The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1)

by J. C. Staudt

  Bastille hollered, stumbled backward, and covered her eyes like a child who’s seen a scary picture. Her heartbeat surged in her chest, and her head pounded like a mountain crumbling in on itself. She breathed fast, but still felt like she was drowning. She cowered in the shadows behind one of the moldy stacks of paper, and it was a long moment before she could think straight again.

  The image of the face flashed into her head. Something was alive in there. A being so dreadful that it made Bastille want to scream again, just knowing it existed. It had seemed to look into every hollow of her soul, knowing her in an instant with terrible intimacy.

  “You shouldn’t have come down here, kind Sister.”

  The voice turned Bastille’s blood to ice. It was Sister Gallica, she knew by the rough syllables and the wad of sputum she heard smack the concrete floor. The sounds of water rushing down the corrugated halfpipe outside the doorway heralded the high priest’s arrival.

  Bastille turned and stared. “How did you…”

  “How did I know you were down here? Only because I saw you eyeing the manhole cover while we were walking in the gardens the other day. I asked Sister Usara to notify me if she saw you in the conservatory at any time for more than a few minutes during your morning chores… just in case. I didn’t know for sure whether you would poke your nose where it didn’t belong, but I figured you might. It would appear that you’ve somehow managed to get hold of a copy of the Arcadian Star, despite not being one of the Esteemed. How might that have happened?”

  When Bastille tried to speak, her mouth was cotton-dry. “I got it from… Brother Mortial. He gave me his key before he left the basilica forever.”

  Gallica wrinkled her mouth, as though testing to see whether she could distort it further. “Really. That’s strange, because he would’ve needed it where he’s going.”

  “The city north?”

  “Yes, the city north. And then, to places all across the Inner East.”

  “Why?”

  Sister Gallica’s smile did nothing to make her more comely. “My dear, kind Sister Bastille. You would’ve learned all of this when you became one of the Esteemed. But since that promotion isn’t far off for you, I suppose an early lesson couldn’t hurt. You’ve proven your loyalty to the Order, and for that you’ll soon be rewarded. There’s something special about the Arcadian Star you’ve come into possession of, you see. The Star isn’t just a key to our labyrinth. It’s the key to the Aionach.”

  Bastille was surprised to hear that she was close to becoming one of the Esteemed. Given the situation, Gallica may only have been posturing to lure Bastille into a sense of safety, so she stayed quiet and let the high priest continue.

  “The value of the Arcadian Stars is incomprehensible. Time has shrouded the validity of their existence. They’ve become legend, known by only a few and recognized as the truth by fewer still. In the ancient times, when technology was at its peak and the Aionach was in the midst of its most prosperous era, there was a man who had amassed great wealth in the building of cities like the one we live in. In his elderly years, he was stricken with mania, fearing to lose everything he’d accumulated, so he hid his entire fortune in a series of secret repositories he called Catacombs. That is where Brother Mortial has in mind to go. He wants to find the locations of the other Catacombs and discover what treasures lie in wait. They say the man hid all kinds of things in his Catacombs—something different in each one. Gold, weapons, Nexus implants, power stations; all manner of technological marvels. That brings us to the Order. The Order was established as protectorate of these keys, to keep them out of the hands of those who would use them for ill.”

  “So, the Mouth…”

  “…is a lie, kind Sister. The Mouth is a ruse. We are here to protect the keys, and the treasures they guard, both wondrous and malevolent. We offer the reward of long life to those who are willing to dedicate their lives to our cause. You look disappointed, Sister Bastille. Did you think this was really about service to a god who lives within the depths of the light-star? Did you think the Order was gifted with the Nexus technologies and given all the tools it needed to survive out of sheer luck or divine providence? Did you join the Order for salvation, or did you join it for the promise of freedom from the physical affliction that has ailed you all your life? If you’re like most of us, it was the latter.”

