The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1)

by J. C. Staudt

  She was running by the time she reached the tunnel’s end, through a sharp fold in the rock and out into a day that was bright enough to stop her in her tracks. She’d forgotten what it felt like to be so blind, without the Oculus Cordial to help her see. Still, she had never been so glad to be in the daylight before. She cowered and retreated toward the tunnel to put on her goggles, but a waiting hand took her by the scruff of the neck and dragged her off her feet.

  She heard another stream of gibberish in the slanted, lilting tongue of the calaihn, and she found herself surrounded by them. They prodded her with their spears and walking staves as they jeered at her. She couldn’t tell whether the three she’d seen earlier were here or not; they all looked so similar. For the brief moments she dared to open her eyes, she could only look at the ground and try to tell them apart by the differences between their feet.

  One of them spoke at her in a rough voice. He repeated himself twice before Lizneth shrugged and held up her hands.

  “What are you saying? I don’t understand…”

  The calai knelt. “You know the Aion-speech, do you? Tell us where your forces are moving.”

  Artolo said the calaihn warriors know more of the old tongue than their peasants do. These must be warriors. “Moving? What forces?”

  “I do not want to pluck your claws out one by one, but I will, if you do not tell me. Welli. Breith. Hold the muirrhad down.”

  Rough hands pinned Lizneth to the ground. The calai produced a hard metal tool and set it around the first of her claws.

  Lizneth was frantic. “Stop it. I don’t know anything about any forces. I’m coming from Sai Calgoar. I have nothing to do with whatever this is, and I have no information for you. You can torture me all you want, but all I’ll be able to do is scream. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The calai let up, curious. “You are coming from Sai Calgoar, you say. A slave escaped from its master, are you?”

  “No. I’m not a slave. Not to any of you… hu-mans.” The word came back to her as she said it, a memory of something she had heard. “I came to Sai Calgoar by ship. Now I’m going home.”

  “Where is home?”

  “Bolck-Azock,” she lied.

  “That is the big one, eh? We know it.” He turned to the others. “That is where his agents have been hiring new warriors.”

  “Whose agents? What warriors?”

  “She really does not know. You really do not know, do you?”

  “Sniverlik?” she blurted, without thinking. A mistake.

  The calai took her by the snout, bringing his face close to hers. “I knew you were one of his. He sent you to our fair city for spying.”

  “No, I’m not. He didn’t. It was a guess. A stupid guess. Every ikzhe knows Sniverlik where I’m from. His name is known far and wide among our kind. He’s notorious.”

  “A big word for such a small creature. Yes, it is Sniverlik’s forces we are after. If you have been to Sai Calgoar on your own business and not his, you would not know his plans.”

  Mama and Papa and Raial and Deequol and everyone in Tanley were the first things on Lizneth’s mind when she heard Sniverlik’s name. She didn’t know what he was planning, but she wanted to. “I’m no friend of Sniverlik’s. Just because I’m an ikzhe doesn’t mean I’m on his side. Now let go of me. Get these brutes off.”

  The calai laughed, deep and hearty. “Let her up.” They stood and watched her scramble to her feet.

  Lizneth brushed herself off, but her fur was even filthier now. She remembered what Bresh had told her when they’d first come to Sai Calgoar. There are good calaihn and bad—some who hate what they do not know, and others who welcome it. Those calaihn are rare.

  Lizneth hoped this calai was one of the rare ones.

  “I’m on my way home,” she said, “and I can promise you if you let me go I won’t get in your way. I don’t want to see Sniverlik succeed at whatever he’s planning. He’s torn my family apart. My brood-brothers and sisters, my younger siblings, my Mama and Papa… we all live in fear of him.”

  “Okay, little one,” the calai said. “Calm yourself. This will be no different from every muirrhadi uprising before it. A nuisance that has to be put down.”

  “If Sniverlik is behind it, it will be different,” Lizneth said. “He’s always been satisfied with his control over the lesser villages. If he’s stirring, it’s because something is making him restless. He’ll ally with the burrow-kin soon, if he hasn’t already. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t have hu-mans on his side, too.”

