The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (21 page)

“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 was
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.”

“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.