  Bastille was speechless. She scratched around the bandage on her forehead. With the other hand, she set the metal plate down on one of the machines, pulled off her hood, and swept her hair back. Her hands felt unfamiliar, as if they were acting on their own. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She had dedicated her life to a lie. Aside from the severity of that revelation, she was having trouble coming to grips with the mystery of the face behind the door. So she had to ask the question that was burning in her mind. “Who is that? In that room back there?”

  “Not who, kind Sister. What. People come here looking for salvation. They could not possibly know the true burden of the Order’s task. We are not here to hide some valuable treasure, as some believe, but to protect the Aionach from itself. Behind that door, Sister Bastille, is the fearsome culmination of a war that never happened. It’s the reason Infernal only misbehaves, instead of destroying us all. The man who gave us the task of preventing this war is unknown to us. Like the locations of his Catacombs, his name has been lost to time. It’s possible that someone out there knows who he was, or has information on his life. Finding those clues has become part of Brother Mortial’s mission.”

  “But how could the man’s name have been forgotten entirely?”

  “Let me ask you something, Sister Bastille. What was your great-grandmother’s name?”

  “Something Hestenblach. I… don’t know.”

  “How about your great grandfather on your mother’s side?”

  “The family name was Treborough. I can’t remember his first name.”

  “And if you don’t remember that, how is it so hard to believe that a few hundred years isn’t enough to wipe away the name of a reticent man—apparently, a man with issues of extreme paranoia and a link to forces that run deeper through the Aionach than we could ever imagine? It’s strange what history remembers, and what it forgets. But it’s also reasonable, and merciful.”

  “So, the symbol on the key is the Order’s true symbol after all.”

  Gallica nodded. “The Order has existed for much longer than you may have realized when you joined.”

  “And the Cypriests aren’t protecting us. They’re protecting the keys… and whatever that thing over there is.”

  “Protecting the members of the Order is a very fortunate side effect derived from protecting the keys, yes.”

  Now Bastille understood that Brother Soleil wasn’t serving some religious ideal, which he’d violated by committing his sins. The ethical implications of Soleil’s actions still made him a monster in Bastille’s mind. But to know that his life was dedicated to keeping a secret, not upholding a code, changed the way she felt about him. She leaned on one of the paper presses, her head throbbing. She could feel the machine’s sturdiness, the thin grooves that ran down its sides and the smooth surface of its belt. “I don’t understand the purpose of this room. If the man hid a part of his fortune in each Catacomb, which part of the fortune is this?”

  Sister Gallica gave a wry smile. “It’s clear that these machines were once used to draw marks on this paper. But, like you, I fail to see how that could be of any value. Perhaps it was something of great personal interest to the man; something he regarded with more sentimentality than most. I believe our Catacomb is the most worthless of them all. Just a room full of mold-ridden paper and broken machines. When I showed it to Brother Mortial, he circled the room once to look everything over, then walked out. He never even went near that door. He said he wanted nothing to do with the dark powers or their manifestations; only that he wanted to uncover what wealth lay hidden in places like this one. It’s a disgusting place. So wet an
d cold. It may have been the first Catacomb the man ever built. It’s clearly not as structurally sound as he intended it to be. The walls are cracked and leaky, the foundation unstable, except for that room, which is as solid as thick steel plate can get. The rest of this place would’ve needed to remain sealed up just as tight for any of this paper to have been preserved properly over the long years.”

  “So the Order has just been hiding this here, keeping the keys a secret for centuries? Why?”

  “Can you think of a better life than one in which all your needs are met? That kind of life doesn’t exist outside these walls, as far as we know. Divulging the basilica’s secrets would bring the world to our gates. It would disrupt our way of life in potentially irretrievable ways. That’s why the barrier to being told the Order’s secrets is so high. If a priest can’t dedicate herself to the ways of the Mouth—something distant and intangible—how could she ever be trusted to hide the truth of something real? The Most High Infernal Mouth is the allegory to our quest; that we must always keep our mouths closed, and the truth hidden. The Mouth is the constant reminder of our vows as the Esteemed. When you came to meet with me the other day, I knew you were ready. I could see it in your nature, your demeanor. You are an unyielding bastion, Sister Bastille. Your name fits you. And you fit the Order. Will you accept the call placed on your life and become one of the Esteemed?”