  “You know a lot for a muirrhad who claims to have no involvement.”

  “I’ve lived under Sniverlik’s rule my entire life, as has my family and everyone in my village. I know what he’s like.”

  “Your village. I thought you said the big sai muirrhadi was your home. Bolck-Azock, is it?”

  “My village is two hours’ run from Bolck-Azock. I live near it, not in it. If you don’t believe me, why don’t you just take me captive?”

  “The little muirrhad is feisty, no?” There was more laughter and jeering. The calai quieted them. “I will tell you why, little one. Because I need you. I will send you on your way with a message for Sniverlik. If you deliver it to him, your village’s hardest days will be behind it.”

  Lizneth shook her head. “When Sniverlik is gone, one of his sons will only take his place, just as he took Ankhaz’s place after he stretched him to death. That’s how it goes with the ikzhehn. It’s either tradition or right of conquest that gives a zhe his power.”

  “The master-king has ordered me to destroy Sniverlik, my little friend. I always follow the master-king’s orders. If you deliver my message, you may let me do it quicker. After I am done with Sniverlik, your below-world belongs to you. The one who comes after him is none of my concern. Perhaps the next one to take his place will be kinder to you and your village, eh? You stay with us tonight. I will give you my message in the morning.”

  Cotterphage meat was slimy and pungent, but thinking about the countless meals of dried kelp and salted gull meat she’d been forced to endure made Lizneth devour it with fervor. She’d had to smell the calaihn and their disgusting sweat all afternoon, but even that hadn’t weakened her appetite. She was convinced that even if she spent every day with them from now until the end of her life, she would still find them off-putting. Repulsive. That was the word Fane had used.

  “See the warlock when you finish,” the calai told her, when she was almost done eating. His tone made it clear that she was to do what he said without argument. She could see him better in the growing dusk than she had earlier in the day, but he was so similar to the other calaihn that she still couldn’t have picked him out from a group. He was tall, broad in the shoulders and narrow through the legs, with deep scars across his chest and black head-fur that rose in a tall plume from front to back and was shaven off at the sides.

  As Lizneth wove through the calai camp, she could feel their eyes on her. Not stares of lust like the bucks had given her in Bolck-Azock, but narrow-eyed looks of mistrust. Even their steeds grew uneasy when she passed by, clacking their hooves on the rocks, pulling at their guide ropes, and making frightened noises through flared nostrils.

  The warlock was an emaciated man with ornamental bones piercing his nose and ears. His chest bore decorative scarring like many of the others, but his scars were painted with thin seams of red and black and yellow. The colors didn’t wash off, even when he cleansed himself at a stone basin. “Shoethgeti,” he said, twirling his finger.

  Lizneth made an obedient about-face, hoping that was what he meant. She heard him pick up one of his bowls, and jumped when he began to rub something cold and wet on her shoulder. She turned her head to find that it was an orangey-brown paste that had a smoky, sweet smell.

  The warlock rubbed until the paste was covering every scratch on her body. He held up a finger and said something in his strange tongue. Then he left her. She didn’t understand the wor
ds, but she knew he meant for her to stay there.

  The cooking fires had been left to smolder by the time the warlock returned to check on her. He was carrying a small basket filled with several varieties of plants and grasses. She watched him separate and tie them off into bundles with lengths of thin cord.

  “Titrobaid,” he said, and waved her closer.

  The strips of paste had dried, and when they crumbled away the skin beneath felt fresh. Lizneth could still feel the wounds and see where they had begun to scab over, but the pain and redness had receded. “Thank you,” she said, bowing her head.

  “Maetha,” said the warlock, and bowed in turn.

  He could’ve been wishing death upon me, for all I understood of that. She took her leave and returned to the fire, where the leader of the calaihn was still sitting. The others around him were talking and joking, but he was staring into the fire, lost in thought.

  Lizneth still wasn’t very good at judging hu-man facial expressions, but something in the calai’s eyes was somber. “How long have you been away from home?” she asked him.

