizneth’s body screamed for relief. She rowed with just enough effort to keep pace with the others, at times closing her eyes and letting her thoughts take her to places far away, as much to keep herself focused as to distract herself from the cramps running through every limb and muscle.

  She didn’t go home anymore, during those long dreamlike periods of introspection; thinking of her family only disheartened her. Instead, she would imagine that she was still free, still wandering the streets of Bolck-Azock, or that she was across the Omnekh on some other distant shore, discovering new cultures and places and ways of life. In her imagination, she could even go out into the blind-world without fearing its cruel effects. In truth, she hoped that if Curznack did sell her to some new master on the other side of the sea, they didn’t force her to go into the blind-world. But she still wondered what it was like—besides being ‘bright,’ as Bresh had described it.

  Lizneth had been excited to finally see real live calaihn before Bresh had described them to her. Now, Lizneth wasn’t sure they sounded like the kind of creatures she wanted to meet. They sounded crude and stupid; fragile, even. Their larger size must have been the only reason the ikzhehn were their slaves, instead of the other way around.

  Lizneth kept to her thoughts, letting some untold number of hours pass beneath her oar as the slaves drove the ship onward. The next time she looked out her oar hole, the waves were smaller, the sea was less choppy, and a quiet calm had fallen over the hold. The reason for the calm soon became apparent: Lizneth could see light on the surface of the water. Not the dim orange glow of the lanterns, but inlays of shimmering gold that rippled over every wave. The light worked its way across the surface as the ship sped forward, pulling on the sea until the black depths rose up and Lizneth could see the bottom, lit a deep green the color of wet leaves.

  Dozhie leaned toward Lizneth between strokes so she could speak more softly. “I think we’re close.”

  Bilik appeared out of nowhere and gave Dozhie a lash across the shoulders. She grunted, ground her longteeth, and set back to work.

  “Port ahead,” came the cry from up the stairs.

  “Let ‘er run,” the drummer shouted. With a palpable measure of relief, the rowing slaves pulled up their oars and rested them inside while the boat glided over the lapping waves.

  Another shout came from above. “Prepare to take ‘er into port.”

  CHAPTER 23

  The Priest and the Acolyte

  The Order will fall to ruin. The Cypriest’s grim prediction repeated itself in Sister Bastille’s mind. The Order will fall to ruin. The Mouth proclaims it. Father Kassic was no prophet—unless the Ancients had some secret way of conversing with the Mouth itself—but his prediction haunted Sister Bastille all the same.

  The four priests known as the Most Highly Esteemed sat in high-backed chairs along one side of the dark ironwood table in the meeting hall. Bastille scraped a chair back and took a seat facing them.

  “Brother Soleil has already explained what happened,” said Sister Gallica, a middle-aged woman half a decade younger than Bastille.

  Being in Gallica’s presence made Bastille feel her age; Sister
Gallica had been a follower of the Mouth for a far shorter time than any of the other high priests, but she had already risen to the Order’s highest rank. It was no wonder. Many in the lower echelons considered Gallica far wiser than the others. Bastille didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

  The fact that Sister Gallica was hideous had nothing to do with her rapid rise to stewardship. She was missing most of her hair; her face and scalp were masses of tissue, bubbled and raw. Her teeth were always visible on one side of her mouth, where the lips never closed. She seethed and spat when she talked, and suffered from aches and pains on a near-constant basis.

  “We simply require your testament as to the condition of Father Kassic,” Brother Liero was saying. “If it is time for his deposition, steps must be taken.” Liero was a quick-witted old man, though he belied his years with hair that was still growing thick and holding onto its mustard color. He studied Bastille, his mouth and bulbous eyes spread across the width of his face like some amphibian waiting for an insect.

  “Father Kassic expressed his sorrow over leaving his station,” Bastille said. “But he stayed on the parapet far too long before he finally gave in. He was wounded, and he needed attention days ago.”

  Brother Soleil turned in his chair to address his fellows. “Quite right. Kassic was in a bad state.”

  “We have heard your testimony, Brother Soleil,” said Brother Liero. “Let the kind Sister give us hers.”

  “What else did Father Kassic say to you?” Sister Dominique asked. She was a dark woman, black in everything but her skin, which was feather-white. Her hands were whiter still beneath the slender cotton gloves that ran almost to her elbows beneath her robe sleeves. She was taller than the others, her face long and thin, with sharp cheekbones that gave the skin an overstretched appearance. Her small mouth was always drawn up in a subtle smile, but it was never one that imparted happiness.

  Sister Bastille hesitated. Hesitation was rather unlike her, she supposed. She often made a point of speaking as though she were certain of herself, even when she wasn’t. Being before the Most Highly Esteemed after the things she’d seen today was making her nervous. No matter how she tried to shake the feeling, she couldn’t overcome the nagging sense that the high priests knew her every thought. They were reading her secrets in the lines on her face. She wondered if she seemed as right a fool as Sister Adeleine often did, stumbling and bumbling over her own words. “He said… that the Order would fall to ruin,” Bastille admitted, after a long pause.