  Once again, Bastille didn’t know what to say. She was overcome with emotion, a flood of pride and sorrow and uncertainty that changed within her from one fleeting moment to the next. “This is a lot to take in,” she said. “Can I have some time to think about it?”

  “Of course,” said Gallica. “It’s a lot for anyone to learn the truth of these things. But if the decision is one you must think about, you should keep in mind the price of refusal. In the meantime, I’m going to need that key you’ve found. There are no exceptions to our rules.”

  The high priest held out her hand.

  There are always exceptions. “Do you really not know where I got this key?” Bastille asked, pulling the leather cord from around her neck.

  Gallica sucked a puddle of gathering saliva through her teeth. “What do you think?”

  “I think it belongs with the man in the east tower,” said Bastille. She let the iron key—the Arcadian Star—dangle until it came to rest in Gallica’s outstretched hand. “Am I right?”

  Gallica tucked the key into her pocket. “You’re not one of the Esteemed yet, Sister Bastille. Now, if you’ll kindly step outside so I can lock the door… we should be getting back to the basilica. People will start to miss us.”

  No, I’m not one of the Esteemed, Bastille agreed. I’m not even sure if I want to be, anymore. But I don’t seem to have a choice in the matter.

  CHAPTER 40

  Into the Wastes

  Daxin dismounted from a night’s hard riding and made camp near the eastern edge of the Skeletonwood, resting beneath an early morning sky that was radiant with swathes of pink and orange. It struck him then that he might never see Ellicia again, but he allowed himself only a brief moment to miss her before he pushed the thought away.

  He’d been selfish, there was no denying that; he’d left her and the others alone against the sanddragons and gotten away clean. Even if he could’ve loved Ellicia—even if he ever came to the point where he was ready to give up the search for Vicky—there was an emptiness inside him. An emptiness that was so crippling, it had started to make him believe he was unfit to be loved. He’d given in to that emptiness when he fled Dryhollow Split. He’d let his mission outweigh his goodwill; he’d let fear replace self-sacrifice, and it made him feel as rotten inside as the animal carcasses he’d discarded on the trail behind him.

  But if he was so heartless, so incapable of love, why had abandoning Ellicia been so hard? He remembered being twelve years old, leaving Pleck’s Mill with tears streaming down his face as he bid all his summer friends farewell. He knew too well the ache of goodbye; he knew how things changed at the end of the long year, when the days begin to shorten and every ill-fated love story makes its slow journey toward the far reaches of memory. Ellicia had meant something to him, but hers was one of those stories. Even if he’d recognized it sooner, his feelings for her had been doomed from the start.

  When he thought of Victaria now, he could still see her long dark hair, the clarity of her form. But his memory of her was fading. There was nothing left of her eyes; no surety in the sound of her voice. Even the image of her face had begun to darken and smudge around the edges like so much wet clay.

  The next night, Daxin emerged from the Skeletonwood and crossed into the vast desert of the Inner East. This was the true wasteland, even more barren than the scrubs and covered in windswept dunes that threw off sheets of grit with every strong breeze. The sand here was heavier than scrubland dust; it stung his skin, got in his eyes, and worked its way into his clothing. It irritated his rain rash too, so that by the end of each night’s ride he felt like one big sheet of sandpaper.

  Despite his discomfort, it was the desert that held the purest part of him. It was here that he could hear his father’s voice most clearly. When Daxin was old enough, his parents had brought him on the less dangerous of their journeys. It was there that he’d learned most of what he knew about survival in the Aionach. The wasteland will offer you no quarter or forgiveness, his father had told him. Never doubt its malice, or fail to appreciate its power. If you ever find yourself at your last hope, remember that the land speaks to those who listen. Look at the way things are and you’ll fail. Look to the way things were, and you’ll be rewarded.