  “This is my home,” the calai said, indicating the foothills around them.

  “Don’t you have a family? A mate? Children?”

  The calai was silent for a time, still staring into the flames. “Do you know why the lathcui call us nomads?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what a lath-cui is,” Lizneth admitted, taking her time with the foreign word.

  The calai laughed. “One is a lathcu. Many are lathcui.”

  “Ah, just like you are one calai and all of you together are calaihn.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Your language and mine are similar, you know. Both are rooted in the same history, before the long ages drove them apart. The lathcui are… how do I explain? They have impure blood. Borrowed blood from distant shores. Their skin is light in color. They have lesser heritage.”

  “Oh, you mean the eh-calaihn.”

  “That is your word for them? Well then. The eh-calaihn,” he said. The word sounded as strange on his tongue as lathcui had felt on hers. “The eh-calaihn call my people nomads, or savages. Not because we have no grace, but because we came out of the north long ago. From Calgareth, across many sands. The sand is in our blood. As it shifts and moves, so do we also. I have a wife and six children. They understand what it is for a man to move with the sands. The movement is part of us.”

  “I used to think movement was part of me too,” Lizneth said. “I wanted to leave home so badly, to see the whole world and never go back. But since I’ve been gone, all I’ve wanted to do is go home again.”

  “The desire for movement does not mean you will not miss home. It means you bring home with you wherever the movement takes you. The master-king sends me home every time I go to him for new orders.”

  “That isn’t possible for me. My fields won’t tend themselves while I’m away. If I don’t tend the fields, the mulligraws will die, and Sniverlik will punish Mama and Papa for a poor harvest.”

  “I do not pretend to have sympathy for the muirrhadi, or even to understand them. We keep as many muirrhadi slaves as we do lathcui in our city. The master-king’s interest in Sniverlik goes only so far as to protect our people from him. But I have to say, little one, that it will do me great honor to know your family is served well when my job is done.”

  “I’ll take your message to Sniverlik,” Lizneth said. “Whatever I can do, I’ll help you fight him.”

  “Travel with us to the base of the Vors’ Rhachis, little one. Then we will speak more of the message I want you to deliver. If Sniverlik refuses us, we will stage our attack from the western edge of the vale.”

  “You don’t have to call me little one. My name is Lizneth.”

  The calai gave her a warm smile. “Very well, Lizneth of Bolck-Azock. Call me Neacal Griogan of Sai Calgoar.”

  The burrow-kin harried Neacal’s forces all the way to the Vors’ Rhachis, hurling javelins and slingstones at them from hidden niches and fleeing at the first signs of retaliation. Lizneth had been right, it seemed; Sniverlik was already rallying the burrow-kin to his cause. She doubted they would’ve been so aggressive unless Sniverlik had already exerted his influence over them in some way.

  The mountains were too treacherous to ride over, so Neacal’s forces were all on foot. That meant they had to carry the full weight of their supplies on their backs. Neacal was determined to arrive in Sniverlik’s domain soon enough to put an end to his growing revolt before it got out of hand. The Brinescales offered the nomads a faster trip north than if they’d ridden through the vale with a full complement of mounts.

  Lizneth had never seen a horse or a corsil, except the few she’d spotted from a distance while she was in Sai Calgoar. Sometimes the younger warriors would struggle through a tale or two in the Aion-speech for her benefit, so she heard plenty of stories around the campfires about the great beasts the calaihn rode when they were on the sands. Lizneth grew fond of several of the younger calaihn, who were more accepting of her than the elders. Neacal had to reprimand a group of older calaihn one night for making jokes about Lizneth in their language. They kept their distance from then on.

  Traveling during daylight hours would’ve been rough going for any ikzhe, but it was especially hard on Lizneth. She would often start the day at the front of the group with Neacal. By the time they made camp for the night, she would often find herself lagging near the back with the porters. At times, the younger warriors would take turns hoisting her up onto their backs and carrying her over the long horizons, but too often they had their own burdens to carry, and they left her on her own to cover the distance.

  On the third day of their trek, they made camp where the eastern edge of the Vors’ Rhachis met the westernmost point of the Brinescales. Neacal summoned Lizneth to his fire. They ate a meal of stale bread, grilled corn, and a thin stew of mutton with bits of onion and potato.

  “You look tired,” Neacal said, wiping the last of the stew off his chin. “You have spirit to have kept up with us for this long.”

  You have spirit. That’s the same thing Bilik told me before he made me row so hard I nearly died. “I barely kept up,” Lizneth said. “If I hadn’t been carried—”

  “Your role has become crucial to our success,” Neacal said, interrupting. “I believe I can depend on you, Lizneth of Bolck-Azock. I have placed a great deal of trust in you by asking you to deliver this message. It is important to be sure that you possess the strength to go on. Do you still wish to help us?”

  Lizneth studied him, trying to read his eyes, but unsure of what she was seeing. Now that I’m here, going before Sniverlik seems scarier than I thought it would be, she almost said. “I… I do want to help you. But I need to go home and make sure my family is okay.”

  “Then do it,” Neacal said, setting his bowl aside. “Go home first, if you must. But be quick about it. Each day we linger here is another chance for Sniverlik’s spies to learn of our presence. This is what I want you to tell him.” He cleared his throat.

  Lizneth was confused. “Hold on. You aren’t writing it down?”

  Neacal’s eyes flashed, his brow crumpling. “We have no scribe here, no scholar of languages. The best I could do is make one of my men scribble something in Calgoàric, but then what use would it be to you? Your warlord would not even understand it. Do you write?”

  “Sniverlik is not my anything,” Lizneth said. She looked at the floor. “No. I don’t write. At least, I’ve never tried. I can read some. I just thought you would write something Sniverlik could read, so I wouldn’t have to… say it.”

  “You will not speak to him, now?” Neacal was becoming angry; that much Lizneth could tell.

  “You don’t get what it means for me to do this. Carrying your words to him makes me as much his enemy as you are. My whole village is bent to his rule. He could have my entire family wiped out at the slightest whim, and nobody could do a thing to stop him.”

  “I was sent here t
o do everything I can to stop him, and I will. If he does not release you, we will come for you. If we have to, we will fight in the below-world with torches in one hand and our swords in the other.”

  “So what do you expect me to do? Deliver him your verbal threat of force and then throw myself at his mercy? Wait for you to show up with your torches while his Marauders surround you in the dark?”

  Neacal’s face softened, and the anger drained out of him. He looked her in the eyes as if searching for something he didn’t see there. “There is only one thing I expect from you, little one. Courage.”

  You know who I am. Stop calling me little one, she wanted to say. There was a roiling in the pit of her stomach like nothing the Omnekh had ever wrought. The tears wanted to come, and her legs wanted to carry her away, but everything inside her knew she had to resist those instincts and be brave. To see this through. It was the only way things would ever change.

  CHAPTER 54

  A Strike in Two Parts

  The siege of the basilica began as a much quieter affair than Sister Bastille would’ve imagined. After discovering the basilica’s hidden Catacomb, she had learned that the Order of the Most High Infernal Mouth existed only as a means to protect the Arcadian Stars. Sister Gallica’s words had been haunting her ever since. Keep in mind the price of refusal, Gallica had said. There are no exceptions to our rules.

  A veiled threat if ever I’ve heard one, Bastille thought, as she emptied a bucket of bones and cartilage into the hog pen. What haunted her even more was the image of that face. That gray, sallow face behind the door with the porthole window, and those piercing black eyes. There was that dark presence, too; the one that had made her believe with such certainty that the world was collapsing in around her like a balled up sheet of paper. She’d had to remind herself that the scriptures and meditations she was in the habit of reciting whenever she was scared or worried were nothing but vain attempts at subterfuge. She felt tricked. The Order had fooled her into believing in the Mouth, along with all the other priests and acolytes and aspirants who had come through the basilica’s gates.