  At dawn on the third day, the neglected spires of Belmond appeared within the gloom of a fierce sandstorm that had been spitting its effluvium from the lower atmosphere all night. His mare was ready to give out beneath him; water and shade had grown scarce, and the reserves he’d collected in the Skeletonwood were running low. He couldn’t afford to give Belmond a wide berth, even if he weren’t in need of fresh supplies. Hug to the outskirts and use them for cover; that was the way to get past the city without drawing the Scarred Comrades’ attention. He knew the safest routes into and out of Belmond as well as the nomads did; they used the same paths to approach the city from Sai Calgoar. They knew the fingerprint of the land—every dune and mesa, every hill, fold and funnel a traveler could use to disguise his passage.

  The smell of clean sand became the city’s hot rusted stench, the shifting dunes hardening to concrete. There was a little place Daxin knew—a store, if you could call anything in the city south by that name. It was nestled inside an old electronics repair shop, its exposed cinder block walls cracking with age, shards of colored glass poking in around the borders of an old back-lit sign. Two broad-shouldered security guards stood at the door in spiked leather, with nail-board maces in their hands and pistols holstered at their hips.

  “Mistah Glaive, you sad son of a bitch,” exclaimed the proprietor when Daxin stumbled through the door. “Looks like you got caught in a rainstorm. That or you’re going bald faster’n a dead bushcat.”

  “Gachenko.” Daxin touched two fingers to his brow in greeting. He knew the man better than he trusted him.

  The shop smelled of mildew and polishing oil layered with dust, motes swimming through the shaft of light in the doorway. Shelves lined the walls, a façade of black and silver chassis with wire guts spilling out in strands of red and green and yellow.

  “Atcha service,” said Gachenko. “Been awhile, y’skinny old coffer. What you been up to these days?”

  “Just now, I’m into selling things,” Daxin said.

  “Never been one for small talk, have you?” said Gachenko, chuckling to himself. “Fine, let’s see what you got.” The shopkeep lifted the counter and came around to greet Daxin. He was a boulder of a man in a faded green tunic and suede leggings, thick through the chest and belly. The skin on his face was taut and his eyes bulged with strain, as if his pulse ran so high he’d burst at the s
lightest increase in pressure. When he took Daxin’s hand in his gold-ringed grip, veins stood out on his forearm.

  The handshake made Daxin’s fingers feel like straw through a baler, but he endured the cramping in his hand as he dumped his tradestuffs from a cloth sack onto the counter. The things he’d brought with him had looked better in the daylight, when there wasn’t so much else around for them to contend with.

  “Right off the bat, I’ll take the scissors,” said Gachenko. “They’re in good shape.” He held up two of the diamond rings. “These, I have a million of. But I’ll take the gold. You might as well throw away the rocks, unless you’re like one of them flashy bastards who comes in here looking for diamond-studded knuckles. What you looking for?”

  Daxin knelt to the floor and whacked the rings with the hilt of his machete until the diamonds broke free of their settings and skidded away over the concrete. “I’ll take one of those shirts and a hood-scarf,” he said, tossing the empty rings onto the counter. “A razor if you’ve got one. Some paper, too.”

  “I got some paper,” said Gachenko, lifting a stack of books from the floor and setting them on the counter. “Plenty.”

  “Not for smoking. Blank paper. For writing on.”

  Gachenko grinned. “Fancy educated man, over here. Alright, I think I have some in the back.”

  “Also, water for four days’ ride and some food, if you can spare it.”

  “What do I look like, a grocery store to you?”

  Daxin gave him a sour look.

  “Sheeze, relax, okay?” Gachenko’s mouth widened into a grin. When Daxin’s expression didn’t change, the grin faded. “I’m just busting your balls. I tell ya… learn to take a joke sometimes, eh? Where you headed, anyway?”

  When Daxin said nothing, Gachenko rolled his eyes. “Now don’t make me do the math here. You need four days water, so that must mean… you’re going to Wynesring? You might make Unterberg in four days, but not on that horse. Nah… somewhere along the coast? Ah shoot, of course. Sai Calgoar. What in the name of all that is good and holy are you doing up there? Huh? Hello? Buddy, I swear… talking to you is like that much more fun than banging my head on the wall.” He pinched his thumb and forefinger together.